And God Belched

by Rob Rosen

  “Savior my ass,” mumbled Craig. He looked at Milo. “This isn’t a cell. They weren’t planning on capturing us. Can you send your mom a message? Tell her we’ve been captured?”

  Milo nodded, then spoke to the wall. Said wall sprang to life, going from white to what looked like some sort of homepage. Sort of. Milo spoke a bit more, the wall image morphing, then morphing some more the more he spoke. A minute went by. Milo eventually turned to us, and said, “Done. Now, let’s hope they can rescue us. Without getting caught. Before these guys either kill us or transport us to a prison.”

  I sighed and finished my water. “Maybe try that praying thing again.” He did, hands quickly folded in prayer. “Now, we just have to hope that someone is listening.” I stared up at the shiny white ceiling and did my own bit of praying, thereby hedging our bets.

  The minutes ticked by. Since I no longer had Tag—and so, no watch—it felt like hours, but was probably only one at most by the time the wall slid open and in walked the same three guards with the same three weapons pointed at the same five of us.

  Here’s the gist of the convo, which Milo translated for the guards:

  “Yo, dudes,” Craig said, literarily using the word dudes. “Like, when can we vamoose?”

  The guards shook their collective noggins. “No can do, little human. The powers that be want to see you, pronto.”

  Me being the smartass that I am replied, “Can’t we Skype them?”

  Sadly, Milo didn’t know how to translate that. In either case, the answer was, “We have a truck outside. We are to take you to the commander. Beyond that, we wish the savior well and hope they don’t, like, chop off his pretty, little head, or some such thing.”

  Well, at least they thought I was pretty. Still, a gulp the size of a well-ripened grapefruit slid down my equally pretty throat. I tried to object, but three guards, three weapons, yada, yada, yada.

  In other words, we were being marched out of the room a moment later, the five of us in the front, the three of them in the rear—which definitely sounded sexier than it was. We squinted into the bright sunlight as we emerged from the paste factory, the truck already waiting. Said truck was massive, all white, all metal, no identifying marks. Heck, it didn’t even have tires or windows. Basically, it was a large, floating, metal box.

  “Our chariot awaits,” said Dad glumly.

  I matched his glum with a gloom as we closed the gap between us and the hovering behemoth. The side of the box parted, revealing the interior, revealing a cage within. Misery quickly trumped glum and gloom.

  I turned to the others just before we boarded. I thought to say something inspiring, something along the lines of “it’s always darkest before the dawn,” only, it came out as, “Um…”

  Not that I didn’t mean to finish the thought, to, you know, inspire, but I’d been interrupted. That is to say, weapons started firing at us from all sides. Or at least three sides. And not at us so much as at the guards. Laser-like beams shot out, striking the menacing trio behind us. They fell down in a heap. Kerplunk! The melee lasted barely a minute, more meh than melee

  “Um,” I repeated.

  “Yeah, um,” said Craig with an added, “What the fuck?”

  “Language!” shouted Mom from her concealed vantage point.

  “It’s English!” shouted Cher from her concealed vantage point.

  I grinned, missing Tag all the more, knowing he would’ve said the exact same thing. “How?” I said, staring from them to the armed guards. “You…you killed them.”

  Britney appeared from behind her own concealed vantage point. “Not killed. Stunned. If we wanted to kill, there wouldn’t be bodies left.” I grimaced at the imagery. “As to how, you contacted us. We traced you back to here. We gathered the weapons we still had from the government prison. We saw the prison truck, figured you were to be loaded into it, hid, and…” She pointed toward the downed guards. “Easy.” She smiled. “And you’re welcome.”

  Craig ran up to her and hugged her. The kiss sort of threw me off. Butterflies flittered and fluttered inside my gut. I smiled at the kiss, then blushed just a bit as it lingered. I waited for either Mom or Dad to say something, but they, too, were kissing. I turned to Sonny and Cher. Yep, kisses all around. Meaning, not ones to be left out, Milo and I were kissing as well, even though neither of us had rescued the other. When in Rome, I figured—or, you know, Planet Six.

  Still, we didn’t have all the time in the world—or worlds, plural.

  “Better get going,” I said, lips unlocked.

  They all nodded. They all looked at the floating metal box, its door still open. I turned to Milo. “They know about us. About me and you. Now, with what we’ve done here, they probably know about all of us. Hopefully, they don’t know about J.T. All that said, can that—” I pointed to the truck “— help us with all this?” I then pointed to, well, everything else.

  He seemed to think about it before replying. The standard shrug quickly followed. “It’s, as you call it, armored. It should offer us adequate protection. Perhaps, therefore, it can be used to our advantage.” He looked inside. “Plus, it’s big enough for all of us.” The shrug rose north. “So yes, I say we take it.” He ran back to the downed guards before ripping their ID badges off their uniforms. “Just in case,” he added, then hopped on the truck. “All aboard!”

  Suffice it to say, we all hopped, the door closing behind us. And just in the nick of time, too, because the wall inside was a giant monitor, and the outside was almost immediately swarming with guards, new ones, and all with weapons. Weapons, it should be noted, that were already firing at us. Thankfully, said weapons were having little effect, other than to jangle my nerves and make the box go ping, ping, ping, ping.

  “See,” said Milo, exhaling once he realized we hadn’t been blown up. “Armored.” He shot me a wink. I, naturally, popped a boner. Apparently, my prick didn’t know we were being fired upon at the time. Either that or simply didn’t care. Me, I cared.

  “Anyone know how to drive this thing?” I asked.

  Britney raised her hand. “The orphanage has a similar vehicle, though one that is no longer armored. It has gone from what you call a truck to what you call a bus. I watched the driver,” she said. “I believe I can operate this vehicle.” Her English, it seemed, had improved, though she still sounded a bit robotic. Ironically, the one almost-robot I knew, namely Tag, sounded more human than she did.

  In any case, there were several more pings pinging all around us. “Hurry,” I told her, “before our luck runs out.”

  Britney grabbed one of the ID badges and held it up to the screen. In an instant, the beast roared to life. That is to say, in complete silence, it began to drive off. Our young friend then ran her hands this way and that. The truck, it seemed, could detect her motions and respond in kind.

  “Look at the screen, Milo,” Sonny said.

  Milo looked, then squinted, then smiled. “Weapons controls.” He turned to me. “This baby is fully armed, Randy.”

  I looked, squinted, and promptly frowned. “It’s also a sitting duck.” All the Cureans looked my way. Clearly, they didn’t understand the reference. I sighed, and amended with, “They can see us coming from a mile away.”

  Britney laughed. FYI, that did not sound robotic. She turned to me, her hand still twirling in the air. “Bottom right. The icon that looks like a backward letter P. Run your hand across it.”

  I nodded. “This vehicle usually takes two people to control it, huh?”

  She nodded. “That’s okay, we have eight!”

  I smiled at her enthusiasm, then ran my hand across the backward letter P. Nothing happened. “Nothing happened.”

  “No?” she said, then spoke to the screen. “Show us the outside of the vehicle.”

  The monitor had been showing us the road in front of us; now we were seeing, well, nothing. Zilch, nada, zip. “I don’t get it,” I said.

  Craig snickered. “Shock.” He pointed at the screen
. “There’s nothing to see. You obviously ran your hand across a cloaking command, dude.” He stood next to Britney, his left hand on her lower back. “They can’t see us anymore, right?”

  She nodded. “Right, dude.”

  I cringed at the word. Oh please, dear God, not another one of them. “What about radar, an electronic way to see us, apart from visual?”

  She shrugged. “The icon you activated says cloaking. A reasonable person would surmise that that means we are cloaked, fully.” She briefly looked my way and smiled. “Duh, dude.”

  My cringe went cringier. “Craig is a bad influence on you, Britney.”

  “You say potato, dude,” she replied.

  I turned away and sat on a bench that appeared from the floor. “I think I liked you better before you learned English.”

  Milo sat down next to me, his hand on my knee. Our parents were sitting in the cell. It was roomier in there, if not a bit creepier. “We need a plan, Randy,” he said. “In theory, Tag will find a way to destroy the portal. If such is the case, then what? And what if Tag doesn’t find a way? Or what if Tag goes…missing?”

  My cringe turned wince, with a squirm thrown in for good measure. “For all intents and purposes, we’re in a tank, Milo. We have weapons. They’re in a building we know isn’t indestructible, mainly because we destructed half of it already.” I sighed as I placed my hand over his. “Let’s wait to hear from J.T. or Tag. If we hear from neither, we can simply try to blow the place up.” Hopefully, fingers and toes crossed, without our friends in and/or near it at the time.

  He pointed around the tank. “Armored,” he said. “So are they, and probably more so than ever.”

  Which meant that the entire human race was in the hands of Tag—Tag, who had no hands. Funny, I know. Plus, Tag was, at that very moment, flowing through a paste pipe, perhaps never to emerge again.

  In short—yeah, good luck with that now—Lord help us.

  Chapter 13

  We drove from the factory and back to the city. It wasn’t a long drive. Still, we passed several other trucks on the way, all of them heading the way we had just come from, all, more than likely, looking for us. We held our breaths every time one went by in a near-silent whizz.

  “How are we moving without wheels?” I thought to ask, after the fourth truck drove by.

  “The city is built on steel. The truck is magnetized,” replied Cher as she sat in the cell, holding Sonny’s hand. “The technology is simple enough.”

  I shrugged. “If you say so.”

  In any case, it seemed that the cloaking device was working. None of the trucks stopped and fired at us, no bombs bursting in air. Phew. Though we’d quickly noticed that all of the connections to the government were now lost in the vehicle. In other words, we had basic Internet, but nothing more. So, they clearly knew what we’d done, and had limited us as best they could—the fuckers.

  Soon enough, we were parked outside the government building. There were guards everywhere. Britney passed her hand across the screen and gave a few commands. The building showed up on the wall, its weapons system made visible.

  Britney sighed. “They have far more weapons than we do. Plus, they, like us, are heavily armored.”

  “Meaning,” said I dolefully, “our weapons will be useless on them.”

  “Unless…” said Craig.

  I nodded, knowing the unless all too well. “Unless, Tag comes up with a plan.”

  They all nodded in sync as we counted down the minutes until Tag’s imminent rescue. Um, hopeful rescue, that is—fingers and innumerable toes crossed.

  “Why are your eyes crossed?” asked Craig.

  I shook my head. “Never mind.”

  “Stop it,” said Mom. “They might stay that way.”

  I uncrossed them. Vanity, thy name is Randy. And then we continued to wait, and wait some more.

  “It’s time,” eventually whispered Sonny as he stared down at his watch.

  I sucked in my breath and said yet another prayer. Now that I was officially an unofficial bald and black-bedecked monk, I hoped I had a party line into the Big Guy Upstairs. Prayer quickly completed, I again gazed down at Sonny’s watch. “Connect to Justin Timberlake,” I croaked out.

  The watch obeyed, blinking like Tag was prone to do, only with much less, you know, personality. More seconds ticked by, then more. My heart pounded all the while. My heart, in fact, felt like an entire percussion section. My throat was so dry it could give the Gobi a lesson or two. More seconds passed, more.

  “Answer,” I rasped, my face just above the device.

  “Answer,” said them all, one by one, as they amassed behind me. “Answer.”

  I tried to swallow. It hurt. I tried to blink. I couldn’t.

  “He’s not…” I started to say, and then, praise be…

  “Hello,” whispered Justin Timberlake, his face appearing atop the watch. He looked like he was in some sort of closet.

  “Where are you?” I asked.

  “Storage closet,” he replied, still in a whisper, nothing but his (hot) face in the frame. “Didn’t want anyone to see or hear me. We only have a short while before my absence is noticed.”

  “Tag,” I rasped. “Do you have Tag?”

  He smiled. He lifted my friend into view. Tag blinked—with personality. “Sticky, but in one piece,” said Tag.

  I finally exhaled, as did the group behind me, their collective breaths hitting the back of my neck like a gust of wind. “Good to hear your voice, Tag,” I said.

  Again, he blinked. “And, as a side note, travelling through a pipe of paste is not the least bit enjoyable.”

  I grinned. “I’d think not.”

  Justin Timberlake came back on. “I heard what you all did, even from in here,” he said. “Either insanely smart or simply insane.”

  “I’d say fifty/fifty.”

  Tag piped in with, “Fifteen/eighty-five.”

  My grin faltered. I liked my odds better. “In any case, how long will it take you to do what you’re there to do?” Should anyone be able to hear what was being said, I was purposely being vague, even though I was dying to tell him that we were parked just outside.

  Tag briefly paused. “Calculating,” he said, then, “I should have the information in approximately three hours. I can access some of the databases here. I have something of a sense of the layout of this side of the building. With Justin Timberlake’s help, I should be able to find the you know what and have our answer shortly thereafter.” Seemed that Tag was also being vague. Considering how precise he normally was, how precise he was programed to be, I’m sure that vague was difficult for him to pull off. “I will contact you when I have an answer. After that, I will exit with Justin Timberlake, then eventually be returned to you.” Again, he paused. “I miss my friends.”

  I gulped. He missed us. I looked over at Milo. “Still think he’s just a program?”

  Milo shrugged. “We miss you, too, Tag,” he said into Sonny’s watch. “Now, hurry back.”

  “I will do my best,” came the reply just before said watch went blank.

  I smiled. Tag’s best, after all, was pretty fucking awesome. I stood and addressed the others. “Well, I guess we wait.”

  They all nodded, all but Britney. She, in fact, was frowning and madly waving her hands in front of the screen. “No,” she said.

  “What’s wrong?” said Mom as she turned and stood by our young friend. “What are all those red marks on the screen.”

  The screen, at the time, was showing the outline of our vehicle. Red marks kept appearing and disappearing. Britney briefly looked our way. It was cool in the truck, but she was sweating. Meaning, so was I, all too soon.

  “What are they, Britney?” I asked, standing by her other side.

  “The government,” she replied. “They’re trying to find us. Each of those marks is a direct hit.” She pointed at the screen. “They appear and disappear because they aren’t connecting. Should they connect, th
e mark will remain.” She turned my way. “Everything is a code, Randy. Should they break the code, we’re, as you say, screwed.”

  “But the cloaking device,” I said.

  She shook her head. “This is a government vehicle. They’re the government.”

  Sonny sighed loudly from behind me. “It’s only a matter of time.”

  Britney’s shake turned nod. “Yes, plus…”

  I groaned. “Plus what?”

  She pointed at Sonny’s wrist. “If they capture us, they’ll scan our devices. They’ll know what we’re up to. They’ll arrest Justin Timberlake. They’ll destroy Tag. They’ll probably kill us all.”

  “Probably?” I asked, despite, one, knowing the answer, and, two, not wanting to hear the answer.

  “Definitely,” said Britney, followed by Cher, then Sonny, then Milo, all saying the same.

  “So,” I said, “What should we do? Can we get outside their range?”

  “Their range goes beyond this planet,” said Sonny.

  My groan returned. “So, that’s a no.”

  “No,” the Cureans all replied.

  Dad tapped my shoulder. “I have an idea, but I’m not sure it’s a safe one. I mean, right now, we’re out of harm’s way.”

  I turned to look at him. “Yeah, but for how much longer?”

  “What is it?” asked Mom as she turned his way. “What’s your idea?”

  Dad sighed. “If they thought we were already dead, they’d stop looking for us.”

  Silence filled the space around us. We had to let Dad’s words sink in. “The truck,” Milo eventually said. “If it were to be destroyed, they’d think we were dead. Since they know we’re all together now, they’d think we were all dead. Presumably, they’d think that all our devices were also destroyed, that even Tag was dead.” He smiled at my father. “Brilliant idea, sir.” His smile grew wider. “I think I can, as you’d say it, put some icing on that cake.” He turned my way. “This cake thing any good, by the way.”

  “Depends,” I replied. “Then again, compared to your paste, even a pizza with anchovies would be good.” I held up my hand. “Yes, anchovies are that gross.” I grinned his way. “Now, what’s that icing thing?”