by M. D. Cooper
Chapter 2
As luck would have it, today we’ll dock at Garvon VII. I’ve never been there, but Pinky and Greta tell me it’s great fun. The whole planetoid is a riverfront carnival sort of thing. It’s a highly popular tour destination, because who doesn’t enjoy breaking up the monotony of space travel with arcade games and throwing tiny rings at impossible targets?
Every time I leave the ship, I have to give myself a stern talking-to about standing up to my phobias, pushing past the fear in my stomach, and focusing on having a good time. I need to trust in Greta’s luck and Pinky’s awesomeness.
And I do.
For our visit to Garvon VII, I also have to chastise myself about not mentally calculating the miniscule odds of winning any of the silly carnival games. Today will be about fun, not about statistics.
It’s hard to break old habits. Especially when those habits increase the odds of my continued survival.
Back in good old cabin 25J, I get ready for the adventure ahead. I got lucky when the Chance Fleet agreed to let me rent this room indefinitely. Such a thing is typically reserved for fleet employees like Greta, as their brand ambassador, and Pinky, as their bartender. It probably helped that Greta was the one to make the request.
Do I feel bad about using her luck for my own purposes? No. Not at all. I figure the universe owes me one.
I put on a plain pair of beige shorts and an off-white shirt. Greta keeps telling me my clothes are boring, but this is another habit I’ve yet to break. Not standing out in a crowd and not having any decorative bits on my apparel have thus far prevented me from becoming another clothing casualty.
For my people, that’s a thing.
I drop my shiny green luck stone into my pocket. Greta gave it to me, and I carry it with me everywhere I go.
As I leave my cabin, I notice the little man staying in 26J open his door. He starts out, notices me, and scowls. After a moment of visible reconsideration, he emerges anyway, eyeing me like I’m a seagull about to snatch his happy beach-day lunch right out of his hands.
I don’t know what his problem is. I’ve never been anything but pleasant to him.
“Good morning, sir. Will you be visiting Garvon VII today?” I level a friendly smile at him.
“What if I do? Are you going to look up my nose and tell me what you see?”
I’m at a loss. That was oddly specific, and just plain weird. Maybe it’s a phrase where he comes from. And now I probably look like a rube, not knowing what it means.
“Uh, no, sir, I’d never do that,” I assure him.
“See that you don’t!” He points at me accusingly, then stomps off down the corridor.
I probably could have handled that better, but I’m not sure how.
Nothing to do for it now. I brush off the experience and continue to Greta’s quarters. She answers as soon as I knock, and joins me in the corridor. She looks happy and excited, and a little extra glowy still after her early-morning drink.
“Hi, Charlie!” she chirps. “Let’s go get Pinky. I can’t wait to start having some fun.”
She rushes ahead at an entirely foolhardy pace. She could trip on a carpet wrinkle or be rammed by a food cart going the opposite direction at a junction. But she’s wild and crazy like that.
I hurry more than I’m comfortable with to keep myself within the radius of her good luck. In my experience, the benefit outweighs the risk.
Pinky takes a full two minutes to answer her door. I wonder if she was busy and if her cabin is bigger than mine. Well, it must be, given her size. My own little space is not much bigger than a closet.
I try to peek in when she opens the door, because I’m really, really curious about what her living space looks like. For all I know, she decorates with machetes and the teeth of people who have crossed her.
But she fills the space, then the closes the door behind her and the opportunity is gone.
“Let’s go wreck Garvon VII.” Pinky heads toward the elevators so we can disembark.
I’m both nervous and excited about how literally she might mean that.
We get in the elevator and wait for it to begin its descent. Instead, a mellow, electronic voice says, Welcome to the Chance 3000: A new experience in elevators.
I hadn’t realized this was going to be a whole experience.
The voice continues. We’ve developed the Chance 3000 to better serve you, our guests. We elevate you because you elevate us. Please enjoy your elevator experience.
Greta looks as puzzled as I feel. Pinky looks entirely unimpressed.
State your desired destination.
“But there’s only up and down.” Greta says. “And since we’re up, we obviously want to go down.”
You said, “Up.” Now going up.
“We’re already up!” Greta shouts at it.
Up has already been registered. Please be patient.
“Oh, now it’s getting snotty with me.” One side of Greta’s nose wrinkles in irritation.
She looks cute that way.
We wait for ten long, curious seconds, then the doors open.
Arrived at up. You may now depart.
“But we want to go down,” I say.
You may now depart.
“No. Go down!” I’m getting frustrated, too.
You may now depart.
“Oh, for pete’s sake,” Greta says. “Let’s get off and back on again. Maybe that will fix it. And no one say ‘up’ under any circumstances.”
We do a funny little dance of leaving the elevator, then getting back on.
Welcome to the Chance 3000: A new experience in elevators.
Greta glares at the speaker that transmits the voice, but says nothing.
We’ve developed the Chance 3000 to better serve you, our guests. We elevate you because you elevate us. Please enjoy your elevator experience.
Not so much, at this point. But I’m afraid to even mutter something sarcastic for fear of making it do something strange.
State your desired destination.
“Down,” Greta demands.
You said, “Down.” Now going down.
We remain quiet as the elevator descends, all the way down to the bottom, and the doors open.
Arrived at down. You may now depart.
As soon as we’re out, Greta bursts out, “That is not an improved experience! They should change it back.”
“Yeah!” What my agreement lacks in words, it makes up for in supportive tone.
Then I get my first good look at Garvon VII.
Wow.
There’s activity everywhere. People mill about, carnies shout to people to try their games, and costumed characters with giant heads roam about, waving and taking photos with guests.
I breathe in deeply because the scent of the place is wonderful: fried dough, popcorn, and sunscreen.
I feel instant excitement. Awe. And happiness. All things relatively foreign to me.
“What should we do first?” Greta asks.
“I want to throw some stuff,” Pinky says.
“Let’s go!” Greta grabs my hand and pulls me forward.
I feel light-headed. She’s holding my hand. It’s amazing.
Then Pinky holds my other hand and I come crashing down. Suddenly I feel weird. Like some of my internal organs have suddenly exited my body and are just lying on the pavement ahead of me.
As I look at her in confusion and amazement, Pinky gives me a big, maniacal grin.
I don’t know whether to laugh or be terrified.
Before I can decide, we’re standing in front of a Throw the ball and knock down the cans game.
You and I both know these games are rigged. Those cans are made of lead or some shit. Maybe a person can knock the one off the top, but the other two will barely even move.
I look at the cans.
I look at the carnie.
I look at Pinky.
This is going to be something special. I just know it.
“We’ll t
ake a hundred tickets.” Pinky slams her thumb down on the credit transfer device, stabs in her code, and it spits out a stream of bright-yellow paper tickets.
Just watching this is all the entertainment I could need, but then Pinky drops ten tickets on the ledge in front of her and squints expectantly at the carnie.
I feel a wave of malevolent glee that is entirely unlike me. It’s just that it’s so rare to get a front row look at someone nailing a swindler’s ass to the wall.
The carnie smiles. He’s an entirely nondescript man of nondescript origins. He could be human, or maybe something else. He could slip into the crowd and I’d never be able to describe him sufficiently for anyone to ever identify him.
Which is probably the idea.
The carnie hands Pinky a big white ball. In her hands, though, it’s like a golf ball. This is the first moment when the carnie looks uncertain. His smile slips, but he puts it back into place.
“You’re going to want to stand back,” Pinky warns him.
“We’re not allowed to leave our booths,” he says. He moves as far to the right as he can, though.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn ya.” Pinky brings the ball to her chest, winds up, and her arm flies forward.
I don’t even see the ball. I see a blur of white and an explosion of cans. They fly in opposite directions, with one bouncing off the back wall with a dull bong sound and coming right at us.
Pinky snatches it out of the air. “I win.”
She sets the can on the ledge.
By now, the carnie knows he’s in the shit. “Uhm, yes, you’re a winner! You can pick any of these as your prize.” He gestures to a variety of stuffed animals and insanely oversized hats. He gives her time to decide, restacking the cans.
“I want to go again.” Pinky looks at him expectantly.
“I…um…” The man fumbles for words. He brightens. “Hey, for such a clean shot, why don’t you take one of our top prizes?” He indicates the other grouping of items—an assortment of even larger stuffed animals.
“I want to throw.” Pinky frowns at him.
He scrambles for a ball, hands it to her, and leaps over the wall to stand next to us. Behind Pinky. “You bet! Go right ahead.”
She throws again. And again. Funny thing, he’s not even charging her tickets now.
Finally, Pinky tires of her sport. “All right. I’ll take the flamingo.”
We all look at the car-sized flamingo, bright pink, smiling, with shiny eyes the size of my fists.
“What?” she says when we all look at her. “I like pink.”
She doesn’t seem encumbered by the thing, even as we stop to let Greta play a ringtoss game then feed the fish in the grotto. Pinky’s lashed the flamingo below its legs with a rope, which she’s tied around her waist like a belt. She’s pulled its long wings down over her shoulders, so she can hold them with one hand.
Basically, she’s giving a giant flamingo a piggyback ride.
It’s almost too much for me.
I want to laugh whenever I look at her, but it feels like the wrong move. So I shove it all down, to the point that I think laughter is filling my abdominal cavity and threatening the overall health of my liver and spleen.
Greta, I think, feels the same. She looks unusually wide-eyed.
We march on, playing the carnie games, teasing one another, and laughing. Greta wins a purple hippo and little gray manatee, and, every now and then, bumps their faces together to make them kiss.
It’s a little weird. But I don’t say anything about that.
I don’t win any prizes, but I don’t stab my eyes out throwing darts at balloons, either. Which is a win for me.
Before we hit the arcades, we stop for some goodies. Pinky props her flamingo friend on a bench and sits next to it while Greta and I stand in line for sopapillas.
If you don’t know what sopapillas are, and they’re served somewhere on your planet, go find some. They’re a kind of fried dough. They puff up with the right mix of tender flakiness and crisp friedness. Then they’re sprinkled with powdered sugar and covered in honey.
I’m on the fence about whether or not the harvesting of honey equates to the enslavement of bees, but dammit, for sopapillas, I’m willing to look the other way.
I’m sorry if that makes me a monster.
Greta carries her plate, and I carry both mine and Pinky’s. She and her flamingo take up a whole bench, so Greta and I sit on another.
We dig into our sopapillas. So light. So flaky. So…I take an inopportune breath and choke on the powdered sugar I’ve inadvertently drawn into my lungs.
I cough, aware that my mouth and cheek are sticky with honey but I can’t do anything about that right now. My lungs are rebelling against the sudden attack on them.
Then Pinky’s there, pounding my back. “You need another Heimlich?”
I flap an emphatic no with my arm. Last time she did that, I was sore for days.
“Here, drink this.” Greta puts a cup of water in my hands.
I clear my throat, hard, and take a long drink.
Finally, I can breathe.
“You okay?” Greta asks, concerned.
“Yeah. I’m good.” I eye my remaining sopapillas.
I decide it would be silly to let them go to waste. I’ll just have to better ration my breathing.
Afterward, Pinky gets her flamingo back into place and we hit the arcades. It isn’t easy. People have to make way for Pinky and her prize.
I approach a race car game. “How do these things work?”
“You’ve never been to an arcade?” Greta seems amazed.
That’s me, the rube who’s never been to one. There aren’t a lot of them on Earth, and such boisterous gathering spaces have never been my thing.
I say, “No.”
I fish a ticket out of my pocket. “Where does this go?”
“Oh, they take tokens,” Greta says. “I’ll go get some.”
She sprints away before I can say anything. Pinky has lagged behind. People keep asking to take pictures with her and, surprisingly, she agrees every time. She even seems pleased about it.
I’m standing there, patiently waiting, when a familiar face comes around the racing game. I’ve seen this face before, although only briefly.
It’s my wife, Oollooleeloo.
Her people, I suppose, are handsome in their own way. They have a roughly human shape, though their necks are as wide as their very big heads. On the sides of their necks, they have gills, which move with their breathing. Alongside their mouths, they have catfish-like whiskers.
I never meant to have a bewhiskered wife. I know it happens sometimes, but usually only after you’ve been married for forty or fifty years already. Starting out that way seems like a cheat.
I want to run, but she’s right there, facing me. What kind of adult runs away when he comes face-to-face with a problem?
I do. Turning, and perhaps—okay, definitely—flailing a little, I run.
Behind me, I hear her gurgling speech, but I’m having none of it.
I see Greta as I run out of the arcade.
“What…?” she begins.
“No time!” I shout, not slowing down. “Fishwife!”
Greta’s a good friend. She hears that, and she hip checks the woman beside her, moving her out of my way. Then she takes off after me.
I run down the main thoroughfare, past the carnies, past the food carts, and beyond the crowd. On the outskirts, I find a photo booth and duck in. Greta follows me in and closes the curtain behind us.
This is no ordinary photo booth. It’s huge. There are costumes in here. Old-timey ones, cyborg ones, fluffy-bunny ones. The people on Garvon VII have gone next-level on their kitschy keepsakes.
“Are you okay?” Greta asks.
“Yeah. I just freaked out a little. I mean, why does she keep hunting me down? I talked to her for like two minutes.”
“I don’t know,” Greta says slowly. “But maybe it’s something g
ood?”
I laugh, but don’t feel amused. “That’s your life. For me, with all of my experiences, this can only mean something bad.”
She frowns. “Okay. But…what if it isn’t? Your luck’s been different with me, right?”
“You stepped away. I was outside your luck radius.”
“I was really only ten feet away. You think that’s enough distance?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
She nudges me. “So, what if it isn’t something bad? Maybe it’s something good. Or just something interesting?”
“How could it be? This is me we’re talking about. I know I put up a good front, but the truth is, I still struggle every day. I won’t even wear carpenter’s pants in case the loop were to catch on something and, I don’t know, pull me into a chipper-shredder or a pulper or something.”
She put her arm around me. “I know you’re working hard. That’s why we do the fork exercises. Maybe we should work on pants next.”
“Maybe. I can’t think about that right now.”
“Right. Your fishwife.” She sighed.
“You really think it could be something not terrible?” I ask.
“Yeah. I’d like to think so. I know my experiences are different than yours, so I can’t understand how hard you’ve had to work at things. But I respect that you’ve survived all that and are working so hard to overcome it. That’s pretty amazing to me.”
“Really?” I turn my head to look at her. How could anything I do seem amazing to her?
“Really.” Her face goes all soft and smiley and her lips look so pretty. I can’t look away. Help. HELP. I can’t look away! I’m being weird! Oh no!
The curtain yanks back and a giant flamingo attacks us.
No. It’s not an attack. The flamingo just bangs into Greta, which causes her to knock heads with me.
“You two okay?” Pinky asks. “I got here as fast as I could, but it’s hard running with this thing.”
In my mind, an image unfurls. Pinky, running, her long, muscular legs churning, while a giant pink flamingo bobs its head up and down with every step.
With an unmanly, high-pitched sound, I start laughing.