“Oh, hello,” said Bezzin, startled. “You scared me.”
“Ooooh, tsk tsk.”
“I barely even recognize you, Lord Overseer,” Bezzin said with a gulp. “Did you go to the salon or something?”
“I did,” Pillbox confirmed.
“That’s an interesting outfit you’re wearing.”
“You like it? I’m finding it fits rather nicely with my new… position.”
“Ooookay,” Bezzin replied with one eyebrow raised. She then glanced over Pillbox’s shoulder, seeing Jord standing behind her. “How come Senator Jord is wearing a collar?”
Pillbox smiled wickedly and reached her hand out to Bezzin. “Let me show you.”
§ § §
Senator Zesque arrived at Pillbox’s office, feeling down. He was running a few minutes late because he was still depressed that Jord was no longer on the market. He’d not had a shot with Jord, obviously, but knowing that he was now taken made Zesque sink even further.
He stepped into the office and found that he rather liked the new layout. It was a bit dark for his taste, but the rose was a beautiful touch.
“Hello?” he called out, staying close to the door.
“Ah, Senator Zesque,” Pillbox said, “so glad you could join us.”
“Uhhh…” he replied, noticing that a lot had changed since seeing Pillbox that morning. The clothes, the hair, the office, her demeanor, and… “Why are Senators Jord and Bezzin wearing collars?”
§ § §
While Mr. Corlair understood the importance of keeping the reins tight on Pillbox, he was growing weary of her constant need for reassurance. If she didn’t pull herself together soon, she would find herself back in the position of senator, or worse. There were many people who would find the prospect of being a figurehead rather appealing if she failed to improve.
He said nothing as Pillbox’s secretary waved him directly into the office.
Standing in front of him, with her arms crossed, was the antithesis of the Pillbox he’d been working with over the last couple of days.
He gulped, but held himself in check.
“Lord Overseer Pillbox,” he said, glancing over his spectacles.
“I’ve decided I don’t want that title after all, Mr. Corlair.”
“Oh?”
She walked over and ran a fingernail across his cheek. “It just doesn’t quite suit me, I’m afraid.”
“Ah,” he replied as three familiar faces appeared from the shadows. “Why are Senators Jord, Bezzin, and Zesque wearing collars?”
Pillbox giggled evilly.
“That all has to do with my title, Mr. Corlair.”
“Right,” he said, feeling confused and somewhat aroused, “you don’t wish to be the Lord Overseer.”
“No, I do not.”
“Then we shall make other arrangements. There is—”
She spun on him and gripped his chin, digging her nails into his face. “I want to be Mistress Overseer Pillbox!”
Corlair felt his temperature rise… in a good way.
HUMANITY RESUMES
Everything was as it once was and functioning as normal. Well, normal was a relative term, especially on the bridge of the Reluctant, but it was as normal as possible, anyway.
“Looks like humanity is back in place,” Harr said with a sense of pride, knowing that his crew had pulled through, especially the two cavemen… He frowned and changed his thought to: Especially the two EEHs.
“I find it rather amazing, actually,” Grog said while snickering.
Vlak joined in on the merriment. “You can say that again.”
“You two were fantastic. I’m genuinely impressed.”
“You’re gonna make me blush, Cap’n. Eh, Grog?”
“I’m beside myself,” Grog replied.
He couldn’t even give people compliments on this ship. On the plus side, at least Jezden hadn’t said his usual remark when it came to Harr dishing out praise.
Actually, Jezden had been somewhat quiet since they’d returned to the ship the second time. Harr imagined it was something he’d said to the android, but he couldn’t imagine what that may have been. He pretty much spoke to him the same way all the time.
“Anyway,” he said, turning his attention back to the EEHs, “why don’t you two go ahead and get to work on some of that military training with Commander Sandoo?”
“Can you imagine that, Vlak?” Grog said with a sniff. “This man has no respect at all for his ancestors.”
“Rather cheeky, if you ask me, Grog.”
Harr gave them a funny look. “What are you two…” He stopped and felt his heart sink as the blood drained from his face. “Oh, my goodness.”
Grog laughed aloud with Vlak joining in. Within moments they were both slapping their legs while reveling in the hilarity of the situation.
Harr’s brain was too busy cramping to care.
“You’re seriously just now getting this?” Grog said, wiping his eyes.
“But this isn’t possible. It’s a paradox.”
“Could be a treydox,” suggested Ridly. “We were working on three worlds, after all.”
Moon turned at that. “But there weren’t any dimensional thifts.”
“Good point,” conceded Ridly.
“Always wanted to be in a treydox,” Jezden chimed in thoughtfully. “Me on the one side while three chicks are just inside of separate parallel universe doors. I’ll bet my dong could please all of them at the same time, too, breaking right through the dimensional boundaries.”
Everyone looked at him for a few seconds. The problem with his fantasy, aside from the unlikeliness of him finding three willing ladies standing at these imaginary doors, was that the treydox had never been proved. Neither had the polydox, the infinite dilemma quotient that said any impossible scenario was possible if there were the possibility of passableness; the screwydox, which claimed that conflicting happenstance could absolutely occur as long as the absurdity rated high enough; or the doxblockler, which tended to block paradoxes that had the potential to be for the betterment of a lifelong loser… this is because lifelong losers can’t ever seem to catch a break. It should be noted that the doxblocker was also believed to double as a situation that would block Jezden from enjoying his treydox, should the opportunity ever arise. There was another off-the-wall theory floating around regarding two birdlike creatures who could open portals to separate realities by quacking and paddling their feet in a pool of water. This was known as the “Pair of Ducks” theory. It, too, had yet to be validated.
“Hey, Prime,” Geezer chimed through the comm, “funny thought here. I was just thinking that you’re now descendants of the cavemen.”
“EEHs,” Harr quickly corrected.
“Geezer won’t play that game,” Grog said with a wave of his hand.
“Yeah, you’ve got a non-PC robot aboard.”
“Does that make him a Mac-robot?”
They giggled again.
“Explains a lot, actually,” Geezer continued, clearly not hearing Grog or Vlak. “You being descended from them, I mean.”
“It doesn’t work, though!” Harr said, grabbing the sides of his head. “It makes no damn sense.”
“What do you mean, sir?” asked Sandoo.
Veli was tapping on the floor with his claw. Harr had already told him more than once to quit doing that, but it was clear that whenever there was tension in the room, the dinosaur used that little ritual to calm himself.
“He means,” Veli said at length, “that for him to go forward in time to take people from another planet to go back in time so they could start a civilization that he would one day be born into so that he could grow up and repeat the cycle is a complete impossibility.”
Ridly shook her head quickly. “I’m an android and I couldn’t follow that.”
“I just started humanity on two worlds,” Harr explained. “One of them was a world I was born on.” Everyone just stared at him. “How the hell can
I start the human race if I never previously existed? It can’t happen.”
“Not without a little help, anyway,” Veli said with a chuckle.
Harr spun on him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing,” Veli said, holding up his hands and showing his belly. “Nothing at all. Sorry.”
Harr gave Veli a look and then shut his eyes. It wasn’t the dinosaur’s fault that… Wait. What was he thinking? It was absolutely the dinosaur’s fault that all this was happening.
“Uh, Honcho?” Geezer said.
“What?” Harr replied tersely.
“On a whim, I just jumped back to Earth a few hours after we originally dropped everyone off and our crew was still down there.”
“Why?”
“I said it was on a whim, Prime. Anyway, looks like those people you put there ate from that tree you told them to stay away from.”
Harr sat up straight at that.
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it, Cap’n,” Jezden said. “Probably nothing. We should move on. We’ve got a timetable to keep, you know?”
“Seriously?” Harr was already skeptical, but for Jezden to suddenly worry about keeping to the schedule was a bit too much. “Geezer, take us back to just before they ate that damn apple.”
§ § §
“Hello, Steve,” Harr said, trying to keep the angst from his voice, but he had to admit he was in the mood to smite something.
“Urg ook og.”
Harr groaned and flipped on his translator. “Where’s Ava?”
“Don’t know,” he answered, avoiding eye contact with Harr. “Been looking for her myself. Last I saw, she was heading up towards the bad tree.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes, God,” he said. “I heard her calling out your name for about twenty minutes, but I couldn’t find where she was.”
“She was calling my name?”
“Yes. Repeatedly. ‘God! Oh, God! Faster! Oh, God! Pull my hair! Yes, like that! Oh, God! Call me names! Oh, God!’ and so on.”
Harr furrowed his brow. “That’s strange.”
“I thought so, too. Why would she want you to call her names?”
“Steve?” called a voice from the trees. “Steve? Where are you?”
“Over here, love,” Steve called back.
Ava rushed into the clearing, looking somewhat disheveled. She had a glow about her, too. And she was walking funny.
“There you are, Steve. Listen, I need you to…” She stopped and turned very pale. “Oh, hi, God.”
“Hello, Ava,” Harr said calmly. “Where were you just now?”
“Shouldn’t you know? I mean, you’re God, right?”
“Never mind that. Just answer my question.”
“Well, I went up to the bad tree to see what the fuss was all about,” she admitted. “I wasn’t going to eat an apple from it, but I wanted to see the problem firsthand, you know?”
Harr was struggling here. “I’m listening.”
“Anyway, I got to the tree and there was this incredibly hot-looking dude there who handed me an apple from that tree.”
“Dude?” said Steve with a look of confusion.
“I told him you said not to eat those apples, God,” she continued, “but he said you were an idiot. Said nothing would happen to me if I ate from that tree.”
“Is that so?” Harr said as his eye twitched.
“Yeah. Anyway, I was wary to eat it, but then he pulled out a snake and I was mesmerized by it.”
“Snake?” Harr and Steve said together.
“Yes. An amazing, amazing snake.” She looked up at them both. “He had it in his pants.”
Smiting was definitely on the horizon.
“Ava,” said Harr, “what kind of snake would you say it was?”
“Hmmm… I’d have to say it was a python.”
§ § §
“I couldn’t help it, man,” Jezden said as Harr gave him the third degree. “I’d never been with a cavechick before. You know they don’t keep themselves trimmed up down there?”
“You promised you’d be good.”
“She said I was amazing.”
“No…” Harr ground his teeth together. “You’re going to be punished for this.”
“What are you going to do, make me a crewman instead of an ensign?”
“You will march every single day for four hours a day,” Harr said, ignoring Jezden’s comment. “You’ll be in full battle gear too, mister!”
“Yeah, okay,” said Jezden with a shrug.
That’s when Harr remembered that physical punishments weren’t effective on androids.
“Scratch that,” Harr said, his eyes growing dark. “I have a better punishment for you.”
“Pushups? Sit ups? Pull ups?”
“Nope,” Harr said, crossing his arms as a wicked sneer formed on his face. “No porn for two weeks.”
The wail that came from Ensign Jezden was so profound that the Tiny Ship nearly fell off the table from the rattling.
“Commander,” Harr said, “take away any means for him to peruse the GalactiNet, please.”
Sandoo pushed the weeping android out of the way and locked his console.
“What did you do to the Earthlings, thir?” Moon asked as Jezden’s sobs continued.
“Ava and Steve? I changed their names slightly and told them I was really angry with them and all that.” He sniffed. “Not much I could do about it, but sometimes just expressing one’s disappointment is sufficient.”
“So they’re no longer Ava and Steve?”
“Correct. Sounds similar but not quite the same.”
“That’ll teach them,” Grog said.
“Lame,” Vlak added.
“Unless you two want to join them living there, I’d suggest you keep your mouths shut.” Harr was not in the mood for anyone’s sass at this point. “Geezer, bring us back to the future and lets get things back on track.”
“Course laid in, Top Dog.”
“Hit it!”
VELI'S FATE
Harr had called Frexle into the conference room to discuss Veli’s fate. The Overseer-turned-engineer had the deepest understanding of Veli’s personality. He also had the biggest grudge.
“What’s up, Colossus?” Frexle said as he wiped his hands with a rag.
Harr couldn’t help but smile at how Frexle had chameleoned from his once pompous self into Geezer’s protégé.
“I want to talk to you about Veli.”
Frexle’s demeanor changed to one that was more fitting of an Overseer. He’d sat up straight, squared his shoulders, and donned a stony visage.
“Yes?”
“Well,” Harr said while putting his elbows on the table and lacing his fingers together, “it’s just that we have that new information regarding the nature of his upbringing.”
“So?”
“So there are clearly some extenuating circumstances that we should consider, don’t you think?”
“Not really,” Frexle replied, “but that’s for the Overseers to decide anyway.”
Harr had expected the pushback, but he was prepared.
“When you grew up, did you do nothing wrong?”
“If you are trying to draw parallels between my stealing a piece of candy from a dime store to Veli’s blowing up entire planets, I think you’re stretching your logic a bit.”
“Fair enough,” said Harr, “but were you brutalized as a child?”
Frexle looked away. “No.” He then glanced back at Harr and added, “But I was tormented pretty regularly by Veli.”
“As were we all,” Harr admitted.
“Then you must understand how I feel to at least some degree, Captain.”
The term “Captain” being used, instead of “Pork Chop” or the like, confirmed Frexle had indeed moved back into Overseer mode.
“But if your logic holds, Frexle, then I’m afraid the crew of the Rel
uctant could hold you responsible for our involvement in all of this.”
“What do you mean?”
“You were the one who got Platoon F into this mess, weren’t you?”
“Well, yes,” Frexle said, placing his hands face-down on the table, “but that was to save lives, remember?”
“I do, and I commend you for the sentiment, but in so doing you’ve caused everyone on this ship a fair amount of anxiety.”
Frexle sighed. “I honestly hadn’t considered that.”
“Of course you didn’t. You’re an Overseer. We’re just fodder to you. Playthings. Toys to move about on your intergalactic chessboard.”
“There’s no such thing,” Frexle replied.
“I was being rhetorically metaphorical.”
“Ah, right.”
“Anyway, Frexle, the point is that while I can appreciate you and your HadItWithTheKillings group doing what you could to protect civilizations from the likes of Veli, you also partook in the destruction of those worlds before you came to your senses.”
“I’ll admit that,” Frexle said, slowly nodding. “However, it should also be noted that I was merely following orders.”
“Oh no you don’t,” Harr scoffed. “I can understand some young kid being so terrified that he does something stupid simply because his commanding officer tells him to, but you’re not young enough to use that excuse. Now, maybe you were terrified and that was your motivation, but you can’t justify the horrors you were a part of simply because you were following orders.”
“Isn’t that what turned you from being Lieutenant Orion Murphy into Captain Don Harr?” Frexle questioned.
“Yes,” Harr replied, “and I’ve been suffering the consequences ever since.”
“That’s all I’m asking that Veli does,” Frexle stated as if he’d won the round.
“Then you must subject yourself to sentencing as well,” Harr replied, gaining the upper hand.
“Damn.”
It wasn’t often that Harr outwitted anyone on this ship, but it was extra sweet when it was Frexle in Overseer mode.
“I have an idea that will exact punishment on him in such a way that’s far worse than death, though.”
Platoon F: Quadology: Missions 6, 7, 8, and 9 (Platoon F eBook Bundle 2) Page 70