Outcast

by Guerin Zand

  Like I said, this sort of thinking just made my head hurt. Of course, I could never talk to my alien friends about any of this. In their opinion, it was knowledge that we were not yet advanced enough to understand. If I tried to have a discussion like this with them, they would simply nod and say “Maybe.” Even Lori had just told me the bare minimum she thought I needed to know to get me to consider visiting Taes.

  Even though all this thinking just made my head spin, I couldn’t help myself. If this message was sent directly to my consciousness, and the void meetings used the same process, then the medical scans should not have been a surprise. If I believe what they told me, and they couldn’t explain it, then a different mechanism must have been used.

  Maybe it was some sort of telepathic communication? If the Uncertainty Principle was applicable, then perhaps that explained the temporal anomaly they detected in the scans. The message was broadcast throughout time. It was broadcast to my physical mind, but they had no idea when I would receive it. Perhaps they had detected my consciousness, and thus my physical being, on Taes, but didn’t know when that was? For all they knew, I would have already been to Taes before I received the message. To them, it didn’t matter. It was meant to tell me what was happening on Taes. It was possible that Taesrins no longer existed and it was too late for us to intervene. But that couldn’t be true based on what Lori told me.

  I just had to assume that these Guides were a lot smarter than me. Ok, probably not a bad assumption, I know. Everything I was thinking could only explain part of what had been happening to me. Even that, I couldn’t be sure of. What if I just had the dumb luck to keep running into trouble and no one was actually guiding me? It could just be my paranoia, but the thought of another bunch of really smart aliens manipulating me just didn’t give me a warm and fuzzy feeling. What was the deal anyway? Was I on some alien dupe mailing list? Was I like one of those easy, elderly targets that direct marketers loved. I was just stupid enough to fall for their bullshit sales pitches every time.

  “You’re special Guerin. This opportunity is an exclusive offer just for you. Not everybody qualifies for this once in a lifetime offer. All you have to do is....”

  You get the idea. My entire fucked up life as a spaceman basically boiled down to something really simple. I was the biggest sucker in all of existence and I fell for that stupid pitch every fucking time!

  First, I had to save Earth, then the solar system. What next? The galaxy? The universe?

  It sort of reminded me of when I was a small boy living in Utica, N.Y. My father was one of those do-it-yourselfers, which meant we kids had to always help him do whatever it was he had to do. One time, the main sewer line in the house was backed up and my father opened a trap in the sewer line in our basement.

  “Guerin, stick your hand in there and clean out the line.” My father said that like it was no big deal.

  “I’m not going to stick my hand in there. It’s full of shit.”

  “Oh, it won’t kill you. I’d do it, but my hands are too big. Your small hands will fit in there, no problem.”

  I’m sure he would have done it, right? He could have just gone to the hardware store and bought a snake, but no, I was right there. The point of this little story is that I’ve been cleaning up other people’s shit since I was a small boy, and I was tired of it.

  Now Lori had a shit job for me. She wanted me to go and fix another one of their messes, and I didn’t see how fixing this situation was really any of my concern. Well, except for that dream, but they could just be using me to send the Collective a message, right? Where was I going to draw the line?

  As usual, all my thinking didn’t really help me. I was still going to go to Taes and shit was going to happen. I had forgotten my one basic rule. Ignore the confusing stuff. It’s probably not real, and if it is, it doesn’t matter anyway.

  Of course, that was easier said than done. I had to find a way to stop thinking about all of this. I had let the aliens get to me, and now I was all wound up.

  No one ever actually asked me what I wanted to do. Sure, Milly sort of did the other day, but they already had a new assignment in the works. She was just trying to make me think it was my idea. It had been so long since I actually thought about what I wanted, I didn’t know what that was for sure.

  I did want to design my own spaceship. I grabbed my portable viewer and started working on my starship design.

  The Collective shuttles were functional, but they weren’t really that impressive. If I wasn’t that impressed, imagine trying to score a space babe or two with one of their shuttles. It would be like borrowing your parent's station wagon to take a girl on a date back in high school. I might as well stick a ‘Baby on Board’ sign in the back window, well, if there was a back window.

  I had done my best pimping out the Vengeance, but it was like polishing a turd. It wouldn’t be that hard for the Collective to build me something I could proudly call my starship. We could start with the basic guts of a shuttle. Like I said, it was functional. It needed wings and other aerodynamic surfaces so it could fly in a planet’s atmosphere. Sure, gravity technology made that unnecessary, but it really upped the cool factor. Actual flying added a sense of style. Imagine the sight of some awesome starship, black hole black, with the skull and crossbones on the vertical tail swooping in for a landing. Now compare that to a big old cylinder just plopping itself down. It also needed plasma thrusters to propel it at subluminal velocities in and out of the atmosphere. You have to admit, superheated plasma shooting out of the ass of a starship is way cool. I’d add some retractable landing struts, so it didn’t look like you just crashed the belly of the ship onto a planet when you landed. Include some cool weapons that could vaporize a small moon like the one Earth had, and we’d be starting to approach what I’d call impressive. Oh, and it needed some windows.

  The interior would need some real work. I’d make my starship a bit bigger than the shuttles to start with. I figured I would need to be able to house a total crew and passenger compliment of 30. It would still be able to be piloted by a single crew member if needed. We needed room for a squad of marines, or whatever we were going to call them, for basic operations. You know, the usual stuff like ship security, repelling boarders, and protection for passengers who may need to go down to less than friendly planets. Include room for flight crews, two shifts minimum, other assorted staff, and room for at least a dozen passengers.

  I’d add a real cockpit, or bridge, up front with a windshield and the standard blast doors to protect against bird strikes or whatever the hell we might run into. It would have a pilot and co-pilot station up front. They would be next to each other, with plenty of room on both sides and in between for easy access. Just behind that, in the center, would be the Captain’s chair. There had to be a Captain’s chair with all the bells and whistles, including a decent beverage holder. It would have its own viewer interface, so the Captain could do shit like play Tetris when he got bored. Behind him, in the back corners of the command center, I’d put the communications, navigation, and sensor stations. There would definitely be some cool displays included all over with holograms and other eye dazzling light shows. I wanted people to go “ooh” when the entered my bridge. I’d leave the central command center, that shuttles normally had on the lower deck, as a backup.

  Off the bridge, I’d put the Captain’s ready room that led to the Captain’s quarters. The problem with the Bree design was they didn’t really have a ranking system and so no one was really the Captain. That’s what led to the terrible interior layout they had. I’d added pretty much everything I wanted to the Captain’s quarters on the Vengeance, but it was sort of patched together. By designing it from scratch, it would be laid out to be more functional, and, I don’t know, maybe more feng shui? I’d make the other quarters a little bigger as well, or at least a few of them for the higher-ranking crew members. I’d have to change that whole IKEA motif throughout the ship and I’d definitely do something about the
God-awful puke green color of it all.

  Now the galley/mess would be totally redone. First off, the basic shuttles didn’t really have a galley. They had a galley/mess combo if you consider the food replicators and beverage stations as a galley of sorts. So right off, my new ship would need a real galley, properly equipped with gas cooktops, ovens, and all the other accouterments of a fine restaurant. Of course, the galley would include a nice big stasis chamber for keeping real meat for us carnivores. If possible, I’d include a wood-fired pizza oven.

  Of course, there would be a Captain’s mess for when I started scoring all those hot space babes. That would be attached to the Captain’s quarters, and that new properly equipped galley. The crew mess would have some real dining tables and not those school cafeteria chairs and tables. It would also be located adjacent to the galley as well. I’d include the basic replicator and beverage stations for those quick meals, as I would in the Captain’s mess, but we’d also have a decent kitchen staff to make us real meals, from real food.

  On the upper deck, I’d include a bar/lounge for the crew. It would be set up with a moonroof and windows, again equipped with blast doors so we could darken the room for movie nights. We’d need some decent lounge chairs and tables. Add to that an elevator to connect the galley to the lounge, so the kitchen staff could serve snacks and appetizers up there. I should probably see if any of Steve’s recruits had a background in interior design to help with the whole project.

  Basically, my vision for the perfect starship was a cross between a hot ass fighter jet and a cruise ship. It may sound funny, but I knew it could be done and it wouldn’t be that hard. Who knows, we could probably even include a few bowling lanes. Since I really didn’t feel like I belonged anywhere anymore, this ship would be my home.

  Once I had a decent starship, maybe I could get back to writing. Maybe I’d do one of those food travel guide type books to start with. We’d travel around the universe looking for the best places to eat and drink. We could include recipes and videos of the chefs preparing the meals. Alien eBooks had a lot more capabilities than our Earth eBooks. Since you used a portable viewer to read them, it could easily include tons of holographic videos and pictures. I think, in the end, it would be a great companion to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The whole fine dining thing was sort of glanced over in that series of books.

  At some point I finally fell asleep, my perfect starship design still displayed on my viewer, and I dreamed of the perfect cheeseburger.

  Chapter 25

  Planning the Future

  I arrived back at the Earth ship the next day about mid-day. I returned to my quarters and I was just planning on spending a quiet day with Gamma. I found her, Maria, and Prima playing some alien child’s game. They were all sitting on the floor in the living room with a portable viewer in front of them. I watched for a while and it looked like an alien form of Lego. It was all holographic, but the concept was very similar. There was a palette of pieces Gamma could pick from. They were all different shapes and she could stretch or shrink them to fit into her little construction project.

  “So, what are you girls building?”

  Gamma didn’t even seem to notice I had entered the room. Normally she would have jumped into my arms when I first walked in, but not this time. I watched as pieces were mysteriously added to the little construction project.

  Maria looked up to answer me. At least I wasn’t totally invisible. “It’s not about what we’re building. The point is to add something to the model when it’s your turn. We’re playing with a few other children, and when it’s our turn the palette will become active and we pick a piece and try to add to what is already there.”

  “How does the game end?”

  “It doesn’t, really. You just play until you get bored. People will drop out of the game and maybe more will enter. You can join a game in progress or start a new game from scratch.”

  I kneeled down behind Gamma and wrapped my arms around her. I gave her a kiss on the back of her head. She wriggled, and I released her.

  “I’m busy, Papa.”

  And she was. She couldn’t take her eyes off of the game. Maria and Prima laughed at me and I shook my head. I stood back up.

  “Well, I guess I’ll just go to my room since I’m not needed here.”

  I didn’t get so much as a shrug out of any of them. I guess the whole newness of having a father had worn off. Maybe Gamma was mad that I took off for a day and left her behind. I learned when Maria was a little girl, there was no point trying to figure out what went on in my daughter’s head. The same was probably true with Gamma. Let’s be honest. I had a better chance of understanding the fundamentals of this quantum multi-verse then understanding women, especially the real young ones.

  I went to my room, unpacked my dirty clothes from my go bag, and put them in the alien washing machine. I don’t know that it really washed the clothes. I think it just recycled them back to the same thing they were in the first place. When the tone sounded that the laundry was done, I’d open the, I don’t know, whatever, and find the same clothes all packaged like when I first ordered them. That sort of made me wonder. If the machine simply recycled the clothes and delivered me new versions, then why when I ordered clothes over the stream, were they delivered to the quarters, and didn’t just pop up in this machine? It was probably just the aliens fucking with me again, so I just stopped thinking about it.

  I heard the doorbell ring. I headed back out to the living room where I found Milly and Huiliang talking with Maria. Last I knew, Milly had gone back to her station, and Huiliang was on Ganymede with her mother Mei.

  “What are you doing here, Milly? I thought you went back to your station?”

  “It’s nice to see you too, Guerin.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that, Milly. It’s nice to see you too. I’m just sort of surprised your back here already. Are you going to tell me what you and Huiliang are doing here?”

  “Julie asked me to help out with the Ganymede supply issues. When I was there, Huiliang and I got to talking. I guess I’ll let her explain.”

  “Milly was telling me how you were going to form a new group to explore the galaxy and I was wondering if I could join up. I always wanted to explore more, and my mother doesn’t really need me on Ganymede.”

  “Well, in case Milly forgot, I haven’t decided yet what I’m going to do. It’s only been a couple of days and I haven’t even had a chance to talk to Steve yet.”

  I don’t know why everyone was trying to rush me into a decision. We had at least a year before official first contact still. Couldn’t they give me at least a few weeks to make my decision? As usual, there was probably something else going on here and I was expected to figure that out on my own.

  “What have you been doing? You’ve had plenty of time to talk to Steve.”

  “I’m sure you know exactly what I’ve been doing. What is the big rush anyways?”

  “We’re not trying to rush you, Guerin.”

  “Yes, you are, Milly. Look, I’ll talk to Steve. Let me call him and see if he’s available and we can all talk together. I’m still not going to make my decision anytime soon.”

  I called Steve over the comms and invited him and Jackie to join us in my quarters to discuss this new project. He let me know that they had some things to do but they’d be there in an hour. He wondered why I wanted Jackie to join us. I told him if she was going to be involved, then we needed to all be on the same page. Milly would be there as well. This way they couldn’t bitch later that they didn’t know what we were planning. If they had any problems with what we came up with it was best to deal with those problems now. Steve agreed.

  “Steve and Jackie will be up here in about an hour.” I looked at Milly. “The four of us can talk about this in my office.”

  “What about me, Guerin?”

  “Since we haven’t made any decision yet, Huiliang, I’d rather you not be in on the meeting. If I agree to do this, the
n I’m fine with you joining up. Even if I don’t decide to do this, I’m sure Steve will take charge of it. I’m sure he’ll have something for you. Why don’t you see if your mother wants to join us for dinner? I’m thinking we’ll all head down to Earth tonight. Gamma will be coming along so it will give Mei a chance to see her.”

  “Ok. That sounds like fun.”

  “You’re going to Earth just for dinner?”

  “You have a problem with that, Milly?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Do you want to join us?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then find something other than that onesie to wear. We don’t need you drawing any attention to yourself. That goes for you and Prima as well Maria. We’ll be leaving at 5 PM sharp. If you wouldn’t mind, Maria, get in touch with Roger and Diane and let them know we’re coming for a visit. There are some things we need to discuss with them before we make any final decision about Milly’s little plan. They can join us for dinner if they’d like. Let’s plan on spending a few days back on Earth. Senri can take the others back home after dinner if they need to get back sooner.”

  “And where are we going for dinner?”

  “Seoul, Korea. Let them know we should be arriving at Earth around 7 PM.”

  “Milly, if you wouldn’t mind there are some things I want to talk to you about in private. Would you join me in my office?”

  As Milly and I headed back to the office, I asked her if she wanted something to drink. She asked for a cup of tea. I told her I’d be right back. I probably should have asked her before we went back to the office, but I didn’t think of it at the time. I went to the kitchen to use the replicator. I brought her back her tea and a cup of Joe for myself.

  “So what’s on your mind, Guerin?”

  “A couple of things. First, how well do you know Lori?”

  “We’re good friends, why?”

  “Do you have any idea why she wanted to see me last night?”