System Failure

by Joe Zieja

  The whole thing was utterly indecipherable to Rogers. The Astromologer kept putting cards in space, taking them back again, performing a spin or two, and then shuffling the cards only to start the process again. On the other side of the table, though Rogers couldn’t see her face, Keffoule was sniffling softly. Rogers rolled his eyes. Was this guy really going to be able to single-handedly solve a problem that every scientist in the galaxy was working on?

  Suddenly the Astromologer stopped moving entirely. Black-backed cards, with something on their faces that Rogers’ couldn’t see but were definitely not poker cards, spun gracefully in empty space. The Astromologer himself curled up into a fetal position and rotated at exactly the same rate as the cards in front of him. Regardless of whether or not this guy was a fraud and a loon, he certainly had some incredible knowledge of how to manipulate moving bodies in a zero-gravity environment.

  “I hate him,” Deet said, his voice turned down very low.

  “Get over it, Deet. If he manages to figure out where the Galaxy Eater is, he’ll have done a lot more for the war effort than you have lately.”

  Deet didn’t respond, and Rogers shifted in his chair. That seemed like kind of a harsh response, even though he and Deet verbally abused each other on a regular basis. Perhaps it was because there was a kernel of truth in it. As much as Rogers thought he “knew” the droid, lately it seemed like Deet had been so laser focused on figuring out the secrets of artificial intelligence that Rogers couldn’t get him to pay any attention to anything else.

  The room grew awkwardly quiet. The Astromologer didn’t move. Well, he was in constant motion, since he was in a vacuum, but he didn’t move with respect to anything else.

  “Uh,” Rogers said. “So that was great, I guess? Do we put money in his hat now, or cross his palm with silver, or something?”

  “The star dust of the universe has collected on my lotus petals,” the Astromologer said through the radio. Rogers thought he was going to continue, by, perhaps, telling them the location of the Galaxy Eater, but only more silence followed.

  “We can send someone to clean up the dust?” Rogers offered when he couldn’t take the silence anymore. “I’m sorry if your room was out of order, but—”

  “Urp is aligned with Merida Prime. The Mu and Ji galaxies present a trigonometrically significant angle when placed within the Great Sphere—they are currently in major aspect. This is . . . very unusual.”

  Rogers sat back in his chair. “How the hell can anything be unusual in astronomy? Everything follows a predetermined path that takes billions of years to alter. We can literally predict the path and location of every celestial body within observable space.”

  “This isn’t astronomy,” Keffoule said.

  “It’s astromology,” Krell finished.

  Rogers could barely see part of Krell’s face, due to the projection and the way they were all seated around the table, but he saw Krell turn and look in Keffoule’s direction, smiling. He wanted to roll his eyes, but in truth, the more attention Krell paid Keffoule—and the more she reciprocated—the less time she was spending chasing him around the ship, decrying the sanctity of the golden ratio and the inevitability of their marriage. If Rogers was smart—and Rogers had been known to be smart occasionally—he would probably spend some time and energy encouraging the relationship.

  He was about to start asking Krell if he had any measurements or personal statistics that were 1.61 times that of Keffoule’s when the Astromologer interrupted his thoughts.

  “Everyone,” he said. “Meet me in the war room as soon as you can. I have news.”

  “We’re already in the war room, [EXCREMENT EXIT DOOR],” Deet yelled.

  “I know this,” the Astromologer said.

  From the back of the room.

  “I am able to foresee all things through the power of calculus and cosmic energy.”

  “What the hell?” Rogers said, nearly jumping out of his chair. “How did you get from out there to in here so fast?”

  The Astromologer, whose pale forehead glistened with sweat as he took broad strides around the outside of the war room, ignored Rogers’ question, perhaps because it didn’t have anything to do with hocus-pocus. Without asking for permission—which, for some reason, bothered Rogers—he came to the center of the table and started pressing buttons on the projector’s control console. Rogers noticed that, of course, the Astromologer was no longer within view of the ship’s cameras. If that were the case, he would have been in two places at the same time, which wouldn’t have made sense at all. But how did he get inside so fast? And why did nobody else seem to care?

  “You think you can just come in here and start touching buttons?” Deet asked.

  “Pipe down, robot,” Krell said.

  “Hey,” Rogers said. “He’s my robot. You can’t talk to him like that.”

  “Hey,” Deet said. “I’m not anyone’s robot!”

  “Pipe down, Deet,” Rogers said.

  Deet piped down. The Astromologer was, of course, unconcerned with the world around him, and continued pressing buttons anyway. The result was that the feed from the outboard cameras vanished, replaced by a two-dimensional representation of the Grandelle system, complete with labels for the space geography–uninitiated. As though he’d invented the software himself, the Astromologer began whipping through different sectors of Grandellian space, zooming by planets, moons, and asteroids. It quickly became impossible to tell where they’d ended up, but finally he stopped in a sector that seemed to have nothing in it at all. It was just a transit point for Un-Space traffic heading from Grandelle to Merida.

  “Here,” the Astromologer said. “The mouth that would consume the world yawns, bearing its tonsils to the universe.”

  “Say ‘ah,’ ” Rogers said.

  “Ah,” Deet said. “But why?”

  Rogers sighed. “I assume you mean you’ve found the Galaxy Eater?”

  The Astromologer looked up, glaring with what Rogers thought was inappropriate intensity.

  “It is not whether or not I have found it. It is whether or not the universe has deigned to reveal to me its secrets.” He narrowed his eyes. “And it has.”

  “Uh-huh,” Rogers said. “And how, exactly, do we know that it’s here?”

  “Captain Rogers!” Keffoule hissed. “Questioning the Astromologer is not appropriate! You will show my system’s guest more respect. He has potentially rescued us all from certain danger.”

  Rogers, now able to see Keffoule since the large projection had been changed, looked at her with a wry smile. So, he could sit here all day and insult her, call her crazy, and tell her he didn’t want to marry her and she just kept on coming, but disparage her math god and she’d explode?

  “I’m about to fling the best effort the systems have assembled into one location in an effort to surround and destroy something designed to collapse the galaxy. I think I have a right to ask a few questions before I do it.”

  “But—”

  The Astromologer looked sideways at Keffoule and silenced her with a glance. It was actually kind of impressive. Rogers couldn’t silence Keffoule with a literal platoon of marines shooting at her from both directions. In a way, it made him jealous of the Astromologer’s power, and Rogers wasn’t thinking of the weird, psychic/mathematician kind. Just the shutting-up-Keffoule kind.

  “It is a series of equations and divinations so complicated that just relating it to you might cause your mind to come apart at the seams. Suffice it to say that there are traces in the fabric of the cosmos that all point to one, single, terrifying disturbance. Combined with the power of my Tau/Rho Cards—”

  “Tarot cards?” Rogers asked. “Are you serious?”

  “Not tarot cards. Tau/Rho Cards,” the Astromologer said. “Tau, as in the alternate notation for the golden ratio, and rho, as in the alternate notation for part of the silver ratio. Their forces bound all things in space, aesthetics, and cooking.” He paused, looking up at the ceiling
dramatically. “Silver and gold. These two shimmering forces of the universe are—”

  “Right. Can I see the cards?” Rogers asked.

  “The cards are made of such complicated astral projections that simply viewing them might cause your mind to—”

  “Come apart at the seams,” Rogers said. “Right.” He turned to Thrumeaux. “This is your system, right? Have any of you, by any chance, noticed a large device out there shaped like something that might completely destroy the human race?”

  “We have not,” Thrumeaux said. “As with all of the other systems, we combined our best scientists’ efforts and reports to try and discern the location of the Galaxy Eater, and were unable to do so.” She looked pointedly at the Astromologer. “I must say I share Captain Rogers’ skepticism here.”

  Even General Krell seemed a little leery of tossing the full strength of his forces into battle in the middle of nowhere without any actual evidence. He looked at Keffoule with a half smile that came off very awkward, and merely shrugged, waving his hand at both Thrumeaux and Rogers as though indicating their point.

  “Right,” Rogers said. “I was hoping that by bringing you aboard, Mr. Astromologer, we’d have something a bit more than hand waving and tarot cards.”

  “Tau/Rho Cards.”

  “Whatever. Grand Marshal Keffoule set you up as someone who could solve our problems, not do dances in space and then point to a random spot on a map.” He glanced around the table, looking between the faces that had gathered to watch this idiocy and the surface of the table itself. Somewhere there had to be a switch so he could turn the lights back on and send everyone on their way to try to find a real solution.

  “Captain Rogers,” Keffoule said, sounding nervous. “If you’d only—”

  “No,” Rogers said. Wow, when did he start interrupting everyone so much? “I gave this guy a chance, and he’s given me playing cards and space dancing. Until we can get some good, solid evidence that there’s anything out there at all, I’m not—”

  “Sir! Sir!” came a voice from the hallway.

  Rogers put his face in his hands. “Why do you people do that? Why can’t you just say sir once?”

  Looking up a few seconds later, Rogers saw a young starman second class come running in, clearly having sprinted to get here. Her face was red, and her chest heaved with every breath. He didn’t recognize her as any of the bridge crew, but there were so many it was possible that he simply hadn’t seen her yet.

  “What?” Rogers said flatly. “What is it now? I swear, if you’re going to tell me that someone else hung themselves in the zero-g room . . .”

  “No, sir,” the starman said, huffing. “We just received a report from High Admiral Holdt. Apparently they’ve found the Galaxy Eater.”

  Despite the sinking feeling in Rogers’ stomach, he put on a cocky grin and pointed at the starman. “You see? Real science yields real results.”

  Keffoule harrumphed.

  “Well, where is it?” Krell asked.

  The starman frowned, looking at her datapad, and then looking at the display in the center of the room. She looked at Krell, then at Rogers, then at the datapad again.

  “Are you having a fit?” Thrumeaux asked. “There are times for dramatic pauses, young lady, but it appears you’ve forgotten how to speak.”

  “I’m just . . . you’ll have to excuse me,” the starman said. “I ran all the way down here with this information so I could show you the sector, but it appears you already have the sector displayed.”

  Rogers’ sinking feeling deepened. “What are you talking about?”

  “I mean that’s the sector where the Galaxy Eater is, sir. You’re looking at it. An unmanned sector in the Grandelle trade routes. How did you know?”

  The room was silent for a moment, and Rogers had managed to find the dimmer switch on the table. Slowly, the stunned faces of everyone at the table became slightly more illuminated.

  “We knew,” Keffoule said, “because the power of astromology is irrefutable.”

  “Oh, come on,” Rogers said. “He clearly got ahold of the reports first. The rest was just mumbo jumbo.”

  The Astromologer himself remained relatively silent throughout this process of Rogers continually telling him how much of an idiot he was. It served him right. How the hell did this guy get so high in the Thelicosan government using just a couple of parlor tricks and some clever gymnastics? He wasn’t even a very good con man, and Rogers considered himself kind of an authority on con men.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, sir,” the starman said. “I think maybe I wasn’t clear. We found the Galaxy Eater at the coordinates provided by the Astromologer. I just didn’t realize he’d told you all yet. I was kind of looking forward to being the one to show you the information, and he kind of spoiled my surprise.” The starman pouted.

  “Wait,” Rogers said. “The Astromologer told you already? How long ago?” He shot a look at the Astromologer. “Why not just tell us?”

  “I foresaw my own prediction,” the Astromologer said, “but I had not yet done the proper divinations.”

  “You foresaw your own . . . is this guy serious? You’re telling me you predicted your prediction?”

  “Astromology,” Keffoule whispered.

  “Shut up!” Rogers barked.

  “Hey, you can’t talk to her like that!” Krell shouted.

  “Oh, now it’s not okay to talk to people like that?” Deet said. “Nobody cared how anybody talked to me.”

  The starman, who was starting to look very uncomfortable being in a room with a group of general officers behaving like squabbling children, started to slowly back toward the door. “I’m sorry to have interrupted. According to High Admiral Holdt, we got the information yesterday and dispatched all the long-range sensors we could to the area to see if it was correct. It was.” She was halfway out the door now. “But if you need me I’ll just be see you later bye take care sirs and ma’ams!”

  The sound of quickly pattering boot steps echoed through the now silent room. Rogers felt like he wanted to break something, or someone. It wasn’t that he’d just been outsmarted and humiliated by a freak in a black cape who liked to dance in open space. Wait. Yes it was.

  “Okay,” Rogers said. “You win, Astromologer. I don’t know how you did this, and I’m not sure I want to know, but it sounds like we all had better get ready to head to the Grandelle system.”

  “Are you serious?” Deet said, unusually animated. “You’re just going to believe this [ANATOMICAL REFERENCE]?”

  “Deet,” Rogers said, his voice low. “That’s enough. I get that you don’t like him, but you heard the starman. It’s there.”

  “[MALE BOVINE EXCREMENT],” Deet said. “I disagree strongly with this course of action.”

  Rogers got up out of his chair, grabbing Deet by the arm. It was cold and metallic, and Rogers was small and weak, so Rogers’ tugging was mostly effective only at making his hands kind of sore.

  “Come on,” Rogers said. “Let it go, Deet.”

  “Very curious,” the Astromologer said suddenly, and before Rogers could tell him to get the hell out of the war room, he was standing so close to them both that Rogers could see the pores on his face. Rogers wasn’t really confident in his own ability to evaluate the looks of a man, but he couldn’t say he thought the Astromologer was handsome. More creepy than anything else. Maybe that’s why Keffoule liked him; they were two creepy peas in a creepy pod.

  “I will [EXPLETIVE] kill you if you don’t back up right now,” Deet said. His arms started to whir, a clear sign that droid fu was on the horizon.

  “I can sense the light of the cosmos within you,” the Astromologer said, “like a surrogate function, reflecting the glow of its objective function to illuminate new parts of the problem.”

  He reached out his hands, and for a moment it looked like he was about to grab Deet’s “cheeks” and pull him in for a kiss, but the Astromologer merely held them out in front of him, as though fo
rming an invisible bubble around the droid’s head. Deet didn’t move, though his arms looked less likely to shred the man into tiny bits.

  “I have a function I’d love to call right now,” Deet said. “Do you have a moment to talk about our lord and savior, protocol 162?”

  “But something is missing . . . ,” the Astromologer said. “Your aura. You don’t appear to have one. It’s as though your chakra are just empty shells.” He frowned. “This makes me so very sad. Does it make you sad?”

  Rogers rolled his eyes. If he didn’t know any better, he would have said this joker was deliberately antagonizing Deet. That would have required him pulling his head out of his psychic ass for ten minutes, though, which Rogers didn’t think he was capable of doing.

  “Hey, astro boy,” Rogers said, “stop giving my droid ideas. I don’t need him to start researching the powers of Tau/Rho or kinematic horoscopes or anything, alright? We’ve got enough problems to deal with here.”

  The Astromologer hesitated a moment, his mouth twitching as though he had more to say, but he dropped his hands and backed away, bowing his head a little bit. At least he could listen to reason, even if he couldn’t speak any.

  “If you’ll excuse me, then,” the Astromologer said, “I have spent a considerable amount of my astral energy today. I need to return to my meditations if I am to be of further use to you.”

  “Yes, please,” Rogers said. “Go charge up that astral energy.”

  “More like [ANATOMICAL REFERENCE] energy,” Deet said. Rogers could not figure out what word Deet had intended to use there.

  The Astromologer turned with a flourish and exited the room. Rogers took a deep breath, feeling like some of his stress had left with him. Sure, he might have provided the location of the most dangerous weapon in the known galaxy, and a path to completing Rogers’ team’s sole objective, but that didn’t mean he had to like the guy.

  “Alright, everyone, you have your orders. Go order your fleets to prepare for transit. We’ll see if there are any escorts available and check on the blockades, and then we’ll move out.” Rogers frowned, thinking. “We’ll need as much information as we can get on the Galaxy Eater itself. If we go in there guns blazing and they turn the thing on, we’ll need to know how much time we have to destroy it before it rips us apart. Task all your respective intelligence squadrons with putting together whatever they can, as fast as they can do it. We leave within the next two days. You’re all dismissed.”