He nodded graciously, then lowered his hands. “Can I ask you a question, though? Before we go any further?”
Heseltine’s face twisted as she edged closer to the swirling abyss of fury, but didn’t yet throw herself in. “What is it?” she seethed.
“So, you’re from Earth, right?” Cal said. “I’m guessing you’re British, from the accent. London, is it?”
“That your fackin’ question?” Heseltine grunted.
“No. Sorry,” Cal replied. “So, I know a lot has changed on Earth, but do they still have movies?”
“Movies?” snapped Heseltine. “Course we still got fackin’ movies. We got lots of fackin’ movies.”
“Right. Right. Great!” said Cal. “So, that wasn’t my question, either. My question is…” He took a deep breath. “Have you ever heard of an actor called Tobey Maguire?”
He clenched his fist, bit a knuckle, and braced himself for the response.
“What? The guy from all them Spider-Man films?”
Cal thrust his fists into the air. “Yes! The guy from all the Spider-Man films!” he whooped. “Wait. By all the Spider-Man films, how many do you mean, exactly?”
Heseltine shrugged her broad shoulders. “I don’t know. Like… eight.”
“Eight!” Cal cried, a grin splitting his face in two. “Loren, eight! He did eight!”
Loren looked back at him. “You know I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about, right?”
“Eight!” Cal said again. He lowered his arms and sighed contentedly. “That’s my special guy.”
He gave himself a shake, suddenly all business. “OK, so here’s the thing. You want the Sentience. Normally, I’d be happy to give it to you, but—”
“Wait,” said Heseltine. She leaned in and gave her screen a wipe, then her scowl deepened. “Clear your viewscreen. Let me see you properly.”
Cal gestured to the screen. “This is as good as it gets. Unless you can beam us over an extendable mop or one of those squeegee things.”
Heseltine made a series of swiping gestures at the screen, then tilted her head, squinted her eyes and leaned in closer. None of the expressions she’d demonstrated since first appearing had been altogether flattering, but this one took her to an all-new low.
Fortunately, it didn’t last long.
“Wait a fackin’ minute. What is this?” she demanded. “Whatchoo looking like that for? How fackin’ dare you?”
Cal self-consciously covered his nipples with his hands. “We, uh, we have a very warm ship,” he explained.
“How dare you try to pass yourself off as Earth’s greatest war hero, you shapeshifting little green fack?” Heseltine seethed, her orange face empurpling as her rage swelled. “How fackin’ dare you?”
She grabbed her monitor and shook it violently, making her image flicker. “Know what? Forget the fackin’ Sentience. We’re just gonna kill all of ya!”
“Wait, no!” Cal yelped “I can explain. Kind of. I mean, it’ll take a while, but—”
With a final roar from Heseltine, the screen went dark.
Loren turned in her seat. “Are all Earth women like that?” she asked.
“No. At least, I fonking hope not,” Cal said. He snapped his fingers. “Quick, get Jjin back.”
Loren opened her mouth as if to question this, then turned and busied herself at her console. Jjin’s face appeared almost immediately.
“Finally. What is happening?” the Zertex officer demanded. “Are you giving us the girl, or are we killing you first? Your choice.”
“Yeah, we got a problem with that, Jjin,” Cal said. “See, the EDI, they already took her.”
Jjin’s eyebrows knotted. “They what?”
“I know, I know. I told them we’d already promised her to you, but they were pretty insistent. They just beamed over, took her, and beamed away again. If you’re quick, you might be able to stop them.”
“Beamed?”
“Yes, they beamed! It’s an Earth thing,” Cal said.
“And they took the girl?” said Jjin.
“They did,” said Cal. He shook a fist vaguely at the galaxy in general. “Those fonks.”
“That girl?” said Jjin, pointing past Cal. “They took that girl?”
Cal lowered his fist. He licked his lips and took a peek back over his shoulder to where Miz and Tyrra were sitting.
“Oh. You can see over there, can you?” Cal asked, facing front again.
“I can,” Jjin confirmed.
“Right. Gotcha. I didn’t realize,” said Cal. He puffed out his cheeks. “If I said that was a different girl, would you believe me?”
“No,” said Jjin.
“No. No, thought not,” said Cal, nodding slowly.
Beside him, the Symmorium Sentience vibrated and his shirt began to slip. He jammed his elbow against it, pinning it in place.
“The Earth ships are preparing to fire,” Loren announced.
Jjin’s eyes flicked to the display that was presumably before him.
“Jjin, if they shoot us, they’ll get the Sentience,” Cal warned.
“Not if we get it first,” Jjin said. He turned to someone off-screen. “Open fire. Destroy that ship.”
“Wait, is he talking about our ship?” Cal asked. “Are you talking about our ship?”
“They’re firing!” Loren cried.
“Mech, where are the fonking shields?” Cal demanded.
“Gimme one minute!” came a voice from the back.
“We don’t h-h-ave one m-m-inute!” Cal told him, the shuddering of the Sentience rattling his teeth together.
At the back of the bridge, Tyrra let out a sob. Miz pulled her in close and shushed her, rocking them both back and forth. The girl trembled in Miz’s arms, her full-body vibrations matching up perfectly with those of the orb beneath Cal’s shirt.
Loren gripped her chair. “Impact in five, four, three…”
Cal shot Loren an imploring look as if she could somehow stop what was about to happen.
He hadn’t told her, he realized. He hadn’t worked up the courage to tell her, to say all those things he had rehearsed. He hadn’t told her. And now, he never would.
“Loren—” he began.
“One!” she yelled.
And then the screen flickered, the hull rocked, and the Currently Untitled was consumed by a ball of brilliant light.
Ten
Colors danced and swam. Blues. Reds. Yellows. A purple.
That sort of thing.
They were all quite pretty, really. Orange. Pink. A sort of… what was that one called? Magenta? Lilac? He’d never been great at remembering all the different names, even before he’d been blown to pieces. Now that he was almost certainly dead, he was finding it even more difficult to recall them clearly.
Still.
Nice, though.
Cal watched the ebb and flow of the intermingling shades for a while.
Beautiful. Just beautiful.
He followed their complex, intricate webs.
Gorgeous.
His eyes traced the swoops and curves.
Stunning. Just stunning.
…
Bit samey, though.
Not that he was criticizing, but if he had to pick a fault, it would be that it was all starting to look a bit… familiar.
Repetitive, almost.
When you’d seen one swirl of red gradually bloom into a streak of pastel orange, you’d kind of seen them all, he thought.
He watched for a while longer as a blue became purple.
If anything, it was even less impressive than the red-to-orange.
And the green-into-yellow was, quite frankly, a fonking debacle.
God, was this Heaven, he wondered? Was this it? Just colors swirling around? It wasn’t the traditional view of Heaven he’d had drilled into him as a kid, but then, what did they know? What did anyone know?
Besides, this might not even be Earth Heaven. It might be Space Heaven, and fonk knew what the rules for
that were.
Either way, the thought of spending eternity here was not a happy one. At least when he’d died last time he’d had someone to talk to, even if it had been an imaginary version of Tobey Maguire.
“Eight Spider-Mans,” Cal muttered into the color void. “What a champ.”
He wondered briefly if it should technically be Spider-Men, but then came to the conclusion that he had more pressing issues to concern himself with right now.
His body ached. Particularly his elbows, which he felt was odd. It wasn’t as if his elbows had exploded any more than the rest of him. Or had they? Was that possible? What sort of explosion focused predominantly on a point midway down both arms?
As well as the aches, he was hungry. He also badly needed to go to the bathroom. These were not sensations he equated with Heaven. Or Space Heaven. Or even just being dead in general.
He was also still topless and bootless. Was that right? Was he really expected to spend the entirety of his afterlife in a permanent state of semi-undress? What if Jesus popped round? What was he supposed to do then?
Sure, no doubt the son of God had seen nipples before, or was at least aware of their existence, but would he really want to see Cal parading his around the place? Wouldn’t that just make things awkward?
What was the correct etiquette in such a situation? Cal had no idea. He didn’t remember anything in the Bible that covered it, although he’d never read it all that closely. Most of his knowledge of religion had come from one Sunday school class, a handful of cartoons, and eighty-seven consecutive plays of the 1989 single, ‘Jesus is My Spaceship (Let’s Ride Him Through the Stars)’ by German Christian Rock act, Klaus Hugen, which had kept him and several friends amused for an entire weekend when he was twelve.
He hummed the melody as he recalled the lyrics, checking them for anything useful. The search proved fruitless. Klaus Hugen had nothing to say on the subject of Jesus and nipples. He might’ve touched on it in the chorus, but the way he roared into the microphone in a thick Germanic accent had made it indecipherable to Cal’s ears.
Hilarious, but indecipherable.
Cal was workshopping a few possible explanations that might help smooth things over should Jesus show up unannounced, when Mech woke him up.
“Huh? Wha—?” he blurted, gazing up at the cyborg towering above him. Mech’s foot was pressing down on Cal’s chest. It gave him another jiggle, and Cal yelped in protest. “OK, I’m awake! I’m awake! Quit standing on me.”
Mech withdrew his foot and Cal sat up. When he saw the screen, he quietly lay down again.
The same colors that had been swimming before his eyes a moment before now swirled and writhed on screen, only with a level of intensity that made Cal recall his early days of space travel, and the many vomiting episodes that had filled them.
Although he’d only glanced at it, the screen had looked like he’d imagine normal warp speed would look, were it viewed upside-down through a kaleidoscope, while on an acid trip. He slid his hands out at his sides and gripped the floor, the sensation of solidity it offered providing some small measure of reassurance.
“What happened?” he whispered. “Are we dead?”
“Man, I hope not,” Mech muttered. “If I have to spend my afterlife with you, I’m gonna demand a fonking recount.”
He clanked backward, making room for Cal to stand up. Cal had absolutely zero intention of standing up, though, and was perfectly happy lying on the floor, thank you very much. The metal was cool against his bare back, which helped with the creeping nausea he could feel working its way up through his insides.
“It’s the Sentience,” Mech said.
“What is?”
“This. All this,” said Mech, gesturing to the screen. “At least, we think that’s what it is. Just before the missiles hit—”
“Torpedoes,” Kevin corrected.
“I thought you wanted us to call them missiles?” said Cal. From his position on the floor, he had a clear view of the ceiling, and scowled generally in that direction.
“They have torpedoes, sir. We have missiles,” Kevin explained. “It’s not difficult.”
“Whatever the fonk they had,” Mech barked. “Just before they hit, we went into some kinda weird superwarp.”
Cal raised his head a fraction. “Superwarp? What the fonk’s a superwarp?”
“I don’t know. It’s just the name we gave it,” Mech said. “We ain’t ever seen or heard of anything like it before.”
“We?” said Cal. “Who’s all awake?”
“Everyone’s awake,” Mech told him. “You’re the only one who passed out.”
“Seriously? Just me?” said Cal.
“Just you.”
“Not Loren or Miz?”
“Just you,” Mech reiterated.
“Tyrra? Did she pass out?”
Mech tutted. “No one else passed out, man. You were the only one. Only you passed out. No other passing out took place but yours. Is that clear enough for you?”
“Well, I was closest to the Sentience, so that was probably it,” Cal said. “I’ll have taken the brunt of it and momentarily lost consciousness.”
“You’ve been out for forty minutes,” Loren said, appearing at Mech’s side.
“Just forty short minutes,” said Cal. “Despite everything, just forty short minutes. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m impressed.”
“Also, so you know, your shirt’s gone,” said Mech.
“Gone? Gone where?”
“We have no idea. But it ain’t here.”
Cal groaned. “I loved that shirt. First my jacket, then my boot, now this… What a day.”
He sat up again. The screen swam.
“No. No, not ready for that yet,” he muttered, returning to his horizontal position on the reassuringly solid floor.
“Are you OK?” Loren asked.
“Me? Fine. I’m great!” Cal said, with a little too much enthusiasm. He smiled with even more of the stuff, showing off all his teeth. “Uh, and you?”
“Yeah, I’m good,” said Loren, brushing a stray strand of hair over her ear. She glanced away for a moment, then gestured back to the screen. “I just wish we could figure out where we are.”
Cal risked lifting his head enough to look around the bridge, but took great care not to look directly at all the churning colors on screen. “Where’s the Sentience?” he asked, then he clutched his stomach in panic. “Shizz, hold on. It’s not in me again, is it?”
Loren made a vague sort of circular motion with a hand. “It’s out there. From what we can tell, it’s surrounding the ship. That stuff on screen you’re trying so hard not to look at?”
Cal gave a snort. “I’m not trying not to look at it. I could totally look at it if I wanted. I’m just choosing not to for personal reasons.”
“Whatever. That stuff? That’s the Sentience,” said Loren. She shrugged. “I mean, we think it is.”
“To be honest,” added Mech. “A lot of what we know right now is guesswork. We’re figuring out most of the weird shizz as we go.”
“Welcome to my life,” said Cal.
He tilted his head back until he found the guest chairs. “Where did Miz and Tyrra go?”
“Tyrra got agitated,” Loren said. “Miz took her through the back to try to get some rest.” She sucked air in through her teeth. “Poor kid.”
“Which one?” asked Mech. He looked between them both. “Looked to me like she took your date thing pretty hard.”
“Wasn’t a date,” Loren said on auto-pilot.
“Not a date date,” Cal agreed. “And she’ll be fine. She doesn’t like me like that. Not, like, like like me. You know what I mean?”
Mech replayed the words. “Kind of. I think,” he said.
“Have we checked on Splurt?” Cal asked.
Loren’s gaze went briefly to the door. “No. We just… I guess we assumed he’ll be fine. He’s always fine.”
“He was acting kinda weird earli
er,” said Cal. “I’d better go check on the little guy.”
He started to sit up, decided that this wasn’t in anyone’s best interests, and rolled over onto his front, instead. “I’m just going to go this way,” he said, crawling on his elbows and dragging his feet behind him. “And if someone could get me a new shirt and some comfortable footwear from my room, that would be awesome.”
Cal dragged himself up on the kitchen table just as Loren came in, dropped a pair of boots by his feet, and handed him a t-shirt.
“Thanks,” he said, taking the shirt and unfurling it from the crumpled ball he’d left it in. He brightened considerably when he saw the Thundercats logo printed on the front and gave a little triumphant cheer in Loren’s direction.
“Hoooooo!”
Loren looked taken aback.
“Shizz, no. Not like that. I wasn’t saying you were a…” Cal winced. “It’s just a thing they say.”
“A thing who says?”
“The Thundercats,” Cal explained. “When there’s trouble they need to go stop they shout, ‘Thundercats, hooooo!’”
Loren looked dubious. “Why?”
“What do you mean?” Cal frowned. “Because they’re the Thundercats.”
“I get that they’re called the Thundercats, but why do they shout, ‘Hooooo!’?”
“Well…” Cal gave this some consideration. “Actually, I have no idea. I’ve never really thought about it. Why the fonk do they shout, ‘Hoooo!’?”
He pulled on the shirt, still deep in contemplation. “It seemed to make sense at the time.”
“‘Thundercats go,’ would work,” Loren suggested. “It’s better, even. And it doesn’t have the, you know, the sexual connotations.”
Cal had to concede that one.
“You’re right. You’re absolutely right. You’ve convinced me,” he said. He clapped his hands together. “Next Thundercats AGM, I’m totally going to go along and suggest that.”
Loren looked quite pleased with herself. “Oh. Well, great. Let me know what they say.”
“I absolutely will,” Cal promised.
He moved to jab her playfully on the shoulder like he’d done so many times before, but a niggling anxiety stopped him. They’d kissed. He wanted them to kiss again. He wanted them to do a lot of things. Were playful jabs to the shoulder still allowed? Should he do it more often, or less? Or at all? Should he ever have done it?
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