The Twiller

by David Derrico

  “I know it’s small, although I’ve seen smaller, here in York,” Quirol assured him. “And it’s pretty reasonable. Just under one hundred thousand bucks a month.” Ian’s jaw dropped open; such a sum was several times more than all of his Gideon earnings put together.

  “I’m sorry,” Ian said. “I guess I’m just not used to such, um, cramped quarters, or such a crowded city.” He looked around the room. “I mean, how do you do it? Where do you eat? How do you shower? Where do you sleep?”

  Quirol didn’t seem upset by Ian’s assessment of her living quarters. “Why don’t I give you the tour?” she replied cheerfully. She flipped a switch on the wall, and a small flat panel folded out. “This is the table, over here in the kitchen area. And above your head, see those little holes on the clothes rod? That’s the shower.” Ian looked down to his feet to find a drain in the center of the concrete floor. “As for the bed, you had better grab the rod and hold on.”

  Ian cocked his head at Quirol, who grabbed a hold of the metal bar above her head and lifted her legs up off the floor. Confused, Ian followed suit, straining with the effort of supporting his weight, but determined not to let Quirol notice his difficulties. His feet dangled a few inches off the floor, and his arms and fingers started to burn.

  “You’ve gotta lift your legs up higher,” Quirol advised him, helpfully wiggling her own, which were bunched up almost to her chest. Ian nodded, unable to speak due to the exertion, and with a great effort of will pulled his legs higher up off the floor. Quirol pretended not to notice his difficulty, and quickly pressed a button embedded in the rod. With a hiss, a rolled-up air mattress unfurled from one side of the room, expanding to span the length and width of the room, about two feet off the ground. Quirol eased herself down onto it and Ian more or less fell, gasping, onto his knees, bracing his arm against the wall for support.

  “See? Plenty of room. Well,” she amended, “as long as you’re not more than five feet tall.”

  “It’s … an impressive use of space,” Ian concluded once he regained his breath. “Very, um, efficient.”

  “Thanks!” Quirol said brightly, sliding open a panel on the wall behind her. From inside, she produced a small plate of cucumber sandwiches, which she offered to Ian. At that moment, Ian forgot his claustrophobia, forgot his homesickness, and very nearly forgot his manners, belatedly drawing his hand back from the tray.

  “After you,” he said.

  Quirol giggled and plucked one from the tray, then extended it to Ian once again.

  Ian gingerly reached over, picked up one of the small triangle-shaped delicacies, and settled back down onto the bed. And, for that moment, he was home.

  . . . . .

  After filling up on cucumber sandwiches (Ian had said, “No, I couldn’t possibly have another,” followed by, “Oh, all right, if you insist” no less than eight times), Ian and Quirol had spent the rest of the afternoon talking and sharing stories. Ian had described his adventures (sadly, Quirol had never heard of Earth and had no idea how best to get there), and Quirol had told him a little more about York. She had moved there a few years ago for work (she worked at some huge intergalactic corporation, and her job sounded only moderately better than that of the lawyer Ian had met earlier), and she was struggling to make it in the big city. When Ian asked why she worked so hard so she could barely afford a tiny apartment in such a crowded city, she simply shrugged and told him that, if she could make it in York, she could make it anywhere. While Ian had no doubt her statement was true, he had refrained from asking the obvious follow-up: “But why?”

  Ian sighed contentedly and leaned back against the cabinet behind him, stretching his legs out on the air mattress that still filled the tiny apartment. Quirol appeared quite comfortable, leaning against the wall opposite Ian and absent-mindedly twirling her hair with her finger as she spoke.

  “So, what do you plan to do?” she asked. “Any chance you’ll stay here in York for a while?”

  Ian started to say something along the lines of “Not if I can help it!” but quickly caught himself as he felt a sharp pang of something very like panic as he thought about leaving Quirol. Although they had just met, he felt an instant kinship with her. He could tell that she was kind and sweet and good. It certainly helped that she was one of the first aliens Ian had met who had treated him better than toenail lint.

  “I’m not sure,” he confessed, “although I’m afraid I probably can’t afford to stay in York for very long.”

  “I’d offer for you to stay with me, but ….” Quirol spread her arms to indicate her tiny apartment, which could clearly never accommodate two people for any length of time. Just the bathroom situation alone was … unworkable.

  Ian nodded in understanding. “No, no, I’d never want to impose on you like that anyway. But, it’s just, if I leave York … I guess it sounds silly, I mean, I know we just met and …” Ian realized he was floundering and just forced the words out. “I’d miss you.”

  Ian was terrified that Quirol would laugh at him, or feel uncomfortable, or perhaps call the police, all of which happened fairly often on Earth whenever Ian professed his feelings about a member of the opposite sex. Quirol, however, completely missed Ian’s romantic intentions and instead saw him as another helpless creature to take in and save. So she simply smiled and said, “You’re very sweet. I do wish I could keep you.”

  Ian ignored the strange phrasing, and simply returned her smile, letting out an involuntary sigh. The movement seemed to wake the Twiller, who shook itself out of Ian’s pocket. “I haven’t been this happy since I left Earth. I’d like to see you again.”

  Suddenly, Quirol’s entire aspect changed, and her face flushed to a pale blue. Her eyes were fixated on the Twiller.

  “Ancestors protect us!” she shrieked, pointing at the Twiller. She leapt to her feet on the bed and grabbed the overhead rail.

  “Wait, it’s okay, he’s just—”

  Ian never got a chance to tell Quirol about his harmless Twiller friend, because she pressed the button on the rail and the air mattress quickly deflated and rolled itself back into the wall, tumbling Ian to the floor in the process. “Get out!” Quirol screamed.

  Ian picked himself up off the ground, backing against the door and opening it. The Twiller hurried outside. Ian tried, vainly, to think of something to say to Quirol to calm her down, but she had begun speaking in tongues. He backed his way out of the apartment, pleading with Quirol to calm down.

  “How dare you bring that … thing into my apartment!” she yelled. “I never want to see you again!” With that, she reached out and slammed the door closed.

  Stunned, Ian turned to the Twiller, who managed to look sheepish. “Twill,” it said apologetically, lowering its large eyes to the floor. It seemed to hover a little lower than usual.

  Ian slumped down to the ground and stared at the door to Quirol’s apartment. He stayed that way for some time, before finally struggling to his feet and sullenly shuffling away.

  * * * * *

  Part IX

  Ian wandered around the crowded streets of York in a disconsolate daze. The Twiller valiantly tried to cheer him up, but quickly realized that it wasn’t working, especially since Ian’s current depression was pretty much the Twiller’s fault. So it floated silently overhead instead.

  As for Ian, his brief glimpse of kindness and hope and then his sudden shocking reversal of fortunes left him defeated. He was used to the Universe being generally mean to him, but he hadn’t been prepared for it to dangle something nice in front of him only to yank it away. He missed that kindness all the more, knowing that it was there, just a few blocks away and a hundred floors up.

  Ian wandered through the milling mass of alien creatures, most of which seemed to be striding purposefully in one direction or another. Many carried briefcases or electronic tablets of some kind, and they carried the unmistakable air of people heading to and from work. Actually, as Ian paused and looked around, he noticed a cluster of p
eople that were not hurrying about, but were instead standing around in a jumbled knot. They seemed to be gathering around someone or something at the center of the mass of aliens. Curious, Ian headed in that direction.

  A large crowd had gathered, and Ian craned his neck to see what the commotion was about. This turned out to be fruitless. Not only were many of the aliens far taller than him, and they wore large hats, or what appeared to be large hats but may in fact have been appendages, but also several of the aliens seemed to have the ability to stretch their necks in order to see over the crowd. Ian, who had no such ability, was at quite an evolutionary disadvantage.

  He did, however, get lucky when a large, burly (and smelly) alien slammed into him from behind as it pushed its way to the front of the crowd. Ian stuck to the alien’s large, slimy belly, and was transported right to the front of the group. The Twiller, floating above, had little trouble keeping up with him.

  In the center of all the commotion was a large structure covered by a shimmering golden tarp. It rose twenty feet into the air, and appeared to be sloped away from Ian. At the base of the structure was a small alien wearing a top hat. In this case, Ian was reasonably sure it was actually a hat, or at least as sure as he could be of anything these days. The alien reminded Ian of a circus ringleader, which is odd inasmuch as Ian had never seen a circus (his experience at Yore Mayker’s Circus of the Bizarre notwithstanding).

  “Step right up,” said the alien. “Prepare to be astounded and amazed at the very height of modern technology. A fabulous invention so advanced, so fiendishly brilliant that it makes the holostimulator look like a simple particle accelerator.”

  Ian found himself keenly interested. He had seen some technology on his travels that far surpassed the wildest imaginations of any human who ever lived, but this seemed to be something even … more. More complex, more alien, more science-fiction. What could be even more amazing than what he had already seen?

  “As you all know,” the alien ringleader continued, expertly lowering the pitch—but not the volume—of its voice, making the crowd lean forward to hear, “there is one fundamental problem that all of our technology has failed to solve. One heretofore inviolate barrier that our most expert minds, and our most advanced computers, and our most expertly advanced computer-mind hybrids have been unable to break through. The ‘experts’ told us it couldn’t be done. But, ladies and gentlethings, we have done it!”

  There was an uproarious cheer from the assembled crowd. Ian found himself cheering as well. A stray thought tugged at the edge of his consciousness: the small fact that no one had any idea what this man was talking about. Ian dismissed the thought with a quick shake of his head, and listened raptly.

  “Clearly,” the creature said, shifting its gaze to the tall buildings all around them, “the elevator is a necessity of modern life. Yet many different species—and many of you in the crowd today—suffer from the same untreatable phobia. The one fear that transcends time and space and species. The single, terrifying terror that unites us all ...” Here, the alien’s voice rose to a crescendo: “The fear of … being trapped in an elevator!”

  There was a nightmarish collective gasp from the crowd. Several of the nearby aliens murmured to each other in agreement. One lady appeared ready to faint.

  “Please, please, good people,” said the ringleader, pretending to try to stop the murmuring of the crowd, but clearly enjoying the reaction it had received. “Have no fear. Have no more fear at all—because we have finally, once and for all, eliminated your fears forever!”

  The roar of the crowd was deafening.

  “Behind me,”—here, the ringleader gestured to the shrouded apparatus behind it—“is the culmination of eons of painstaking research and the solution to all of our collective problems. You are here for a historic occasion: the unveiling of the Universe’s first and only elevator that it is impossible to get stuck in!”

  The crowd began pushing closer to see this historic unveiling. Luckily, the large alien that Ian was still attached to gave one look back at the crowd and they gave him some space.

  “Throughout history, our best minds have developed faster and safer and better elevators. From the simple, pulley-driven devices of our ancestors, to hydraulic lifts, to turbolifts, to gravity repulsor platforms, to warp capsules, they have all shared the same fundamental problem: they enclose you in a confined space and there is always the fear—even if it actually happens somewhat rarely—of being trapped, helpless in the elevator. Unable to get out, unable to breathe clean, fresh air, unable to order a pizza, and of course—this is so horrible I hesitate even to mention it—you could even be trapped inside with … your mother-in-law.”

  The groan from the crowd conveyed a horror that was beyond words, beyond language. Apparently, Ian’s claustrophobia and fear of being trapped in an elevator was commonplace across the galaxy.

  “Well, fret no more, my friends, because the elevator behind me can not get stuck. No way, no how. No possibility whatsoever of its riders being trapped inside. No matter what happens—power outages, wormhole destabilization, gravity well fluctuations, solar flares, you name it—there is absolutely no possible way for the riders of this magnificent machine to be trapped inside, or be unable to reach their destination. Should the Universe itself end while you are riding this elevator, you will be free to step off and witness the cataclysm under the open skies!”

  The crowd cheered as the ringleader grabbed a corner of the tarp and prepared to unveil the magnificent creation. Ian’s imagination was at a loss; even with all the technological marvels he had seen, he could not even imagine such a wondrous and magical device. He let himself get lost in the emotion of the crowd.

  With a final satisfied smile, the small alien tipped his top hat and ripped off the tarp, which fluttered majestically to the ground. It revealed a sloped device about six feet wide and twenty feet tall, and it angled away from Ian. For a moment, Ian was left completely stunned, and his mouth fell open as he gaped at it. He was speechless.

  It was an escalator.

  . . . . .

  Ian worked his way out of the crowd, still enthralled by the escalator unveiling. He walked with a special bounce in his step, secure in his (mostly unsubstantiated) belief that humanity was technologically equal to, if not better than, most of the aliens he’d seen on his travels. Sure, the cars hovered, but they were mired in traffic as bad or worse than any back home. And the buildings were taller, but the apartments were smaller. And yeah, okay, they had spaceships, but Ian hadn’t seen much on his travels that convinced him that the ability to leave the planet was a good thing. And he didn’t even want to think about the wormhole technology, and how that worked out.

  Of course, just as Ian had underestimated his hotel key back in El Leigh, he was also blissfully unaware of vast gobs of technology that lurked beneath the surface of the things he saw around him every day. It would have blown his feeble mind to even know what ridiculous levels of technology and engineering went into seemingly simple things like hotel keys and his credit chit, let alone the nanomite air particles that changed the molecular composition of nearby air to accommodate the breathing patterns of various species. Or that most of the aliens he encountered were not simply cloned, but were genetically engineered from hybrid DNA that humanity had yet to even theorize existed, let alone manipulate. And if Ian had only gotten a good look at their cell phones—after all, he still thought it was pretty nifty that his cell phone had a lousy camera and customizable ringtones. To pick one random example, a slender Ventragian walking nearby appeared to be simply speaking into her phone, but was actually downloading several years’ worth of courses from the prestigious Andromeda University directly into her brain, was viewing just over a trillion status updates from her 12 billion friends on the latest social networking service (a powerful thinking computer sorted them by how likely she was to give a darn and scrolled the less important ones through at rapid speed), and she was only holding the phone up to her fa
ce (instead of leaving it in her pocket and using the standard telepathic interface) so it could deliver her daily dose of cheek-tightening beauty serum and anti-aging chemicals directly into her bloodstream.

  Unaware of all this, Ian felt pretty good about his own cell phone, failing once again to understand that it only continued working at the far fringes of the Universe because a particularly aggressive cell phone marketer back in the Harmrinkle Spaceport had used restricted teleporter beam technology to remove his old cell phone from his pocket and replace it with a current model. Of course, Ian would probably come to realize this once the monthly bill was deducted automatically from his credit chit, under the mysterious heading “Communications Services, Inc.”

  Ian looked around and noticed that many of the other beings walking nearby seemed to be going to and coming from stairways that led underground. Ian let himself be herded toward one of these stairways, quickly identifying it as a subway entrance. He checked to make sure the Twiller was able to keep up and follow him down, and used his Gideon travel card at the turnstiles to gain access to the subway terminal.

  The smell inside the terminal was oppressive. While much of what Ian had experienced had smelled strange and bad (to him, anyway), he had the distinct feeling that the subway station smelled bad to everyone. The odor was certainly more pungent down here, and aliens were packed even closer together. In general, the place was filthy, and even the semi-sentient cleaning bots assigned to tidy the place up were huddled in a corner playing poker. One of them caught Ian’s eye as he looked at them and shrugged the garbage-scooping attachment it now used to deal cards, the motion seeming to mean the heck with it, nothing I can do would be much use down here. Ian found it difficult to argue.

  Ian wandered toward the nearest platform, glancing only peripherally at the illuminated sign overhead. He was used to moving about the Universe haphazardly and more or less at random, so the thought of an unknown destination didn’t particularly faze him. Overall, he wasn’t a fan of York anyway, and besides, he didn’t seem to have any reason to stay anymore. So he hardly even noticed that the sign read “WMD,” and he certainly didn’t make the connection with a certain unfortunate acronym back on Earth.