“See if I care,” said Cal, slightly quieter than before.
Mech’s scowl deepened further. His metal fingers adjusted their grip on the tool he was holding.
“Not my problem,” Cal whispered.
“You’re trying to make me set this thing off. That’s what’s happening right now, ain’t it?” Mech snapped.
Cal looked hurt. “What? No! Of course not. What do you take me for?”
“A pain in the ass,” Mech replied. “Now, will you shut the fonk up and let me concentrate?”
Cal mimed zipping his mouth shut, then gestured to the table in a manner that bordered on outright aggression.
“Thank you.”
Mech leaned in closer to the device, his fine-motor hydraulics buzzing softly as he brought the tool in close. Much as he hated to admit it, Cal was right. One mistake, one slip, one wrong move, and it was all over.
He could do this. He just had to very carefully—
“Easy now,” whispered Cal.
Mech almost lost it at that point, but somehow resisted the urge to kill the man sitting across from him. Instead, he focused on his movements, steadied his nerves. He was a cyborg, so his hands shouldn’t be shaking, and yet he could detect just the faintest tremble as he initiated the delicate removal procedure.
BZZZZT!
The bright red nose of the cartoon human illuminated, and Cal thrust his hands in the air.
“Operation!” Cal cheered, jumping to his feet and gesticulating victoriously at the board game on the table. “You killed him, Mech! You killed that poor little guy. Never go for the funny bone. What did I tell you? Never go for the funny bone!”
Mech slammed the tweezers onto the table and shook his head in disgust. “I hate this fonking game,” he said. “And will you quit dancing?”
Cal did not quit dancing. Quite the opposite. He jigged triumphantly on the spot, shimmying his hips and pumping the palms of both hands in the direction of the ceiling.
“Victory dance, Mech. I’ve got to do it. It’s in the rules.”
“I read the fonking rules and it don’t say anything about no motherfonking victory dance.”
“House rules,” Cal said. “Not official, but important all the same.”
After a few more seconds of gyrating, Cal sat on the bench and began replacing the plastic pieces back into the Operation board. “Best out of… what are we on? Thirteen?”
Mech shook his head. “No. I am done. I don’t ever want to play this game again. I hate it. I hate the game, I hate whoever the fonk invented the game, and I hate you for making me play it.”
Cal gave him a pointed look. “Well, maybe if someone hadn’t broken Hungry, Hungry Hippos way back when…”
“Not this again,” Mech groaned. “You told me to hit the tail. I hit the tail.”
“You sledgehammered the tail, Mech. There’s a difference.”
“Ain’t my fault I’m stronger than you,” Mech said.
“No, but it’s your fault you didn’t think about that fact before you pulverized a hippo’s ass cheeks into a billion little pieces,” Cal said. He shook his head reproachfully. “And as for Buckaroo…”
“That wasn’t my fault.”
“You shot the donkey, Mech,” Cal reminded him. Not that Mech really needed reminding. It had not been one of his finer moments. “You shot the little donkey in its little face.”
“It surprised me,” said Mech. “How was I supposed to know it was going to kick like that?”
“Uh, maybe from the box art? Or from the rules you insisted on reading aloud before we started?”
Mech grunted. It wasn’t a grunt about any one thing in particular, but rather an indication of his feelings on the conversation in general.
Cal finished replacing all the pieces. “So, are we playing again?”
Mech stared back at him across the table. On the wall behind Cal’s head, a piece of cardboard covered the porthole window, hiding the streaking star effects that came with traveling at warp speed. Cal had become accustomed enough to faster than light travel that he could mostly deal with looking at it straight on, but not sideways. Watching the stars rushing toward him when he sat on the bridge? Fine. Not pleasant, but fine.
Watching them smear past the side windows like runny paint? No. Therein lay a one-way ticket to Vomitsville.
“Do you really want to play again?” asked Mech. “Seriously?”
“Yes!” said Cal. His eyes flicked down to the pained expression on the Operation man’s face. He had to admit, he was starting to appreciate how the guy felt. “I mean, no. Obviously, I don’t want to play this game ever again. I don’t want to play any more games. We’ve been doing this for weeks.”
“Days, sir,” intoned the droll voice of the ship’s artificial intelligence.
Cal flicked his eyes up to the ceiling in the direction the voice had come from. “I meant space weeks, Kevin,” Cal said. He pressed on before anyone could question the logic of this statement. “Anyway, the point stands. We’ve been flying for a long time.”
“This was your idea,” Mech pointed out. “You’re the one who wanted us to get out of the sector and go somewhere new.”
“I didn’t know it’d take this long!” said Cal.
“We told you,” said Mech. “We said, ‘That will take a very long time.’ We literally said those words.”
“You know I don’t listen to things, Mech,” Cal said, as if this was somehow the cyborg’s fault. “You know that.”
He stood up and sighed theatrically. “I’m going to go find Splurt.” Cal gestured to the board game. “Can you deal with that stuff?”
Mech regarded the Operation board for a moment, then smashed it with his fist.
“Well, I meant, you know, tidy it away, but I guess that works,” Cal said, tapping the button to open the door.
His eyes fell on the replicator. It had been a while since he’d last eaten. Not a long while—not even a while of medium length, in fact—but a while all the same.
“Loren, honey, you want me to bring you anything from the replicator?” Call called.
There was a moment of hesitation before the reply came. “I’m fine.”
“I can get you a Twix,” Cal suggested. He looked back over his shoulder and dropped his voice. “She likes Twixes.”
Mech contemplated this nugget of information for approximately a second and a half, then shrugged to indicate he didn’t care.
“No, thanks. I’m fine,” came Loren’s reply.
“Frosted Flakes? Banoffee Pie?”
“I’m OK.”
“Spit Nibbles? We could share.”
No answer.
Cal waited.
“You want me to stop asking you now, honey?” he called.
“Yes, please!”
Cal nodded and flashed Mech a grin. “We know each other so well,” he said. “It’s like we’re twins.”
He caught the expression on Mech’s face. “But not like actual twins. Not blood relatives. Because that would be wrong. You know, since me and her are—”
“I am well aware of what you’re doing,” said Mech. He visibly shuddered. “For a state-of-the-art experimental spaceship, this thing has some thin-ass walls.”
“Also, I beamed a live video feed of proceedings to the main viewscreen, sir,” said Kevin.
Cal’s eyes widened in horror. “You did what?”
Kevin chuckled benignly. “Just my little joke, sir. I’m well aware that Mistress Loren would uninstall me with her bare hands were I to have done anything of the sort.”
Cal’s chest heaved with relief. “Oh, thank God.”
“Rest assured, I wasn’t watching, sir,” Kevin continued.
“Well, good. That’s… good to know.”
“On either occasion.”
“Right, that’s… Wait, what do you mean ‘on either occasion’? How do you know how many occasions there have been?”
“Uh… lucky guess, sir,” said Kevin.<
br />
Cal raised a reproachful finger to the ceiling. “OK, that’s it, Kevin, you’re officially barred from my room. Or Loren’s room.” He shot Mech a sideways glance and lowered his voice a fraction. “Or the engine room.”
“Hold on, what? The engine room? Aw, man, that’s the room I go into,” Mech protested. “Why’d you have to do it in there? You ain’t even allowed in the engine room in case you break something.”
“I did break something,” said Cal. “A several-year-long dry spell. And a hip.”
Mech’s expression twisted in such disgust it looked like his metal lower jaw was trying to chew his own face off.
“Kidding. I’m kidding. Nothing happened in the engine room,” Cal said. He pointed to where Mech was sitting. “Now, that bench, on the other hand…”
“Shut the fonk up,” Mech told him. He picked up the Operation board and put the final nail in its coffin by crushing it between his hands. “Oh, and a piece of advice?”
Cal’s eyes gave Mech the once-over. “Like… sex advice?”
“Hell, no!” Mech spat.
“Phew!” said Cal, wiping his forehead on his sleeve. “That’s a relief. Shoot.”
“You might want to stop calling her ‘Loren.’”
“You mean during—”
“I mean at any point,” said Mech.
Cal frowned. “What? But, why? That’s her name.”
“It’s her surname. I mean, I ain’t no expert, but when people are in a relationship they generally speaking call each other by their first names,” Mech said. “How would you feel if she started calling you ‘Carver’ all the time?”
Cal gave this some consideration.
“Aroused?”
“Forget it,” said Mech. “Sorry I said anything. I thought you said you were going?”
“I am, I am,” said Cal. He turned to face the food replicator again. “But since I’m standing right here… one Banoffee Pie, please. Easy on the cream,” he said, then he immediately reconsidered. “In fact, wait. No. Double cream.” He patted his stomach. “But shave the ends off the banana to compensate.”
A red light illuminated on the replicator and a buzzer sounded. “Denied,” said the machine’s computerized voice.
“Denied? What do you mean, ‘denied’?” Cal demanded. “What’s the matter, are we out of Mush again?”
“No, sir,” said Kevin. “Mush capacity is at eight-six percent.”
“Oh.” Cal gave the replicator a push, rocking it back a fraction. “Then why isn’t it working?”
“Mistress Loren told it not to, sir,” said Kevin. “She was concerned you were rather overdoing it.”
Cal stared at the ceiling in horror, then back at the machine. “Overdoing it? What’s that supposed to mean? I haven’t been overdoing it. I’ve been doing it the exact right amount!”
“You have gained eight pounds in six days, sir,” Kevin said.
“Holy shizz, seriously?” Mech snorted.
“That’s travel weight,” Cal insisted. “It’ll fall right out of me when we land. It’s just retained water.”
“It’s definitely retained something,” said Mech, looking him up and down.
“Hey, it’s not like you can talk,” said Cal, crossing his arms across his middle. “I mean, what do you weigh? Eight-thousand pounds?”
“I’m two feet taller than you,” Mech pointed out. “And almost exclusively made of metal.”
“Sure. Go ahead. Make all the excuses you want, big guy. But, the first step to recovery is admitting that you have a problem,” said Cal. “I want you to think about that. Those are wise words.”
“I don’t have a problem,” Mech said. “I am literally built to be this weight.”
“Wise words, Mech,” Cal whispered, backing out through the door. “Wise words…”
When he had backed all the way out of the kitchen, he turned to face the front of the ship, then doubled over when a curved blade was plunged into his stomach all the way up to the hilt.
The sudden violent bending action brought Cal face to face with a shark-like snarl.
“Ha!” shouted Tyrra, the last survivor of the Symmorium race. “Bested!”
“Ow! Jesus! What is it with you, you little psycho?” demanded Cal, leaning a hand against the wall to steady himself. He called back along the corridor. “Miz! Miz? She’s stabbed me again.”
“You mean I bested you again,” Tyrra hissed. “That’s the fourth time.”
“I know it’s the fourth time,” wheezed Cal, partially straightening. “You know how I know it’s the fourth time? Because you’ve stabbed me four times.”
Wincing, he gestured to the handle. It jutted from his stomach, a patch of crimson staining his t-shirt around where the blade had entered. “Can you hurry up and pull it out?”
“No. You pull it out,” Tyrra said.
Cal’s lips went thin. “You know full well that I faint when I have to pull it out, young lady,” Cal said. “We’ve been over this.”
Tyrra grinned, showing her teeth. “Yes. I like watching you fall down. It is amusing.”
Cal glared at her for a few moments, trying to admonish her with his mind. When it became apparent that this technique wasn’t proving fruitful, he went back to shouting for Miz.
“Miz, can you come out here? Your fonking… protégé, or whatever she is is getting out of hand.”
The door to Mizette’s room slid open with a ssshk that sounded not unlike a sigh of resentment.
“Ugh, why are you shouting me?” asked Miz, her huge, shaggy frame ducking through the doorway and into the corridor. “What do you want?”
“Honestly? Not a lot, Miz. I don’t ask for much,” said Cal. “Some cardboard over the windows. Everyone’s undying loyalty and admiration. The occasional pie. Oh, and also…” He pointed to the knife in his stomach. “For this to stop happening.”
Miz’s eyes went to the weapon, then past Cal to where Tyrra was standing tall and proud. “You got him again, huh? Cool.”
“No, not ‘cool,’” said Cal. “This is not cool. This is assault. No, worse, this is attempted murder.”
Miz tutted. “Like, what’s the big problem? It gives her something to do to pass the time, and it’s not like you don’t heal up in seconds.”
Cal couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. “What’s the big…? OK, one, I might heal, but my t-shirts don’t, and I’m very fond of some of these guys,” Cal said, tapping the face of Golden Girls actress, Betty White, who adorned the front of the shirt. “Two, I might heal now, but it ran out once before and I don’t fancy having a metal spike in my belly when it wears off next time. And three—and this is a big one—it fonking hurts. A lot. Not to mention the emotional trauma that goes with being knifed out of nowhere when you’re least expecting it.”
He leaned in Miz’s direction and lowered his voice. “Yesterday, she got me on the toilet, Miz. On the toilet. I mean, is nowhere sacred?”
Miz rolled her eyes. “Ugh. Fine. Whatever. Tyrra, stop stabbing Cal.”
Tyrra gasped. “You’re taking his side?”
“What side? There is no ‘side’ here,” Cal said. “This isn’t a nuanced discussion. You keep sticking knives in me!”
“You don’t tell me what to do,” Tyrra warned. “You’re not my parents!”
“Exactly,” replied Cal. “So, we’re under no obligation to put up with your shizz. We could toss you out the airlock any time we like.”
Tyrra eyeballed him. “I’d like to see you try!”
“I’d get Mech to do it,” Cal said. “So… ha!”
Mizette stepped between them. “Alright, alright. Like, just stop, already,” she said. “Tyrra, you shouldn’t stab Cal, OK?”
“What if he deserves it?” Tyrra asked, holding Cal’s gaze with her shiny black eyes.
“Oh, then that’s totally fine,” said Miz.
“No,” Cal protested. “Not fine. Totally not fine. You are not to stab me under any circumstan
ces. Ever.”
“Even in the bathroom?”
“What are you talking about? Especially when I’m in the bathroom!”
Tyrra tutted moodily, as if she was somehow the wronged party in all this. “Fine. Give me back my knife.”
“With pleasure.” Cal offered his stomach to her, then had second thoughts. He stopped and drew back. “In fact, you know what? No. I’m keeping it,” he said. “It’s confiscated. I’m leaving it in there, and you’re not getting it back until you’ve had a good long think about your—”
He yelped as Tyrra caught the handle and yanked the blade free.
“Bested,” she told him, then she shoved him against the wall and skipped off along the corridor in the direction of Miz’s room.
“What can I say? She’s got to learn,” said Miz.
“I agree. Education’s important,” said Cal. He rubbed the edges of his stomach wound as the flesh knitted itself together again. “But how about teaching her something that doesn’t involve her stabbing me in the ass and torso for no reason whenever she feels like it? Math, maybe. Math is useful. Teach her math.”
Miz and Tyrra exchanged glances, then rolled their eyes in near-perfect unison. “Whatever,” they both said, then they stepped into Miz’s room and the door sighed closed behind them.
Cal exhaled slowly and shook his head. “Kids.”
Three
“What happened?” asked Loren, turning in her seat as Cal strode onto the bridge, poking at the hole in his t-shirt. “Did she stab you again?”
“Yes, she stabbed me again,” Cal confirmed. “The little psycho. I swear, this can’t go on. Isn’t there, like, an orphanage we can drop her off at? Like a space orphanage?”
Loren looked shocked. “We can’t do that. You know what happens in those places?”
Cal slumped into his chair, still trying to figure out if there was some way of salvaging the shirt. Short of some form of wizardry, though, he suspected not.
“I mean, I’ve never really looked into it, but from what I understand they sing and dance for a while, then Daddy Warbucks comes and picks them up,” said Cal. “It’s a pretty great system.”
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