by M. D. Cooper
“Hey, Chip. I’m glad to see you too. I could have used your company the last few weeks,” Ben replied as the robot wrapped its arms around him and pulled him close. Under any other circumstance, Ben would’ve felt uncomfortable with the public display of affection, but after the disastrous meeting with his father and being isolated from everyone except the doctors, nurses, and patients in the psych ward, Ben welcomed the show of friendship. “I’m sorry about what happened,” Ben said as the hug concluded.
Chip took a step back and looked at Ben. “What are you sorry for?”
Ben thought it was obvious, “I’m sorry for freaking out and crashing the ship and generally making existing harder for both of us,” he answered. “If I had planned better, none of this would have happened.”
“I will admit I was worried about you, but it was my understanding that life is supposed to be full of awkward moments that don’t make sense and drag you through the mud only to make stronger. I thought after all you went through, you would’ve gained a lot of life experience. That’s an invaluable asset and you should be grateful for that,” Chip said.
Well, that’s another way of thinking about it, Ben thought. “I suppose, but I could have done without crashing the Shistain and the hallucinations.”
Chip nodded once and let it go before moving on with the conversation. “So, what do you want to do today? Earth is waiting.”
Chip’s question was something that Ben spent most of his time considering the last few weeks. After more than a year in space, he wanted nothing more than to experience life on Earth, but life was expensive and he was broke. “I think the most important thing right now is to find a place to live,” he said. “After that, I’d really like a cheeseburger.”
“All right,” Chip replied, turning as if he was about to walk away before Ben stopped him.
“Hold on a second,” he said, “The doctor and my dad all said I did some things that I don’t remember. Was it really as bad as what they say?”
Chip looked at his human companion, and without a hint of a smile he answered, “No. it was much worse than that. You nearly died.”
“That’s not really making me feel any better,” Ben replied.
“It wasn’t supposed to. I thought you wanted me to tell you the truth about what happened, not pat you on the back and tell you everything is going to be OK. You know, like the one time you got too drunk to urinate completely inside the toilet and you stepped in your own piss with your bare feet, or when you wake up with an erection that’s slightly embarrassing and looks like abstract art inside your tight sweatpants, or the way your brown eyes widen when you get upset about the truth I keep trying to tell you.”
“OK, I surrender,” Ben said, waving his hands for Chip to stop talking about pissing on the deck and the morning wood before someone heard him, despite the fact the small courtyard was void of people. “Forget I even asked. Fark me.”
Chip smiled, “I forgot, I have something for you,” he said as he turned to the bench and picked up a small bag, handing it to Ben. It was a meticulously decorated gift bag.
Ben took it and said, “thank you.” When he opened it, a slight wave of nausea followed. It was an unopened can of Vienna Sausages. “Chip, what the fark?” He fidgeted with the can in his hand. “That’s a cruel joke.”
“It was the last can and I thought you’d like to have it. But I don’t suggest you eat it,” Chip joked, chuckling a little harder than necessary as he placed his hand on Ben’s shoulder.
The two of them stood there smiling and giggling like kids. “Thank you, for everything, Chip,” Ben said. “If not for you, I would be dead.” Ben was not joking, he meant every word with every ounce of his heart.
The robot smiled. “Anytime, Captain.”
Ben caught a movement above them, and looked up to find a drone hovering several feet above them. “What the hell?” His words seemed to invite a response as a man in a dark suit stepped towards them.
“Benjamin Dale?” The man asked as he approached quickly. The man had a stiff posture and a serious, grim face. His eyes were deep-set and calculating, sending a chill down Ben’s spine.
Oh shit, Ben thought, he’s probably an FBI agent. “Yeah?” He answered, nervous and wanting to run, but knowing he did not have the strength to get away.
“I have something for you,” the man said tersely. When he was within a few feet of them, he stopped dramatically, and stuck his hand inside his jacket. Ben feared it was likely the man was about to pull a gun and draw down on him, but he knew even if he ran, there was no hiding from the drone. The man quickly pulled out an envelope and handed it to Ben. “This is for you.”
Ben did not reach for it. Instead, he asked, “What is it?”
“Aren’t you going to take it?” the man shot back.
“Why?”
“Because it’s for you.” The man’s stilted demeanor shifted to one of confusion, which made Ben more nervous.
“I’m not expecting anything,” Ben said.
The man looked at him, frustrated, but obviously trying to be polite. “Fine,” he said as he opened the envelope and pulled out a letter. “Mr. Dale,
“‘We here at GNN are very inspired by your story and would like to have exclusive first rights to telling it to the world. We would like to offer you twenty thousand dollars to tell your story of being the first person to travel to Europa and back unaccompanied. If you accept our offer, please meet us on Friday at noon at the GNN corporate office. Sincerely, Maxwell Halts.”
“So that wasn’t a warrant for my arrest?” Ben asked.
“Did it sound like a warrant for your arrest?”
“No.”
The man handed the letter to Ben, and this time he took it. “There you go. If I was you, I would take Mr. Halts up on his offer. He’s not going to increase the price, but none of the other networks will offer near as much. That is just my opinion, though.”
Ben folded the letter and stuck it into his pocket. “I’ll take that into consideration, thank you,” he said.
The man nodded once, turned on his heels, and walked away. As the man left, so did the drone, once again leaving Ben and Chip alone.
“Well, that’s rather exciting, isn’t it?” Chip chimed happily.
“Yeah, I suppose it is.” Ben shoved his hands in his pockets. The gift bag with the can of Vienna Sausages dangled from his wrist.
“Are you going to do it and take the money?”
“I could certainly use the money. Especially after crashing the Shistain,” he replied.
“Maybe you should,” Chip urged, crossing his arms over his chest and stroking his moustache as he appeared to contemplate existence. Ben was glad the robot seemed to be back to his normal self and not the overly sensitive version he recalled in his fever-pitched memories.
“Maybe.” Ben kicked a small rock towards the grass. “If nothing else, it could be an opportunity for a new beginning.”
“Yeah?”
Ben shrugged. “Fark it.”
THE END
— — —
Want to read more by Drew Avera?
The Alorian Wars
Dead planets litter the Alorian Galaxy in the wake of interstellar war...
Ensign Brendle Quinn has spent five years loyally serving the Greshian Empire in their relentless quest to dominate the Alorian Galaxy. But, as his ship decimates planet after planet, he finds his sympathies swinging toward their defeated enemies.
Sergeant Anki Paro, a Luthian Marine, has been anxiously awaiting the call to deploy. As the last line of defense against the crushing Greshian forces, she hopes the time has finally come for her world to stand against tyranny. However, as her society prepares for imminent destruction, questions of misplaced loyalties lead Anki to wonder if the world she is trying to save has any real intentions of surviving.
As Brendle’s and Anki’s worlds collide, they find themselves in an unlikely alliance to try to stop the full might of the Greshian Empir
e before there’s nothing left to fight for.
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About the Author
Drew Avera is an active duty Navy veteran and science fiction author of the bestselling series, The Alorian Wars. Growing up in Mississippi, Drew often dreamed of visiting faraway places. In the Navy, he has visited a dozen foreign countries and has traveled thousands of miles on the open sea. Drew enjoys his free time by reading, writing, and playing guitar.
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Trash Beings of the Galaxy, Unite!
by J.J. Green
He who controls the trash controls the galaxy.
Studying for a degree in Garbology hasn’t prepared Jaquil Rarebit for the high-class, high-stakes world of trash collecting. When he begins his internship with the little-league company, Trash Iz Uz, he finds out about the shadier side of junk.
But Jaquil’s an ambitious tweenager, and he has his sights set on joining the galaxy’s big enchiladas of garbage. Despite his rude awakening to the seedy realities of refuse, he’s determined to stay the course.
Then a collect-and-dump mission goes way off plan, and Jaquil and the rest of the Trash Iz Uz crew are sucked into a crooked corporate underworld, where cutting-edge technologies fetch unimaginable prices—as high as a person’s life.
The trash gang are way out of their depth, and everything’s to play for when the debris starts to drop.
Chapter One
Collecting the garbage of the civilized galaxy isn’t all soirees and glamour. Sometimes, there’s hard work to be done, as new intern Jaquil Rarebit found out on his first day on the job.
“Y’see,” said Bantram Hepplehiggy—she’d told Jaquil to call her Banty—as she exhaled a cloud of rose-tinted vapor that entirely enveloped the young man, “it ain’t only a matter of collecting the trash, we have to dispose of it too.” Her fat hand was wrapped around a tube with a large, transparent bulb hanging from the other end of it. Inside the bulb, a deep pink liquid sloshed around, supplying the gas she was huffing. “That’s the hard part.”
Jaquil coughed and hitched up his plasti-vinyl dungarees. His mom had bought them and made him wear them even though they were two sizes too big. They were the latest fashion, she’d assured him, and would impress his new boss. She’d also told him, when he’d complained that they tripped him up, that he’d soon get used to walking in them. All the other tweenagers did.
At twenty-seven years of age, Jaquil knew he was too old for his mother to be buying his clothes, but he didn’t like to upset her. He’d tried telling her that in the past, before human lifespans dramatically increased, young people his age would be in jobs and living independently, but she wouldn’t listen. In another year, he told himself, he would graduate, and then he would finally be able to take control of his life.
“What’s the problem with dumping garbage?” he asked Banty. “Why can’t you find a quiet part of deep space and eject it there?” He eyed the pile of trash that sat in the corner of the square, steel refuse bay where they were standing. He identified broken starship parts, old clothing—including a suspiciously large number of pairs of dungarees—and swamp garden waste, some of which was still moving.
His remark drew guffaws from Banty, hiccups from Lollololp, a soft, yellow, tube-shaped alien who constantly undulated, and excited bleeps from U8AB, a silver android who made up the remainder of the staff at Trash Iz Uz. The bleeps puzzled Jaquil. U8AB was humanoid and spoke English normally. Jaquil guessed that some things were so funny the android lapsed into his native, electronic language.
Banty expelled another cloud of vapor from her capacious lungs as she also laughed. “Now where would be the fun in that?”
“He don’t get it,” exclaimed Lollololp before starting off on another round of loud hiccups.
Banty raised her meaty hands as if to put them on Jaquil’s shoulders. If Jaquil hadn’t been twice her height, and if she hadn’t been wider than she was tall, and she might have made it. As it was, she had to content herself with resting her palms just below his nipples, her fingertips almost touching them. “Kid, if you’re gonna roll with us for the next three months, there’s one thing you need to understand. Garbage is gold. You’re too young to remember it, but they must have taught you about The Great Hot War in your schooling?”
Jaquil nodded. Modern history had been his favorite subject, mainly because the teacher would forget to turn off her camera after giving her live-synced lesson, allowing the class to see whatever she got up to in her spare time, which was a lot.
“So,” Banty went on, “not so long ago, after decades of fighting, the intelligent species of the galaxy were about to wipe themselves out. They finally saw sense and drew up the Declaration of Never-Ending Peace and Galactic Harmony. But life gets kinda boring when there are no more wars, especially when you hate your neighbors’ guts just as much as you always did. You get where I’m going?”
Jaquil nodded again, wondering where she was going and wishing that she hadn’t shifted her hands that little bit higher.
“So what do you do when you want to piss off your neighbor?” Banty asked.
“Err...” Jaquil thought of all the annoying habits of their upstairs neighbors in their cubicle housing. “Play cybernetic music really loud?”
Banty shook her head.
“Hold pneumatic pogo derby competitions in your living room at three in the morning?”
“Not that,” said Banty.
“Drill holes through the floor and pour water through? At least, I hope it’s water.”
“No,” Banty said, “but that’s a good one.”
“I give up.”
Banty turned to her employees. “All together everyone.” She conducted the chorus with a sweep of her arms as they chanted, “You dump your trash in his backyard.”
“Oh,” Jaquil said with the kind of all-knowing look that had stood him in good stead for most of his academic career, with the exception of tests or anything else important to his educational progress.
When Banty didn’t elaborate, he said, “So...when you say we have to dispose of trash, what you really mean is...” He left a pregnant pause, hoping that someone would fill it.
“He still don’t get it,” crowed Lollololp.
Jaquil was beginning to form a gentle hatred for the over-sized yellow grub.
“Kid,” said Banty, “if you’re gonna last out your internship here, let alone achieve steady employment in the trash business, you gotta use your noodle.”
Jaquil wondered if she was referring to Lollololp, but Banty was tapping the side of her pointy head, which was narrower than the neck it sat upon.
“Look,” she said, “when we go collect someone’s trash, we take an order too. We ain’t just picking it up, we’ve gotta know where to set it down.”
“And so you...dump it in their neighbor’s backyard?”
“Figuratively speaking,” Banty said, waving around her tube and bulb so that the liquid washed up the sides. She took another huge huff.
“I think you mean literally,” said U8AB.
“Whaaaat?” Banty exhaled a cumulus cloud of vapor as she spoke.
“Figuratively means you don’t really do it,” U8AB explained.
“Oh, yeah, yeah. Literally. That’s what we do. We literally dump the trash wherever it’s gonna annoy the neighbors the most. But we gotta be sneaky about it. Do you get it now, kid?”
To his surprise, Jaquil felt like, for once, he did actually understand.
“So now you know our first trade secret,” said Banty.
“That’s our only secret, Banty,” Lollololp said.
“I get it,” exclaimed Jaquil. “It all makes sense now. I never really understood why we still have trash, or where the trash barons got their money. With all the recyclable, self-destructing and disintegrating materials, garbage should be a thing of the past. What you’re saying is, it’s become a new method of waging war.” His heart beat fast. He’d made the right career choice. Not only was he going to be rich and famous, he would also be a warrior.
“But, doesn’t that mean,” he continued, “that sometimes the same trash is passed to and fro again and again?”
“Oh yeah,” Lollololp said. “And it travels along from one enemy to the next. We’ve seen trash go right around the galaxy.”
“You finally got it, kid,” said Banty. “Just don’t spread it around. The secret, that is, not the trash. Are you with us?”
“I’m with you,” Jaquil exclaimed.
He’d heard somewhere that workers in the trash business had a slogan, and he thought this would be a great time to shout it out to join in with the camaraderie. He took a deep breath before announcing, “Trash creatures of the galaxy, unite!”
Banty paused, her tube hanging from her lips. Lollololp stopped, well, lolloping, and even U8AB’s quiet machine noises ceased.
“Kid,” said Banty, “you need to be more careful with your language. That term ain’t acceptable any longer. Trash Iz Uz is an equal opportunities employer. Please reflect that in the terms you use.”
“Oh,” Jaquil said. Things seemed to have been going so well. “What should I say?”
“The correct word is beings.”
“Right. So, trash beings of the galaxy, unite?”
“Now you’re getting it,” said Banty before taking another huff.
Chapter Two
Jaquil sat behind the controls of Megaboom Starblaster and reminded himself that this was another reason why he’d applied for an internship in a galactic garbage disposal company. The vehicle was twelve thousand tons of raw hybrid steel-silicon compound. It packed fifteen ells of power, had a belly like a pregnant whale and a nose like a shark.
