“What’s all that mean? Shutdown jive?”
“Thrive,” Commander Noble says. “It’s for deep-space travel.”
“How deep we talkin’?”
“Deep,” Noble says.
“The ship thought we were going to bed,” Pilot Parkhurst says.
“Going to bed?”
“Yeah. Nighty-night. So it was, like, tucking us in. Consider it like that.”
“By knocking us out for three months?” you ask.
The rest of the crew doesn’t look too excited about that either. John Luke appears to have just stepped out of his room on a Saturday morning with his bedhead.
Bedhead with a mullet. Not a good thing, John Luke. Not good at all.
“Better than going boom, right?” Franco, the warrant officer, says as he takes a bite of cereal.
Noble produces a set of reports and puts them on the table. “We’ve addressed the issue in our coordinates and can head back to Earth.”
“Don’t tell us we have to go back to sleep right away,” Parkhurst says, scratching his curly hair.
“No.” Commander Noble hasn’t smiled for a while. Maybe that’s what you gotta do to be a commander. Know when to put away the smile.
“Science Officer Jones reported some findings from her computer,” Noble says. “Ashley, do you want to share those?”
The tall woman smiles and stands, taking up a stack of papers. She seems more composed than the others. “Of course. I noticed these right away when I logged on after waking up. At the moment, we’re very near Mars. There are two bits of data that stood out to me. First off, we’re close to the small Martian moon Phobos, and our sensors are detecting some kind of life-form on it. The good news is that we can take a landing shuttle to the surface of Phobos and see what the life-form happens to be, should we choose to do so.”
This is crazy, Jack. A Martian moon.
“The bad news is there’s a faint distress signal coming from Phobos as well.”
“Distress signal? So what are the options?” you ask.
The commander frowns. “For distress signals this far out in space . . . there are no options. We have to postpone our return home and attempt to help.”
“Sir,” Jada Long says in a monotone, “technically this falls within the majority shareholders’ jurisdiction, and Si represents the duck people, who have 51 percent.”
“The duck people?” you laugh. “Hey, we ain’t no Planet of the Apes or anything. Well, I can’t speak for Willie, of course.”
“I apologize,” Jada says. “The Duck Commander franchise.”
“Well, we ain’t got no golden arches and don’t supersize, do we?”
Jada doesn’t even smile, though most everybody else does. The commander doesn’t either, but that’s no surprise.
“So, Silas . . . I guess it’s up to you,” Commander Noble says. “How would you like to proceed?”
Do you head to Phobos to investigate the life-form and the distress signal? Go here.
Do you choose to travel home and go straight back to cybersleep? Go here.
MEAT IS MURDER
WHEN YOU AWAKEN, you’re sitting in a shop that has various kinds of hunting gear for sale. There are camo pants and jackets and knives and spears. It’s a primitive sort of shop, but you assume it’s a small, independent one.
Wait a minute. What happened?
A monkey walks past the chair you’re sitting in. He notices you’re awake and stops.
“Uncle Si! Hey, man. Sorry I never introduced myself. I’m Scrumbles. This is my store! Isn’t it awesome?”
The monkey is talking to you. He’s talking in plain English.
Clearly you’ve lost your mind, Jack.
“Where am I?”
“You’re on our planet, Icarus. I wanted to be careful with you—I couldn’t think of a better mascot to have for our store.”
“Mascot?”
“Sure! Look—we printed up flyers for the grand reopening.”
You look at the piece of paper he gives you.
New and Improved Beef Eaters Store Coming Soon!
Meet our new mascot, Uncle Si! From the Duck Commander family. On display daily at our human farm.
Also, we have a new batch of meat that just came in from Earth. Good prices. Will barter!
You start to feel a little dizzy.
“You okay, Uncle Si?”
“Am I okay?”
You’re really lost for words.
You don’t have any.
“Why did you say you wanted to be ‘careful’ with me?” you ask Scrumbles.
“Oh, well, things got a little out of hand on Earth. But, hey—nobody wants to hear war stories, do they?”
You almost say you do, but you can’t.
This is your life now. As a human mascot.
This really and truly is . . .
THE END
Start over.
Read “Look at the Stars: A Note from John Luke Robertson.”
ANYTHING COULD HAPPEN
LOOK HERE, JACK.
There’s a word called honesty.
Yeah. And there’s also a word called discretion.
In this case, you go with being honest and just tell them everything.
The moment you utter the word jackalope is the moment you lose everybody. Even John Luke is laughing.
“That thing is a terror, I tell y’all!”
More laughter.
“It took out Wade in a matter of seconds.”
Howling.
Tears run down their faces as you describe it. Come on, Jack.
“Seriously, Silas, what attacked him?” the commander says once he can speak again.
After about fifteen more minutes of back-and-forth, you’re done.
“When you guys decide to believe me, you can just call. Or you can go call Ghostbusters. I don’t really care.”
You storm off toward your bunk in the sleeping quarters. You close the door and put your headphones on.
That’s why you don’t hear the screams.
That’s why you don’t see the chaos.
It’s only when you feel a rumbling in the ship that you remove your headphones. Then the yelling and screaming are plain to hear.
You rush out of the room, through the corridor, and into the galley. But it’s too late.
It’s too late because they didn’t believe you.
And somehow the tiny little terror got on board.
Commander Noble lies on the ground in front of you. You go over to help him, but he looks like . . .
Well, it’s unspeakable how he looks.
“Where’s John Luke?” you ask.
“He went to get the fire tanks,” the commander whispers.
“The fire tanks?”
“Yeah.” Noble can barely get his words out.
“Where are they?”
“Toward the bridge . . .”
“Did you see it?”
Noble says something you can’t understand. It has to do with antlers and Wade, but it mostly sounds like gibberish.
“I gotta find John Luke,” you apologize.
You rush past the computer access room and see smoke and flames pouring from it. Then John Luke appears from around the corner, pointing what appears to be a fire extinguisher at you.
“Where is he?” he shouts.
“Where is who?”
“Wade!”
You have no idea what he’s talking about.
You hear more screams. Then, out of the blue, Ashley Jones appears.
“You two need to get off this ship immediately.”
“I’m not going back to antler land out there!” you shout.
“Listen to me. You both are in danger, but especially John Luke.”
Why John Luke especially? And what’s the danger from? Something worse than the jackalope?
Blasting sounds reach you from down the hallway.
“I set the coordinates of a small escape pod,” she says. “The
pod is on the bottom level of the ship, near the back. We’ll hear loud alarms going off when we’re close.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll help you get off. Make sure nobody comes and tampers with you guys.”
“Why is John Luke in danger?”
She shakes her head. “I can’t explain. There’s not enough time. They’re looking for him. They’ve been looking for him for a very long time.”
“They? Are you talking about the jackalope?”
“I’m talking about the known universe.”
You stare at John Luke, who doesn’t say anything. Then you remember what Willie and Korie told you.
“Just bring John Luke back home in one piece, okay?”
“We have to go!” the science officer yells. “Follow me. Hurry.”
All three of you rush to the bottom deck of the DC Enterprise, alarms going off around you, and head for the sign marked Escape Pod: Use Only in Life-and-Death Emergencies. John Luke gets in first, and you follow.
“What do we do when we land?” you ask Ashley.
“Stay away from anything that looks human,” she says.
“That looks human?” John Luke asks. “What about stuff that doesn’t look human?”
“They’ll be easier to trust. Unless, of course, they want to eat you.”
With those comforting last words, she shuts the hatch door.
Soon you’re strapped in with John Luke next to you. Then you’re breaking away, blasting off from the DC Enterprise.
“I liked that spaceship,” you say as you watch it get farther and farther away.
The pod is barely big enough to fit both you and John Luke in two seats. You’ve been sitting in it for about two hours (since you can’t exactly stand—it’s that cramped) when you notice yourself drifting off to sleep.
“John Luke, are you getting tired?”
But he’s already out.
Not another cybersleep! Where we goin’ this time?
You try to fight it. You press some buttons and attempt to get in touch with Ashley. But your actions are becoming slower and slower. Your lips feel full.
Hey, this ain’t no sunshine.
What?
Listen, Jack, don’t go chasin’ waterfalls.
Huh?
And like that. Fast asleep.
Go here.
SUPER TROUPER
IT’S NOT LIKE YOU KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING, Jack, but who else is gonna save the universe? Or at least this tiny little bit of world inside the DC Enterprise? And waking up the pilot seems way less risky than driving a crazy-complicated spaceship on your own.
You decide to wake Pilot Ben Parkhurst first because, well, he’s the pilot, and he can pi the lot of you all the way back home if you wake him.
So you slowly start to open his space suit as John Luke looks on. The suit is almost unfastened when emergency sirens go off. You jerk back from Parkhurst in alarm.
All of a sudden, something clicks and beeps. Kinda like the sound of John Luke’s computer when it turns on. Then a pinging sound.
Beeeeoooooooonnnnnnnngggg.
“Hello, Silas.”
The voice is coming from all around you. It seems to be emitting from the speakers throughout the vessel.
I think I’ve heard that voice before.
You wait for a moment, but it doesn’t say anything else. So you keep trying to open Ben Parkhurst’s space suit.
“Just what do you think you’re doing?”
Yeah, it sounds just like him.
You wonder if it can hear you. “Who’s that?”
“This is the Central Liaison Intelligence Neurotransmitter 1999. CLINT for short.”
You laugh and glance at John Luke. “Recognize that voice?”
He shakes his head.
“I was raised on that voice.” You address the speaker system again. “You know who you sound like, CLINT?”
“Of course I do.”
Now you’re laughing hysterically.
“Hey, that’s great, Jack. They actually programmed you to sound exactly like Clint Eastwood!”
“I don’t think it’s nice, you laughin’. You see, my mule don’t like people laughin’. He gets the crazy idea you’re laughin’ at him. Now if you apologize, like I know you’re going to, I might convince him that you really didn’t mean it.”
You have to literally bend over laughing. “John Luke, I know you’ve seen some Clint Eastwood movies. Come on. Let’s see. Dirty Harry. The lasagna westerns. You know—The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. And one of my favorites, The Outlaw Josey Wales.”
“I think I’ve seen some of them.”
“If you haven’t, drop everything and google his movies,” you say. “Well, not now, but when we get home. In like ten or twenty years.”
“We are approximately 2.4 years away from Earth,” CLINT says.
You can’t help but crack up again. Every time you hear the voice, it’s funny.
Then you realize what the computerized voice said.
“Two and a half . . . years?” you ask. “You mean to tell me I aged almost three years taking a nap? Wow.”
No response.
“So why don’t you want me to open Pilot Parkhurst’s space suit?” you ask CLINT.
“This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.”
“This mission? Listen, Jack—”
“The name’s CLINT.” It’s as if Clint Eastwood is right here.
You’re two and a half years from Earth, and you’re talking to a computer that sounds like one of your favorite actors.
How much more awesome can this trip get?
Maybe an android will show up speaking like Robert De Niro or Al Pacino.
Hey, Jack. You talkin’ to me?
You need to focus on what you’re supposed to be doing. “Look, we gotta figure out how to get back home. I mean, something happened, and maybe something even happened to you, so—”
“I’ve never felt better,” CLINT says.
You nod and give John Luke a this-might-be-trouble sort of look. But John Luke gives you a you-look-kinda-constipated-Uncle-Si look in return. So you shoot him a listen-here-Jack-this-computer-might-be-wonky sort of glance. But he only gazes back with an I-sure-would-love-a-biscuit-from-Bojangles’ kinda stare.
You sigh. Yep. Hey, look—Si gets to sigh sometimes. It’s part of life. Si sighing. Get it? Got it? Good.
“Look here, uh, CLINT,” you begin. “I’m just thinking that waking up the pilot might help us get back to Earth. You know—our home. The place we come from.”
“I’m sorry, Silas. I’m afraid I can’t let you do that.”
“But why? What’s wrong?”
“A man’s got to know his limitations.”
You shake your head. Man, I just can’t keep these movies straight, Jack.
“Uh, John Luke . . . we need to talk in private.”
Go here.
ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WALL
WHY NOT? You can handle whatever’s behind this door.
The room you walk into is some kind of classroom, looks like. White walls with nothing on them and white floors. Ceiling’s the same color too. If there weren’t chairs and desks in the room, you’d think this was a place you put crazy people in straitjackets.
The kid you were following sits down in one of the chairs. Several other teenage boys are sitting down as well. You motion for John Luke to do the same.
“Excuse me, sir? With the beard?”
“Me?” you ask.
“No, the other elderly man with the gray beard. Yes, I’m talking to you.”
The man addressing you looks like the very cliché of a high school teacher. Dark slacks, a buttoned-up shirt with sleeves rolled, a beer gut, and a balding head. His tone and attitude make him sound just like your own jerky teacher from back in the day.
“Hey, no need to get all high-and-mighty, man.”
“The crazy vets’ room is on the thirteenth floor. Take
the elevator in the main level concourse up there.”
Did he just call me a crazy vet?
“Look here, Jack—” Then you glance at John Luke, and he shakes his head.
Okay, okay, fine.
So you nod, playing it dumb. Or playing it safe. Or playing it easy. Or—
“Thirteenth floor. Check.”
You give John Luke a wink. You don’t want to cause a scene, especially when you’re outnumbered like this. And John Luke’s a smart kid. He’ll be okay. “I’ll see you later.”
Of course, you have no idea when you’ll see John Luke again. Or what’s happening in this little classroom here.
You head back into the hallway and decide to go see what the “crazy vets’ room” is all about. Maybe that will explain the teenage boys’ room you left behind as well—and show you how to reconnect with John Luke.
This is so not Return of the Jedi. Feels more like Back to School.
You find the elevator and head up to the thirteenth floor. You ride with a pretty lady in a business suit and a guy who looks like a bullfighter. The woman is looking at you and giggling.
“What’s so funny?” you ask her.
“Now that is a good one,” she says. “Love the beard.”
“Why, thank you.”
“It almost looks real,” she says before the door opens for her floor and she walks out.
“Hey—it is real. What are you talking about?”
Something’s very odd about all this.
You’re wondering where your crew happens to be. And you worry again about what’s going on in John Luke’s classroom.
You get out on the thirteenth floor and see a hallway much like the one you were just in. Everything is very clean, very bright, very bland.
And that’s suspicious enough because nobody on Earth is this clean.
You find the door to the room soon enough after asking a couple people. So far, nobody in this hallway has stood out either. Still just the ordinaries. That’s what you’re gonna call these people. The ordinaries. But they don’t fool you. Nope. Not you, Jack.
Si in Space Page 9
