Chutes & Ladders (Prosperous Book 1)

by A. Rhea King

  Tru smiled. “Well then, we need to get the two of you working together better. You feel your two personalities are sisters?”

  Jackie nodded.

  “In some ways that’s good but Jackie, I need one of you do be a dependable COM officer. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Jackie smirked, leaning close. “Yeah, Tru, we get it, but don’t expect us to change for you. We don’t like you that much.”

  “And don’t hit on another commanding officer while you’re on my ship.”

  “Yeah. Fine.” She looked back at him. “Now what’s up with the closet here?” She hiked a finger over her shoulder.

  “Did you ever read C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe?”

  Jackie shook her head.

  Tru stood, smiling down at her.

  “In the book, the wardrobe leads to Narnia. In here, it leads to the Beaver’s dam, complete with a swimming hole. Come on.”

  Tru stepped into the wardrobe, parted the coats, and disappeared into the back. Jackie smiled and with a spring in her step, followed him.

  On the other side of the coats was a hall decorated like a house, and two doors on either side. There was a stick figure with a ball cap on one door, and one with a triangle bottom on the other. At the end was a screen door. Outside the door, it looked like there was grass, trees, and a pond.

  “Boys, girls,” Tru said, pointing to the appropriate doors. “Sequence yourself a bathing suit and towel, and I’ll meet you in the pond.” Tru pushed open the door of the stick figure with a ball cap.

  Jackie dashed into the other room.

  Jackie stared at the ceiling overhead as she floated in the warm water of Beaver’s Pond. Whoever had painted the ceiling put a lot of time into small details. From the sun to the clouds and birds. It was lit with lights hidden in the tops of the fake trees that surrounded the pond. The light reflected back into the room, giving the illusion of a sunny afternoon. She moved until she was upright and slowly treaded water with her arms.

  Tru swam for a little while but left without a word while she was swimming around the bottom collecting coins. When she surfaced, she saw he’d changed back into his clothes. He sat in an Adirondack chair with a book in hand. She stared for a few minutes because it had been so long since she’d seen an actual book, or someone reading one.

  Then she returned to her coin hunt. They weren’t real coins, but if she dropped them into the slots hidden around Beaver’s Den at the center of the pond, whirlpool jets would turn on for five minutes with each coin. The coins would be released back into the water to be collected and slid into the slots again. The game had been fun for a long time, but now she was feeling bored.

  She swam to the shore and climbed out. She pulled a towel from the branches of the fake tree. Jackie stared at the tree while she dried off because the attention detail was just as extensive as the overhead sky. It was made of metal, and the sculptor had used copper and iron to create the bark. Then created each leaf out of hammered copper, iron, and what looked like gold.

  Jackie wrapped her towel around her and walked over to where Tru was. She plopped into the Adirondack chair next to his and curled up in her beach towel.

  “Who painted everything and made the trees, and everything?”

  “I don’t know.” Tru put the open book over his leg and looked around the room. “My dad commissioned all of the work between expeditions. He’d only show them to my brothers and me after they were done.”

  She wiped the water dripping from her hair down her face. “Does that pond always have water in it?”

  “No. It drains back into the black water tanks to be recycled or sent to hydroponics. I let Gracie know when I’m coming and she fills it.”

  Jackie turned her attention to Tru. “Gracie is a really strange computer, Tru.”

  “Oh?” He looked at her.

  “She argues with people, and she sometimes does things people don’t ask her to do. She also seems to have an attitude. I mean, I’ve used a lot of A.I. computers that could imitate emotions, but with her… It’s like she’s actually feeling those feelings. And she’s sassy.”

  “ Sassy?”

  “She’s worse than Joan sometimes. And you can tell when she doesn’t like someone. And I don’t know what Q’al did to piss her off, but she really hates him.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “I heard him telling someone that unless he’s asking her to do something for a patient, she might ignore him for hours. What computer does that?’

  “Mine, apparently.”

  “Well, your ‘apparently’ computer is not standard and behaves strangely.”

  Tru smiled. She pursed her lips for a moment and then leaned toward him.

  “What’s the secret about Gracie?”

  Tru closed his book and dropped it on the grass under his chair. It wasn’t real grass, but it felt like it when Jackie walked on it.

  “I’ll worry about my computer.”

  “You argue with your computer.”

  He looked at her, openly surprised by her comment. “I’m sorry?”

  “I have seen you three times when I bet you thought you were alone, and you were two were arguing. And not a guy upset cuz the computer OS was flaking out, but like two people fighting about something. Once was because she wasn’t letting the engineers into somewhere, and she was saying they didn’t need to be in there. Another time she wanted you to stop telling her how to monitor hydroponics because she’s been doing it forever. And the last time you two were fighting about her locking someone out of the kitchen.”

  Tru looked away. Jackie waited because she wanted to know why Tru wasn’t fixing the computer and fighting with it.

  But instead, he asked her, “How did you open the doors to the supply closet and The Catacombs? They’re biometric, and you are not authorized.”

  “You’re changing the subject.”

  “You’re avoiding the question.”

  She laid her head on the back of the chair. “It’s one of my psychic gifts. If something has an electronic lock, it might as well not be locked when we’re around. We’d be amazing thieves, know that?”

  “How do you do you unlock electronic locks?”

  “I dunno. I put my hand up to the lock, or biometric pad, or retinal scan, whatever, and decide I want the lock to be unlocked. Sometimes I really have to focus on it, but doors always open.”

  “ All electric locks?”

  “If they aren’t already broken, yeah. If a lock is broken, I make them more broken, but that’s someone else’s problem.”

  “What else can you do?”

  “When I touch something that someone else has touched, even through clothes or shoes, I can see five minutes of the past. That’s come in handy when I’ve lost things.”

  “You can see five minutes into your own past?”

  She nodded.

  “That is handy. What else can you do?”

  “If my coffee gets cold, I can stick my finger in it and heat it up to warmish. And I can put my hands on someone and warm them up. A few of my crappy ex-boyfriends liked that for other reasons.” She offered a devilish smile.

  He laughed. “I’m sure they did.”

  “Sometimes, out of the blue, I can hear voices.”

  “What kind of voices? I thought you said Joan was the only other persona in you.”

  “No, Tru. I mean I can hear other people. I figured it out a long time ago because if I looked at a person I could hear the other voices would sort of fade out and I could hear just that person talking. But sometimes… I hear voices that I don’t think are anywhere near me. I’ve heard political speeches that were given on a planet light years away and the next day when Earth finally got the recording of the speech, it was the exact same speech.”

  “You can’t control hearing voices?”

  She scoffed. “God, I wish I could! Luckily it doesn’t happen very often, but it has gotten me in trouble with other captains a c
ouple times. It’s hard doing COMM officer things right in front of you when you can hear every damn voice in the universe!”

  Tru chuckled when she rolled her eyes. “I can imagine. Perhaps for us, you should tell me when that happens. Then I won’t accuse you two of being insubordinate.”

  She smiled. “We will do that. But you know, on the plus side, we’ve gotten amazing at learning languages. That’s why we’re the best COMM officer in Merchant Raitor.” She laid back in the chair, resting her head on the armrest. She toyed with a few loose strings on the edge of the towel.

  “You can learn any language you hear?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Speak, write, and use it?”

  “Weellll… We can talk it, like conversational. Not so much write it, or talk fluently. Usually not fluently.”

  “Good to know. I’ll have to keep that in mind if we come across a race we’ve never seen before.”

  “Like that’ll happen. We’ve met every alien that exists.”

  “It’s a huge universe, Jackie. I doubt we’ve met every race in existence.”

  She peered around her leg at him, faked a sneer and told him, “If you think so.”

  He smiled at her humor. “I was told that you are also pretty good at military strategy. Is that a psychic ability or another skill you picked up along the way?”

  She shrugged. “Skill, probably. Maybe.” She thought a moment. “Nope, a skill definitely. I think…” A distant look came over her face. “I can feel moves of my team, and the other team. It’s like when I play chess. I know where the pieces have to go if I want to win, and I can guess what the other player is going to do.” She came back to the moment, focusing on him. “But I’ve never had to outsmart more than a couple of ships.”

  “That doesn’t really sound like a psychic ability, you know.” Tru leaned toward her. “That sounds like someone with a very logical and brilliant mind.”

  She blushed. Jackie covered her face with her towel. Tru chuckled. He sat back in his chair, staring across the pond at the painting of the White Witch’s castle.

  “Can you let me come back here on my own?” Jackie begged.

  He looked at her. She was pleading with her eyes.

  “Why?” he asked.

  She lifted her head. “I like it here. It’s quiet and peaceful. I can get away from people here.”

  Tru looked back at the castle. “We’ll see.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “If you want access to the Catacombs, you have to earn it.”

  “I could just break in.”

  “And I could just throw you in the Brig.” He stared at her.

  “For breaking in here, you’d do that?”

  “If you want something from me, Jackie, you earn it. It’s that simple. And I don’t ask for much.”

  “What do you want for access to this place, Truman? A blow job?”

  “Don’t be lewd. For starters, it is Captain or Captain Barnett.”

  “I can’t promise that one.”

  “And you see me once a week for therapy sessions. We need to get you and Joan working together.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “And you do your duties well, without me having to ask more than once, and don’t complain when you’re given work. If you can do all that for a month, I’ll give you access.”

  “Fine, but I’m not doing my commanding officer’s work for her. She has plenty of time to do her own work.”

  “Once things smooth out, I’m sure she’ll quit relying so much on her team.”

  “When I blow you out of the water with my supreme work and glowing past, you will not only add me to authorized personnel in here, but you’ll give me a guided tour.” She dipped her chin, looking childish. “Because, frankly, I was kind of lost when you found me.”

  He laughed. “I can agree to that.”

  “Kamakazee!” she yelled as she leaped from the chair, tossed her towel, and ran toward the pond. She jumped into the air, grabbed her knees, and did a cannonball into the warm water.

  Tru laughed, watching her start splashing and diving for coins. He stood up and walked to the door of the shack on the back wall. He stepped out of the wardrobe into the brick room.

  “Gracie,” Tru said.

  Yes?

  “I’m going to supper. Send a security droid to wait outside the wardrobe and escort Jackie to a different door. If she wants to explore today, you can let her, but once she’s left, do not let her back in.”

  Are you sure that’s wise?

  “Probably not, but I gotta start trusting my crew at some point.” Tru walked out of the room.

  If you say so, Tru.

  Chapter 12

  AMANDA RE-ARRANGED ITEMS IN HER BATHROOM IN NEAT ROWS AND columns, from smallest to largest. She moved on to evenly space the towels, again, and then out into her quarters where every trinket and decoration was carefully arranged. She glanced up when her door opened, and a droid came in with two duffel bags.

  “Your laundry has been completed, Executive Officer Wrigley,” one said.

  “Place the bags on the bed.”

  It obeyed and left. Amanda opened the duffle bags and stacked the folded clothes in level piles on her bed, keeping the shirts, pants, and underwear evenly spaced. With the bag emptied, she carefully folded it, fastening a strap around it to keep it folded in storage. She knelt down next to her bed, tapping a button at the end. The doors to the cubby compartments under the bed disappeared. She reached into place the bag on a shelf and spotted something on the wall.

  She leaned in, staring at the painting shaped like a brightly colored egg. Amanda touched it, and her sequencer activated. She turned as paper confetti spat from the sequencer over her and the room. The confetti stopped, and a small egg-shaped cake appeared under the sequencer on the table, frosted the same color as the egg inside the compartment.

  Amanda sprang to her feet, staring in horror at the confetti.

  “Gracie!” Amanda screamed.

  Yes?

  “Get a cleaning droid in here! Hurry! It’s an emergency.”

  It’s confetti, XO. It is not an emergency.

  “GRACIE, DO WHAT YOU’RE TOLD YOU GOD DAMN MACHINE!”

  Silence answered her panicked response. Her door opened, and three cleaning droids zipped in and began cleaning. Amanda turned, finding confetti on her clothes and bed.

  “This… I can’t… This…” Amanda hastily grabbed clothes and shook them.

  Are the cleaning droids still needed? Gracie asked.

  “Yes. The bed needs to be stripped and remade. These clothes need to be laundered again.”

  It was made this morning, First Exec—

  “Do it!” Amanda snapped, starting to cry and shake.

  The droids began making the bed.

  “Where’s Captain Barnett?”

  Eating in the captain’s mess.

  Amanda ran from her room.

  Tru leaned on the table, reading a doc-slip in his hand while he ate in the Captain’s Mess.

  He shook his head as he sat the doc-slip aside. “I don’t know how to get this crew under control, Gracie. They’re running wild.”

  I am not allowing them to run wild. The situation could be much worse, Truman.

  He smiled. “Optimism? I didn’t ask for that, did I?”

  Sometimes you need things you aren’t aware of.

  “That’s my mother speaking. Shame on you.”

  She was a wise woman.

  “Yeah, mom was.” Tru reminisced for a moment.

  Amanda has arrived to speak to you about an incident in her quarters. You aren’t likely to enjoy this conversation.

  Seconds before the door opened Tru muttered, “What else is new?”

  The door opened, and Wrigley marched into the room. Tru looked at her. Her face was flushed, and tears were still drying on her cheeks. She was breathing hard like she’d just run a mile. He looked down at her clenched fists and noticed her whole bod
y was shaking. He wasn’t sure if this was anger or fear he was seeing, but it was enough to worry him.

  “You needed to speak with me?”

  The question surprised her, but not enough to calm her down. “You were expecting me?”

  “I was told you were coming. Apparently, there was an incident in your quarters?”

  She didn’t even question how he knew that. She haughtily demanded, “Do you want to tell me about any other surprises I’m going to find in my room?”

  “Surprises such as…?”

  “I was stowing my bags in the cubby under my bed and found a painting of an egg on the inside wall. When I touched it, the sequencer showered my room with confetti, and then a cake was sequenced.”

  Tru smiled, looking down at his meal. “It’s an Easter egg, Wrigley.”

  “A what?”

  “You haven’t heard of an Easter egg? Like in a video game? Those eggs are hidden everywhere on the ship, and they all do something different. Yours creates confetti and sequences a cake. Chocolate marble with cream cheese frosting, if I recall. It’s my grand—”

  “That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard for a ship to have! That stupid trick is going to take me hours to put my room back in order!”

  Tru stared incredulously at her. “Wrigley, it’s just confetti and a cake. It is not going to take you hours to put your room back in order. Just request a couple cleaning droids, and the confetti is gone. And you eat the cake. You did eat the cake, didn’t you? The cakes are excellent.”

  “NO! You can’t eat cake after nineteen hundred hours!”

  “Why?”

  “Sweets can’t be eaten after twenty-one hundred!”

  “Why?”

  “Because they can’t!” she screamed at him

  Tru lost his sense of humor, realizing he was witnessing whatever disorder she had, the one that Larson had warned him about. The psychiatrist in him took over.