by Eric Juneau
“I’m not taking responsibility for any of this. Just to say.”
“Please read on. No sin in that. You are absolved in advance.”
Position to be made of lead pail provided at no consumer cost whichsoever under drain port on underside (see to illustration) to so remove borated shipping solution from unit before be starting main water flow. Very much important: Not to exceed 5.37 seconds after boron solution drained to start of water flow.
“Seems pretty specific, that timing thing,” Maria said. “Very much important. Also very much ominous. Dave, I—”
“Nothing but a thing. Ugh, this pail is darned heavy. Okay, I’m removing the drain plug from underneath. Get ready to turn the water valve on, on my signal.”
Dave loosened the plug with his pliers and unscrewed it until it came fully out of the cooktop’s lower pan. Milky fluid poured out. Most of it went into the pail.
“Should I turn the water on, Dave?” Maria said.
“Not yet.”
The fluid flow slowed, then stopped.
“Should I turn the water on now, Dave?”
“Not yet. I have to get the plug back in place first.”
He went to screw the drain plug into the pan, then lost hold of it. It fell into the lead pail with a sploosh. He stared forlornly into the opaque liquid.
“Should I turn the water on now, Dave?”
“Not yet. I had a little mishap.”
“Dave, the clock is ticking!”
Dave steeled himself, pulled up his sleeve and reached into the pail, fished for the plug, found it, and began screwing it back into the cooktop drain pan.
“Should I turn the water on now, Dave?”
“Not yet. Darn, I’ve cross-threaded the screw. Wait! Wait!”
“Dave, the cooktop is glowing blue. Is it supposed to do that? Should I turn the water on now?”
“Not yet! I’ve just about got it. Now, where are those gosh-darned pliers?”
“Behind your right foot, Pumpkin. Should I turn the water on now?”
Dave groped on the floor behind himself, grabbed the pliers and tightened the drain plug. “Turn it on! Turn it on!”
He sank back onto the kitchen floor, and all the rapidly flickering scenes from his past life ceased. Situation contained, neighborhood nuclear meltdown avoided. Nothing to see here folks, everyone move along now. He heard the RotoFlow™ indicator spinning cheerfully on the cooktop above him.
“Uh, what’s for dinner, Sweetie?” he said, smiling.
“Surely you’re joking. I think I’d rather eat out tonight.”
Dave wiped his brow and found his feet. “Nothing left but to mop up, I guess. Cooktop seems a bit dusty. What’s it say about cleaning?”
Maria leafed through the manual to find the Care & Maintenance section.
Cooktop surface comprised of very especial AtomMaster™ alloy made from only best imported high-quality Zirconia sands from Australia which are sunny and very fetching when seeing. When after cleaning cooktop on periodic times, discard should be made of wipe cloths into provided lead pail. Note: If necessary to emptying of full pail, use only government-approved low-level nuclear waste repository in local area.
The pail was already full with shipping liquid. Maria continued to read aloud:
Not to let small pets not intended for consumption to lie on cooktop surface for too long time.
Not to bend head over cooktop when using. Not to let hands stay over cooktop for too long time when stirring food or cleaning. Recommend is to use AtomMaster™ lead-lined mittens (see to Accessories section).
Maria slammed the guide down on the counter. “This is too much, Dave. Our precious Lau-Lau can’t read these warnings. And I don’t have my lead mittens!”
Dave cringed. He could deal with anything, save the specter of getting between Maria and her darling Persian cat.
She picked the manual back up and continued. “And listen here:”
Any foodstuffs stored in cabinets over cooktop may be suffer minor change in taste due to nucleonic transmutation process. However, foodstuffs stored in this manner will be also sanitized and preserved, which is especial feature of the AtomMaster™ unit of no cost to consumer whichsoever.
“Which sounds kind of neat, actually,” Dave said. “We could save a lot of space in our freezer. Just stow bagged steaks in the cabinet over the cooktop. Heck, Honey, think of it this way: we’re ready for the apocalypse.”
“But our bed is located right over the cooktop, upstairs.”
“Easily movable to the opposite wall. We’ll just rearrange things a little. I can do that.”
Maria threw her arms out. “Dave, I don’t want to be . . . transmutated!” She burst into tears and ran out of the kitchen.
Great, Dave thought. Another anniversary bust. Shoot, shoot, shoot. And he tried so hard.
¤
The next day after work, Dave pulled up in his driveway and entered the house. His steps were tentative.
He heard Maria singing in the kitchen. The wonderful smell of her chili wafting through the air made his mouth water. His favorite dish.
“Sweetheart! I’m home!”
The AtomMaster™ fission-powered unit was gone. A new, standard electric cooktop unit graced the countertop in its place.
“Ah, my wonderful husband has arrived. Let me give you a big hug, handsome man.”
“What happened to the fission-powered cooktop?”
“Pumpkin, I had the guys at the local appliance center come and replace it today. I knew you’d understand. It was such a nice anniversary gift, but way too good for me. Forgive?”
“Of course, Sweetie. Of course. Just curious: where’d they dispose of it?”
“Don’t ask, don’t tell. That’s what they said. And that was fine by me.”
Dave sighed. “I guess it will be up to someone else to help the North Koreans join the global community.”
“You’ve already done more than your fair share with that, Honey.”
“I’m sorry I screwed up again, Maria. I really am.”
Maria clutched Dave and held him tight. “Dave, there’s no man I’d rather be with. I love you more than I can ever say.” She paused, then added, “But maybe next anniversary, just get me some nice perfume or a box of chocolates, okay?”
Dave grunted and nodded. Of course, she hadn’t mentioned her birthday, which was coming up in a couple of months. Plenty of time to order a gift for her—this time, an extra-extra special gift, to make up for his last one.
Gary Cuba lives with his lovely wife (yes, she is reading this over his shoulder) and a teeming horde of freeloading domestic critters in South Carolina, USA. His home is located perilously close to a swamp where big–footed, seven–foot–tall “Skunk Apes” are said to lurk. (And while he hasn't seen any of these marsh Yetis personally, he has numerous friends who claim to have done so—although it must be noted that those persons tend to like their beer a lot.) Besides numerous appearances in Stupefying Stories, his quirky short fiction has been published in more than sixty magazines and anthologies, including Crimson Fog, ReadShortFiction, Conjurings, Universe Annex (Grantville Gazette), Abyss & Apex, and Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. See http://www.thefoggiestnotion.com to find links to some of his other work and to learn more about him.
MASTERS
By Jason Lairamore
SPACE IS COLD, a cold that pushes in and makes you more compact, more tuned-in to your body. The ships are warm. All those cold feelings go away. It gets so you forget you even have a body. Your head takes over. For some this is good. For others… others do better in space.
I am a rare creature that is good in both hot and cold, a Zenist: a remnant who survived the wars and xenophobic eradication. You probably believe all Zenist are dead. As far as the general populace is concerned, that’s true. We live on a moon, a cold one, in a galaxy so far out it isn’t on a star chart. On that moon we are studied from afar by our betters and allowed to continue as we wis
h… for the most part.
I’m on loan at present, have been for some years, off our moon, used… in a way, by the winners of the war.
I use my ropey, strong, multi-jointed body to dig around on the rocks of an asteroid field. It’s a waste of my time, but I don’t make the rules. I’m like an old-fashioned explorer searching out natural resources and items of interest for the multi-corp.
Genetically, my neural chi is whittled down to a pretty sharp point, sharper than yours anyway. Muscle reactions, heartbeat regulation, pheromone outputs. There’s a lot going on that you’d have a hard time trying to figure. So they use me to sniff out neat stuff on the rock. It’s all hush-hush, of course. Nobody here knows I’m a Zenist. They wouldn’t believe it anyway.
My official job ended for the day, so I headed for my unofficial job, one of the quick contracts for big money. It’s funny that the government thinks money matters so much to me. It makes things too easy. I could get soft living like this. I have gotten soft, softer than I’d like. That’s the real shame of my ‘loaning out.’
¤
The bars follow the master ships and are accessible to any and all, as long as you’ve got the coin or credit to spend a piece of what you’ve scratched from the company. I’m here, mingling with the laughing masses, moving along in step with what they call music. It’s so loud you can’t hear yourself talk. Things become more internal. The lighting is soft and yellow and filled with the smoke of whatever medicinal herb or chemical is the latest craze. You can’t see clearly. The mind retreats farther. Things that didn’t make sense before become friendly. The drugs help that along.
So I’m in a place filled with deaf-mutes that are nice and cozy with their fellow humans. They are wearing fewer clothes than appropriate, so they’ve got themselves a night to remember, if they remember.
I stop between two pals and lock eyes with each one before moving on. It’s good to scare them, a good warm-up. I see a man making a move on a girl. I make a gesture, a simple hand half-open and extended in the right direction, the head kicked to the side, some pheromones puff out with my breath, my knee bent in just the right angle, eyes a tiny dart between the two. The man takes a poke at me. It’s all reflexive on his part. He wears his rage like a child. I let the fist slide off my jaw and fall back as big and loud as possible. I knock down as many people as I can along the way.
On the floor, I roll away. The floor is nasty. I’ll need a good scrub later. Clear of the brawl, I stand on a table next to some others and gape and cheer. Human are such intricate dancers. Muscle reaction to stimuli, blind faith in hormonal inputs, sweating, laughing, crying; the whole gambit rolls out.
The security team comes and breaks it up ten minutes later. They kill the music, turn the light on full blast, and pull the smoke from the room. The humans can now hear, see, and think again. It’s a reversal of the system. People feel their bodies. They know what is happening. Ah, the beauty of physiology.
It feels like an hour has passed. There was just so much to see. Nobody is arrested. Everybody here works for a living. The multi-corp funds the security and gets a skim off the bars. Business is business
¤
I get as google-eyed as the rest as we are herded out. I hit a bubble, pay my chit, and bob my way back to the closest miner residence ship. Once there I go to finish the job.
The café is a common mess for the common man. My two contacts are already there, munching on something synthetic that crunches like new plastic. I plop down beside them. They avoid eye contact. Smart, these military types, sometimes. One slides me a board.
The workers are numbered. Everyone has a number. Have to have one to get paid. It’s on the clothes. It IDs you wherever you go. Clocks you in and out of work. Pays the commissary when you eat. Docks water rations when you scrub. You may have a name, but that number is more important.
I write numbers and label dispositions. Fighter, coward, berzerker, observer, and on and on. That was tonight’s job. I start a scene and ID reactions. Helps with the draft. Does a valuable service for the military. It’s one of the ways we help out our betters. Another waste of my time.
“Thanks, Jack.” My name’s not Jack.
“Money there?” I ask. They expect it. I barely put out the effort for the fake interest in my own question.
“Yes,” one answers. They act like my question doesn’t matter, but if I hadn’t asked they would’ve reported it to the higher-ups. I didn’t want to expend the effort that’d take to fix. Like I said, I’m getting out of shape.
“Until next time then.” I go. Time to change clothes.
My hole in the wall is just that. It’s like some engineer got lazy and told the mechanics to just dent the hull until there was enough square-footage to throw some shmuck blue collar worker in there so he could rest between back-breaking, profit-generating work cycles.
There’s a door. I trust the lock as much as I trust the common man to control his inner animal under stress. The place is probably bugged floor to ceiling, too. I hope so. I like to do an exercise every now and then to pretend I’m staying in shape. The trouble is I can’t go too overboard or it will get reported.
So I play with the supposed person behind the probable camera. The person monitoring my channel should have an extensive list of mental disorders by now if I’m worth my salt.
With my luck they’ve probably gotten smart and installed a computer to throw red flags for specific behavior patterns. Nothing much I can do about that. Technology is unimpressed by the nuances my body has developed over millennia.
Divergent evolution is what you call it. Simply put, Humans grew to fruition on two separate systems that clipped along the same line for a space and then took separate paths. You went the way of tech. We went holistic. So we were behind in the space race and in weapons development. Your side won when we met.
¤
I stripped off the party clothes and pulled a cup of water from the collector, then got a rag and got to scrubbing. Did some antiseptic swiping then donned street clothes, clothes that typical techies wear when cruising the aisles during down time. They’re dull, gray, plastic fiber slacks with a full length shirt a tone darker than the ship’s walls. All you techies must see in grayscale. I pulled on some gray rubber shoes.
¤
You probably don’t believe I’m a Zenist. If I’m as powerful as I say then I should not be a space grunt. You’ve all heard the fables your grand-dads told around the campfire, the one about the super villains from outer space, the one about the war with the aliens that look like men.
Truth is, I’ve got a little scar on my left forearm and a little bump just underneath. They could kill me with a push of a button. Death hovers all day every day. I’m surprised somebody hasn’t sneezed and hit the button by accident.
But fear of death isn’t the whole reason I keep doing this. I have a mountainside worth of ambition to feed. That reminds me. It’s time for my weekly delivery.
I rattled some of the things I’ve collected, harmless stuff, trash really, and pulled out an old transceiver I’d salvaged from a broken down remote rock crusher. I put it in my pocket. The mail ship heads out tomorrow morning.
I ship trinkets back home. I started with a television remote just to see if I could. They took the batteries out of it. I laughed at the time. They looked at me funny, but let it pass. Deep inside my adrenal gland wanted to burst, but I clamped it down and doused my system with some l-dopa. I never imagined such easy success.
I have been sending bits of stuff back home every week since. The military has become lax, but I still play it safe. I am practicing my culture’s oldest profession. I think it’s your second oldest. Thievery.
The postmaster smiled a patronizing smile, a suffering the children’s smile, when he saw me walk in. My eyes were wide with glee as I glanced at the transceiver cradled in my hands.
“Another package home, Buddy?” My name isn’t Buddy. I bob my head like I’m too excited to speak, and just
like that it’s bagged and tagged and sent along the line. You’re welcome, home. Good luck. Don’t forget your wayward brother.
¤
Home. Well, not really. Your people, your government, put us on that moon. Us, the last of a nearly dead race, treated as a new pet project to be used and prodded as indicated. And you didn’t take any chances. There are a number of satellites in orbit capable of blowing that moon to dust.
¤
I check my mail slot. Lo and behold—a package from home; a rock, third one this year, and this one is special. It has Dad’s initials on it. That means it’s time. I smile and hold the rock to my chest. Those monitoring me probably think I’m homesick.
The rock is ovoid, black, smooth and shiny as glass. I break it open, find a purple geode, then pocket the treasure and go back to my room.
My apartment welcomes me with a beep. A message on the system beeps again. It will do that every few seconds until I answer. The powers that be use the psychological ploy to irritate me. I let it work to keep you techies from getting nervous.
“Answer.”
“Tomorrow, after shift, there are various social gatherings observing political debates for the upcoming elections. Attend and report. Contact will await you on level 10 auto-commissary.”
While the message spooled I got a fresh cup of water and dropped both halves of the geode inside, smooth as magic. Hand tricks are easy. People always look where I want.
I carry the water for half an hour and scroll the TV. It’s expected, so I do it. Like visual stimulus means something in particular. You techie guys have a narcissism that’s baffling. You are sight-dominated, so all must be.
The water tastes like water, and wonder of wonders, the geode is gone.