by Andre, Marc
The train decelerated and stopped. Mother awoke with a start, and Cotton pitched forward out of his seat with a thud. Through the doors and up the stairs, Cotton shook off his motions sickness. His recovery was quite remarkable. He ran off ahead.
My still groggy mother needed help with her bag, so I lagged behind. I had the overall feeling that we were downtown in a large city, even though no one technically lived in San Onofre, just starmen who hung around briefly between voyages. Sometimes they would venture as far away as our neighborhood looking for fenes or loose women. A few told us really cool stories about space travel, explaining how star ships were pretty dangerous and how some folks would go crazy during long voyages. Most starmen, however, weren’t very interested in talking to Cotton and me, and they would only linger for a little while before moving on. Starmen who actually sought out young boys were best avoided.
The entire south wall of the station had been turned into a giant vid screen listing departures on the far right and arrivals on the far left. Under departures, we were unable to find the Largo, the name of our ship. Mother scrolled through the menus of her pocket module and found her embarkation packet.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “It says right here, ‘Largo departs San Onofre Station for Civilian Extra Solar Travel at 13:47, please check in for embarkation between 07:00 and 10:00.’” On a good day, her coping skills were questionable, but in our rush to get out the door mother had neglected to take her medications.
“I don’t understand!” she said again, only this time with the glossy-eyed look that usually preceded total panic and a complete mental and emotional breakdown. The last time mother skipped her meds, a waitress asked her if she wanted cream or milk in her coffee, but mother didn’t understand because she had ordered a cup of tea. She started weeping openly. It was pretty embarrassing, and eventually the manager of the restaurant kicked us out.
The second column from the right listed cancellations. The Largo appeared midway down the list. Mother whimpered pathetically. Adjacent to our ship’s name was written “voyage subcontracted, refer to reassignments.”
Reassignments were listed in the column adjacent to cancellations by carrier rather than ship name. We found the name of our former carrier, Axis Transways, in our embarkation packet. The vid screen informed us that our new carrier was Heavy Industries General LLC and that our new ship was the Magic Sky Daddy.
“Magic Sky Daddy!” Cotton said with disbelief. “That’s a pretty cool name for a ship!”
“Yes, I suppose it is,” I agreed.
The Magic Sky Daddy departed from gate N-42. Mother had more or less composed herself by the time we found our ship, but her eyes were still pink and puffy from crying.
The quarantine officer checked the medical clearance data on our personal pocket modules and let us pass through the gate. I remembered from school that they used to comb through your hair to look for lice. Billy told me that, in the Space Marines, they even made you take your dong out so they could check your pubes, but the guy in the grey uniform didn't even give us a second glance. I suppose Dr. Maltort, our family doctor, had already certified us as free from parasites or other unwanted tenants. We had visited him specifically to have a form filled out for this voyage. He seemed pretty happy when he realized he would no longer have to see us as patients.
On the other side of the gate, we could see the flank of the spacecraft, which looked like a giant riveted metal wall that stretched as far as the eye could see. A couple of workers brazed some sort of conduit tubing to the side of the ship.
A guy in an orange baseball cap and jumpsuit sat at a terminal and verified people’s identity and job assignments. He looked puzzled after he pulled up mother’s file. He dismissed himself, and walked over to a man dressed in a white jump suit and baseball cap, his supervisor, I guessed. As they spoke to one another, they periodically glanced over at us. Their tones were hushed, attempting to talk discretely, but I could still make out most of what they were saying.
“I have this woman in line with her kids. Her file says she was hired on as a Undesignated Laborer Level 1,” said the man in orange.
“So?” said his supervisor.
“The personnel officer once told me that we never hire anyone that unskilled. The lowest we hire is someone rated Level 3, and then that’s only under unusual circumstances. Level 1’s aren’t even allowed to operate a computer.”
“Well then tell her to get lost!” said the man in white.
A terrible sinking feeling lanced the pit of my stomach. I wanted nothing more in my life than to get on the ship. Mother seemed calm, which meant she was oblivious. Mother had mediocre hearing, which made it easy for Cotton and me to sneak past her if we needed to leave home without permission. She told us stories about how, after dropping out of school, she became a traveling groupie that followed the metal band Rusty Barbed Fish Hook. She boasted that she didn’t miss a single concert over a three year period and got to know the band members really well. The band’s drummer was eventually stabbed to death by another groupie. “I knew her too,” mother said. “She was the jealous type and could get really nasty.” With the loss of their drummer, the band broke up and mother returned home to look for work. I was born about seven months later. Mother never regained her hearing. The nerves in her ears were permanently damaged by the high volume screeching and poorly sequenced baseline and drum beats. Billy had Rusty Barbed Fish Hook’s debut album, Caught and Filleted, on his pocket module. The songs were all about doing it with girls, but there was nothing subtle about their lyrics, no metaphors, just un-colorful, un-rhyming, rather mechanical description. I really hoped my father wasn’t one of the band members.
“What should I tell her?” the man in the orange jumpsuit asked.
“Tell her there was a mistake and that we no longer have a job for her.”
“Can I do that?”
“Yeah we do it all the time.”
“But she was hired by Axis, which was acting as an agent for the Feds, and not by us. I think her position is some sort of government make-work program to get unskilled folks off of welfare or something.”
“That’s a good point! Don’t turn her away just yet. There’s definitely politics involved with our cargo.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask you,” the guy in orange asked. “What is our cargo?”
The man in white shrugged his shoulders and said, “I’m not really sure. The first mate was pretty vague. But let’s stay focused on the problem at hand. I’ll call the personnel officer and see what we can pull off.”
The man in the white jumpsuit turned away and put on a headset. I couldn’t make out exactly what was said, just something about “obligations, penalties and fines” and “lucrative federal contracts.” The supervisor took off the headset, walked back over to the guy in the orange jumpsuit and said, “looks like we are stuck with her.”
“What kind of work is she supposed to do?” the underling asked, frustrated.
“Clean the toilets when a jano-bot breaks, I guess,” the guy in white replied. “Like I said, we’re stuck with her, either we take her on or we run the risk of never getting another government job, and apparently they pay pretty well, even after Axis takes away a big cut for doing nothing.”
The underling looked back over at us. “Oh my God, I cannot believe we have to let her onboard! I don’t think I’ve ever seen a worse set of ghetto-rednecks in my life! Look at her kids! They’re probably gang affiliated. I bet they haven’t even been toilet trained and are going to piss on the floor! Maybe we can get the medical officer to say she failed her drug test.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Me, a gangster, I thought, I hate gangsters!
“I already asked the personnel officer about faking drug test results. They said it was a good idea but that we couldn’t bring on our own doc. We had to take on some guy from the Space Marines Health and Sanitation Reserves.”
“Yeah I think I saw him earlier,” s
aid the underling. “He was wearing combat fatigues. If he wasn’t so wimpy, you’d think he was about to charge off into battle.”
“Well,” the supervisor said, “look on the bright side. She’s not bad looking, and if her kids piss on the floor, at least we can find something for her to do.” They laughed.
The underling in orange walked back over to us.
“Is there a problem?” mother asked, concerned.
“No problem, ma’am. We are very happy to have you aboard. Go find the steward to get assigned to living quarters.”
Mom smiled at him as we walked by. I sneered menacingly, and picked up my elbow as if I were about to throw a punch. The guy flinched, which felt rather rewarding after the verbal venom he just spewed about my family. What really hurt was that some of the things he had said about mother were true.
I was surprised to find that the passageways in the Magic Sky Daddy weren’t much different from the corridors in public housing. The floor of the ship was covered with almost identical carpeting; dreary, worn, and grey but previously dull green or burgundy in a past life, and best ignored. There weren’t any square windows of course, just a few small round portholes at the peripheries of the ship. The passageways varied more in size than the hallways at our old place. Some passageways were very narrow, some were very wide. We got lost several times, but we were able to find the steward without my mother completely melting down.
The steward also wore an orange jumpsuit, the uniform of an ordinary starman. He was skinny with thinning brown hair and well-trimmed side burns. On a white strip over his left front chest pocket were printed the words, “Bob Blunt, steward.” He authenticated our personal pocket modules so they would work as chip keys for our living quarters. He handed my mother an orange baseball cap and three orange jump suits, the adjustable one-size fits all variety.
“You must wear the cap and jumpsuit anytime you are on duty, but take the cap off when you eat.”
“Yes sir!” mother said with enthusiasm. Bob rolled his eyes. Like his two crewmates outside, he didn’t think much of us.
Our living quarters were right around the corner. Mom’s jaw dropped when the door slid open. The main living space was quite small, only about two meters in width and three in length. A small table was bolted to the far corner. A vid screen was integrated into the wall on the right. There were four chairs that swiveled around on wheels.
“Hey those are the kind with locking magnetic wheels!” Cotton yelped. He picked a chair up, flipped a switch on the side, and placed the wheels against the wall. The chair clung tightly, defying gravity.
“That’s so cool!” I cried.
There were doors on both sides of the room. Beyond the right door was a thin chamber that ran the length of the living room. A two-story bunk was bolted to the wall. Clearly this was the room for Cotton and me. We were used to sharing a room, so the cramped quarters caused us no distress. Beyond the door on the left was another room, slightly wider than ours but with only one rack, mother’s room.
“It’s so small!” mother said, her voice trembling.
Somebody tapped on the door. It took mother a minute to locate the button that opened it. Bob Blunt, steward, stood in the passageway looking rather impatient. He held a faded red bundle of cloth.
“I’ve just been informed by the personnel officer that there’s been a mistake,” he said.
“Yes,” mother responded optimistically, “in the packet it said we would have a two bedroom living space with full bath and kitchenette. This place is tiny and doesn’t even have a toilet or sink.”
“Those were the accommodations offered to you on the Largo. This is the Magic Sky Daddy!” Bob scoffed, arrogantly.
“But you can’t change the terms of the contract, can you?” mother asked sheepishly.
“Your official government-approved contract, and not the drivel printed in some other company’s info packet, specifies ‘living quarters for one nuclear family.’ These quarters exceed the United Nations Standards for Adequate Living Space for a refugee family of four by almost a square meter, and there are only three of you!”
“But —” mother tried to protest, but the steward cut her off.
“Hey if you don’t like it, you’ve got four hours to change your mind and leave the ship!”
Mother looked dizzy. Still hopeful for mother’s sake, I asked the steward, “What’s the mistake?”
“Oh yes, thank you,” he said. He snatched the orange jump suits from mother’s grasp. “I just got word from the personnel officer that you are not permitted to wear these.” He thrust the red bundle into my mother’s hands. “This is your uniform. You only get one set so be careful not to get stains. You can keep the cap so your hair doesn’t get caught in heavy machinery.” He turned to leave, paused for a second, turned back around, took our fourth extra chair and left.
Mother unfolded the bundle. It was a faded red jumpsuit, the un-adjustable kind our school janitor used to wear. It looked like it would fit loosely on a tall male bodybuilder. There was no way it was going to fit mother’s slim figure. If mother got lost in the woods, she could use the jumpsuit as a tent if she could find a long enough stick to prop up the middle. It was well worn and patched awkwardly on the arms and leggings, each patch causing the surrounding fabric to fold and wrinkle. Mom howled, dashed into her room, and slammed the door.
Cotton and I just stood there looking at each other, not sure what to do. We could hear mother whimpering through the wall. An hour passed. I tapped on mother’s door, not because I thought of something clever to say that could cheer her up but because I knew that there were important errands we were supposed to complete before liftoff. It took several loud efforts on my part until she finally yelled, “WHAT?”
“Aren’t we supposed to do stuff before the ship takes off?” I asked.
After a pause, mother replied, “Yes, take your brother to the medical center.”
“But he’s not sick!”
“Take him anyway, and while you are at it, there’s a document in the side compartment of my bag. Take that with you too.”
I found the document and inspected it in the passageway where mother could not hear or see what I was doing. It was pretty official looking, made out of the same indestructible translucent micro fibers as hard currency. When I held it up to the light, I could make out a hologram of two snakes coiling around the side of a stick. Written up top were the words “Official Medical Document, CONFIDENTIAL.” I read the document, even though I knew I wasn’t supposed to.
“To whom it may concern, Melinda D. Dullwid is currently under my medical care. Her current prescriptions include Ketomorphone for fibromyalgia, methylphenidate-bis-phosphate for chronic fatigue syndrome, and long acting quadrazapam hydrochloride for generalized anxiety disorder. In the event Ms. Dullwid tests positive on an employment-related drug screen, clinical correlation is recommended. Peter Q. Maltort MD, Yucaipa Community Medical Center.”
“What’s it say?” Cotton asked.
“Nothing really.” I knew exactly what it said though, that my mother just could not cope with life.
With a fair amount of help from people in white and orange jumpsuits, we were able to find the medical center. We were greeted by a short, pudgy middle-aged medical assistant with a big black hairy wart on her chin. Evidently, she didn’t have to wear a jumpsuit. Her name tag read “Mary, Certified Medical Assistant.” Apparently she didn’t have a last name.
“Why are you here?” She croaked in a throaty voice. “You sick already? We haven’t even left the ground yet!”
“No, we’re okay. My mother sent us here.”
“Did she say why?”
“No.”
“Is she a new hire?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Okay then. Go sit down over there and fill out these forms,” she handed us a small tablet and pointed at a row of seats against the wall. “One copy for you and one for your brother. Be sure to tell your mother if she
doesn’t take her drug test by T minus one hour, she will be escorted off the ship.”
“What’s all this for?” I asked, “I think we had our regular doctor sign a form that said we’re not contagious or nothing.”
“Standard procedure,” she said, “required by law for continuity and portability of medical care for all minors during prolonged star travel.”
We worked on Cotton’s form first. Most of it I didn’t understand such as whether or not Cotton was menstruating. I answered all questions I didn’t understand in the negative. A few I could comprehend. “Do you have blood in your stool?” I asked.
“What’s that?” Cotton asked.
“Do you make bloody poops?” I clarified.
Cotton giggled. “Let’s say I do to play a joke on the doctor.”
“You sure?” I asked. It didn’t seem like a good idea to me.
“Yeah,” he snickered, so against my better judgment I checked, “yes.”
I handed the tablet back to the medical assistant. She asked us for our pocket modules and downloaded our medical records onto the clinic’s computer system.
I gave Mary my mother’s document. She read it and rolled her eyes. “Tell your mother she need not bother with the drug test,” she croaked. “She pretty much has all her bases covered.”
We sat back down, and within ten minutes Mary told me to follow her. It was the shortest wait I ever had at a clinic. Usually, I waited hours. Cotton followed like a loyal puppy. “Just Anthony!” she snapped at Cotton. “The doctor will see you one at a time.”
Mary made me take off my shoes and sit on a chair built onto an elevated podium. A med-bot wheeled over, squeezed my arm to take my blood pressure, and pressed a soft probe against my temple to get my pulse and temperature. Billy once told me that in the olden days they used to stick a hard glass thermometer up your butt, and I was really glad they didn’t do that anymore. The chair recorded my weight. The robot scanned me with a laser, adjusting my weight for the clothes I was wearing and estimated my standing height. Mary herded me into an exam room and told me the doctor would be with me shortly. I sat on the exam table for about five minutes wondering if the doctor was going to ask me to take out my dong and turn my head and cough. The door opened as someone knocked on it. The doctor entered. “Hello,” he said, “I am Doctor Zanders.”