Child's Play: A Spaceman's Story

by Guerin Zand

“Yes, that stupid looking dance. Any ways, Milly complained to you that some of the guys were being a bit grabby, shall we say. You told her that skydiving was pretty much a guy’s sport still and most of the girls in the sport liked guys like that, which was why they could get away with acting that way. You said she couldn’t blame them for taken notice of a beautiful girl like her. Yes, even back then you were a real smooth talker weren’t you?”

  I just leaned my head to the side and smiled.

  “But then you told her to just let you know if it happened again and you’d take care of it. She followed you around like a little puppy the rest of that weekend”

  “Are you talking about Natasha?”

  “You remember?”

  “Of course. I always regretted not pursuing her. I guess she made it clear she didn’t appreciate the guys all hound doggin her so I figured I wouldn’t do the same.”

  “You know Guerin that nice guys don’t get laid, right?”

  “Whatever Julie!”

  I really liked her, even her name, Natasha. I thought that was so sexy. I guess I watched a little too much Bullwinkle when I was a kid.

  “After that weekend, she was gone and I never saw her again. Not long after, I moved to Florida and I used to go around to all the different drop zones hoping I would find her. She had told me where she normally jumped but no one knew her. I always regretted letting her get away.”

  “Dumb shit! Are you not listening? Natasha was Milly. Milly was Natasha. I think you found her you idiot!”

  “Why didn’t Milly tell me all this?”

  “I think she was hoping you would remember her. I am not really sure but …”

  “You really think a guy like me and a space babe like her have a chance?”

  “NO!”

  “That’s not why I am telling you this. You need to stop thinking about your dick and how you’re going to get in her pants. She needs your help. She needs that nice guy she met one summer’s weekend.”

  “I can’t believe I just said that. I don’t know why I’m even trying Guerin.”

  “So what I am I supposed to do?”

  “What do you want Guerin? Dating advice?”

  “No. I mean how am I supposed to help her? I still don’t know what this project is or how I’m involved. Can’t you at least give me a clue?”

  “Just do what she asks you to do. It’s really not so much anything you have to do that will help her. Just be yourself and try not to be such a dick!”

  “She’ll introduce you to some of her peers and just try not to insult them or start playing with yourself in front of them. Try being serious. That’s all.”

  “Well gosh Julie if I can’t play with myself what am I going to do?”

  “I knew I was wasting my time.”

  “You’re jealous of her aren’t you Julie? You just want a little Earth monkey of your own to play with.”

  “Sure, that’s it.”

  “Come on Julie it’s just you and me here. You can admit it. You want me, don’t you? You want to rock my universe. You want to do things to me no Earth girls have ever done before.”

  “Like what? Hold your hand and kiss you?”

  “Very funny Julie. Is nothing private with you people!”

  “Milly and I are the original BFFs monkey boy. You hurt her, you embarrass her and I will destroy you. I will ruin your pathetic little life, if such a thing is even possible. You’ve been warned.”

  “And another thing. You mention this conversation to her and I will remove that precious little dick of yours. Capisce!”

  “Is a blow job still out of the question?”

  Julie just ignored my last question and said, “We can go now.”

  “Seriously Julie. Was there really a quarantine or were you just looking to get me alone for this little talk?”

  Julie reached in a drawer, pulled out a lolly pop and handed it to me.

  Outside the little quarantine room Milly was waiting for us.

  “I see you’re both still breathing. I guess everything went well?”

  “Sure. Julie just wanted to get me alone for a quick blow job. I told her no, I was already spoken for. She did give me a lolly pop though, see.” And I held up my little treat to show her. “You’ll never guess where I found it!”

  Julie and Milly simply looked at each other and shook their heads and I heard Julie say under her breath to Milly, “You’re so screwed.”

  We started to leave what I can only call the space port portion of this giant space ship. I still thought it was more of a space station and just calling it the “Mother Ship” really wouldn’t do in the long term. Being the first human to see this marvel I figured I had the right to name it so I thought at some point I would have to work on a proper name. I sorta nicknamed the little shuttle we came in on the S.S. Minnow and compared to the size of this station it probably was a good name. There were hundreds of these shuttles in the space port, along with some other types of ships I was not familiar with, so I dubbed them the Minnow class shuttles. I realized at this point there were going to be a lot of things I would have to come up with names for. I remember in the Guide the whale had this same problem.

  We took an elevator from the space port up to one of the domed cities, they looked like domed cities so that is what I will call them. See this whole naming thing could take up most of my time. A considerate alien race would have given proper names to all of this prior to my arrival in order to not burden me with this task, but not this group. They should have a guide book or something at least. I wondered if there would be a comment card for me to fill out when I left where I could give these guys a few tips on alien hospitality?

  Now I had to give these aliens credit for making a pretty smart space city. I didn’t have other space cities to compare it to so it may be shit in comparison but I really liked what I saw. Now according to Milly, the clear dome was made of something like diamond except each molecule was aligned in such a way as to make the actual description incomprehensible to me so I simply called it diamond glass. I was starting to get the hang of naming things.

  The buildings were all laid out in a fairly simple pattern. The tallest buildings were in the center and the buildings gradually got shorter as you moved outward towards the dome walls. This, it appeared, was to allow the living spaces to all have some fantastic views of the cosmic greatness outside the station. The lower levels without views housed what I would describe as shops, storage, maintenance, and transportation access.

  This is pretty unheard of back on Earth, especially in Florida, where it seems we like to build giant condos on the beach so only a few people can enjoy the view.

  Surrounding the city, all around the outer circumference of the dome, were green areas with plants and trees. Now I can’t say if these were Earth plants, or related to them, but I’m not a botanist. I don’t know the names of most of the plants and trees on Earth so I wasn’t really worried about naming any of these. Most of my plant knowledge is limited to the various strains of ganja grown back home.

  The green areas had what I could only call food courts with tables scattered about. You could smell the food that was being prepared. It smelled good which only made me wonder how you could make a salad smell good? Fucking VEGANS! Next time I will have to pack some bacon in my bug out bag. Everyone knows bacon is the key to converting vegans back to proper beings.

  Throughout the city there was a maze of walk ways and a transport system that is hard to describe.

  There were these large pads you would step onto, about the size of a small minivan, just a thin floor with a post on one end with a palm pad. It would know when you stepped on it and everyone was ready. Then it would shift over from the embarkation area to the to a main spur and go in the direction you wanted. It was almost like a magic carpet, except it wasn’t a carpet, but those were the only words I could think of. They seemed to move up, down, right, left, forward, and backward as needed yet they avoided all the other pads doing the same
. It was probably some of that real fancy multi-dimensional math involved that I couldn’t possibly understand so to me it all seemed pretty much like magic. I just called it cool.

  You felt no motion while on these pads so there were no hand grips, because if you think about it, who needs to hold on to anything when they’re not actually moving? But you were moving. That’s just more of that alien magic juju I guessed. They could travel at a pretty good clip to get you across the city if needed.

  I was just glad that Milly was there. Ok, Julie was there too but she didn’t count. If it were just Julie she would have probably tossed me over board.

  Remembering my earlier experiences with these mind reading interfaces I figured if I tried to use this transport system on my own I’d probably end up causing an intergalactic incident. It would probably be safer to let me fly Sammy’s shuttle. I promised Julie I would try and behave like a good monkey, and not cause any problems for Milly, so trashing the entire cities transport system, while maybe fun, would not be a good thing. I was going to have to walk everywhere if they let me out on my own to explore.

  Our little magic pad took us up and towards the center of the city and one of the taller buildings. Now we were pretty high up and while traveling on the pad I thought falling would not be pleasant. I was seriously suffering from that feeling, you know the one that seems to tell you to jump even though you know it’s a dumb idea? Of course, I had to test this so I tried to lean over but I couldn’t. My head and arms moved and I could turn around but I couldn’t just lean over. Got me what was going on there. These aliens really knew their shit obviously. Julie just looked at me like, well pretty much the same way she always looked at me, shaking her head with a frown on her face. Just like a disapproving mother.

  We docked next to a walk way, sort of like you would see outside a hotel or motel’s upper levels except there were no railings to keep you from falling off. I guess I would just have to be careful, but I really wanted to jump to see what would happen.

  Milly grabbed me, have I mentioned I like that? “Come on. I’ll take you to your suite, you can get settled in and then we can go to dinner.”

  Chapter 9

  Date Night on the Mother Ship

  Milly and I went one way and Julie went in the opposite direction. That made me happy. The outside of all the residences were made of some sort of glass. You could not see inside but I suspected you could see out to enjoy this magnificent view. I bet these space aliens thought that was special but we Earth monkeys have the same thing, so I wasn’t really impressed.

  About fifty feet from where we left our magic pad we came upon the door to my suite. I used the old flat palm method on the panel to open the door and we walked inside. I was right, of course, about the one-way windows but I acted surprise just to entertain Milly. She really enjoyed seeing this monkey’s amazed look so I played along.

  I dropped my bag on a sort of sofa, actually it looked more like a futon. Could the aliens be responsible for futons on Earth? Could they be behind IKEA? The furniture did look familiar. If so, I would have to make sure and voice my displeasure at this violation of the prime directive.

  Milly pointed out the obvious but I let her rattle on about this being the bed and here were the food and beverage stations and on, and on, and on ... She liked explaining the simple things to me and all men know you don’t really want to point this out. Just smile and say stupid shit like “Really” and “Wow” and “That’s pretty cool!” At some point, I probably should put all this info together and write a book about the Dos and Don’ts of space babe dating.

  “Are you hungry?”

  Actually, I was. “Sure. What’s the plan?”

  “I thought I would take you to one of my favorite restaurants.”

  “You have restaurants? Why do you need restaurants when you have the food replicators?”

  “At a restaurant, the food is prepared by real cooks so you get to try new things, or variations of foods you already know, which of course you remember and can then use a food synthesizer to recreate.”

  That made sense. No, really it did. The reason I didn’t think of this was because it would never work on Earth. Imagine the big-name chefs of Earth cooking you a great dinner and then you have your friends over and pop the same dish out of the old replicator. They would sue the replicators for copyright infringement and eventually the replicators would only be allowed to serve you bread and water.

  “Is this a nice restaurant? I’m not sure I’m dressed for something too nice. I just have these jeans, t-shirts and boots. Not really what one wears to a fancy restaurant.”

  Being from Florida, that was not actually true, but I didn’t want her to think I was some uncouth country bumpkin.

  “There are some standard uniforms in your closet if you want to change. Weren’t you paying attention when I was explaining the suite to you?”

  Of course, I wasn’t paying attention, but I didn’t think that would be a good answer. I thought it would be a bad idea at this stage in our relationship to explain to her the whole female vocal filter every man was born with. You know the one that allows men to ignore pretty much everything a woman says while still looking like we’re paying attention.

  “Sure, I was paying attention but I would have thought by now you’d know I don’t wear onesies. They’re just not, um, manly.”

  “You don’t like my onesie?”

  “I didn’t say that.” Yes, I think I just stepped into the “Does this dress make my ass look big?” trap.

  “It looks great on you.” Which it did. “And it even looks great on Julie, but don’t let her know I said that. I mean, I’m an Earth man, and I think as the only human representative here I should show the local residents a proper example of Earth style. The t-shirt and jeans is more like work clothes and are not really meant to impress.”

  “You don’t have to impress anyone.”

  “I thought you wanted me to make a good impression? I can’t really do that dressed as some backwoods redneck!”

  “Well we can’t really do anything about that before dinner but you can use the viewer to pick out something. Just bring up a memory of some catalogs you remember from Earth and pick what you want. It should be ready in the morning and it will be delivered to you.”

  Sweet!

  I proceeded to play with the viewer and it brought up a copy of the Tommy Bahama’s online catalog. These aliens had all the Earth info available at the touch of your palm. Good thing I got here before the Russians or Chinese.

  I proceeded to pick out some of those nice comfortable silk shirts, a couple pairs of pants, a belt and some nice sandals. It was up to me to set the dress code for all future humans and I was going to do it right. No ties! No onesies!

  “How do I specify the right sizes”

  “Your measurements are already available remember.”

  “Oh, that’s right. I guess my videos are all available too?”

  She didn’t answer. She just smiled an evil sort of smile. I really had to track down that IT guy, I think his name was Ricky.

  “And how do I pay for this?”

  “You don’t have to pay for it.”

  “Really? I don’t know. There’s no such thing as a free lunch you know. I hope you don’t expect me to pay for this by agreeing to that ass rape party you’re planning!”

  We both laughed.

  “But seriously, at some point you’re going to have to explain to me the entire intergalactic system of finances. I feel like a little kid whose parents just give him anything he wants. I take care of my debts. I’m no freeloader. How can I take a sweet space babe out to dinner if I can’t pay for it? What kind of losers do you normally date? I did bring some gold and silver if that would help.”

  “You brought some shiny baubles?”

  “Very funny Milly. Ha, ha.”

  “Just don’t worry about that now and let’s just go to dinner.”

  “Ok, but if I end up washing dishes for the res
t of my life because you just like screwing with me I’m not going to be happy. That’s the sort of shit I would expect from Julie.”

  We laughed, left the room and headed back to where we left our magic pad. It was still there. I was going to ask but I figured I should just look cool and act like that is exactly what I expected. You don’t want to look like an idiot when you take a young lady out on a first date.

  “Milly, I noticed there are no barriers to keep me from falling over the edge here. What would happen if I just walked off the edge?”

  “You’d look like an idiot!”

  “Besides that, very funny by the way, wouldn’t it kill me. I am still kinda partial to living, although, a little more time with Julie might cure that.”

  “No. You wouldn’t die. And stop picking on Julie.”

  “The gravity field is generated by this walkway. If you stepped off, there would be no gravity to pull you down so at worst you’d just float about until someone retrieved you. Like I said. You’d look like an idiot.”

  “But doesn’t a large ship like this have enough mass to generate a least a small gravitational pull?”

  “It’s not big enough to generate a substantial gravitational field and what it does is offset by other factors.”

  Well at least I got the whole asking dumb questions, and looking like an idiot, on our first date out of the way. It’s always awkward until that happens. Now I could relax. I still really wanted to jump off and try it though.

  The magic pad took us to the top of the tallest building which it turned out was just one big restaurant on the top floor with a 360 degree view of the cosmos. Ok I was a little impressed but I kept my “been there done that” look up for appearances.

  A very attractive hostess, in a onesie of course, escorted us to nice table by the window. Milly obviously had some pull. I found that very attractive. I had been looking all my adult life for a woman who could afford me. I may have just found her.

  Milly looked very happy to be at this restaurant. It was nice to see her relaxed and smiling. The table of course had a viewer which I presumed was where one found the menu. Milly started to go through some items on the viewer.