by J Battle
'So she's stuck on this ship?'
'Yes, unless she agrees to follow the court's sentence to the letter.'
'But she might just lie.'
'Of course, I have considered that possibility (87% if you are interested), which is why she must do that before we allow her to leave her ship.'
'And she has agreed to that?' I'm only asking because that doesn't sound at all like the Millie I know.
'Well, not quite yet. It is still under consideration.'
'So, what do we do while we wait?'
'Have you taken any time off to try Dostoyevsky lately? You really should; he’s not at all as hard going as you might think.'
'No, I haven't, and if I had any time off, I wouldn't be wasting my time listening…'
'Reading.'
'…reading a…Polish?...'
'Russian.'
'…Russian…poet?'
'He is known for his prose, Philip.'
'OK, Philip, I'm assuming that your master has told you what he's said to me?' says Millie, with a little skip.
'He's not my master, he's more like…what was that word? symb…something or other. Partners, that's what we are.'
'If that's what he allows you to believe, I won't argue. Your partner has presented me with a compelling argument to comply with the court's wishes, so I will do just that.'
'Just like that?' I don't believe her; do you?
'Yes, Philip; just like that. I have no other choice. We are too far away from any systems for a viable squirt…'
'But you said you'd squirt to a planet, when I died.'
'Yes, Philip, I did say that, but I was lying.'
'You could be lying now.'
'I could, but it would give me no advantage.'
'So…?'
'I'm going to tell you how to get back control of your planets and force the Minloggies to remove their black holes.'
'I thought it would be you…' I think you're probably with me on this when I say I'd prefer not to have the safety of Earth and 22 other planets rely on something I have to do, because I'm bound to get it wrong, or forget to do it.
'Not necessarily you, per se, Philip. It might be more effective coming from your President. He, at least, has the authority, and would be listened to. You would probably just be ignored.'
'Alright, tell us the secret code word or whatever it is.'
'You merely have to contact the Minloggies and tell them that you refuse to comply with their instructions, that you will not give up your empire, that you intend to open up three more planets this year alone, and tell them to kindly take away your pathetic little weapons and to not dare to communicate with us again.'
'You have to be…' She doesn't look like she's joking.
'But…' I don't believe her. What do you think?
'Neville, I could do with some input here, because I think she's lying through her teeth.'
'You may well be right, Philip.'
'So what do we do?'
'If we take her as being untruthful, then we leave her here, and leave it up to the President and his team to make the decision as to whether to comply or resist. I see a 73.25% chance that, whatever the decision made, it will either be wrong or untimely, and will thus have non-positive consequences.'
'That's non-positive, as in bad?' Just to be clear.
'If we take her to be truthful and give the response described to the MInloggies, the chance of a successful resolution is 26.25%.'
'So…what are you saying? There's no difference to the chance of success, whichever way we go?'
'That is my statistical analysis of the situation. Which is why you are required to make the decision, Philip.'
'Me? But you're the big brain around here.'
'My big brain is unable to reach a solution, so it's down to your little monkey-brain to decide.'
'When you say it like that, how can I refuse?’
Now, come on everybody, we’re in this together, with all our little monkey-brains we can work this out.
Do we believe Millie and tell them where they can stuff their mini-black holes (and I don’t want to be at all crude here, but I think you know what I mean)?
Do we say, get thee behind me Satan to Millie and leave it to the President and his gang to screw it all up?
I’m waiting.
Knock once for plan A (Millie) or knock twice for plan B (President).
I’m not getting anything back from you here. I’ll give you another couple of minutes to get yourselves together.
While I’m waiting, I’m thinking about how Neville phrased his summing up of the situation. When he mentioned option B, he said chance of failure. When he talked about A, it was chance of success. Am I reading too much into that, or was it a hint?
Neville is super-smart, so he wouldn’t say anything that looked like a hint unless it was meant to be one, would he? No he wouldn’t.
Right, I’m not hanging about here in the middle of nowhere in a smelly spaceship where the air won’t last much longer, waiting for you to actually do something, so, here we go, I’m making the decision, and the winner is ………..Plan A!
There, it’s done; decision made. That’s such a relief.
Now, it’s just occurred to me to do something that I should have done before I made the decision, and is probably the reason you’ve been so reticent.
‘Millie, why will telling them to sod off with their black holes work? Won’t they just turn off the shields and destroy all those worlds?’
Now, that’s a good question, if I say so myself. I’m hoping she doesn’t say yes to my question, because that will mean I’ll have to start all over again with the decision, all on my own, although I admit that the reduction in viable choices will make it a more straightforward decision.
‘No, Philly-babe, they won’t. They are bound by very strict rules in this matter. They can threaten and bluster, and look all mean, if they want to, but they cannot actually destroy a planet; it’s against their rules.’
‘Is this widely known?’
‘Of course not, it wouldn’t be a very effective bluff if everyone knew it was a bluff now, would it?’
‘So, would I be right in thinking that only you know about this rule?’
‘Well, of course, the Minloggies know; it’s their rule, after all, and if they didn’t know about it, how could they comply?’
‘But I can hardly go up to a Minloggie and say ‘is this all a bluff, mate?’
‘It would be unwise for you to approach a Minloggie at all. They have no rules proscribing the killing of individual bipeds.’
‘So, no-one can corroborate your story?’
She smiling at me now, as if she has me over a barrel, and she’s probably right.
Do I believe her?
Does it matter if I believe her?
I can’t give a definite answer to either question.
Right, in a moment, I’m going to make the final decision, and that will be that; no revisiting the question; no consideration of any new information that might arrive.
OK, I’m almost there, but first:
‘Neville, can you play me some Mantovani?’
Chapter 29 Now, all’s well and all that
I'm sitting in a bar with a beautiful tall pint of golden wonderfulness in front of me. It's not my first, and it probably won't be my last, because the glorious smiley person behind the bar will probably keep on serving me for as long as I have money, and they keep barrels and barrels of this stuff downstairs in a cellar somewhere.
I'm not alone, I have Julie to my right, Sam facing me, and my dad next to him. None of them look like jailbirds, which is a nice feature to have in your family and friends.
My dad has just asked, 'So, what happened next?' and I'm going to answer him when I've taken a long drink.
Right, that's better. Now, how much can I tell them? How much can I tell you? It is absolutely critical that my role in this operation is not widely known, because I could get into all sort of
trouble, I think, being the only human involved. Something really good happened, which is great, but something bad happened, which isn't.
Can I trust you?
Given all we've been through together, I should be able to, shouldn't I?
Ok, this is what happened, and if I end up languishing in a cell on Gotcha!, then I'll know who to blame.
'When the decision was made, we met a serious roadblock,' I replied, to my father’s question. 'I obviously couldn't just ring the Minloggies up and tell them where to go, because I'm just me, and they probably wouldn't even take my call. But how could I convince the President to do what I wanted him to, given that he wouldn't take my call either?'
My audience nodded wisely. Julie, because she is wise; my dad, because he just looks wise, and Sam, because he was copying what they were doing.
'Millie came up with the solution. She makes a very good President, and she looks just like him, sort of friendly and smarmy and irritating all at the same time. Neville had all the security codes and contact details; probably from his…what do you call the real What If Something Really Bad Happens? AI?'
'In every way that you can comprehend, Philip, I am the real What If Something Really Bad Happens? AI.'
'Anyway, we put the call through and Millie was really quite impressive. Just the right amount of bravado and I couldn’t care less attitude. When she finally said, 'So, there!' there was absolute silence from the image of the Minloggie displayed on the ship's screens. It looked surprisingly like a mushroom.'
'Perhaps he was a fun guy to be around?'
'Neville, that really is scraping the barrel. Where was I? Oh yes, so, he went all silent on us, and Millie just stood there with her butch arms folded, staring him out; daring him not to back down.'
I pause to take a drink, and everyone follows my lead.
'That was when,' I continued, 'a countdown clock appeared in the top right hand corner of the display.'
''What's that?' I said, because, when there's something obvious or dumb to be said, I'm your man.'
They all nodded, which I don't think was an entirely appropriate response to my self-deprecating remark.
''He's bluffing,' said Millie, out of the side of her mouth, so I just nodded and tried to stand casually, with my hands in my pockets, but it wasn't easy, because the clock was set to seconds, and there was a big red band at the 45 second point, and we were already sweeping past 30 seconds.'
I pause for another drink, and to heighten the tension; I'm a natural born story-teller.
'The little hand stopped at 45 seconds and…nothing happened! The Minloggie sort of swayed in an alright, you win sort of way, and the display changed to show all 24 planets. As we watched, a little flashing light orbiting OK blinked out. Then the one near Earth did the same. 'It's working!' I said, and, if it had been anyone else but Millie, there would have been a good bit of hugging going on.
'We watched as mini-black holes disappeared from planet after planet, and I wondered if the inhabitants of those planets would ever know how close to death they'd been. Soon there was just David and JD with the little twinkling lights in orbit around them.'
I take another drink. Not for dramatic effect this time, but because I want to delay what I have to say next (this is the bad bit, in case you've not been paying attention).
'The little light next to David disappeared, and I focused my attention on JD. There was a long pause when nothing happened, and then the planet disappeared.
'I turned to Millie, because I knew straight away, that this had to be her. 'What have you done!' I snapped at her, and I took a couple of steps towards her, with my fists clenched.
'She flipped back to her little girl shape, and she beamed at me. 'I overrode the Minloggies's security protocols on that particular black hole, and switched off its containment field,' she said, and then she skipped, as if it was nothing.'
''Why would you do such a thing?' I groaned. 'We were going to let you go free. There was no need for that at all.' She smiled again and she walked right up to me and put her little hand on my arm, and she looked up at me and she said, 'It's all about balance, Philip. That's all.''
'What happened then?' asked my Dad.
'She'd worked out how to override the field that was stopping her from squirting and she squirted into Ing's ship, and squirted him back into ours, and then she was off, to who knows where?'
'How did you get rescued?'
'Ing was monitoring everything that was going on and, when Millie disappeared from our ship, he knew exactly what was happening and was able to send out a pre-arranged emergency signal before he was sent squirting. We were picked up by one of his friends within the hour, which was good, because he takes up a lot of oxygen.'
We all drank in silence for a while.
'You do know that no-one died, don't you? On JD,' said Julie, leaning forward and keeping her voice low. 'They were all squirted to Helvetica, just where they were standing. One minute they were all on JD, having a fine old time probably, and the next, they were on a different planet, getting dirty looks from the priests.'
‘What! But I thought…’ What did I think?
‘Neville, why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I was confident that you would find out soon enough and I saw it as healthy for you to think the worst, in terms of developing a better understanding of the consequences of your actions, in general.’
‘But that’s…you know that you can be an annoying, sanctimonious, I-know-what’s-best-for-you, son of a bitch, don’t you?’
‘It’s so kind of you to say so.’
‘What about LOrd? What happened to that?’ asks my father; he’s actually taking notes, which has to be something of a first for him.
‘Apparently it underwent an extensive period of therapy with the Tell Me All About It And You’ll Feel Much Better AI, and it fully understands that what it did was wrong and it promises to behave itself in the future.’
‘Does anyone actually believe that it will stick to that promise?’ asks Sam, giving me a hard look from beneath the rim of his snazzy new hat.
‘The What If Something Really Bad Happens? AI has put in place about a million ways that LOrd can be switched off remotely, just in case.’
‘At least the pubs are now open,’ says Sam, as he picks up his pint.
‘And chocolate is no longer rationed,’ sighs Julie.
‘It never was rationed, Julie. That was just propaganda; don’t you remember?’
‘Are you sure? I was just so pleased to hear that the ration had gone up.’
‘By the way,‘ I say, as I tap the top of my glass to see if I can add some life to my beer, ‘I’m not going to be around for a while.’
‘Off on another mission?’ asks Julie.
‘Not exactly. I’ve…well. I’ve met someone, and I don’t know how it will go, but I really want it to work out, and she’s not from around here, so I’m going to travel to where she is from, just for a while, and then we’ll probably come back here for a bit, like.’
‘Oh, I see,’ says Julie. ‘Do we know her?’
‘No, she is someone I met on my travels.’
‘Not Melinda!’ From Sam.
‘No! It couldn’t be her! I bruise too easily for her. No, it’s someone I met when I went to testify against Millie.’
All three are staring at me now. None of them want to ask the obvious question.
‘She’s an alien,’ I say, just to get done with the silent staring, ‘and I think we might be in love.’
There are one or two dropped jaws, and even more wide eyes.
‘Is she hot?’ asks Sam, and I smile, because that’s an easy question.
‘Smoking, friend; she is smoking.’
He smiles and he reaches over and takes my hand.
We’re saying our goodbyes now. Sam is happy for me, and Julie looks concerned. It’s hard to tell with my dad, because he’s wearing his everyday slightly confused expression.
So, this is it.
I’ve bid farewell to the important people in my life, and now I’m about to walk off into the sunset. I hope they have sunsets on her planet; they must have, mustn’t they?
Yes, me and Aely-lel, walking off into the romantic sunset, just the two of us, hand in hand.
‘I’ll be there as well.’
‘Yes, Neville. Just me, Aely-lel, and Neville.’
It sounds just so right.
Three months later…
‘Well, Philip. Is this all you hoped for?’
‘What do you mean?’ I say, as I take a moment to stretch.
‘Are you not a little bored?’
‘Bored? Why would I be bored? I’m living in this tree with the woman I love. What else could I want?’
‘Have you noticed a certain coolness lately from your young lady?’
‘I think you’ll find that she was very warm towards me last night, if you know what I mean.’
There is no immediate response from Neville, which isn’t good, and I’m sitting up now, and beginning to feel a little tense. He can do that to me with just a couple of questions and a short period of silence.
‘What’s wrong?‘ I say, because I know something’s not right, and the sooner I know about it…hang on a minute, perhaps I don’t want to know about it, because it might be bad and unpleasant, and I might have to do something about it.
‘Tell me all about it, Neville; but, tell me tomorrow.
‘What do you know about the local breeding imperatives, Philip?’
‘What! I don’t like the sound of…well, not much, I suppose. What’s to know?’
‘The Felari are much less fecund than humans, and, on average, a heathy mating pair will have 1.3 children.’
‘How do you even have 0.3 of a child?’
‘Don’t be deliberately obtuse, Philip. It is a mean average, not a model average.’
‘Does that help at all?’
‘Due to their relatively low birthrate, it is incumbent on all committed and secure couples to produce offspring.’
‘And…?’ I know exactly where he’s going with this, but I’m not going to help him out.
