Deja Vu

by Guerin Zand

  “The system is called the Vaj system. The planet doesn’t really have a name, well other than one of those Bree names you really hate. I guess you can name it whatever you want since it’s yours. It’s an abandoned Bree research facility. The whole system is being hidden by some rather sophisticated Bree technology, and the planet has its own automated defenses. If we hadn’t responded with a valid code, it would have tossed us out of the system to some random location in this local arm of the galaxy.”

  “So, what am I supposed to do with my own planet?”

  “Gees, Dad. A simple thank-you might be nice.”

  “Thanks. What do I need a planet for?”

  “The Rangers, Dad. We can use it as a base for Ranger operations and there is actually a lot of good land that could be used by the agriculture teams to grow Earth crops out here. This system is on the edge of the unaligned worlds, so it’s conveniently located. You know when it comes to real estate it’s all about location, location, location.”

  “Very funny, but if we start moving teams out here, especially agricultural teams, this place isn’t going to stay a secret for long.”

  “Would that be so bad? We could easily sell it as a Collective world, which it actually is, that has remained hidden, but now they decided to open it up as a colony for humans that have been working for them over the centuries. It’s not really a lie. You’ve got to admit, there are a lot of possibilities for us here.”

  “Sure, I’ll admit that, but tell me one thing. Why is it abandoned?”

  “I don’t know. Why do you insist on looking a gift horse in the mouth? All you have to do is go down there, register yourself with the systems at the main facility as the new owner, and it’s yours.”

  “Why do I have to go down there? Why don’t you go down and register yourself as the owner, Maria?”

  “Because, I entered your Bree access code when we were queried by the surface.”

  “I have a Bree access code?”

  “Well, of course you do, Dad. We all do.”

  “How come I didn't know that? I don’t even know what the code is, how did you?”

  “You’d know what it was if you bothered to look it up like I did, but you’d probably just forget it since you can’t seem to remember Bree designations.”

  “I can remember them, I just don’t want to. There’s a difference, you know?”

  “Whatever, Dad. Let’s go back to the party and tomorrow you can go down and take possession of your very own planet.”

  Maria seemed really happy about this gift. Hell, the whole crew seemed really happy about it, but for some reason I had a bad feeling. I was sure that Julie and Milly hadn’t decided to give me a planet out of the goodness of their hearts. There was some deeper bullshit going on here and I was sure I’d figure it out. That’s right, I’d figure it out, but probably only after it was too late. Whatever was going on, I thought I’d play along and not ruin the party. Julie had never punished me for Taes, so this might be her move. I never thought that woman would drop the issue until she got a chance to get even. Since then, I was constantly watching my step. Knowing all of that, I still was curious enough about this planet to ignore the warning buzzers going off in my head. At least my ship and crew would be close by if I got into any real trouble.

  The next morning, I met Maria down in the transport room. I was decked out in my basic fatigues, boots, 45, and go bag. This time I remembered to pack a good supply of toilet paper along with a change of clothes and a few MREs.

  Maria smiled and said, “Are you ready, Dad?”

  “As I’ll ever be. Tell me again, exactly what am I supposed to be doing down there?”

  “Once you get down on the surface you’ll be contacted, somehow. Then you just have to imprint your DNA onto the system’s command core, and that’s it. The planetary systems will respond to your commands. You can come right back up, or you can spend some time looking around. Just let us know when you want to return.”

  “Fine. Let’s get this over with.”

  Maria opened a portal and I stepped through. It looked like I was standing in the middle of a large spaceport. There was all sorts of equipment laying around and several large hangar-like buildings scattered about. I turned around to see a giant mechanical creature of some sort. It looked like some sort of robot. It had two arms and two legs, but not like a human or any other type of being I’ve ever seen. This thing was all business with these giant tri-claws for feet and hands. They looked like they could crush my head as easily as I could crush a grape. It had a head of sorts. It was an oval shaped object on the top of what I guessed were its neck and shoulders, but it had no eyes, nose, mouth, or anything else. It was just a smooth egg-like object with no expression. I assumed this was some sort of worker machine for handling cargo and maybe some other duties. The thing I called its head probably housed a sensor package or something, giving it the ability to see and hear, but in what ranges I couldn’t be sure. It didn’t seem to notice me or pay me any attention.

  “Take me to your leader?” That was the best I could come up with. Still, no reaction from this machine. I looked down at my 45 and decided I really needed a bigger gun if this guy decided to get nasty with me.

  I contacted the crew over our comm network. “Hey guys. There’s a really big honking robot of some sort here. It doesn’t look all that friendly. Maybe I should come back up to the ship.”

  “There’s nothing dangerous down there, Dad. I’m sure it’s just some utility drone.”

  “God, your father can be such a pussy sometimes.”

  “I heard that, Kelly!”

  “Sorry, Captain.”

  “Yea, I bet. So, what do I do? This robot doesn’t seem to be working, or whatever.”

  “Wait until your contacted, Dad.”

  “Ok.” A few minutes later, I noticed some movement on the horizon.“Hold on. There appears to be some sort of vehicle heading this way.”

  It was a space-alien looking mini-van thingy. Could the Bree be any more boring? The only thing missing was the “Baby on Board” sign in the window. As the vehicle drew closer it appeared that there were people in the vehicle.

  “Um, what’s going on here? I thought you said there were no people on this planet, Maria.”

  “The sensors are not reading any intelligent life forms, Captain. They appear to be some sort of cybernetic constructs.” Senri obviously thought I’d find that information somehow comforting.

  “Fucking androids, Senri?” Hopefully, my tone made it very clear to Senri that I didn’t find that information at all comforting. I could tell the rest of the crew thought this was all hilarious from the background laughter.

  “Well, androids is probably the correct term, Captain, but I can’t say if they’re actually capable of fucking. You’ll have to figure that one out on your own if you really want to know.”

  “Very funny, Senri.” For some reason the rest of the crew seemed to be enjoying this. You know that bad feeling I had about this? Well, it was becoming more obvious every second why I had that feeling.

  The mini-van thingy finally stopped a few feet away from myself and the doors opened. My worse fears came through as the occupants started to exit the vehicle. I screamed out. “FEMBOTS!”

  “Senri, open up a portal right now. We’re aborting this mission.”

  “You’re breaking up, Captain. Can you repeat that?”

  “Stop fucking around, Senri, and open a portal right now! There’s nothing wrong with the comms. I can hear every last one of you laughing.”

  “No can do, Captain. The rest of the crew has me at gunpoint and are threatening to shoot if I open a portal.”

  “Bullshit, Senri. No one has a gun to your head.”

  “Ok, but they’re giving me some really nasty looks. That counts, doesn’t it?”

  “Maria, open a portal right this second.” That’s when things went from bad to worse. “Oh no, no. It’s a fucking JULIE-BOT. Ok, very funny guys, but I’m serio
us. GET ME OUT OF HERE!”

  “Sorry, Dad. We have an errand to run on Klatznu. We’ll be back in a month or two to pick you up.”

  “This is mutiny. You’ll all pay dearly for this when I get off this planet, and I will get off this planet, even if I have to build a spaceship from the scrap in this spaceport.” The laughing onboard the Ryvius had reached the level of hysteria. Amongst all the laughter I could hear the small giggles of my youngest daughter. “Et tu, Gamma?”

  “Sorry, Papa. Happy birthday!”

  “Quit you’re whining, Dad. Milly thought you’d enjoy a short break on a planet inhabited by only fembots. She said you used to talk about your fantasies with her.”

  “Name me one movie, Maria, where fembots turned out to be a good thing for the hero, then I’ll calm down.”

  “All you have to do is give them a DNA sample and they’ll follow your commands.”

  “And just how am I supposed to do that?”

  “Please, Dad. You’ve given out more than a few DNA samples over the years. I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”

  I only had one more appeal I could make since most of the crew seemed to be in on the mutiny. “Prima, Scirla, are you two in on this as well?”

  Prima answered, “Yes. This is all your fault, you know? Maybe next time you’ll listen to Maria when she thinks something is important.”

  As the Julie-bot approached me, the idea of giving her a DNA sample made me throw up a little in my mouth. “I’ve decided on a name for this planet, daughter.”

  “What’s that, Dad?”

  “HELL!”

  Chapter 2

  Hell

  No one from the Ryvius responded to my last comment. The no-good traitors had left orbit I assumed, since I could no longer connect to the Ryvius’ command systems over my comm network. They probably decided to get out before I figured out how to override their commands and open a portal on my own. I would have been really pissed but the Julie-bot was now standing only a few feet in front of me. She started to raise her right hand. I instinctively ducked and covered my head with my arms in preparation of the inevitable smack-down to come. Flashbacks of Gitmo and my visit to Erandi flashed through my mind.

  I remained cowering with my hands raised protecting my head for what must have been a few minutes. After that time, having not felt the wrath of the Julie-bot, I slowly lowered my arms to see what was happening. The Julie-bot was just standing there with her right hand raised and her palm facing me as if she were expecting a high-five or something. I finally stood back up straight and looked around as if to make sure no one had seen my little display of cowardice. Then I acted like it never happened and I was totally in control. Still, the Julie-bot stood there in the same position, as if frozen in place, while the gaggle of fembots stood in formation behind her.

  “Take me to your leader?” I tried the universal greeting once again, but to no avail. Still, none of the fembots responded with even a single utterance. I scratched my head. I don’t know why we humans scratch our heads in these sort of perplexing situations. Maybe it’s just an ineffectual attempt to reach into our brains and rearrange things so the current situation might make some sense. Whatever the reason, it didn’t actually help. Having no clue what to do next, I fell back to responding to the Julie-bot’s hand signal in the only way I knew how. I quickly high-fived the raised hand and stepped back out of range quickly.

  The Julie-bot and her gaggle of friends all dropped to one knee simultaneously. They bowed their heads and said in unison, “Master, what is your command?”

  I guess the DNA from my hand was good enough, and I wasn’t going to have to do what I had considered to be the next obvious thing to try. Sure, I thought to myself, this is exactly how all those stories about genies usually started out, and it never ended well. That didn’t stop me from thinking of having the Julie-bot perform some act so vile that if I were to describe it here, it would prevent this book from ever being published. I instead decided to show some restraint and start them out with something simple.

  “Is there anything to drink on this planet, I mean, of the alcoholic variety?” Being too vague in one’s requests was always the downfall of those who the genies served.

  “No,” the Julie-bot responded.

  “Well, is there any sort of vegetation here that you can ferment and distill? You do know how to build a still and distill a proper beverage, don’t you?”

  “Yes, we can do that. What type of beverage would please you, Master?” The whole Master thing was starting to bother me but hearing that from the Julie-bot made me smile slightly.

  “How about a Kentucky Bourbon?”

  The Julie-bot raised her right hand again and asked, “Please place your palm on mine so I may access your memories for references to this beverage you call Kentucky Bourbon.”

  They have built-in palm readers, I thought? I guess you could build them into a fembot and they’d work. These readers somehow were able to read one’s mind, excuse me, according to the aliens, it didn’t actually read your mind, just your memories. I still say that’s bullshit, but it works whether I understand it or not. The readers I was used to were just flat panels you placed your palm on for a second to establish the connection. It had taken me several years to figure out you didn’t have to keep your palm on the reader until you finished whatever task you were attempting. Since it used the physical contact to initiate the link to your mind, I wondered if I could just touch a fembot anywhere and get the same results. That could be a problem, so I made a mental note to myself to be careful.

  As I placed my hand on hers, the Julie-bot blinked her eyes a few times and said, “As you command, Master.”

  “Well then ladies, chop-chop. You don’t want to keep me waiting now, do you?”

  “If you will come with us, Master. We will take you to your residence and get started preparing your beverage.” The Julie-bot motioned me towards the mini-van.

  I followed their lead, and as I walked towards the van I said, “You can drop the Master crap. My name is Guerin.”

  “Yes, Guerin.” The entire gaggle responded in unison.

  I hopped into the vehicle with the other fembots, and the Julie-bot, obviously the lead fembot if such a ranking existed. Then she drove us to a building in the north-west corner of what I was calling the spaceport.

  Now some of you might be curious as to how one determines what is north or south. East and west are pretty simple to figure out and I’ll leave that little proof to the readers. To determine the North pole, or as astronomers like to call it, the positive pole, you use what is called the right-hand rule. Curl the fingers of your right hand in the direction of the planet’s rotation. With your thumb perpendicular to your fingers, the direction your thumb is pointing is North. There is actually another definition of North and South for planets in Earth’s solar system based on what is called the invariable plane, a real oxymoron if you ask me, of our solar system. This definition is so Earth-centric it can only be seen as blatant racism and so all the rest of the intelligent worlds simply ignore it.

  This right-hand rule only works if you happen to have a typical human hand. If you are some sort of strange alien species, this might not apply. You either have to ask a human-type species where North is or remain clueless! These disabled alien races were the ones responsible for the majority of accidents in space. Many of them even found it difficult to achieve space flight due to this deficiency in their physical attributes.

  These oddball aliens were a lot like the Brits, and a few other backward countries influenced by them, that somehow thought that driving on the right side of the road meant the left side. The only member of the Commonwealth that recognized this stupidity, it seems, was Canada. But I think that was mainly due to the French Canadians and the shitton of nuclear weapons in the U.S.A. At one point, before the U.S. had nuclear weapons, Canadians actually used both systems depending on where you were in Canada. I suspect, after several thousand deaths, it became obvious
they needed to decide on one way or the other for the whole nation.

  Anyways, after a short drive, we arrived at the main building in the complex. The drive was a rather boring one since the only time any of the fembots spoke was when I asked a question. It was obvious that the fembots were of a Bree design. The lack of witty conversation, and their inability to offer any sort of answer other than a very precise answer to the question asked, was evidence of their origins. In short, they appeared to be programmed to be as arrogant as their makers. Although they were all very attractive, I mean, for machines that is, the only thing that came to mind when I pondered having sex with one was “dead fish”. It wasn’t like I was planning on having sex with any of these walking, talking vacuum cleaners, especially not the Julie-bot. I was just trying to keep my mind off of which crew member I was going to take my anger out on first when I got my hands on them. I was definitely going to have to find a hobby or something to keep my mind busy during my stay on Hell.

  As Hell goes, this place wasn’t actually that bad. There was ice and ice water available. The temperature of the planet reminded me a bit of Florida. This got me to thinking. A lot of planets I visited seemed to be fairly comfortable, and a lot of them did remind me of Florida. I was wondering if one of the modifications the Collective made to me physically was to add some sort of internal nanobot controled HVAC system that made most climates seem so right to me. There were some worlds that were just plain fucking cold if you asked me, and I tried to stay away from places like that. The ones that were too hot generally didn’t have a breathable atmosphere. For the most part, they were only good for heaving small meteors and comets at with the gravitational fields we could generate with the Ryvius’ engines. We were still working on the rules for galactic bocce ball. Other than deciding we should restrict the boundaries to a single solar system at a time, we hadn’t been able to come to agreement on the majority of the rules as of that time.