Jump Starting the Universe Book Bundle

by John David Buchanan

  “Are we in the right place? This doesn’t look like a parking garage.” asked Wayne.

  “You’re in the right place buddy, put it right there,” said the attendant, motioning Wayne to pull up between two thick red lines painted on the concrete.

  “We’ve got some equipment in the car; will it be safe.?

  “Safest place to park in the universe,” said the man, who rubbed the side of his smooth head where ears on other species were generally located. “Got everything you need? Good. First time here I take it. We can watch from in there,” he said pointing to a kiosk with a large window facing them.

  Wayne told the attendant he would like to leave the transport and paid a deposit for two nights using the credit card Prenetian had given Mark when they were in jail on Alphus Nebulum. “You’re a long way from home,” remarked the man who then launched into an explanation of the garage.

  “We have the most efficient parking system in the universe. It was developed by our own Mr. Dodd Tining for use in crowded urban areas where more parking is needed but there’s no more space available, like in developed downtown areas. Mr. Dodd says single level parking is an absurd waste of space and regular parking garages are rubbish if not worse. He’s peculiar that way.”

  “Isn’t this a regular parking garage?” asked Blackie.

  “No, it’s a Space Saver,” replied the attendant. “When I push that green button the parking process begins.”

  “What process? I just want to park my transport,” replied Wayne.

  “Of course you do, or you wouldn’t be here,” replied the man. “Now watch the three-dimensional scanner, it will make three complete revolutions around your transport. I must say I’ve never seen one quite like it. When the scanner is finished it will stop – see it’s diagnosing now. If the scan provided sufficient data, it will continue: if not it will make additional revolutions around the transport until it has a sufficient data base. See, it’s making one more pass around your transport – it is a little unusual.”

  “Is all this necessary to park a transport?” asked Blackie.

  “We couldn’t do it any other way,” replied the man. “Look it’s scanning the roof top now and notice there is another scanner on the floor that scans the complete underside of the transport; we wouldn’t want to miss anything,” he said as a thin flat robot slid under the car making several passes to scan the undercarriage. “There that didn’t take long. You apparently don’t have a lot of sophisticated navigational devices in your transport; those are the hardest to scan.”

  “You’re going to use all this data just to determine where it’s going to be parked?” asked Wayne.

  “Oh, that’s a good one,” remarked the man. “The scanning is completed and one hundred percent successful – see the screen,” said the attendant pointing to a flat screen monitor that was blinking the words ONE HUNDRED PERCENT. “Now the system automatically initiates the reduction phase.”

  As soon as the man finished speaking a giant ram mounted against the ceiling thrust downward and bashed the Nomad, flattening its roof and blowing out all four tires. It retreated toward the ceiling then crashed down several more times, crushing the car and everything inside until it was a slab of metal and debris about twelve inches tall.

  The shock was so great both Wayne and Blackie stood speechless. The ram retracted, triggering two thick concrete panels beneath the Nomad to slide sideways on steel rails recessed in the concrete. When the gap was wide enough, the Nomad fell into a subsurface grinder. The concrete panels closed so tightly, the sound of the grinder chewing up the Nomad was barely audible.

  “Look,” said the man, “here is your receipt,” and he pulled a small plastic card out of a machine on the counter and handed it to Wayne with a smile. “You’ll have to have that receipt to get your car, so don’t lose it.”

  “You just destroyed my Nomad station wagon.”

  “We have your file,” said the man cheerily, “one hundred percent. Oh, look there’s a message. Let’s see, oh okay, do you want that rust spot on the inside of the driver’s side door panel fixed?” asked the attendant.

  “What rust spot?” asked Blackie.

  “Inside the door panel near the middle, where that door rod guide is mounted,” replied the attendant who pushed a button on the control panel labeled VISUAL AID. “You can see it right there,” he said pointing to a hologram of the door and a rust spot the about four millimeters in diameter. “It’s so small there’s no extra charge,” offered the attendant, “but we have to ask. You have no idea how touchy people can be about their transports.”

  “Actually, we do have some idea,” replied Blackie.

  Wayne was speechless.

  “You want the rust repaired, right Wayne? Repair the rust,” Blackie told the attendant.

  Wayne didn’t acknowledge the question. He didn’t nod or say a word. He was staring at the concrete where a few minutes before sat a fully restored 1957 Chevrolet Nomad station wagon that had traveled millions of miles with hardly a scratch. The subsurface grinder made a final noise – a sound Wayne would later describe as a mechanical belch – and became silent.

  “Wayne, let’s go,” said Blackie trying to break his trance. “By now Amelia and Joules have had showers and are waiting in the lobby to meet us for dinner. We could have a drink.” That did it. Wayne blinked, thanked the attendant, because it was the polite thing to do, and walked back to the hotel with Blackie.

  “Everything go okay?” asked Amelia who was admiring the hotel’s lobby furnishings with Joules.

  “Is Wayne okay,” asked Joules, “he looks dazed?”

  “He’s dazed alright,” replied Blackie who described what had just happened next door. “Let’s see if the restaurant is open and if they have Gorgas Cavitas – Wayne probably needs a double with something extra in it.”

  They walked down the hall to the hotel restaurant, slid into a booth and ordered drinks and appetizers. Wayne didn’t say a word until their waiter returned with the order.

  “I can’t believe it,” he said finally, after taking a small sip of his drink. “Millions of miles we’ve traveled and nary a scratch on her; not from the baby Belkie and not even from the Gurges, and I drive it into a parking facility and watch it get crushed and shredded. I’m going to have a talk with that hotel desk clerk.”

  “What good would that do?” asked Amelia. “And are you sure you went to the right place?”

  “It wouldn’t do any good,” replied Wayne who immediately discarded the idea of talking with the desk clerk as bad form, “and the name of the place was Space Saver.”

  “Has anyone seen Anonoi?” asked Blackie, who suddenly realized he hadn’t seen him since the jump.

  “We saw him while you were at the parking garage,” replied Amelia.

  “Some garage,” said Wayne as he took another small sip of his Gorgas Cavitas.

  “He said he was on top of the Nomad when we arrived, but he left to do something. He didn’t offer to tell us what and I didn’t ask,” finished Amelia.

  “I thought he looked better,” added Joules, “not so thin and stretched.”

  “Wayne, tomorrow morning we can go over to the Space Saver garage and get this sorted out,” said Amelia. “In the meantime, try to forget about it, I’m sure there was just some kind of misunderstanding.”

  “They ground her up into little chunks,” said Wayne.

  “I know,” said Amelia, patting him tenderly on the arm, “we’ll sort it all out tomorrow, I promise.”

  Very early the next morning, before you could describe it as bright and early, because it was still very dark outside, Wayne sat in the hotel restaurant drinking coffee. A plate of assorted breakfast breads lay untouched in a large bowl at the center of the table. Wayne was rehearsing the events of the previous day in his head; specifically, the events involving the complete destruction of his car.

  Six years earlier Wayne had visited his grandfather’s ranch in west Texas on Terra Bulga
. While he was there that summer he met another city boy who was spending time in the country at his uncle’s ranch. They became fast friends, partially because of their interests in music, although they did argue about who was the better lead guitar player – Clapton, Page or Santana.

  When they weren’t working on the ranch they listened to music, played one on one basketball and got into as much trouble as humanly possible – which was appropriate since they’re humans, although their families have often suspected otherwise.

  It was during one of their “getting in trouble” exercises that Wayne found his heart’s desire. He and Mark were throwing rocks at the side of the hay barn trying to hit red wasps when they landed to extract fibers from the weathered wood. Mark finally hit a wasp making the score over the last five days one to zero. Wayne realized he was in trouble. He was more likely to get hit by a meteorite than hit one of those red wasps from ten feet away.

  Ten feet was critical, it was the minimum distance from which they could perturb a red wasp and still avoid getting stung by outrunning it. Wayne decided he could increase his chances of hitting a wasp if he increased the surface size of what he threw – the rule was anything you could lift and throw ten feet was fair game; Mark used a four-inch diameter metal sprocket he found in a parts bucket next to the barn door.

  Wayne was deep in thought about that sprocket when he saw it; lying under a Live Oak tree about ten feet away was a round stone the size of a softball. If you’ve ever had one of those moments when you knew something was going to work, like it was destined to happen just the way you imagined it, then you know exactly how Wayne felt at that moment.

  He marched over to the oak tree where there was a pile of large stones all about the same size. But he selected the one on the ground, the one that had first caught his eye. Wayne thought it was symbolic that it had fallen off the pile, separating itself from the other stones and distinguishing itself, as much as an inanimate object could. He remembered thinking, “It’s trying to show me it’s the one, the one stone up to the task,” he thought.

  He reached down and picked up that stone and it felt good in his hand. It was rough on the outside and that let him grip it more securely; it wouldn’t slip when he made the throw. Wayne marched back to the ten-foot line with a smirk on his face and waited for a victim. Mark wasn’t worried about the determined look on Wayne’s face. It had taken him five days to hit a wasp and he considered the odds of he and Wayne hitting wasps back to back were beyond calculation. That was a convenient consideration since he had no intention of trying to calculate the actual odds.

  But just in case it was that moment among eons of time when two wasps would bite the dust back to back, Mark thought insurance to the contrary was in order and began to ridicule Wayne’s throwing technique. Wayne laughed and returned an equally dark insult which included an allusion as to why Mark didn’t have a girlfriend. This went on for quite some time and they enjoyed it so much it became a staple of their long friendship, along with mock fist fights and martial arts battles.

  After a particularly biting comment by Mark, Wayne spied a red wasp landing on a discolored spot on the barn about six feet from the ground. He went into a windup like a professional baseball pitcher and launched his rock with pinpoint accuracy. It hit the wasp and went right through the rotten wood into the barn where it produced the unmistakable sound of broken glass.

  “Uh oh,” said Wayne.

  He and Mark went inside the barn to investigate. They easily found the hole in the side of the barn. It looked like a missile had been fired through it, and light pouring through that hole led them directly to the shattered glass.”

  “What are the odds of that?” asked Mark. The rock had struck something right at the location where its blanket had fallen down to expose the glass. “We’d better inspect the damage,” he told Wayne, “help me pull this cover off.

  It was thick and heavy and looked like an afterthought since what is was covering was under piles of newspaper and a thick coat of dust. Mark pushed a stack of papers to the floor, then another and before long they realized what it was.

  “Man, there’s a car under all this stuff. Help me move these boxes away from the sides.”

  Mark and Wayne moved boxes until the entire side of the vehicle was exposed.

  “That’s not just any car, Mark, that’s a 1957 Nomad station wagon.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” replied Mark. The driver’s side door creaked as he opened it. “Hey, I found your rock,” said Mark who reached into the passenger side seat and retrieved the stone that was now in two pieces. He handed them to Wayne. “Have you ever seen a rock like that?”

  “No, I don’t’ think it’s an ordinary rock. I’d better tell your uncle about the windshield,” said Wayne, “before he comes out to the barn and finds out on his own.”

  Mark and Wayne marched up the path to the house that was about 100 meters away. It afforded Wayne just enough time to chide Mark for the pitiful speed of his rocks. “I’d say it was less than stellar,” commented Wayne. “I think I’ve seen more ball speed in grade school, slow pitch softball leagues.”

  Uncle Mike looked out his kitchen window just in time to see Mark balanced on one foot. His other leg was in front of him and bent at the knee with his foot tucked in close to his body, and his arms were extended over his head with his hands bent downward towards his wrists. Accentuating this ridiculous sight were his ninja-fighting noises. Wayne wasn’t much better, in-fact no better really.

  He had assumed a wide legged stance facing Mark with his knees bent so that his thighs were parallel to the ground and he was moving his hands together from side to side in a wavy sort of motion that reminded Uncle Mike of a kite swaying back and forth in the wind just before plunging to the ground. Mark made a loud grunt and released a kick that came dangerously within four feet of Wayne. Wayne returned fired with four rapid punches that fell equally short of Mark, who pronounced himself the winner. Wayne agreed and fell over trying to get out of his fighting stance.

  “That was an evasive maneuver,” he said quickly.

  “Yeah, you never know when you might want to evade the bottoms of your own feet.”

  “You boys enjoying yourselves out there?” asked Uncle Mike who had a big smile on his face when they came through the kitchen door. A Cattleman’s magazine was on the table in front of him opened to a section about raising organic beef.

  “Yeah, but we had a little accident out at the barn,” said Mark as Wayne dug the two pieces of rock out of his pocket. They were almost exactly the same size; like the rock had been cut with a saw.

  “I see you found your Aunt Claire’s geode pile. She’s simple about the ones with jasper crystals. How did you cut it?” asked Uncle Mike.

  “Maybe we should show you what happened,” said Mark.

  On the way to the barn Mark and Wayne described the red wasp competition in detail and how Wayne’s rock had gone completely through the side of the barn. Uncle Mike said not to worry about the hole; several of the side boards were rotten and needed to be replaced.

  “We heard glass break and when we came inside we found this,” explained Wayne. “It was my fault and I’ll be glad to pay for the damage; it’s a great old car.”

  Wayne proceeded to talk about the car. He explained that they came off the assembly line decked out with carpet throughout the inside and had chrome spears on the front fenders, chrome window moldings, and full wheel covers, and that the ‘57 came with a 283-cubic inch engine and a few of them even had fuel injection.

  “This is the classic root beer brown color,” said Wayne, “I’m really sorry about the damage, sir.”

  “This old car has been under that blanket for a long time,” replied Mike. “It’s just been waiting for the right person to come along ever since Toby didn’t come home in ’66. Wayne, I think you’re the right person to finish restoring her. Pay for that windshield to be replaced and the car is yours; you can have it. And call me Uncle Mi
ke; people quit calling me sir a long time back.”

  **************************************

  “You’re up early,” said Blackie as he glided into the booth. “How’s the coffee?”

  Blackie’s question jolted Wayne back to the present, “It’s not Gavalkian, but it’s not bad.”

  “Good morning,” exclaimed Amelia who slid into the booth next to Wayne. “Joules will be down in a minute. I heard her having a fight with the hotel’s alarm clock. Some jokester set it to go off early and turned the volume all the way up.”

  They ordered three more coffees from the waiter and before Blackie finished his first croissant Joules joined them. She said good morning but it was only after a big yawn and a long sip of coffee that she smiled and looked ready for the day. They sat around the table munching on breakfast breads and chatting, but no one mentioned the Nomad. When they finished a light breakfast, Amelia suggested they walk around the village.

  “That’s a great idea,” said Joules.

  “I think this place is too small for a museum,” responded Blackie.

  “Ha ha. Really, do you think so?” asked Joules.

  Wayne laughed in a way that everyone knew he was back to his old self (Blackie could only imagine the comment Mark would have made, had he been there).

  “Before we do a walkabout, let’s see if the Space Saver parking garage has any Nomad scraps I can take home with me.”

  They walked next door to find the same attendant who had “helped” Wayne the day before was working in the kiosk. “Good morning,” he said.

  “It is and I hope the rest of the day will be the same,” replied Wayne. “I’m here about my transport.”

  “You have your receipt card, yes?” asked the man who clearly remembered Wayne and Blackie, but protocol prevailed.

  “Here it is,” said Wayne, handing him the card. “Can I have that back later; as a souvenir just in case?”

  “Just in case what?” asked the attendant.

  “Oh, you know, someone may ask us about the Space Saver, we could show them the card and spread the good word,” replied Blackie quickly.