by Kerrie Noor
What the sliced beetroot is going on?
She had gone to all the trouble of making sure that Mex’s equipment was the worst possible—including a B&B leaflet as out-of-date as a coffee machine. And then Her Leadership goes and sends Pete down, a robot with too much knowledge and an incognito pose like no other, a robot that had been caught loitering around her “Magna Carta is a Starter” file; a robot “worth the watching.”
She looked again.
Who the pickle gives a robot a plugulator of that caliber? It’s top of the line.
Hilda was about to charge into the shed and demand heads for rolling, pay to be cut (except they didn’t get any). She was about to throw her weight around, as she was often known to do on Planet Hy Man, when something behind her beating breast told her to wait.
“Zoom in on Woody’s coordinates,” yelled the voice from the back.
“Yes yes yes, he’ll be there soon.”
Hilda waited and watched . . .
Chapter Eight—Woody
“NEVER KID A KIDDER; they won’t rest until they get you back.” —Beryl
Woody, a dwarf with a lot of time on his hands, had spent a lot of it sitting in coffee shops dreaming about his sci-fi novels until the bus shelter incident. Since then he placed his torn camouflaged trousers under his bed, avoided his mum and decided to take the bus everywhere. Just in case . . .
The first bus he took was to the Edinburgh International Book Festival. He went to every workshop on the programme about fantasy, sci-fi, time travel, and anything else that remotely sounded like the sort of thing a story about a porn star shifting dimensions might fit into. And he was almost inspired until he stupidly attended the last workshop of the day: “Is Sci-Fi as Dead as an Albatross or Just Comatose?”
His heart was down; his idea was brilliant. It was inspired by his love of Terry Pratchett novels and based around a bus shelter harboring elderly porn stars from other dimensions saving the world from genetically enhanced tomatoes and the like. And for the last two hours, all he and a hundred other would-be writers had heard from “agents in the know” was that comic sci-fi was as dead as test cricket in South Africa.
Not even a free ticket to an Earnest Ernie (unknown stand-up) would cheer him up.
Woody pondered over his Frappuccino. And was just about to skull the last of it when he heard a loud clatter from the disabled toilet followed by the sound of a hand dryer and muffled, unfamiliar cursing.
Pete had materialized in the disabled toilet stall, hitting his head on the dryer, which didn’t improve his mood; he was cheesed off about being ripped from his audience so coldly. One minute he was acrobat-ing like a spider of the highest order and the next, like a flash, he had landed with one foot in the “john” (as Vegas liked to call it) and one on the seat.
It was all too undignified, and cold, to speak of. To make matters worse, because of the complications of his Teflon, Pete had also endured the great discomfort of time travel. It was now eight hours on from his time in Dunoon, eight hours out of his life gone forever, along with his stomach, so it seemed; typical of those damnable Operators, they had no respect for Teflon.
He looked about at the complicated arrangement of pulleys and bars. This was a “john,” but not as he knew it. Her Leathership’s toilet was a pretty straightforward affair, and cleaning was a mere press of a button. But this was more complicated than the deck in Star Trek. What a pickle, he thought, what a great pickled egg of a situation.
Pete looked about the stark white rooms. What was he to pull for what? He hadn’t a clue, so he looked in the mirror above the sink and began to rub his dented face back into shape and nearly tripped. His foot was lodged in the toilet just above the water.
What the gherkin was going on? One minute he’s entertaining on an impressive scale, the next he’s in a toilet, minutes away from being flushed by God knows what.
He yanked his foot out of the toilet, setting off the flushing of “blue water,” and the hand dryer revved up again. He then gave his leg a good shake, which set off the hand dryer yet again. Then, being a robot of great imagination, he thrust his leg under the hand dryer. But, also being a robot who had materialized, dematerialized, and materialized again, his spirit level was all over the place, and he began to see double. Pete tripped and grabbed the nearest thing to hand, which happened to be the emergency cord.
WOODY WATCHED AS THE staff gathered around the door now blocked by Pete. The assistant manager knocked on the door while the others shouted.
“Anything wrong?”
“You okay in there?”
“Can you let us in?”
The staff looked at Woody; he knew what they wanted. It wasn’t the first time he had been asked to squeeze through a window the size of a cat flap. He sighed.
“Extra coffee and any amount of cake,” said the assistant manager.
Woody said nothing, just left his almost-finished Frappuccino and edged himself through the window. He jumped down onto the floor and bent over Pete, whom he assumed was on the piss.
HILDA WATCHED. THROUGH her peephole she could see the two large screens monitored by the Operators.
Woody landed on the toilet floor like a cat, sending the Operators into a frenzy of sighing. They watched the landing a few more times.
“He must be what, all of four foot three inches?” said the third in command.
“If that,” said another.
“He can land, that’s for sure . . .”
Short had always been the new tall in Planet Hy Man, ever since the overthrow of men and all their sports equipment. Nowadays a man with few words and stature below five feet was a god to all but Beryl. Beryl didn’t believe in gods, unless you counted her latest hairdresser.
Hilda smiled to herself. This Woody—he could be a godsend. Silently she left, like a bat fluttering in the dark, making a mental note to get the footman around to clear up the pizza boxes.
Chapter Nine—Costa Coffee
“SEEING IS BELIEVING, but tasting is even better.” —Pete’s log
Woody looked at the crumpled, gold-colored body lying on the toilet floor and assumed that he was a very posh street performer. A first for Woody; the bodies he usually found on the floor were homeless and a bit grubby. Pete was not only immaculate but he had no body odor, not even a hint of pee.
Woody stepped closer and gently shook Pete’s shoulder.
“Wake me up before you go go . . .” muttered Pete.
Woody shook his shoulder again. “You cannae sleep here.”
“Captain’s Log; Stargate . . . 219 AD . . . err. What?”
“You need to get up.”
Pete rubbed the side of his head and muttered, “Huh?” He opened his eyes and stared at Woody as his face blurred from one to two and back again.
“Come on, mister, you cannae sleep here.”
Pete was about to ask what a “cannae” was, but he decided to wait until Woody’s face remained still before he said anything.
BERYL LOOKED AT HER latest updates as they flashed up on her super-deluxe, high-definition, extra-slim stationary H-Pad screen. It was next year’s model, hidden in her bedroom for testing purposes, with a new experimental fourth smelling dimension, which first thing in the morning before a coffee was not always advisable.
“Reporting to her Supreme-ness; it’s official, landing has occurred. Pete assisted out of his arrival pad by Woody. Pete saw two Woodys blend into one, over and out, Stargate.”
“Woody?” shouted Beryl. “Why is Woody still present and what’s with the Stargate? I thought that went out with roll-on deodorant.”
“Deodorant, ma’am?”
THE OPERATORS WERE in a pickle. The plugulator was in the hands of some male who could probably read, and it was their fault.
“Stalling is all we can do,” said the second in command. “If it gets out what’s saved on those files . . . our jobs, all this”—she gestured to the darkened shed and the paper cups of watered-down beverage—“
will be gone.”
“So what?” muttered a few.
“So what? Do you want to go back to your old jobs?”
“I didn’t have one.”
“Me neither.”
The room fell silent.
“Because if we don’t find a way of downloading Pete’s files incognito, those above will . . .” The second in command downed her weak tea with distaste. “Actually, I have no idea what they will do . . . but I am sure if they knew how we helped Pete download, it would not be pleasant.”
“I’d do it again in a flash,” shouted the voice from the back.
“Me too,” shouted another.
“Yes, thank you, comrades,” said the first in command, pulling the cup from her deputy, “but I am sure that won’t be necessary being that he is now on Earth.”
WOODY HELPED PETE UP without mentioning the wet foot or the small indent on Pete’s face that was slowly puffing back into place. Pete again looked in the mirror, gave his face a rub, and smiled at the handsome man.
Woody then brushed some toilet paper from Pete’s shoulder and noticed something funny about him. Sure, he was painted gold, but his shoulder felt padded, soft, and nothing like leather.
“Pete landed in the john and is now in crash mode” flashed up on Beryl’s H-Pad.
“I thought he was swinging from a scaffold,” shouted Beryl.
“He was, Your Sirness, but now he is anything but, swinging in a john, and has been bashed into clueless mode . . .”
Beryl was speechless.
WOODY INTRODUCED HIMSELF and then asked Pete for his name as he helped Pete from the toilet. Pete said nothing but watched as Woody stood up—his height hardly altered. Woody’s head looked like it belonged to a bigger body.
Pete was silenced by the beauty of such a man. Pete felt he was in the presence of a very important and desirable man, something that had not been seen on Planet Hy Man in decades . . . well, at least not since before Pete’s time, anyway.
It was then, as he rubbed his head for the second time, that he realized his plugulator was gone. He began to look around as Woody started to make “you need to move out of here” noises.
Woody walked Pete outside onto the street and left him there.
Pete had no idea where he was or what time it was, and he had lost his plugulator. Who was going to mind his back now?
Pete had worked hard to make connections with Operators from the day he started his placement with Her Leathership. While Herself was up there—in the chambers, making “let’s not forget the man spy” petitions—he was in the shed, giving lighting advice and bringing creamy cappuccinos to the Operators, while they updated his plugulator with more storage space than . . . an IBM backup plant. What was he going to do now?
Pete watched Woody head back into the shop. He didn’t want him to go. Pete liked Woody’s face; it was warm, intelligent, and sympathetic. The sort of face that anyone alone and lost would cling to. Pete squelched back into the café. No one noticed—the staff were in the kitchen and the only customer apart from Woody was a very old lady standing at the counter, and her eyesight was so bad she thought she was in the library.
Pete inhaled the aroma of coffee and made his way to Woody’s table. He felt a rumbling in his stomach, something he had never felt before. He gestured toward the plate of flapjacks, some covered in white and dark chocolate.
“Is this all yours?” he said.
Woody said nothing but gestured for Pete to join him. He watched Pete pull up a chair with curiosity. Pete appeared too polite to be Scottish, too white to be a migrant, and too curious to be English—he was unplaceable.
“So, this establishment; it serves coffee?” said Pete.
Woody looked at him: “It’s called a coffee shop.”
Pete mumbled something about too good to be true as he picked up a sugar packet, surveyed it, and then shook it close to his ear like it was some sort of musical instrument. He shook it harder, until the sugar packet broke and sugar went everywhere.
Woody laughed, and then so did Pete.
“May I?” Pete gestured toward a flapjack of high quality.
“Sure, knock yourself out,” said Woody.
Pete turned the slice in his hand and sniffed it. “Apricot, I gather, and”—he sniffed again—“condensed milk. I have heard about this but yet . . . nothing can capture the true fragrance . . .”
“Some people just eat it,” said Woody.
Pete took a bite of the flapjack; golden syrup and creamy milky taste hit his mouth like an explosion of sweetness he knew nothing about and had never experienced before. He bit down on the oats and as they crunched into his jaw he sighed. “So this is what a mouth is really for,” he murmured.
“Some would say,” said the assistant manager, walking by. He stopped at the table. “That is a flapjack that holds its own. You can go too far with a flapjack, but this little baby balances it just right.”
Pete took another bite; this time apricot hit the side of his mouth, setting off a tingling sensation that caused him to drool—another new and mildly disconcerting sensation.
The assistant manager stood in awe; this man was a true connoisseur of the finer things, a man with taste, despite his getup. “It is something to savor, is it not?”
“Yes, siree.”
“It’s just a flapjack,” said Woody.
Chapter Ten—Satin and Silk
“A CHANDELIER BY ANY other name still swings both ways.” —a Voted In unknown
Beryl took a sip of the illegal beverage and stretched out on her bed wrapped in her favorite black satin sleeping gown; it was shiny, expensive, and as hard-to-get as shoes for a footman. It slid across her fingers like oil.
It was a warm morning, and she had the windows open with her silk curtains billowing. Normally by now she would have looked in one of the many mirrors in her bedroom, caught her reflection, and wondered at what ruling had done to her looks.
Beryl was young when she took over leadership. It was back in the fifties when there were still a few men around, but they were aging fast. Once women discovered how to reproduce without a man, it was all downhill for the men, and they began to wither. They had little purpose. They did try various rebellions—there was the famous arm-wrestling treaty and the revolt of the cyclist—but no one took them seriously, even the robots.
In the end, most men gave in and reassigned themselves to the gym . . .
Those were the days, when she had a face worth photographing and a blue rinse worked a treat. Now everything was complicated. Even the Operators were questioning her, and they used to be so . . . manageable.
She opened her manifesto, picked up her pen, and rolled it between her finger and thumb. She usually wrote freestyle, as she liked the feel of a pen dipped in ink and the rustle of a turned page. She also knew that no one, not even the Voted In, used paper and pen. Her manifesto was safe, a secret, and she could write whatever she wanted. But this morning she couldn’t think, let alone write.
She flicked through the pages and stopped at an entry from a few months ago—“Hilda snorts like a pig and walks like one too”—and took another sip.
That woman has poked her nose into every suggestion—objected, questioned, and poured scorn onto every one of my amendments. She is like one of those annoying, smart-arsed, sniveling younger brothers that—thank God—don’t exist anymore.
Today she exceeded herself; she stood under that ridiculous penis-shaped chandelier reading from her surveys—in a trench coat. She looked like Inspector Gadget reading out his shopping list. And all I could think of was . . . well . . . men, hot dogs, and those godawful speeches they used to make.
“Have we not progressed?” I asked.
No one said anything; they just looked at me like I was speaking gibberish. Apparently, the Operators are to be taken seriously and I am not! After all, they are the ones who filled in all those damn surveys . . .
And then, right in the middle of the “let’s freeze the
finance” presentation, the recording froze as they, the Operators, left for their “whatever” with “whoever” okay-ed by you-know-who—she in the trench coat. And I was left with a viewing screen as impotent as a footman.
“Give it a good bash,” shouted Vegas.
That’s their answer to everything . . . as if a good bash is going to do anything other than give the basher a sore hand.
“We are working with top-of-the-range equipment that has connections to the White House, the Kremlin, any parliament you can swing a cat at, and BBC reruns. Do you really think a good bash is what is needed here?” I said.
And did they listen? I may as well have read a shopping list to a man in a porn shop.
Beryl let out one of her long, elegant sighs . . .
All the signs were there: she was losing control, and Hilda was behind everything. Why hadn’t she seen it earlier?
Beryl poured herself another coffee, this time with extra cream, and stared out through her patio window as the sun rose. Hilda had called the mission a waste of oxygen. If only she knew how close they were to lights-out—a few months, maybe a year, depending how extravagant the Voted In were. She sighed and cursed Legless.
THE SAME MORNING BERYL was contemplating the aging process, Hilda was in the shed—yet again stirring things up. Hilda, buoyed up on the kitchen of new cuisine’s latest stew/casserole, waltzed into the shed and demanded to know who was the pint-size male—catching them off guard before pre-breakfast tea.