So essentially, in a hypothetical situation where I was being torn limb from limb by a slobbering pack of Mud Lizards, Oiyou’s prime concern would not necessarily be for my limbs. This worried me a little and I shared this worry with Joosthava. I explained that I had run several mission simulations where we met potentially fatal or destructive parameters. In 3 out of 5 simulations the ship had been completely destroyed and we had been killed. In the other 2 simulations Oiyou had saved the ship but used such extreme measures to do so, that the ship’s environment ceased to support human life. So we perished there as well. All in all, our chances of surviving a tough situation, if we relied on Oiyou for a response, did not seem very high.
I looked across at Joosthava and said “I don’t have a lot of faith in this new robot cat that HQ have provided. Quite apart from the fact that it talks like an elevator avatar and walks like it has an aerial shoved up its rear end, I don’t think its purpose is the same as Cat’s was.”
“Hmmm,” she said, “You have to bear in mind that Mr. Cat was special. He had that extra something that made him more ‘being’ than machine. He had Azz-Lex DNA. This robot has standard domestic cat DNA solely for the purpose of helping its e-BIO codec deliver appropriate ‘cat like’ looks and characteristics. It is essentially devoid of all personality.”
I had no idea what an e-BIO codec was but I nodded my head in that well practiced sage-like manner that I had used so frequently with Cat and said, “You’re telling me.”
“Yes,” responded Joosthava, “I know I am telling you. What’s your point?”
Oh Lord, I thought to myself, I could see it was going to be as difficult to cover up my total lack of any knowledge with Joosthava as it had been with Cat. This was definitely going to be hard work so I quickly added “My Dear, I was just trying to emphasise the point that without any character, without the capability to think beyond ‘machine’, as Cat could, Oiyou might not be our best bet in a crisis. He might be able to calculate a course to get us from A to B but I doubt he could work out the best thing to do when some interfering third party, like the Mud Lizards, started to introduce other letters between A and B.”
Whilst I was realising just exactly how stupid that last bit actually sounded, as even I knew there were no letters between A and B, Joosthava said “Wise words indeed.”
This made me think that, having clearly failed as yet to grasp the depth of my cluelessness, she obviously was interpreting any old rubbish that came out of my mouth as ‘deeply meaningful’. Quite lucky I thought as I stood up, shook my head slowly from side to side, as I had seen many a hero do in blockbuster aircasts, and said “We need decisive action if we are to succeed.”
I thought that sounded pretty good and was about to sit down and shut up because I hadn’t the faintest idea what decision to take, when Joosthava leapt up, making me jump somewhat. “You are right,” she exclaimed. “we must take decisive steps immediately.”
“Oh Centauri,” I thought, what now?
Oh heck, I’m in charge?
Joosthava moved swiftly across the flight deck and said, “It's clear to me that we cannot succeed with this robot even vaguely in charge. You Inspector, you must take over now.”
With that, she reached under Oiyou’s body and in an instant its eyes dulled and it became completely immobile. She then picked up the robot with both hands around its middle and deposited it on a chair to the side of the navigator’s console.
She looked back across at me, smiled broadly, and said, “Well, over to you then.”
I stared very blankly at her and said, “What do you mean, over to me?”
She smiled some more as she said, “You're now in sole charge. Please take over navigation and do whatever it is you normally do.”
This was very worrying as of course normally I didn't do anything, except maybe buy stuff on Cadabra Universe. Cat used to do everything. Nonetheless, I slowly edged my way over to the navigator’s console, wondering what on earth I would find. I sat down and to my relief saw on the flat screen beneath me a message indicating that the course to Messier 31 had been set.
“Well, not much for me to do now as the course has been set,” I said knowingly. Then I asked, “How exactly did you disable that talking waste bin?”
“Oh, that was simple,” she said, “All of these animal like robot AIs have a shutdown/reset switch on their tummies.”
“Really,” I said, looking quite surprised. “Do you mean that Cat had one of those? He never said. All those years I used to boot him in his rear end to reset his operating system and you’re telling I could have done that with a simple built-in switch?”
“Yes,” she replied. “Although G-soft tend not to like on/off switches, government authorities insisted these be fitted as standard on all AIs,” said Joosthava.
Hmm, I thought, Lucky that Cat hadn’t told me. Imagine all the fun I’d have missed without a legitimate reason to kick him!!
I need a plan
“Ok,” said Joosthava, “”What’s the plan now we’re on our way and rid of the pesky Mr. Cat replacement?”
I narrowed my eyes dramatically as I looked in her direction and basically babbled, “Yes. Plan. Good. Still not quite fully formed. Got a good framework. Almost there. Just ironing out the final details in my mind.”
It was unlikely I thought that she would realise that I hadn’t the faintest idea what to do when we got there. Then I had a brainwave and I said, “Tell me Joosthava, just out of interest of course, what do you think we should do once we get to Messier 31?”
She looked a little quizzical and then said, “I am not entirely sure what we can do. I think the combination of you and Mr. Cat would be needed to work out the best plan of action. After all it is likely that the situation at Messier 31 will be very unpredictable and, I know from what Mr. Cat told me, that you and he were terrific as a team when dealing with the unpredictable.”
I could feel my brow furrow once again as I thought to myself, yes I guess what she said was true to some extent. Though I did suspect the unpredictability Cat was referring to was all mainly about me never knowing what life threatening circumstances I was going to face next. And that happened all too often because he would not tell me everything he knew before it was too late. Of course I didn’t say this to Joosthava, instead pointing out that unfortunately Cat was no longer with us.
At that Joosthava gave another of her multi-blue toothed wide flashing smiles and said, “That’s why I know you are thinking that our plan must be not about what we do when we get to Messier 31, but rather that we must first get Mr. Cat back and then work out what to do at Messier 31.”
Huh!!
I stared rather disbelievingly at her thinking ‘Oh Lord, she must have space sickness or something’. Or, I wondered, maybe she is just a looney after all. I mean there had been other signs. How can someone with blue teeth, matching blue hair that can be as soft as snow one minute and as hard as a storm trooper’s knee protector next, and who also had a really annoying habit of disappearing into thin air, possibly be normal?
I couldn’t think what else to say other than “Yes, it would be great to be able to get Cat back,” to which she instantly responded,
“Ok, I’m up for trying to do that if you are. I know I can’t do it on my own as although I can move in time, when I move I am powerless to alter anything physically. Due to the need for me to use all of my mental strength to maintain the time vault, it is difficult for me to make anything different happen. I can observe usually but no more. That’s why I have been working so hard in recent years on developing my skills, where possible without mined time packets, so that I can move objects or others with me when I vault. I believe that I now have the relationship needed with your mind to vault with you so that we can try to move together back to your lightship just after take-off and before the explosion. I know with certainty that this is what you have been thinking too.”
I wanted to say I hadn’t been thinking anything of the sort,
but, in order to preserve the pretence of being in some sort of leadership position on this mission, I limply said, “Yes, absolutely. What you say sounds good and just what I was thinking.”
As I ended my response, Joosthava added,
“Then you can defuse the bomb.”
I now definitely, really, really, really wanted to say that I hadn’t been thinking anything of that sort and that the notion of me defusing a bomb wasn’t at all a wise one. Whilst trying very hard not to start to shake with fear, I went through a range of questions on the pretext of wanting to find an option that would not place her in more danger than was necessary, not to mention me being placed in a situation where waterproof underpants would be an ‘essential’ on the mission equipment list. However, much to my horror she deflected each and every suggestion.
No, we could apparently not time vault to before the lightship took off and get Cat to defuse the bomb before take-off. She was fairly sure, from what she had seen when she was reconnoitering, that the bomb had been planted by the Mud Lizards after the lightship had left the ground. No, she could not time vault to the lightship just after take-off without me to tell Cat to defuse the bomb, because she needed my presence and apparently vacant mind, to control the vault. And anyway, she added, Cat would probably be too busy with essential post take off manoeuvres to concentrate on defusing a bomb. When I suggested that perhaps she could just tell him the day before not to go she looked quite annoyed and said very sternly that I was really missing the point about time travel. Little did she know I was missing the point on a lot more than that! My final plea also failed, with her firmly telling me that ‘no’, she didn’t have any friends or relatives with vacant minds who might like to time vault with her instead of me.
So, I think I’d exhausted all options and was now faced with two possibilities. I either went along with this positively lunatic plan or I finally openly exposed myself to Joosthava as the spineless, faint-hearted, yellow bellied chicken scaredy-cat I knew it was probably very definitely sensible to be in this situation. Sensible, because basically I was inept at anything that wasn’t an aircast game or a pointless gadget.
For whatever reason or reasons, once again I found I could not expose my true self, so simply said “Can you give me 15 minutes to swot up on bomb de-fusions?”
With that Joosthava began her preparations to vault and I rushed off to the toilet.
Chapter 6 - Messy at Messier 31
Managing without Cat
I emerged from the toilet significantly lighter but absolutely no wiser with respect to how to defuse a bomb. As far as I could tell from the help pages on the Cadabra help airsite there were around 37 different types of fusion bomb alone. And apparently, to defuse one you needed to have at least 3 degrees in sub-atomic physics, professional accreditation from the Trans-Planetary Association of Fusion Bomb Defusers and bladder muscles strong enough to lift a small hovercar. Since I had none of these I shot back off to the toilet for a re-think. I re-emerged minutes later with a brainwave. You see, I knew I could have them!
I walked over to Joosthava and said, “Assuming you can get us to where that bomb is I don’t think defusing is going to work. Our best bet is get it off the lightship, then ‘whack’ the lightship into hyper-LightDrive and let the bomb blow up harmlessly in space well away from us. What do you think?”
“Sounds good,” said Joosthava, “And sensible. Do you know how to get something off a lightship when it’s in space?”
“Well I think you can of course go through the rigmarole of chucking it out through an airlock. Seen that in tons of airbuster alien blockbusters, but I figure that could take too long. So, I propose to use Cat’s portable eMDaDD. I know he took it on board with him. Now, are you sure you can get us on to my lightship?”
“No,” said Joosthava, “No, not at all.”
Oh crumbs I thought and wondered if I had time to visit the toilet again. However, all thoughts of toilet vanished from my mind as suddenly, Joosthava’s hair started to wrap around my body and harden, as she drew close. Oh Centauri, I thought, we are about to vault, I do hope I don’t vomit again.
Joosthava’s face was now very close to mine and she said “I now need to concentrate. You can help by thinking of Mr. Cat, visualising him on the bridge of the lightship at the navigator’s console. And please, may I ask something of you whilst you are visualising him?”
“Yes, what?” I asked.
“Please try not to vomit,” replied Joosthava.
Another time vault
I wondered for a moment whether she was being slightly sarcastic. I mean thinking of Cat ruling the roost of a lightship had in the past made me feel somewhat sick, but then I remembered what had happened the last time I had experienced a time vault with her. Clearly she didn’t want to be covered in that again and neither did I. I focussed my mind on Cat doing his stuff at the navigation console. At the same time I tried my best to shut out all thoughts of the sensations I had experienced when Joosthava had vaulted me off the lightship previously, before it exploded.
Then it started. Joosthava had said nothing and in fact it seemed like she was in some sort of comatose trance-like state. Everything around me that I could still see, apart from her face, started to blur. Very soon after I could no longer feel my legs. Then my stomach disappeared, rapidly followed by my chest, nose, ears, eyes, and, last of all my teeth. For a moment I was just a brain with teeth before feeling as though I had been sucked into a small hole that went nowhere. Squashed inside this hole, I then expanded back out, very slowly at first and then at breakneck speed. Or at least that’s how it felt before my whole body juddered in a series of accelerations and emergency stops. Now, if any one human knows how not to vomit during an experience like that, no matter how hard they concentrate not to, I’d like to know the secret. However, somehow I seemed to have managed it. As I became aware of my stomach being reconnected to my mouth, I thankfully got no taste or smell of my stomach contents. Phew, lucky me and lucky Joosthava.
Where am I?
Although I was fairly sure that we had materialised and completed our time vault, I had no real sense of where I was. It was difficult of course because I had reformed, as one might expect, still wrapped up in Joosthava’s hair with her face very close to mine. In fact, this time around it was actually resting on mine, sort of forehead to forehead. Joosthava seemed to me to be unconscious.
It was all a bit strange, as I felt no dead weight on me but I couldn’t move much, swathed as I was in hardened blue hair. Under my middle back I could feel something hard digging in to my body which was quite uncomfortable and added to my desire to be able to get up. I couldn’t even move my head much and found myself straining my eyeballs mercilessly to try to get a look down my body and hers. I could just about see one of my hands and wiggle it a bit and then found that actually I could move my index finger quite a lot. I dug it hard into Joosthava’s midriff to try to elicit a sign of life, but she remained pretty much as stiff as a board.
I then tried blowing on her face as best I could to try to waken her but stopped, as I realised that each puff was spraying her face with what I thought was my spit. For whatever reason I seemed to be increasingly salivating. Strange I thought as surely, normally, when one was scared didn’t one’s salivary glands tend to dry up? Whilst I was thinking this, it became clear that it wasn’t my spit I was blowing at her. My face was getting increasingly wet generally from somewhere and as I blew I was blowing thick droplets of this into her face. I then realised I needed to continue to blow urgently again, as this fluid, whatever it was, was starting to flow rather too freely into my mouth for my liking.
Waking up Joosthava
I dug my fingers into Joosthava’s midriff again and this time got a response. “Will you stop trying to tickle me,” she said.
“I am not trying to tickle you,” I replied in my best exasperated tone, “I thought you were dead. And I really want to get unwrapped from your hair because I’m not that comfor
table hardly being able to move generally, and especially when something seems to be trying to drown me.” I spluttered those last few words out as more fluid got between my lips from somewhere.
“Things have not gone totally to plan,” said Joosthava.
“Really,” I said, “Oh my, what’s gone wrong? Don’t tell me I’m trapped. I mean if I am trapped fine, but just don’t tell me please.”
“Ok, I won’t,” she said.
“Well, am I trapped or what?” I asked.
“You just told me not to tell you. But if it helps, you’re not trapped. You’re just safer where you are until I work out what to do next. You see you, well we, are laying on top of a Mud Lizard.”
She said that so calmly she might have been telling me what the time was. Ordinarily I would have freaked out at the words ‘Mud Lizard’ but this time I steeled myself. I took as deep a breath as I could, given that I was drowning, and then really freaked out. I started to hyperventilate which was quite tricky given that my mouth was filling up with liquid. On top of this my general immobility made making ‘hyperventilating type’ chest movements very difficult indeed. In the end I contented myself with a rather blood curdling, ‘gurgly’ scream, which really didn’t do me much good but was better than nothing.
As my scream ended Joosthava said, “I think your personal attack alarm just went off. Are you able to turn it off permanently, it’s quite distracting.”
Quite distracting. Quite distracting, I thought. Did she just say my personal attack alarm was quite distracting? Yes she did. Not that I really cared at this point but she clearly did not seem to get the fact that I had just emitted a high pitched scream borne out of total fear.
The Zygote Crystal Page 10