Bypass Gemini

by Joseph R. Lallo

  Chapter 8

  The pair made it to the mess hall, just a few doors down, before Lex managed to kick his brain into gear.

  “What just happened?” he asked.

  “Well, I was trying to hot-bleed a custom plasma manifold valve on a class A power module and I forgot I went with the 3-6-3 sequence instead of the 2-4-3,” he said, matter-of-factly, while grabbing a tray and pushing it along the counter.

  “And you blew your hand off.”

  “Well, I blew my fingers off, anyway. It happens all the time. Hence all of the spares.”

  “Spares. So it’s prosthetic.”

  “I prefer cybernetic.”

  Lex nodded. After the crash, the strange bus, and the adventure in lost body parts, this cafeteria was the first halfway normal thing he’d had to deal with. Admittedly, the place was utterly deserted, but there was a counter with covered warming trays, and there were tables and chairs. That made sense. He took a tray, threw a plate and some silverware on it, and started pushing it along after his host. Now that he wasn’t coping with a life-threatening situation or an acid trip, his brain was willing to spend some time processing things.

  He started with the mechanic. He was one of those men who was hard to pin to a certain age. From the looks of him, he could have been anywhere from a worn-out thirty to a baby-faced sixty. His voice had a generic urban quality, sloppy and a little hollow. Build-wise, he was a little pudgy, but irregularly so. He had a slight paunch that seemed to be the kind of belly that accumulated like sediment over the years. He was maybe two inches shorter than Lex. His hair was salt-and-pepper black . . . but that’s where things started getting unusual. A swath of his hair along the right side of his head looked wrong. It wasn’t as fine as the rest, and was much shinier, like a doll’s hair. Most of his skin was blotchy and pitted with neglect, but there were patches here and there that were baby-smooth.

  Strangest, though, were his eyes. The left one was hazel, but the other was silver. Not to say a fancy shade of gray--the whites were white, but the iris was actual, mirror-finish chrome.

  “Are you a human being or . . . what?” Lex asked.

  “Karteroketraskin.”

  “Is that your . . .”

  “Name. It’s my name. It’s been a while since I’ve had to deal with the whole social interaction garbage, but I’m pretty sure you were supposed to ask me my name.”

  “Oh, right. I’m--”

  “Trevor Alexander. I know. You did the entry interview at the door. Good job pissing off the computer, by the way. I’m going to have to deal with that now.”

  “Okay. Well, that’s introductions out of the way. So . . . are you a human or what?”

  His host began to answer. As he did, he pulled the tops from steam trays and shoveled food directly onto his tray. He hadn’t bothered to get a plate.

  “Accurately answering that question is a non-trivial exercise in statistics, anatomy, physiology, and philosophy. As of my last medical scan, the standings are as follows: Thirty-nine percent original equipment, thirty-five percent aftermarket parts, and twenty-four percent synthetic organics.”

  “That’s only ninety-eight percent.”

  “I’ve got some bits on back order. So, the majority of my body is not human, but the plurality of it is, and that’s good enough to win an election, so I’m going with human.”

  The mechanic finished piling up his tray, which now had a few pounds of red beans and rice and three burritos on it. After grabbing an extra burrito and tossing it into the pocket of his coveralls for some reason, he reached into a tray of ice and pulled out a can of some sort of soft drink. After checking a series of the steam trays and discovering that burritos, beans, and rice were the only things available, Lex helped himself.

  “Where do we pay for this stuff?”

  “Just eat. This is the smallest amount I can get the automated system to pump out.”

  “Oh, okay. Thanks. So what do you do here, Ketraskin?”

  He answered with his mouth full, spraying rice irregularly. “Build stuff. Fix stuff. Blow stuff up. Various permutations of those concepts. Why the hell did you call me Ketraskin?”

  “You don’t like people calling you by your last name?”

  “Last name’s fine. You’re calling me by the last half my first name.”

  “Your first name is Karteroketraskin?”

  “Yup. My full name is Karteroketraskin Onaserioriendi Dee.”

  “That’s . . . a mouthful.”

  “People who can’t deal with it call me Karter.”

  “I’m gonna go with that.”

  Karter grunted in reply.

  “You can call me Lex.”

  “Lex? Your name is Trevor Alexander, and you want to be called Lex?”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Nicknames are the first half of your first name. Those are the rules. You can’t just use a random part of your last name.”

  “What? No, nicknames are whatever someone calls you. I had a roommate nicknamed Tex because he always wore a cowboy hat.”

  “Tex was in violation of established nickname protocol.”

  “Everyone’s entitled to their opinion,” Lex said with a shrug, digging into the surprisingly tasty food.

  “Pff,” Karter scoffed, sending a volley of beans and rice Lex’s way. “There’s people who are right, and people who are wrong. Guess which one you are.”

  Lex looked at him flatly. “Anyone ever tell you you’re an asshole?”

  “It is a fairly common observation, yes,” he said, without a trace of apology.

  “Look, it is pretty clear you don’t want me around. So if you can just point me to someplace that can patch up my leg and someone that can lend me a ship, I’ll be out of your hair.”

  “No.”

  “What request were you denying?”

  “All of them. You are standing in the only someplace on the whole damn planet, talking to the only someone on the whole damn planet, and you aren’t getting out of my hair any time soon.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “This is my planet. I’m the only one here. You want or need something, you get it from me. And you and whoever that was shooting at you stirred up the moat. There’s no way anyone is getting in or out until the computer remaps the whole thing and plots when and where navigable gaps will occur.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “Meh, forty hours or so.”

  “Whoa. No. No, no. I’m on a deadline. I’ve got a delivery to make.”

  “You probably should have thought of that before you blew up your ship.”

  “Karter, I’m serious. I’ve never missed a delivery date. Ever. In my business, it is all about reputation. And this is a high-paying gig.”

  “I cannot put into words how much I don’t care,” he said flatly. “Listen, I sent the bus to pick you up because if you died here, someone would come looking for you, and I’d have to deal with that. I’m as eager for you to get the hell off of my planet as you are, but if you’re going to be doing it, you’ll be doing it in a loaner ship from me, and there is no way I’m letting you take one of my ships through the moat until I know there’s a safe window. You want to get yourself killed, fine. But do it where I won’t be inconvenienced, and don’t do it in one of my ships.”

  “Wow. Most people would be ashamed to show that degree of self-interest.”

  “I don’t have a whole lot in common with most people.”

  Lex fumed for a moment. He’d dealt with people like Karter before. They didn’t want anything to do with other people’s problems. Usually, if he wanted something out of a person like that, he had to pay them, which he could probably afford to do . . . But screw that. This guy was a jerk. There was no way he was handing cash over to him now. Fortunately, self-absorbed misanthropes were easy to manipulate. Lex just needed to make his problems into Karter's problems, and Karter would spring into action.

  “Well, let me as
k you this. As a man who is familiar with serious injury,” Lex said, limping over to Karter’s side of the table, “what do you think about this one?”

  He peeled off the tape and opened up the torn leg of his flight suit, revealing gash in his thigh. Karter eyed it critically.

  “Hmm. Yeah. That looks pretty bad.”

  “It does,” Lex agreed, slightly nauseated by the growing bruise and the depth of the cut.

  “Yeah. You’re gonna need new pantyhose.”

  “Huh?”

  “I’ll bet your ovaries hurt, too.”

  Lex narrowed his eyes and sneered.

  “Fine, I’m a woman. But if I get an infection and die, you’re going to have to deal with that, aren’t you?”

  “You aren’t going to die,” Karter said dismissively, “but if you’re going to get your panties all in a bunch, we’ll fix it up.”

  “Good. So there’s a doctor or some--”

  “Ma!” Karter yelled suddenly toward the ceiling.

  Lex flinched at the sudden sound. “Your mother is here?”

  “What? No.”

  “Please state request,” echoed the computer’s voices over the cafeteria’s speakers.

  “You named the computer ‘Ma’?” Lex whispered.

  “Please do not speak about me like I am not here,” the voice reprimanded.

  “Ma, pansy here needs medical assistance for his boo-boo,” Karter jabbed.

  “Processing . . . Processing . . .”

  “What’s taking so long?” Lex whispered even more quietly.

  “She’s trying to decide if she wants to help you or not. And she can still hear you.”

  “Yes. I can. A medical drone has been dispatched. Please hold still and await assistance,” stated the voice.

  A disconcerting whirring noise quickly approached from along the hallway. The doors opened and what looked like something that should be welding things together on an assembly line trundled into the cafeteria. It was a large industrial arm affixed to the end of a gurney. Splitting off from the main arm and hanging over the gurney like a chandelier was a wheel of smaller, spindly arms. Each was tipped with a different medical tool, and there were reels of gauze, needles, and tubes jutting from every possible location.

  Before he could object, or even react, Lex was maneuvered onto the gurney and restrained by a pair of arms that were clearly designed for the purpose. A laser line swept over him, lingering on the afflicted leg. Once it retracted, a clamp appeared from beneath the gurney to immobilize the limb. The wheel of tools hovered over the wound. An arm tipped with a syringe paused for a moment without deploying, then rotated to one that sprayed antiseptic.

  A white-hot, stinging pain seized Lex so hard that he couldn’t even scream. He just made an agonized croaking noise and flailed every part of his body that wasn’t tied down. By the time he recovered from the initial jolt of pain, separate arms had applied a trio of compounds that he couldn’t identify. Pincers then deployed and pressed the edges of the open wound together, sending a fresh surge of pain through him. One of the things applied must have been some sort of medical adhesive, because the wound stayed closed. A waterproof bandage was then applied, and all restraints released. As a final slap in the face, the gurney dumped him onto the ground.

  “What the--seriously, what the hell!” Lex panted when he managed to get back to his feet.

  “Oh. Did I forget to apply anesthetic? Perhaps if I was a better computer, that wouldn’t have happened,” the voice said innocently.

  The drone withdrew as quickly as it came. After a few steps, Lex realized that the burning of the antiseptic and a bit of bruising when he pressed on it were the only lingering effects of the injury. The stab wound was completely gone. He’d always been vaguely aware that medical technology could pull that sort of thing off, but it came at a price. Only the very wealthy could afford it. If he’d managed to wreck during his fifteen minutes of fame, he might have gotten that treatment. Everyone else made do with more traditional recovery times. He glanced up from admiring the remarkable recovery to find that Karter was already on his way out of the cafeteria. Lex jogged to catch up.

  Good heavens, he could jog already.

  “That was incredible. Did you make that?” he asked.

  “The medical probe? Hold on.”

  He stood still for a moment, eyes moving as if he was reading.

  “I’ve agreed not to disclose that information for another three years,” he said.

  “Isn’t that just a yes?”

  “It is a contractually obligated ‘No Comment,’” he corrected, swinging toward workshop F again and stepping inside.

  He picked up the auto-spanner, powered up the piece of machinery, and set to work on it again.

  “You called this a class A power module? You meant D, right? Class A modules would take up this whole room.”

  “That’s because most of the people making power modules are sucky quitters who give up on something after it blows a hand off once or twice.”

  “Sounds like a good policy to me.”

  “And that’s why you’ve never invented anything worthwhile.”

  “It’s also why both of my hands are still made of meat.”

  “I fail to see the allure . . . You know what?” he asked, a look of dawning realization on his face. “You and I have almost opposite points of view.”

  “It certainly seems that way.”

  “This is good. This is an opportunity. Hang on a second.”

  Karter paced over to the edge of the room and pulled out something that looked like a hat rack on wheels. He lined it up in front of the module he was working on, hung a tool bag on it, then disconnected his arm and attached it to a similar socket on the stand. The whole process was as smooth and practiced as tying a pair of shoes. The arm flexed and tested its motion a bit, then grabbed something out of the bag and went to work.

  “There. Now, you’re probably not going to meet this delivery deadline, or whatever. And that’s your job, so probably you’re going to get fired. Which means you’re going to need money, right?”

  “If I get a move on soon--”

  “And you won’t, so you’re going to need money, right?”

  “What are you getting at?” Lex growled.

  “Follow me. I’m gonna show you some stuff I’m working on. The stuff I hit a wall with. The way I figure it, since your brain is orthogonal to mine, you might have the right perspective to get me unstuck. You focus-group some of my dead ends and I’ll pay you.”

  “Listen, I really don’t have time for this. I’ve got to--”

  “You’ve got . . . thirty-eight hours, nineteen minutes, and forty-seven seconds. Now come on.”

  Karter marched out of the room. Lex, with little choice, gathered up his things and followed a one-armed man who wanted his help testing experimental devices. Surely this would end well.