by Jack Castle
Oh no. I’m still in the fishbowl.
The passing fish seemed to stop their ballet and gaze down upon them, watching the show beneath them unfold.
Well that’s ironic.
He lurched himself out of Tessa’s lap. She tried to grab him, but her moves were slow and sensual, and he escaped, off the bed at least.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I’m here to serve,” she responded sweetly.
It occurred to him that he could simply give in. His real wife was dead. He was certain of that now. He might have killed her. Perhaps this was what he deserved.
“You’re not my wife.”
The faux-Tessa gave him that look Tessa always gave him when he would say something incredibly stupid. “Does it really matter? Why, your every wish would be my command.”
“Now I definitely know you’re not my wife.”
He retreated to the door. This time she didn’t stop him. She seemed content to sit on the bed. The door didn’t budge. The scratch marks on the inside of the door were more apparent than before.
Someone had tried to claw his way out. He doubted it was the leisure-bot. She seemed more than capable of smashing down the door.
“That won’t work, George,” she said, sounding exactly like Tessa. He briefly wondered, is it like Tessa, or is it the way he remembered Tessa speaking?
“Why don’t you come back to bed and I’ll run my fingers through your hair some more. I know you like that.” He did like that, but now that memory was tainted forever by this…abomination who looked like Tessa, but wasn’t her in the slightest.
She moved toward him. It wasn’t the same robotic-purposeful movements as before. It was the way Tessa had moved: gentle, casual. Maybe, because she had uploaded his memory of Tessa, she was forced to move only like Tessa, and maybe that, was something he could use to his advantage.
Before she could reach him, he noticed the bathroom door on his right was open. As robot Tessa arrived, he jumped inside. The moment he turned the bolt and locked the door, she calmly tried the handle.
“Let me in, George. I’m here to serve.”
“You’re not my wife,” George yelled back at her, his voice growing angry.
THUMP-THUMP-THUMP! “I SAID… LET ME IN GEORGE!”
He needed a weapon. Scanning the bathroom, he saw only sink, toilet and ceramic tiles.
The Leisure-bot banged violently on the door again.
He backed away from the door and that’s when the smell hit him.
That can’t be good.
He didn’t want to turn around. He knew what he was going to find, and eventually he did. There in the bathtub, submerged in clear water, was the corpse of a short man dressed in a business suit.
Sitting on the toilet seat beside the tub, George reached down into the bath water and searched the corpse. Its flesh was gooey. George didn’t find any weapons (even another pocketknife would’ve been something), but he did find a photo in the man’s hand. It pictured a short-statured Asian man, with an elderly Asian woman with a stunning college-aged girl, who couldn’t have been more than nineteen.
“What happened to you?” George asked the dead man. He went on to wonder, In the end, did you kill yourself or did that whack-a-doodle outside do it for you?
George thought about all the other doors he could’ve chosen in the endless corridor and cursed his dumb luck that he chose this one.
Laying the picture back down onto the side of the tub, he mumbled in his best Humphry Bogart accent, “Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, she walks into mine…”
As he rose from the tub, his hand grabbed a metallic handicap bar. One end had been pulled free from the wall, and the other end was nearly free.
He gazed down at the corpse in the tub. Had you tried to pull this bar off the wall? Use it as a weapon? If he did, the submerged bather had only half succeeded before giving in to exhaustion. George grasped the pipe in both hands, put one foot up on the wall and pulled. The pipe moved, and after several more angry tugs, it came free.
“Come out, Georgie! I want to play with you some more.”
George gave one last nod of respect to the man in the tub. “Thanks buddy. This one’s for the both of us,” and he moved to the door.
“Come out! Come out! Come out!”
George did exit the bathroom and when he did so, he swung mightily.
She caught the pipe easily, held it for a second and then ripped it from his hands. “Oh George. You have so much to learn.”
She backhanded him so hard, he flew across the room and crashed into the night table beside the bed.
Ironically, his first thought was, This has to be at least the fourth thing I have been flung into today.
The lamp upon it had smashed to pieces, and he could see where the power supply was still sparking.
Maybe I could electrocute her?
He quickly dismissed the idea because, one, she wasn’t about to stand there and let him connect the sparking wires to her person. And two, he doubted the wall socket was carrying enough juice to shock her into submission anyway.
To his surprise, she tossed the metal bar back to him.
That’s when it hit him. She had done this before. Perhaps dozens, even hundreds of times to anyone unfortunate enough to stumble into her web. Every scenario ran through his mind, but he realized, there was no outcome she couldn’t predict or probably hadn’t experienced already.
Think George, what is the one thing no one in their right mind would do?
She took a menacing step toward him. “Let’s get this over with, George,” she said tauntingly. “Get it all out of your system.” When he didn’t react quick enough she raised her voice and yelled, “I said, try again!”
It was futile. He knew it, and she knew it.
(Tinkling of glass),
George could hear the glass pieces crunching underfoot. He spun around and soon located the source. Pieces of glass littered the floor where he had struck the glass with his head. Tessa always said I had a thick skull. Soon, narrow streams of water began pouring in.
The leisure-bot must’ve seen him studying the fresh hole too, for she said, “Don’t you worry about that, George. Room service can have it fixed in no time.”
Wrong!
George swung the pipe, only this time, he did the one thing no person in their right mind would ever do. He swung at the broken glass. Water immediately began streaming in with more fervor.
Faux-Tessa’s eyes went wide with alarm. “What are you doing?”
The panic in her voice brought a smile to his face. An alarm klaxon sounded and if that weren’t enough warning, a spinning, red strobe light dropped down from the ceiling.
“Stop!” she cried, “You’ll kill us both!”
The water quickly formed a pool on the floor. Before the water could reach him he hopped up onto the bed. The Leisure-bot did that head tilt thing again, but for the most part she ignored the water rising up over her shoes.
Steel shutters began lowering down over the smashed-out window.
“George,” she had to yell now for the water was really gushing in. “All you did was delay the inevitable. The shutters will stop the water, the glass will be repaired and we will start all over again, right where we left off.”
The leisure-bot seemed confused when he dropped the pipe… and picked up the broken lamp instead.
“No thanks. You’re not my wife,” he said, and then threw the sparking lamp into the water that was now rising up to her knees.
Immediately, the leisure-bot jolted from the electric shock. All but the flashing strobe light dimmed for a moment and then the main lights went out completely. A few seconds later, they snapped back on. The leisure-bot fell to her knees and sat there convulsing.
The shutters had completely sealed the windows and a drainage hole had magically appeared in the carpeted floor. Certain that the water no longer carried any juice, George hopped down from the bed and recovered the
pipe.
The leisure-bot’s head continued to jerk back and forth, and George figured he had only seconds to react. With all his strength, he hit her in the head several times.
The leisure-bot raised her ruined face. It was still Tessa’s. Using his wife’s voice she begged, “Please…”
George hefted the bar, but couldn’t bring himself to strike her. He knew the leisure-bot wasn’t Tessa, but he just couldn’t bring himself to finish her off.
“Please… George. Please don’t hurt me anymore.”
In the end, it was the poor deceased man in the bathroom that finally gave him the willpower to deliver that final swing. It was the hardest thing he had ever done in his life, but he knew if he didn’t, he would’ve wound up just like the Asian man in the bathtub.
WHAM!
The Leisure-bot crumpled to the floor and a second later the door to the room unlocked and swung open.
George knew he probably should’ve taken the handicap bar with him. He had no other weapon, but he wanted nothing to do with it, so he dropped it to the floor.
Chapter 11
Land Ho!
“Hey, Uncle Rick!”
Uh-oh. She called me Uncle Rick, and not just Rick. That means she wants something. Before she could even try, he said loudly, “Nooo.”
Maddie had her hands clasped behind her back and half-skipped her way onto the bridge of The Dauntless. Coquettishly, she said, “I haven’t even asked for anything yet.”
“I know that tone. It’s the same tone your mother used whenever she wanted something totally insane. Whatever it is, the answer is no.”
Totally ignoring that, Maddie asked, “Seeing how we are grounded until the portside batteries recharge, Traxx and I were wondering if we could take the Hopper out and do a little recon?”
Rick tossed his clipboard onto the console, furrowed his brow and responded with his usual incredulous nature, “Nooooo… you can’t take out the Hopper.”
“Why not?” Maddie whined, “I’m rated.”
Rick put his face in his palms, held them there for a moment, and then drew them down with a heavy sigh. “We’re in unexplored territory, that’s why. We don’t know what’s out there. It could be anything.”
Undeterred, Maddie shot back, “All the more reason for me to go out and map it.” Seeing that her Uncle still wasn’t convinced she added, “I’ll be armed. And, it’s not like I’m going out there all by myself. Traxx is going with me.”
“Forget it. What would your da…”
Rick didn’t finish the sentence he had so reflexively began. There was an awkward silence between them.
Maddie lifted her eyes to his, and holding back the tears she was first to speak, “What would my dad say? My mom?” Shaking her head, “I don’t know. I don’t know what they’d say. You know why? Because they’re not here. They haven’t been here for a long time.”
The large engineer averted his eyes, looking anywhere, at the rivets in the hull, out the windows, anywhere but in the eyes of a young girl who lost both parents way too soon.
Maddie sniffed loudly and wiped her tears on the back of her wrist. “Uncle Rick, other than my dad, I’ve had more rescues under my belt than everyone on the entire ship combined.” She moved to where she could meet his gaze. “If you can’t trust me to do a little recon with a dumb ole’ Hopper, who can you trust?”
She was right. George had trained her well. So well in fact, he often wondered if George somehow knew that one day she’d be leading her own expeditions. Probably just being his usual self; hope for the best, but plan for the worst. Grumbling to himself for doing so, Rick moved over to the metal safe mounted on the wall, opened it and removed a set of keys. Before throwing them to her he said, “Four hours, Maddie.”
They both knew she’d push that to five.
She went to say as much when Rick sighed and said, “I mean it, Mads, you got four hours at the absolute most. I don’t care if you find the Holy Grail out there, after two hours in, you turn your butt around and come right back. You understand?”
Rick could tell by her face that she didn’t expect him to be so harsh. She was about to retort with the first thing to come flying out of her mouth when he added, “Maddie, before you lay into me, please keep in mind you’re getting what you wanted.”
Maddie let that one go, and he tossed her the keys.
“Sure, Uncle Rick. Um, thanks.”
He didn’t respond. He was too angry. Instead he turned back around and slammed the door to the safe shut.
Maddie retreated to the exit where Traxx was waiting for her in the shadows. He kept his voice low, but Rick could still hear the boy when he said, “That was pretty mean the way you talked to him. He’s done nothing but watch out for you.”
Rick knew deep down that Maddie appreciated the way he had tried to fill in for her missing parents, but it still hurt him just the same when she said, “Just mind your own business, Traxx,” and stomped out the door.
“Sorry,” Traxx responded, but Maddie was already gone.
Rick watched the two of them go, and thought, They’re just kids.
Tessa appeared next to Rick on the bridge. She was resting one elbow on a console and sipping a mug of chai tea. This wasn’t an illusion or even a clever hologram like before. Rick knew that much.
Tessa’s ghost took a sip from her mug, smiled sweetly, and finally said, “You know, Rick. You can’t keep an eagle in a canary cage forever. At some point, you’re going to have to let her spread her wings.”
Of course, she was right. Tessa and George were the two most adventuresome people he had known in his life. So, it shouldn’t surprise him that their daughter would share the same recklessness.
Tessa was always the parent who was a little more free with Maddie and her escapades. On the other hand, George would’ve been perfectly content if Maddie were wrapped up in a plastic bubble made of titanium. Sure, he trained her, but that was because he was always hovering protectively over her or nearby.
Rick knew he should go over the repair list one more time, but he couldn’t shake the feeling of melancholy. How did it all go so wrong? When was he going to tell Maddie the truth as to what really happened to her parents. I mean, how do you tell a kid something like that? How could he ever possibly hope to tell Maddie that her father, the man she loved most, was the man who murdered her mom?
Chapter 12
The Launch Bay
“You still haven’t told me where we’re going.”
Maddie led him down several flights of stairs into the belly of the ship. “Yes, I did, I’m taking you to the launch bay. It’s located near the aft of the ship.”
Henry trailed down the stairwell behind her. She certainly did not tell him that. Or had she? Maybe I blacked out again? Henry didn’t feel comfortable walking past signs that read: Authorized Personnel Only. But, he dutifully followed her nonetheless.
Arriving at a massive hanger bay, Henry stared up at an enormous box-shaped vehicle parked within. The craft before him was drab yellow in color and about the size of the heavy cargo truck he had seen in The Factory. But despite this craft’s great size, it seemed more like a Land Rover with large-paned windows; like the kind Henry had seen in those National Geographic magazines on African Safaris; only this gargantuan rover didn’t have any wheels. Instead, it was floating on air, as if by magic.
“Whoa,” was all he could manage. Whoa. My, aren’t you articulate Henry.
Henry wasn’t sure who this new voice in his head was, but he continued to follow Maddie around the back of the massive vehicle even so. More than once he saw her caress the hull with a gloved hand. They passed the nomenclature, H-04, stenciled on the side in blue lettering.
Abruptly Maddie said, “Oh, that’s right; I forgot. You haven’t seen a Hopper before.”
As they finished circling the craft, Henry could now see the front of what Maddie called, the Hopper. The front was more akin to a helicopter’s cockpit and looked as though it
had been slapped on as an afterthought.
“See that?” Maddie asked, pointing to an accordion-looking passageway that connected to the payload area. When Henry nodded, Maddie explained proudly, “That allows for the cockpit to swivel back and forth, like a hound dog sniffin’ out prey”.
Henry noted that Maddie was just full of delightful colloquialisms, and she often switched to a southern drawl when she said them.
“So, where’s the pilot?” Henry asked.
Maddie didn’t answer. Instead she grabbed a vertical bar and slid open a side door that reminded Henry of the heavy doors on old freight train cars. The moment the door finished sliding all the way open, metal, corrugated stairs unfolded from beneath the hovering vehicle. When the unfolding stairs got stuck, Henry could hear whirring motors groaning in protest. This continued until Maddie gave the stairs a swift kick with her boot. “She’s an old girl, but she’s still plenty reliable.”
Henry thought he detected the tone of a much more seasoned man behind her words, her dad maybe?
Despite the craft’s obvious modern design, it had seen better days. The drab yellow hull was pitted and heavily dented in several places. Henry could see where two of the large window panes had splintered cracks.
Maddie climbed up the short stairwell and into the payload area. Henry cursed himself under his breath for following.
Inside the payload area, Henry saw Traxx and the gargoyle pulling on thick overalls similar to the ones on the rack behind them.
Traxx slipped into his easily, whereas Cheeves was having a bit more difficulty pulling his suit over his large paws.
“Cheeves,” Traxx complained, “We’ve been over this, buddy. You don’t need a survival suit.” He yanked the suit from the gargoyle, causing the gargoyle’s ears to lower like a sad puppy.
A sad puppy with fangs and razor-sharp claws, Henry thought. Despite how welcoming Cheeves had been, Henry still couldn’t explain his strong apprehension around the friendly butler.
Seeing how crestfallen Cheeves had become, Traxx explained, “Cheeves, your skin is tougher than the hull of The Dauntless. You’ll be fine.”