by E. M. Foner
“The memory metal?” Bork guessed.
“That’s only a few hundred thousand years off if the Humans work hard enough,” Jeeves said. “The Verlocks are the only tunnel network members whose mathematical system accommodates magnetic monopoles.”
The Horten band began to play some instrumental piece with a distinct funereal air, and the guests who were drinking at the bar returned to the benches. Dorothy came out of the changing room with her long train dragging behind her, then issued a gather-left command, causing the guests to break out in applause. The wedding party sorted itself out again, but this time, Bob and Judith positioned themselves behind the purported bride and groom.
As the human guests who were merely on time raced for seats, Becky approached the wedding party, then turned slowly to face the audience.
“A teaching,” she announced. “In the evolution of computational systems, the earliest architecture chosen by many species is binary in nature. Everything in the universe is described by ones and zeros, true or false. What is a wedding ring but a perfect zero? What is a finger but the earliest symbol of one? In marriage we bring together a ring and a finger, a zero and a one, but in the Boolean algebra of my species, the union of one AND zero is zero by definition. How can that be?”
“Are you following this,” Kelly whispered to her husband.
“No, but Srythlan seems to be enjoying it,” Joe replied.
Kelly looked over at the Verlock ambassador, who was rocking in his seat and wiping away his tears with a handkerchief.
“The solution is that marriage is not the mating of a ring and a finger, but the joining of two people,” the prophetess continued after a significant pause. “Trying to describe the universe with nothing but binary choices inevitably leads to oversimplification and trivial solutions. The important thing for any two sentients coming together in marriage is that they lead a sequentially consistent life, forsaking all auxiliary variables for each other. The greatest blessing we ask of the Prophet Nabay is to complete our threads concurrently.”
“Bravo,” Srythlan shouted, rising to his feet. “The formal proof is lacking but the sentiment is lovely.”
“I hope she was finished,” Joe muttered.
Whether or not she was, the prophetess took the interruption as an excuse to move ahead with the ceremony.
“Please face each other,” Becky requested, and the two couples complied. Samuel and Vivian delivered the wedding rings to Kevin and Dorothy and stayed close to the front couple, while Judith and Bob moved in tight behind them, using the prophetess to help shield their pending ring exchange. “Now repeat after me—With this ring, thee I wed.”
“With this ring, thee I wed,” the two couples chorused, and then slipped the rings onto the fingers of their opposite number.
Then Kevin stomped on a wine glass wrapped in a napkin, winced, and both couples kissed. Becky headed off to get out of her robes, and the guests expressed noisy congratulations according to their own traditions, which included a surprising number of thrown objects. Jeeves suddenly appeared in front of the happy couples with a loud pop.
“May I have your attention please,” the Stryx announced. “Due to a scheduling conflict, the castle is under attack, but I assure you,” he continued, raising his voice over the sudden hubbub, “that the defending forces are sufficient to hold the walls for the next seven hours.”
A splintering crash sounded from the large wooden doors near the front of the hall, and the tip of a bronze horn on the head of an unseen battering ram was withdrawn for another onslaught. The Grenouthian crew re-deployed their cloud of floating cameras to capture the action at the doors, while not neglecting the wedding party, plus several wide-angle audience reaction shots.
“As a matter of fact,” Jeeves continued, unperturbed, “I was able to hire a number of the attackers to provide a little pre-dinner entertainment as a gift to the bride.”
Dorothy grabbed the Stryx’s pincer and practically yanked it out of his body.
“Talk fast,” she growled.
“Don’t worry,” Jeeves told her. “The raiders are only here for the dress.”
“MY WEDDING DRESS?”
“They won’t get it, of course,” he reassured her. “It’s all for the commercial.”
“What commercial?” Dorothy hissed, twisting the pincer.
“The only way I’m ever going to make back my investment in that dress is if we get the marketing right,” Jeeves said. “LARPing is just starting to peak as a tunnel network craze and we’re in the perfect position to ride the wave. Do you have any idea how much producing this commercial is costing me?”
“A lot less than hiring professional actors and over five hundred extras to play wedding guests!” Dorothy glanced over at the splintering doors, and then back at the rows of benches where everybody seemed to be taking the attack in stride. “You owe me.”
“I’d like to think we’re even,” Jeeves shot back, and then addressed the wedding party at a carefully calibrated volume that wouldn’t carry to the guests. “I’ve got to get out of the frame now, but the goal is to get a number of thirty-second spots out of the footage. I swapped out all of your swords for noodle weapons while you were changing, but remember, it’s not a LARP, so don’t stop fighting even if you get killed. Above all, protect the dress!”
“Protect the dress!” Judith shouted, brandishing the noodle copy of her rapier. “This is going to be the greatest wedding ever.”
One of the giant iron brackets holding the wooden bar across both doors pulled loose from the stonework and a party of raiders swarmed into the hall. Samuel, Judith, Thomas, Chance and Stick charged forward to meet the attack, and with an artistic flourish, Dorothy’s brother disarmed the first swordsman he met and flicked the blade back toward the wedding party. Vivian snatched it out of the air and rushed to join them.
“Get that dress!” a giant Drazen bellowed, posing like a hero and pointing towards Dorothy with his two-handed axe.
“That could have been my line,” Bork groused to his wife without taking his eyes off of the action.
“If you had accepted the part you would have been stuck waiting outside until after the wedding ceremony,” Shinka reminded him, and patted his forearm. “You’ll get it next time.”
Jeeves pinged Dorothy over her implant. “Stop laughing and try to look angry, or frightened. Anything would be an improvement. And it would be a big help if you would keep turning to different cameras and repeating the tag line.”
“What tag line?”
“Shaina liked ‘Fashions worth fighting for,’ but Brinda thought that ‘Fashions worth dying for,’ has more dramatic impact. Feel free to improvise, the Grenouthians can fix anything in post-production. And move a little to the left so that you’re centered under the banner.”
Donna nudged Kelly and pointed at the Frunge attorney Dorothy had drafted for the wedding party. He was obviously more intent on protecting Flazint than the intellectual property of SBJ Fashions. “Cute couple,” she said.
Chastity leaned around her mother and mouthed, “Front page story,” at the ambassador, who realized she was witnessing the closing of the loop that had allowed Becky to prophesize the wedding date.
“Did Dorothy know about this ahead of time?” Kelly asked Joe. “I guess I can understand if you all kept it from me because I would have put my foot down.”
“I’m pretty sure she was just as surprised as we are, but I doubt she was planning for Bob and Judith to get married at her wedding either.”
“You noticed that too? I think Bob must have talked Judith into it as a form of therapy, like trying it out to see it’s not that bad. If you think they got hitched for real I’ll have to get them a present.”
“If they really got married, we just paid for their wedding,” Joe pointed out. “But you should ping Lynx and make sure she gets enough pictures of the other happy couple.”
“If she doesn’t use up all of her film on the battle,” Kelly re
sponded, pointing to where their friend had positioned herself just behind the Grenouthian director. The alpha-bunny was waving his paws in the air and complaining loudly about working with amateurs.
Dring leaned forward from where he stood behind the McAllisters, having forgone a seat to accommodate his tail. “I’ve attended hundreds of thousands of weddings in my life and I have to admit that they all run together in my memory. Something tells me I won’t forget this one.”
“But what will you remember it for?” Kelly asked plaintively.
“Celebrating with friends, of course, and the teaching of the prophetess. May the happy couples lead a sequentially consistent life and end their threads concurrently.”
“Amen,” the station librarian contributed.
For readers suffering from EarthCent withdrawal symptoms, I just released Turing Test, a stand-alone novel about a team of AI Observers visiting Earth in the present day to assess our humanity. Strangely enough, the Observers are more human than we are. Look for the tennis balls on the cover.
LARP Night on Union Station is getting a sequel because I’m addicted to my own characters. You can sign up for notification of the next EarthCent release on my website, IFITBREAKS.COM. I also post an updated cast of characters for the current book to the website with every new release.
If you believe there is still a place in science fiction for stories that aren’t all about death and destruction, please help to get the word out. Posting an Amazon review on the first book of this series, Date Night on Union Station, will help new readers discover these books, even if you only write a few words.
About the Author
E. M. Foner lives in Northampton, MA with an imaginary German Shepherd who’s been trained to bite bankers. The author welcomes reader comments at [email protected].
