by Jenn Thorson
Or, well, the foliage.
Bertram checked the pocket vis-u connected to O’wun and verified what he already knew; systems were go. O’wun was pumping this to the Uninet. The GCU was tapped-in.
Rollie and Xylith rejoined them now after a quick recon of the stadium. The Hyphizite was flushed with delight, his laugh low and amazed. “Did you see?” he queried incredulously. “Front center. It’s Zenith fragging Skytreg out there! Zenith Skytreg. How in Altair’s tarpits is that brooquat wrapped up in this?”
Out in the stadium, fanfare and an on-screen explosion signaled the start of T’murp’s video promo.
“Maybe he’s in the market for new Underworld office space,” suggested Xylith.
“On Tryfe? Not flashy enough,” Rollie sniffed. “Unless he could convince the Tryflings to worship him as their god, wouldn’t be worth his effort.”
“It’s a sizable crowd,” Xylith observed, “but none of them scream ‘RegForce’ to me.”
“Can’t rule out holowatches,” Rollie reminded her, “but yeah. RegForce you can almost smell. No Seers of Rhobux, either. Just keep an eye on Mij’s bodyguards and Skytreg’s little Vos Laegon beauties. They can pack some trouble. O’wun, you pan the audience so our Uninet viewers get to see all the pretty faces of today’s attendees. You give each of ’em a nice, clear close-up. Make sure you get Skytreg, too. Then you keep your eyes on the stage. You follow Ludlow no matter what happens, you understand?”
O’wun understood.
“Ludlow,” Rollie began, “Xylith and me, we’re going to cover you best we can. Which, by Underworld standards, is pretty fragging stellar. You just do what you got to do out there. Things go zonky, you get yourself out. Hear me? You get out first and head toward the ship. You remember where the ship is?”
“I do.” After their narrow Ludd escape, Bertram had learned how important it was to pay real attention where you parked a cloaked ship. He imagined a lot of elderly members of the Underworld eventually got nabbed because they were wandering around ICV parks looking for their see-through transportation.
Now Rollie turned to his Underworld colleagues, his expression grave. “Xylith, O’wun, if I’m caught or too fragged up, I want you to take the ship. Keep it cloaked. Go to Tseethe’s. I’ll catch up if I’m able.”
“And if you’re not able?” Xylith’s lavender eyes wore concern in duplicate.
“Then picture me building a nice summer home on Altair-5, and expect a Uninet postcard.” He gave a flash of a smile he didn’t entirely seem to mean. “Right. Now, the RegForce and every other law unit across the GCU is likely seeing this live and heading here now. Meaning, there’s not much time for fancy stuff. So Ludlow, good luck saving Life As You Know It and whatnot. Always liked Tryfe. Try not to get lasered. And don’t forget—”
“Plant my feet?” Bertram suggested.
“Ah, they grow up so fast,” Rollie said to Xylith, with a wink, and darted through the threshold into the arena’s nosebleed seats.
“Make Tryfe proud, Bertram,” Xylith told him. “It’s been a real pleasure subverting the iron-fist of intergalactic authority with you.” And with a quick one-faced kiss as light as the antennae of a ratuk flappameria, she darted into the arena, laser drawn, taking a path that mirrored Rollie’s.
That left him with O’wun. “Ready?” the Non-Organic asked.
“Just need to get my battle-cry on,” said Bertram. It sounded a lot braver than he felt. But sometimes that was good enough.
O’wun nodded. “After you.”
“It’s my first populist rebellion, you know,” Bertram told him, hoping to stall a moment longer. And drawing a deep breath he hoped wouldn’t be his last, Bertram Ludlow ran into the stadium shouting, “Life for Tryfe! Life for Tryfe!”
Heads turned as he raced forward, down the stands. “Life for Tryfe! Life for Tryfe!”
Surging ahead, Bertram surveyed the crowd. He caught the eyes of Mimsi Grabbitz, the Alternate Realty agent he’d met with back on Ottofram. In the far aisle he spied Musca Mij, who buzzed with interest at this new change in events.
But in the nearest section, Bertram’s eyes were drawn to a bright shock of hot pink hair, on a head that just now was swiveling toward him. It revealed a familiar face wearing an angelically exhilarated smile. The figure also seemed to be wearing a fast food service uniform. Bertram blinked rapidly to process the information. “Rozz?”
At the sight of him, Rozz leapt up from her seat, clapping and fist-pumping. “Yeah, you rock ’em, Bertram! Life for Tryfe! Life for Tryfe!”
The giantess of a woman next to her scowled. The lady’s suit went from pink to black so swiftly, Bertram wasn’t quite sure he hadn’t imagined it. “Rozz, what are you doing? Sit down!” the giantess hissed.
All Bertram’s logic neurons had gone off at once. They whooped “Contextual Impossibility! Overload! Overload!” Rozz Mercer was here. Not in the Psych Department computer lab. Not enjoying two-for-one beers with Bertram at the Murray Avenue Tavern. Not even face down snoring in the University coffeehouse, chocolate croissant for her pillow. Rozz Mercer was in space. At Skorbig Stadium.
Bertram had to wrench his gaze away from the pink haired programmer, before he lost all momentum to save the planet. Instead, he turned to address Eudicot T’murp. T’murp stood tall at the podium, and behind the man towered the most enormous holoscreen.
On that screen was playing—oddly enough—Eudicot T’murp, live, at the podium. And behind Movie T’murp was the movie holoscreen. And on and on. Limitless T’murps and unending screens marched dizzyingly into the distance, like performance art honoring M.C. Escher.
Bertram would have latched onto his old madness theory, but he knew the GCU better than that these days.
Then he remembered: O’wun. He turned around, expecting to see the Simulant-turned-independent filmmaker right behind him. He’d been told to focus on the crowd, but these Underworld people were a notoriously self-determined bunch and—
The space was empty, and a scan of the seats found O’wun crouched four rows up, ducked behind a Sleemy Snaps cart, and busy panning the crowd like he’d been told.
Bertram grabbed the little vis-u from his shirt pocket and frowned at it. The footage was of the crowd. As it should be. He shook it. Only the crowd. From the front left. Four rows up.
Now the screen on the stage showed Tryfling hands holding a portable vis-u displaying footage of the crowd.
Bertram waggled the portable vis-u in his hands.
The vis-u on the mega-screen waggled, too.
Bertram waved a hand over his mid-section.
A two-story hand waved over the whole of the screen on the stage.
Bertram grabbed up the Yellow Thing, as it dangled on its string around his neck, and the whole view on the screen rotated to nauseating effect. Heads in the audience tilted. One life-form fell out of his chair. And then the whole image adjusted and righted itself.
Bertram winced. “I’ll ‘know when I need to know,’ huh?” he muttered as the implications of the Seers cryptic words sunk in. He’d had this stupid thing with him all over the GCU and back. He’d had it the confinement center on Podunk. He’d had it in the Underworld meeting at Vos Laegos. He’d had it on the Cosmos Corral. He’d had it while he slept, and while he ate, and while he— “Holy crap!” He wrested the Yellow Thing from around his neck and flung it to the ground like he was making the last touchdown in the final quarter of the Superbowl.
The screen image rolled and joggled.
The audience joined the presenter on stage in merry laughter. “And that’s how we’ve been doing the single-camera hand-held live feed. Yep, viewers won’t miss a single eye-popping moment of all the Real Reality RealTime DocuDramatic™ Tryfling action!”
Eudicot T’murp pushed a button and the screen shifted from the perspective of the Yellow Thing on the ground, to an action montage featuring the highlights—or low points, depending on how you looked at it—of Bertram’s recent days. The wo
rds “There Goes the Galaxy” blazoned forth front-and-center.
“So, in summary,” T’murp continued, “with DiversiDine as Tryfe’s winning bidder, we won’t just offer Tryflings the thrilling chance to user-test DiversiDine products before they go to market. We’ll leverage their quaint lifestyle as part of a ground-breaking new entertainment concept. One, I might add, that’s already become a real fan favorite for our test groups.”
On the screen, one interviewed User Tester said, “I’m simply hooked on There Goes the Galaxy. I can’t wait to see what that zonky Tryfeman will be up to next!”
Another wondered, “How will Tryfling Bertram Ludlow get himself out of this latest jam? My familial unit and I are dying to know.”
And a third: “I’d be interested in learning more about Tryfe. Can you imagine never seeing a piece of Translachew gum before? Having never touched a vis-u or piloted an ICV? There Goes the Galaxy made me look at the GCU from a whole new perspective!”
“Our plan,” continued Eudicot T’murp, “is for each season of There Goes The Galaxy to feature a new Tryfe person in a new challenge, making it both educational and compelling. So let’s give a big round of applause for our very first There Goes the Galaxy Tryfling Uninet star … Let’s hear it for Bertram Ludlow!”
In an odd 180 of those childhood nightmares where Bertram went to school naked and with nowhere to stick a hall pass, now at the sound of his very name, life-forms in the stadium went wild. Some rose in a standing ovation. Even a few of DiversiDine’s biggest competitors clapped him on the shoulder or reached to shake his hand.
“Nice job, kid,” someone said.
“Good luck out there,” said someone else.
“Very brave for an unevolved life-form.”
It took a moment of this unexpected and uncanny behavior, before Bertram was able to find his motor skills and break free of the startling adulation. “No!” he shouted, recoiling from his newest, biggest fans. “What is wrong with you people? The people of my planet don’t want to spend their lives testing your crappy products!”
“Aw, you’ll never even know you’re doing it,” Eudicot T’murp explained kindly. “It’s fun. You’ll get into it.”
“We don’t want to be the unwitting stars of your crummy Uninet series, either!” Here, Bertram ran the rest of the way through the stadium seats and leapt up on the stage. “What you all seem to forget is, we are people—like you.”
He glanced at the leafy appearance of Eudicot T’murp, into the iridescent eyes of Musca Mij, and at the mountain-hewn physique of the woman in the CapClub section, who Bertram realized had to be Spectra Pollux.
“Well, not like you exactly,” he hedged. “But we have lives and hopes and dreams, like you do. We have our own world that we love, like you. And if and when we figure out long-distance space travel, and join the GCU, it will be our decision to make. Not yours.” In his most passionate tones he announced, “We will not be the playthings of some self-proclaimed ‘superior intelligence.’ We didn’t spring up in this universe to have our fate in the hands of some money-grubbing alien corporation. Or some sneaking, sell-out Seers. Or some … some … Underworld politician thinking about reelection.” Here he gave a pointed look to Zenith Skytreg.
Now Bertram noticed Rozz jumping from her chair and scrambling to join him on the stage. “And believe it or not,” shouted Rozz, “we don’t exactly dream of spending our lives providing deep explanations for shallow poetry. We rarely get up in the morning and wish some big-boned alien chick would snatch us from everything we love and offer us a life of indentured servitude behind a glorified beverage cart! (We can be slaves to corporate bureaucracy on our own planet, thank you very much!) And very few humans want to become Our Best Us if it’s by someone else’s martyred, manipulative, big-headed, big-mouthed, celebrity-blinded, bigoted, bouffant, mood-dress-wearing standards!”
Rozz exhaled, like a Rumoolitan-sized weight had been lifted from her. She exchanged a surprised grin with her fellow Tryfling, as if just coming-to and realizing he was there. “Hey, Bertram. Great to see ya,” she said warmly. “How goes?
“Not bad. I’m an Intergalactic Fugitive these days. You?”
“Hanging in. Could do with a few less bossy aliens.”
“Ditto that.” He nodded knowingly and turned back to the crowd and announced, “Tryfe is not now and has never been for sale. This goes beyond GCU real estate paperwork. Tryfe belongs to the people born on its soil. Who dwell under its sun and its moon. Who call it home. And who—by the way—call it Earth, not Tryfe. I mean, geez! You’ve got all this advanced technology and know-how, but you can’t even get the planet’s name right? That drives me nuts! And—”
He was just starting to enjoy the topic and was about to tell the GCU a few other enlightening things about itself, when the words died somewhere in the back of his throat, around the central uvula region.
Across the Stadium, an ICV had swept in. Bertram recognized its sleek features and the aforementioned advanced technology. It belonged to the Hyphiz Deltan RegForce and it came here prepped to buck tradition—and maintenance crew regulations—by landing smack-dab on the kachunketball playing field.
Bertram closed his gaping mouth. An effective public speaker knew when to wind things up. “Er, okay! Thanks everybody! Great crowd! Gotta go.”
He grabbed Rozz’s wrist and started out across the stage. “Bertram, I don’t think I can—”
But Bertram was too busy listening to the voice that boomed from the descending ICV: “BERTRAM LUDLOW AND ROLLIAM TSMORLOOD; THIS IS THE HYPHIZ DELTAN REGFORCE. WE NEED TO TALK.”
Bertram and Rozz had scrambled off the stage and down through the stadium seats. All the while Rozz was unhelpfully trying to wrench her arm from his grasp. “Bertram, listen to me.” She touched her silvery headband absently. Decorative red lights blipped along it. It wasn’t her style, but Bertram knew how space changed a person. “Dude, I can’t go with you. I’d love to, but Pollux set the radius on this damned thing, and if I go out of range—”
“Ludlow!” This was Rollie, still covering the audience. One-handed, he dug into a pocket of his coat. “Take this.”
He pulled out a print copy of Guide to Karnaxic Meditation: the Uptight Stressed-Out Non-believer’s Edition, glanced at it and cursed. “Sorry.” He stuffed it back into his jacket. He withdrew something else. “This.”
It was the remote for the ship. “Here. Let yourself in. I’ll be along shortly.”
“Rollie, we could all make it if we leave now,” said Bertram.
“I can’t,” interjected Rozz. “Spectra has me hooked up with this totally messed-up—”
“BERTRAM LUDLOW AND ROLLIAM TSMORLOOD!” The RegForce ship rattled, as the landing gear unfolded from its undercarriage. “PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPONS AND AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTION.”
“Rollie, it’s time to go,” Bertram insisted.
The Hyphiz Deltan’s focus was riveted to the ship. “No.”
“What?”
“Not for me. I got something I need to try first.” He glanced only cursorily at Xylith and O’wun who’d just joined their small knot of insurgents. “All of you. Move. Now.”
“What do you mean ‘something you need to try’?” queried Xylith’s face on the right.
The left face added, “Are you that anxious to tour Altair-5, Rollie Tsmorlood? Only someone who thrives irrationally on risk to the point of being dangerously self-destructive would even consider staying to ‘try’ something under these circumstances.”
“Actually, Xylith, I could use your help.”
“Oh,” she said, brightening. “Sure. No problem.”
“IF YOU NEGLECT TO PUT DOWN ALL WEAPONS IMMEDIATELY,” continued Mook’s voice from the RegForce ICV, “WE SHALL BE FORCED TO FIRE, AND I DON’T IMAGINE YOU’LL LIKE THAT AT ALL. CONSIDER THIS YOUR FINAL WARNING.”
“More running,” Rollie advised the rest of the group. “It starts with the feet. Go.”
He didn’t nee
d to tell Bertram Ludlow twice. Well, he did; technically. But Bertram was too busy tugging Rozz toward the exit to count.
“Bertram, will ya let go?” Somewhere between the empty Flinky Rolls dispenser and the long-abandoned souvenir stand, Rozz wrested her arm free and scowled. “I go much further, the next thing you’ll be smelling is deep-fried frontal lobe.”
Bertram stopped. “What are you talking about?”
“This!” she pointed to the headband. “This. This is what I’ve been trying to tell you. It’s an electric head hobble. Spectra Pollux had me haberdashed with it the last time I tried to escape. She’s got it set for a range. I go out of the range, I get zapped.” She grabbed him by the collar of his flannel overshirt. “And I’ve been zapped, Bertram. Oh, there has been zappage. And I do not recommend it.”
Bertram couldn’t imagine anything that looked so much like designer couture could have that much kick. “It’s that bad?” The words escaped his lips almost on reflex.
But Rozz Mercer flushed with outrage. “Bad?! You tell me. Last time, I wet myself, threw up, and completely forgot my own favorite color.”
He glanced at her shocking pink hair. “Er.”
“I still don’t remember the name of my cat.”
He hated to break it to her. “No pets, Rozz.”
She blinked tired, dark brown eyes. “Shit. Wonder what that was then.”
“Look,” began Bertram, surveying the exits for unwanted company. “You can’t just stay here. And after your little speech, I think you’ve pretty much blown any chances for upward mobility with your employer. Did you have a plan?”
“Plan? Yes, I had a plan. 4B,” she snapped. “If you didn’t show, I was going to lay low until I could get my hands on an infopill on DIY tiara extraction. Then work the system from within. But you came and went all Rosa Parks on their asses, and I got caught up in the moment. So I guess that’s out now.”
“Then Breakfast with Bertram at Skorbig Stadium for Independence Day was yours.”