Goooood Morning Neptunians!
This is Radio Neptune coming to you from, well, download the latest maps and you'll find us. Who cares? You can hear us, right?
First up, the weather. That last storm was a doozy, wasn't it? Right when we were getting some decent stuff dropped on us from Earth, too. Now the goods are tossed all over the place.
We hear tell of a pile of Volkswagen Beetles out West of here, wherever "here" is, use your metal scanners to find them. If you can get one off the heap, it's yours. Rumor has it most of them have motors.
There are more and more reports of Salvage Sickness, please use all the precautions. Wash your hands. Those Earth microbes can be a little, well, foreign to us Neptunians. Symptoms include acting all irrational, attacking sunlight or air monitoring stations, jabbering about impending disaster, and of course, claiming not to have Salvage Sickness. Don't get this yucky bug - wash your hands!
This report brought to you by the Scar City Casino, who invite you to Put Your Faith in Your Bets. You can't win if you don't play! Isn't that a nice chunk of wisdom. Those guys.
That's it for now from Radio Neptune, where we remind you, each new day is a chance to go out and do something worth putting on the radio. Until next time, enjoy your new Volkswagen, and wash your hands!
021 - May's Underground Shelter
“That stupid van is going away, finally.” May peers into a screen that shows her a view outside. “I guess the guy woke up and headed back to the Casino. The other car’s still there, though.”
“It’s waiting us out,” Philo says from the workbench. May has set his telly-head there so she can make eye contact with him without looking down at the floor.
“Wanna see why they were chasing me?” May asks, a huge grin on her face.
“Sure,” Philo says.
May pulls a black object the size of her palm from her pocket. Two green lights blink on and off on one side, one after the other. She holds it up so Philo can see it.
“Is that what I think it is?” Philo asks.
“The guys I stole it from said it was a backup. They were treating it like it was super valuable. So I took it.”
“A backup? A human backup? That is very illegal,” Philo says.
“Ah! Valuable and illegal,” May says. “Great! Should get me a good price. I want to look at it first, though. Before I sell it.” May pops the tiny drive into a slot on one of her makeshift computer terminals.
“I wouldn’t do that,” Philo says. “There’s a reason they always say, never make a human backup. Ever.”
“Really? Well ‘they’ aren’t here,” May says.
The terminal’s screen lights up. Characters fly across it, too quickly to read. The hard drive hums, and then…
A scream. A horrible, human scream. Sounds like a woman’s voice. May claps her hands over her ears.
“That’s awful!” May shouts. She ejects the tiny drive from the terminal, but the screaming continues. It only stops when she yanks the cord out of the back of the monitor.
“That’s why they say, never make a human backup,” Philo says. “She’s in your systems, now.”
022 - Hotel Room at the Scar City Casino
“Investigation journal of Debra O Millman, Agent. Whatever the date is. First entry since arriving on the surface.
“I have learned that there is a human backup floating around. At least one, anyway. There may be more. I heard talk of it at a local market, but by the time I tracked this one down, some little kid had taken off with it. Pursued said kid into the desert, but was waylaid by some idiot in a tricked-out Casino Vanagon and the kid escaped into an underground shelter before I could catch her. Waited her out for a while but there’s no sign of her.
“Rumor has it the backup made was of Angelica Brubeck. I don’t know if that’s true. Finding out is next on my to-do list.
“Sam Brubeck’s face is everywhere but that doesn’t help. Nobody snitches here. I knew that going in. I will just have to find him myself. Hope to speak to the father of a known associate of his, Doctor Drake Mangrove, tomorrow. I hear he cruises around in a giant RV of his own making.
“For now, rest.
“Let’s just hope that kid doesn’t load that backup into any computer systems connected to anything. A single zero or one out of place, and we could have some serious problems on our hands.”
023 - Somewhere Under Scar City Casino
"How could I be the last person to see her alive? I haven't been on Earth in ages," Dr. Mangrove says.
He sits in a dark room in a single chair, facing a wall with nothing but a pane of glass. He presumes his questioners are on the other side of it. The light of a bulb in the ceiling directly overhead throws an unpleasant glare onto the lenses his glasses.
"You were a known associate of Doctor Angelica Brubeck, the most familiar with her work," a voice says. "You were known to be in contact with her. Her last communication was a video link with you. What did you discuss?"
"Muffin recipes," Mangrove says.
"Doctor Mangrove, I know you're aware we can make things unpleasant for you if you don't cooperate," another, deeper voice says through the glass.
"Hey, is that Scarborough? Agent Scarborough? I'd know that voice anywhere. How have you been?" Dr. Mangrove is up out of his chair, grinning at the blank glass.
Two large individuals enter through a door that had been camouflaged in the wall. They each take one of Dr. Mangrove's arms and hurl him back down into the chair. Then they leave. The door disappears again.
"Okay, I guess that's how we're playing it," Dr. Mangrove says, more subdued now.
"Yes, it is," the voice says. "There are some technologies at stake here, Doctor, some with direct bearing on the workings of Neptune's core and surface. If that information did not die with Doctor Brubeck, we need to know about it. Is that clear?"
"Yep, yep it is," Dr. Mangrove says.
"Good. Let's proceed."
024 - The Bridge of the Tumbleweed
Feller leans in and stares through his goggles at the monitor. "What the heck is that?"
"What is what?" Rebecca asks.
"That crater in the ground wasn’t there a few minutes ago," Feller says.
Sam walks in with a cup of coffee. "Maybe it's where a delivery from Earth touched down," he suggests.
"If it is, the contents were flammable," Feller says. “Looks like whatever it was burned up.”
Rebecca looks out the Tumbleweed's window. "There's someone down there," she says.
"I'm zooming in,” Feller says. “Looks like... a little kid. And a television."
"So a kid is watching TV in the desert next to a burnt hole in the ground?" Sam asks.
"That's what it would seem," Feller answers. "There’s a little robotic creature rolling around, too."
"Let's go pay a visit," Rebecca says. "Why would a kid be out here all alone? This is way too exposed. Let's see if she's in trouble."
The Tumbleweed pulls to a stop a safe distance away and hovers.
Rebecca descends the Tumbleweed's ladder. The child remains seated next to her television.
"Hello there, miss," Rebecca says. "How are things?"
"We're good," May replies. "Nothing to see here."
"Except a big char mark," Rebecca says. "Did you have a baking accident?"
"We had to take action for safety," the telly says. Rebecca jumps. She did not expect the telly to speak to her.
"There was a human backup in the systems," the telly continues. "It was corrupted. We attempted to destroy it before it escaped."
"A human backup? Those are super illegal," Rebecca says.
"Indeed," the telly says. "Hopefully we destroyed it in time."
"It was a big explosion, you should've seen it. BLAM! It was excellent," May says, and grins.
(Art credit for this chapter: Alex Schumacher)
025 - Interrogation Room, Scar City Casino
"I'll take it from here. Orders from E
arthAdmin," Debra O Millman, Agent, says.
"EarthAdmin. You people are nothing but a pain in my ass," the guard says.
"Nevertheless, it's my investigation now. You are excused."
A short fistfight and chokehold later, Debra O Millman makes her point and the questioners holding Dr. Drake Mangrove are indeed excused from the interrogation room. Debra closes the door behind them.
"I can't feel my hands or my feet," Dr. Mangrove says. "Can you loosen these?" He twists his wrists around, seeking relief from the black tape binding him to his chair.
"Are you going to help me, Drake?" Debra asks.
"Depends on what you need help with," Drake answers. "Do you need directions to the best slot machines in the Casino? Or maybe a support group for multi-gendered humans? Weren’t you a man when we last spoke?"
"Don't be daft," Debra says, peeling tape from Drake's ankles. "I'm looking for someone. Someone you know very well."
"The same someone these Casino goons want, I suppose," Drake says.
"Probably," Debra says.
Dr. Mangrove pulls free of the tape, and the chair. He hops up and dances around to regain his circulation.
"I don't know anything," Drake says. "About whoever you seek, that is. I know stuff about other subjects. Like, building vessels and hacking communications systems. Stuff like that."
"You know enough," Debra says. "You know the location of Sam Brubeck."
"Sam who?" Drake says.
"Okay now you just sound like an idiot," Debra says, exasperated. “Everybody knows he headed for the Tumbleweed when he got to Neptune.”
"Fine. I'm an idiot. But I'm not in the habit of ratting on people," Drake says.
"Even if 'people' might have murdered someone important to you?" Debra waits for that to soak in. "Someone like Angelica?"
"There's no way Sam murdered his mom," Drake says.
"Don't be so sure," Debra says. "Not until you've heard what I have to say."
About Betsy Streeter
Betsy Streeter is a science/speculative fiction author and artist. She can explain the Infield Fly Rule and once devised a way to score infinite points on Space Invaders for the Atari. Her art travels the world without her, including as a tattoo on a person and as a cartoon in the Smithsonian Astrophysics Observatory's exhibit on black holes.
She's been published by King Features, The Funny Times, Utne, Perihelion Science Fiction, Literary Orphans, Fiction Vortex, Oxford University Press, the University of Wollongong, Jack Canfield, and a cornucopia of other fine publications to whom she is grateful.
She has a YA science fiction novel entitled "Silverwood" coming out Spring 2015.
Betsy welcomes questions, thoughts, or musings about her stories and artwork, as well as ideas for Great Women to draw. You can find her in these scenic digital locations:
https://www.betsystreeter.com
Twitter: @betsystreeter
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DeviantArt: thesuperpug
Scribd: Betsy_Streeter
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Neptune Road Volume I Page 3