Blackjack Villain

by Ben Bequer

  Cool Hand foraged for us and found a tree with a plant much similar to an eggplant, except whitish and the core had a sizeable seed. Mr. Haha ran an analysis of the vegetable and found it suitable for consumption, and hungry as we were, we devoured the succulent meat. Even Zundergrub picked at one, eating the whole thing by the time he fell asleep.

  Now that we had settled for some rest, I realized how cold it was. Haha read off the temperature at 45 degrees, and we made a bonfire. Cool Hand could use his temporal powers to avert the cold, Mr. Haha was immune to it, and the doctor and I had coats, but Apogee had no such defenses and a tight, revealing spandex suit to boot. She huddled, clutching her legs and staying closer to the small fire than was probably safe.

  I stood and walked to her, taking off my coat, but she scoffed, “I’m fine.”

  “No you’re not,” I told her. She took the dirty coat and smelled it, recoiling from the odor.

  “I think I’d rather freeze to death,” she said distastefully unraveling the bundle I handed her. The stink of it wafted in her direction. “Oh my God, you need a bath.”

  “That’s good old man smell,” I laughed and returned back to my seat, content that she was wrapping the coat around herself.

  “I think I know a way out of here,” Haha said suddenly, drawing his katana from the scabbard and a whetstone from his kimono. He sharpened his weapon as he continued; “we will re-build the device that brought us here.”

  I laughed.

  “You think you can build it, Haha?” Cool Hand asked, hopeful and grasping at anything.

  “No, I’m offline,” the robot said, “I don’t have access to my main core of information and wouldn’t have the repository of information on Quantum Physics and Applied Science required to build it.”

  “I thought you said you knew a way out of here, Haha,” Zundergrub said.

  “I do,” Haha said pointing at me.

  I laughed again.

  “Yeah,” Cool said, now more inspired. “B can get us out of here.”

  “You two are crazy.”

  “I’m not programmed for insanity,” Haha shot back, “and Cool Hand Luke is relatively stable at the moment.”

  “Ok, so tell me how? How do I make it? I mean, I got a look at the thing for a couple of minutes. No way, man. No way in hell.”

  “Sure you can.”

  “Assume I can replicate a design by two of the finest minds in human history. Say I could do it from memory, after seeing the machine like a minute...what would I build it with, Cool? We don’t have the materials.”

  Cool looked at Haha, “what about that?”

  “We have all we need here, Blackjack.” Mr. Haha dug his hand into the sand and picked up a handful of dirt, releasing it into the air dramatically as he continued, “I have already identified copper, iron, manganese, tin, carbon, and a half dozen other basic components we might need.”

  I knew where Haha’s robotic brain was headed, but the task was beyond herculean. He meant to use the naturally occurring materials, such as those he had already found, as the building blocks for the device. His idea was to make a forge and smelt the metallic items we needed and blow glass for the tubes by finding silica, calcium oxide, magnesium oxide and aluminum oxide. It would take time to find all the minerals we needed, and build a forge and smelter, along with a good anvil and set of tools. But there was no guarantee we would find everything we needed naturally occurring in the wild and this place had already proven to be dangerous and unpredictable.

  But that wasn’t the problem. Materials could be replaced with different minerals, as long as it served the same function, or was as conductive in the case of cabling. The problem was making a machine I had only looked at for a very short and hadn’t fully understood. It wasn’t enough to make a physical replicate of the machine; you had to emulate the function.

  I told Haha all of this, but the rabbit didn’t relent.

  “This machine might take time to build, but if Tesla could do it, and if Dr. Retcon could modify it, then you can re-construct it, Blackjack.”

  I looked over at Apogee, who had popped her head up and was evidently listening in. Our eyes met in the firelight. She was hopeful that I could get us out of our predicament, a sentiment shared by Cool and even Zundergrub.

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Haha, but this isn’t as simple as replicating a machine. I don’t know its full function, or its complete workings. I never read much about Tesla before, so I don’t even know how he thought in order to make the necessary assumptions. I hate to tell you ‘no’, but-”

  Haha held his hand up, stopping me mid-sentence and stood, digging into the folds of his battered kimono. He withdrew the Tesla book we had stolen from Shivvers and tossed it at me. I caught it out of the air and held it in my hands for the first time since Influx had died, noticing her blood staining the cover.

  “Read that, then,” Haha said will full dramatic flair. “I will continue assembling the raw materials, Blackjack. Tell me what you need, and I will find it for you.”

  Haha walked off, away from the camp and began his patrol. We had agreed prior that he would take watch while we rested. I held the book gently, touching Influx’s dried blood on the leather cover. It was flaking already, and soon would leave no evidence, save for small discolorations where the droplets had landed.

  “Sweet,” Cool Hand announced. “We’re getting outta here!” He rolled on his side and went to sleep.

  I gazed over at Apogee, but she dug her head back into her knees.

  As I flipped the pages of the Tesla notebook, I felt a shiver run through me and all I could think of was my dirty overcoat wrapped around her back.

  * * *

  A shadow rolled over me, waking me. I feared it might be another of those manta ray monsters, and clenched, readying for combat but it was Apogee standing over me.

  “Easy,” she said.

  I shook the cobwebs out of my head and saw that the others were already up and moving out.

  “By the way,” Apogee added helping me to my feet, “you snore like the world is going to end.”

  She strolled off after, still wearing my overcoat, the back trailing in the sand.

  I don’t know how long we slept, but I felt worse now than I did before. My muscles and tendons were taut and overstretched, and my bones felt sore and pulverized. It was the mass effect of a week’s worth of pounding with no appreciable rest. Apogee saw my difficulty and slowed her pace, walking beside me as I thumbed through Tesla’s notebook.

  The man wrote almost in a stream of consciousness way, with ideas overlapping ideas, and no consistency. I’m not sure the man thought in order, and what didn’t help was that this was only the second book, and I couldn’t tell out of how many volumes. I guess a great mind like his couldn’t be contained within the boundaries of time. I closed the book and tried to jog ahead, but my muscles complained, and I settled on being a few dozen paces behind our leaders.

  We trekked through rocky canyons, amongst which lay ancient wall carvings that Haha made a point to photograph. Afterwards, we passed under the shadow of a snow-peaked mountainous formation and traversed around flat topped tepuis and then through a wide sandy plain with reflective, glass-like soil that was reminiscent of polished quartz pounded to a fine dust. Later we came to a gravel floodplain left over by a long ago extinct glacial river with fluvial terraces flanking each side, denoting a channel downcut towards the lower elevation. Eventually, we found a live streamlet, fed by glaciers high on the near mountains and waded through rolling brooks that meandered across our way that fed the lowland lake. The cold water was purplish and viscous, and after testing it, Haha reported it to be brackish and undrinkable. Finally we crossed a sandy desert plain with high dunes and low plateaus before reaching a broad valley with wide grasslands that sprawled ahead as far as we could see, towards a lake from which a river flowed.

  In the far distance rose a low flat-topped mountain, with a village at its peak. The gras
sland was replete with creatures of all types, and winged beasts (thankfully much smaller than the monster that tried to kill me) flew overhead, part of what was a complete ecosystem ripped from its originating planet. A herd of antelope-like creatures scattered from us, and took flight, with some throat fins, that looked more like gills than structures used for flight. They were plump and fat, from steady grazing, unperturbed by predators, and I wished I still had my bow to have a bit of meat to go with our eggplant vegetables we had eaten prior.

  We spent the rest of the morning walking quietly, until we came closer to the lake and a mounted humanoid approached. The creature he rode was a strange reptilian, much like a purple and black skink, with most of its forward locomotion coming from a bouncing action between its belly and thick tail. The mount’s tiny legs merely steadied its lateral motion.

  Riding atop the beast was a huge, formidable humanoid man, though his features were concealed by fearsome chitinous armor and helm. A long black cape flapped behind him, as did a banner at the tip of his long lance. Even though he was quite a distance from us, you could tell he was a big man, nine perhaps ten feet tall.

  He howled a challenge and charged us.

  “Think we found the local authorities,” Mr. Haha said, drawing his katana.

  “Cops are shit everywhere,” Cool Hand said, ready with his bat.

  The rider brought his mount to a stop about fifty meters away, then pulled hard on his reins, making the animal rear up at the midsection, towering over us. He threw his lance down, stabbing the long wooden spike into the dirt. He then shouted something in an unintelligible language and rode off, leaving his banner waving in the wind.

  “Scary dude,” Cool said.

  “We’re pretty scary too,” I said, moving forward and kicking the lance over.

  * * *

  It took us a few hours to cross the wide plains and reach the lake. By then, the rider had returned with a dozen friends that shadowed our every move.

  They split into two groups, with the larger group watched us from a high ridge. The smaller bunch rode different beasts, some sort of colorful ostrich-looking birds that lacked the long neck and head of their earth-bound counterparts. They rode close behind us, confident that their fast mounts could get them out of trouble if we attacked.

  We expected them to strike once we got to the water, each group from a different side, with the water behind us barring our escape, but they were content to watch us. After a few minutes of standing off against them, and Cool Hand taunting them with a pretty hilarious chicken dance, we decided to get water and be done with it.

  Apogee and I hit the water first. She knelt at the edge of the riverbed and sipped water from her cupped hands, while I dove in, slamming sideways into the rocky shallows of the not so deep water with a loud thud.

  “Damn!” I said coming up with an aching shoulder, covered in mud and bits of rock.

  “Dummy,” she laughed.

  “CANNONBALL!” Cool Hand shouted, jumping high in the air and coming directly for me.

  “It’s not deep!” I yelled, and he stopped in midair, his temporal powers keeping him stuck in the same position as if halted in space.

  “Huh?”

  “It’s very shallow,” I added, standing up to show him the water only came to my waist.

  “That was almost ugly,” Cool said, continuing forward slowly until he was high enough to put his feet down into the water and avert an injury. “Thanks for the save, dog.”

  Cool lowered himself into the water and swam off on his back.

  “This is the life.” He spit a mouthful of water into the air in a thin stream so that it landed back on him like rain. “Haha’s right, this stuff tastes like shit.”

  I scrubbed the gunk out of my hair and face then tossed myself on the ground next to Apogee.

  “You really think you can get us out of here?” she asked after a few moments.

  “Bet you like me now, huh?”

  “It’s your fault we’re here,” she snapped.

  I sat up and scratched my short-cropped head.

  “Retcon sent us to steal the gem and Tesla’s book. Then he sent us to see the alien first hand and to the machine on the moon base so we could be transported here. He wanted us to see all of this.”

  “I still blame you.”

  I bowed at the waist from the lying position, “you’re welcome.” Leaning back, I came to rest on my elbows. A flock of strange, multi-winged birds flew overhead, oblivious to us.

  “I think the old man wanted us to see something here. That’s why he sent us to Nostromo’s moon base. He knew I’d see the machine and I’d figure out the whole gem thing.”

  “See what?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “Maybe it’s on that thing.” I pointed to the tower floating above shattered world.

  “Maybe there’s another machine hidden somewhere.”

  “I doubt that. I think Haha’s right. I’m the way back, regardless of how impossible that machine is to replicate.”

  “So we’re counting on some guy who failed out of college to help us back to our dimension, or time, or whatever,” she joked, laughing softly.

  “You’d be surprised what you’re capable of when you have a gun to your head.”

  “I guess. What’s so hard about that machine anyway?” she wondered, inching closer to me.

  “It’s all really hard to describe,” I started.

  “I love how guys make everything so complicated,” she grumbled.

  “It is.”

  “Yeah,” she said, “but men make it seem like we women can’t be bothered to understand. Unlike some people here, I actually got my degree.”

  I leaned closer to her. “Really, in what?”

  “Doctorate in Western History.”

  “I don’t see you as a historian,” I said, almost absentmindedly but instantly wished I hadn’t said anything when I saw her face turn.

  “Well screw you very much,” she spat. “I love history, especially the parts where men ruin everything.”

  I laughed, “Lot of that going around.”

  “We’d have a chance at being truly civilized, if not for you ignorant, penis-envying lot of useless misogynists.”

  “So much anger at men,” I started. “Remember that this man here’s your ticket back to civilization. Oh, and I think penis-envy is a mental condition that afflicts women not men.”

  “No it isn’t.”

  I nodded, “it’s from Freud, if I’m not mistaken. Penis envy is something that happens to girls when they’re growing up and realize they don’t have penises. What I think you’re referring to is ‘small-penis syndrome’ which is a whole different thing. I might not have a college degree, but at least I paid attention in Psych classes.”

  I leaned toward her, a sheepish grin on my face. She pushed me back by my face, playfully.

  “Whatever. You know what I mean.”

  “I do,” I said chuckling. “I’m giving you a hard time.”

  “So about the machine...” she hinted, losing her patience with me.

  “I’m still reading the book, trying to figure out how to build it.”

  “We’re in good hands,” she said sarcastically, but smiling.

  Cool swam over to us, interested in the conversation.

  “What are you guys talking about?” Cool wondered as he swam close by. Only his head and back partially visible above the water.

  “Blackjack has small penis syndrome,” she quipped.

  “What?”

  “Yo, if you got a problem there, B. I know a doc that’ll fix you right up. Stick this thing into your Twinkie, and you can just-”

  “Twinkie?” Apogee chuckled.

  “Yeah, I’m not going to call it by its name. Not going to use that language in front of a lady,” he replied bashfully.

  “Both of you can kiss my Twinkie,” I said.

  “B, you seriously want a dude to kiss your junk? That’s fucked up,” he said an
d swam off deeper into the water, genuinely satisfied with his joke.

  We sat silent for a few minutes, feeling the breeze over the water. She was slightly behind me, so after a while I forgot about her, enjoying the beautiful panorama.

  Small fishing boats traversed the lake nearer to the other side, where a village lay, a few huts and a long wooden dock. The only thing marring the idyllic landscape were the riders watching us from their vantage point.

  The machine was all everyone talked about, and Haha was well underway collecting the materials required to build it. The only one not hassling me about it was Zundergrub, but then again, he was probably the only one of us who didn’t want to return home. He was truly taken with the place, and I had even overheard him talking to Haha about how pristine this world was as we marched earlier.

  I closed my eyes and saw the Tesla/Retcon device, trying to take it apart in my head. I had gotten a better look than I dared admit to the guys, and I was pretty sure I could replicate the hardware for the most part, but how would make it work? It wasn’t as easy as they were making it sound. If you listened to Cool Hand go on about it, the whole thing was arbitrary. You had to use a pair of Tesla coils as a teleportation device.

  But I knew it wasn’t that easy.

  The gem played some role that I didn’t understand, with the whole cradle the focal point of the device. If I could figure out how it related to the rest of the unit, then I could make it work.

  Cool Hand knocked me out of my thoughts, splashing over with a sudden look of concern.

  “Yo, B,” he started. “You sure nothing happened, cause I can tell this chick likes you.”

  “Cool, she’s sitting right there.”

  Apogee waved to him.

  “Yeah but she’s not going to remember so it’s cool. Like, let me ask you; Would you?”

  “Would I what?” I asked knowing full well what he was implying.

  “Tap that ass, humplestilskin, skeet skeet. What the fuck do you think I’m talking about?” he said.