Static Mayhem

by Edward Aubry

  Feeling the transport slowing to a halt, he got up to see what was happening. Jeannette was driving. Glimmer was sitting on the dash.

  "What's up?" he asked them.

  "We're here, apparently," said Jeannette.

  Harrison blinked. "Really? That kind of crept up on me." He could feel his heart starting to accelerate. They were about to set out for distant shores. He looked out the windshield. All he could see were water and trees. He frowned. "Where is it?"

  Glimmer pointed. "That's it over there. It's a bit of a hike yet, but you should at least be able to see the top of it."

  Harrison stared where she was pointing, but all he saw was more water and trees. Then three trees caught his eye, and he realized that they could not be real trees. Their branches were at perfect right angles to their trunks, and of perfectly symmetrical lengths. He wondered at the presence of three rogue telephone poles in the wilderness. While he was silently chuckling about that, they suddenly resolved in his eye. Not poles. Masts.

  "Mother of God," he said quietly. "That's a schooner."

  Glimmer looked at him curiously. "Do we like schooners?" she asked.

  Harrison turned to Jeannette. "Do you know the first thing about seamanship?" She shook her head. He rubbed his eyes. "Okay," he said. "Don't let on to the others. We'll go check the ship out, and maybe we can either learn how to get it going, or stall until Alec snaps to. He might have sailing experience. Please go tell everyone to start rounding up their gear."

  She got up. "Yes, Captain." They were all calling him that now, and he had long since stopped hearing any mockery in the word. Hearing it now, it took on a completely new meaning. He shivered.

  "We are so screwed."

  * * *

  The ship was far longer than it had appeared from a distance, and Harrison's first, unspoken, reaction was that they were going to need a substantially bigger crew. He had no idea where to place the ship historically, but it looked to him like something straight out of Cutthroat Island. In addition to the three large vertical masts, there was another long mast pointing forward and up about twenty degrees. All four had sails bunched up and tied to them. Something seemed wrong about the setup, however, and after a bit it hit him. There was no visible rigging anywhere on the ship. It was bad enough they would have to learn how to sail the damn thing. Now they wouldn't even be able to get to the sails.

  Just below the forward mast was a carved wooden bust. It was the nude torso of a woman holding out some sort of cup and wearing a scarf on her head. He could also see ornately latticed windows on the sides on the hull, and wider ones in the rear. The hull itself was painted deep burgundy with pale red trim. It struck him as garish. Across the side, near the bow, was written in huge black letters, "HMS Ptolemy."

  "HMS?" Jake asked.

  "His Majesty's Ship," Apryl explained.

  "Her Majesty's, I'd wager," said Harrison. He was thinking of the Faerie Queen.

  "Hm," said Apryl, and walked away. Too late, he realized he was pointlessly contradicting her. He wished he had kept his mouth shut.

  Hadley walked up to Harrison and took a closer look at the name of the ship. "Ptolemy," he said aloud, and chuckled. "Otherwise known as the Everything-You-Know-Is-Wrong."

  If this was a joke, Harrison failed to get it. He did not want to let it go, though. Hadley had been sullen and distant ever since they had emerged from Faerie, and now Harrison wanted to draw him out, but was not sure how, or if that was even his job anymore. Yet here was an opportunity. He tried being friendly. "What do you mean?"

  Hadley stared at the ship a bit longer, and Harrison wondered if he had heard him. Then Hadley broke the silence. "Do you know who Ptolemy was?" he asked.

  Harrison tried to remember. He was sure he had heard that name at some point between first grade and his senior year at college. He struggled with it for a moment, wanting to sound smart by remembering, then realized that sounding smart was a stupid objective in the face of pulling Hadley out of whatever shell he had crawled into. "No," he said.

  "He was a second century astronomer," the scientist replied. "He developed a system for explaining the apparent motion of the planets. Which was remarkably accurate, given the tools he had at the time. His writings were considered the definitive works on the subject for fourteen hundred years. His model predicted the positions of the planets correctly, in a way that subsequent models were unable to reproduce until Kepler reasoned that all orbits were elliptical, not circular, in the early 1600s. It was a beautiful piece of scholarship. It had just one tiny flaw."

  Harrison remembered Ptolemy now. He had come up in a middle school science class, along with Kepler, and Galileo, and one other, Copernicus, the man credited with correcting what Hadley was calling the tiny flaw in Ptolemy's reasoning. "He thought the Earth was the center of the universe."

  Hadley smiled. "Quite so. But then, so did everyone else. And why not? It's intuitive, it's consistent with scripture, and any fool can see that the sun rises and sets as it travels around the globe. The only problem was those pesky wanderers, the planets. They just didn't want to hold still. So Ptolemy devised-no, calculated-orbits for these 'stars' such that they spun in little circles as they revolved in their large sweeping circles about the Earth. He called them epicycles. Imagine it, Harrison! Mars, Venus, even Jupiter, twirling around in these circles within circles, for all the world like some cosmic Spyrograph. What an elegant, inspired model! The man was a genius." After a minute, Hadley's smile faded. "And he completely missed what every grade school child knows now. The Earth is one little ball of rock. Making its rounds about the sun just like all the other planets." He looked at the ground, and Harrison wasn't sure what to say next. He didn't want to shatter whatever momentum Hadley was building. This was the first time Harrison had seen him so alive since before they lost Louise. Just as he was about to ask a question, Hadley shouted, "Euclid!"

  Harrison waited a beat. "Euclid?"

  Hadley looked at him again. "Euclid created a geometry based on the most obvious observations of the natural world. It's stood up so well that we still teach it, thousands of years later. Then Riemann came along circa 1850 with a non-Euclidean geometry where parallel lines don't exist. And, lo and behold, it turns out space is curved, so Riemann has the more accurate model of the universe." He was getting really excited now. "Newton! Any fool can see his work makes perfect sense. It's consistent with every casual observation we care to make regarding motion and energy. For hundreds of years," he said wistfully, "we lived in our blissfully Newtonian universe … until Einstein propounded that time and mass are variables, and functions of velocity. The faster you go, the more massive you get. Did you know that, Harrison?"

  Harrison did actually know this, but he chose to look surprised.

  "Well," Hadley answered his own question, "Newton certainly didn't. How could he? Why would he even think to ask the question?" Harrison finally saw where Hadley Tucker, Ph.D., was going with all this.

  "It's magic, isn't it?" he asked. "That's what this is about."

  The scientist looked up at the sky. "You have no idea how excited I was a year ago," he said. "The rate at which we were discovering new principles was staggering. The Department of Esoteric Studies was created, and I was brought into it for the same reason that I was infatuated with it. We all thought this was the new science. Magic would prove to be a special application of physics, or better yet, a new physics entirely, which we would document from the ground up." He paused. Harrison was still waiting for his cue to say something supportive. Hadley took that moment to look him in the eyes, and Harrison suddenly found himself noticing how old the other man looked. He had assumed that they were not far apart in age, but now he found himself questioning his assumption.

  "But it's not science," said Hadley. "It's not physics. It's not even physical. Esoteric was absolutely the right descriptor for what we're trying to study here. It is unknowable, Harrison. It took our visit to Faerie to make me see that. I've learned
more in the past year than most people do their whole lives, and I'm finally coming around. Glimmer? Titania? Those things that attacked us? They don't do it by some skill they've mastered, or by some system they've learned. They intuit all of it. It's no wonder Glimmer can't answer a simple question. To her, questions are probably beside the point. She's been a good sport about using a science paradigm to explain the rules of magic, but she can't possibly cover one billionth of one billionth of what we'd need to know to truly understand her." He looked back up at the ship. "Ptolemy is an excellent name for this ship of fools," he said, walking away. "Wrong again."

  * * *

  There was an invitingly extended gangplank. They all boarded the ship. The main deck was about what Harrison had expected, with one startling difference. Mounted on the main mast were two floodlights. It was still broad daylight, and they were unlit, but their significance did not escape him. "Heads up, people," he said with a grin. He pointed to the lights. "This may not be as old as it looks."

  They had gathered around the main mast. Most of them looked awe struck. Alec's eyes kept drifting down and snapping back up. He needed another nap. This would be as good a time as any to start handing out assignments.

  "Claudia," Harrison said, "why don't you take Alec below and see if you can find him a nice hammock or something. You may as well scope out the living quarters situation while you're down there. Let me know how many cabins we've got."

  "Aye, Cap'm." She took Alec by the arm, and led him to an open door and down a stairway.

  Harrison turned to Glimmer. "Would you mind scouting the bay for unpleasant surprises?" He had been very pleased with her work in finding paths of least resistance for the buggy, and he wanted to be sure they had every possible advantage while they were learning how to sail a tall ship with a crew of only five. "When you get back, I'll need you to keep an eye on Alec." She saluted and zipped away. "Dr. Tucker, I'll need you to be in charge of bringing the counterbomb components on board. Which is probably what you want to be doing right now, anyway. Right?"

  Hadley grinned. "Yes, Captain," he said. "I'll find a cargo hold to store it in. I should be able to start building it once everything's aboard. With your permission?" He looked like he might be bouncing back. Maybe, Harrison thought, all he had needed was a chance to vent.

  "Of course," Harrison said. "Come back up if you need a second pair of hands."

  "Of course." Hadley strolled back down the ramp to the transport.

  Harrison turned to Jake. "See if you can find the galley," he said to the boy. "Take a quick inventory if you can. See if we've got any provisions."

  "Aye, aye, Captain." Jake took a step, then stopped. "What does a galley look like?"

  "Like a kitchen." Harrison tried not to sound too patronizing. "Apryl, maybe you should go with him. When you're done down there, round up Claudia, and we'll start making trips back to the transport for the rest of our supplies."

  She looked at him. It was the first time she had made eye contact with him since they had left the transport. There was no warmth in her eyes. "Aye, aye, Captain," she said dryly. She went below. Jake seemed mildly wary of her, but followed.

  Jeanette gave Harrison a disturbed, inquiring look. He ignored it. "Let's find the bridge," he said.

  * * *

  Finding the bridge proved simple enough. It was aft, on the uppermost deck, exactly where Harrison figured it would be. It also laid his last fears about the ship to rest. In addition to a beautiful, hand-crafted, hardwood ship's wheel, the small room contained a multitude of technical controls and displays. It reminded him of the Worm caboose, both in its level of sophistication and in its user-friendliness. One whole wall comprised a navigational chart, which turned out to be a giant interactive touch screen.

  "Magnificent," he said aloud after having only spent a few minutes examining the controls. He looked up at Jeannette. "This is all computer controlled," he told her. "All we have to do is find a location on the main chart, point, click, and sit back with our Piña Coladas. I love this."

  She was watching him. She had a cross look on her face, and her arms were folded. "Is there a problem between you and Apryl?" she asked bluntly.

  He felt the wind go out of his sails. The doctor never missed a trick, and she would not let him have his moment of triumph with someone else's bitterness still lingering in the air. He looked away. "I don't want to talk about it."

  She put her hand on his shoulder. "Begging the Captain's pardon, but you don't have that luxury." Surprised by her scolding tone, he turned. "It may not sound fair," she added, "but we all need you to be beyond personal conflict. We're not going to have room for it. We need to be able to trust you. All of us. All the time." She paused, but he passed on the opportunity to defend himself. "Whatever you don't want to talk about, you're going to have to talk about it."

  He hesitated. Time for confession. "I kissed her."

  Her eyebrow went up. "Really?" she said, obviously intrigued. "How did that work out for you?"

  "Not so well," he said. "It was, ah, kind of not her idea."

  "Oh."

  Harrison looked away again. "She says she's not upset. But it's been four days, and she keeps getting, I don't know, crabbier."

  "Were those her words? She said, 'I'm not upset'?"

  He shook his head. "She said we were okay. Or something like that. But it doesn't feel like we're okay."

  Jeannette gave him a sideways look. "Have you tried talking to her about it?"

  He shrugged. "Not since then. I feel bad enough about the whole thing as it is. I've been trying to leave her alone."

  "So the situation is that you kissed her, without her permission, she said she was okay, and now you're avoiding her because you think she's mad at you. Is that about it?"

  "Yeah, I guess. God, I didn't think I could feel any stupider about this, but I'm there now."

  Jeannette sighed. "Harrison, I find it unlikely that she would be this upset about you kissing her. You really should go talk to her."

  "You think so?" he said. "What if that just makes it worse?"

  "Trust me. Please."

  "Yeah," he said. "All right. I will."

  Jeanette watched him for a few seconds. "I mean right now."

  "Oh. Uh, yeah. Okay." He started to leave, then turned back. "Did I just catch you being my counselor?"

  "No." She shook her head and grinned. "Your mei shuo."

  "I'm your what?" he asked.

  She laughed. "Just go talk to her, please."

  * * *

  It took him several minutes to find the galley, which he did mostly by listening for Jake and Apryl's voices. They were having an animated discussion about their discoveries that he could hear through most of the gangways. Upon entering the room, he found it to be a font of modern convenience, like a kitchen from a gourmet cooking show. Like the bridge, it belied the ship's exterior.

  "Harrison!" Jake's eyes lit up as Harrison entered. "Check this out!" He opened a chest freezer and pulled out a slab of something in a clear plastic wrap and tossed it to Harrison. It was vacuum-packed, frozen slices of lime. Harrison couldn't help but laugh. All this technology at their disposal, and the previous owners of the ship had still stocked it with limes to prevent scurvy. Every nuance of the world had become anachronistic and absurd. He tossed the limes back.

  "I'll be requiring each and every one of you to suck one of these dry every day," he said. "Can't be too careful."

  Jake laughed. "Aye, aye, Captain!"

  Still smiling, Harrison said, "Jake, Jeannette wants to see you topside."

  "What about?"

  Harrison shrugged. "She didn't say." It was a paper thin lie, and if Jake pushed it the tiniest bit further, it would tear into shreds of obviousness.

  "Okay," said the boy. He started to leave. "You coming?" he said to Harrison.

  Harrison shook his head. "I want to take a look around."

  "Oh." Then he said, "Oooh," with a slightly more coherent express
ion, nodded, glanced at Apryl, and backed out slowly. Rip, rip.

  Harrison turned to face Apryl. She kept her back to him. They both waited until Jake was well out of earshot.

  Finally, Apryl said, "Did you need something else?"

  He shuffled awkwardly. "I'd like to talk to you."

  "You've been avoiding me."

  An accusation was not how he wanted to start the discussion. "I was trying to give you space," he countered.

  "Ah."

  "I'm sorry," he said.

  Apryl turned. "I'm still listening."

  He trudged on. "It was a stupid thing to do, and I feel like crap about it, and I just want to get past it. I like you. I don't want to screw up being friends with you over one misstep."

  She was chewing on her cheek now. "So, you're sorry you kissed me?"

  "Yes," he said. She was still staring and chewing. "Isn't that why you're mad at me?"

  "You," she said slowly, "are … an … ass!"

  He sure hadn't expected that. "I'm sorry?"

  "Yes! I know you're sorry! I'm sure everyone knows you're sorry!" She was ranting now, and Harrison considered flight as a possible option. "I'm angry at you because of how you've acted since then! I wasn't upset about the kiss! It was your timing! That's what shocked me! You gave me this crazy power, and then I opened my eyes and your face was all over me!" On the word face, she shoved him in the chest. "It was when you kissed me." Another shove. "Idiot!"

  He was now feeling genuinely threatened. And yet … "What are you saying?"

  "AAUGH!" she shouted. "I wanted you to kiss me! I just didn't want you to kiss me then!"

  His heart was racing. "Do you still want me to kiss you?"

  "Yes!"

  So he kissed her.

  It was not like before. There was no sense of being in a paranormal state, just pure affection. It was a tender kiss, but also hungry, probing, and best of all, mutual. Despite all of Harrison's emotional fumbling, this felt perfectly natural. He could feel his anxiety and uncertainty drain away. He felt refilled by something he was unable to define, other than that it was far, far better. It was a proper first kiss, and he was drawn into it completely.