Analog Science Fiction and Fact - September 2014

by Penny Publications

  "Sit! Sit down and fasten up, this is waaay cool!"

  She pulls out her cell phone and begins finger-painting. Things in the walls began to power up. I don't see any meat hooks, but this really isn't what I expected for a corporate award ceremony. Maybe a teleconference? Perhaps the CEO is going to appear on the large display on the wall? Maybe Dave will pop out, shouting "Candid Camera!"

  I buckle up when the container lurches. Why are they loading us onto a truck? I wonder. I stop wondering as all hell breaks loose. Impossibly, we drop for a full ten seconds. I know, because I am screaming like a thirteenyear-old girl at a Justin Bieber concert and continue to do so until I run out of breath.

  "I love this part," Sara says, laughing. "Okay—hang on, here's where it gets bitchin'!"

  Bitchin' is right. I no longer need seat belts— I'm not going anywhere, except backward into the seat. We are accelerating upward like a turbocharged Ferrari on I–5 making the late-night Portland to Vancouver run. Not just gaining speed—gaining acceleration. My cheeks are moving toward the back of my neck, leaving my nose all by itself at the front of my face.

  I think, This is not good.This is not normal. I should leave now. Screw the award, get me out of this box.

  I manage to stop screaming and look over at Sara. She's playing Tetris on her phone. After a couple of lifetimes, or maybe minutes, we start to coast. Now I'm floating up against the straps. We bump something, and I hear noises outside. The container lurches and the door opens. I wish I was looking at a residential street, but it's dark outside.

  I remember Dave told me stories about outof-body experiences. In cases of extreme trauma, a person's mind takes a little vacation. Floats around. Stops trying to make sense of everything. Watches all the pretty lights. That's what I'm feeling. I suspect I should be concerned. As odd as Portland might be, floating out of a chair is not what I expect. But I'm enjoying my little mind-vacation. My other option is to resume screaming and curl up in a ball. Oh well. I follow Sara across the room. I'm floating. She's walking. I wish I could walk.

  "Oops," She laughs. My floating around the container is a big practical joke. Ha ha. "You need some boots."

  She walks to a closet and retrieves a pair of extra-large galoshes. Reaching for my floating foot, she stuffs it in the boot and pulls a tab. The boot shrink-wraps itself to my foot. She grabs the boot and guides it, and me, to the ground. I stick—how convenient! The process repeats and now we are standing face-to-face. Little things still float around, but with a small amount of effort, I'm walking again.

  I think, I should get a pair of these... for all the times I'm weightless.

  Sara heads for the door and with a minute of hesitation, I follow. There must be a pool nearby, the smell of chlorine has become much stronger. Sara leads me down a hallway, into an eight-sided room with four doors and four windows, out one of the doors, down a hallway and we stop at a door.

  She puts her palm up against a panel. It flashes three short whites, one long. Nothing happens.

  "Come on," Sara shouts at the door. "Book it. You knew we were on our way. Spaz!"

  The door doesn't answer and neither do I. Maybe the door won't open. I picture myself dangling weightless from a meat hook. The mild up-and-down motion of the floor is making me seasick. Maybe I can go someplace where my keys don't float.

  "I should explain. Like, we're on a ship—in orbit," Sara turns and looks up at me. "We weren't planning to be here long this time, just a quick pop in and say hello. Like, catch some theater, suck up the broadcasts and run for the trading station. Supposed to be a quick trip, then stuff fritzes out and we need a patch. Does Ficus have spares? Noooooooooo! So it's my job to go find the next best thing. Looks like that was you." She stops to take a breath and smile at me.

  I realize I'm at a pivotal moment.

  I could wake up. Unfortunately, I'm probably already awake.

  I could scream and run. Unfortunately, the only place to run is a flying shipping container and I don't know how to fly it.

  I could accept the fact I am in orbit on a spaceship. Fortunately, I am in orbit with Sara.

  I'm going to stand here by the door. Maybe something interesting will happen. I could be okay with a little sci-fi role-play. Maybe later on, Sara will get out her Princess Leia costume and I can play Han Solo.

  The panel flashes two short and the door opens. Sara walks through the door. I peek in, checking for meat hooks. None in sight. I'm looking around for a hot tub—the smell of chlorine is stronger in this octagonal room. Each wall has a large, sealed window and a door. No doorknobs. Some of the rooms behind the windows are dark, some are lit but empty.

  In the center is a... thingy. When you work in a hardware store, live theater takes on a new interest. At first glance a theatrical stage looks like it has real oak floors. Real fireplaces. Functioning electronics. Most people buy into the deception. But when you hang around with plumbing and paint all day, you notice the stage is made of plywood coated with high-gloss varnish. Theatrical props are made out of ordinary stuff. You inventory the parts and what aisle to find them in.

  None of that works with the setup in front of me. The thing in the room is not theater parts. It reaches from floor to ceiling and looks like a tree made out of surplus vacuum cleaners. But it's real and consists of stuff I would not be able to find in any hardware store. It's dominated by red pipes. Several of them hang loose. Red liquid oozes from them and forms floating globules in the air. Red vapor comes out of the access port on the side. Lots of red. I really hope this isn't blood, because if it is, a guy with a chainsaw and a hockey mask is waiting behind one of those doors.

  Sara goes to face a window displaying a large purple plant. She does an odd sort of dance and after a minute, the plant moves its stem, twists around and runs a few tendrils across the glass. Sara gestures. More tendrils move.

  "Like, I'd introduce you," Sara turns to me and says, "but he doesn't have a name you'd understand or that I'm going to take the effort to translate. And calling him—'he'—is wrong, but it works for now. He's the ship's engineer and he's a little stressed out, you know. Plus he thinks we're airheads because we only have one brain. Sometimes he's kind of a jerk."

  I don't even flinch. An egotistical stressed out plant flying a spaceship. Why not?

  "Here's the skinny," continues Sara. "He says he knows how that's supposed to work." Sara gestures at the tower of surplus vacuum cleaner parts. "But he isn't able to fix it with the parts he has. You hopefully know where to get parts. So the two of you have to work together."

  "He can't come in here while the room is filled with our atmosphere. I've learned his sign language—it's full body—so I'll translate." Sara stops and grins. I'm not sure she's sobered up yet.

  Okay, I think. The gauntlet has been thrown down. I should walk out the door and catch a bus. That's probably not an option, so I might as well stick around and help the ficus plant fix the doo-hickey in the middle of the room.

  "Sara," I ask. "What does this thing do?"

  Sara dances around in front of the plant. The plant dances back. Sara ponders, consults her hand-held, dances a bit, studies Ficus, then turns back to me.

  "He says it would take years to understand. It's some sort of a switch, but he says that doesn't matter, just that it's broken and needs to be fixed."

  "Ask the plant what happens if this doesn't get repaired?" I ask. I want to make sure I'm not breaking my brain trying to fix a toilet or a home entertainment system.

  Sara dances. The plant dances. "He says the paint on the outside of the ship will get scratched. Or... he might be saying we're going to burn up when we lose orbit. I'm not sure. Either way, it is going to happen in about... uh, lemme think... uh... I think he says it will be in about six hours, give or take twenty-seven minutes."

  Nice. Scratched paint or a fiery death. If I'm going to fix this, I need to figure out what's broken. Then I need to figure out how to fix it. Then I need some red plastic things to fix it wi
th. No more difficult than finding replacement parts for Ikea furniture. And six hours, twenty-seven minutes to do it.

  "What exactly is broken?" I ask Ficus-The-Plant via Sara. "I see parts all over, and it looks like some of this stuff used to connect, but this thing is just one big confused dishwasher."

  While I poke around the innards of the vacuum-cleaner-tree, Ficus describes the broken part. "It's round with three and one-half sides," Sara tells me. "That's bogus, but Ficus insisted. He sent me a picture."

  Sara rubs the face of her cell phone and holds it up for me to see. I'm looking at a red hockey puck with five holes, but no indication of size. Zooming out from the drawing reveals it's part of a sub-assembly, but no indication where it might be located. I spend fifteen minutes looking inside the pillar of mystery before I find something round and flat. Pipes run in. Pipes run out. Getting it out from behind all the other somethings is going to be more difficult than fixing a cross-threaded metric wingnut. I have no idea how I'll replace it.

  Ficus explains (dances? mimes?) about how fluid enters the puck. When it leaves, it's power—like electricity but different. Whatever flows through the puck changes state—fluid—power—fluid. This widget isn't working because the fluid whatsit isn't staying away from the power goo. They mix at the wrong time, and apparently mixed drinks don't make spaceships fly right.

  "We're in one of the tech rooms off the loading dock," Sara says while I'm poking around the whatever-it-might-be. When she isn't translating, she gets chatty, and right now, she's trying to explain the overall size of the ship. "There are a few levels, most of which I've never been on. They aren't configured with our atmosphere. Us oxygen breathers have our part of the ship we stick to and mingle with the chlorine-breathers in rooms like this. Game night is pretty groovy when you figure out what the rules are."

  Sara tends to go off-topic, but now I know why everything smells like a pool—Ficus breathes chlorine.

  "I came on board in 1978," Sara continues. "Like, I was working in Wisconsin at a community theater. I did sign language for the audience. I like to talk and I must have a knack for translating. This guy asked me if I wanted to travel in space. I'd just seen Star Wars; so cool, you know. We've been picking up Star Wars episodes all along. Did you know there's a three-planet competition for the best Jar-Jar Binks impersonation?"

  Sara is right, she likes to talk. In between conversations with Ficus, Sara chatters about anything. Everything. I should find it distracting, but it's the closest I can manage to making small talk.

  "I don't know how they got the first human to come on board." Sara tells me. "When we swing by, we do a bit of recruiting. We mostly bring on theater majors and musicians. That's where the big moolah is—selling cultural artifacts, music, theater. Totally rad, but Earth BGrade movies are always about how aliens are going to steal water or women. Actually, we're here to steal the B-Grade movies—once they're translated, the chlorine-breathers love them. Makes 'em laugh—I think. That's the best I can figure out, you know?"

  My fingers are full of potentially carcinogenic goo, but in the short-term, it isn't flesh eating. I can see red and blue "stuff" going upand-down a pipe and notice there are postage-stamp sized pads scattered next to the tubes. When the blue stuff goes by, they vibrate. I ask Sara to ask Ficus what they're supposed to be doing.

  Sara does the watusi, a few steps from the hokey-poky and signals the runner on third to steal home. "He says they're diagnostics. When not-red goes by, they vibrate. He says they're not important right now."

  Ficus's answer is 100 percent accurate and 0 percent useful. It's obvious blue makes the pads vibrate. I keep poking around. How am I supposed to get the puck out?

  "Why are all these pipes red?" I ask. I should have asked "Is this thing dangerous? " but curiosity, cats, etc.

  "He says it won't work if they aren't red," Sara translates. "Like, he's talking physics. I didn't get a lot in school, so I'm kind of guessing. Some of the stuff in the pipes has to be encouraged to turn red so it doesn't go where it isn't supposed to be. It's like he's using the same words as when we recruit crew members from planets."

  Ficus is vastly more expository than any other plant I've met on Earth and keeps Sara hopping—literally. I suspect much of what Ficus says is lost in all the hand-waving; little of it makes sense and of the parts that do make sense, less of it is useful.

  I also think Sara is getting frustrated. I can understand; this is frustrating for me, and I don't have to foxtrot around the room with Einstein-The-Plant. She's trying to discuss engineering via the medium of creative dance. If we fail, the paint on the outside of the ship gets scratched. I'm guessing Ficus is somewhat exasperated as well, at least to the equivalent a chlorine-breathing houseplant might feel emotion. As for me, what if I can't get out of this crazy space-opera before the timer runs out?

  I'm worried about Ficus for another reason. At Hankins Hardware, we've learned to recognize overwhelmed customers. They get started on projects beyond their abilities, get frustrated, then come yell at us. Sometimes their T-shirt is wet with plumbing effluent. Or the electrical outlet they are replacing has telltale short-circuit burn marks. They try to look authoritative, but grab entirely the wrong parts. They miss the problem because they focus on the wrong things.

  Ficus isn't wearing a wet T-shirt, but he has a big problem and it's clear he doesn't know how to fix it. I don't know if plants have ego problems but he may not be happy about some single-brained earthling fixing his little red spaceship. Would he—it?—be willing to let the paint get scratched instead of getting shown up by a meat bag from an insignificant trading backwater? Is he telling me everything I need to know? Does he even know what I need to know?

  More ominously, the up-and-down motion of the ship is getting more pronounced. It's faster and bigger. Even if I allow myself to float, everything fastened down is rising and falling. Now I have personal experience with something actually spinning out of control.

  We've been at this for at least an hour and it's clear there is no way to get the three-and-onehalf sided puck out without explosives. We don't sell dynamite at Hankins, so that's not an option. I'm guessing Ficus wouldn't like it either.

  "Ask Ficus if I can connect these pipes back together," I ask the assembled plant/mineral/vegetable audience. "I'd like to see what the puck doesn't do, so I can guess at what it does do."

  Sara squinted. "You have got to be joshin' me. How am I supposed to translate that to him?"

  "Just ask Ficus if I can reconnect the pipes without breaking the ship."

  Sara shrugs at me, then she shrugs, flails, and bows to Ficus. Ficus wiggles back.

  "He says, and I'm pretty sure I'm getting this correct, 'that would be redundant and a waste of time.'"

  "If I don't know what it's supposed to do, at least I should know what it isn't supposed to do, and the only way I'll learn that is if we let it do what it shouldn't be doing," I say. With less tact than before—I'm getting tired—I continue with my feeble, single-brained attempt at debate with a superior plant. "Just ask Ficus—Will I break the ship if I reconnect the pipes?"

  Sara looks at me, turns to Ficus, gestures, then stops and turns back to me. Her mouth twitches and her eyes get moist.

  "Sometimes he's hard to read, but something is wrong. He's starting to insult you— calling you a cheap piece of meat."

  Sara wipes her eyes with the frilled sleeve of her theater jacket and stares at the floor. I stare at the same part of the f loor, unsure what choice of phrases I can select from my collection of witty repartees to bring her back to her formerly bouncy self. I suspect getting Sara back to happy is going to be more difficult than fixing the red hoover tree. Taking a huge risk, I reach out and hold Sara's hand. I've seen it work on Star Trek. If it works for Captain Kirk, maybe it can work for me.

  "Look," I say. "We're all tired and worried. But this is going to work out. We'll fix the thingy."

  "Thanks," Sara says. Miracle of miracles, she continues
to hold my hand. Oh happy day, oh frabjous day. I almost forgot there is a possibility we are going to burn up in reentry. She continues, "I'm glad you're here. I'll convince him to try reconnecting the pipe."

  Ficus was not part of our little emotional theater and is still being petulant. Maybe he is being petal-ant —I smile at my own little joke made in the privacy of my own little head. He still addresses me as the diminutive piece of meat—Sara translates it as "Chuck Roast," or simply "Chuck" when she realizes I find it amusing. As amusing as could be possible in the middle of a life/death situation.

  For example: "Tell Chuck," Ficus says. (At which point I snicker, which makes Sara smile, which makes me smile, and the bluebirds are singing and the soundtrack swells into a big choreographed declaration-of-mutual-love number and the audience applauds....)

  "Tell Chuck," Ficus says, "reconnecting the pipes will not fix the [untranslatable]. Reconnecting the pipes will produce immediate evidence of failure." Ficus wants to argue the futility of my proposed experiment more than he wants to find a solution. Aliens are so tiresome.

  In a burst of human recklessness I grab what appears to be a "red stuff" conduit and thrust it into the twist-lock socket it is obviously designed to fit. As Ficus predicted, the evidence of failure is immediate. The column throbs upwards from the floor with red. Just before the red goo enters the puck, some of it turns blue and enters, some goes dark and stays out. The diagnostic thrummers vibrate at the blue/dark junctures and the vacuum cleaner pillar issues an ominous clacking sound. The ship oscillations double in amplitude and frequency. I grab the pipe, twist and pull. It comes free and the clacking stops. Experiment complete. Researcher frightened. Plant and animal observation team having a fit. Ship settles down to a manageable rise-and-fall although still more pronounced than before I experimented.

  Sara doesn't bother to translate the agitated plant's words. "What the hell are you doing?" she asks. She's waving her hands in plant-speak, unaware her excited shrieking is quite sufficient to express her concern. "Ficus said not to reconnect those pipes and you just went ahead and did it. That was totally whacked!"