Attack of the Rockoids

by Gene Steinberg

  Calmly and slowly, the clerk replied, “I don’t know why you’re here, but this object is a computerized calendar.”

  “Who are those creatures—from space? I’ve never seen anything like them before!”

  The clerk couldn’t believe she was behaving so rationally in the face of this wild, insane man. He must be humored, to give her time to get out of this ticklish situation.

  “Well, we do get visitors from all over.”

  The woman had quite enough of this acting job. She knew she must react fast before this staggerhead became violent, seeing as he was showing no signs of wanting to leave.

  “Excuse me, I’ll be right back…I need to finish checking my inventory.”

  She smiled briefly, a forced smile. Ray could see the fear in her eyes as she stared at him. She couldn’t hide that.

  Nor did Ray fail to notice how she walked to the back of the store with fearful sideways glances.

  * * *

  Once the clerk was back in the stockroom, she gazed anxiously at something on her wrist that looked like a watch, but sported a miniature TV screen.

  The woman didn’t hesitate, summoning up the courage to bark into the screen, “Get me the Las Vegas Police Department right now!”

  “One moment please,” replied a robotic voice.

  A few seconds later, a stern-faced man with brown hair, impassionate brown eyes and wearing what was clearly a police uniform, appeared on the screen.

  “Captain Gotlieb here. How can I help you?” said the man with a distinct trace of the Bostonian accent that identified his birthplace.

  As he responded to her call, he noticed on his viewscreen that the caller was Laura Jenkins of Laura’s Fantastic Fashions at the Area 51 Shopping Mall.

  Jenkins quickly summarized the situation to Gotlieb.

  “Hmmm. I guess he had a little much of the good stuff,” Gotlieb replied. We’ll be right over to check it out, okay?”

  “Wait, what if he leaves the store?”

  “Don’t worry, Ms. Jenkins. A staggerhead is pretty damn easy to spot in a big crowd these days. If he’s still in your store, just stall him as long as you can. Humor him, but be gentle. We don’t want him getting too violent.”

  That was reassuring!

  Laura Jenkins didn’t take very kindly to such possibilities. She’d seen more than enough strange people since opening her little clothing store four years earlier. The changing tastes in fashions always presented problems. Keeping the shelves well stocked with what the customers wanted every week was a never-ending source of headaches.

  And those damned staggerheads! There was a large tourist trade in nearby Las Vegas, and she never seemed to be able to rid herself of those unsavory visitors, even if their presence was largely unthreatening.

  Oh well, here I go again. She nodded her head as she looked at the tiny screen on her wrist.

  “Okay. You’re sure you’ll be here in a few minutes, right?”

  “Don’t worry, Ms. Jenkins. We’ll be there in a flash. I’ll even come myself. Thanks for calling us before this thing blew up.”

  “Thanks so much!”

  “No problem. Goodbye.”

  Captain Gotlieb’s face disappeared from the screen. Jenkins put her hand to her side as the image on her watch-like device changed to a faint gray glow; her calm demeanor amazed her. She returned to the front of her shop, where Ray was still waiting.

  “Would you like to buy something? I mean, you don’t want to look out of style,” said Jenkins. She again forced a smile, trying hard to mollify this clearly crazed individual.

  Young, in her mid twenties, Jenkins seemed almost too slim, with light makeup, and wearing a colorful set of coordinated slacks and blouse of shimmering reds and pinks. Aside from a set of earrings shaped remarkably like sharks, a gift from her father, and the wristview device on her hand, she remained devoid of jewelry.

  She was even rather attractive in an anonymous sort of way, with a cute, upturned nose and almost pouting mouth. Her hair was dark brown, almost black, long, but held tight in a bun behind her slim head. Her slim physique seemed evidence that she had even been a fashion model at one time.

  For a moment, Jenkins was lost in thought. She picked at her left earring and wondered about the whereabouts of her father, a trader of weird, unconventional goods no doubt gallivanting about the galaxy looking for trouble again.

  The abrupt change in the clerk’s attitude made Ray more suspicious than ever, as alertness seemed to return to him. They stared at each other again briefly, and both figured they might as well play out their roles in this little drama and see what happened next.

  “Yeah, I guess. These clothes probably aren’t flying off the shelves these days. Just show me the latest thing,” said Ray.

  Ray figured the gas in that underground chamber was giving him hallucinations, but this entire crazy scenario sure seemed realistic.

  He saw the clerk walking over to a rack of clothes, looking over the selections. She chose a complete outfit that included red pants and a shirt, and selected another one that was almost the same style, except it consisted of a blue shirt and black pants. She retrieved a pair of black gloves and boots from a nearby display.

  She took a quick breath, returned to Ray, handed him the clothes, and quickly returned to the cash register. She gripped it tightly, evidently to provide a modicum of security.

  “Would you like to try these on?” she remarked, very casually. Clearly she knew how to handle the crackpots and eccentrics who visited her store.

  Ray started to protest, but thought better of it. He was now fully aware of the rather frightful manner of his appearance and actions.

  He expected to be taken out in handcuffs any time now, but he realized there wasn’t any alternative other than to run and become a fugitive. That certainly wouldn’t resolve his situation. He obediently strolled into a nearby dressing room, behind a shimmering, rainbow-colored curtain, and tried on each outfit separately. The room had a small, violet-colored bench, and a little counter with an object that resembled a microwave oven, with a few flourishes that he took to be control panels and meters of some sort.

  Adjacent to the dressing room, he found a small bathroom, and Ray took the opportunity to take a few moments to clean himself up before donning his new duds. Inside, he was pleased to discover that a long, hose-like device sprayed a soap-like material that served as both cleanser, deodorant and, apparently, healing lotion for minor cuts and bruises.

  When Ray emerged from the dressing room wearing the blue and black outfit a few minutes later, he was the spitting image of a twenty-third-century civilian.

  “You look splendid,” Jenkins smiled; this time the expression seemed genuine.

  Consulting her cash register, she smiled with studied efficiency, “That will be fifteen hundred credits, please.”

  “What’s that in dollars?” Ray asked.

  “Dollars? What are those?” Jenkins replied, still struggling to remain absolutely casual in the face of this absurd question.

  “You know! Dollars! Money! Coin of the realm!” Ray exclaimed.

  “I’m sorry, but the only means of exchange we use around here are credits. Maybe we can work out something anyway. Do you have a credit card?”

  “Too many actually. Let me find one with a decent credit line,” Ray remarked as he began searching for his wallet.

  Fortunately he remembered to stuff the wallet into a handy pocket of his new duds (though he seemed to have a perfectly awful time squeezing it in). After a few seconds, he managed to extract it, took out his Visa card, and handed it to Jenkins.

  “Do you take these?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry. Those became obsolete over a century ago. Do you have anything else?” she said as she slowly handed him back his card. Jenkins hoped the staggerhead’s frustration at not being able to complete the transaction wouldn’t make him violent.

  Where is that police officer? Why do they always take forever to re
spond?

  Through it all, the smile remained frozen on her face and she kept her voice as level as possible, forcing herself to act friendly by sheer force of will. Inwardly, though her visitor seemed more presentable now, Jenkins feared he might crack at any moment.

  Ray put back his Visa card, searched his wallet again, and found his American Express card, which he handed to her.

  “Do you take these?” asked Ray.

  His frustration grew, but he, too, kept his voice level.

  “I’m sorry I’ve never seen one of those,” said Jenkins, once again handing him his card back, slowly.

  Ray calmly returned the American Express card to his wallet. Just as he was about to retrieve his Discover card, the only credit card he had left, someone rudely grabbed him by the shoulder.

  With difficulty, Ray turned around, and saw the tall, thin man now holding him in an ever-tightening grip. The uniform was different all right, form-fitting, silvery in color, the wearer clearly a police officer of some sort. Ray caught a brief look at the mustached face and grim expression. The nametag said Captain David Gotlieb.

  “Is there any trouble, Captain Gotlieb?” asked Ray.

  “You should know, buddy. You’re the pirate trying to plunder this lady’s store like it’s some damned space freighter.” barked Gotlieb as he pointed to the puzzled clerk with a frozen grin, still standing, almost at attention, behind her cash register. Inside her mind, she sighed with relief, knowing this irrational intruder would soon be on his way to a nice prison cell.

  “What? That’s crazy! I was just trying to pay for some clothes here, but the clerk wouldn’t take any of my credit cards,” Ray argued.

  Ray finally gave up all pretense of seriousness and added, “I guess next you’ll tell me I just killed the Wicked Witch of the West, right?”

  “The what?”

  Gotlieb wondered what sort of person this was. He’d seen staggerheads before, but this stranger’s voice remained strong, not quivering, and his gait seemed rock steady. In fact, he didn’t look intoxicated at all. Gotlieb vowed to keep that in mind when he interrogated the suspect. For now, he simply decided to voice his standard spiel: “Sorry, buddy, but we’re gonna have to take you to headquarters in Las Vegas for questioning.”

  “Questioning? Damn it, I didn’t steal anything! I’m no pirate!” Ray yelled. Yet he didn’t struggle. He knew that would only make his predicament worse.

  The policeman ignored Ray’s protests and put two ringed devices around his arms, which seemed to force them to the side, leaving them paralyzed. There was no pain at all, but his arms remained immobile. He struggled momentarily, but quickly realized the effort was futile; he had to give in and hope the authorities would understand his situation and be lenient with him.

  He was directed to leave the store, through the mall to the exit. Ray felt amazed at the calm demeanor he displayed in the midst of all this chaos. One minute he was overcome by noxious fumes in a top-secret military base and the next he was walking about in a big shopping mall and someone was telling him he had been transported many decades into the future.

  Yeah, sure, if this is madness, I have it in spades!

  * * *

  As the two men approached the mall exit, the one Ray stumbled through earlier, Gotlieb yelled to his men, “All right folks, the show’s over. We got our man! Get back to your hovercars, and I’ll catch up with you guys on the bright side of the moon!”

  The two officers waiting outside nodded and strolled casually to their patrol cars.

  “Okay, buddy, you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law,” said Gotlieb as they walked out the door. He continued to expand upon the twenty-third-century variation of the Miranda law. There were a few new wrinkles, about the right to contact an attorney from Ray’s home world if he so desired, but this was his home world, wasn’t it?

  “Court of law? I didn’t steal the clothes! I’ve never stolen anything in my life!” Ray protested, ignoring the memories of those candy bars he and his pals regularly pilfered from a neighborhood grocery when he was barely in his teens.

  “The questions we ask, and how you answer them is gonna decide if we hold a trial or just let you go home,” said Gotlieb coldly.

  “Yeah, go ahead and take me home—if you people have discovered time travel yet,” Ray grumbled under his breath.

  Ray now realized he was in the mall’s parking lot, a place filled with semicircular vehicles with darkened glass windows and no visible headlights. The rear of these odd contraptions had sets of taillights that looked more like small rockets. The license plates were rounded, encircling glowing numbers and letters.

  Gotlieb’s vehicle had been adorned with a large police insignia on both sides, but was otherwise no different from any of the other vehicles. When the police captain walked up to the car, the back door slid open to the side and Ray found himself pushed roughly inside. As soon as Ray almost fell into the waiting seat, the door slid shut and two belts passed above and around him, from his shoulders to his hip, locking him in a seated position. The wrist restraints dropped automatically from his hands and he sat back, looking toward what might be a dashboard on this strange vehicle.

  Gotlieb quickly took his place in the front seat. Within seconds, the front door slid shut, his seat belt encircled him, and he was safely locked in place.

  The inside of this strange police car looked almost the same as the vehicles of Ray’s century. However, there was no steering wheel; a long stem with a smooth, rounded top, replaced it. There were also many other strange gizmos and gadgets on the dashboard that he could not identify.

  Ray sighed and pinched himself. When he realized it hurt, he began to come to the realization this was no dream. The reality of the situation finally hit him between the eyes. Somehow, that mysterious experience in the deep, dark chambers of Area 51 transported him to the future.

  Or maybe he died, and went to…well…that other place.

  “Okay, old man. Sit back cause this is gonna be the hardest ride you ever took,” said Gotlieb, dripping with sarcasm.

  “How fast can this thing go? I used to practice riding cars around racetracks on the weekends. There’s nothing this thing can do that I haven’t exceeded already.”

  Gotlieb laughed.

  “You gotta be stuck in the past, old man! Our vehicles can go over four hundred kilometers per hour when they’re just cruising!”

  He pushed a green button, and Ray felt the car slowly rising.

  “Hey, what the hell’s going on here?”

  “Okay, buddy, think logically here. If this car didn’t fly, it wouldn’t be called a hovercar, now would it?”

  “No, it probably wouldn’t,” Ray replied, a sickly smile frozen on his face.

  “Thank you. Your life’s been spared because of that answer you just gave me.” Gotlieb chuckled, ever the sarcastic one, but Ray didn’t appreciate the joke.

  “Okay, old man, here comes the fast part,” Gotlieb announced, apparently proud to show off the capabilities of his vehicle.

  He turned a knob, and the hovercar gained altitude with an incredible burst of speed. Had he not been secured in his seat belt, Ray would surely have been knocked about the cabin. A deep, upsetting feeling in the pit of his stomach intensified as the vehicle reached its cruising altitude.

  Gotlieb turned the knob again, and made the car accelerate even faster. Ray panicked as the enormity of the situation caused his head to throb—or was that just a headache? His heart pounded, and his vision began to waver, as dizziness seemed to intrude on his consciousness again.

  The hovercar sped past smooth buildings, all very different from one another; many of them were made of some sort of shiny, metallic material. Some were spiral shaped, and they rose much higher than the limit of Ray’s sight. They were seemingly immersed in a sea of airborne traffic, consisting of rows and rows of speeding hovercars and even a few flying motorcycles called (as he later learn
ed) hovercycles. The strange vehicles seemed to pass around them at uncontrollable speeds, yet the distance between them remained fixed. The logical portion of his mind surmised some sort of computerized traffic control system was at work.

  “What is this? Where are you taking me?”

  “We’ll be at police headquarters in ten minutes. Once there, you’ll be able to sit back and relax until I question you about all this crap, old man.” Gotlieb laughed.

  Ray tried to relax, but the dizziness returned in full force. He remained confused, unable to get a grip on what happened. Finally, a wave of unconsciousness overwhelmed him and he blacked out, his head falling slowly to the side.

  The vehicle continued on, at top speed, lights and sirens flashing. In minutes, the craft slowed and began to descend. A lighted pathway stood before them as the vehicle seemed to float gently toward the ground. Finally, it came to a dead stop in front of a -parking stall.

  Gotlieb and an assistant carried their prisoner out of the vehicle, and Ray was taken towards a large, cold, drab building looming ahead in the distance.

  Chapter 5

  Time passed slowly for Ray as he slept. That awful dream about a battle with the aliens and their huge, marauding spaceships returned again, this time more vivid than ever.

  As expected, the gorgeous alien woman appeared to rise above the carnage, disconnected from the rest of the universe. Once again her expression was, at first, one of content, then it quickly turned to one of deep anguish.

  She seemed so close he thought she was standing right before him. He remembered his life spinning before him as he was immersed in that tornado-like phenomenon.

  He knew her name!

  She was Zanther!

  * * *

  After a few hours of fitful slumber, Ray woke up in a cold sweat, laying on a long cot in a room lit by some sort of recessed beam of light with no visible source. The room itself had a reddish cast to it, dim and drab. He would have believed he was incarcerated in a prison cell, but for the weird sights around him.

  Next to him loomed a large desk with all sorts of strange gadgets on it. He saw buttons, knobs, and glowing meters, and a helmet of some sort, not unlike one a motorcycle rider would wear. Standing in front of him was Captain Gotlieb, two other officers, and someone with a white lab coat and a stern look on his craggy, long-nosed face that Ray took to be a scientist.