Child's Play: A Spaceman's Story

by Guerin Zand

  “Sure” Another one of Milly’s funny expressions accompanied her response which said a lot more than her actual answer.

  Now when you normally go to a restaurant to eat you have a limited menu to choose from so the decision of what to eat isn’t that difficult. Even when deciding what to cook at home you’re limited to the available ingredients. Here I had all the choices one could possibly imagine, literally. I was stymied. It took me a few minutes to come up with something. This was obviously annoying Milly slightly. Finally I settled on one of my favorites. A Steak & Shake triple steak burger with cheese with all the fixings and a side order of fries with that incredible plastic cheese sauce. Plastic cheese sauce makes everything better! No vegan meal for me, oh no. I was going to make this machine hurt if it tried to push a salad on me.

  I placed my hand on the front of the “food replicator” and a few seconds later it signaled it was done. I opened the door and to my surprise there it was. Exactly what I was thinking about. Even down to the Steak & Shake dish that they use in their restaurants. Pardon my French but, HOLY FUCK. I want one of these. Somehow, I was going to get one of these to take home before this little “vacation” ends. Maybe I could barter a few “hands-on” videos in trade. Oh sure, like you wouldn’t do the same to get one of these babes for your kitchen!

  Milly looked at me with the same sort of expression I normally have when my dogs perform some amazingly stupid pet trick. Was I getting some insight into the true relationship forming here? I hoped not.

  “What do you think?” she asked. “The drink dispenser works just the same way” she said as she demonstrated. I took a glass and made myself an iced tea and we took a seat at the nearest table.

  We sat their quietly and ate our meals. It really was as close to the real deal as I could have imagined, which I guess I did. When I was finished, I decided to get back to the millions of questions I had not yet had time to ask.

  “Milly now that we have some time I really would like to pick your brain a bit so I am not totally lost here. I mean you’ve been sort of controlling me a bit and I’ve barely had time to ask you any questions. You know everything about me, or so you say, but I haven’t a clue about anything. I don’t even know what kind of ship this is or how it works. Or why is it that you guys appear to be human just like us? I saw you naked. I couldn’t see any obvious differences and I looked really hard. How is it you speak English and where are you from. What …”

  That’s right Milly interrupted again.

  “Hold on Guerin. We have plenty of time for questions. Let’s try them one at a time though ok?”

  “Sure”

  “First I need to take you to your quarters and let you get settled in. You’re still lugging around that bag with that big gun and all that ammo. I hope you realize you’re not going to need that. Let’s go and we can work on your question list.”

  “Could we get a couple more drinks too?” I asked. That’s right I hadn’t forgotten my primary objective. “Maybe Julie would like to join us too?”

  Of course Milly just smiled at me while slowly shaking her head. I know I might have been pushing it. I probably only did that because of what Julie had done to me in the med center. I mean it was her fault and as my doctor she should want to make sure her patient was doing well, right?

  We walked back down the main hallway towards Milly’s quarters. Before we passed her quarters, Milly stepped inside and grabbed the whiskey bottle and the two glasses still sitting on the table. She closed the door to her quarters and we continued down the hallway passed one more of the crew quarters, I assumed, and she pointed me to a door on the other side of the hallway.

  “Just place your hand on the door pad and it should recognize you and open for you.”

  I did as she said, the door opened and we both stepped inside my new pad. All according to my master plan, hee, hee, hee.

  “This is a closet where you can store your clothes. Julie took some measurements and so there are a few crew uniforms and boots you can wear if you’d like. The bathroom is through here complete with shower, works just like your used to, and sink for washing up and water to drink. If you want something other than water to drink you can go to the cafeteria and get whatever you like. You know how that works.”

  “There are liquids in there, you use them just like soap, and towels. If you need more towels you can come to my room and I’ll help you out. There’s the waste recycling bowl, I think you call them toilets, and it is pretty self-explanatory. There is a little help guide available on your desk’s viewer and I’ll show you how to use that in a minute. Any questions yet?”

  “No. Monkey boy good!” I responded. I was glad to hear they had the proper supply of towels required for space travel.

  “Guerin! Can you be serious just for once?” She sounded a little miffed.

  “Sorry Milly. I have been abducted by ass raping aliens. I’m on a fucking space ship, I mean a fucking space ship. Do you have any idea how totally you have screwed the pooch I called reality today? Humor is my way of coping with it. Maybe you’d prefer I just let go and start ranting and raving. Throw some feces against the wall and smear some all over my body. Would that be better for you?”

  “Ok I get it. Sorry. It’s kind of hard to imagine what this is like for you.”

  Was I losing it or was that actually a sincere apology. I couldn’t tell. Nothing really made much sense. I really was just holding on by a thread. Luckily, she brought the whiskey.

  Then she proceeded to show me how to use the viewer to access data and information on the ship. It had a nice little map of the ship’s layout with that convenient little “You Are Here” pointer.

  She handed me a digital watch, yes, a digital watch, how retro. I probably should have brought one of my own analog watches with me, especially since I noticed these folks liked to dick around with spacetime. She explained she had it set to convert ship time to the normal 24-hour day clock I was used to. Their days were a little longer so the time isn’t exactly the same, but it would work just fine.

  We both sat down on the bed and she poured us a couple of good sized drinks. Thank GOD!

  “So where would you like to start?” she asked.

  Was that one of those trick questions? Ok I was going to try and be serious for a few minutes. After that I would make no promises.

  “Ok first question has two parts. Who are you people and where are you from?”

  “We are known as the Bree. We are originally from a system in the Andromeda galaxy. That’s around 2.5 million light years from Earth. Your scientists can barely make out any individual stars in the Andromeda galaxy so I can’t give you a name that would do you any good. Our home star died over five thousand years ago and now, for the most part, we live aboard our ships. Our original home planet was very much like Earth which is why we are so interested in your home.”

  “Are you human? You look human. You feel human. I mean I haven’t done a detailed examination of any of your crew, maybe we can get to that later”, I gave her my best little devilish grin, “but it seems an awfully big coincidence. Also, you speak English.”

  I think I detected a bit of a smile after that last remark. A few more whiskeys and who knows.

  “Yes, we’re pretty much human, although that is not what we call ourselves. From a DNA perspective, we’re the closest race to humans, closer than you are to any other species on Earth, so for simplicity sake you can say we are human. There are a lot of races out there that are also very similar and some very different but they’re also closely related to other races in this universe. Why so many races are similar is a good question and why we study the issue. My specialty is Earth humans and that of course is why I’m here.”

  “So you could have my child?” I know, I know but the whiskey and Julie made me do it.

  Milly smiled, grabbed the bottle and said “I think you need another drink and the answer is probably. I swear I don’t know if I can keep working with Julie anymore. Maybe I
should ask her to join us?” I just smiled a really big smile.

  “Back to your question. I speak English, and all the other Earth languages”, Why do aliens always have to show off? I bet their dicks were bigger too! “and so do most of the crew on this shuttle. It helps with our jobs.” She reached into a pocket and handed to me what looked like an earbud. “Here”, she said, “This will translate all the other languages we have cataloged. Just put it in your ...”

  “Monkey know earbud. Monkey good.”

  “Ok, sorry. It’s not like I do this every day you know. This is my first job as project lead. Anyways you don’t have to do anything, just wear it and it will translate for you.”

  “This is a lot like some earbuds a new startup is working on that translates all the Earth languages. Same principal. You wouldn’t have had anything to do with that, would you?”

  “We do drop hints here and there but I think those are a totally human invention.” Milly answered.

  Sure, I thought. Just like the whiskey. I think these ass rapers like to screw with the human race’s development. It’s got to be a boring job otherwise. What exactly their job was, that was still a mystery at this point.

  “I didn’t really think about it earlier but this ship has gravity. You can manipulate gravity?”

  “Yes. Not much more difficult than creating a strong magnetic field but different enough that it takes a better understanding of the natural universe than humans currently have. We actually use gravity drives within local star systems and for short range travel. We can achieve velocities of 10c using this kind of drive.”

  “That’s possible?” I asked.

  “No, I just made that up.” she said, as she poured us both another drink. “I’m just joking with you. Yes, it’s possible and we do it every day. You have to let your mind be open to things that your world has programmed you to believe are impossible. Nothing is impossible, some things are just less probable.”

  “Well we should both get some sleep. I hope that helps you. Anything else before I go?”

  I know she really could not have given me a better opening but I simply said, “No. I really appreciate it though. Good night.”

  I felt totally alone. It just hit me. We were pretty insignificant in the whole scheme of things and just me was truly insignificant. I could almost see that in her eyes as she left. Maybe it was just, PTPD, Post Transit Portal Depression or something. I should ask Julie next time I saw her.

  Chapter 5

  The Morning After

  I woke up the next morning feeling great. I really had not felt this good in a long time. I thought I was fine before and didn’t really notice anything wrong, I guess I wasn’t as fine as I thought?? Yes, I was still really confused.

  There was just one thing wrong. I don’t know how to talk about this but it was a pretty big thing. I had this, um, erection. I mean a solid steel, pure granite maybe even diamond hard erection. It was so hard it almost hurt. What did that crazy, Dr. Mengele wannabe, Julie, do to me? I figured I should get my mind off this subject. I thought I would access the ship info, using the viewer Milly showed me how to use last night, and see if I couldn’t find their equivalent of YouTube. If I could find some cute puppy, or other baby animal, videos that might help me relax.

  Well they didn’t have a YouTube? Really? How do super intelligent beings waste their time I wondered.

  The viewer interface seemed to be like most of the interfaces to the machines I had used so far. Like the food replicator it basically read your mind, although Milly would argue that’s not the case. There was a place on the table you placed your hand over and the interface would read your thoughts and bring up index pages for you to select from based on your current thoughts.

  It was all holographic as far as I could tell, at least that was the current Earth monkey term for it. You could then just look at an item that you were interested in, the machine could tell what it was you were focusing on, and then item would move up in front of all the other items being displayed. As you browsed through the info in front of you it would just follow along and scroll the information when needed, like it was reading your mind. It was like a suped up web browser without all that “page not found” nonsense.

  Now you’re saying to yourself that this tech sounds real neat, and I have to agree, but tech always has its issues. Problems with hi-tech gadgets can usually be traced back to operator error and this alien tech was no different.

  Remember that problem I was talking about earlier? Well this mind reading tech assumes the user can control their thoughts to some degree but I was pretty much just thinking about one thing. I don’t know if any of you have ever experienced a porn storm, what am I thinking, if you’re reading this you know exactly what I’m talking about. Well imagine a porn storm on a super-duper alien hyper-dimensional, quantum level super computer. That’s right a full-scale porn-ageddon was thrust upon me. I’m talking images, videos, audio, 3D interactive simulations. My little quarters had become the universe’s porn central and this was not helping my condition. I am sure the computer core was about to melt down and ship’s security should be breaking down my door very soon. I leapt back to my bed and buried my head under the covers and just hoped it would all go away!

  There was a knock at the door. The problem I’ve been talking about had not been resolved so at this point I just yelled out, “I’m kinda busy right now”. I am not sure why I had to say it so loudly but I did.

  “Guerin? Guerin? Are you alright Guerin?” It was Milly. Great just what I needed. Ok, you could argue it WAS just what I needed, but embarrassment at this level can kinda screw with intelligent thought.

  “I’m fine.” Yes, that seems to be the default phrase that comes out of my mouth when my brain is otherwise occupied. Wait, a thought occurred to me, seriously. You’ve seen those commercials telling men when a condition lasts longer than 4 hours we should call our doctor so I said, “Milly, can you have Julie come see me? I could really use her help right now.”

  “Guerin, are you alright? What’s wrong? Let me in I can help.” Milly sounded worried, and I am sure she could have helped, but I am not sure she had any clue what that would involve.

  “Milly. Just get Julie here. I’ll only talk to Julie. Just do it.” Women. Why do we always have to repeat ourselves? You would think alien woman would be different. Sorry guys. As you will learn soon there are some basic rules of the universe that just do not have any exceptions.

  Milly must have actually listened to me, what a shock, and soon there was another knock at the door.

  “Guerin its Julie. Can I come in?” “Yes” I said and the door opened. “Just YOU!” I shouted out. Why the door opened when I said “Yes” should have raised some more questions but I was not really in an analytical mood, if you know what I mean.

  “What seems to be the problem Guerin?” Julie asked as she looked at this poor pathetic wreck cowering under the blanket.

  “LOOK!” I screamed while throwing the blanket at her. It was like the Ringling Brothers had come to town in my nether regions and pitched the Big Tent under my boxers. “WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO TO ME!” Yes, I was still screaming. I know I may not have been handling this whole new reality of being a spaceman very well but can you blame me?

  I don’t know what I was expecting her to say but I should have known. She pretty much started to laugh hysterically. Ok men. Anyone think that would help? Did she think that would help?

  “Oh yea. Real funny Julie. It’s not your dick trying to touch the ceiling!” That was me talking in case there’s any confusion.

  Julie stopped laughing, for the most part, and just smiled. “It’s fine Guerin.”

  Hmm, I thought, maybe she liked what she was seeing??

  “It’s not a big deal.”

  That sort of brought me down a few pegs. These space women really know how to stroke a guy’s ego don’t they?

  “Well what do you plan to do about this? This you your fault and you need to fix
it! You did this on purpose, didn’t you? I can’t go out in public like this.” I was pretty upset at this point but I was hoping Julie would help me out here, if you know what I mean.

  “Guerin. You really need to start by calming down. I know you’re a bit stressed with all the new things happening to you, but this isn’t anything unusual. I know this isn’t the first time something like this has happened to you. What would you do if this happened to you back on Earth?” Oh shit! I knew where this was going. “Don’t forget I’ve seen your videos.” Again, she started to laugh.

  There it is! Those fucking videos. These space pervs just won’t drop it, will they? They had to keep jabbing away at me. I was going to have to find the ship’s IT guy and see what I was going to have to do to get those damn videos erased.

  “Relax. Maybe a cold shower or something. You’re just going to have to deal with this on your own. For goodness sake, you’re supposed to be a grown man.”

  Ok I guess the happy ending was still a ways off, but I wasn’t going to give up hope. I owed that much to all the men still on Earth.

  Julie left the room and I sort of felt like an idiot. Yes, she was right. Back home I would have just taken care of this and been done with it but I’m in a space ship with a bunch of alien pervs who seemed to like recording everything I do. It’s not the same. What could I do? I did what I had to. I said FUCK IT and proceeded to head towards the shower. As I walked to the bath room I looked up at the ceiling. Not knowing exactly where the cameras were, or if they even used cameras, I spoke proudly to the ceiling "Alright, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up."

  Well I hope they all enjoyed the show. I’m sure it was going to be the hot topic at the water cooler this morning. I was just going to have to keep my head down and try and slog through it. It was hard.

  I could swear I could hear giggling everywhere as I walked down to the cafeteria to get my morning cup of Joe. I met Milly in the cafeteria as she was finishing her breakfast. I decided to join her, needing to latch on to anything even slightly familiar.