Space Team: Planet of the Japes

by Barry J. Hutchison

  “So, you see the symbols?” said Cal, spraying crumbs onto the curiously-shaped icons on the table between them.

  Splurt’s eyes flicked down to the symbols, then back to Cal. As always, he said nothing.

  “You understand the significance of them?” Cal asked. More crumbs flobbed out onto the tabletop.

  Splurt’s eyes lowered again. He looked for longer this time, before meeting Cal’s gaze again.

  Cal put a finger on one of the symbols and slid it closer to the other. “Identical. You see that? Absolutely identical.”

  Splurt held Cal’s gaze. Cal swallowed the last few clumps of pie and took a sip of milkshake. It was banoffee flavored, like pretty much everything that came out of the food replicator these days. He was starting to think he might have some rare form of mental illness.

  Space mental illness.

  He turned his attention back to the two symbols on the table. They had been one atop the other a moment ago, but he’d moved them to give Splurt a better view, in the hope that their importance was revealed to him. It was not, however, going well.

  Cal smiled, a little wearily. “So…?” He raised his eyebrows hopefully. Splurt’s bloodshot eyes didn’t flicker. “So, that’s a snap.”

  Splurt looked down. An arm grew from his body, the hand whipping down until it slapped onto the cards with a bang.

  “There you go!” Cal said. “See, wasn’t so hard, was it?”

  He gestured to the pile of cards. “OK, now you take those.”

  Cal watched as the cards were absorbed into Splurt’s rubbery hand. They oozed along the length of his arm, then both the limb and the cards were pulled into the center of the little guy’s body. Cal could see them bobbing around behind his eyeballs.

  “You know what? I think that’s probably enough Snap for now,” Cal said.

  He regarded the stack of board games on the table beside them. Trivial Pursuit was out, obviously. Clue would only lead to tears of frustration again. His, probably.

  The Game of Life?

  Cal tried to imagine Splurt settling down with a job and a family, even in board game form.

  No. No, probably not.

  “Mouse Trap it is,” Cal announced, and he began setting up the board.

  They had been at warp speed for a few hours now. Cal had slept for some of it, and woken up feeling far healthier than he had been before he’d nodded off. The headache was gone, the nausea was notable by its absence, and he was no longer interested in having Mech carry out a mercy killing.

  The streaking stars had threatened to bring the queasiness back, though, so he’d retired to the kitchen, where he, Splurt and Kevin had spent an enjoyable five minutes, and then a substantially less enjoyable forty-two minutes playing the ‘What am I?’ game that Kevin insisted he’d invented. Splurt appeared to dispute that, and Cal was pretty sure there had been a cable show based around the same concept back in the 90s, but he decided not to bring it up.

  It took Cal several minutes to set up the Mouse Trap board, slotting all the trap pieces in place. Only then did he look at the instructions.

  “OK,” he said, reading from the sheet. “Mouse Trap. For two to four players.” He lifted his eyes to Splurt, just briefly. “Object of the game. Here we go, listen up, buddy.”

  Cal cleared his throat. Splurt presumably listened up, although he gave no outward signs of it.

  “Take turns building the mouse trap as you move around the board,” Cal read.

  He frowned, and moved the sheet aside, giving him a clear view of the fully constructed mouse trap.

  He returned to the sheet and read it again, more slowly. “Take turns building the mouse trap as you move around the board.”

  He picked up the box lid and examined the picture on the front, then returned to the instructions.

  “Take turns building the mouse trap as you—”

  The Currently Untitled decelerated at eye-popping speed. Mouse Trap, Clue, and most of the stack of board games, up to and including Buckaroo, were launched off the table. Cal was launched off the table, too, but while the games only stopped when they smacked into the wall, a gloopy green tendril caught Cal and prevented him flying too far.

  “Thanks, buddy,” he wheezed, once the ship had fully come to rest. He looked up. “Kevin, what the fonk has happened now?”

  “Sorry, sir. Can’t talk,” Kevin said. “Rather busy.”

  “Busy? Busy doing what?”

  “Cal!” Loren called. “Cal, you should get up here.”

  Cal dropped the Mouse Trap instructions on the table. “What do you think it is this time?” he asked Splurt. “Space monsters? Space pirates? Space monster pirates?”

  His eyes widened. “I hope it’s space monster pirates. That would be awesome. Wouldn’t that be awesome?”

  Splurt grew shoulders specifically so he could shrug.

  “Come on,” said Cal, leaping to his feet and tapping himself on the shoulder to indicate Splurt should jump aboard. Adrenaline was pumping through his veins, lighting up his brain in a way that it hadn’t done all week. A shoot-out with space monster pirates was exactly what the doctor ordered. That would alleviate his boredom. He hadn’t had a decent space battle in days.

  “Let’s go find out what we’re dealing with!”

  They reached the bridge in time to see Mech topple backwards onto the floor. The screen, which traditionally showed stars and planets and all that stuff while flying through space – or, when Cal was around, cute space kittens doing funny things – was awash with lines of blinking red code.

  Loren stabbed at her controls and swiped across her screens, but from the way she threw up her arms in frustration afterwards, Cal guessed it was all non-responsive.

  Even Miz was sitting upright in her chair looking alert and attentive. That was arguably the most worrying thing of all.

  “Hey. What’s going on?” Cal asked. He pointed to the horizontal cyborg. “Did Mech just die?”

  “We’re being hacked,” Loren said, not looking back.

  “Oh,” said Cal. “As in…?”

  He mimed typing quickly on a little keyboard.

  Loren looked confused. “Tiny spiders?”

  “What? No! Forget it.” Cal gestured towards Mech. “That doesn’t explain why—”

  “I am attempting to initiate a defensive strategy,” Mech chimed. His voice emerged from within him without his mouth moving, and Cal realized the dial on the cyborg’s chest had been turned all the way up to intellect mode. “However, the attack is incredibly advanced, and I have not yet carried out a full range of diagnostic tests following my recent repairs, so I am unable to accurately predict the chances of retaining our credit balance.”

  Cal’s brain was operating a full three words behind Mech’s voice. It took him a second or two to catch up.

  “Wait, credit balance?” he said. “You mean…?”

  “They’re stealing the money,” Miz said.

  “As in our money?” Cal asked. “As in, our two million credits worth of money? How? Who?”

  “Someone good,” said Loren. “Kevin and Mech are both working on it, but whoever it is… they’re getting through.”

  “Well, switch it off!” said Cal.

  Loren looked round. “Switch what off?”

  “Everything! The computer. The space internet. Shut it down.”

  “Do you want to keep breathing?” Loren asked. “Because if so, we can’t shut it down.”

  “Narp,” said Cal, punching his fist into his palm. “I bet it’s Narp.”

  Miz frowned. “Who’s Narp?”

  “That kid who found out where Sinclair was when we thought he had Splurt,” Cal said. “His mom made the Spit Nibbles.”

  Miz looked blankly back at him.

  “And gave us a giant robot.”

  “Was I there?” Miz asked.

  “Yes!”

  “I don’t believe Narp is the perpetrator,” Mech said. “From what little I can ascertain, thi
s is someone new. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it’s some sort of living entity inhabiting the code. Not something I’ve encountered before at… Oh.”

  Mech’s voice glitched, just slightly. “Oh my.”

  “What? What is it?” asked Loren.

  “Don’t you lose our money, Mech!” Cal warned him. “Don’t lose our money.”

  “I no longer appear to be fully in control of my processors,” Mech chimed. “My firewalls have been penetrated.”

  Cal snorted, instinctively. “Penetrated.”

  Kevin’s voice came as an uneven crackle. “Hostile breach of ship’s systems,” he announced. “Attempting to override now.”

  The lights all went out, one by one.

  “No, wait, wrong button,” Kevin said.

  The lights all came back on, one by one.

  The mish-mash of symbols and code strings on the screen died into darkness, as if the screen had snapped off. A moment later, the display was filled by what looked like video footage of some pipes. There was something familiar about them, Cal thought, although he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

  “What’s this now?” he asked.

  The footage flickered, giving a glimpse of the Untitled’s bridge. It was from earlier in the day, and showed Cal getting up and heading out through the door.

  “Hey, that was us,” Cal said. “Miz, Loren, Splurt, me. But no Mech.”

  “It was Mech’s point of view,” Loren realized. She gestured to the pipes, which had now returned. “And that’s what he’s looking at now.”

  Cal compared the ceiling above Mech’s head with what was on screen. “Huh. You’re right. We’re in Mechvision.”

  A series of images began to flit rapidly across the screen, like the pages of a flipbook. Cal stepped back as the images assaulted him. The bar from earlier; Hungry, Hungry Hippos; Mech’s fist punching an armored rhinoceros; a baby spider-dragon lunging directly to ‘camera’.

  On and on they went, ploughing backwards through Mech’s memories, moving so fast now Cal’s brain couldn’t register the contents, just the feelings they evoked. Excitement. Anger. Then further back, loss and fear.

  So much fear.

  “It appears Master Mech’s memory banks are live-streaming onto the viewscreen,” Kevin said.

  “So, this is Mech’s memory?” Cal said. “This is, like, all his deepest darkest secrets?”

  “Something like that, sir,” Kevin confirmed.

  “Please tell me you’re recording all this.”

  The imagery stopped, leaving only darkness.

  No, not only darkness. There was text at the bottom right corner of the screen, blinking on and off.

  “Memory dump, ninety-eight per cent,” Cal read. “What does that mean?”

  Miz shrugged. “That he’s dumped ninety-eight per cent of his memory? Who cares? What’s happening with our money.”

  “Hmm?” said Kevin. “Oh, the money. That’s long gone.”

  “What?!” Cal, and Miz both spluttered at the same time.

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute,” said Loren. “Mech said something about this, way back. When we took Miz to see her dad. After we crashed.”

  “You crashed,” Miz corrected.

  “He said someone was going to take our money?” asked Cal. “You mean Mech can see the future?”

  Loren shook her head. “No. He realized part of his brain was, I don’t know, hidden. Locked away, or something. Two per cent. He couldn’t access it.”

  Cal gestured to the screen. “Looks like someone is.”

  The number in the bottom of the screen jumped from ninety-eight to ninety-eight-point-one. As it did, thousands of star maps were overlaid on the display, each one interlocking like pieces of an enormous jigsaw puzzle.

  A line appeared and began tracing a route through the stars, as if someone were drawing it on before their eyes.

  On screen, ninety-eight-point-one became ninety-eight-point-three.

  Cal sidled closer to Loren. “Any ideas?” he asked. “What is this?”

  “I think it’s a big map,” Loren guessed.

  “Impressive piece of deduction, Columbo,” Cal replied. “Obviously it’s a big map. But of what? And please don’t say ‘space.’”

  “Uh, guys,” said Miz, a note of concern in her voice. She pointed to Mech. “Should he be doing that?”

  There came a series of rattles and clanks as the previously inert Mech began thrashing around on the floor.

  “Shizz,” said Cal, rushing to the cyborg’s side. “Mech? Old pal? You OK?”

  He rapped his knuckles on Mech’s metal skull. “Hello? Anyone home?”

  “Try his dial,” Loren urged.

  Cal looked down at the control switch on Mech’s chest. It had recently been replaced, and was chunkier than the old one. Cal gripped it with both hands and twisted it back towards the center position.

  Mech’s thrashing became more violent. The ship’s lights flickered and dimmed.

  “Kevin! Cut it out,” Cal cried. “Keep the lights on.”

  “It isn’t me, sir,” Kevin replied.

  On screen, the star maps flashed by faster and faster, each square patch of space shrinking as it zoomed and locked into position. The white line zig-zagged through solar systems, curving around suns and black holes as it carved a route through the depths of space.

  Mech’s eyes rolled back in his head. His back arched. His elbows dented the floor as all four limbs spasmed.

  Cal glanced at the screen. Ninety-nine-point-two per cent.

  “It isn’t stopping,” Cal said. “Whatever’s doing this, it isn’t stopping.”

  “He’s still connected, sir,” Kevin said. “His intellect is still hooked up to the attacker.”

  “What do we do?” Loren asked. “It’s like it’s killing him.”

  Cal looked at the screen. “His intellect is still hooked up?”

  He looked at the dial on Mech’s chest.

  “Ah, fonk it,” he muttered, then he twisted the dial all the way to Mech’s right, diverting all power from his brains to his brawn.

  Mech stopped thrashing immediately. The viewscreen froze, the numbers stuck at ninety-nine-point-five.

  Cal let out a phew of relief, but it stuck in his throat as Mech’s hand grabbed him, the metal fingers meeting behind Cal’s neck.

  “Ack! Hey now,” Cal wheezed. Mech was on his feet in an instant, and hoisting Cal off his just another instant later.

  “Mech, relax,” Loren urged. “Put him—”

  Cal slammed into her, butt first. They both collided with the control console, flipped over it, and landed in a tangle of arms and legs on the other side.

  “Thanks for that,” Cal said. “Also, ow.”

  Loren shoved him off her and pulled herself up on the console. “Miz, his dial, turn it back.”

  “You’re not the boss of me,” Miz sneered.

  “Seriously, you’re doing this now?” Loren spat.

  Mizette rolled her eyes. “Fine. Whatever.”

  She bounded from her chair and lunged for Mech’s dial. He caught her, mid-leap, his hands clamping onto her shoulders. She brought both feet up, trying to kick the dial back towards center, but he raised her above his head then slammed her backwards against the floor, knocking the air from her in a shrill dog-like yelp.

  “Ooh, that had to hurt,” Cal winced. “Splurt, you’re up, buddy!”

  There was a rubbery twang as Splurt rolled up Cal’s back and launched himself over the console. In the space of a second, he switched from ‘little green blob’ to ‘slightly larger green blob with several hundred squirming arms’.

  Mech spun and drove a fist into the approaching Splurt. It sunk into Splurt’s gloopy body with a flomp, and rolled the shapeshifter’s eyes all the way around to his back.

  Splurt’s arms spread out, slapping and prodding at Mech from all directions at once. Mech roared with rage as he tried to fight off all several hundred limbs at the same ti
me. He was so pre-occupied with the dozen or so that were nipping him in the face that he failed to notice the solitary arm that wrapped around his dial and twisted it back to his left.

  The rage left him with a barely audible click. The fury that had been etched across his face fell away, then briefly returned when Splurt poked him in the eye, pinched his nose, and did that wibble-wibble-wibble thing with his fleshy top lip, all at the same time.

  “What the fonk are you doing?” Mech demanded, pulling away. “Cut it out.”

  Mech noticed Miz on the floor, breathing deeply as she tried to get her lungs working again. He spotted Cal and Loren taking cover behind the control console.

  “What happened?” he asked. “Did I miss something?”

  Cal stood and brushed himself down. “No, you got all of us. Well done.”

  Mech frowned. “Say what?”

  “You got into some kind of duel with whoever was hacking us. Somehow your hard drive or whatever started uploading everything to the screen.”

  Mech’s jaw flapped open. “The hack! What happened? Did we stop it?”

  “Ugh. Not really,” said Cal. He raised his eyes to the ceiling. “Kevin, how much money do we have left?”

  “One moment, sir,” Kevin intoned.

  They waited. Mech tried to help Miz up, but she slapped his hand away and heaved herself back into her chair. Splurt rolled over to Cal’s feet and clambered onto his back.

  “Right. Calculations done,” Kevin said. “Would you like the actual credit balance, or the percentage of the original balance you still have left?”

  Cal shrugged. “Either one. No, wait. Credit balance.”

  “Zero,” said Kevin.

  Cal blinked several times, then slowly nodded. “OK. And percentage?”

  “Also zero,” Kevin confirmed. “Don’t know why I offered you the choice, really.”

  Mech’s face suggested he was about to flip out again. “They took all our money?! You have got to be shizzing me. Tell me this is a joke.”

  “I never joke, sir,” Kevin replied.

  “Yes, you do,” said Loren. “All the time. Usually about stuff like this.”

  “Do I, ma’am?” Kevin asked. “I don’t think I’m joking. Would you like me to double-check?”

  “Do it,” Cal urged.

  Kevin double-checked.