UNIDENTIFIED FUNNY OBJECTS 3
Edited by Alex Shvartsman
PUBLISHED BY:
UFO Publishing
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Copyright © 2014 by UFO Publishing
Stories copyright © 2014 by the authors
Trade paperback ISBN: 978-0-9884328-4-0
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Interior art: Barry Munden
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Table of Contents
Foreword - Alex Shvartsman
On the Efficacy of Supervillain Battles in Eliciting Therapeutic Breakthroughs - Jim C. Hines
The Right Answer - James A. Miller
The Gefilte Fish Girl - Mike Resnick
Master of Business Apocalypse - Jakob Drud
Carla at the Off-Planet Tax Return Helpline - Caroline M. Yoachim
Why I Bought Satan Two Cokes on the Day I Graduated High School - Nathaniel Lee
Company Store - Robert Silverberg
The Door-to-Door Salesthing from Planet X - Josh Vogt
Picture Perfect - Matt Mikalatos
The Discounted Seniors - James Beamon
That Must Be Them Now - Karen Haber
Notes to My Past And/or Alternate Selves - Sarah Pinsker
The Real and the Really Real - Tim Pratt
Into the Woods, with Zombunny - Camille Griep
Live at the Scene - Gini Koch
The Newsboy’s Last Stand - Krystal Claxton
The Full Lazenby - Jeremy Butler
Do Not Remove This Tag - Piers Anthony
Super-Baby-Moms Group Saves the Day! - Tina Connolly
The Choochoomorphosis - Oliver Buckram
The Fate Worse than Death - Kevin J. Anderson and Guy Anthony De Marco
Elections at Villa Encantada - Cat Rambo
Infinite Drive - Jody Lynn Nye
Foreword
Alex Shvartsman
Welcome to the third annual installment of Unidentified Funny Objects—an anthology series of humorous, lighthearted, wacky, and downright unidentifiable stories.
In this, our thickest volume to date, you’ll find a traveling robot salesman and a vampire novelist, a brain-in-a-jar superhero and a jinn trapped in a mattress. You’ll visit the scene of an alien invasion alongside a local news team and become embroiled in the board elections at a condo populated by magical beings.
Our regular readers will get the chance to revisit settings introduced in the previous UFO volumes, in stories by Jim C. Hines, Matt Mikalatos, and Jody Lynn Nye. New readers need not worry; each story stands on its own and doesn’t require familiarity with the previous episodes.
All but two of the stories in this book are original. Of the two reprints, the history of “Company Store” by Robert Silverberg is especially interesting. This story was originally published in the 1950s and hasn’t been reprinted in English since the 1970s. In fact, it’s been out of circulation for so long that even the author did not have a digital copy. He photocopied the story pages out of a paperback and sent them for us to type up.
Although “Company Store” may be unfamiliar to most English-speaking readers, this story is very well-known to Russian fans. The translated version (titled “The Contract” in Russian) was published in numerous Russian anthologies, and a short animated film based on it was produced in the 1980s. It was broadcast regularly on one of only two national TV channels during the final years of the Soviet Union, and so is as familiar to that generation of Soviet viewers as ThunderCats or the Care Bears are to their American counterparts.
I invite you to rediscover this lost gem and to enjoy the other fine and varied stories collected within.
Happy reading!
On the Efficacy of Supervillain Battles in Eliciting Therapeutic Breakthroughs
Jim C. Hines
Patient Name: Tamara “Puff” Jones
Insurance: Silver Shield State Coverage w/Metahuman Rider. Policy 2851-28-H3.
Physical: Tamara appears to be a healthy teenage girl, approximately fourteen years old, with—oh, hell. Who am I kidding? The poor girl is a laboratory experiment, one of Michael “Monster-Master” Manchester’s final creations before he was locked up for a decade. In Tamara’s case, he spliced blowfish and human physiology together.
As challenging as this has been for Puff, she’s adapted better than Manchester’s half-man/half-skunk soldier.
Physically, Puff is roughly human sized, heavyset with venomous spines that lay flat against the skin. When frightened or angry, her blowfish instincts take over, something that apparently happened two weeks ago in phys. ed. Needless to say, Puff was mortified. This was when her adoptive parents, both superheroes, brought her to me.
Psychological: Puff presents with low-level anxiety disorder and possible depression. Her relationship with her parents is terse and strained. Given her unique physiology, psychiatric medication is not recommended at this time.
I’m uncertain whether her father’s telepathic control over sea creatures allows him to command his daughter. I suspect he knows better, but if he’s using his powers to make his kid clean her room or some such, I’ll kick his ass myself.
Don’t write that down. No, delete that. Delete!
Dammit, I hate this bloody machine.
###
“It’s so embarrassing.” Tamara Jones, aka “Puff,” sat with folded arms in her wheelchair, avoiding eye contact with her adopted parents. “Other superheroes can fly faster than the speed of sound or punch a hole through the moon. What does my father do? Gossips with jellyfish.”
“A telepathic bond with the creatures of the sea is a powerful weapon,” said Jarhead. This was his third session with Puff, and the first time he had felt comfortable bringing her parents in for more than a few minutes at the beginning and end. Given the amount of anger emanating from the teenaged mermaid, that might have been a mistake on his part.
“It’s like they’re stuck in the Silver Age,” Puff said. “He hasn’t changed his costume since the seventies.”
“It’s iconic.” The superhero known as Triton, self-proclaimed Master of the Oceans, was a tall, broad-shouldered man with umber skin, blue eyes, and bright red gill slits running just beneath his jawbone.
“It’s gold and brown.” Puff still hadn’t looked up from her smartphone. “Your costume is literally the colors of an unflushed toilet bowl. And Mom’s is worse. It’s like she made her outfit from the leftover scraps of his.”
“This was the style when I got started,” protested Optica.
Jarhead kept his mouth shut. He had been a superhero back then too, before a neck-height tripwire transformed him from the fastest man in the world to a decapitated head in a jar. He had once seen Optica peer into a lead-lined armored car, then use her heat vision to burn through the car and vaporize the mercury switch on a bomb that would have turned the people of Lake City into giant mutant gerbils. After that, he figured she had the right to wear whatever the heck she wanted. He wasn’t about to criticize a woman who could kill you just by looking at you.
“She’s fifty-three ye
ars old,” Puff continued, tapping the screen of her phone. “Her costume doesn’t even make sense. What do skintight hot pants and all that cleavage have to do with superpowered eyes?”
“You remember the rules,” Jarhead said gently. “No phones.”
Puff didn’t answer, but her tail flapped against the base of her wheelchair, one of many, many ways she signaled annoyance. Unlike her parents, Puff dressed in heavy layers of dark, drab clothing that, in the words of her father, made her look like a homeless person. The only exception was her hair, which was styled into short blue spikes. She made a show of finishing what she was typing, then shoved the phone into her pocket.
“Thank you,” said Jarhead. “How have you been doing on the goals we set last week? Homework and chores?”
“I got an A in algebra.”
Jarhead waited.
It was Triton who broke the silence. “She failed her biology exam.”
“What happened?” asked Jarhead.
Puff shrugged and made a show of studying the carpet.
“She doesn’t study,” said Optica. “When we remind her, she tells us to stop treating her like a child.”
“It’s not biology,” Puff snapped. “It’s human biology. I should be taking Intro to Medical Freaks instead.”
“You’re not a freak.” Optica reached out.
Puff inhaled… and kept on going. Her body swelled, stretching her clothing tight. Spines poked through her skirts and sweatshirt, and she gripped the arms of her chair to keep from toppling forward. Her cheeks and eyes bulged, and she looked at her adopted parents as if to say, Oh, yeah?
While Jarhead hated to see his clients hurting, this was a good sign. At least Puff wasn’t locking everything away inside.
Puff deflated and began picking at her clothes, sliding her spines back through newly-torn holes. Optica had jerked back, and now folded her hands in her lap, looking sadly at her daughter with those mesmerizing, all-black eyes.
“There are days she doesn’t say a single word to either of us, from morning until bedtime,” said Triton.
“What do you want me to say? ‘Hey, mom. Guess what! The boy I like has an old cheesecake poster of you in his locker.” Puff pantomimed gagging. “You wouldn’t understand, Doctor J. You were one of them. Zipping around, punching bad guys and doing commercials for running shoes. It’s like they don’t know what to do with a problem they can’t blow up or feed to a shark.”
Before he could take advantage of the moment, someone knocked on the door.
“I’m with clients,” he called out.
“This is the Lake City P.D.”
“Figures,” muttered Puff. “‘Duty calls.’ What else is new?”
“I’m sorry about this.” Jarhead used the microneural circuitry connecting his brain into the technology in the base of the jar to remotely open the office door.
A squad of LCPD’s finest waited, guns drawn, with polarized riot shields on their arms. Before anyone could react, they fired a Taser into the room, striking Optica in the shoulder. She seized and fell. Puff screamed and ballooned outward so hard she fell from her chair.
Triton leapt toward the door, but his powers were weaker on land, and another Taser took him down.
“I’m sorry,” said a detective wearing a bullet-proof vest over a shirt and tie. “We have a warrant for the arrest of Optica and Triton.”
“On what charge?” asked Jarhead.
The detective looked slightly embarrassed. “Tax fraud.”
###
The arrest was only the beginning of Jarhead’s headache. The detective called him later that day… not to apologize, but to ask for Jarhead’s help.
For the most part, Jarhead had come to terms with his lack of body, but some conversations called for a good old-fashioned facepalm. Slapping his jar with one of the mechanical spider-like legs built into the base just wasn’t the same. “You’re saying that in the two hours since you burst into my office to assault my clients, your men—a task force charged with bringing down supervillains—have managed to lose a mermaid in a wheelchair?”
“There was… an incident.” The speakers carrying the detective’s voice through the bionutrient fluid in the jar conveyed both embarrassment and annoyance.
“What kind of incident?”
“Some sort of monkey/goat centaur things. They ambushed us. They’d gotten up onto the ledges of the credit union and the history museum. Damn things can climb like—”
“Like monkeys? Or mountain goats?”
“Yeah.”
“Manchester.”
“That’s my guess. We’ve got a BOLO out to all units. Manchester’s parole officer says he’s has been checking in regularly. We searched his apartment, but it was empty.”
“Did he capture Puff?”
“We don’t think so.”
Jarhead blew a thin column of bubbles, the equivalent of a relieved sigh. “Was anyone hurt?”
“You don’t understand, Doc. They didn’t attack us. Just shot steel lines across the road to stop traffic, and then the lead monkey-goat climbed down to deliver a court order.”
“A court order?”
“It was almost cute. She was wearing a tiny suit jacket and tie.” The detective hesitated. “I confirmed the order was legit.”
“You’re stalling,” said Jarhead.
“Yeah. With the custodial parents under arrest, Michael Manchester is suing for custody of Tamara Jones.”
###
Jarhead had spent several sessions working to build trust and rapport. A text message from Puff was enough to confirm that those efforts had paid off.
Puff’s family split their time between land and sea—a another source of stress for a teenaged girl looking for stability and identity. Their land-based house was protected by an electronic security system keyed to a series of lasers Optica had designed in her free time.
Puff was too smart to try to hide out here. Between the initial arrest and her disappearance, the police would have searched her house at least three times. The computers had been taken, along with any files that might prove or disprove the allegations of tax fraud.
After turning off the alarm, Jarhead skittered into the house and maneuvered himself through the doorway of Puff’s room, a hybrid arrangement that reminded him of an oversized turtle aquarium. Half the room sank into a pool, while the other half held a small flat-screen TV, closet, and a poster of Albert Einstein sticking out his tongue. Plastic ponies lined several shelves on the wall. A large tank full of goldfish sat beside the pool. Puff had inherited a number of the blowfish’s traits, including a voracious and predatory appetite. Those goldfish were the equivalent of a half-eaten bag of chips.
Jarhead retrieved a black electrical cord from the floor. He pulled up the display inside his jar and sent a text message. “At ur place. Got ur cellphone charger.”
The response came quickly. “Thx. And don’t say ‘ur.’ You’re too old.”
Jarhead sent an emoticon of a face with its tongue sticking out. “U know about the court order?”
“I’m NOT going with that creep.”
“If the courts decide that using his genetic material as part of your creation gives him a parental claim…”
“Then they can send a scuba team to try to catch me. Come on Dr. J. U know he framed my parents. Ugh. He’s so creepy.”
Jarhead paused. “Have you been talking to him?”
“He tried to friend me on Facebook. Like I even use that site anymore. My *parents* are on Facebook. I blocked him.”
Jarhead’s sensors picked up a faint noise from the next room. He amplified the microphones, trying to pinpoint what he had heard. “Gotta run. Company.”
His mics weren’t good enough to pick up heartbeats, but the quick breathing of three creatures one room over? No problem. He crept toward the door, then paused. Several of the goldfish in the tank floated upside down on the surface. Swimming over the gravel at the bottom was one of Manchester’s spies, a
tiny merman, half minnow, half fetus-like person, and 100 percent disturbing. “How long have you been hiding out here?”
It would be just Manchester’s style to have installed a camera and transmitter into the merminnow’s head. He’d known the instant Jarhead arrived. Jarhead crept into the living room to see what Manchester had sent. “That’s new.”
From the waist up, the creatures resembled small hawks, but their legs and tail were those of black, chitinous scorpions. One stood atop the sofa. The second was helping itself to butterscotch candies from a bowl on the coffee table. Like most of Manchester’s creations, they showed little sign of intelligence. Puff was one of the few exceptions. The third spread its wings and swooped at Jarhead.
He waited for the clink of the thing’s tail against the jar to stop. “You know, back in my day, supervillains were a little smarter. That glass will stop a .45 caliber bullet at point blank range. You’re only going to hurt yourself.”
The creature’s tail stiffened, and a pointed flame erupted from the tip. It narrowed to a needle of blue fire.
“That’s much better.” Jarhead tipped himself forward, trying to crush the animal, but it scampered around the glass, continuing to try to cut through. His temperature sensors spiked. It was hard to say whether the flame would pierce the jar before it heated his biofluid to unsustainable temperatures. “Crap.”
The other two flew at him in a cloud of feathers, adding two more blue-hot torches to the mix. One still clutched half a butterscotch in its beak.
In the old days, Jarhead would have moved too fast for them to touch him. He could have plucked every feather from their bodies between one wing beat and the next, and duct taped their tails so their weapons pointed at the backs of their own heads. Sadly, the ability to wiggle his nose at superspeed didn’t do him much good now.
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