by Andre, Marc
“Wait? What happened?”
I finally caught my breath, as did Cotton who finally stood up. “Billy was so convinced that Cotton shot him that dropped a load in the back of his pants.” At the word “load” Cotton collapsed again, laughing.
Allen did not look amused. “You know, if Billy’s dad kept a round chambered, you would have killed him.”
“Naw,” I protested. “We took the stick thingy out with all the bullets. Wait, what’s ‘chambered’ mean?”
Allen was visibly agitated and shouted, “I can’t believe you two did that!” With Allen’s outburst, Cotton stopped laughing. I felt a bit sobered myself. “That was so stupid and dangerous!” Allen said, continuing his reprimand.
“Well, sorry I guess.”
“Yeah, sorry.” Cotton said.
Allen calmed down a little. “I want you two to promise you’ll never do that trick again!”
“Yeah, well okay.”
“No, I want you to say, ‘I promise!’” Allen demanded.
“Okay, I promise.” I wanted Allen to drop it so we could move on.
“You too Cotton! You have to promise too!”
“I promise.” Cotton said, timidly, looking down at his feet.
Allen went back to rummaging around in his closet. Cotton and I exchanged silent glances and took turns shrugging our shoulders. There was a loud knock.
“Oh that must be Ellen.” Allen left his bedroom to open the front door.
“Why didn’t he laugh?” Cotton asked. “It’s funny when someone poops in their pants.”
“I dunno,” I said, “but we probably shouldn’t bring it up again.”
I heard three pairs of feet in the living room instead of just two. Allen appeared followed by Ellen and Hammond. Allen and Ellen both seemed pretty annoyed.
“Hammond!” Cotton and I shouted with delight. Hammond smiled, pleased to see us.
“Hey, Hammond,” Cotton said, setting the large boy up as his next mark, “check out these cool knives!”
“Hey, they are pretty cool.”
Quietly, Allen turned to Ellen and said, “What’s he doing here?” nodding towards.
“I don’t know.” Ellen said, exacerbated. “He won’t leave me alone. He put his tray down next to mine at the mess hall, and he’s been following me around ever since.”
“Why didn’t you try to lose him?”
“I did. I couldn’t shake him.”
“Did you hide in the women’s washateria?”
“Yes, I stayed there for ten minutes but he waited for me the whole time.”
“Why didn’t you sneak out the back?”
Ellen frowned. “Yeah, I suppose I should have thought of that.”
I felt the need to interject. “Hammond’s cool,” I said, “and there’s no way he’s going to snitch.”
“Yeah, but, this is my —”
“Don’t be a jackass!” I said. “Hammond’s my friend!”
“Okay.” Allen said reluctantly. “He can stay.”
Ellen rolled her eyes. I tried to reassure her. “It’ll be okay. With everyone else here, he probably won’t hit on you too much.”
Hammond yelped and fell over backwards. Cotton had just stabbed him with the trainer. The large boy stood up, his eyes wide with bewilderment. “I thought for certain you had just knifed me! Man, that’s a good one!”
“All right let’s stop farting around and get started!” Allen said, bossily. Cotton let a loud one rip, just to make a point. Ellen looked disgusted, so I suppressed a chuckle.
“What are you guys doing here anyway?” Hammond asked.
“You’ll see in a minute.” I said quietly. “Try and be quiet, Allen hates to be interrupted.”
“Yeah, okay.”
Allen turned to Cotton. He unrolled the measuring tape. “I need to make some precise measurements. I’ll need you to strip down to your underthings.”
Cotton shrugged. Of course, neither mother nor I had done laundry recently so Cotton wasn’t wearing any underthings. All his dirty pairs were stashed out of reach in the hamper. Ellen turned red and diverted her eyes. Allen was a bit surprised and didn’t seem to know what to do.
“Is that the first time you’ve seen a dong?” Hammond asked Ellen.
“Yes,” she said, tersely.
“Did you like it?”
“No!”
“Yeah, that’s not a very good one.” Hammond said.
Allen shrugged and started taking measurement, looping the tape around Cotton’s neck, then his shoulders and chest. When he got to Cotton’s waist, Hammond asked obnoxiously, “Are you going to measure his dong?”
“No. Genitalia parameters are not relevant,” Allen replied, sounding very scientific.
“It’s twelve centimeters,” Cotton said proudly.
“There’s no way that’s twelve centimeters!” Hammond said.
“It is when I’m using it.”
“Well, okay. Still, that’s not very big. Mine’s twenty.” Hammond boated. I suspected my friend was lying.
“Mine’s still growing.” Cotton said. “It’ll be at least twenty by the time the voyage is over.”
The conversation made me a little bit uncomfortable. Ellen looked utterly mortified.
Allen ignored the two boys and finished his measurements, his face coming dangerously close to Cotton’s dong as he took my brother’s inseam.
“Here put these on.” Allen handed Cotton the rumpled piece of grey cloth and a clean set of undies. “You can keep the underthings. I won’t want them back.” Allen turned away and started punching numbers into his computer. “Let me know when you’re dressed.”
The grey cloth turned out to be some sort of jump suit. Tight in the butt and belly, but loose everywhere else, the garment fit Cotton poorly. “Done,” Cotton said.
Allen hit the return key, and in a fraction of a second the cloth seemed to morph, fitting Cotton perfectly like a second skin.
“Cool!” Cotton cried.
“The suit will help you with thermoregulation, so you shouldn’t get uncomfortably hot or dangerously cold. You could even wear it in space for brief periods if you had gloves, boots, and a pressure helmet. The outer surface is a ninth generation Teflon, so you should slide into tight spaces pretty nicely.”
“Hey, I heard about these,” said Hammond. “Fat ladies use these to make themselves look thinner, and flat girls use them to look bustier.”
“Hmm,” Allen said. “I suppose that could be a secondary function.” He typed a few more keystrokes and hit return.
We heard a whoosh and a hiss. Cotton’s butt and paunch flatted and his chest and arms puffed out. He looked pretty buff and his package seemed downright massive. Again, Ellen diverted her eyes.
“It’s not a physique undie,” Allen explained. “This is a special issue stealth battle dress uniform. A few voyages ago, I got it off a veteran who was former special operations. What civilians use to hide a panty line, the space marines use to tamponade bleeding if somebody gets shot. This pair is equipped with so much more technology than the junk you can buy at a department store.”
“Must have cost you a fortune,” I said, considering how much Allen had overpaid for his bayonets.
“Actually, didn’t cost me a dollar.” Allen boasted. “The veteran gave them to me in exchange for making a few arrest warrants disappear when we arrived back planet-side.”
Cotton’s face was turning red. His lips were sputtering but he seemed unable to speak. “I think he’s pretty uncomfortable.” I said.
“Oh! Sorry!” Allen turned back to his computer. With a single keystroke, the suit returned to its former setting. The more lumpy Cotton reappeared, equipped with his standard-issue paunch and package. A more normal pallor returned to his face.
Cotton gasped for breath. “Oh, that’s much better.”
“Okay, last piece of equipment.” Allen reached into his drawer and pulled out a set of glasses identical to the ones on his face. �
��Okay put these on.”
Cotton complied. “That’s strange. These don’t make my vision all blurry.” Cotton once tried on an old pair of spectacles that belonged to Billy’s great-great-great grandfather who was legally blind.
“Of course not, they’re not intended to correct a refractive error.” Allen said dismissively. “Okay, active in three… two… one….” He typed another key and eyeball holograms projected onto Cotton’s face.
“What the heck!” Hammond exclaimed.
“Huh? What?” Apparently Cotton couldn’t see the hologram globes, and they weren’t affecting his vision.
Allen was turning green. My guess was that the cyborg part of his brain was processing two different sets of visual data, and the fleshy part of his brain couldn’t keep up. He pinched the hinges on the pair he was wearing and his own hologram eyes disappeared. “That’s much better.” Allen took his glasses off and put them in a drawer.
Hammond gasped at the sight of Allen’s scar. I elbowed him sharply in the ribs to prevent him from inadvertently saying anything cruel. Ellen seemed pretty unfazed, so I guessed she had seen Allen’s true face before. Cotton shrugged indifferently. As long as Allen was good for a laugh, my brother could care less if our friend was deformed.
Allen braced his head against his seat back. “Cotton,” he said. “I will see what you see. The visual data will conflict with input from my vestibular system, so try not to move your head too quickly, or I’ll get motion sickness. I suppose the rest of you are going to want to see what Cotton and I will see, so I’ll dump the video data to the big vid on my right.”
Allen pressed another key. An image popped up on the big screen but it didn’t make much sense to me. Cotton was looking right at Allen, but on the screen I could barely make out the image of a small boy sitting in a chair. Everything seemed pixilated, with wavy lines, and odd flashing colors that weren’t actually in the room. Every now and then yellow circles and polygons would blink in and out in an instant, transiently providing shapes and contours to items around us.
“Is that how you see the things?” I asked curiously.
“It is,” Allen said. “Based on what Ellen tells me she sees when we look at the same object, I have been able to create an algorithm that approximates the vision of normal people. Here, let me bring it up for you.” He typed in a few more commands and the screen flickered. “Now keep in mind that this image is complete nonsense to me. I will continue to see what you saw on the screen previously.”
Though easier to interpret than the previous display, the new image was off slightly. Compared to what I saw around me with my own eyes, some colors on the screen were way too vivid and others seemed washed out. The depth of field was also exaggerated, items in the background seeming much farther away than their true location. Soft boarders had been sharpened, and items that were normally hidden in shadows or dark corners were much more apparent.
“Will Cotton be able to hear us?” I asked.
“Oh, glad you reminded me. Can you reach into the drawer where I just put my glasses and retrieve the audiopiece.”
The drawer was cluttered with bits of circuitry and parts of electronic gadgetry, and I had no idea what I was look for.
“Tiny pink cylinder in a small clear case,” Allen advised.
“Got it.”
“Okay, pull back and out on Cotton’s pinna —”
Had Allen just asked me to touch Cotton’s dong? I thought, panicking. “His what?” I asked.
“The fleshy part of his ear. Pull back and out on his ear and place the metallic end of the audiopiece into his canal.”
I complied.
“Ouch.” Cotton protested.
“Don’t scrape the hard end against the walls of the canal. It’s very sensitive,” Allen explained.
“Sorry,” I said, making an adjustment.
“No! Anton, the earpiece needs to go in much further.”
Considering Allen was literally seeing from Cotton’s eyes, there was no way he could know the exact placement of the earpiece. “It’s in pretty deep,” I lied.
“No it’s not,” Allen said assertively. “I can tell from the reflection off the lamp in front of me, which is itself a reflection from Ellen’s lapel pin, that the ear piece hardly clears the tragus.”
We all turned to look at Ellen. Indeed, she wore a silver pin in the shape of a polar bear. Environmentalists wore them to protest the species’ extinction. Ellen’s pin was tiny.
“No way!” we said in amazement.
“I don’t want the ear piece to get stuck.” I said.
“Don’t worry. I have a device to get it out. There will be no need to visit Dr. Zanders.”
Ready to go, Cotton asked, “Where’s the nearest vent?”
“There’s a vent above the closet, but I haven’t taken the grating off.”
To reach the vent, Cotton had to stand on Hammond’s shoulders. We handed the real bayonet up to Cotton so he could pry off the grate.
“If you’re going to take that with you, you better wear a belt and bring a sheath. I don’t want you to nick the suit by mistake,” Allen said. We found the items in Allen’s closet, and Cotton disappeared into the ductworks.
Allen typed a line and a schematic of the ship popped up on the monitor directly in front of him. “I put a low frequency wave emitter in the right pant cuff of the suit. We can track your brother from this monitor,” Allen explained.
“How does Allen see the screen without his glasses?” Hammond asked Ellen in a whisper.
“The femtoprocesor in his head can receive the image wirelessly and superimpose it on the visual data he receives from the glasses Cotton is wearing,” Ellen whispered back. “Doesn’t make him sick like getting data from two pairs of glasses.”
“That’s wild.” Hammond whispered. “I kinda wish I had a computer in my brain too.”
“It certainly has its benefits.” Allen said. Apparently his hearing was on par with his bionic vision.
For the next hour, Allen gave Cotton directions. “Left... right... left... no your other left.” He would occasionally comment on Cotton’s location as if he were a tour guide. “See how the ducts suddenly changed from very dirty to very clean. That’s from the recent retrofit. It was done a bit carelessly in parts. Some sections of the ship are completely walled off from the passageways.”
Hammond yawned. “This is boring!”
“Feel free to leave.” Allen said, but Hammond stayed put.
“Are you okay Cotton?” Allen asked, concerned. “You’ve been in there for over an hour. Are you getting claustrophobic?”
“Oh, I’m fine. This is great. I move much faster with this suit on.” Cotton’s voice came out of the speakers built into the back of the large monitor.
“We’re almost at the jano-bot! Hang in there!”
“I wouldn’t worry about him staying in the ducts for too long.” I said. “He’s pretty much used to it by now. It’s like his second home.”
“Is that true Cotton?”
“Yes.”
“So you do this a lot then.”
“Yes.”
“Anyone ever see you.”
There was a pause. “Maybe.”
“What happened?”
“I was in a duct that went through someone’s living unit, and the duct wasn’t bolted down very well so it would shake when I moved. Then this guy comes home from dinner. My face is right by a grate, so I can see the guy watching a video”
“What was he watching?”
“Some program for piety-freaks. It was really dull.”
“What makes you think he saw you?”
“Well, I didn’t want to move because that would rattle the ducts, which might make the guy want to look in the vent. I had been in the ducts a while, so I was pretty tired. I decided to take a nap to wait the guy out, figuring eventually he’d go to bed. As I put my head down, I bumped the grating, and it popped out and landed with a crash. The guy looked up. We didn�
��t make eye contact or nothing, but I’m certain he saw me.”
“Then what happened?” Allen asked curiously.
“What do you think happened? I booked it out of there. I wasn’t exactly going to stick around, now was I?”
“No, I suppose not. Did you recognize the guy?”
“No, I didn’t get a good look at his face, just the back of his head.”
“Well, what could you see?”
“He was bald.”
“Hmm... did the guy have family there?”
“No, or at least not right then.”
“What color jumpsuit was he wearing?”
“No jumpsuit, he was wearing regular clothes.”
“Not an officer’s uniform?”
“No.”
“What was his place like?”
“Pretty big, or at least much bigger than our unit.”
“Let me think.” Allen thought aloud. “No jumpsuit or officer’s uniform around dinner time, so he probably works the early shift. Big place, so he’s probably an officer or able starman. Bald….” Allen paused and scratched his head before reaching a conclusion: “Frederick Chaucey. He’s a certified level five electronic technician who works the early shift. He rated able starman a while back. My uncle says he does good work. No family. I didn’t know he was religious, but he keeps to himself. How long ago did this happen?”
“Few days ago.”
“And Jim Boldergat never said anything to you about it?”
“No.”
“I think you’re in the clear. Fred’s pretty focused on his work. Doesn’t poke his nose into things, and probably could care less about kids farting around.”
Cotton let a noisy one rip just to make a point. Hammond giggled.
“Don’t do that!” Allen snapped. “The ventilation system will fan your smelly farts through to the next vent, giving away your position to any person with even a subnormal sense of olfaction.”
“Sorry,” Cotton said.
“Just don’t do it again!”
Cotton wisely let the reprimand go unchallenged, and continued down the ductworks, making a few more turns.
