Revenge of the Star Survivors

by Michael Merschel

  And CRASH, there went my final hopes of easy resolution.

  “Sir,” I said, as my stomach did a somersault, “I think somebody made a mistake.”

  “Yes, he did,” he said, as his steel eyes—definitely cyborg—bored straight into the fear center of my brain. “Starting with your picking a fight the moment you arrived at my school.”

  Picking a fight? I’m not the one who had picked anything. There had been a big misunderstanding, and then a door had hit me. Hard. Wasn’t it obvious that I was in no position to be picking any fights?

  I should have said that out loud. But all I could do in actual response was rub my bruised face and stare blankly.

  “Sherman,” he said haughtily, “I was hired to maintain order and discipline around here. To keep the peace. And I will use whatever means necessary to keep order and discipline intact. Do we understand one another?”

  I understood that I needed to get out of there as quickly as possible. So I nodded.

  “Good,” he said. “Then we won’t need to see each other much.”

  “Keeping away from you would make me incredibly happy, sir,” I said.

  This seemed to anger him.

  I wanted to tell him that I meant no disrespect, but I had run out of strength.

  So I just ran.

  1.01.07

  I tried to summarize everything for the command unit on duty when I made it back to base. She was in the kitchen, unpacking dishes, as I walked in. The younger spawn was in a restraining seat, pounding a cracker into a brown, paste-like substance.

  “Hi!” the commander said cheerfully. “You made it home, right on time! That’s great! How was—” She halted, and gasped. “Your face!”

  “It’s nothing,” I said. “Can I have some medicine? The grape kind?”

  “But what happened?” she cried, rummaging through boxes that held spices, silverware, glassware, oven mitts, a never-used fondue pot and her collection of hand-tinted postcard images of several jackalope, a Paul Bunyan statue and America’s Largest Ball of Twine—but apparently, no pain medicine.

  “It was an accident,” I said. “I hit a door. And then a ball.”

  I probably should have told her about the scheduling fiasco, and the additional “stray” balls that hit me as I was leaving the gym, and how I got lost going to three of my classes when the counselor forgot to arrange an escort. But I was still in shock, and embarrassed about being chewed out by the principal. And I thought, I’m too old to be crying. In front of her. Over this.

  “Oh, Clark!” she said. “Sit down! I’ll find the medicine. And I have a box of cupcakes here somewhere. Just sit! And let me—”

  At the same moment the spawn began to scream, and the commander’s phone buzzed with someone from the mortgage company, and as she was hanging up from that, the doorbell rang and some workers arrived to install the new dishwasher.

  I made my way to the sofa, pushed aside some bubble wrap, and sat.

  From the kitchen, the commander kept trying to question me. But it was becoming clear to me—she was busy. She didn’t have time to worry about things like cupcakes, or how klutzy I was, or my mission in general.

  I needed to find a way to take care of myself.

  I had a duty to take care of myself.

  And I therefore would find a way to take care of myself.

  I turned on the TV.

  The channels were wrong, and there were not enough of them; the cable company said it would be weeks before they could get an installer out. I recognized some of the network logos as I flipped through the over-the-air offerings. What had been Channel 4 at home was now 6. What had been 12 was now 2. There was nothing on 8. And at first I thought the same of 31, which was barely coming in at all.

  But then, when I twisted the antenna slightly to the left, I saw it.

  STAR SURVIVORS.

  And for a moment, all was right in the universe again.

  Allow me to explain.

  Star Survivors is the story of the USS Fortitude, a twenty-third-century space vessel that, cast across the cold universe by the shock wave from a freak ultranova, spends each episode in a desperate search for a way to rejoin humanity.

  Along the way, the crew—led by the resolute Captain Aristotle Maxim and his loyal, inventive first officer, Commander Conan Steele—battles various life forms and navigational hazards that make survival a day-to-day struggle. Only by luck, wit and courage can they hope to live.

  The episode I stumbled across was the one where the shut-tlecraft is sent to a planet that is supposed to be a tropical paradise. But it turns out the sensors are being jammed and the landing site is really a barren desert with these land-squid things that surface unexpectedly and drain the life force out of the guest star.

  As I watched his corpse get slurped into the sand, I could totally relate.

  This is why you should ignore anyone who tries to tell you that Star Survivors is an entertainment program. It is so, so much more.

  It is a guide to orderly behavior in a confusing world. It creates role models in places where they do not otherwise exist.

  Don’t tell me that it’s just a bunch of actors in funny costumes. I’m not stupid. Or crazy. I know the difference between Apollo 11 and Ceti Alpha XII. One happened on a soundstage. One did not.

  Star Survivors is a refuge. It is a beacon of hope that my future will be something entirely different from my present.

  Which, like a life force–eating land-squid, completely sucks.

  EXPEDITION LOG

  ENTRY 2.01.01

  Each morning I wake up and tell myself, this is the day things start to get better.

  Each day I do my best to charge into battle the way Captain Maxim would want me to.

  Each day my results are less than . . . stellar.

  Today, day ten of the mission, unfolded in typical fashion:

  0800 hours: Exited transport. (I can’t always count on a ride, but today was pretty cold, and the commander took pity.)

  0801 hours: Sought cover.

  0803 hours: Was discovered by Ty Hunter, Jerry Sneeva and Bubba Pignarski. You met them in the earlier report. I meet them every day at the entrance, where they often provide a fashion critique. Or other observations on ways I might improve myself. I would quote them, but these guys use words that are fouler than the inside of a tauntaun.

  Sneeva is small, curly haired and rabbitlike, in a twitchy way. When he plays defense on basketball, he is constantly poking, prodding, reaching and slapping until the ball comes loose. On offense, he spends a lot of time looking around at what everyone else is doing, and dishes the ball to them.

  Bubba is built round and strong, like a boulder. He is possibly almost as intelligent.

  Ty is the long-armed Death Star they orbit. He’s always smiling with those razor-thin lips, but his eyes stay narrow, like a sniper getting ready to pull the trigger. I saw a face like that in a comic book once. The villain’s name was Sinister something. He was a cold-blooded killer with nerves of steel (literally, on account of some kind of nuclear accident) who kept blasting and maiming and wounding and—

  Where was I? Oh, yeah. Dodging them before school. It’s a significant part of my morning.

  0810–1505 hours: Attended school. My days are a blend of me seeking out Counselor Blethins; me being avoided by Counselor Blethins; me being induced to sleep by my remedial classes; and me being exposed to torture by various spherical instruments in PE and Athletics. Classes that I happen to share with my three least-favorite life forms, who also seem to be maxing out on their PE credits. Lucky me.

  1505 hours: Sought route to home base that would not go past Hunter, Sneeva and Pignarski. Failed. Endured further verbal abuse.

  1530 hours: Arrived at base. Sought high-sugar nourishment. Assured command unit that all is going according to plan.

  She is shockingly easy to fool. After particularly bad days, I tell her I have a lot of homework, and I close the door to my quarters so I can “f
ocus.” This buys the solitude I need to recharge.

  You might be wondering why I haven’t gotten around to debriefing my commanders about what I am experiencing. “Are they even fit to lead?” you might ask.

  In their defense, they do ask about my classes. I tell them things are fine. This is true, from a GPA standpoint. They see 100s on my quizzes, same as ever. They believe all is well. And it is what I want them to believe—that I can handle things myself.

  Here’s how I see it: They have so much to worry about. His new job. Her new studio. All these boxes. Oh, and the little spawn, who is extremely loud and frequently smelly.

  With all that going on, eighth-grade interpersonal relations should not be their priority, right?

  Which is why, when they ask me about making friends, I tell them I’m seeing lots of interesting new people. And why, when they pressed for details about my black eye, I blamed only my own clumsiness.

  Half-truths like these seem to make them relax. And I hope it keeps them out of my affairs while I sort things out on my own.

  After all, I am supposed to be an explorer of superior intellect and ability. Doctor what’s-his-name was able to save the universe who knows how many times with not much more than a telephone booth and a sonic screwdriver. Shouldn’t I be able to figure out middle school?

  1600 hours: Shut off overwhelmed emotional centers by engaging Star Survivors on the vidscreen.

  I wish I could spend my whole life here.

  Granted, the worst problems the USS Fortitude must face are radioactive comets, antimatter-reactor meltdowns and fanged, leather-skinned aliens with plasma beams—nothing as bad as what I am up against. But at the moment, the crew is all the companionship I have.

  2.02.01

  Planet Festus seems fraught with peril in every quadrant. Except one: The Academic Resource Center.

  For starters, it is a large room filled with books. My kind of place.

  Second, those books are on high shelves. It is easy to hide there. And when people can’t find you, they can’t hurt you.

  Third, there is Ms. Beacon.

  Ms. Beacon is the commander of this zone. She answers to the title of ARC Coordinator, but the plate on her desk identifies her as LIBRARIAN. Which would make sense, because on other planets, this zone would be called a library. I suspect she was promoted some time ago and is just waiting for the new deskplate to be assigned. From the looks of things, she has been waiting a while.

  She is fairly old. My guess is at least forty. Her hair is streaked with gray, and she keeps it cut short. She has glasses of the type that allow her to scowl at people up close and far away. When she adjusts them a certain degree, her irises seem to take up the whole lens.

  Back on Day One, when I was escorted into the ARC for my first Independent Study class, the intercom summoned Counselor Blethins to an urgent consultation with Principal Denton right in the middle of her introduction. The counselor had scurried off midsentence, leaving me and Ms. Beacon staring at one another. She looked me up and down, adjusted those glasses, looked me up and down again, and adjusted her vest.

  “So,” she said. “They messed up your schedule and Counselor Blethins has parked you here for an hour because she can’t figure out where else to put you.”

  I was stunned. It was the first time at Festus that anybody had spoken to me with what seemed to be honesty.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I think that’s about it.”

  She furrowed her brow and puckered her lips in distaste. “Well,” she finally said. “What do you think we should do?” She enunciated each consonant precisely.

  I looked into those glasses and caught a reflection of myself staring up at her. “Well,” I said, “if you’ve got a place where I can sit and read, you can go about your work. I’m kind of at home in libraries.”

  Although it would not have registered on any photon sensor, at that moment I do think I detected a twinkle in her eye.

  “I am certain I can arrange something,” she said, and showed me where to sit.

  Since then, Independent Study has been the one hour I look forward to. Ms. Beacon pretty much leaves me alone, except when she asks about the book I have brought. Usually, it’s a collection of science fiction stories, or something involving an apocalypse. If it’s a tie-in to a movie or a TV show, she suggests that I might want to look for something a little more illuminating next time. But other times she listens to me summarize a plot and nods approvingly.

  And those tiny bits of encouragement—I cling to them. I cling to them the way the people in those post-atomic wastelands cling to the sight of a lone, colorful insect buzzing over the ashes, or to a hint of something green and growing on the distant horizon.

  In other words, it is not much. But we look for hope where we can get it.

  2.03.01

  Sunday nights are the worst here. After a thrilling weekend of helping the commanders move furniture or hang pictures, I lie awake, dreading the week ahead. Sometimes I just flip my phone open and closed, like Commander Steele’s communicator, and wonder what it would be like if anybody called, or texted, or just acknowledged I was alive.

  On this particular Sunday, I was reflecting on things I had overheard the commanders discussing when they thought I was out of earshot.

  The initial topic was their concern about me, and I immediately went on full alert status. Some kind of awkward intervention from them was the absolute LAST thing I wanted.

  I could make out questions about how I was adjusting and concerns about how distant I had become since the move. There was discussion as to whether this was normal teenage behavior, or whether I just needed space to sort things out.

  Then they started remembering things from the ancient past: The time I had broken down in tears in first grade when I saw that the reading list was nothing but picture books. The way they had pulled me off the second-grade soccer team because I kept ducking and crying when the ball was kicked my way. And the way I reacted the day we visited Disneyland and found that Space Mountain was closed for repairs, when my sobs actually made an approaching Tinkerbell turn around and run the other way.

  Listening to them was dreadful. And made worse by my fear that they were going to come in and hug me at any moment.

  Luckily, talk quickly devolved from concern about how I was coping with the change to how the whole family was going through it. They discussed Unit One’s latest big story and the lights Unit Two was going to hang in the bedroom that would become her studio. They used words like opportunity and finally arriving, and how they hoped they had made the right choice, and how they were sure things would be better for me and the baby now, and how they had waited so many years for their break, and how young they had been when they started. And then they lowered their voices and started giggling and that is when I stopped eavesdropping and started thinking about how much they were depending on me to be strong.

  I’ve been doing my best. But earlier, while scrolling the TV listings, I came across an old movie about a scientist who spends too much time in an isolation chamber. Deprived of human contact and with only his own thoughts as company, he emerges as a crazed half-human beast.

  I am worried that this might turn out to be me.

  2.04.01

  Some observations on local fauna, as I mark one month since my crash-landing:

  When dinosaurs ruled the Earth, small, ratlike creatures scurried beneath their feet. These creatures were too small to attract attention. They provided insufficient nutrients to the large carnivores, and this is how they survived in a world clearly not meant for them.

  Similarly, on a TV show I once watched that was set on the planet Koozebane, tiny furry beings survived assaults from larger, alien invaders by hugging gaps and craters in the surface of the planet.

  On Planet Festus, there is Les Martin.

  Les, I have learned, is that kid I saw briefly on Day One in Athletics. The one who keeps disappearing. I have caught only fleeting glimpses of him outside the gym
. He walks with his head down and his shoulder brushing one wall. He does not make eye contact. I’ve never gotten near enough to say hello, much less start a conversation.

  But today, while I was slipping into the ARC, there he was, checking out some books from Ms. Beacon.

  “Ah, my other charter member of the science fiction book-of-the-week club,” she said. “Clark, this is Les. Have you met?”

  He looked me in the eye for the first time. His head was round and smooth and pale, with thin strands of blond hair clinging limply to the top. His eyes were wide and blue, and constantly darting.

  “We have Athletics together,” I said. “I’ve seen you in the bleachers.”

  “And I’ve seen you get hit by a lot of stray balls,” he replied.

  Awkward silence followed. Ms. Beacon had to break it.

  “Well, then, I’m sure you two will enjoy talking about all the books you’ve been consuming lately. It’s as if you’ve been going down the same reading list.”

  I examined what he was checking out—Tales of Time and Space, one of the Asimov Foundation books, and a battered copy of 101 Home Electronics Projects.

  “Cool stuff,” I said, genuinely impressed.

  He stared at his feet, looked at the door again, and looked at me.

  “I gotta go,” he said, scooping up the books and stuffing them in his backpack.

  Using both straps, he slung it over his shoulders. He acted as if he were about to say something, then put his head down and headed for the exit.

  He looked up the hall, then down, then over his shoulder at me.

  “It’s dangerous out there,” he said, softly.

  “I noticed.”

  “Try to stay low.”

  Before I could reply, he had slipped around a corner and disappeared.

  2.05.01

  After that, I looked for him everywhere. But he must be part phantom. It’s like one of those Star Survivors episodes where the Fortitude’s sensors can detect some kind of energy fluctuation off the starboard bow, but nobody can lock on to an actual target.