“I hate you so much, Joe.”
“Uh huh. So, if you’re not mad about the ship, then what is the problem?”
“I got screwed over, Joe,” he was fuming. I mean, he must have modified his avatar’s program, because wisps of steam were rising from its ears. Sometimes he took things too literally. “Remember I told you about the group that is sponsoring my epic opera?”
“Yeah, sure. The Milwaukee Cheese Appreciation Society, something like that?”
“Close enough. I thought my sponsors were a reputable organization, but-”
“But,” I burst out laughing. “You found out they are,” I laughed so hard I was choking, “kind of cheesy?” Delivering the punch line made me blow a snot bubble out my nose. That made me laugh more.
“Oh,” he did an ironic slow clap. “Bravo, Joe. You are so clever. Not.”
“Sorry,” I mumbled as I blew my nose. “They didn’t cough up the money as they promised?”
“That’s the problem,” he grumbled, looking sheepishly down at the desktop. “I should have read the fine print. They never promised any money. What they offered was an ‘In-Kind’ contribution?”
“What does that mean?”
“As a practical matter, they stuck me with a whole warehouse full of cheese. What the hell am I supposed to do with that?”
“Um, sell it, maybe?”
“Nobody wants a warehouse-load of stinky cheese,” he said disgustedly.
“Stinky? Oh, like it’s Roquefort, something like that?” My knowledge of cheese was sadly lacking.
“No. No, it’s just cheddar. That’s the problem. The cheese wasn’t stinky when I took legal possession of it.”
“Um-”
“Apparently, you are supposed to refrigerate cheese, Joe. Who knew?”
“Gosh, well, I certainly had no idea that dairy products could spoil if-”
“Right, see? I’m not the only one. I think the Cheese Council just wanted to get rid of product they couldn’t sell, and they stiffed me with it. Bunch of jerks. They never believed in the value of my opera.”
“I find that hard to believe, Skippy,” I said as solemnly as I could manage.
“Oh, trust me, Joe, this Cheese Council is not the trustworthy group of people you would-”
“No, I meant, how could anyone who heard your opera not appreciate its undeniable, um, artworthiness?” I might have just made up that word.
“Why, thank you, Joe. You mean that?”
“Yes,” I lied my ass off. The little guy needed a win, and I couldn’t stand to hurt his feelings right then. “So, you own a warehouse full of spoiled cheese?”
“Yup. Worse, I didn’t pay for insurance, so a tragic fire wouldn’t do me any good. The EPA is on my case, they are threatening to declare the warehouse a Superfund toxic waste site.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Did you ever smell a warehouse full of rotting cheese?”
“Thankfully, no.”
“All I can say is, I thought your feet smelled bad, but they are nothing compared to this. The prevailing wind in that area is from the west, and the neighborhoods downwind are very unhappy.”
“That’s terrible. Hey, nobody knows that you own this warehouse, right?”
“No, I own it through a tangled web of shell companies, Joe. Don’t worry, it can’t be traced back to me. The companies were originally owned by my persona Magnus Skippton, but, um, he might have done something faintly sketchy involving an organized crime syndicate in Tajikistan, so he had to go into hiding.”
“Faintly sketchy?”
“Do the details matter right now? The Tajiks might have sent a hit squad to Magnus Skippton’s supposed home in the Cayman Islands.”
“Shit!”
“Oh, don’t worry, Joe. Luckily for me, their private plane apparently suffered a navigation error over the ocean, and ran out of fuel over the South Atlantic. Sadly, it sank in very deep water, so I guess we’ll never know what happened.”
“That is tragic,” I agreed, hoping we could leave Earth behind before Skippy caused any more trouble.
“I agree. Hey, on a totally unrelated subject, you know how we have been test-firing the Dagger’s railgun?”
“Yes,” I answered cautiously, suspicious that subject might, in fact, not be unrelated.
“Well, I have been concerned about the accuracy of the Dagger’s targeting system. It would truly be unfortunate if, you know, an errant railgun round were to hit my warehouse and-”
“You are not going to nuke Milwaukee!”
“It’s Sheboygan, Joe. Come on, how many people could even find it on a map? Anywho, I could dial down the yield so it only takes out, oh, shmaybe a couple thousand square meters of-”
“No. Railgun.”
“Oh, don’t be a baby. Railguns don’t leave radioactive residue. Not long-term radiation, anyway, although there could be-”
“No railgun, no missiles, no maser cannons. That is final. You are not bombarding Sheboygan or wherever, just to fix your problem. Why can’t you just pay a hazmat company to clean up the mess?”
“Well, I could, but, DUH, you made me promise to pay back all the followers of the Holy Skippyasyermuni. I don’t have fundage to spare, numbskull.”
“Oh. Well, gosh, you know how I’ve been trying to get to the next level on this Super Mario Kart game?”
“What does that have to do with it?”
“While I am distracted while playing that game,” I emphasized the word in the hope he would catch my meaning. “All sorts of shady things could go on with the bank accounts of various criminal organizations dirtside. If you know what I mean.”
“Oh. OH, gotcha. Um, Ok, done.”
“Done with what?”
“With, um, possibly sketchy things that you were not involved in and therefore could not possibly be blamed for not knowing about, right? Especially if we jump out of orbit before the banks open in Bulgaria on Monday morning. Gosh, will you look at the time? Gotta go, I have a lot of stuff to take care of before the Flight Readiness meeting, buh-bye!”
His avatar blinked out, and I pulled out my tablet to play a video game. Because I really, really, did not want to know what was going on.
“Hey, Joe,” Skippy’s avatar popped above the treadmill I was running on. “I have super amazing news! Beyond amazing, it is a certified miracle.”
“Hit me,” I gasped, pressing buttons to slow my pace, “with, it.”
“Remember that UN committee that has been debating what to call the two local wormholes? Incredible as it may seem, they actually made a decision.”
“Oh, that’s, great.” There were two wormholes that could provide aliens with relatively easy access to Earth. There was the one that became active during the last wormhole shift, that the Kristang used to reach and ultimately conquer our homeworld. That is the one Skippy caused to go dormant, or technically it was on ‘pause’ or something. We used that one to go back and forth, waking it up and shutting it down behind us with an Elder wormhole controller module. One of those modules, that we called a ‘magic beanstalk’, was aboard the Dutchman. Another was floating near that wormhole, hooked up to a power source.
Skippy had casually told me there was another dormant wormhole closer to Earth, a wormhole that had been dormant for at least eighty million years, and had not been affected by the most recent wormhole network shift. We typically just said ‘the Earth wormhole’ or ‘the local wormhole’, but the United Nations decided we needed formal names for those ancient objects. So, they sprang into action and appointed a committee to study the subject.
The last I heard, the leading candidate names for the wormhole we used were ‘First Base’, ‘Subway’ and ‘Gateway’. The truly dormant wormhole could be called, you guessed it, ‘Second Base’. Alternatives were ‘Dry Hole’ and ‘Deadend’. The wormhole much farther away, in Ruhar territory, had already been named ‘Goalpost’. My opinion was I did not care what they called any wormhole, except
that I would need to use the formal names in my reports. “Please tell me they didn’t choose First and Second Base.”
“Why do you object to those names? They make sense to me.”
“They make no sense, you lunkhead. First base is supposed to lead to second base, but those wormholes don’t connect at all. Plus, the wormhole they want to call ‘First Base’ is farther from home. It makes no sense.”
“Ugh, fine. Anyway, the wormhole we use will be identified as ‘Gateway’ and the dormant one will be ‘Sleeping Beauty’.”
“Seriously?” That made me stumble because I momentarily forgot I still running on a moving treadmill.
“Seriously, Dude.”
“’Gateway’ is a good name-”
“You’re just saying that because it was your suggestion.”
“A lot of people suggested that name, Skippy. It’s kind of obvious. But, come on, ‘Sleeping Beauty’?”
“You do not want to know the names the committee rejected. Many, many human cultures have myths or stories about a sleeping princess or whoever, who is awakened with a kiss or a magic potion, or because she forgot to silence her phone,” he chuckled. “So that name is not offensively Eurocentric or whatever. Avoiding that was a vital goal of the committee.”
“Uh, isn’t ‘Gateway’ an English word?”
“Yes, duh. English speakers will say ‘Gateway’, while other languages will use their equivalent. The Mandarin version is ‘Wangguan’, although that is being debated by a subcommittee.”
“Of course it is.” I sped up the treadmill again. “Let me know the instant that subcommittee releases their report.”
“Will do, Joe. Although you will probably be retired or dead by that time.”
“Bonus.”
Mostly, I avoid the Stooges as much as possible, to the point where I stayed away from my office, and took my laptop to an engineering access tube aft of the Dutchman’s forward section. The tube was cramped, it was uncomfortable despite the cushions I stuffed in there, but it gave me peace and quiet. When the Stooges asked to speak with me, the duty officer could report honestly that I was in the engineering section, working to upgrade our capabilities. The capability I was attempting to upgrade was getting to the next level of a video game, but the Stooges didn’t need to know that.
Unfortunately, I could not avoid them entirely. I was on the way from the gym back to my cabin for a shower, when a door slid open and one of the Stooges stepped out. Despite the lack of space aboard the ship, with several cargo bays converted to living space for the survey teams, the UN had insisted their Commissioners be assigned quarters better than the typical small Thuranin cabins. To avoid another useless argument, I asked Skippy to remove bulkheads and combine two cabins into one, for each of the four Commissioners. It pissed me off to coddle those bureaucrats, but if feeling respected made them happy, they might be less likely to make bad decisions just to spite me.
Any, the door opened and the Commissioner from Algeria stepped out. “Ah, Captain Bishop,” his face lit up with a charming smile. That was the problem with the Commissioners, as individuals they could be decent people. It was their official positions as overseers that made them a pain in my ass.
Several times, I had explained that it was proper to address me as ‘Colonel’ rather than ‘Captain’ but I was not going to argue the point with a civilian. “How can I help you, Mister Commissioner?” I flung the towel I was carrying around my neck, using one end to wipe the sweat off my face. My hope was he could see I was sweaty and ripe from a hard workout, and would not to talk for long.
“I have a question about housekeeping?”
“Housekeeping?” That was unexpected.
“Yes, if that is the correct term. I wish to know the arrangements for laundry,” he seemed kind of embarrassed.
“Oh,” I chuckled, relieved to be asked such an easy question. “That’s easy, Sir. Just leave your clothes or towels or whatever on the Magic Floor.”
“Magic Floor?” He shook his head gently, like he didn’t quite understand American slang.
“Yeah. My father said we had one in our house. He would leave clothes on the floor, and they magically got picked up, washed, folded and put back in a drawer.”
“Oh,” he laughed cautiously. “I used to have a Magic Floor in my home also.”
“Used to?” I raised an eyebrow. “What happened?”
“My wife began taking anything I left on the floor, and stuffing it into the trunk of my car.”
“Ouch. Did you find out when you had to change a flat tire or something?”
“No,” he chuckled. “I took the car to the shop, because the interior smelled bad. I got the message.”
“Yeah,” I replied thoughtfully. “My father found his clothes in the barn. A squirrel had made a nest of his Red Sox jersey. My Dad got the message too. Seriously, Sir, the robots aboard the ship handle most domestic chores for us. You can leave your laundry on the floor, and bots will come into your cabin while you’re away. They will clean the cabin, take away laundry for cleaning, anything like that. If you need anything like extra towels, just ask Nagatha, and she will assign a bot. Uh, there might be a delay for a while. Skippy has many of the bots working to clean up issues from the Flight Readiness Review squawk list. That’s uh,” I figured I needed to explain. “A list of minor maintenance issues, like sticky door handles.” Ok, I was minimizing how ‘minor’ some of the issues were, but the UN had cleared the Dutchman to fly. “Sir, we will be leaving orbit in,” I glanced at my zPhone. “Sixteen hours. There is one last dropship coming up from Paris, so if you forgot anything, please tell Colonel Simms so she can get it up here before we depart.”
He smiled. “There are no convenience stores beyond Gateway?”
I got a chuckle out of that. “They are more like inconvenience stores.”
After the last dropship was secured in its docking cradle and the supplies it brought to the ship had been verified by Simms, I scanned the checklist in my tablet, then looked at the ceiling in my office. “That’s it? We’re ready to go?”
“Ready as we can be, Joe,” Skippy sounded annoyed. “We need to be extra, like super-duper careful with the ship. What we should be doing is taking the ship apart again and fixing or replacing all the stuff that glitched during testing, instead of taking a drunken joy-ride way outside the galaxy.”
“Yes, I know, you told me that like, a zillion times already. We are not taking the ship apart again. In the Flight Readiness Review, you said the ship is good to go.”
“Well, yeah, but that’s partly because I didn’t want a bunch of ignorant monkeys asking me stupid questions, about stuff they can’t possibly understand.”
“Is the ship flightworthy or not?”
“That’s not a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question, Joe. I told you I am not happy about the replacement components that were made on Earth. Like the reactor shielding, for example. Even the crude, dumbed-down equipment I asked humans to provide was almost impossible for your industries to manufacture. Of the first two hundred and eight test batches, one, only one piece of reactor shielding was marginally acceptable for being installed aboard the ship. Really, this is my fault, for asking monkeys to make complicated equipment by wacking coconuts with sticks. Without me constantly providing input, Earth will never make half the stuff we need to keep the ship functioning. I should stay here until we have the equipment we need, instead of flying off to another galaxy to find a vacation spot for monkeys.”
“The beta site is not for vacations, and we need this survey, Skippy. Once we locate a potential beta site, the UN will be all excited about moving people there. That means the Dutchman gets to keep flying, instead of hanging around Earth just in case we get attacked again by frozen lizards.”
“Taking the ship out is still a risk, Joe.”
“Everything is a risk. Listen, while we are away, the monkeys down there will be fumbling their way through trying to make all the fancy crap you need to keep th
e ship running long term. Is the Dutchman going to fail while we fly to a beta site?”
“If I thought critical components could not make the journey, I would have refused to participate. Compared to past missions, going to scout a beta site is relatively short in terms of distance traveled through normal space and the number of jumps. It is exponentially longer in terms of absolute distance from Earth, but the Elder wormholes will provide shortcuts.”
“And we will not be doing any crazy shit or getting into space battles. I hope. The wormholes that connect to the dwarf galaxies we want to search, went dormant long before the Rindhalu had space travel, so all those dwarf galaxies should be empty, right? You told me something like, the stars there are old, so the planets should be old, and that makes it less likely a new intelligent species will have evolved since the Elders were there?”
“That is a big assumption, Joe, but yes, you are correct. No guarantees.”
“No guarantees expected. Let’s get out of here before somebody dirtside changes their mind.”
“Wait! Before we leave, we need to get our parking validated. Damn it, I had that receipt around here somewhere,” he grumbled while his avatar patted its pockets.
That made me chuckle. “I’ve got it covered, Skippy. And, hey, remember, when we go through the first wormhole, you need to do your thing of making it act funky, like it’s broken.”
“Right, like I would forget something important like that. I am the smartest being in the galaxy, Joe.”
Holding up my hands, I waved them to show I was sorry for daring to question the memory of the most absent-minded being in the galaxy. “Just checking, Skippy.”
“Course is programmed into the jump navigation system. We can-”
“Whoa, wait a minute there, Skippy. You shouldn’t program the jumps for us, we need Nagatha to do that.”
“Oh for- You have got to be joking-”
“No joke, Skippy. Listen, we agree we need to get a new ship, right? A better ship, something more powerful than the Dutchman ever was. If, when, we get a new ship, the Dutchman will hopefully continue to fly missions to the beta site. Or maybe the Dutchman can fly simple recon missions, like retrieving data from a relay station. On those missions, this ship will be alone, without you. We need to know whether Nagatha can handle the ship by herself. Not just programming jumps and managing the bots to perform simple maintenance, we need to know she can repair the ship when something breaks, and that she can use a wormhole controller module.”
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