She looked up, met Andie Mae’s eyes, and then they both lost it completely, Andie Mae laughing so hard that she literally staggered back a couple of steps to collapse onto a convenient empty chair, giggling helplessly into her hands. Part of it was mirth, another part was pure hysteria at the turn of events, but all of a sudden it was a matter of finding the situation fit for either laughter or for tears.
“I love it,” Andie Mae managed to get out at last, gasping for breath. “How utterly perfect. These are going to be fucking collectibles, if we ever live to tell the tale.”
She’d wanted a unique convention, she’d wanted to leave her mark, to be remembered for this – and although the situation that they found themselves in was hardly of her own devising it was definitely going to work as far as achieving that particular goal was concerned. Nobody who had been at this con, Andie Mae’s maiden voyage as con Chair, would forget the experience – and now the headline of the newsletter had summed it all up in one neat little phrase.
WELCOME TO ABDUCTICON.
This was nothing at all like Andie Mae had planned, nothing like the thing she had looked forward to and dreamed about – when she would step out onto that stage and take control and announce her own con and get the applause of the fen in the audience. It should have been smooth, and rehearsed, and practiced, and predictable. Instead, she waited behind the curtains at the back of the stage for her cue to go on while the belly dancers did their thing out front, her heart beating erratically, her face pale, her eyes burning. She was wearing a figure–hugging dress that seemed to be made entirely of purple sequins –she had found the monstrosity in a thrift shop a couple of years back and had known immediately that this had to be the gown she would wear for her first outing as con Chair at Opening Ceremonies. But events had robbed the gown of its glamour and its spell and she barely remembered what she was wearing.
The belly dancers finished, and streamed off the stage in a cascade of bare feet slapping against the wooden floor. Andie Mae took a deep breath.
“Here goes nothing,” she said. “Are your guys in place?”
“Helen and Bob are out there,” Boss said, using the names that Xander had tacked onto the androids. “Zach is at the back of the hall.”
“Right, then.” Andie Mae hiked up the tight purple–sequined skirt and stepped delicately out onto the stage. A wireless microphone had been left lying on a wooden block to the side of the stage, and she took it up, toggling it on and tapping on it with a fingernail to make sure it was on.
“Hey,” she said, and her voice boomed out across the room, “I’m Andie Mae Wilkinson, and I’m your con Chair. Glad to see so many of you out there tonight, tell everyone who wasn’t here what they missed. Although… some of them will already know. Because we’ve got something to tell you. Change of plans. Like the sign out there in the lobby says, don’t panic… there’s newsletters out there, pick up a copy if you haven’t yet, you need to read this one, we’ve got a couple of, er, folks handing them out right there in the audience… hold up your hand if you haven’t seen one yet… by the way, take a good close look at the folks who are handing them to you. Trust me, Just do… We’re in for quite a wild ride together. But before we get to that – let me introduce your Guests of Honor. Vincent J. Silverman, author of Cyberdome!” Vince stepped out onto the stage, wearing a dark polo–neck and black jeans, looking preposterously younger than he had any right to, and waved at the audience.
“Rory Grissom, Captain James Fleming of the Starship Invictus!” Rory Grissom loped out, clad in his skin–tight red–and–silver Invictus uniform and wearing a huge grin, waving both arms like windmills above his head.
“Artist Guest of Honor Elizabeth Vail! Fan Guest of Honor Brian van Buuren!”
The named individuals dutifully made their appearance.
“And last but by far not least, and not even on your original programs – but you’ll read all about him in that newsletter that you just got – here’s a guest who kind of invited himself along… and then invited us, in a manner that couldn’t be refused, to join him on a magical mystery tour. We’re all going on a trip! You couldn’t pronounce the name he claims as his own, nor would you remember it, and he is not… quite what we would call Homo sapiens. We had to call him something, so we just call him the Boss – and it’s pretty much in his honor that we’ve renamed the con, just as you see on your newsletters.”
Andie Mae lowered her voice, even as Boss stepped out onto the stage behind her and a murmur began to build in the audience. “As for that trip… I’m serious. I’m serious. Your instructions are in the newsletter you’ve just been handed, and please, for your safety and that of your fellow travelers… obey them. We’re shooting for the Moon, chickens. We’re taking you to the Moon. Welcome to Abducticon.”
SATURDAY
WELCOME TO ABDUCTICON.
The signs were up by Saturday morning, with the con attendees mostly responding to the stunning news of their current whereabouts by taking the bit between their teeth and running with it. By the time the ConCom members, after a very late night and a bare handful of hours of sleep, gathered again in the Con Ops room, it was to reports of posters and banners all over the hotel, messages (hard copy on actual scraps of paper, since voicemail and email seemed to have evaporated altogether) asking for everything from an interview with one of the androids to requests for permission to throw Abducticon parties that night, and only a few more realistic (and more panicked) souls asking (with commendable restraint) for more information.
“We’d better be honest about it,” Libby said. “We can’t spin them a yarn.”
“Until our android overlords deign to let us in on the whole picture, we’re pretty much stuck with saying ‘We don’t know yet’ to any and all questions,” said Simon, the head of security and the one facing the huge headache of how to prevent rubber–neckers from crowding out onto the portico outside the main entrance, just to ‘take a look’. There had been a number of such hovering in the lobby, leaving Simon and his troops, as well as the hotel security people, with their hands full.
“Do we just go on with programming as planned?” one of the volunteers asked carefully.
Xander, head of programming, roused like a Halloween cat. “What? Of course we do! I worked too damned hard on this for us just to drop everything and drool into our beer!”
“When’s the first official panel?”
“In about an hour,” Xander said. “I pasted up the program sheets onto the walls of the main corridor. And I plan on being out there with a loudspeaker to announce things if I have to. And I’ve actually had a bit of a brainwave, at that.”
“Being?” Andie Mae, who hadn’t slept much that night, said while trying to smother a jaw–cracking yawn.
“I’ll get the damned ‘bots to go on the panels,” Xander said. “They owe us that much.”
“They don’t owe us zip,” Dave said morosely. “All they want are some nebulous ‘answers’, and anything else – ”
“They do so,” Xander interrupted. “If they’re actually doing the ‘boldly go where no man has gone before’ move and taking us on an unscheduled freaking outing to the Moon…”
Dave snorted. “It’s hardly the final frontier, Xander. We’re just retracing some ancient footsteps. Or engine burns, anyway. To the Moon and back – once a small step for man – ”
“Engine burns,” said Lester Long, one of the volunteers, thoughtfully. “Er, just how are we performing this magical mystery tour, if one may ask? This is hardly – if I understand what you’ve said correctly – the most aerodynamic of shapes to sail around the cosmos in.”
This was an old argument. “Neither was the Borg cube,” Xander snapped. “Aerodynamic doesn’t matter where there isn’t, you know, air.”
“Fine out here – but how did we get out of our air – and if we plan on coming back, how do they intend to accomplish that little miracle? We’re a hank of rock, no better than a meteor, and we’ll probably
do a spectacular re–entry. Come back in with a bang. A big bang. Tunguska will be nothing on us.”
“Boom,” Libby said faintly.
“Big badda boom,” Lester said helpfully.
“You’re still applying our physics to any of this?” Dave asked incredulously. “We’re just as likely to come back in and turn into a bowl of petunias on re–entry as we are to flame out.”
“A very warped Infinite Improbability Drive,” Libby said.
“Hell, yeah!” Xander said. “To Infinity, and beyond! That might be entertaining all by itself. But when we come back – if we come back – whatever that schedule is – we still have a con to run, and a bunch of people who paid good money to be here. Our responsibilities didn’t end just because we got hijacked, and I’m damned if I’m going to let the android crew just sit back and ignore us now. They have to entertain us. Seriously. I plan on having Sim’s guys stand guard on the panel rooms if necessary. But they will play.”
“Do they know that yet?” said Andie Mae sharply. And then relented. “Oh, Xander. I’m on your side. I’m on my side, on my con’s side. Of course I’ll back you. I just don’t know how it’ll work out. The only one with the gift of the gab in that sense seems to be Boss – the rest have been pretty monosyllabic thus far. But it’s worth a try and there will certainly be a measure of increased attendance because people might just come along to gawk and point. Fine with me. Go do.”
“Right,” Xander said. “I have stuff to see to. I’ll report back later.”
“Speaking of our guests or masters or our Tin Man greatgreatgreatgreatgranchildren,” Dave said, “anyone seen them this morning?”
“We’d better find them,” Andie Mae said. “If Xander gets his way he’s gonna want them, and I still want to talk to that Boss creature. And I emphatically don’t want them wandering around screwing with everyone else’s minds. Or listening to some of the drivel that they might get eagerly told by some of the fringe elements out there. I wouldn’t want them to get the wrong end of the stick about us. They might decide that we’re too bizarre by half to bother saving, after all – collateral damage, send the rock into the sun, be done with us…”
“You really think they’ll return us?”
“They’d better,” growled Andie Mae. “I still have to have words with Al, and he’s back on the home rock. Come on, Dave, let’s go android hunting.”
They got as far as the hotel lobby and had started down the corridor that wound between the two hotel ballrooms, the larger one which they had used for Opening Ceremonies and the smaller one across the hallway where the gamers had been ensconced, when Luke Barnes, the erstwhile Night Manager but now by default the Duty Manager for the entire resort, caught up with them. He looked like hell; clearly he’d had less sleep than Andie Mae, his eyes were bloodshot, and his blond hair was standing on end in a way that made him look endearingly like the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz movie. He had two companions in tow, a bearded and bespectacled academic–looking type and an older man wearing a peaked hat and a jacket with gold braid on the sleeves.
“I need to talk to you,” Luke said. “About several things, really. This is Dr Cohen, and this is Captain William Lindstrom, he’s senior flight crew for Enterprise Airlines…”
Dave shook his head in disbelief. “Enterprise. Airlines. Who’d have thunk it.”
“We’re quite conveniently situated for one of the smaller regional airports,” Luke said, a shade defensively, “and the crews – ”
“Never mind, don’t take it personally,” Andie Mae said. “What’s the problem?”
Luke actually stared at her open–mouthed for a moment. The man introduced as Dr Cohen stepped forward.
“If I may,” he said. “You do realize, of course, that there is a reasonably sizeable contingent of guests at this hotel right now who are not part of your particular group, and who are very much in a bad way. I mean, some of them had plans for this morning – which were understandably made rather untenable when they realized that there was little out there but outer space. I’ve had to supply sedatives to one older woman who almost had a stroke when she made the mistake of asking one of your more ordinary–looking attendees in the corridor what was going on and was gleefully informed that she was on a journey to the Moon, quite literally, and most emphatically without her permission and against her will….”
“I’ve moved some of these people into a dedicated set of rooms on a single upper floor in Tower 3,” Luke said. “They will have to be kept calm and probably sequestered…”
“And yeah, quite understandably, probably sedated,” Dave murmured. “And there will be some of our gang who will have trouble with this too and may end up in your ward. I’m really sorry about this, Doctor, it was not of our doing.”
“I realize that,” the doctor said, “but you’re kind of in the hot seat, I am told, and you’re the ones at whom the finger points right now. For the time being I have a certain amount of the relevant medications which may become necessary – but I have no idea how long this whole thing is supposed to go on for, or if it has a planned conclusion of any sort that would make me feel a little more sanguine about our surviving the experience. And when I run out of supplies…”
“And speaking of those,” Luke said, “we were due a delivery of fresh foodstuffs for the kitchens for both restaurants this morning – and that, fairly obviously, isn’t going to happen now, is it? We have a relatively limited food supply, given the number of people at the hotel right now, and I am not at all sure about our drinking water…”
“May I be of any assistance?”
“Actually,” Andie Mae said sweetly, turning to Boss, who had just stepped up to the group, “we were hoping to run into you…”
“We have a problem,” Luke blurted, staring at the silver man. “Actually, more than one problem.”
“We’re people,” Dave said. “We need to eat.”
“And I need access to medical supplies,” Dr. Cohen said.
“We can deal with these things. Come with me.”
They all obediently followed him to where a dark rectangular object stood against the far wall of the hallway. It had a square opening at about waist level, and a mysterious light source providing a warm orange–tinged glow to the interior, highlighting a silvery platform in the middle of it which looked rather like a microwave turntable. An array of blinking lights twinkled beside this opening. Dave stepped forward and examined the thing thoroughly, and then turned back to Boss, frowning.
“Okay,” he said, “I’ll bite. What is it?”
“It is…” Boss began.
“Hi!” Xander said brightly, stepping around the airline captain’s side and pushing forward to stand beside Dave. “I’ve got something to tell you, but first – er – what…?”
“It is something that I have seen referred to in the context of your own history and fiction as a replicator,” Boss said.
“A replicator,” Dave echoed.
“Yes.”
“As in, something that replicates something.”
“Yes.”
“You mean, like food, maybe. Just like on Star Trek.”
“We have seen something similar on that show. Yes.”
“Like, food.”
“Yes.”
“Prove it.”
“I’ll do it,” Xander said, grinning broadly. He stepped up to the opening and said, in his best Jean–Luc Picard voice, “Tea. Earl Gray. Hot.”
The opening in the obelisk opaqued for a moment, presenting a perfectly featureless blank surface, and Xander began to turn his head in consternation to ask if it was something that he had done – but then the opening reasserted itself and this time, in the middle of the platform, sat a tall glass cup containing a brown steaming liquid.
They all stared at it for a moment.
“Well,” Dave said at length, after the silence began to stretch from astonished into awkward, “you asked for it – aren’t you going to taste test?”
Xander swallowed, and reached out for the cup. “I’m damned if I know what Earl Gray tea is actually supposed to taste like,” he muttered. “But here goes…”
Everyone craned in closer as Xander brought the cup to his lips and took a sip – and then grimaced, which made at least one of the people in the circle draw in their breath sharply. But Xander shook his head quickly to dispel the shock and fear.
“No, no, it’s fine, I think, but next time I think I will have to specify sugar. How does Picard drink this stuff? Give me a good cup of coffee any day…”
The opening opaqued briefly, and Xander yelped in consternation as a cup of coffee appeared on the silver platform. “Somebody get that!”
Luke took it and sipped. “Not bad,” he said rather reluctantly.
“Well, it’s great for elevenses,” Dr. Cohen said skeptically. “But what about – ”
Xander stepped away from the replicator, nursing his tea. “So why don’t you try it?”
“What am I supposed to do?” the doctor said, taking Xander’s place and staring helplessly into the replicator.
“Just ask for the thing that you want,” Xander said.
“Let’s keep it simple,” the doctor muttered. “Er, aspirin…?”
“Specify quantity and dosage,” a soft voice said, emerging from the machine, making the doctor rear back in startled shock. But then he peered at the opening a little more closely, took off his spectacles to rub at his eyes, and appeared to make an effort to gather his thoughts.
“Er, twenty pills. Make it low dosage to begin with. Baby aspirin – 81 milligram.”
The opening opaqued, cleared, revealed a small plastic tube with twenty white pills in it. The doctor reached in and took it, turning it over in his hand.
“Well?” Dave said.
“Well, I guess,” the doctor said, sounding unconvinced. “I mean, I suppose they look like aspirin. If I opened this up I have no doubt they’d smell like aspirin.. But would they actually have the effect that I would expect…?”
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