“Did I learn something useful in the local language, Wilburps?”
“Unconfirmed. Am unable to find that gesture in the data base of the known communication clues. You did learn that the open and darker colored areas at the lowered level are in use by vehicles so you need to use extra caution while in those places though.”
“What would I do without a zerpy like you to give me all these clues and cues?”
“Not look okay for one thing. I detect that you are askew and not certain to stay in place for social interaction without give-aways. Check your head.”
Nerber touched his head, carefully feeling to be sure his wig was present and in place. “Is the problem what?”
“Your hat not there to hold things in place is the problem what.”
Nerber now looked around in some alarm and confusion until he spotted the hat. He was ready to retrieve it from the street but Wilburps urged caution. “Another large moving vehicle is coming. I recommend waiting until it has gone by before entering its domain. Those things do not seem friendly.”
This large truck rumbled by, also passing over the hat but this driver swerved a bit to avoid it so none of the tires came close to it.
With no traffic in sight moving in this direction Nerber retrieved his hat. He had to dust if off and reshape it but it was none the worse for its recent close encounters of the vehicular type.
He put the hat on over the wig and pulled it down tight to hold that in place. “I should be ready now.”
“Let me remind you that I am here to translate for you when and if you meet any locals who turn out to be speechifiers. I come as fully prepared for that task as the company’s technicians can make me.”
“They do a good job making you. Zerpies are at the leading edge of our technical capacities. Your kind make things happen for us. Our constant improvements in technology mean ever more useful helpers. I must watch for signs that the inhabitants here have devices equivalent to you, Wilburps.”
“Analysis of signals detected since we approached suggest that the inhabitants do have limited development of what they call androids or robots. Those seem to be mostly work devices made to look like themselves.”
“That sounds primitive. Why burden your helpers with the same restraints you are stuck with if you can make them able to get beyond those? Do not answer, I am only wondering out loud.”
“The analysis so far suggests that, like your kind, they often use the pattern of naming things to tell what they do.”
“Like zerpy?”
“Correct. The analysis of their signals suggests that translated to the talk-talk version most common in the region where we have arrived their equivalent for the term for my type would be ‘Save and sends’.”
“Which describes a zerpy’s main uses in a rempilcarp.”
“Something I cannot locate a local talk-talk word for.”
Nerber nodded. “This may be a once in a while problem but I have practiced to pretend a smizdef.”
“Which translates as a cough here. That is the word for it, not the sound that comes from doing it although they are somewhat alike.”
“This is why a trusted zerpy is so important. You give me both a word and a caution not to confuse the thing and the word that identifies it to the inhabitants. I look forward to meeting some of them and having excitable adventures for the thrill of those at home.”
“You must not get too excited and forget our limitations. You must talk-talk with them slowly to give me time to figure out what they are communicating. It will also help the delusion if when possible you make physical contact with me so I can control your mouth movements to approximate the sounds I am making for you as if you were speaking them yourself. We can make this work, Nerber. Your success, and maybe even your survival, depends on it.”
“There you go trying to scare me again.”
“You are where no Ormelexian has ever been before but in a place where we believe we know something about the customs and reactions. That knowledge is based on interception of long-distance signals from here that are interpreted as their mass entertainments. From some of those we expect they may not be thrilled when they find out who you are, where you came from, and even why you are here.”
Nerber took a small package from a pants pocket and looked at the pill it contained. “I still have much to do while I am here. A test case I am of many things but I accepted the terms so I cannot turn back now without losing my chance at fame.”
“Hesitate, Nerber. Next you must state for the record that you are taking the transformation step voluntarily. I am ready to store and relay your message.”
Nerber fumbled a pill from his pocket and swallowed it with a grimace of distaste. After a moment he gagged and seemed about to dump his insides on the ground by way of his mouth but he fought off those impulses as he turned what the locals here would describe as a healthy-looking color. “I, Nerber, mildrex oftbilk that I am acting freely in the silwarb things I am doing here. Yuck. What I will do to be a winner.”
“They had to scramble to make your pill. There are many audio intercepts from this planet but only since we got close were good enough visual signals received to show what some of the inhabitant kinds look like. They noted that the one common kind, like the ones inside those big things that went past us, apparently come in a variety of shades of color, all of them not green. That pill makes you the lightest of those colors because that was the easiest to make with the available materials.”
“My insides have settled and I can see that my hands have lost their healthy green glow but I am okay with that for at least a short time.”
“You are ziz-pod. Hold on, let me... There, I should be translating better for you and from you now in case some natives can detect us. Being...it seems they call those in our position pioneers. Being pioneers we must proceed with caution.”
“I am dependable on your help, Wilburps. I love the thrill of the challenge but I am smartly pants enough to know this could turn out like badness.”
Nerber sat the solid but light-weight rectangular box that was the zerpy named Wilburps beside him on the park bench near the street and facing it, then looked around getting oriented.
“You are already a winner, Nerber. You arrived alive so you are history,” the zerpy said as it hovered a foot off the bench then settled to hover two inches above the seat.
Nerber responded eagerly, “But to get the vipsig mermin...” He forced himself to speak slower, “...big cashing in prizes, I have to beat out any and all competition.”
“We need to practice,” Wilburps cautioned. “I cannot translate at Ormelexian speed, so if you talk too fast you will give yourself away.”
“Without a way to translation my talk for surely so this would not be dreamable.”
“Stay in range and I will do my task as a well-designed zerpy. I am readied like no other,” Wilburps assured him.
Nerber nodded his understanding and appreciation saying, “If there are others who made it this far they also have their helper zerpies.”
“But we cannot know about them so we may with good hope think we are uniqueness and specialty.”
“Zemgas, Rumpsy, and Zipper were ready to transport down so they may be mixing me around to win and be the hero of our whole world.”
“Reprocessing. The new inputs suggest we should use beating in place of mixing around from hencefifth. There is more. Reprocessing. From henceforth.”
“You catch up on the talk-talk stuff while I find what I need to perfect the game challenges.”
“Reprocessing. Perform the challenges. Here perfect has other ideas attached.”
“It would reassure me to know which other contestants made it safely to the surface even though I must still attempt the tests to amuse the home audience.” He straightened his hat and touched Wowseyla as he added, “Also to know if you are detecting any signals you cannot account for, ones that might hint of problems I should check on.”
“They warned you
that the transport risk is more than they at first expected because the atmosphere here is not as they had expected so what they told you when you signed up to be a contestant did not hold. But the game rules say no one may tell you about the other contestants. Not whether or where they landed safely. Not whether or where were captured and killed by the locals.”
“What about signals from sources you cannot identify?”
“None are registering.”
Nerber raised both arms in a gesture of excitement. “Pipswitch doogely. All is acceptable then. I proceed for the glory of appeasing the blood lust of the home audience,” Nerber muttered. “We all know that they say other if asked by authority persons but many of the audience secretly hope for game contestants to be killed as long as they get to watch all the gore and details.
“Appeasing the audience means being widely known as a hero - and being made rich,” Wilburps reminded him.
“What better motivational excuses could I have? Does it be full of any sense to say phone home, Wilburps? I am being sense filled with that as a thought to say coming from I have no hint of where. But I have arrived intact and I am ready for the next challenge.”
Chapter 03
Penelope Regimentator, known by many who knew her whether they were happy about that fact or not only as Reggie, was a calculating user. This morning she was also in her own mind on the job as an enhancer. She parked along this urban back street lined for several blocks on one side by four-story apartment buildings and on the other side by row homes, all the structures long time occupants of their spots.
She got out of the car she had borrowed for the day and looked it over. She had stopped on her way here to scatter some bags of loose dirt over it to make it less noticeable and, as she intended, driving fast down the expressway coming here had blown off the excess loose material and left the medium blue car a dull blue-gray. She would wash it before she returned it and there would be no obvious trail back to her. Details like that were important to her sense of how things should be done.
Descriptors commonly used for her were “not to be trusted” and “sneaky but not all that bright”. She was also “on the wrong side of forty”, and “sort of scrunched down” because although of average height she often looked shorter as she skulked around hunched over to be less noticeable. Her medium-length graying hair had a way of accumulating static electricity so it stood on end even when she was calm, giving her a fright wig look that often alarmed others who had to get near her. She was thin because her nervous energy had her moving much of the time when she was awake so fat didn’t have time to find a place to settle. She had pale, unhealthy looking skin because she distrusted the sun not to do bad things to her and being out in it also meant she wasn’t skulking and she really liked to skulk.
She chose her clothes to be durable, easy to maintain, and sort of automatic camouflage because of their drab, unpatterned dull colors and unremarkable design. Today she wore what she considered to be close to an ideal outfit - sweat pants, hooded sweatshirt, plain T-shirt, and plain sneakers. All the items in shades of gray; none of those grays matching one another or her hair which might have made her even less noticeable.
Checking that she had the essential items for this mission in her fanny pack, Regimentator hurried down the street on the roadway side of the line of parked cars. She moved in full skulk mode with cartoon-character furtiveness. She stopped every few yards to crouch and look around for anyone who might be noticing her although she couldn’t imagine why anyone would.
This was a one-way street and she had deliberately parked a full block ahead of the old parked car that was the focus of her interest. That was to minimize the likelihood that the man she didn’t want to see her would do so. She intended to enhance his parked car with an electronic tracking device so she could follow him discreetly with no risk of losing track of him and no risk of him noticing her because she had to follow too closely.
She had that small device stuck to one side of a square of extra strength double-stick tape, ready to be attached to her target’s car in some out of sight place. Since, as she had seen when she drove by it on her way to find a parking spot, his old car was as incidentally dirt-covered as hers was deliberately she would have to get close to find a place to firmly attach the tape but that shouldn’t be a real problem. She would only need to rub clean a spot two inches square and the job was done.
As she eagerly approached the target car she made her last minute moves. She took the prepared square of double-stick tape from her fanny pack. Using a razor blade she had cut out a section of the protective paper cover and affixed the dime-width sized electronic device to the exposed glue, leaving the outer part of the covering on so she wouldn’t stick to that side.
Holding the square device-side-down in her left palm, she silently rehearsed how she would peel off the cover from the other side of the tape so it would be ready to stick to the car but keep it in that hand so her right was free to rub a spot clean of dirt so it would get a good grip before she attached it. Satisfied that she was ready, she went through her crouch-and-look-around-for-observers routine twice in the last few yards. You can maybe never be too careful. She really liked to sneak around and do secret stuff that would pay off for her.
She got to the target car and moved along it on the driver’s side, around the back between it and a parked rental van, and back up on the pavement side. She was looking for the best place to tag it but was distracted when she looked in through the car window and saw two cartons on the back seat. Her instinct shouted in her mind’s ear that those might be important and she should try to find out what those were.
Then she heard the whistling – and cussed to herself. She knew who the whistler was and what it meant that the sound was getting louder at a fast rate. He was coming out of his apartment building and literally any second now would see and probably recognize her near his car. That would seriously compromise her plans.
So she yanked off the cover of the second sticky side of the tape and slapped the tape and tracking device on the passenger side door. In her hurried fumbling she managed to get the tape’s second surface cover stuck to the outer side of the device which made its true nature less obvious. She scooted away up the street and stepped in between parked vehicles so she would be out of sight when the whistler stepped outside since he, being a generally paranoid type, would scan the area for anyone whom he should wonder or worry about. She hoped her interest in him was going to finally pay off.
Ms. Regimentator was always on the lookout for someone to set things up that she could swoop in on at a late stage and get the profit from. Taking credit was of secondary importance but was a plus she was always more than willing to grab too. She has a wide range of areas where she made a point to know what might be worth real money and what work or discovery might be needed to capitalize on that item. She was averse to the work aspect, telling herself that she was a specialist. Her skill was in recognizing who had done the work but then, as they were about to reach payoff time, made the mistake of telling someone who would repeat the claim so she would hear about it in any number of roundabout ways.
Over several years she had added the name of George Krinkle to the Rolodex she had found at a garage sale and used as her fast and convenient way to remember who might be of use to her, along with a note about the areas where each was likely to present an opening for her.
She made a note on his card each time she found a small newspaper item about his claims, theories, or investigations that all seemed to involved extraterrestrial beings and their interest in Earth. After seeing him in a thirty-second report on the TV news on a slow news day she had a premonition that this weirdo could actually make an important discovery. When that happened she wanted to be there to witness it – and to sell the first photos and story about it to the news media.
When she heard on today’s morning radio news about the latest round of suspicions that alien beings had invaded overnight she checked her Rolodex and deci
ded that almost certainly George Krinkle would be hot on the trail of any such creatures. Her notes suggested that he kept up to date with a proverbial three tons of resources on such things so he had a better than average chance of finding something the news people would take at least a momentary interest in, whatever it finally turned out to be. She then made the judgment that it was worth her while to be ready, camera in hand, if he found something newsworthy, sad as it was how that term had deteriorated over the years. This was her plan and mission today.
George Krinkle stopped whistling as he stepped out the door of his rundown apartment building and looked around warily for any movement. He was thirty-two and super nerdy-looking in dark-rimmed glasses and a hat, jacket, shirt, trousers, sock, and even shoes each a different pattern of several muted colors and featuring vaguely star- or planet-shaped designs.
Zippedy Jones, twenty, with an unkempt mop of dark hair and a vacant air-head expression, ambled up the opposite side of the street. He passed Regimentator who was hiding between the parked cars on the other side of the street from him without noticing her since she was crouched down and not moving and he was in his own world in his head.
After a check for traffic Jones crossed the street to join Krinkle.
“Is anybody following you, Zippedy?”
Jones looked around, almost falling over as he tried to make a full turn in place without moving his feet. “Don't see nobody, Mr. Krinkle. I just got off the bus at the corner two blocks up and you're the only one I've seen. You got your special clothes on, that must mean somethin'.”
Krinkle whispered, “I think aliens have invaded for sure this time. My camouflage and distraction outfit is so I don't panic 'em before I'm sure.”
“Sure of what?”
“I telescope-spotted something up by the moon but as usual the authorities won't listen to me without solid proof.”
“You saw the man in the moon?”
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