by George Ellis
Uncle E glanced at the seat restraints in my chair. I got the hint and buckled myself in.
“Better safe than sorry, that’s my motto,” he reminded me.
We weren’t exactly breaking the speed record. We were towing a ship a few times our size, after all. I checked the rear camera feed and saw that the water hauler was trailing behind us, secured by a series of thick cables and a mechanical jib. The cables were a bit slack and served more as a backup for the jib, which was about 100 yards in length and had an AI mechanism system that accounted for drag, speed changes and directional navigation. That too had been designed by my uncle. On most wrecker ships, they just used the cables and a standard tow hitch that was maybe 50 feet long. It wasn’t uncommon to go through multiple hitches on a single tow job. It also wasn’t uncommon for the trailing ship to smash into the back of the wrecker ship, causing all sorts of damage. Sometimes total, if you weren’t careful.
“That jib is my pride and joy,” Uncle E cooed. “I spent a year on the main bearing alone. That’s what makes it swivel so smoothly.”
It was impressive, I had to give him that. He had spared no expense or brain power on the Stang.
“Wanna talk about it?” he asked.
“About what.”
“The Sheffield.”
“No.”
“Okay then,” he said, dropping the subject. I relaxed and took a sip of the coffee I’d just made in the galley. That was one thing I’d have to change: my uncle may have had prime taste in beer, but his coffee selection was nothing to beam home about.
“Gary, take over and keep the speed reasonable. Denver and I are gonna binge The Sopranos.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
Uncle E whistled and shook his head. “Oh to be just like you, watching it again for the first time. It’s only the best TV show that Earth ever produced, in my humble opinion.”
* * *
The trip to Mars was going to take roughly two months. We could have done it much quicker if we hadn’t been towing that giant water hauler. Because my Uncle Erwin always kept the Stang in top shape, there was rarely anything engine-related for me to do aside from running diagnostics and checking the systems each day.
Then running diagnostics and checking the systems the next day.
It was monotonous work, but there was a method to my uncle’s madness. After only a week aboard the Stang, I was so familiar with the engine and electrical systems that I could tell if something was wrong just from the pitch of the engine hum or a flicker of a fuse light. I began to take more interest in the daily ritual, looking at particular parts or designs and asking my uncle why he built them that way. Soon, my uncle and I were spending most of our time together. I’d always had an innate sense of how things worked, but it was cool to learn from him why things worked, and how you could reconfigure a system to get more efficiency or better performance. I began to realize that the maintenance of a ship could be thought of as one long, unending tune-up. Each day we tried to squeeze even more out of the Stang. When I wasn’t learning the ins and outs of electrical engineering or nuclear fission, I was cleaning the ship. Somebody had to do it, my uncle enjoyed telling me.
“And I don’t think it should be the captain,” he would joke.
Trash was easy enough – it would either go into the incinerator or the recycler. If it went into the incinerator, it was later expelled into space in a biodegradable form that would degrade down to nothing in 200 years. Not perfect, but not terrible. The recycler was one part of the ship my uncle didn’t build. The technology had been developed about 50 years earlier, and it was pretty simple. It took all recyclable items, broke them down into their component parts and then created new items with the press of a button. Cups. Plates. Even shirts, if you had the right recycler model.
After I’d put in my working hours, I usually hung out with Uncle Erwin and watched some classic entertainment. It boggled my mind that people stopped creating movies and TV. They were such escapist fun. According to my uncle, the advent of space travel was one of the main reasons entertainment dwindled, as people started to embark on their own real-life adventures. Space travel was commonplace and even boring to us, he argued, but when the first independent spacecraft started crisscrossing the verse, people became obsessed with exploration and settlement. Who wanted to make a TV show when you could learn about the latest discovery on Mars or see the progress being made on Titan Station?
Personally, I preferred comedies. Movies. TV shows. Cartoons. It didn’t matter. If something could make me laugh, I was into it. I was quickly hooked on shows like Arrested Development and The Simpsons. I was particularly intrigued by The Simpsons, an animated TV series, as the idea that a single show could go on for over a thousand episodes was a testament to the medium. My uncle showed me historical articles and excerpts that demonstrated the impact long-running programs like The Simpsons had on popular culture of the day. They were quoted by everyday people and celebrities alike, and episodes were even cut into short, bite-sized pieces and shared digitally as standalone jokes. It was fascinating; none of that existed anymore.
The sheer amount of entertainment being churned out on Earth resulted in a slew of famous people. It seemed to me like you wouldn’t be able to walk down the street in the 21st century without bumping into someone who had been in a movie or TV show. My uncle chuckled at that notion, as he agreed it probably wasn’t very far off from the truth.
One day when we were deep into a viewing session, on our fourth episode of Cheers, a show that was literally just about a bunch of people hanging out in a bar, we got into a heated argument about whether life was better before humans left Earth. Uncle E thought people were more imaginative about the universe, and just life in general, before we started to actually know what was out there in the great beyond.
“Think about it, Denver,” he said. “I used to do this thing called reading…”
He always teased me about that. He was an avid reader of literature, whether it was hundreds of years old and in book form, or something more recent on his handheld.
“I know, I know…I tried reading that one book about the dinosaurs in the amusement park,” I said. “It’s just easier to watch the movie.”
“Well in that particular case, the movie is almost as good as the book. My point is that I once read that humans have an instinct to explore. And I think that’s true. But I also think we have an even greater instinct to use our imagination. Before we’re spoiled by knowing something, we’re very good about having opinions and dreams about it. You get what I’m saying?”
“Sure,” I replied. “You think sitting in the same bar day in and day out is more enriching than living in space.”
He shook his head. “You know I’m not saying that. Even if I was, though…maybe! I mean the idea that Norm and Sam and Diane could feel fulfilled living in their little corner of the universe without thinking they’re missing out on something –”
“You think they’re happy?”
“Ok, it’s a sitcom. Good point.
“And what’s wrong with sitcoms?” Gary said, butting in. “Some would argue they were the height of cultured entertainment.”
“Nobody would ever argue that,” Uncle E said.
“I’m arguing it right now,” Gary countered.
“You don’t count,” I interjected. “Uncle E, are you sure we can’t like, put him to bed or something? Or at least turn him off when we’re hanging out?”
“Turn me off?” Gary whined. “I was here years before you! Years, Denver! E-dog and I go way back.”
I looked at the camera. “E-dog?”
My uncle shrugged as if to say don’t ask. “Fine, Gary. Sitcoms are the pinnacle of entertainment. Can I move on with my argument now?”
“You may proceed, sir,” Gary said.
Uncle E gathered his thoughts as he chomped on the last bite of a candy bar. “Where was I? Oh, right. Take actual people who live in a neighborhood and have their daily ro
utines. They care about each other. Spend time with friends. Enjoy simple stuff like family dinners or birthday parties. That sounds pretty great to me. They aren’t worried about feeling like they’re always missing out on something better because they’re stuck on that damn rock. They were happy with what they had. Completely content.”
I considered his point. While it was true that it’s easier to be happier when you don’t know there are more and possibly greater adventures out there, it was also true that you may be one of those people who feel confined by being stuck on Earth.
“Nobody felt stuck on Earth before we knew it was possible to leave the place!” Uncle E shouted. He wasn’t angry. He just happened to get really loud and animated when he was excited about something.
“Oh, I see,” I said. “Ignorance is bliss.”
“You’re quoting the Matrix?!” he bellowed, laughing. “You can’t quote that movie to me. I introduced you to that movie. I mean, fine, they have a point. I’m just saying when the world got bigger, I’m not so sure we got happier.”
“I’m not saying we got happier, either. I just think if you gave me the choice of taking the blue pill and living with blinders or taking the red one and risking a little unhappiness, I’m gonna choose the truth every time.”
“I knew I shouldn’t have shown you that damn movie,” Uncle E groused.
“If it makes you feel better, I can take the Stang off your hands and you can go back to Earth to have birthday parties and barbecues with Earthers the rest of your life,” I said.
“It would not make me feel better, point in fact,” he said. “What would make me happy right now is if you got up off your lazy butt and grabbed me another candy bar from the kitchen. I’ll start another episode of Cheers.”
“You sure you don’t want to watch Neo kick some ass?” I asked.
Uncle E just groaned as the theme song for Cheers started up.
* * *
I never got to see my mom in person again. She died about a month after Uncle E and I set out for Mars. We put off the funeral until we got back, as my uncle and I were her closest family in the verse. When the day came, my father and Avery were unable to make it.
It didn’t come as a surprise.
On the somber trip back from Mars, my uncle explained that he was going to leave me the Stang when his time came. I was shocked by the enormity of the promise. Because it had been constructed over at least 10 years, trying to pin down an exact cost or value of the Mustang 1 was impossible. But basically Uncle E could have said he was leaving me 250,000 credits and I would have been less taken aback.
Me, captain of the Stang? It was a wild concept. Of course, when he told me, I assumed it wouldn’t happen for many years, so the idea was less strange to think of me at his age, in my forties, taking over the ship once he retired to Mars or some old folks’ station.
“I mean…why?” I asked. “Are you sure?”
My uncle laughed. “What else am I going to do with it? Give it to a stranger?”
“Oh, right.”
Uncle Erwin looked at me and shook his head. He turned serious and put a hand on my shoulder.
“Because I love you, kid. And I love my sister.”
Apparently, my mother had given him half of her savings to help fund his building of the ship, in exchange for the promise that someday, he would pay me back with the earnings. He had decided the best form of payment would be the ship itself. I thanked him, but also told him I didn’t want to collect on his promise for a long time. With my mom gone and my relationship with my dad and brother severed, Uncle E was all I had left in the verse.
Chapter 10
The funeral was small, like most funerals. With family and friends spread out across the verse, it was usually pretty hard to get a lot of people together in one place without waiting months or years. Beaming funerals to far-off loved ones was common, but Uncle Erwin and I decided my mom wouldn’t have wanted that. She was a private person, and the idea of people tuning in just to watch the proceedings didn’t sit well with us.
My mom’s will specified that she be cremated, and so there was no discussion of where to bury her, either on Earth or its moon (she had spent roughly the same amount of her life on each). Instead, we held a gathering of neighbors and friends aboard the Mustang, which was docked on Earth’s moon near the settlement in which my mother had lived. Eleven people showed up to pay their respects, and many nice things were said about her generosity and zest for life. She loved to laugh, everybody recalled.
Uncle Erwin gave a touching speech and I said a few words, but for the most part the funeral seemed odd, as everyone present had already had two months to grieve my mother’s passing, and so the mood had more of a detached feeling to it.
I didn’t cry. I had done that months earlier. Uncle E shed a few tears, but he too had already come to terms with the loss of his big sister.
Uncle E and I decided to scatter her ashes as the Stang passed over the Sea of Tranquility when we left to head back out for our next job. We had debated whether to keep the urn on the ship, but in the end we assumed she didn’t want to be “cooped up with us boys” as she often said about our trips around the verse.
“It was nice of her neighbors to come,” said Uncle E, once we were on our way to pick up a craft that was meant to be one of the final pieces of a new station being Voltron’d together out of ships and other, smaller stations.
“Yeah,” I said, not really wanting to talk any more about it.
My uncle looked over and knew what I was feeling.
“We still have each other,” he reminded me. I’d been so focused on my own grief that I hadn’t considered my uncle was in the same position. Aside from me, my mother was all the family he’d had. Uncle E had never married or had kids. His work and his ship were his life. And me, of course.
“Your mom would like that,” he said. “Us flying around the verse together like real compadres.”
“She would,” I agreed. “She might have some things to say about our diet though.”
Uncle E snorted, nearly choking on his candy bar. A piece of nougat flew out of his mouth and landed on the console. It just stuck there between a few other blips on the radar scan. I laughed. It was the first good laugh I’d had in a long, long time.
* * *
My first impression of the ship was that it looked like a giant donut. It had the proper shape, right down to the hole in the middle. And the red flashing lights that dotted the top of it could have passed for sprinkles.
“Looks kind of like a donut,” Uncle E said. “I’m hungry again.”
I nodded.
“I miss donuts,” Gary wistfully replied. “But I prefer a good black and white cookie.”
“You’ve never had either of those,” I told him.
As Gary argued that he had theoretically eaten many donuts and cookies, and therefore could be nostalgic about them, I focused on the ship. It was named The Yunan. A quick reference check told us that was one of the provinces of China, back when China had provinces.
“The captain’s name is Jiang,” Uncle E said. “Seems like a straight shooter to me.”
“Straight shooter?” I asked.
“Remind me to have you watch some Bonanza when we get the chance. Or Unforgiven. That’s a great one, too.”
I made a mental note of both the titles. “Crazy that he’s selling his ship to become part of a station. Pretty cool,” I said.
“Agreed. Can’t wait to see the station when it’s done.”
A few moments later, The Yunan hailed us. My uncle accepted the transmission and the captain’s face filled the screen.
Jiang was a thin man with a full head of straight black hair he kept in a ponytail. He wore a flannel shirt. I’d later learn he was of Chinese ancestry, but he’d never set foot on Earth, let alone any other planet. He was a true man of space, as he often joked. And he joked a lot.
“Hello there!” he said with a genuine smile. “Made it just in time!”<
br />
“That so?” my uncle asked.
Jiang explained that he had been unsure of whether to accept the offer to add his ship to the new station they were building, but when The Yunan stalled for the third time in the past year, he knew the ship would be better off as part of something larger.
The only problem was that between the time we’d been contracted to tow The Yunan to the station site and the time we arrived, the life support system had gone down. In fact, the 400 crew and residents of the ship had been evacuated about a week earlier.
“Wait, are you telling me you’re the only one on that ship?” I asked, leaning into the peripheral of the camera.
“Oh, didn’t see you there. Hey!”
My uncle introduced me as his co-captain, and Jiang confirmed he was the only person left on The Yunan. “Unless I’ve got a stowaway. Fingers crossed on that front.”
I pulled up the ship’s specs on the Stang’s computer system. It was half a million square feet. And there was one person on it. One. Talk about being alone in the world. Although you wouldn’t know it from Jiang’s upbeat attitude.
When we stepped onto The Yunan, he greeted us with a smile and a plastic container.
“What’s this?” I asked before catching a delicious whiff of whatever was in the container.
“They’re called egg rolls,” Jiang said. “You owe it to yourself to enjoy them while they’re hot. They just came out of the fryer.”
Eating my first egg roll wasn’t the most rewarding experience I’d ever had as a wrecker, but it was definitely top five. It was like a donut that wasn’t for dessert and was filled with meat and vegetables. As we sat in one of The Yunan’s cafeterias, Uncle Erwin and I looked at each other in disbelief.
“Have you ever had one of these?” I asked him.
“I’ve only heard of them,” he answered, taking another bite.
Jiang popped open a couple beers and sat down across the table from us. My uncle sternly explained that if he kept giving us home-cooked food and free beer, he might never get his ship towed.
