There Goes the Galaxy

by Jenn Thorson

  “Can we!” The lead programmer beamed. He loved his job, too. “Does the Quargon Accellerator have a turbo boost that makes you wet your astro-togs?” he queried.

  T’murp blinked.

  “It does,” assured the programmer, flushing at the neck. “Embarrassing.” And he rose to make the live feed happen.

  T’murp appreciated the expertise and loved the enthusiasm. The humor, however, sometimes needed its own version of Translachew. He made a mental note to work on that.

  “Life for Tryfe! Life for Tryfe!” said one protestor.

  “Tryfling Oppression No Small Matter!” screamed another.

  “Help Back Our Backspace Brothers!” shouted a third.

  Over folded arms, Bertram Ludlow watched his circle of ten picketers with some satisfaction and couldn’t believe he didn’t think of this sooner.

  It was a motley group, he knew. And not as many as Bertram had originally hoped for. But then again, he hadn’t had much time for promotion and mobilization.

  He lifted the lightened bag of Dootett currency and considered what the small investment had bought him:

  —One bribed yet impassioned vis-u announcement over the University of Ottofram student center system.

  —Some low-end e-posters.

  —And snack cakes. DiversiDine ones, no less.

  Irony came in shiny, shiny wrappers.

  Anyway, Bertram had learned one important Universal Truth this day. It was something he had suspected all along but hadn’t been able to confirm until now. And that was: it didn’t matter what planet you were on, or what your species. Step into a university setting and some people will do simply anything for free food.

  So Bertram’s picketers marched with their makeshift protest signs, munching their snack cakes and putting on a pretty good show. A couple of them were genuinely embracing the cause, too.

  “First, it’s backspace planets like Tryfe,” shouted one student, a gender-neutral life-form who may or may not have had eyes under long springy hair. “Next it’s our own home planets!”

  “More importantly,” argued a second student, spiky tail waving in emphasis, “backspace people like the Tryflings should be preserved. Their primitive culture. Their mythology. Their simple way of life. We should use our technology to protect them, not to persecute them! Who will stand up for them if we don’t?”

  Bertram grinned. Yes, this was more like it.

  “Rights for Tryfe!”

  “Preserve Tryfling culture and heritage!”

  “I like food!” That was the protestor Bertram had found living in a mulch pile alongside the University park. The aging, limping creature raised a fist in solidarity and smiled a broad, snack-cake-smeared, broken-tusked smile.

  “You tell ’em,” urged Bertram.

  “Life for Tryfe! Life for Tryfe!”

  “Hey you,” interrupted a Neo-Natelle model VR18, exiting the Simulant picket line to break Bertram’s circle of Tryfers. She tossed a lock of silky, steely-silver hair over her shoulder. “This is our demonstration. Can’t you go demonstrate somewhere else?”

  “Life for Tryfe! Life for Tryfe!” the students continued, winding their circle in a new path around her.

  “Look, we’re not stopping you from your protest,” Bertram told her. “You do your thing, we’ll do ours.”

  “Oh really?” pressed the Simulant. She hooked a thumb at Bertram’s band. “You’re diffusing our messaging. And we were here first, so launch yourself!”

  “Life for Tryfe! Life for Tryfe!” Bertram’s attention was drawn with pride to his energetically protesting troops; almost eight of them were even managing to march in unison without tripping over each other much. It was far better than he’d expected.

  “Well?” the Simulant pressed, tapping a perfect, impatient foot. “Are you going to move or not?”

  Bertram answered her by matching her defiant gaze, picking up a digital picket sign and stepping into formation with the others. “Life for Tryfe! Life for Tryfe!”

  Snarling electronically, the Neo-Natelle model stalked back to her union colleagues and fell into step, shooting Bertram a sizzling glare. She bumped up her volume controls to shout all the louder.

  “Artificial People Have Real Needs! Artificial People Have Real Needs!”

  “Life for Tryfe! Life for Tryfe!”

  “Non-Organic and Proud! Non-Organic and Proud!”

  “Tryfe Oppression No Trifling Matter!”

  “Simmis Say Gimmie! Simmis Say Gimmie!”

  “Yaaaay, food!”

  Back and forth it went, Tryfers and the Simmis … Simmis and Tryfers … Until Bertram noticed that outside his group’s well-trodden path, bystanding Ottoframans had started to collect, curious to learn what all the noise was about.

  As more life-forms gathered, rubbernecking hovercrafts slowed down to look, snarling traffic in the area. Workers began to trickle from the DiversiDine building and other nearby office complexes to gaze on the dueling demonstrations.

  “I never realized it before, but they’re right,” Bertram heard a Simulant exclaim. “I never have had a day off. And yet every single organic in my department—even Kromblatz, who’s completely incompetent—gets time off every year. That’s not fair! I work hard! I want time off, too!”

  And suddenly, that Simulant stepped in to support the Non-Organics’ cause.

  “Just because I’m man-made, doesn’t mean I don’t have feelings, hopes and dreams. Stab us, do we not initiate user-error messaging? Prick us, do we not leak specially-engineered fluids?”

  There was a lot of self-realization going on at DiversiDine today.

  But even more surprising was the split in loyalties. While the majority of Simulants leapt into the fray with their manufactured brethren, some of them actually began crowding around Bertram asking about the Tryfling cause.

  “This is the real problem,” one of the Simulants announced in response. “It’s not just about the inequity that we face as Non-Organics. It’s the inequities faced by all life-forms perceived to be inferior. Whether it’s because we’re considered less natural than everyone else, or simply less evolved. This is so much bigger than Simulants not getting equal benefits. It’s a question of rights for all life-forms! It’s empowering all life to have control over its own destiny!”

  And, before Bertram knew it, a dozen very jazzed Non-Organics had fallen into step with the Tryfers.

  “Have you gotten us patched in yet?” Eudicot T’murp asked from the conference room window.

  “Almost, sir,” said the voice of the technician from Developing Stuff. He’d flattened himself into the one-inch crevasse behind the monitor, whizzing cables around like the tentacles of a Vernjoolsian Mollusk.

  “I just wish I knew what was going on down there,” muttered T’murp anxiously. “It looks like a second protest.”

  “It looks like war,” said someone from Making Things Up, peering down on the scene below.

  “If those are all Non-Organic Simulants down there,” T’murp began, squinting, “they must be shipping them in straight from the factory.”

  The words had hardly passed his lips when a life-form with a long spiky tail marched into view. Then another being with four arms. And two Dootett men. And three fronded Cardoons. There was even someone covered in bits of rotting wood; T’murp wasn’t sure what that was about.

  “They look pretty diverse, sir,” the manager of Putting Things Out There observed.

  “I don’t understand. What do they want?” T’murp adjusted the zoom mechanism on the window—a handy little feature he’d installed for security purposes when he and the Smorg growers were on the outs, and they’d brought in that catapult. In a second, Eudicot T’murp was able to focus in on the signs.

  “I believe they want ‘Life for Tryfe,’ sir,” echoed the voice of the technician from Developing Stuff and Actually Knowing How It Works. He slipped out from behind the monitor and began to unflatten himself. T’murp could hear bones cracking bac
k into place as he re-expanded.

  T’murp turned, and on the large holoscreen they could now see precisely what Bertram Ludlow was seeing, hear what he heard. Bertram Ludlow was in the center of a large ring of life-forms, all shouting with real zeal on behalf of the intergalactically downtrodden.

  “Well, what do ya know?” T’murp marveled aloud. “The Tryfling’s organizing.”

  “He issss determinnnned,” said one of the Seers.

  “He issss dedicatedddd,” said another.

  “He issss bribing people with snnnnnacksss,” observed the third.

  “Want us to call security?” asked someone from Getting Big Yoonies and Figuring Out Where It Goes, lips twitching her implanted mouth-comm in anticipation. “It’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.”

  Eudicot T’murp peered down on the Tryfeman’s growing band, as a wave of warmth—of, yes, even admiration—washed over him. It was always just so interesting to see what life-forms could accomplish, against the odds, when they set their minds to it. So many beings were so much stronger than any of us even knew. Than we even knew ourselves. “We’ll let it play out a while longer and see where it goes,” said T’murp.

  Bertram could see the figures pressed to the windows in the DiversiDine towers, and he had no doubt Eudicot T’murp was among them.

  Remember this, T’murp. This is the day you screwed with the wrong guy’s home planet. This is the start of the Tryfe Freedom, Ditch-the-Alien-Landlord, Non-Probing, Keep-Your-Damned-Dirty-Crop-Circles-to-Yourself Initiative.

  And sure, maybe, one or two of the demonstrators were half-crazed and smelled like woodchips. And maybe another bunch wasn’t quite sure why they were there, so they had started a conga line and were tapping a keg. And okay, some newbies did seem to be adding their own personal issues and demands into the mix. And sure, more people than Bertram had anticipated seemed to be just looking for an excuse to shackle themselves to something heavy, and beat public property with sticks. But sometimes concessions had to be made in the name of planetary self-preservation and awareness.

  Besides, the group had really grown, and the stir had even drawn the attention of the Heavy Meddler Uninet channel.

  The Heavy Meddler ICV flew low, panning across the surging crowd. As it swept overhead, Bertram ducked behind his new friend from the mulch pile, just in case his Popeelie victim had come-to and spilled the beans on Bertram’s latest wardrobe selection. It was all very well to get the “Life for Tryfe” issue some attention and make T’murp squirm, but it was a whole other thing to end up seized and conducting a final interview on the topic from the Ottoframan pokey. Something he pretty much figured was destiny for a high-profile intergalactic fugitive such as himself. Especially one with a knack for mobilizing large, angry mobs.

  And sure enough, at the sight of the news crews, those who’d joined the Tryfe FDAL-NP-KYDDCCY Initiative specifically for the chance of getting in some good old-fashioned unrestrained anarchy, chose this time to pick fights with a few of the shorter-fused Simulants and secure their 15 U-minutes in front of the cameras.

  They’d be longer than 15 minutes at health services later; Simulants are a whole lot stronger than they look.

  So it was mere moments before the Ottoframan Peace Guards shrieked onto the scene. And it took even less time than that for Bertram Ludlow to quietly slide away from the roiling mayhem he’d created. He shielded the bright Popeelie colors with a spiky tail here, a leathery wingspan there, until he made his way to the edge of the chaos and extracted himself. Walking first quickly, and then breaking into a full-out run, the “Life For Tryfe” movement leader knew it was time to let the movement move on without him.

  Bertram kept his hood down and expanded the distance by lengths, looking over his shoulder now and then for reporters or the law. He walked this way awhile. He passed Ottoframan fast food joints, alien salons, skin greening palaces, and a store display containing the very latest in DiversiDine electronics.

  It was here his Popeelie sandals paused. A wall of holovisions was tuned into the live Heavy Meddler broadcast and projected the scene at DiversiDine headquarters.

  “One moment we were protesting lack of equal rights for Non-Organics,” a Neo-Natelle model was saying, “and the next minute these ‘Life for Tryfe’ people had moved in.”

  The broadcast cut to reporter Zaph Chantseree, free from the Secondary Corral investigation and now trying to catch up with the erratically weaving aged protestor with the mulched-up hair. It was like chasing a butterfly drunk on pollen.

  “Excuse me! Er, pardon please?—I understand a number of protestors were recruited specifically for the ‘Life for Tryfe’ rally. Do you remember anything about the person who recruited you?” Chantseree extended a microphone for comment.

  “Smorgs are nice,” said the tusked life-form enthusiastically, weaving out of frame. “I had three.”

  Chantseree and the camera weaved, too. The reporter spoke a little slower and louder now, as if addressing a very deaf, very confused child. “Can you describe the person who brought you here?”

  “He had three, but he gave them to me.”

  “So the person who gave you Smorgs to start this protest was a male life-form then? Can you describe him?”

  The life-form leaned in and replied in a low confidential voice, “I like food.”

  Zaph Chantseree looked directly into the camera, “Back to you, Qwerty.”

  In the studio, newscaster Qwerty Zaqwer chirped, “Thanks, Zaph! Meanwhile, Eudicot T’murp has kept his silence regarding both the Simulant Rights and the ‘Life for Tryfe’ protests. The word on the Uninet suggests MetamorfaSys Inc. mogul, Musca Mij, has also placed a bid on Tryfe. Does this mean Mij will be the next target of this mysterious new Tryfe rights group? Current sources indicate Blumdec, where Mij is currently filming, has been calm. But how long will the peace last?”

  “One question I’ve been hearing a lot right now, Qwerty, is ‘Why is Tryfe suddenly such hot property?” This was Goudy Futura from the chair next to her. “Isn’t it outside the GCU?”

  “Why, yes it is, Goudy. Which is one of the things that makes this all so curious. And—”

  Bertram Ludlow forced himself to step from the window and continue on down the street. So Musca Mij was placing a bid on Tryfe, too. Musca Mij, head of MetamorfaSys Inc., who was currently working on Blumdec.

  Blumdec.

  Bertram knew he couldn’t risk a second ride on the Cosmos Corral to get there. Not when his holowatch cover was blown, and his Popeelie disguise had a slow leak. No, Bertram needed transportation of a more private type. Something where there would be no questions asked and no one to ask them. But also with power, power enough to get Bertram to Blumdec fast and safe.

  Bertram pondered this as he passed an ICV rental, a mass of gleaming signs and shining vehicles. He paused, but then shook his throbbing head and forced himself onward. He didn’t just need an ICV. He needed a pilot, too. One who’d understand his circumstances. One he could trust. And the only pilot Bertram knew was the one who’d dragged him into this mess in the first place. At the moment that guy was only interested in his own continued life off Altair-5—not that Bertram really could blame him. And even if Bertram could somehow figure out how to reach Rollie, the man wasn’t likely to come out of hiding for a bag of Dootett coins.

  The coins.

  Bertram ducked into a doorway and peered into the bag. He dug a hand into it and pulled out a handful of the currency. His finger traced over the Empress’ clean profiles on one coin in his palm.

  He had an idea who he just might be able to call.

  Chapter 18

  “The rye nespyne tastes mainly of d’plyne,” intoned Rozz.

  “Again.”

  “The rye nespyne tastes mainly of d’plyne,”

  “Again.”

  Spectra Pollux’s 37 personal assistants tittered.

  Prickly black loathing rose within Rozz. She prayed it did not burrow noticeably into her voice. “Th
e rye nespyne tastes mainly of d’plyne,” she announced.

  Spectra Pollux leapt up. The floor, chairs and table rumbled with her movement. “That’s it!” the woman thundered, her features alight with joy. “That’s how we answer when someone asks about our new rye nespyne juice smoothie!”

  The 37 personal assistants clapped on cue.

  “And what is rye nespyne?” Spectra Pollux solicited.

  “A new taste experience straight from the outposts of Kerskyne. It’s a fermented herb with a flavor reminiscent of the d’plyne nut of Kerskyne’s northern sector. Only without the gassy after-effects.”

  “Perfect!” said Spectra, her gown turning a pleased tulip pink. “Perfect!” More applause.

  Rozz felt her face go hot.

  Spectra Pollux sat back down with a rumble and swept up both of Rozz’s hands in her own giant mitts. “You have great talent for this, Rozz. You must understand that. Do you? Do you understand it?”

  “I’m a natural,” Rozz said wearily.

  It was the same phrase Spectra Pollux had said to her a million times these last days. Rozz wasn’t sure which of them she was trying to convince more.

  “You’re a natural,” Spectra Pollux agreed.

  “She’s a natural,” the assistants echoed among themselves.

  “But the problem is,” continued Pollux, “you don’t feel it. You don’t feel it in here.” She pointed.

  “My upper GI tract?”

  “Oh. Well, no.” She lost her stride slightly with this miscalculation. “Your heart, Rozz. Wherever you Tryfe people keep your hearts.” Spectra Pollux turned large, saddened eyes on her, like rain puddles forming in two great moon craters.

  The assistants shook their heads sorrowfully.

  “You still don’t feel that this is what you were born to do,” continued Pollux. “You don’t see how important it is. If you did, you wouldn’t have tried to run away twice now. And we wouldn’t have been forced to fit you with …” She took in a hitching little breath. “… That.”