by Andre, Marc
Hammond laughed until his sides ached as I told him the whole story and about how Franklin was dazed at first after I hit him and then just started screaming his head off.
“Ten days in-house!” He shook his head. “That’s a tough break buddy, but you did the right thing. You let some puny kid like Franklin put your momma down in front of the whole class, your ass is pretty much candy for the taking.”
I agreed with his eloquent assessment of the situation. He gave me one of his skin mags. “It’s an oldie but a goodie! You’ll like it I’m sure. I swiped it from my dad. I think he’s been hanging onto it for like fifteen years. Make sure you stash it in your school bag.” I told him I didn’t have a school bag so he gave me his old one and promised he’d sneak out of class to visit me. Regrettably, the Information Technology Archives were near the mess hall, so Sergeant at Arms Boldergat caught him in the passageway, and Mr. Yongscolder gave him detention.
First day of my sentence, Mr. Yongscolder escorted me to the ship’s archives and told the archives clerk that I had in-school suspension for the next ten school days. The archives clerk was a middle aged lady who, just liked Mary the medical assistant, didn’t have to wear a jumpsuit. As a matter of fact, she looked a lot like Mary, only a bit older, a little less saggy, and with a little more facial hair. I hoped that by the time I turned seventeen I would have a moustache as thick as hers so that I could buy cheap beer and sell it to my classmates at a considerable markup.
Mostly the archives housed super quick computers that contained processors over a million times faster than those found in a typical pocket module. Gretchen, the clerk, would not let me use one though because I was being punished by Mr. Yongscolder. I had to sit at a standard display and port my module.
In the back of the archives were stacks of old hard copy books. The librarian at my old school explained that, in the olden days, hard copy books were the norm. As digital readers became more popular, books became quite rare. However, the government prints to hard copy really old information that it considers very important. That way the information persists in physical form as digital copies get purged from computers because of lack of interest or because the format becomes obsolete and unreadable with the most recent digital readers.
There was a surprisingly high amount of traffic in the Information Technology Archives. People would drop by between shifts to browse through digimags or use the super-fast computers to beam messages to loved ones back home. Gretchen would often help guys in white jump suits or khakis find technical journals. Through eavesdropping, I learned that the ship and its engines were so old that almost all of the relevant technical information had been shelved as hard copy books. A few times, Dr. Zanders would run in, grab a hard copy medical journal and run out, setting off the antitheft alarm by the exit. The archives clerk never chased after him though, so I guessed Dr. Zanders was pretty reliable and returned the journals when he was done. One time, he wore a surgical cover and a mask that were splattered with blood. I was never alone in the archives, so I couldn’t exactly take out Hammond’s skin mag.
I spent the morning doing my English schoolwork, which wasn’t too bad. We had to read this really old story about this guy who falls off an ocean ship and swims to an island, and this really prosperous guy who owns the island hunts him like an animal. The writing assignment that followed was to discuss whether or not the story had any social merit or if it was just cheesy escapist literature. I wrote how the story was important because it kept me interested in English. I wrote how, the year prior, I had to read this long book about this easy girl who got knocked up by some piety-freak. Only, the book was real boring and didn’t describe how the couple did it but instead talked about how the community ostracized her yet she became a really good person. I wrote that, if I had to read another book like that, I would completely give up on the English language and resort to grunting and pointing as my sole method of communication. Thanks to the exciting short story, however, I was inspired enough to try my quill at poetry. (Of course, I omitted from the essay how I completely lacked poetic talent and would probably end up writing about Cotton’s persistent flatulence, rhyming “gas” with “ass” and “smell” with “unwell”). Ms. Gross gave me a B minus, saying I was the only one in the class who argued favorably about the story. She said I shouldn’t write academic papers in the first person or use vernacular expressions like “piety-freak,” but I was pretty pleased with the grade.
My math homework was pretty easy because the display I was using didn’t override the math processor function of my pocket module.
After lunch, that nerdy guy from homeroom, the kid with the thin neck and thick glasses, sat down at the next table. He brought with him a portable computer, probably the fanciest one I had ever seen. I guessed that it was probably as fast as the super computers in the archives. It must have cost his momma a fortune.
I wasn’t sure what the stick geek kid was doing there because he seemed way too well behaved to be in in-house suspension. The archives clerk kept beaming at him like he was the pride and joy of the ship. I guessed he was doing some sort of independent study program. The clerk called him “Allen,” so I astutely figured out that was his name.
The vid screen on his portable unit was so big that I could easily see what he was up to. Mostly he did school work, advanced science and math that was so advanced there were no numbers, just some kind of foreign lettering. Every now and then he’d take a break and pull up schematics of military gear. I would have preferred boob shots myself, but the guns were pretty cool.
Something very strange happened around 14:30. I finished my all my assignments and had nothing to do. It was the first time in my life I had ever been caught up with my schoolwork. Honestly, with nothing else to distract me, the work really wasn’t very difficult. I sent Mr. Yongscolder a message telling him I was done with my work and asked if I could go home. He wrote back to explain that, not only did I have to stay until school was finished, I had to sit there another thirty minutes for even considering going home early when I should be feeling remorse for what I did to Franklin.
With nothing to do, I watched the geeky kid’s vid screen. He was watching some sort of science program. The volume was turned down but I could still hear the narrator. The content must have been pretty basic because even I could follow most of the talking points. I guessed that the geeky kid was watching the show for fun and it wasn’t part of his assignment.
“Ever use the word ‘Einstein’ to mock a friend who goofs something really simple?” the narrator droned. “A long time ago, calling someone an ‘Einstein’ was actually a huge compliment and not an insult at all, which underscores how our understanding of Albert Einstein the scientist has changed so dramatically in the last two hundred years.” The program went on to talk about Einstein’s early years, about how he liked to ride his bicycle, and how he was really into this one girl, and how he had to leave town because these guys were trying to kill him. The geeky kid wasn’t really paying attention though and opened up a program in the lower left hand corner that showed one of those old cowboy guns with the cylinder in the middle that spun around. When the narrator resumed discussions of Einstein’s scientific achievements, which seemed a lot less interesting to me than stories about goons trashing his house and running off with his violin, the geeky kid turned off the program about cowboy guns and started paying attention again.
“Building on the work of Planck and Maxwell, Einstein developed his Theory of Special Relativity,” the narrator explained. “Seemingly sophisticated at first, relativistic physics fundamentally constrained modern thought for over a century. The idea that no particle could accelerate faster than the speed of light and that time itself had no fixed reference made long distance space travel seem futile. Programs to send astronauts beyond the near reaches of our solar system were ridiculed by the scientific community and were never funded by governments. The major flaw in Einstein’s work was not discovered until the mid-twenty-second c
entury when a young student at Abraham Baldwin Polytechnic Institute in Tifton, Georgia, accidentally chased a stray cat into a vent of a particle accelerator.” The narrator blabbed on and explained the mechanism used to make particles move faster than the speed of light and describe how that principal applied to space travel. I wasn’t paying very close attention because I found the material pretty boring. I watched the minutes tick away and didn’t stay in the archives one second longer than required. For all I know Allen stayed there until midnight designing space engines.
Mother asked me why I was late when I arrived home. I told her I was in detention because I knew a concept like in-house suspension was beyond her intellectual grasp. Most normal parents would want to know why their kid was in detention, but mother just nodded.
“Where’s Cotton?” I asked.
“He’s in his room.”
But Cotton wasn’t in his room, not hiding in the closet, and not under the covers. A normal parent would be concerned when told her son was nowhere to be found, but mother simply shrugged and said, “I guess he must have sneaked out.”
The ductwork in the living room suddenly shook and rattled, startling me and causing me to jump out of my chair.
“Oh that!” mother said with unusual composure. “It does that every day about this time.”
“Really since when?”
“A couple of weeks I guess,” she said, “scared me the first few times. Had the steward look at it.”
“Yeah, I bet he was cool about that,” I said sarcastically.
“Actually he wasn’t. Said we had the cleanest ducts in the ship and that we shouldn’t complain.”
“I bet he did,” I mumbled to myself.
“Hey, while we are on the subject of clean,” mother said, “I got a message from the school guidance counselor the other day. What’s his name?”
“Mr. Yongscolder.”
“Yes, Mr. Yongscolder. Anyway, he said that he wanted to pass onto me that Cotton’s teachers have complained that he has been unusually dirty lately. Have you noticed anything about that?”
Actually, Cotton had been unusually dirty even compared to his normal baseline state of squalor. Tapping him on his shoulder would create a small dust cloud. However, he didn’t smell any worse than usual and the last thing I wanted was for mother to ask me to take him to the washateria and scrub his shriveled dong and nut sack, so I lied and said, “no.”
“Yes, that’s what I said. A mother would know if her son was really filthy.”
“Well at least the teachers are noticing him in class,” I said. Mother looked puzzled. “Which is to say, at least he is going to class,” I added. Mother nodded and looked very pleased for having a child so well behaved that he would even show up at school periodically.
The routine of in-house suspension continued largely unchanged. Dr. Zanders continued to run in and out periodically. Usually he was covered in blood. One able starman got kicked out by the archives clerk for looking at boob models on the big screen, which was too bad because I much preferred looking at boobs to doing my homework.
Ms. Gross assigned another writing assignment, a rather dull one, which was unusual for her. Basically we had to write about what we wanted to do as adults. I wrote that I wanted to become addicted to fenes so that I could live in a shack in the desert and have rotten teeth. She sent me a message, telling me to take the assignment seriously or that she would give me an F. I rewrote the essay stating that, unlike my peers, I had no delusions about becoming president or a sports hero or an important movie star or a high-ranking space marine. All I wanted was to have a normal job so that I wouldn’t become addicted to fenes and live in a shack in the desert and have rotten teeth. Ms. Gross sent me a second message saying she appreciated my essay’s “raw honesty” and gave me a B plus, which I think is the highest grade I ever got on anything.
With few distractions, I even did my math homework extra credit. I got a message from Mrs. Hallisworth that read, “Congratulations, you are no longer failing math.” which was good news.
Every day after lunch, the dorky kid with the giant glasses would come in and do his advanced math. I didn’t talk to him and he didn’t talk to me, which was just fine.
After the fourth day of my sentence, I got back home and Cotton asked me if I wanted to go to open rec. I told him I was tired, which was a lie. He left without me. He had made a few friends of his own, mostly slow smelly kids, kind of like himself, only fatter.
Lying on my rack, I took out Hammond’s father’s old skin mag so that I could spend some quality time alone. Hammond was right, the skin mag was an oldie but goodie. I leafed through the pages. All the exposed flesh made it easy to ignore the ductwork as it rattled and shook along the far wall. There was a particularly alluring photograph of Fiona Mammalot in her prime, sometime after Lewd Dude Magazine rated her “Best Bust of all Time” and long before she was carted off to jail on fene-related charges. She was sitting by a swimming pool, wearing a bikini bottom but no top, buxom, her dark red hair had been slicked back with water. Granted, there was no reason for anyone to ever assume a pose like that, but I didn’t particularly care, as the camera’s point of view was rather revealing. All of a sudden, the grate popped off the vent from the ductwork along the far wall. Cotton stuck his head trough the vent and guffawed. Startled, I bolted upright and struck my head on the ceiling. Shooting white pain, I dropped the skin mag.
Cotton climbed out of the vent, dusty and dirty. Any normal person would find the confines of a ventilation duct extremely uncomfortable, but Cotton was different and liked that sort of thing, often hiding in laundry baskets so that he could ambush me.
As I rubbed the back of my head, I planned a rather brutal series of wrestling moves that would leave Cotton crippled for life. However, by the time I made it to the floor, something peculiar had happened. Cotton was holding the skin mag and was looking rather perplexed. His look was far from lustful and had the particular intensity one usually sees on the faces of honor students as they struggle with particularly challenging math problems. I saw it on the face of that geeky kid Allen a few hours earlier. The expression was not normal for Cotton and curiosity caused my rage to subside.
“What is it?” I asked.
He said nothing. I pulled the mag forward and saw the upside down picture of Fiona Mammalot.
“She’s on the ship,” Cotton said.
“What? No!”
“I swear she’s on the ship.” He sounded serious. He was seldom serious, which made me doubt that he was lying.
“Impossible!” I said. “She’s in jail. She shacked up with a fene-dealer who shot some cop during a raid. She was sent away for three to five years as an accessory and that wasn’t even two years ago.” The news had made all those cheesy tabloid shows on TV.
“Well, they must have let her out early,” said Cotton, “because I know I saw her on the ship.”
“When? Where?”
A pause, Cotton looked pensive, “I can’t remember.”
“Pig crap! You’re making this up!”
“No, I swear I saw her on the ship! I remember these.” He pointed at her high cheekbones, and the mole on her right cheek. “Her hair was also pulled back just like that.” He pointed at her bright red widow’s peak. The features in question were rather unique, and despite having a limited capacity for logical thought, Cotton had a good memory for faces.
“When did you see her?” I asked. I could imagine nothing more exciting than telling Hammond that there was a real live boob model on the ship. Maybe she’d even give us a private show if we asked nicely.
“It couldn’t have been that long ago,” Cotton said. “Just a few days, I think.”
“Where?”
A pause, “I don’t know.”
“Come on think!” I begged.
Cotton shook his head. “I can’t remember.”
“Wait!” I had a sudden epiphany. “You said her hair was pulled back, was she wearing a hat?”
“Yes, yes…” Cotton closed his eyes and was imagining her.
“What color was it? Orange? White?”
“I… I…” Cotton stammered.
“Yes, what?”
“I… I can’t remember.”
“Come on think!” I said more to myself than to Cotton. “Okay, she was supposed to be in jail right?”
“Right,” Cotton said, shrugging his shoulders.
“So she is probably here for the same reason as mom.”
“Mom’s a boob model?” Cotton asked, disgusted.
“No!” The thought was rather revolting. “She was probably sent here on some sort of work release. Remember how those guys said mom’s job was some sort of government make-work program for people on welfare?”
“No.” During embarkation, Cotton was preoccupied with finding lunch and otherwise didn’t pay much attention to his surroundings.
“Well, if she is like mom. She is probably unskilled. I mean being a boob model isn’t really a skill. So she was probably wearing an orange cap, as an ordinary starman… or starwoman.”
“Ordinary boobwoman,” Cotton added insightfully.
“No her boobs are not ordinary,” I said. “Was she wearing an orange cap?”
“Yes,” Cotton said, his eyes darting evasively.
“You are just saying that aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“So you can’t remember what color it was?”
“No.”