by M. D. Cooper
I keep smelling hints of eucalyptus and my anxiety only rises higher. Trying to calm myself, I reason that if there were any reason to suspect a plague outbreak, these nice-looking young people wouldn’t be going about their lives so nonchalantly. Plus, I have Greta’s luck and Pinky’s straight-up badassness with me. I’ll be fine. Right?
I put my hand in my right pocket and rub my luck stone.
I hope no one thinks I’m playing pocket pool.
We walk for what feels like forever. I barely register the expertly manicured green areas and flower beds. I notice some students playing Frisbee and carefully align myself against Pinky so that if a damn disk comes my way, either it will turn out to be a grand prize in some contest for Greta, or Pinky will catch that shit and obliterate it.
I manage to avoid any mishaps, and, finally, Greta gestures at a huge wooden door at the front of a large stone building.
“Here we are!” She seems entirely happy and blissfully unaware of my hypervigilance.
We walk into an old library and, I have to admit, it’s grand. The building has walls that rise three stories high, stacked with books upon books all the way up. I mean actual paper books. I’ve never seen such a thing.
“Wow.” And as genuinely impressive as it is, in the back of my head, I begin calculating the odds of a book spontaneously slipping from the wall and falling three stories to land on my head.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” Greta’s voice is full of wonder and admiration.
I have to admit that it is.
“Pretty,” is all Pinky says. Actually, she hadn’t said much at all since leaving the Second Chance. Odd, since she has plenty to say when we’re in her pub. But that’s probably where she feels most at home. Maybe I’m not the only one outside my comfort zone.
Next thing I know, Greta rushes to a spiral staircase on the far side of the cavernous library and runs up it. I edge up to the bottom of the staircase and look upward at her feet, which are running in circles and carrying her ever higher. She peers over the side of the rail and beckons. “Come on!”
A sign in front of me insists that the staircase is for employees only. I scan the vicinity, waiting for some angry librarian to come mete out some punishment. But nothing. I look at Pinky. Pinky looks at me. Sighing, I grip the rail and carefully step up, slanted stair by slanted stair. Spiral staircases suck. I’m slightly reassured to know that Pinky’s right behind me.
When we finally reach the top, Greta grins at us. “Come on!” she says again, darting ahead.
“Wait!” I call. “You can’t just come up here. We aren’t supposed to be in this part.” This area has a very different feel than down below. A wide, unadorned hallway is punctuated by a series of doors on each side.
“Sure we can. It’s fine. Trust me.”
I want to. I’ve witnessed her luck before, and I really want to trust her. I just can’t. I have too much history. Too much litany of the many Kennys who have died doing the most innocuous things.
But then, a voice inside me argues, if even the most mundane thing can result in doom, why keep worrying about it? Maybe when a redshirt’s time is up, it’s just up, no matter what he or she is doing. Why not just do what you want to do?
“Because that kind of thinking leads to getting your spine removed by a yeti-gator, like my dad,” I mutter to myself. Like I’m going to let the voice of reason talk me down. Oh no. Reason is no match for my paranoia.
Then why are you here? the damn voice asks. Why aren’t you huddled away in your cabin on the Second Chance? Is it the girl? Are you in looove? The idiot voice stretches the last word out into three childish syllables.
“Shut up, asshole!” I burst out. Then freeze because Greta has skipped halfway down the hall and the only person in my vicinity is Pinky. Who eyes me with a look of mild disdain.
“I didn’t say anything,” she says.
“No! I didn’t mean you. I’d never—augh!” I plunge down the hallway after Greta, heedless of anything but putting my moronic outburst behind me.
Greta looks at me over her shoulder and smiles a sneaky sort of smile. She’s skimming her hand against the wall, swooping it up high, then down low. She hones in on a door, leaning close to it and sliding her index finger across. “This one,” she decides, reaching for opening mechanism.
“What’s in there?” I ask.
“I don’t know. Let’s see.” Before I can protest, she opens the door, which someone has neglected to lock, and she steps in.
I stand in the hallway, silently doing battle with the voice of reason. But Pinky catches up and nudges me forward.
As soon as I enter, I lose all sense of everything but the room itself. “Wow.”
It’s a data analysis center. 3D projectors provide up-to-the-second data on weather predictions, stock markets, planetary GDPs, along with thousands of other running algorithms. “Wow,” I say again. I’ve never seen anything like it, not even in college or within the cutting-edge company I work for. “How did you know this was here?” I ask Greta, not looking at her, but at all of the machines and projecting images around me.
“I didn’t.” She seems bored by the room itself, but entertained by my reaction to it. “You like it?”
“It’s fantastic.” The room is a wonderland of facts and data and calculations. I go from one readout to the next, studying each holographic projection.
I don’t know how long we’ve been there when Greta touches my shoulder. Her mouth is pursed into a tiny frown. “We should go.”
“Just another minute. I want to see—”
“Now,” she insists, calmly but firmly.
I come to my senses. Of course, I have to follow her lead. And I do—I follow her right down the staircase and out the door of the library.
“What was that place?” I ask as we stand, looking back at the building.
“I’m sure you could look it up later and find out.” Greta seems unconcerned.
“How did you know to take me—wait. I know. You didn’t. Right?”
She gives me a sly smile. “Now you’re catching on.”
Pinky stands alongside us, saying nothing.
“So now what?” I ask.
“I showed you something. Now you show me something,” Greta says.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Just do what I did. You lead, I follow. We see what we find.”
“I really can’t describe what a terrible idea that is.” How could I even start?
“You think every idea’s terrible. Let’s go.” She gestures. Not in any particular direction, just a move your ass kind of thing.
I sigh. So, it all boiled down to this. Risking my life by showing off my preposterously bad luck for two people I only met days before. But even though I about-face and begin walking, I don’t feel an overwhelming sense of doom. Just a general air of doom, which is mildly refreshing.
We haven’t gone half a kilometer down the sidewalk when I get a very bad feeling. Normally, I’d run away from such a feeling like a frightened gazelle. Not today. I face that feeling by planting my feet in that spot and hiding directly behind Pinky. Because hey, I might be acting brave, but I’m not stupid.
Sure enough, in seconds, I hear a buzzing—a buzzing that grows increasingly louder, and five very long seconds later we see it: a dark, roiling cloud of bugs. What kind of bugs, I can’t determine, being neither an entomologist nor a citizen of Parkorvan. But it’s a big, black blob of angry buzzing, and it’s coming right for us.
A yell goes up across the street, with people bolting for the nearest building. Apparently, they know what these things are, and they’re not enthusiastic about this turn of events.
Do we move? Do we exercise the slightest bit of self-preservation? Nope. We stand there in the crossroads of my doom and Greta’s luck, and let Pinky’s kenogu decide.
Greta gasps in shock and slaps a hand to her cheek. Pinky frowns and rubs at her neck. I feel a burning pinch on my forehead and realize the
bugs are biters. Great. But as soon as the biting begins, and the black cloud seems about to converge on us, a massive wind comes along, scattering it. The bugs struggle against it, swirling in chaotic patterns. Greta and I grab onto Pinky as the gale force increases, threatening to knock us over.
Within ten seconds, the bug cloud disappears. Doors open and people peek to see if it’s safe to come out.
“What was that?” Greta seems amazed, even though an angry red bump is rising on her cheek.
“No idea,” I say, rubbing my forehead. “I hope they weren’t poisonous.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it.” Greta’s eyes are wide with wonder.
“So where now?” Pinky asks.
I realize I still need to lead them somewhere. Should I keep steering us wherever my danger-sense tells me not to go?
“You want to go on?” I glance at Pinky, but then focus on Greta. This is her adventure. I don’t know what she’s trying to discover or prove, but maybe the bugs have scared her off.
Greta touches her cheek, gently probing the bug bite with her forefinger. She nods.
“Don’t pick at it,” I advise, taking her hand and holding it so she doesn’t aggravate it.
She nods again, suddenly quiet. She seems fascinated with the burning pain on her face. My face burns too, and I find it far less intriguing.
I hone in again on my internal danger-meter. What feels like the worst possible choice? Ah, yes. A right turn. That feels like a terrible decision. Greta should be overjoyed with whatever comes next.
A tall, stocky man crosses the street toward us. A van-like vehicle screeches around the corner and hits the man, who bounces up onto the front of the car, then falls to the road.
I steal a look at Greta, who looks positively gobsmacked, like she’s seeing Christmas for the first time. Pinky simply squints at the scene, looking undecided.
A man leaps out of the vehicle, but rather than rushing to the aid of the victim, he runs over and screams, “What the hell, man, you’re not doing this to me!”
The guy on the road gets to his feet, holding one arm to his side. “Do what? You hit me!”
The apparent vehicularly homicidal maniac only grows more enraged. “Oh, no way! I will kill you in self-defense! I’ll do it!”
“Whatever, man.” The injured guy, still holding his arm, finishes crossing the street and awkwardly opens the door to his own vehicle.
But the maniac isn’t done. “Oh, no you don’t!” He pulls a small capsule from his waistband and sprays something toward the other guy, who ducks and then dives into his vehicle. His tires squeal as he drives away.
The maniac notices us watching. “What?!” he screams at us, then gets back in his van and slowly drives off.
Even Pinky looks flummoxed at this point. “What was that? What just happened?”
I shrug and Greta, her mouth slightly open, merely shakes her head.
We stand there on the sidewalk, my two companions blinking and screwing up their faces in various expressions of puzzlement. I’m far less affected. I’m accustomed to bizarre circumstances in general and have developed mental armor against them. Pinky and Greta do not have this same jadedness.
“So, are we ready to head back to the spaceport?” I ask hopefully.
Pinky and Greta silently look at each other, then at me. I take that to mean that they hadn’t yet grasped the reality of my existence. Fine. We’ll travel onward.
I check in with my danger-sense and feel like I need to head further from the city center to find something truly deranged. I lead my friends down the parkway about a kilometer and take a right turn. At the very end of that avenue I make another right turn. After that, a left.
“It feels like we’re walking in circles,” Greta observes as we travel slowly down the picturesque but far less populated street.
“Nope. I promise you, something really stupid is right that way.” I point, for effect. I’ve never tried to use my sense of doom to intentionally echolocate some crapfest of disaster. Thanks to these two, I’m acting in diametric opposition to my instincts.
Another half hour of walking leads us down a road that has no traffic at all, other than the three of us. The sidewalk ran out some ways back and now we tramp over uneven grass. I don’t care for that, as the odds of my twisting an ankle or breaking a leg are too high. But it’s still better than walking on the shoulder of the road. That would just be begging for a very gruesome, messy death. No, thank you very much.
When I realize we’re approaching some sort of military installation, I must admit, I feel an unusually high level of trepidation. But even though my sense of self-preservation screams, Run, you fool, or kiss your ass goodbye, I persevere. I walk right up to the perimeter fence with Pinky and Greta on either side of me.
Nothing happens.
“Now what?” Greta asks.
“Just wait.”
We wait there, with the sun shining cheerily above and happy birds chirping to each other from the trees alongside the road. And, sure enough, not five minutes later, we see something that I don’t mind categorizing as epic.
A tank rolls out from behind the installation. I can’t claim to know why this little university planetoid has a military base armed with tanks. Maybe they’re afraid of someone coming in and kidnapping students from rich families and holding them for ransom. Or maybe space pirates have a tendency to stop off here to steal computer devices and flipflop shoes. Who knows? Maybe somewhere, there’s a species of people who prize flipflops above all else.
Anyway, it’s obvious that something’s awry with this tank. Rather than roll out on a straight course, it weaves side to side, does lazy donuts (as much as a tank can do donuts because those bastards do not exactly corner well), and generally looks like a drunk monkey is driving it.
Comically, a squadron of uniformed officers runs out in the tank’s wake, and even across the distance I can hear indistinct shouts. The officers’ shouts rise an octave and they run full-out. Another tank emerges. I wonder how many of the vehicles are stored behind the building.
How does a person outside a tank stop a tank? They don’t. That’s the point of tanks.
I hope their guns aren’t loaded.
Aha. Four more tanks deploy now, and these aren’t driven with the airy abandon of a child going, Whee! These newcomers drive with obvious intent toward the freewheeling pair. After some time, they manage to block the two in. Officers on the ground climb up on the rogue tanks, shouting, and, within a few minutes, they open the hatches.
A pair of monkeys clamber out.
Right. Monkeys. Driving tanks. I knew we were on the trail of something unlikely, but I hadn’t expected such a spectacular show of preposterous dumbassery. There are no odds for calculating such a thing.
So engrossed is my little group in watching all this unfold, we don’t notice the young, wiry human hoofing it toward us until he’s within throwing distance. Since my doom-sense hasn’t kicked in, I deem him a low-level threat.
“Hey!” he pants. “You shouldn’t be here.”
What can I say that won’t make things worse? I wisely keep my mouth closed. Greta looks lost for words.
But Pinky has us covered. Though she’s been quiet on this excursion, she finally roars to life, in all her glory. “Well, here we are. Outside a fence. Watching you people play war games with monkeys. What the hell is wrong with you?”
She stares the man down and he takes a half step back, stammering. “Ah, nothing’s wrong with me. I’m just a PR person for the fleet.”
“Then what’s wrong with them?” She hitches her chin toward the tanks, monkeys, and officers. At the moment, the officers appear to be negotiating with the animals.
“Well…” he glances back over his shoulder, then returns his gaze to us. Actually, just to me. He flinches away from looking at Pinky, as if she glows with the mighty brightness of a sun. “Some lab monkeys escaped from the university. They apparently became self-aware and decided t
o bust up the university that had imprisoned them.”
“How do you know this?” I ask.
“We have a sign language interpreter. Those are some pissed-off simians.”
“I don’t blame them.” Greta speaks up for the first time.
The guy glances back again. “Yeah. Me either.” He sighs. “I hate this job.”
We all stand there, watching the monkeys and the officers gesticulating at each other. Finally, there’s a long standoff. The animals seem to be waiting for something. They’re handed a paper, which they confer over, and suddenly scramble down.
“It appears that the long nightmare is over,” Greta observes drily.
“Will they be okay?” I ask the PR man. I feel sorry for him. He’s going to have a nightmare of a PR crisis on his hands.
“Yes,” he answers. “We have strict laws about sentient creatures. The university will have a lot to answer for.”
I feel better about that, anyway.
“So, if you three would sign some non-disclosure agreements?” He says this as if it fits right into our conversation.
“Why should we?” Pinky asks, looking entirely indomitable.
“Well…I could offer each of you a thousand universal credits, for your trouble.”
“Hush money?” Pinky closes one eye and squints at him with the other. Somehow, her glare is more concentrated and intense with just one eyeball. “I’m good with that.”
She glances at Greta and me, and we readily agree. Who would believe a story like this anyway?
“Two thousand each, though,” Pinky decides.
The guy licks his lips. “Sure. Sure. Two thousand.” He shoves a telcoder device at us. We sign, he transfers the credits, and we’re on our way.
As we head back toward the city center, I decide it’s time to make an executive decision. “As interesting as this has been, it’s time to get back to the Second Chance. We need to have these bug bites looked at, and I really don’t care to have another strange run-in.”
They agree to quit while we were ahead because, really, this last event is the highest note we could possibly leave on, so we go directly to the spaceport. Once inside, a doctor who happens to be traveling notices Greta’s face, and dispenses excellent and free care to all three of us.