Out of the Soylent Planet (A Rex Nihilo Adventure) (Starship Grifters Book 0)

by Robert Kroese

  A shambler backed into me, nearly knocking me to the ground.

  “Hey!” I yelped. A few of the plants in the immediate vicinity seemed to take notice of me at last. Building on my momentum, I shouted, “Everybody stop shoving and listen to me!”

  Suddenly all the shamblers’ eyes were on me. The plants ceased their random jostling and backed away, forming a circle around me. A change had come over the mood in the pen, but it was difficult to read. I had wanted to get their attention, not spook them.

  “Sorry,” I said. “This is my first time, and I’m not sure what the best…” I trailed off as excited murmuring went through the herd. Several of the shamblers near me waved their tentacles in the air. I got the sense I had said something wrong.

  “Did you say this is your first time?” asked one of the shamblers near the front. Those near it murmured excitedly.

  “Well, yes,” I said. “But don’t try pulling any tricks. I’m just here to collect your fruit. So if you’ll form an orderly queue, ripest first, we can…”

  My words were drowned out by murmurs and moans. Hundreds of tentacles waved furiously in the air. “Me first!” shouted one of the shamblers near me. “No, me!” cried another. “My fruit is ready to fall off!” Soon the shamblers were all clamoring to be the first to have their fruit plucked. I was beginning to see what Webber meant about not being able to look at himself in the mirror. This was the most humiliating thing I’d ever experienced, and I’d once been upstaged by a floor-waxing machine.

  “Everybody stop talking!” I shouted. “If you don’t shut up, nobody’s getting their fruit plucked!”

  The herd gradually settled down. There were still some murmurs and waving tentacles, but the frenzy seemed to have passed.

  “Okay, good,” I said, feeling a bit more confident. “That’s better. Now, the way we’re going to do this is, whoever is quietest gets his fruit picked first.” Genius, I thought to myself. “Got it?”

  The murmuring faded to silence.

  Feeling like I was getting a handle on the situation, I said, “Very good. Everybody just keep quiet and we’ll get this done in no time.” I took a step toward one of the shamblers. It trembled in anticipation as I reached toward a cluster of bright yellow fruit hanging low in front of it. I snatched one of the fruits and dropped it in my bucket. “Mmmmmmmmmmm,” said the shambler, its tentacles waving wildly in the air and its eyes rolling back in its head. I shuddered.

  “Quiet!” I snapped, as I reached for another fruit.

  “Hey, why are you doing him again?” shouted a plant in the back. “I’ve been way quieter than him!”

  “Me too!” yelled another shambler. “I’ve been quiet this whole time!”

  “I’ve been quieter than anybody!” another exclaimed. “This whole system is a sham!”

  Soon the pen had erupted into chaos again.

  “Stop it!” I shouted. “Forget it. We’re not doing this. You had your chance and you ruined it. If you want your fruit picked, you’re going to have to do it yourself.” I held up the bucket.

  My memories of what happened next are a bit fuzzy. I remember the first few fruits hitting my head, but at some point the repeated concussions must have caused a hard reboot. I found myself lying on the ground just outside the pen, covered head to toe in green goo. Stubby Joe was standing over me, looking like he’d have been shaking his head if he had one.

  “You know,” Stubby Joe said, “there are three rules of wrangling shamblers. One: don’t let them surround you. Two: don’t try to reason with them. Care to guess what the third one is?”

  “Don’t mention the first two rules until it’s too late to do any good?”

  “Never ask a shambler to harvest its own fruit.”

  I nodded, seeing the wisdom in this. “Why did they do that?”

  “Shamblers were genetically engineered to want to give their fruit to humans. Problem is, they’ve never been real sticklers about the definition of ‘give.’ They prefer to have their fruit picked, but if they think it’s their only option, they’ll gladly just throw their fruit in your general direction.”

  “And you didn’t feel like it was a good idea to warn me about this?”

  Stubby Joe’s tentacles made a motion I interpreted as a shrug. “Experience is the best teacher. But to be honest, I didn’t think the shamblers would react to you as if you were a human. Guess I was wrong about that.”

  “I suppose you don’t have that problem.”

  “Nope,” said Stubby Joe. “It’s one of the reasons I’m such a good wrangler. I don’t have to worry about shamblers chucking their fruit at me, because I don’t look like a human. Throwing their fruit at another shambler is not, um, a satisfying experience for them, if you understand me.”

  “How do the human wranglers do it?” I asked. “They must get pelted with fruit all the time.”

  “The shamblers generally only throw their fruit when they get really desperate. We try to harvest a couple days before they’re fully ripe, but we’re so short-staffed these days that we’re having trouble getting to all of them in time. I’ve tried to get Nutrient Supply to thin the mixture to lower the yield, but they’ve got their own quotas. And now with Webber gone, we’re really up a creek.”

  “I guess I didn’t help matters any.”

  Stubby Joe did the shrug thing again. “Won’t make much difference in the end. I didn’t really expect you to harvest a whole pen of shamblers on your first try anyway. And at least I don’t have to worry about them pelting some other poor sap. Come on, I’ll show you to your cabin.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The sun was setting as Stubby Joe led me through the fields to a clearing where several large cabins had been constructed for the wranglers. The rest of the workers were gathering in a mess hall for a dinner of SLOP, but as neither Stubby Joe nor I needed to eat in the typical sense, he showed me to my bunk. It was in a large cabin with some three dozen other beds.

  “I don’t actually sleep,” I said.

  “I know,” said Stubby Joe. “But you’ll need a place to be at night when everybody else is sleeping.”

  “I could work at night,” I said.

  “Nothing to do. The shamblers go dormant at night. Can’t move them and they get irritable if you try to harvest them. You’ll just have to lie in bed and wait it out until sunrise.”

  “Sounds like a blast,” I said. “What about you?”

  “I’ll be going dormant shortly myself. I spend the night in a nutrient bath. Gives me a full day’s nutrient supply so I can work all day without having to put my roots in the ground.”

  “All right, then,” I said. “Guess I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Stubby Joe waved a tentacle at me and went back outside. I sat on my bunk for a while and then decided to head over to the mess hall. If I was going to be spending the rest of my life with these people, I figured I should probably learn to socialize with them. I approached a table where three of the men I had met earlier sat, slurping on SLOP packets.

  “Um, hi,” I said. “You guys mind if I sit here?”

  One of the men, a big, dour-looking guy, shrugged. I sat down next to him. Across the table was a small, weasely guy with long, ratty hair, and a man with an oddly round face and crossed eyes.

  “I’m Grompers,” said the big man. He pointed at the weasely guy. “That’s Figgles. And this dummy is Jim.” Jim grinned a bucktoothed smile at me and waved.

  “Nice to meet you,” I said. “I’m Sasha.”

  “No you ain’t,” said Figgles.

  “Um, yes. That’s my name.”

  “That was your name. We gotta give you a wrangler name.”

  “Oh, okay,” I said. “That sounds like fun.”

  “So what do you want to be named after?” Grompers asked.

  “Uh, I don’t really know. What are my options?”

  Figgles shrugged. “Some wranglers is named for somethin’ they like to do, or somethin’ they used to do. W
e gots a Doc, a Digger, a Smokey, a Pipes and a Tinker. Some’re named for plants. Some’re named for animals. Just depends.”

  “I see,” I said. “What do you call the little mouse that runs between the shamblers?” I’d seen the tiny rodent while Stubby Joe and I were walking back to camp.

  The three men looked at each other meaningfully. “We call it K’trath tar-Kathagra,” Grompers said. The K’trath tar-Kathagra is a very brave and clever creature. There is a legend that a wrangler known as K’trath tar-Kathagra will overthrow the repressive Ubiqorp regime and give the wranglers their freedom.”

  “Wow,” I said. “Sounds like a lot to live up to, but I like the sound of it.”

  Grompers shook his head. “That’s already Jim’s wrangler name. We just call him Jim because K’trath tar-Kathagra is too long.”

  Jim grinned and waved at me again.

  “Oh,” I said.

  “What’s yer second choice?” Figgles asked.

  I thought for a moment. “What do you call the funny blue lizards that climb all over the shamblers?”

  “We call those ‘Sasha,’” Figgles said.

  “Really?” I asked.

  “Well,” said Figgles, “I ain’t never seen no funny blue lizard, but if do, I’ma callin’ it Sasha.” Grompers and Jim nodded.

  The naming issue having been settled, the men went back to slurping at their SLOP. I noticed now that the wranglers’ eyes were all a deep green color.

  “Entertainment, mostly,” said Figgles.

  “What?” I asked, confused.

  “Just answering a question you’re going to ask shortly.”

  “Oh. Actually, what I was wondering is why your eyes are all that green color.”

  “It’s the soylent,” Grompers said. “Bein’ out here all day, it gets in your pores. Changes the pigmentation of your irises.”

  “Wow. Are there any other side effects?”

  “Sure. Figgles can see the future.”

  “If he has the ability to see the future, why doesn’t he use it to escape?”

  “I cain’t change the future,” said Figgles. “I can only see it. Also, I can only see thirty seconds into the future.”

  “Thirty seconds? What is being able to see thirty seconds into the future good for?”

  Figgles grinned at me. Grompers and Jim laughed.

  “So what’s your story, Sasha?” Grompers asked. “How’s a robot end up on a soylent plantation?”

  I told them how I’d ended up on Jorfu and gotten roped into soylent wrangling.

  “This Rex seems to be somethin’ of a rogue,” Grompers said.

  “I’d say that’s accurate,” I replied.

  “Question is,” Figgles said, “Is he a lovable rogue?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You know,” Grompers said. “A lovable rogue. An anti-hero.”

  “Technically,” Figgles said, “only some lovable rogues are anti-heroes, and vice-a versa. If the lovable rogue is the protagonist, then—”

  “Stop bein’ pedantic, Figgles,” Grompers snapped. He turned back to me. “Did Rex have a dysfunctional or working-class upbringing?”

  “I’m not sure about the working-class part,” I said, “but I think dysfunctional is a safe bet.”

  “Does he recklessly defy norms ‘n’ social conventions?” Figgles asked. “Does he try to beat the system?”

  “Definitely.”

  “We already done established he’s a rogue, Figgles. We’re tryin’ to determine if he’s lovable.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say I love him.”

  “Your feelins’ are secondary,” Grompers said. “Does Rex identify with a highly idealistic belief system?”

  “Would that make him lovable?”

  “The lovable rogue is differentiated from a villain by his highly idealistic belief system,” Grompers replied. “Despite his external appearance of selfishness, foolhardiness, or emotional detachment, the lovable rogue may in fact hold a code of honor that transcends normal social constraints such as conformity, tradition, or the law.”

  “I’m not sure Rex has any belief system, idealistic or otherwise. All he seems to carry about is money.”

  “Does he have a lot of money?” Figgles asked.

  “No.”

  “That seems to be a flaw in your understandin’ of his character, then,” Grompers said.

  “In any case,” Figgles said, “I disagree with the notion that a rogue needs an idealistic belief system. What makes a rogue lovable is his ability to evoke sympathy from an audience. An idealistic belief system is only one way for the rogue to evoke sympathy. The important thing is that the rogue’s erratic disposition be viewed not as repulsive and alarmin’ but as excitin’ and adventurous.”

  “You’re talkin’ nonsense, Figgles. How’s a rogue gonna evoke sympathy if he ain’t got an idealistic belief system?”

  “Lots o’ ways. Sheer charisma, for one. On top o’ that, a lovable rogue may be reluctant to reveal his idealistic belief system, particularly to those closest to him.”

  Grompers rubbed his chin. “You’re saying Sasha’s too close to Rex to judge whether or not he’s lovable.”

  “Not only that,” Figgles went on, “but their story ain’t over yet. Right now, Rex seems like a villain, but he might yet redeem himself.”

  “Because of his idealistic belief system!” Grompers exclaimed.

  “Gol’ durn it, Grompers. Tain’t got nothin’ to do with an idealistic belief system. You ain’t heard a word I said.”

  “I heard ya. Yer talkin’ nonsense is all.”

  “Ain’t no point in talkin’ to you in the first place.”

  The three men finished their soylent in silence. We never did establish whether Rex was lovable or not. All I knew was that as much as I hated to admit it, I missed him. Sure, he was reckless and rude, but somehow I felt like less of an oddball with him around.

  Best to put such thoughts out of my head, though, as it was very unlikely I’d ever see Rex again. He was probably knee-deep in his own escape plan, having never given me another thought. I went and lay down in my bunk. Half an hour or so later, the other workers began to file in, laughing and ribbing each other with insipid but good-natured insults. The lights went out not long after that, and soon the only sound in the cabin was snoring. I lay there and listened to it until sunrise, trying not to think too hard on the series of bad decisions—mine and Rex’s—that had gotten me here.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The next day went a little better. I spent most of the day helping Stubby Joe corral several hundred shamblers into a pen, then handed him buckets while he harvested their fruit. The tittering and moaning of the shamblers still creeped me out, but Stubby Joe seemed inured to it. When we were finished, we loaded the buckets onto a truck and drove it to a large automated hopper near the middle of the plantation. The fruit was pulverized by the machine and the resulting mush was sucked through a pipeline to a processing facility, where it would be refined into SLOP. By the time we finished, it was almost dusk, and the claxon announcing that it was quitting time had just blared from the PA system. Stubby Joe parked the truck and we began walking back to the camp. Stubby Joe still showed no interest in socializing with me, but we seemed to be developing a functional working relationship.

  We were trudging across a clearing when I noticed something whizzing through the air toward us. It was clearly not a bird. Some kind of vehicle?

  “What’s that?” I asked Stubby Joe, pointing at the thing.

  Stubby Joe looked where I was pointing. “Where?” He said. “I don’t see… ugh.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Quality assurance,” he said. “As if this job isn’t hard enough, we have those jerkwads showing up to tell us what we’re doing wrong. Just keep quiet and let me do the talking.”

  I nodded. The vehicle, a sort of one-man flying scooter, was heading right for us. I realized, with a surge of mixed emotions, that the man flying i
t was Rex Nihilo.

  “Wow, who is this guy?” said Stubby Joe. I almost answered, then realized it was a rhetorical question. Something about Rex had impressed Stubby Joe, who stared at him as if mesmerized. The spell was broken as soon as Rex opened his mouth. “What are you yokels doing down here?” Rex called, his scooter hovering a few meters from my head. “Don’t you know you’re eight hundred liters under quota?”

  “It’s quittin’ time,” said Stubby Joe. “We’re headed back to the camp.”

  “It’s quittin’ time when you meet your quota. I just flew over twenty hectares of shamblers that are ripe for the picking.”

  “Yeah? Then why don’t you do something productive for a change and pick them. We’ve been working all day.”

  “Listen to me, you thankless mutant—”

  “Sir,” I said. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m doing my job. Which is more than I can say for… oh, hey, Sandy! I didn’t recognize you with the coveralls on. How’s it going?”

  “As well as could be expected. I see you’re adjusting to your position as a quality assurance officer.”

  “It’s fantastic, Sandy,” Rex said with a grin. “All day long I tell people what they’re doing wrong and how disappointed I am in them. I’m getting paid for doing what I love.”

  “You know this guy?” Stubby Joe asked, regarding Rex curiously.

  “I’m afraid so,” I said. “We arrived here together. How’s your escape plan coming, sir?”

  “Shhh!” Rex hissed. “You don’t need to tell everyone in the plantation!”

  I glanced at Stubby Joe, who was looking at Rex with an expression I couldn’t quite decipher. Rex set his scooter down a few meters in front of us and got off. He walked toward me and grabbed my arm. “We’ll be just a second,” Rex said to Stubby Joe, pulling me into the shambler field next to us. Oddly, although the shamblers didn’t seem to wake up, I could swear they leaned in toward Rex. “We need to talk about some quality assurance stuff. Nothing to do with escaping.”