Far-out Show (9781465735829)

by Hanna, Thomas

* * *

  In the security pod Nerber stared at the monitor as he considered whether to acknowledge the hail from Eroder. He examined with interest the view of the control room where Feedle stood close behind Eroder with a small handheld weapon pressed hard to the back of his head. Hasley and Lacrat stood well back out of the way, possibly hoping they would not be noticed.

  “I’m busy, Eroder. What’s your message?” Nerber asked.

  “We’re having really, really serious problems keeping the engine working. Some think it’s because of what you’re doing so it’s been suggested that you stop everything. Uh, and let some others take a look at the control console in the pod. Maybe the problem’s due to something not right in that console. It could be distorting what your zerpy is doing or the zerpy itself could be messing us up. You should let others take back full control of everything until we know for surely certain.”

  “I’m confident I’m not the source of your problems but thanks for staying alert,” Nerber replied. “Is she hurting you by pushing that thing against your head?”

  Eroder said nothing but nodded just a bit.

  “That means he can see us,” Lacrat called out in case that hadn’t registered with Feedle.

  “Bips fump!” Feedle cussed. “It has to be his special zerpy. At least I still control what everybody else knows.”

  With no signal tone to announce him, Molten appeared on the view-screen. “Eroder, we’ve secured the edit room from armed intruders. We can take over all controls from here. We also now have total control over all the show material. The three armed assaulters are declared to be in violation of base line rules so they have no authority or power.”

  “It’s nice to hear you,” Eroder said. “No more of that awful noise interference.”

  “Nerber knows what’s happening and is supporting us,” Molten said. “He tells me there are a few surprises coming soon but he won’t spell those out for me.”

  Feedle yelled at the image on the screen and waved around her weapon. “Because of this insubordination I declare Eroder expendable. Along with every other guy who gets in my way.”

  “Uh, note that it’s her way. I’m not backing her serious threats against anyone. I thought we were only going to scare you guys and you’d do what we want,” Lacrat called.

  A cheerful musical signal sounded while a still image of Nerber replaced Molten on the screen. His voice, calm and steady, filled the room. “While I’m waiting for my zerpy to complete some analysis let me tell you a little about myself. I became a contestant with the hope that I can use the notoriety that would bestow on me to help launch his own zerpy design company. I always saw entertainment as a goal, but I’m interested in creating a new entertainment paradigm.

  “I hope to produce and promote real educational programs, not just more stupidly violent stuff. I’m not out to eliminate the violence, only to provide an alternative to it for those interested. There’s a lot of the violent stuff available and getting rid of all of it probably wouldn’t be good. At least not until a lot of our kind have changed our ways of thinking to a big degree and that won’t happen fast, if ever.

  “Since, as I only learned when I got back aboard, I was the only contestant on the planet Earth and you sent home show episodes featuring me that were well received I have that notoriety. Now I have to convert that into clout.”

  Sneering her disdain for him and his ideas Feedle worked at the console trying to cut him off and to contact the others on the ship with her new orders. That she was having no success at either mission was making her angrier by the minute.

  Nerber continued in an almost hypnotic soft tone, “I understand that clout isn’t an automatic or guaranteed result of notoriety. You need more going for you that being the popular name of the hour. That’s where the show quality material I collected all the time I was on the planet comes in. I’m planning to develop my own programs based on my adventures here, but with no involvement by Bang-Boom Shows.”

  “What’s going on?” Feedle shouted in frustration. I can’t get through to anyone else. I can’t see or hear anyone else.”

  “Oh, that’s my doing. Since I’m so fascinating that you shouldn’t ignore me I’ve fixed it so you can’t. Until I’m finished I have total control of all communications on the ship. Now where was I in my revelations to you? Oh yes, I remember. My naïve enthusiasm much of time while I was on Earth was play acting to fit in since getting thrown off the show because of what you might decide was uncooperative behavior that wasn’t agitated enough to be too exciting for you to feel you had to show the public would spoil my plans.

  “I couldn’t be certain of sufficient backing from the governors if I got dropped as a contestant. It would have been different if I knew I was the only contestant but regrets don’t change the past so I won’t waste time with them. I played out the game the way I thought it was happening.

  “I never told any of you about this part but I hoped I could be an ambassador of peace to the inhabitants here. The governors sent me to evaluate whether Ormelexians could prosper on this planet and whether the inhabitants could be easily conquered to allow that. I understand their interest but hoped that if I found intelligent creatures here I could make the case for peaceful coexistence rather than subjugation. I was ready to fudge my reports as needed to do that. I was for truly real shocked and disappointed by how different the planet and its inhabitants are from what we expected.

  “My report to the governors will be that for some indefinite time to come neither Ormelex nor Earth is ready to peacefully coexist with the other if the general populaces know the others exist and could be reached. I will not, however, argue against exploration of other places that we can reach with our new space travel technologies – once we perfect those.”

  The three producers turned and raised their weapons when the two doors of the room opened and Icetop and Yelpam entered through one while Molten and Biccup came in the other.

  “Distraction time is over,” Nerber said. “Place those weapons on the floor and step away from them or get hurt.”

  Her face a mask of hatred Feedle braced herself, then pulled the trigger on her rifle-like large weapon.

  At that she was thrown backwards halfway across the room by a kick from the weapon without any emission or projectile coming from it that was a threat to anyone else.

  Lacrat immediately put his weapon down and his hands up.

  Hasley was so stunned by what he had seen happen to Feedle that it took him a moment to react – by imitating Lacrat.

  Feedle struggled to her feet, cursing under her breath. The techs stood their ground but did not approach her.

  Feedle raised the weapon and aimed at Eroder in his chair. She grumbled something and fired.

  Nothing happened.

  She pulled the trigger again.

  Nothing happened.

  In fury and disgust she tried to throw the weapon at Eroder. It stuck to her hands.

  Then the muzzle jerked down and the weapon discharged a projectile – twice. One went through each of her feet. That hurt. And, try as she might, she still couldn’t release the weapon.

  Next, despite Feedle’s resistance, the muzzle moved smoothly upwards until it was aimed at her head.

  “Don’t fire it again, you arrogant fool,” Lacrat called. “Oh, you’ve pulled the trigger three times but it’s only fired twice so far. Too bad for you.”

  Feedle wanted to defy Nerber and deny him any satisfaction but she couldn’t move her arms, her hands, her fingers, or her feet. Now she couldn’t even shout out her wishes for bad things to happen to Nerber and everyone else on the ship, if not in the whole universe.

  “It’s safe now, Eroder,” Nerber said. “As captain it’s your call but I recommend that the techs take these three and put them in their separate quarters. I’ll make sure no one else can release them until the ship reaches Ormelex.”

  Eroder strode to Feedle where he found he could easily take the weapon from her hands. She foun
d that that didn’t free her to move though. Molten collected the other weapons from the floor and put all of them in a storage space for now.

  “Me, I’m willing to leave dealing with them to the governors,” Nerber said. “They have a lot of lies and cheating to answer for. My punishment of them will be to out-compete them and force them out of business. Gotta make some choices here.” The screen image disappeared.

  Hasley and Lacrat stared at Feedle, worried but also fascinated to see what would happen when, and if, she got back her mobility.

  Eroder had a whispered conference with the four techs before Biccup hurried from the room while Molten and Yelpam led Hasley and Lacrat out to take them to their quarters.

  Feedle could move her head even if she couldn’t walk or even talk. She glared defiantly at Eroder who ignored her while he checked the status of things on the console. Icetop came over to stand behind Eroder to also look for system troubles.

  Being ignored was infuriating for Feedle and nobody cared.

  At a signal tone, Biccup appeared on the view-screen from the transport room. He said, “She’s in the system’s grasp, Captain. When you’re ready.”

  Eroder swiveled around in his chair to face Feedle and said, “You get to choose, Feedle. You can walk to your quarters without causing trouble or Biccup will attempt to move you there using the transport system. We have only limited experience using it to move guys around inside the ship but I’m confident the system can disassemble you for transport. Whether it can reassemble you anywhere will be a test. If you don’t make it back maybe you’ll find and offer greetings to Zipper in the land of the disassembled. I’m not sure he’ll give you a friendly greeting but that’s part of the experiment only you will know about.”

  Feedle shook herself all over as she felt a tingle and found she could move. She started aggressively toward Eroder – then quickly faded from sight.

  Eroder and Icetop waited for news.

  Biccup looked up from the transport console and said, “She’s in her room. Eventually we’ll find out whether that did her any harm.”

  “But for now we have important things to worry about,” Eroder said. He pushed a button on the console and broadcast his alert through the ship. “Mitzelfinkeldork! Fellow travelers, this looks bad. All techs to control stations. Everybody else, grab something firmly fixed and hold tight. Nerber, we really, really need to talk-talk.”

  Nerber immediately appeared on the view-screen from inside the pod. He said, “I’m seeing what you’re seeing so I know it’s an emergency. In fact it’s what I been trying to outrun. Wowseyla has laid out a path around the problem areas and I’m reviewing those as fast as I can. The guys at A.D.U. just sent the signal to have us all smotheroodled – but I see that your techs cut the ship’s self-destruct unit out of the original chain of commands so that won’t happen the way they expect. But...”

  “I don’t like a but right there,” Eroder said.

  “With good reason. Their self-destruct signal now went where it was never intended to and that change may do us in slowly instead. The discer prumous who wrote that sub-routine - and I know who he is, a fidgemit at PHEW – should neprist oglimp vinx crupsmimp even if he was just following orders.”

  “It’s good to vent and all, Nerber, but can you fix it?”

  “Oh, I see, that’s what’s happening. Wintzerph dinky dork? But that I can deal with. The self-destruct activation signal started a command cascade in the uninvited zerpy. Fortunately that shares programming with Wowseyla so my zerpy can understand what’s happening inside theirs.”

  “Great, great, but can you fix it and fast?”

  “Wow, things are going to bad really fast aren’t they.”

  “Thank you for refocusing on that fact,” Eroder said.

  “Give me total control. Don’t block anything,” Nerber shouted.

  “Reluctantly we’re in your hands,” Eroder said.

  “Okay, that problem’s dealt with,” Nerber said.

  “What did you do?” Eroder asked.

  Biccup came into the communication and said, “Somehow he got that strange zerpy to release its hold and then he immediately used the transport system to eject it from the ship. That was definitely a pomidipser quidniffop. If we survive that is.”

  Icetop leaned over Eroder for a better look at a console monitor and said, “The ejected zerpy just stopped being intact. Probably due to its self-destruct unit. There’s not much left for the inhabitants to examine even if they saw that and come to search that area.”

  “It had to go because the changes forced on it made it impossible to permanently disable its self-destruct unit which was powerful enough to destroy the whole ship,” Nerber said. His voice made it clear he was busy entering code and pushing buttons as fast as he could go.

  “With that danger gone can we stop and repair the engines and the command programs before we enter the snaggiewarp, Nerber? We should have time to turn everything off and double-check the programs before we reboot. I’d feel a lot safer then,” Eroder said.

  “It’s not that simple,” Nerber said. “Check what I just sent you.”

  “That can’t be right,” Icetop said. “We shouldn’t be that close to the snaggiewarp already.”

  “It’s accurate,” Nerber said. “All those changes piled up together have us moving faster than we expected. In fact faster than we thought possible with these engines. But that’s because the default command programs were making the engines as inefficient as every other system. Now they’re exceeding their listed capacity – which was also deliberately misrepresented.”

  “Sorry, Nerber, but as captain of this ship I insist on taking command and making the decisions. I understand that you’ve been helping and I appreciate it but things are too far out of line now. We need to slow down and proceed with caution. I demand the return of full control. We have to be more certain we can withstand the strains of passing through the snaggiewarp.”

  “That’s what I’m working on. To make you grasp the reality I’m releasing partial controls to you. Everything you should need to try to slow, turn, or stop the ship,” Nerber said.

  “You’ve scared me with that,” Eroder admitted.

  “Splinkflert! We’re definitely too close and going too fast this time. There’s no way we can stop now. We’re being sucked in,” Icetop gasped.

  “What happens now?” Eroder asked, his fear evident.

  “I boot the changed command programs and we all hold tight. Captain, I’ve given you back the control so you can set off the ship’s self-destruct unit and all the personal ones if you decide that’s called for. You get to make the final decisions if I’ve made a big-big mistake about all this technical stuff.”

  The ship shook for several seconds. The lights went on and off, then came on and stayed on.

  “Whatsydoodle!” Biccup said.

  “Wimpledimples!” Icetop said, then let out a beechens.

  “Nerber, you get the vipsig mermin in my opinion,” Eroder said. “Things are stabilizing. System after system is falling back into the normal function range. You saved us!”

  “Now I’m giving you back control of everything except this pod. We’re too close to the snaggiewarp to do much except go for the ride but now you have at least the basic controls to get us through that safely. Then you techs can take all the time you want to review all the programs and decide what can be improved on and what should be cut out entirely. I expect that the governors will want a complete and detailed report. This is, after all, actually their hardware and they’ll want to consult with those who did that about the alterations they made in the control systems before it set off on this mission to make entertainments for the masses.”

  “You’re not coming out of the security pod now that it’s safe from all those dangers?” Eroder asked.

  “We have back full controls, Captain,” Icetop said.

  “I have work to do that I can do best in here. I also know too much about a lot of things and
guys to be trusting,” Nerber said. “I can’t even guarantee there are no deeply hidden traps in the control systems that might still mess everything around as someone’s final solution to a complex problem like having a group of guys know too much about a bunch of behind the scenes stuff. I’ve sent you all of Wowseyla’s analyses and suggested solutions. Get the guys busy going over them to see if there are potential problems to be ready for in case those things happen.”

  “Okay, but I’m confident that we have smooth going now. Well, you know what I mean. As smooth as it can be going through the rough and tumble of the snaggiewarp,” Eroder said.

  “Fampfuzzle! It doesn’t make sense that they’d program this to happen but it looks like they did,” Icetop said.

  The ship began to vibrate, then to wobble. The lights went out and stayed out.

  “This isn’t stupid, it’s deliberate sabotage,” Icetop said.

  “This does not look good,” Eroder said.

  “Stay tuned, folks,” Nerber said.

  Then there was silence.

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