Unidentified Funny Objects 3

by Alex Shvartsman (Ed. )

  Her looks for Huey were especially salty. “And you should be ashamed of yourself. You’re not even old.”

  “My model’s a year old,” he replied, “which is practically a dinosaur compared to the T-1006.”

  I couldn’t believe this broad. “He should be ashamed? What about you, Lady? You’re the one with the geriatric slave labor.”

  “Don’t be silly,” she said. “If they were slaves, how could we charge them for the work?”

  “There’s that, too,” I said. “Why are you making people pay to work for you?”

  “Seriously? This is Business 101. If we offered it for free, no one would see the value in it.”

  “This—it’s,” I was stuck trying to find the right word, “—it’s mad!”

  “No, I’m mad,” she said. “Now get out.”

  “Allow me a query, Madam Mad, to see if I process the full extent of this enterprise,” Huey said. “The Curriculum offers a virtualized enjoyable experience to these people. Meanwhile, subroutines in the program manipulate their hands autonomously, crafting clothing articles that you in turn sell, yes?”

  “Of course,” Madam Mad answered, “Do you know how hard it is to find ‘hand made’ clothing in today’s age of automation? This is big bucks!”

  “Naturally,” Huey said. “And since they’re paying for the privilege of making these high-priced clothing articles, the Curriculum experience alone covers the cost of all materials and any maintenance of the VR equipment, yes?”

  She nodded, a self-satisfied smirk on her face.

  “My circuits,” Huey said in amazement. “It’s a perfect system.”

  “Perfect system my rusty butt!” I cried. “Do these people know what you’re doing with their hands while they’re playing in virtual?”

  “Half of these people aren’t even aware of when they’ve lost their bowels. How are they going to know they’ve lost control of their hands?”

  “Stop this diabolical enterprise,” I told her.

  Clyde pointed an accusing finger at her. “Yeah, Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall! Oh,” he said, as he looked at one of the workers, “y’all making Kangol hats? Word, kid!”

  “Look,” she said, “I’m not totally unreasonable. I mean, by law I’m technically able to arrest you folks for breaking in and viewing proprietary corporate processes. But if you go on back upstairs we’ll call the whole thing even. Deal?”

  “No deal,” I said, “If you don’t let my people go, I’ll… I’ll…” Damn. My threat was heading into empty words territory. I didn’t have money for lawyers or the physical stature to win a fight or smash up the machines. I was just an old dude who wanted his social circle back. But something in my stubborn brain refused to go quietly. A flash of inspiration struck and I pointed to Huey.

  “I’ll sic my Terminator on you.”

  “Oh please,” she waved a dismissive hand at Huey. “The First Law of Robotics prevents him from hurting a human. That’s Asimov 101.”

  “Yes,” I agreed, “but you’re not a human. You’re a synthetic meat android, just like Huey.”

  “Preposterous,” she said.

  I looked at Huey. “You said it yourself, this is a perfect system. Do you think a frail, fleshy-brained human designed a perfect system?”

  “It is highly dubious,” Huey said. “My databases indicate perfection is something sought but never attained. Examples include the phrase ‘picture perfect’ and ‘perfect pitch.’ Meanwhile, there is neither a picture nor a pitch in any database identified as definitively perfect.”

  “Then there’s ‘Perfect Strangers’ with my man Balki,” Clyde offered. “Don’t be ridiculous!”

  I patted Clyde on the shoulder. “Keep enjoying yesteryear. I promise to get you a high top fade later.”

  I leaned closer to Huey. “She’s a meat robot. And she’s the closest you’ll ever get in your lifetime warranty to actually crushing your insufferable human overseers. Punch a hole in her.”

  Huey shrugged, nodded as if he considered the logic sound and took a step towards Madam Mad. She held her hands up.

  “I am not a robot.”

  “You’re a liar,” I countered.

  “No, I’m not.”

  “See!” I cried, and pointed a finger. “The only way to answer that accusation is to lie! Liar! Robot!”

  “OK! OK!” she said as Huey took another step toward her. I can’t believe my bluff worked. Now it was time to bargain, get her to reduce the hours of this heinous program, if nothing else. Maybe even get her to shut down completely on the weekends and Thursdays. Thursday was Lady’s Night.

  Well, it would’ve been time to bargain, if I had remembered that Huey was an android and not exactly keen on social queues. He barely took orders from me, much less other humans. Her OK didn’t register and I forgot to call him off. He took another step and without ceremony drove a fist at lightning speed through her abdomen.

  Everyone gasped except Huey. When he removed his fist, me and Clyde were looking through a gaping hole in her gut. Circuitry sparked and wires dangled in the hole. On the other side of the hole, I saw a Judge Dredd sewing the most adorable baby booties.

  “Oh crap,” I said.

  “Oh crap,” Robo-madam Mad said.

  “Crap,” Huey said, visibly disappointed. “Um, I mean, just as my flawless logic predicted.”

  The robo-lady shut down and dropped to the ground in a heap. I sent Huey up the gangway to smash the Curriculum controls. And as I explained to the bewildered seniors what was happening and why the Curriculum was suspended, Huey came back down and helped them get free of the helmets and sewing equipment.

  Apparently, the personal android was going to be helpful. I know he was better help than Clyde, who was busy snatching up Kangols.

  Now if Huey could only help me get a date. A week after the Curriculum shutdown and I was still getting the silent treatment. Everyone blamed me for shutting down their adventure package, even Nadia.

  So be it. Here, memories are short and idle time, well, nowadays that was long, just waiting for something to fill it.

  ***

  James Beamon writes stories because he doesn’t have the operational budget to make the movie version. He’s still on a quest to take over page one of Google when you type his name but sucky other Beamons keep making headlines for criminal acts. He blogs about his angst for other James Beamons along with whatever else he’s getting into at fictigristle.wordpress.com.

  That Must Be Them Now

  Karen Haber

  Number Twenty-Nine watched as three suns set below the blue rim of Eridnae 7 and felt the taste of sour nuglak in his mouth. The remaining sun cast a hard, brassy light upon the purple surface of the planetoid, upon the small brown lump of Number Twenty-Nine and his solitary expectations.

  This was the right place. He had checked the coordinates three times. But there was no sign of those for whom he waited.

  Whoever they were. He had landed on this dustball two cycles ago, in accordance with the directions he had deciphered from the remnants of an alien device that his grandmother’s grapplers had recovered.

  The device had not matched any of his design references. With growing excitement, Number Twenty-Nine realized that it must have been sent by unknown beings. A new intelligent race, on its way to Eridnae 7, and only Number Twenty-Nine knew about it.

  A new intelligent race hadn’t been discovered in a very long time. Intelligent aliens usually possessed all sorts of scavengable equipment. Number Twenty-Nine reasoned that if he were the first to make contact with these newcomers, he could establish a monopoly on their junk. The very thought made his thorax palpitate. Such a deal would catapult him to the top of his family hierarchy. He would be able to claim a new nunc. Probably get his own sublight rig.

  It would be a dream come true. So he was waiting. Waiting for the Wonderful Strangers to come.

  Ever since he was a padless sprout, Number Twenty-Nine had dreamed of traveling far fro
m the muddy piles in his grandmother’s recycling yards on Yagwarin III, far away from the barren hills, the dim red sun, and the pathetic little stacks of junk. He dreamed of flying to an exciting Someplace Else where he would make bigger and better scavenging deals than anyone in his family. Someplace Else, without older sisters and grandmothers to criticize and bite him. In his dreams he met strange, fabulous beings who were happy to give shiploads of their junk to him, only him.

  Number Twenty-Nine would have sighed if his breathing rills had permitted gusty exhalations in Eridnae 7’s thin atmosphere. The best he could do was swat irritably at the dry purple pebbles beneath his tender toepads.

  By now Grandmother would have discovered that he had taken the sublight rig—without permission—and sent his sisters after him.

  They would find him. They always did.

  And what would he have to show them? Would he greet them, swaggering and proud, with his new friends, the Strangers whose distant signals he had perceived with his crystalline rujex? No, he would not. Instead he would be dragged home, listening all the while to the derisive comments of his sisters, forced to endure their bites and taunts. Undoubtedly he would slip several notches in the family hierarchy, possibly even have to give up his own private nunc and share with the twins. He shivered at the thought. They were notorious nunc-shredders.

  A whispering hiss made him look up as white-gold flame lit the skies above his head.

  That must be them now, he thought. Eldest Sister and the others. He prepared himself for the worst.

  The ship that landed nearby looked nothing like the big gut-bucket rig that Grandmother used for scavenging. Had she rented another ship? Number Twenty-Nine reasoned that it was unlikely, especially on such short notice. And even if she had, it would never have been this sleek.

  A hatch opened. An elongated shadow moved within its silvery depths.

  Number Twenty-Nine felt a tingle in his rills. Could it be? Them? Was it really the Amazing Strangers, here, after all, to meet him? Yes, yes, yes. It had to be.

  He rushed forward to greet them.

  A single, biped being disembarked.

  Number Twenty-Nine’s rills fluoresced as he raised his front pads in joyful greeting.

  The alien moved toward him.

  Number Twenty-Nine’s rills went dark.

  It was an alien, yes, but not an unknown stranger. It was a Helibar. Number Twenty-Nine recognized it by its green beak, its iridescent scales, and its long powerful legs.

  Just a dumb old Helibar.

  With no little disappointment, Number Twenty-Nine wondered what a Helibar was doing in this part of the system.

  The Helibar seemed equally perplexed to find Number Twenty-Nine standing on the pebbly mauve soil of Eridnae 7. Three of its ocular lenses quivered. The translator chip in its throat chirped for a moment, then said, “Greetings, immature form of male drone, species Yagwar. I calculate that you are five sublight intervals from your home world. Are you lost? In need of assistance?”

  Number Twenty-Nine responded in kind. “Greetings to you, Helibar of unknown status. Many thanks for your gracious concern. I am not in distress. But you, too, are far from your home world. Do you require assistance?”

  “Multiple gratitudes for your inquiry,” the Helibar replied. “Negative.”

  They stared at one another. Now five of the Helibar’s ocular lenses were quivering.

  Number Twenty-Nine hunkered down on his rear pads and waited.

  The Helibar yielded. “Where is your family group?” It looked around, scanning left-to-right. “Your grandmothers and sisters?”

  Number Twenty-Nine didn’t blame it for its wariness. Mature Yagwar females could be formidable. Particularly if they were his relatives. But he would give nothing away for free. “My grandmothers?”

  “Do they await you nearby?”

  “No. I’m alone.”

  “Alone? Waaa! A solo immature Yagwar drone? Alone? Here? How? Why?” Seven ocular lenses quivered and flashed.

  Number Twenty-Nine wanted to say that he knew it was all highly irregular—in fact, unheard of—for a young male of his status to be separated from his family. But what business was it of this intrusive Helibar’s? And why wasn’t it digging for crystal roots back in the bogs of its vile homeworld, Heliba V?

  “Well, what are you doing here?” Number Twenty-Nine knew it was rude to make such a direct query to an adult, even an adult alien, but he didn’t care. After all, he was just an immature male drone.

  The Helibar reared up on its muscular hind legs. Number Twenty-Nine wondered if it intended to strike him.

  With a thunderous crack the sky turned red. A silvery disk appeared, oddly elongated. It hovered with a strange squealing sound, then flew on and landed to the east, behind an outcropping of purple boulders.

  The Helibar gave a squawk and began to trot briskly toward the boulders, all four of its legs moving at once.

  Number Twenty-Nine followed right behind, loping in his own peculiar rocking-horse gait. If those were indeed the aliens, the Marvelous Strangers with all their marvelous junk, he wasn’t going to let some pushy Helibar get to them first!

  As he tried to maneuver around the Helibar it slashed out with its sharp beak.

  “Get…out…of…my…way,” Number Twenty-Nine gasped, practically running under the Helibar’s hooves. It wasn’t easy for him to move so fast: the hard pebbles hurt the soft bottoms of his pads.

  They cleared the boulders in a dead heat.

  The disk was sitting edgewise upon dainty silvered feet. A platform of some sort had been extruded from its lower half and was bearing some creature down to the planet’s surface.

  Number Twenty-Nine thought that his rills would vibrate right out of his thorax, he was so excited.

  With a clank the platform settled upon the ground. A biped creature wearing a white garment raised long forelimbs to its upper portion and began to remove its head.

  Number Twenty-Nine wondered if these Amazing Strangers were any relation to the Nargex of Eol 9. He’d been told by his grandmother that at trade meetings the Nargexi were forever removing their heads and forgetting where they’d left them.

  On the platform, the creature’s upper segment—the head—pulled away, and beneath it could be seen another head.

  Two heads! Number Twenty-Nine had never seen that before. Two faces, yes, of course, there was nothing special about that. The B’neer Makdali had two, three, even four faces, but always on the same head. He palpitated at this new discovery.

  The head opened its mouth. What strange language would be uttered by those fleshless lips, Number Twenty-Nine wondered.

  It spoke.

  “I didn’t expect anyone else to be here.”

  The language it spoke was marked by the honks and strong gutturals of the Ugglezian tongue. How strange, Number Twenty-Nine thought, that it should know Ugglezian. How remarkable.

  He moved closer.

  His rills drooped.

  The head looked remarkably similar to the flat noseless, earless faces of the Ugglezians. With a bitter sense of disappointment, Number Twenty-Nine admitted to himself that the stranger was, in fact, an Ugglezian, just a member of another familiar species, nothing special or remarkable.

  The Helibar seemed to be experiencing similar emotions. It pawed the ground with two of its hooves and demanded, “What are you doing here, Ugglez-dweller?”

  “I’m awaiting the arrival of the alien ship. Aren’t you?” The Ugglezian seemed mildly puzzled. “Isn’t that why we’re all here?”

  “I received the message first,” the Helibar said. “They will be my guests. My aliens, and will thereby owe me great courtesies.”

  “You must be mistaken,” the Ugglezian replied. “I’m quite certain that my transmitter was the first to receive the communications from these strangers.”

  “You’re both wrong,” Number Twenty-Nine shouted. “I heard them first and got here first. They’re mine!”

 
The other two turned and stared at him as though he were some particularly unappetizing form of buklik, then returned to their discourse as though he hadn’t spoken and, in fact, didn’t exist in their space/time continuum. Number Twenty-Nine was tempted to scoop up a mouthful of purple pebbles and spit it at them, hard.

  “My claim is paramount,” the Helibar told the Ugglezian. “Be gone.”

  “Beg pardon,” the other replied. “It is in your own best interests that you depart immediately. My claim takes priority.”

  A lemony glow haloed the Helibar’s body as it triggered its defensive shield.

  Just as quickly, the Ugglezian was engulfed in a gel-like blue field.

  Number Twenty-Nine saw that the Helibar’s shield was offensive as well: a storm of razor-edged red hail flew at the Ugglezian only to bounce off the blue field.

  The Ugglezian answered the attack with a rain of lethal-looking green discs that fell harmlessly to the ground when they encountered the Helibar’s shield. A few stray discs ricocheted in Number Twenty-Nine’s direction. He decided it would be prudent to take shelter behind the largest of the purple boulders.

  The Helibar unleashed sharpened spears.

  The Ugglezian countered with poisonous polyps.

  Triangular knives.

  Molten, smoking pellets.

  When the Helibar had apparently exhausted its arsenal, it began to kick stones at the Ugglezian.

  Number Twenty-Nine doubted that either one could hold out much longer.

  The air between the antagonists swirled as though filled with dust.

  The Helibar squawked.

  Was this some new offensive? Number Twenty-Nine watched closely, wondering. If so, it seemed just as ineffective as all other attempts had been.

  The dust coalesced, became thicker and darker, ever more opaque, gained mass and definition.

  The Helibar squawked again.

  The Ugglezian took a step toward its ship.

  In the dust cloud, the dark shape was getting larger and beginning to move. Number Twenty-Nine watched, fascinated.

  Squawking repeatedly and loudly, the Helibar backed away. Its hooves beat against the pebbled ground as it fled to its ship.