Oliop scratched his neck, looked down at the fallen human. “Well, I’d need to run a diagnostic on the pilot worm. I’m not sure I have the software for that.”
“I’m sure you can figure something out. You’re clever.”
Oliop found Jeff’s null-space pouch.
The Grey noticed and said, “I wouldn’t do that.”
Oliop craned his neck and peered into the tiny compartment at the back of Jeff Abel’s neck. Oliop cooed.
“The worm’s in there,” Oliop said. “It’s attached to his translator.”
“Quickest pathway to the central nervous system.”
Removing a translator wasn’t complicated. But the worm being stuck inside Jeff made the results of such an action unclear and possibly dangerous.
“Take it out!”
Irving the Grey pretended to think about it. “No. It stays in. It keeps him in place and lets me tell you what to do. And if you take it out, it will fry his brain. Useful little creature, this worm. I wish I’d had several hundred of them back before I invited the Bunnie to the Galactic Commons.”
“But how can I work on the worm if it’s stuck in his head?”
“Simple.”
The Grey produced another worm. This one looked shorter than the one Oliop had stolen and Jeff had placed on the elevator panel. The Grey grabbed the short worm and snapped it in two. Both halves wiggled about in either hand, no worse for wear. The Grey handed one to Oliop.
“They retain their programming,” the Grey said. “Division messes with their memory a bit, but we don’t need them for their recall abilities.”
The worm in Oliop’s hand said, “I live, I think, I am.”
Kwed came running forward. “Can you make the elevator work now?”
“Not yet,” Oliop said. “This will take a bit.”
Kwed shook his head, a deep pendulum waggle that signaled disappointment. “Too bad. Because the rest of the humans are here.”
***
Four dark-suited humans stood and examined the elevator. One held a small metal box by a handle on its top and a wand with an attached cord in the other. He waved the wand to and fro in short arcs near the elevator’s surface. Another man took pictures. A third spoke on a phone. The fourth, a bit taller than the rest and with silver, slicked-back hair, watched.
Oliop crept in closer on all fours through the tall grass off the side of the runway. His tail swam through the air behind him, occasionally bobbing higher than the rest of him as if it were coming up for its own look. The humans had a vehicle near the center of the runway, a boxy thing on wheels painted a dark color with tinted windows. The humans all wore sunglasses. None looked his way. He wasn’t quite close enough to easily hear them. If he were, he would have to concentrate for the translator to make sense of the human tongue, since none of these humans had the courtesy to wear them.
Oliop sniffed the air.
One of the men in dark suits wore a scent that reminded Oliop of medicine, the smell sharp and sweet like poison fruit. Another, perhaps the silvery-haired one, smelled of other aliens. It wasn’t a Bunnie smell. This one must have been close to several Galactic Commons citizens quite recently.
“Technician, get back here,” the Grey said over the com. As this device piped directly into his ear, none of the humans could hear it.
Oliop ignored the command.
“Listen to me,” the Grey said. “Stay hidden and do not engage the humans. Need I remind you that your friend’s life is in my hands?”
The four humans got closer to the elevator. One stepped up to the open portal and looked inside. Oliop moved through the grass and scurried to their vehicle. The humans had left it unlocked, not that such a simple mechanical feature would have kept him out for long. Inside, Oliop found a long weapon of some kind, more communication devices, and a laptop computer, all consistent with the Earth’s technology level. He also smelled more traces of other Galactic Commons citizens.
“Oooh,” Oliop said.
He found a central console that opened with a spring latch. It contained a pair of handcuffs, a pad of paper, some kind of candy in a blister pack, and a hand pump of isopropyl alcohol. Oliop checked underneath the seat. There lay crumbs.
That was when his foot touched the center of the steering wheel. The human vehicle let out a loud honk. Oliop got up on one of the seats. The humans all turned his way. They put away their phones and sensors and pulled out weapons.
“I think they see me,” Oliop said.
“Oliop, do not get caught by them,” the Grey said. “Do not get seen by them. We don’t have time for this.”
“Too late.”
Three of the humans came forward, their short black weapons half raised, fingers on triggers. The one with the silver hair lagged behind, his own weapon drawn but at his side. Oliop examined the door. It had a few electronic toggles and a handle. One toggle lowered the window. He raised it back up. The handle would no doubt open the door. He hit a switch next to the handle. The doors all locked.
“All safe,” he said.
The man with the silver hair pressed something in his hand. The doors unlocked.
Oliop scowled, locked the doors again. And again they unlocked. Locked. Unlocked. Locked. Unlocked.
“Attention, you in the car,” one of the humans said in a deliberately slow speech pattern. Were all law enforcement personnel convinced that anyone they spoke with was hard of hearing? Oliop followed the words easily enough. Maybe the human had just spoken that way since birth.
“Step out of the vehicle.”
Two of the other humans moved towards the doors on either side.
Oliop locked the door again and kept a finger on the switch. It didn’t help. It unlocked. He opened a small plastic cover underneath the steering column. He saw a grid of electronic breakers and fuses. With his tail, he locked the doors. He produced his new blue-handled microfuser and blasted the contents of the electric grid. It instantly turned into a plastic and copper slag. The door stayed locked.
The man with the silver hair had a look of irritation as he repeatedly clicked the device in his hand. Finally he gave up. He approached the door with a key. He would open the door in moments. No doubt the mechanical elements would work in spite of the electronics being disabled.
Something came streaking forward from behind the humans. It was Kwed. He stopped within an arm’s length of the silver-haired human. The human turned on him and took a step back. Kwed reared up as if he were about to pounce. A few of his hands raised.
“Attention, humans,” Kwed said. “On behalf of the authority bestowed upon me by my acceptance of Galactic Commons citizenship, I, Kwed, present myself as a diplomat and plenipotentiary (Limited) to the human race, the human world of Earth, and this province and/or collective…”
Before he could go on, the man with the silver hair shot him with two darts. Wires spooled from the weapon’s frame. Kwed jolted straight, quivered about, and collapsed, twitches racking his long body and his many limbs. This distracted the other humans for only a moment. They kept their weapons trained on Oliop. He slowly opened the vehicle door, his ears flat and his tail low. He put his hands up in the galactic-wide sign of surrender.
“I give up,” he said.
Two of the humans moved to his sides.
“Are there more of you?” the agent asked, again speaking painfully slow.
“They want to know if there are more of us,” Oliop said in his com.
The agents next to Oliop clearly didn’t understand him. But the man with the silver hair put a hand to an ear and pointed at Oliop. He nodded and asked, “Who. Are. You talking. To?”
“Don’t you dare,” the Grey said over the com.
Oliop smiled. His entire face brightened. The human with silver hair might be able to understand him, so why not?
“Hi, I’m Oliop. And let me take you to my leader.”
***
The Grey tried to run. Failed. One of the humans succeeded in tack
ling the little creature, an approximation of a common activity stemming from some Earth sport that featured body checks while carrying an oblong ball. When Oliop saw the Grey go down and squeak when the massive human landed on it, Oliop decided he would become a fan of this pastime that Jordan had told him about and had sounded dreadful up until that point. First, he had to avoid whatever dissection the humans might have on their agenda.
Once the humans herded Kwed, the Grey, and Oliop all together, they stood guard until two more vehicles appeared, both identical to the first. Oliop’s sabotage of their first transport was complete, as one of the humans couldn’t undo the fusing of the electrical box’s tender parts.
A pair of the newcomers carried Jeff Abel from the hangar, still unconscious, his feet dragging through the weeds. He was taken into one of the vehicles.
The man with silver hair was definitely in charge. He gave the orders while the others followed them without a word. Of the three original minions, Oliop kept his eye on one of them. There was something odd about him. The man appeared almost identical to the others. They weren’t clones, as they varied slightly in height and weight and hair color and skin tone. Their dress and grooming were identical. Each had a unique feature that stood out. One had hair that receded from the front of his head. The second had a prominent mole under one ear. The third’s nose looked flatter and more crooked. Oliop’s own nose twisted as he sniffed the air. This human smelled of something not human. He grunted at Oliop when Oliop stared.
“What are you looking at?” Flat Nose said.
Oliop looked away and explored the scent landscape as they were loaded into a sealed compartment in the back of one of the vehicles. The smooth plastic surface had been cleaned with harsh chemicals, and the odor burned his nose. Still, he detected traces of non-humans, members of the Galactic Commons registered in the scent cyclopedia, which Oliop read and contributed to as time permitted. Both Kwed and the Grey were placed in the back with him. Both were out cold. The back doors shut. The man with silver hair gave a gesture, and the rest of the men in dark suits got into the vehicles.
Flat Nose got into the one Oliop was in. He sat in one of the back seats. He held a weapon of some kind in one hand. Another of Silver Hair’s minions, the one with the mole, got in the driver’s seat. A clear, thick plastic wall with small holes divided the containment portion of the vehicle from the two rows of bench seats. They started to drive.
“Hi, I’m Oliop,” Oliop said.
Flat Nose didn’t reply. He watched the prisoners but made no eye contact. His scent continued to prove elusive. Oliop sniffed through the partition’s holes and worked through the odors of the thousands of races he had on file. The scent wasn’t floral, wasn’t bacteria, wasn’t dander. It also wasn’t insectoid or mammalian or scaly or slimy. All of these categories fit a broad profile that Oliop could peg instantly. He continued to sniff. The aroma didn’t speak to traces of non-standard atmosphere. Flat Nose smelled mostly like a human. If anything, the human smell was a bit muted, less sweaty than the others. It was as if Flat Nose wasn’t experiencing the same nervous or excited reaction that the others were upon collecting more visitors from another world. Maybe this human was simply more calm. But there was something else that caught Oliop’s attention as surely as if his tail had been caught in a slammed door.
Flat Nose belched. The odd smell increased tenfold. Oliop now had more information to work with. There was something within the scent cyclopedia’s sentient being’s section similar to the smell, yet altered enough so Oliop couldn’t pin it down. Had the human eaten someone?
As they drove over the uneven ground, Oliop placed a hand on the plastic right by Flat Nose’s face. The human didn’t flinch. Oliop then started to tap-tap-tap with one finger. Flat Nose saw it, heard it, wasn’t bothered by it. Oliop kept tapping. Flat Nose kept not reacting. Oliop slapped the plastic.
“Keep quiet,” Flat Nose said.
“Everything okay back there?” the driver asked.
“Everything’s fine,” Flat Nose said.
Flat Nose turned to the driver. Then Flat Nose heaved once and vomited into his hand. A small cohesive bolus plopped out, palm-sized, yellowish green, and covered in slime. Now Oliop recognized the smell that he couldn’t place before. A virus colony, native to the gut of a certain insectoid race that belonged to the Galactic Commons, symbiotic, harmless. But why had it just come out of the human’s mouth?
Flat Nose reached around and shoved the ball of glop into the driver’s face.
The driver gave a muffled scream. The vehicle swerved. Flat Nose stretched across the struggling agent and took the wheel. The driver was bowled over and out of Oliop’s sight. Oliop heard gurgling sounds as if the human was drowning.
“What are you doing?” Oliop asked.
Flat Nose ignored him. After a moment, the driver sat up again and gave Flat Nose a nod. He took the wheel. And then he continued to drive as if nothing had happened. Flat Nose returned to his vigil, watching Oliop through the plastic, a blank stare on his face.
“Oooooh,” Oliop cooed.
He looked down at the unconscious forms of Kwed and the Grey and then at the back door. Another simple lock. Getting out and away wouldn’t be a problem. Driving ahead of them was the other vehicle. That one had Jeff Abel in it. Oliop would go where his sidekick went. Maybe Jeff Abel would know what to do once he woke up.
***
“Hearing your voice again echoes gladly within my heart,” Virtual Detective Ceph said.
Detective Ceph had invited Jeff to a private face-to-face virtual meeting room. The invitation appeared as text across his field of view, a dreamlike apparition of letters. Jeff accepted. The hospital room vanished.
The new space around him looked real enough, furnished with virtual couch, table, chairs, and potted plants. Doorways led to a virtual kitchen and bedroom. Jeff couldn’t help but wonder if there was a virtual water closet. The air smelled slightly briny, as if there were a low tide somewhere.
“Is this part of some kind of game?” Jeff asked.
Jeff examined himself. He had on a simple white jumpsuit, similar to what the Grey had fitted him with when first bringing him to the Galactic Commons. No soldier’s uniform, no hospital garb. The fog in his head was gone. Still lingering was the unease brought on from facing his wife. The residual feeling continued to twist inside his stomach. Also, the adrenaline rush from facing down a wave of generic hostile aliens left him feeling jittery.
In his hands was the tablet. The voice from the sink in his cell called it a universal game item, an achievement of some kind. It had followed him from the hospital and was powered on. Jeff found his contact list somehow already inside.
“I’m starting to freak out here. Please tell me what’s going on. Where is this, exactly?”
Detective Ceph wore a green bathrobe and held some kind of fancy neon orange beverage with what looked like bamboo shoots sticking out of the glass. He reclined on the couch near a small side table. Three tentacled, congealed lumps on sticks sat on a plate within the detective’s reach. The snacks smelled of spoiled fish. Some bubbling aquatic sounds played over invisible speakers.
“Shared virtual environment,” Ceph said. “Where individual branches intertwine.”
“I get it. Don’t elaborate on that. What happened to me, and how do I get out of here?”
“You’ve become as scarce as a hen’s tooth,” Ceph said. “Vanished into thin air. Were you at the elevators?”
“I was. There’s some weird guy there with an extra leg and a bunch of worms who wants Oliop to fix the system so he can use it to destroy the Commons. The guy’s a real nut. You’ve got to get people there and stop him. He can take over security bots. And you’ve got to help me get out of this game.”
“We’ve tried to get to the terminal. The security officers sent there all went lights out. Captain Flemming wants to go to the next level and initiate security protocols. When I got an urgent cry for help from a human,
I wanted to see if that had anything to do with it, since humans are at the center of so many storms in recent memory.”
“I didn’t send a cry for help, though.”
“No, but Jordan did.”
Jordan. Jeff had almost forgotten about her in the course of chasing down the escaped Grey, getting ambushed in the terminal by a bunch of worms and a beast with two pelvises, fleeing back to Earth, and getting thrown into a virtual psych hospital.
“Jordan’s in trouble?” Jeff asked.
“Thus her clarion call for rescue. She sent a message via a food delivery. She is ensnared by a game as well.”
“Where is she? Can you talk to her? And how is it you and I are talking? I’m on Earth, or at least I think I am. Come on, Ceph.”
Ceph nodded as if formulating his words. Jeff guessed it took the detective time to find the right mixed metaphor. But Ceph’s people were tidal-locked into that thought and speech pattern.
“Do you partake?” Ceph asked with a gesture to the room around them. Maybe he was directing Jeff to the plate of rotten seafood.
“What do you mean?”
“Your name was the egg missing from the clutch of other players.”
Jeff just looked at the detective and shrugged. The translators didn’t help when someone was being vague.
“You joined the club,” Ceph said. “Got off the sidelines and got into the game.”
Jeff thought for a moment and shook his head. “No, I don’t play. I’ve never played any games since arriving at the Commons. I never had the time or interest. And I’ve never installed any dating apps or whatever this sim is that we’re in.”
“Yet after Jordan’s cry for help, I found your profile among my contacts as a common acquaintance and was able to invite you. You’re in a game world but not attached to any of the commercial applications currently available, like a wandering seed floating in the wind. You have installed in you a compatible platform, perhaps. And if you’re on Earth, the translators must act as a link.”
House of the Galactic Elevator Page 17