Alien Omega

by Marc Landau

  ZAP!

  I wasn’t sure how many of these blasts I could take. My stomach was trying to escape through my butt, and my eyes were streaming water like a spigot.

  ZAP!

  “I’m gonna fraking kill you!” I yelled. The anger got me up on my legs, but my head wasn’t in the fight. I was quickly losing my grip. Another few jolts and I’d be unconscious. And if that happened, I was pretty positive the bot would stand over me and deliver enough consecutive electric jolts to fry me like an egg. If I blacked out, I’d be a goner.

  Can we please go five fraking minutes without me almost dying!

  I took a step closer to the bot and was ZAPPED for my efforts. My legs buckled, but I didn’t fall down. That was a positive. If I could just get close enough, I’d rip the walrus’s head clean off. I’d worry later about resetting his program and reattaching it.

  Another ZAP hit my chest and it felt like I was going to have a heart attack on the spot. My heartbeat raced up to a zillion and pounded so hard, my tongue and eyeballs became bass drums.

  Maybe I wouldn’t reattach the bot’s head at all. Maybe I’d just let it roll around the ship. Let Poka treat it like a toy ball. I’m sure she’d like that. And it would be fun to watch.

  Then again, maybe I’d just eject the damn head appendage out of the air lock and be done with it. Not only was the bot not helping the situation, it was actively trying to kill me. And I thought Poka was crazy!

  That was when I heard her barking.

  She’d come to my aid. I had to give her credit. As kooky as she was, she always protected me. Even when I didn’t need it. I couldn’t count the number of times she’d barked at people in the air cruisers parked next to us at coffee shops or nourishment facilities when I went to restock the fridge.

  Yes, I could’ve just sent a domestic droid to pick stuff up or had insta-delivery, but I liked air cruisers. You weren’t supposed to take them off auto-pilot, but a lot of people did. Humans have loved driving since cars were invented. Since horses were invented. That’s never changed, and I don’t think it ever will. From horses to spaceships, people love driving stuff.

  And no, I never left her in the cruiser alone. There was always a nanny-bot in there with her to make sure no one tried to steal her or the cruiser. Not that anyone would want to steal her. Good luck to them if they thought they could handle her. If one day I returned to the cruiser and she was kidnapped, they would return her in short order. They say the universe never gives you more than you can handle, but it enjoys pushing the boundaries.

  Still, I appreciate her protective nature, even though the training vids all said it was because I wasn’t alpha enough. So that made me feel pretty bad about myself. Data tends to do that. I can’t imagine how bad parents must feel when every article basically tells you it’s your fault for everything. Jeezubub. It’s hard enough as is. Give parents some credit.

  Actually, I’d never really needed her protection—until now. She growled and barked at the bot. I didn’t think she’d attack it, because she never attacked anything except for rain and bugs. Anything larger than that fraked her out. She’d bark and do the whole routine, but it was all for show.

  The worst of it was when we went to the vet. Ugh. She drove me fraking crazy. When I’d bring her in myself, she’d bark and growl so much that I had to tek-muzzle her. It sucked, but it was the only thing that worked. Until I figured out that the reason she was doing it was because of me. She was protecting me from the vet. The whole time I thought she just didn’t like getting a stranger’s digit up her keister. Who would?

  But it wasn’t the vet. It was me. When I left the room she turned into a friendly, playful, loving Poka with the vet and all the assistants. Even the nurse-droids! I couldn’t believe it. Then when I came back into the room, she’d immediately start barking at the people she was literally just licking and playing with five seconds ago. Now when I take her, I let the vet-tech come to the air cruiser and bring her inside.

  She still hates going and fraks out in the cruiser the minute we pull into the parking lot. I feel guilty every time when she looks at me like I betrayed her. It starts off with her excitedly leaping into the cruiser like, "Oh, yay, a drive! Fun, fun, fun!” Then we pull into the parking lot and she’s like, “You tricked me you bum! I thought we were going for a fun ride with treats. Now I’m gonna get a finger up my butt.”

  The bot turned toward her, and I saw its hand glowing orange.

  Shat. The bot's going to shock her!

  All the pain and weakness I felt washed away and was replaced with fury. No way was I going to let the walrus turn its defenses on her. I didn’t know what I was doing, but suddenly I was airborne. Flying through the air, headed directly at the bot. In my mind I was doing some super-cool kung fu Bruce Lee flying kick. In reality, I looked more like an awkward scarecrow being tossed by a windstorm.

  It didn’t matter how I looked. All that mattered was that I slammed into the bot and knocked it on its side.

  It beeped and buzzed angrily, trying to move its glowing hand appendage to my face. That would be bad. Very bad. From this close range, I was sure it would knock me unconscious with one jolt. Me and Poka would be goners, and the ship would be captained by a scrambled-brain killing bot.

  We wrestled. Poka barked, but never attacked. I prayed she would. I needed her to grab one of the bot’s arm appendages and treat it like a chew toy. She could rip it out of its socket without even trying. But she just wasn’t that kind of a dog. And the bot would never let her play with any of its appendages before. Even when I pleaded and told it she was a bio-AI and needed play stimulation.

  I was always trying to get the bot to let Poka play with its arm appendage. I was desperate to capture it on vid and send it back to mom. She’d get such a laugh out of it.

  “That is not my job function,” the walrus would say.

  “Come on, dude, it’ll be fun.

  “I am not a dude.”

  “Please. We can use a rope appendage or something instead of your arm. She’ll love it.”

  “Why would a bio-AI love? Is it really a dog?”

  “No. I keep telling you she’s…I mean, it’s not a dog!” That was before the bot figured it out and blew Poka’s cover.

  Poka snarled and barked but kept her distance while the bot and I struggled in a bizarre wrestling match that would never be sanctioned by the PUMMA board—the Pan Universal Mixed Martial Arts Association. I’m sure we looked more like fish flopping around than seasoned martial arts professionals.

  I was able to scramble on top of the thing and was in the classic, “I’m trying to choke you while you’re trying to scratch my eyes out” position.

  I was able to keep its glowing orange hand away from my face, but barely. I could feel the heat as it powered up again, ready to blast me into unconsciousness. It was way too close for comfort. If I didn’t get my face out of the way, I was about to have a serious case of sunburn. I could hear the low buzz of the electricity readying itself to shoot out and imagined my eyeballs about to be turned into two fried eggs.

  I dug down deep and used everything I had to move its damn arm away from my face before the blast went off, but I didn’t have the strength. My flesh muscles were no match for the bot’s stupid metal arms.

  Sure, maybe if I was really a PUMMA fighter and I had serious guns to bring to the show, but I barely did weight training. Last time I tried, I was able to do three pull-ups. And I felt like fraking Superman.

  I wasn’t going to be able to win a battle of brawn, and as much as I wished Poka would grab the robot’s leg and rip it off, it wasn’t going to happen. So I decided to use the other part of the sentence about brawn. Brains over brawn. My brains would have to do the heavy lifting on this one.

  The thing that took us from scared cave-dwellers to masters of the Earth. In the caveman days, we were one of the weakest of all animals. And we still are. But we have big brains. We made tools to defend ourselves and to make civilization
s and spaceships. And crazy killer robots with plasma hands that are about to melt my face.

  What could I do? My brains weren’t coming up with any Einsteinian solutions to the problem. X plus Y equals the robot is going to blast my face. I was never good at math anyway, so I just resorted to another of the great things in the universe. Random chaos. No matter what you plan for and how you try to figure out every single little thing, there’s always some variable that can frak it all up. Chaos theory. I know it well. It’s happened to me too many times to count.

  So I did the only thing that popped into my big chaotic brain.

  I spit in the robot’s eyeholes.

  “Biological substance detected. Biohazard detected,” the bot blurted, then moved its glowing appendage to wipe its face. That was the moment I needed. With its grip loosened, I swung off the walrus and slid up to its head. All I needed to do was reach around and find the damn off button they’d conveniently installed on the base of its neck.

  I could find it with my eyes closed. I’d used it many times before when the thing wouldn’t shut up about how right it was and how I was doing things incorrectly, or against protocol. The bot talked so much, sometimes I needed peace and quiet. I had enough negative voices in my own head.

  You should’ve gone with Kat. You shouldn’t have taken this job. You shouldn’t have blah-blah-blah.

  I didn’t need a mechanical voice added to the choir.

  I wriggled my fingers to the back of its neck and felt around for the switch. Even knowing where it was, it was hard to find when my heart rate was a billion and any second the bot might shock me into oblivion.

  Turns out it's harder to do stuff when you’re under crazy pressure, versus when you sneak up behind the bot and casually flick the switch.

  I felt the heat of the orange glow go live again, and I knew I had only seconds before I was going to be…

  CLICK.

  I heard the comforting whir of the bot powering down. Whew. That was a relief. I’d avoided death yet again. I was starting to feel pretty lucky. That was like four times in a day and a half I’d cheated death! Pretty impressive.

  Don’t push it, the little voice in my head said.

  “Let me just enjoy the win for second, will you?”

  Sure. Go ahead. Just don’t get cocky, it replied.

  Chapter Fourteen

  With the fight over and the bot unconscious, I was finally able to breathe again. It was nice to have the ship back to myself. Even though I enjoyed the peace and quiet, I knew it wouldn’t last. I suddenly felt more alone than I’d been in a really long time. See, I told you the relief wouldn’t last. I was all alone in some uncharted sector of the galaxy with no way home.

  Just me and Poka. The bot was out of the picture. Worse, so was Kat. I hated to admit it, but I missed her. I mean it. I mean, I don’t know what the frak I mean. How could I actually miss a telepathic vampire-alien that had taken the form of my ex? No wonder relationships are so messed up.

  During the scuffle with the psychopathic walrus, I’d completely forgotten what started our death match to begin with. What the hellvian was it, anyway?

  There’s another alien orbiting the ship, the little voice replied.

  “Right. Thanks.”

  No problem.

  I checked the screens but didn’t see anything. Had whatever it was left? Had it gotten on the ship? Please, universe, not that. It was one thing after the other. I’d just finished battling the bot, after we were all almost turned into space dust by a giant sphere. I couldn’t handle yet another alien encounter. Not before a snack and a long nap.

  For some reason the words ‘The Yerkes-Dodson’ popped into my head. What a weird thing to think of. So random to think of it now. Probably because my brain had been scrambled like a Welvian omelet by all these aliens.

  Yerkes! It sounded like something you yell when a medi-bot checked you for prostate issues. It was a piece of long-forgotten data that I didn’t know I still had in there. Why did I suddenly remember? Unlike bots, humans don’t always know why they remember things. You can see or smell or taste something, and suddenly it triggers a memory from childhood you didn’t know was still there.

  This wasn’t that. It was no sweet remembrance of grandma’s plankton pudding. Which was awesome, and I really wished I had some of that right now.

  Yerkes was something I’d learned in one of my upper education classes. Yes, I took upper education classes. I might come off as lazy, bored and self-deprecating but I’m also pretty fraking smart regardless of what the robot says.

  The Yerkes-Dodson law states that there’s an optimal level of stress to create peak performance. Too little stress, and nothing happens. Too much stress, and your brain freezes up like a Krunkin Porcupine in front of a jump vessel’s plasma lights. Your immune system also shuts down, causing sickness and depression.

  Yerkes!

  It looked like sitting around and doing nothing on the ship for months was giving me the Yerkes. And now the unrelenting alien attacks were causing my system to Dodson. No stress for a year then more stress than I’d ever experienced in my life. My system was ping-ponging all over the place.

  Peak performance? Hellvian, I’d take meh performance. All I wanted was to stop almost dying every couple of hours.

  I couldn’t ask the bot what had happened to the unknown object that’d been orbiting the ship. Not that it would matter. All the bot seemed to be saying lately was, “Insufficient data.” Maybe the ship’s systems had some answers.

  “Ship, can you locate the object? Has it gotten inside?”

  There was a brief pause while it processed my request.

  “The object is on the starboard.”

  That was much easier than asking the bot. Question asked and answered. No insults, no judgments. Maybe I should be talking to the ship more and to the bot less.

  “Can you bring it on screen?”

  Barely a second later, it was there. A little red speck of a thing. Again, the ship had done its job, and super quick. I was liking this. Maybe I’d never wake the bot up.

  “What is that thing?”

  “Unknown,” the ship replied. Okay, now it was starting to sound a little more like the bot. But even now it didn’t have that sassy, snarky tone in its voice. When it said unknown, it just sounded like a fact, not an insult.

  “Enlarge image.”

  There was a quick beep, which made me worry that the bot had regained consciousness. I took a quick glance but it was still out cold. On the screen, I now saw what the unknown object was. It wasn’t another death sphere, alien warship, or drone bomb.

  It was Kat.

  “Ship, send out the retrieval drone and bring back the object.”

  “Unable to access drone systems.”

  Shat. Something must have gone wonky when the ship reconstituted itself. Everything was acting up since we’d been disassembled and put back together again like Humpty Dumpty (Personally I preferred Glorshin Glumpity to Humpty).

  It wasn’t a big shocker that the ship was acting up along with me and the bot. We’d all been scrambled and put back together. I should’ve been happy we were in as good a shape as we were. We could’ve wound up mixed and matched.

  I could be part bot-ship-Poka. The ship could have my limbs, and the bot could have pieces of me. We could all be cyborgs. Or it could be like that old vid when the “scientist” tried to teleport, but a fly got into the machine with him and he turned into Brundlefly.

  I wondered if Kat had transformed back into her original jeweled cocoon after eating the sphere. With her hunger sated, maybe she was going into hibernation.

  Maybe I was wrong and this wasn’t her home planet. She just needed to snack up and replenish her powers enough so she could hibernate for another billion millennia.

  I had no idea how long she’d been floating around space when I found her, but I knew she needed food badly. Maybe she’d taken just enough to keep going, but was running on reserve tanks.

/>   Alien-rock-Kat hadn’t sucked the life from the ship, the Earth fleet, or the aliens. So my best guess was running low on fuel after jumping us here. This planet was her plasma-gas station. She must have known we’d be greeted by an angry purple, mirrored sphere. It was exactly what she wanted. Gulp down a sphere, revert to her jeweled cocoon form then float off into space.

  It made me sad to think Kat was out here all alone. Lost and wandering the universe indefinitely. Most life forms don’t like being alone. Even the ones like me who claim they want to be left alone, they really don’t. There aren’t any lone wolves in this world.

  I was also sad that me and the Poke were now stranded with no way home. A pathetic life raft with supplies for a year, and life support for three days. In all the drama, I’d forgotten that we were going to be dead in seventy-two hours.

  Shatballs.

  No time to worry about that at the moment. First things first.

  First things first? Is that a joke? Shouldn’t suffocating in three days be first on the list? the little voice said.

  “Yeah, well, it’s not. We got three days.”

  Oh, right, three whole days. No need to worry about it now. Great planning, buddy, the voice replied.

  “Zip it, will you? I’m trying to see if Kat’s okay.”

  It’s not Kat, the voice replied.

  Whatever. Just shut up. I need a closer look. I had to make sure the cocoon was okay. It wasn’t sending me telepathic messages anymore, so maybe it wanted to be left alone to float away.

  It bummed me out that Kat had turned back into the rock and I had no way to know how to turn it back into Kat. The only reason it seemed to change in the first place was because of its reaction to my intense emotions. I didn’t know what I did then, or how to do it again. All I knew was the thing seemed to react to love, fear, panic, and possible death. Those things got Kat’s super-vampire-succubus powers to activate but neither of us had a clue about how to control them.

  One thing I was sure of was that if the alien-Kat needed something from me, it would get it. Whether it messed with my mind or the ship, the thing had the power to get what it wanted, when it wanted. And right now it didn’t want anything.