by Jenn Thorson
So far, no one seemed to notice the free-range feet strolling the grounds. But that was probably more about the engineered mellow than any keen fugitive stealth. At least, Bertram considered, the mask did filter out The Grand Mij’s heady pollens. Much as he would have enjoyed wasting away in Bouganvillaville, the Earth wasn’t going to save itself. It took a clear brain to devise a new gameplan.
“Let’s go,” said Bertram after a moment.
“Where?” Xylith asked his feet.
“The beach,” Bertram replied. “If I want to make any headway, I’m going to have to put some backbone into this. And though I can’t currently feel my backbone … hey, I’m here, Mij is here. He and I need to talk.”
Sea-salted wind blew gently against Bertram’s invisibility mask, while waves rolled neatly against the glossy plum sands and polished pebbles of the shore. Lush alien trees swayed in motions precisely conducive to relaxation. The breeze was ideal. The waves were right for the watersports. The famous purple sand substitute empowered the progeny with imaginative alien housing complexes. The sun didn’t even scorch. Local sunbathers were leaping up and scattering—not because of its harmful rays, as there were none—but because of three caterpillar-wheeled vehicles that were just now plodding toward them like giant migrating seaslugs.
In a moment, a Mathekite emerged from the first off-road machine. He was dressed in tropical clothing and a hat that let his antennae poke through jauntily. “That’s our man of the hour,” Xylith whispered.
Musca Mij spoke into a sound projection device strapped around his waist. “Hey everybody!” he greeted the beach dwellers. “Don’t mind us. We’ll be practically invisible. Just continue with whatever you’re doing.” He motioned to the beings in the cruisers. “All right, guys! Haul in the cables!”
In mere moments, huge lenses had been assembled, artificial lighting was moved in, and extension cords criss-crossed the sand. “Now, I need a few volunteers,” said Mij to the crowd. “Sex! Let’s start with sex.” He pointed at a sunbathing greenish being who blinked with surprise. “You. I need you to hold this phallic bottle of tanning oil and say, ‘I never tanned this well on my home planet.’ Go ahead; say it.”
“I’m not here to tan,” explained the being in a somewhat injured tone. “I’m photophyllic.”
“You want to be immortalized in my next time-share ad or not?”
“I never tanned this well on my home planet,” the being said, with a toss of the head and a caress of the bottle of tanning oil.
“Cut! Very nice,” said Mij. “Next! Progeny, we need some progeny in this thing. Close up on that kid over there.” The director knelt by an Ottoframan child. “All right, kid. What I want you to say is, ‘I could play in this sand substitute all day,’ and then Mom—” He pointed to a nearby Ottoframan woman. “You Mom?”
The young woman looked startled. “Sister.”
“I’m the boy’s maternal archetype.” An older Ottoframan woman in a silvery mu-mu stepped forward.
“Yeah, sorry, not right for the part.” Mij turned back to young lady. “Okay, Big Sis, you’re going to pretend to be this boy’s maternal archetype.”
“But, I—”
“Look, I know, I know. Awkward for you; smart casting for me. Work with it … Okay, so when the kid says his line, you laugh. And you say, ‘And sand substitute doesn’t stick to your feet and towels like non-engineered sand.’ Okay? Go.”
She said her line like a professional.
“Great. Cosmic. Moving on.” Here the Mathekite buzzed back to the vehicle. He withdrew a slim, aerodynamic-looking board and then buzzed over to Xylith and Bertram.
“You, Doll-faces, you look like you work-out.” This was addressed to Xylith. “You’re going to hold this Blumdecian WaveMaster 5000 SuperSport Ultra-turbo Mega Skimmer, and do you know what your line is? Your line is, ‘And when the public beaches get too crowded, I always have room to skim the waves here.’”
Before Xylith could respond, Mij had snatched the Map and bag out of Xylith’s hands, and thrust them at a roadie. Then he tucked the wave skimmer into her arms and fluttered back to the camera. “Okay … action!”
“Er … ‘And when the pub—’”
“Hold it, hold it!” shouted the director, dashing into view. “Cut! Cut! What are these … things …” he waved several hands emphatically, “doing in my shot? These … these …”
“Feet?” Xylith supplied, peering down on the unattached pair of peds waiting at her side.
“Right. Is this a place for feet? Is this a time for disembodied body parts? This is about buying a timeshare on Blumdec that makes all of your biggest, most lavish vacationing dreams come true for one low, low price. And standalone feet don’t say lavish dreams to me.”
“It might if you were a foot fetishist,” Xylith suggested, hopefully.
“True, but I gave up that kind of film-making long ago,” he replied, shaking it off. “So let’s get ’em outta here, people! They’re cluttering up my paradise.”
It was just as the Mathekite’s roadies moved to declutter paradise that Bertram Ludlow found himself quickly calling out, “Musca Mij, are you trying to buy the planet Tryfe?”
The roadies paused. They looked around, exchanged glances, and scratched their heads.
“Aw, geez,” sighed Mij, turning to address the voice. He, too, searched, puzzled, for the source of the sound. Finding none at eyelevel, his large multi-facted eyes went immediately to the beach clutter. “Look, I don’t know who or what you are, but we’re burning daylight here, kiddos. So take a hike.”
“I’m with the Heavy Meddler,” Bertram announced. “And I think the public deserves answers about this ‘Life for Tryfe’ business.”
“I happen to run the Heavy Meddler,” Mij said leaning down. He directed his comments to Bertram’s right big toe. “Meaning, I pay you. So why don’t you hot-foot-it off my beach and go kick up a nice Stella Cygnus piece for me back at the station? Much obliged.”
“Who owns Tryfe now?”
The Mathekite gave a huff that smelled like old vegetables and fish. “Do I know? Look, Alternate Realty said if I wanted the property, I needed to present my ideas. So I’ll present. I don’t know who I’m presenting to. And I don’t give a flying fraxbat who it is. Either you embrace MetamorfaSys Inc.’s vision of ‘more is never enough,’ or you don’t. It’s no hair off my antennae. Is this,” he pointed, “some kind of medical condition you got there or—”
“I’m undercover. Way undercover,” said Bertram.
He nodded. “You missed a spot.”
Bertram pressed on, “When is the presentation? What do you plan to do with Tryfe? What about the people living there already? Aren’t you concerned about what happens to their culture? Their environment? Life As They Know It?”
Musca Mij’s laugh buzzed with amused exasperation. “Look … I admire your mandibles, kid, I do. You got some big ones. But you’re bordering on professional insubordination here. In fact, your big toe is on the far line of that border. So let me offer you some friendly advice; take a long walk, Big Toe. While you still have a job to run back to. Now shoo.” He waved two sets of arms.
“Don’t you care that billions of lives are in your hands?” Bertram continued. “That you could trigger the end of the whole Tryfling race? That you’ll probably be branded a backspace slumlord?”
By now, the roadies were rolling up their sleeves and moving in to declutter, so Xylith tugged where she thought Bertram’s own arm might be. “Come on,” she pleaded with him. “Just leave it be. There’s nothing more we can do here.”
“I’d listen to the lady if I were you, Big Toe,” Mij said. “Progress marches on. I suggest you march along with it.”
Finally, with a scowl Mij couldn’t see, Bertram gave in to Xylith’s tugging grasp. They were a few paces down the path, when the Mathekite called, “And by the way, kid: nice AirChamps® sandals.”
“Yeah, thanks,” Bertram grumbled. “Thanks a lot.
”
“Okay,” shouted the Mathekite to his people, “moving on. Bring in this year’s Ms. Big Dippers pageant contestants! And animals! We need fuzzy animals! Let the Argonian snoogle out of its cage!”
Everyone on the beach cooed. Bertram realized Xylith had been right. It was good they got out of there when they did.
Chapter 21
“So T’murp’s hiding in his glass tower over labor issues, while our friend Mij has no idea who he’s presenting to and isn’t really bugged about it.”
Back on Xylith’s ICV, the brief image of Musca Mij, with his big iridescent eyes and his many arms and shiny wings, crossed Bertram’s mind. He chuckled. “Bugged.” A slip of the invisi-suit turned the laughter into, “Ow.”
“Do you need help in there?” Xylith called, sounding concerned.
“I’mfinedon’tcomein.” He’d been talking to Xylith through the ship’s lavatory door, less from modesty than the lack of suavity found in birthing yourself from a giant rubber glove covered in sharp reflective plates. Every tug, every pull, had potential for strain, abrasion and laceration.
He cleared his throat. “So next steps: I was thinking we could send our infopills to every news station in the GCU and—”
“Which infopills are these?” asked Xylith lightly.
“What do you mean?” Bertram had managed to extract his arm from the suit. The sleeve left his hand with a sharp, cringe-worthy snap. “The ones we made for Blumdec. The ones we never used. A thousand of those blue-and-white beauties, ready and waiting to share Tryfe’s plight with the disillusioned masses. A thousand should be enough, right?”
“A thousand of them sitting on the purple sand substitute of Blumdec in the perfectly-controlled sunshine, you mean,” Xylith said.
Arm Two would have come free more easily, Bertram considered, if only he could have unscrewed it at the elbow. “We lost the infopills?” he asked. With Bertram invisible, they’d agreed it would be somewhat less-obvious if Xylith carried the bag.
“They took them from me, remember? Mij or his roadies or someone. I don’t know, I was trying to concentrate on the lines Mij gave me for that timeshare infomercial. And then, well, it all happened so fast.” Her voice sounded strained. “I think it was those horrible genetically-engineered flowers; I don’t want to be in Uninet commercials, Bertram.”
The suit was now past the main danger zones and heading kneeward. “We can always make more infopills,” Bertram assured her.
“Yes, but there aren’t enough supplies for another thousand.”
Bertram looked up from the fabric bunched around his ankle. “How many?”
“Two hundred. Maybe less. I’d used up quite a few with my last Underworld PR announcement.”
Bertram nodded and turned back to the suit. Slowly, painfully, he teased the fabric into descent, taking some leg hair and skin cell casualties along the way until SNAP! He flinched and examined his ankle.
The reflectors had left tiny red welts. Catching his breath, he asked her “Could we get supplies?”
“We could.”
“Maybe we’d better plan on it, then.” Satisfied by this simple solution, Bertram seized the fabric around the second ankle. His physical strength was waning, yes, but he was determined to give it his all. He summoned his energies in one last move toward total invisi-suit liberation and—SNAP!
Bertram cried out and fell backwards onto the floor.
“Bertram! Bertram!” shrieked Xylith at the door. “Are you all right? Should I fetch the on-board Simmi-Doc? What was that noise?”
“The sound of freedom, Xylith,” he gasped, rising to his feet. The suit now lay like a shed snake-skin on the cold metal floor. He reached for his street clothes, which waited welcomingly in a nearby pile, but the movement dislodged something tucked into his duds like a waiting grenade.
Across the floor rolled the Yellow Thing.
“Freedom does tend to favor sacrifice,” responded Xylith’s voice. “Are you sure you don’t want the Simmi-Doc? It’s no problem. It’s in the utility room all charged up. I’ll dust it off.”
Bertram paused and frowned at the door. “You keep a Simulant doctor locked up in your utility room? Is that even legal?” On the heels of the Life for Tryfe movement, Bertram was gaining a healthy new respect for the plight of the average GCU Simulant.
But Xylith just gave an impatient sigh. “Oh, it’s not like it’s a full Non-Organic with personality and empathy programs or anything, Bertram. Just a low-level gadget model with simple first aid capabilities and—”
The Yellow Thing … The Simmi-Doc … There was something about the combination that united in Bertram’s mind and struck him harder than the snap of an Invisi-suit pantsleg. “Xylith,” Bertram almost couldn’t breathe with the idea, “where did you say your Simulant friend with the thrill issues lived?”
“Who, O’wun? He’s living on Ludd. And I assure you, the Simmi-Doc is nowhere near as advanced as O’wun, I—”
Bertram was leaping into his jeans. “And do you know what building? And how to get there?”
“Sure, I’ve been there a couple of times. I—”
Through t-shirt fabric he said, “And you’d said he has access to information? That he’s tapped into systems and might be able to tell us what the Yellow Thing is? Might be able to track down records on Tryfe’s sales history, maybe?”
“Why, I don’t know,” she said honestly, “but I have seen him hack into complex systems that surely did seem impossible. He was always up on the very latest technology. Until he moved to Ludd, anyway.”
Bertram exited the lavatory. He never thought he’d be so glad to wear jeans and a t-shirt again. They’d journeyed all over space, so they stank a bit; but they stank in an empowering way he hadn’t appreciated before. He handed her the invisibility suit, which had gained a fragrance all its own.
Xylith wrinkled her nose. “I’ll just have this sent out,” she said, tucking it quickly into a shoot in the wall.
“Nevermind that.” Bertram was guiding the Dootett lady to the cockpit door. “We need to go to Ludd. Right away. The Seers told me I’d know what the Yellow Thing was when I needed to know; I’ve waited long enough. How fast can this thing fly?”
Surprise and delight marked the expressions on her faces, like they’d both been waiting for just this kind of opportunity. “Funny, but I’ve never really pushed this ship of mine much.” She stroked the cockpit doorway affectionately. “So let’s just see what this ICV can do, shall we?”
“Life for Tryfe! Life for Tryfe!” The Heavy Meddler newscast cycled footage of the dueling protests on Ottofram, with a “Life for Tryfe” beach party bonfire sing-along that had just erupted on Blumdec.
Apparently, a bag of infopills from an unknown source fell into the hands of a film crew working on Musca Mij’s new timeshare ad. It was sampled, passed around, and somehow made its way to the beach-going guests of the Blumdec Grand Mij Hotel and Resort.
The infopills contained messaging about how disrespect for Tryfe, its people and their quaint, backspace way of life revealed just a slice of the greater inequity in the GCU. The message said Tryflings stood as a living metaphor of the prejudices, struggles and disappointments life-forms faced across the universe daily.
“We’re all Tryflings in our own way,” the pill imparted.
This spirited and enlightening concept rolled around in the hearts and minds—or more specifically, in the bloodstreams—of the hotel patrons. Some found themselves touched by it during their hands-free massages. Some were transformed by the idea at their gene therapy appointments. And many digested its ramifications during their post-lunch, pre-dinner buffets.
So by the end of the day, at the Grand Mij Resort’s evening barbecue, the resort’s guests enjoyed grilled-to-perfection Blumdec cuisine, artfully-decorated drinks, and felt moved to share their own unbearable lives of neglect, inequity and dashed hopes. They told tales of hearts-wrenching disappointment in the quality of upholstery in th
eir much-anticipated Quasar-57 Luxury ICVs … The unrelenting anguish of their progeny not getting into the proper Uninet academies without extra, costly infopill supplements … And the eternal woe of being unable to find adequate Non-Organic Simulant housemaids these days that didn’t want outrageous benefits packages.
Just everyone had weighty personal torments they wanted to get off their chests.
And it was as the fourth round of Purple Pleasure Perfection Punch hit their systems, that a few brave sympathizers even began to improvise with pro-Tryfe protest tunes.
It wasn’t long before the music grew enthusiastic, competitive, and the media was there to catch all the action.
From his Vos Laegos Underworld office, Zenith Skytreg watched this display for just about as long as he could bear. Then he withdrew the exquisitely designed hand-laser from the finely hand-tooled holster at his side and aimed it at his holovision.
“This—” ZAP! “—is not—” ZAP! “—the way—” ZAP! “—it’s supposed—” ZAP! “—to go!” he shouted. He smiled with satisfaction as the holovision smoked in a flickering orange ruin.
Two former Vos Laegos showbeings, who now worked for Skytreg’s Underworld branch, ran in with fire quellers to tame the blaze.
Skytreg took a sip of his smooth Feegar bourbon.
Yes, the sale of Tryfe was supposed to be a quiet little transaction. One that Zenith himself could then blow into a nice, controlled media frenzy when he was good and ready. He had planned to be the shining hero poised to bring the backspace planet into the GCU fold. To ease the planet forward with his hand-picked redevelopment plan. Also, to get the fast yoonies from the sale to pay off some unexpectedly sizeable personal debts he’d incurred. Debts brought about by unfortunate circumstance and what could only have been a crooked dealer on the gaming tables that night.