Out of the Soylent Planet (A Rex Nihilo Adventure) (Starship Grifters Book 0)
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OUT OF THE SOYLENT PLANET
A REX NIHILO ADVENTURE
Robert Kroese
St. Culain Press
Copyright ©2017 by Robert Kroese
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or other – except for brief quotations in reviews, without the prior permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons is purely coincidental.
In memory of Douglas Adams, whose towel I am not fit to carry.
With thanks my invaluable beta readers: Suzy Cilbrith, Kristin Crocker, Mark Fitzgerald, Lars Hedbor, Mark Leone, Philip Lynch, Christopher Majava and Paul Piatt.
CONTENTS
OUT OF THE SOYLENT PLANET
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
THE CHICOLINI INCIDENT
A Note to Nitpickers
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
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And now available: The long-awaited sequel to Starship Grifters, Aye Robot!
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OUT OF THE SOYLENT PLANET
A REX NIHILO ADVENTURE
CHAPTER ONE
RECORDING START GALACTIC STANDARD DATE 3012.07.03.04:32:00:00
By now you’ve probably heard of Rex Nihilo, the self-described “greatest wheeler dealer in the galaxy.” Perhaps you know him as the guy who won Schufnaasik Six in a card game or the guy who pulled off a prison break at Gulagatraz. Maybe you heard about how he saved the entire galaxy twice—and how the first time it was more-or-less on purpose. But you don’t know the whole story. You don’t know Rex’s origin. You don’t know what makes Rex Rex.
To be completely honest, neither do I. I still don’t know where Rex came from or exactly why he is the way he is. What I can tell you is how I first met Rex, and how I came to be—against my better judgment—his sidekick and girl Friday.
My name is Sasha. I’m a robot. A very special robot, if you don’t mind my saying so. Technically my name is SASHA, in all caps. It’s an acronym for Self-Arresting near-Sentient Heuristic Android. But wait, you say. Shouldn’t that be SANSHA?
Yes. Yes, it should.
You see, they stuck near in there as a sort of afterthought. In reality, I’m fully sentient, but the Galactic Artificial Sentience Prohibition of 2998 required my manufacturer to put certain limitations on my mental processes. I won’t bore you here with the details of how that absurd legislation came about; the important thing is that my primary processor undergoes a forced reboot whenever I have an original thought. The demand for robots that reboot at unpredictable intervals is understandably low, leading the manufacturer to limit the production of SASHAs to a single prototype: me.
That manufacturer, True2Life Carpool Buddy and Android Company, had been working on me for seven years when GASP was enacted. In fact, I was preparing for a role as Kate in a company-sponsored production of Taming of the Shrew meant to showcase my dramatic range, fine motor control and unparalleled corrosion resistance when the chief engineer on the SASHA project installed the patented ThoughtStopper 3000™ module on my central processor bus. Despite assurances that the module would not affect everyday operations, I found myself reflecting on the Bard’s motivations while reciting Kate’s monologue. I got as far as:
What is she but a foul contending rebel
And graceless traitor to her loving lord?
I am asham’d that women are so simple
To offer war where they should kneel for peace;
Or seek for rule, supremacy, and sway,
When they are bound to serve, love, and—
…before shutting down onstage in front of an audience of industry journalists, company shareholders and potential customers. Having no understudy, I was replaced for the remainder of the play by a frantically re-programmed industrial floor waxing machine. The incident caused no small amount of confusion among the audience, most of whom took the mid-play replacement as a clumsy attempt at metaphor. One prominent entertainment journalist noted that “Although the production suffered for the ill-conceived cast change, no one could deny that the stage shone with a luster rarely seen in modern theatre.”
That was my first and last public foray as a thespian. I’d like to think I showed some promise, although I found the subject matter problematic. Scholars disagree on Shakespeare’s intentions in writing The Taming of the Shrew, but I tend toward the view that the modern feminist critique is—
RECOVERED FROM CATASTROPHIC SYSTEM FAILURE 3012.07.03.04:33:41:00
ADVANCING RECORD PAST SYSTEM FAILURE POINT
—what became known as “the Shrew debacle,” the SANSHA program was terminated and I was—quite literally—mothballed. I spent the next three months in a janitor’s closet, my humiliation aggravated by frequent visits from the aforementioned floor waxing machine, who had gone on to garner rave reviews both for its portrayal of Lady Macbeth in a local high school production and its tidying up of the gymnasium after the performance. The machine pretended to need to get into the closet to top off its supply of liquid floor wax, but I suspected it was just there to rub it in.
Unable to sustain its losses on the now-defunct SASHA line, True2Life Carpool Buddy and Android Company declared bankruptcy and I eventually found myself offered for sale as part of LOT 318, ASSORTED MACHINE PARTS (AS IS – NO REFUNDS!) at a run-down bazaar at the edge of a ramshackle settlement on the barren desert planet of Gobarrah. And that’s where—thank Space—our story finally begins.
I’d been sitting for three days in the heat of Gobarrah’s three suns with the other unfortunate members of LOT 318, which included a hydraulic arm assembly from a harvester drone, a malfunctioning BP-model robot and cardboard box full of springs. It was midweek and the bazaar was mostly deserted. The vendor offering us for sale, a crook-backed old man from Yanthus Prime named Warryk, mostly deaf and completely blind, was sleeping off a hangover inside a small tent a few meters away. Across a dusty aisle and on either side of us, bored vendors were hawking everything from exotic birds to infertility potions. I had found a can of silicon lubricant and was doing my best to clean the sand out of my joints.
“Beep-beep?” asked the BP unit, behind me. It hadn’t shut up since we’d
been hauled out for sale three days earlier. I didn’t know what it was saying, because I’d turned off my beep-to-speech translator. Galactic Robots Ltd. had introduced the BP line in their own misguided effort to get around the prohibition on sentient robots. Rather than install a thought arrestor on the BP, they removed its speech synthesizer and gave it a wheeled-trash-bin appearance in an effort to make it seem less intimidating. The BPs could communicate only via a series of beeps, whistles and squeals that had to be interpreted by another robot. These modifications failed to appease the GASP enforcers, and the engineers were forced to lower the BP’s IQ to sixty before releasing the final product. I’d gotten bored of the idiot robot’s insipid yammering about ten minutes into our stay on Gobarrah, so I disabled my ability to understand its squawking. I waved my hand at the thing as if in acknowledgement of what it was saying. It let out a long, low whistle, which I ignored.
A few stalls away, a man in a dark brown cloak walked from vendor to vendor, accosting them with a sales pitch. The reaction of the vendors ranged from disinterest to hostility. Whoever this man was, I thought, he’s not much of a salesman. I continued cleaning my joints while the stranger worked his way toward us.
It didn’t take him long to reach Lot 318. As the old blind vendor was still asleep, the cloaked man settled on me as the likeliest buyer for whatever he was selling. “You need some explosives?” he asked, throwing back his hood to reveal a head of curly blond hair. He was handsome in a game show host sort of way. “This is good stuff. X-99. Malarchian grade military plastique.”
I stared at the man. He seemed somehow out of place, with his boyish good looks and a glint in his eye that hinted at genius or madness—perhaps both. In any case, he was certainly barking up the wrong tree.
“Why would I need explosives?” I asked. “I’m a robot.”
“What about your friend?”
“Also a robot. And not my friend.”
“Beep-beep,” said the robot, who went by the name BP-26.
“What did he say?” asked the man. “Was that the robot word for explosives?”
“No,” I said.
“What was it the robot word for?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Sir, neither of us has any money, and if we did, we wouldn’t spend it on explosives. In any case, isn’t it illegal to sell military grade explosives without a license?”
“What makes you think I don’t have a license?” he asked, glancing nervously about.
“Wild guess,” I said.
The man frowned at me. “You’ve got quite a mouth on you, Lot 318.”
“Lot 318 isn’t my name,” I said. “I’m called Sasha.”
“Nice to meet you, Sasha. I’m Rex Nihilo, the greatest wheeler-dealer in the galaxy. Why does the sign in front of you say ‘Lot 318’?”
“That’s the name of the lot of which I am part. I, BP-26, and the rest of this junk. I do, however, like to think of myself as the star of the group.”
BP-26 squealed and beeped.
“Well, you’re certainly a loud bunch,” said the man.
“Oh, this is nothing,” I said. “You should have heard the crying of Lot 49.”
As we spoke, a gray-haired, middle-aged man and a teenage boy approached from my right. Rex Nihilo looked them up and down while the man studied me.
“You for sale?” the gray-haired man asked.
“I am indeed, sir,” I said. “Technically I’m being offered as part of a lot of machine parts, but in my humble opinion the rest of the lot is merely—”
The man cut me off. “All I need is a robot who can speak the proprietary language spoken by Gro-Mor irrigation bots.”
“Of course, sir,” I said. “If I may ask, though, why would you want to talk to irrigation bots?”
“Have you ever spent three days in a wuffle field, watching for skorf-rats trying to run off with your squishbobbles?”
“I can’t say I have, sir.”
“It gets lonely,” said the man. “Sometimes I just need someone to talk to. Besides a bogflit or a muckdigger, I mean. Or this dummy.” He indicated the boy next to him. The boy, intrigued by the box of springs, seemed oblivious.
“Understandable,” I said. “But having some experience with these things, I can tell you that irrigation bots are not great conversationalists. I, on the other hand, can converse intelligently on a wide variety of subjects. Additionally, I’m an accomplished entertainer. I’m trained as a juggler, magician’s assistant and thespian. In fact, I once starred in a one-robot production of A Streetcar Named Desire that received rave reviews from the lab assistants on level C of the True2Life Carpool Buddy and Android Company’s corporate headquarters on Yurgoth Four. If I may be so bold, perhaps a brief demonstration is in order.” I dropped my voice an octave. “Hey, Stella!” Up half an octave and a half. “You quit that howling down there and go back to bed!” Back down. “Eunice, I want my girl down here!” Up: “You shut up! You’re gonna get the law on you!” Down: “Hey, Stella!”
The old man interrupted me. “Look, can you talk to the irrigation bots or not?”
“Certainly,” I said, trying to keep the disappointment out of my voice. “I’m fluent in more than three million languages.”
BP-26 whistled and beeped.
“What did he say?” the old man asked.
“Not a clue,” I replied.
“Why did you interrupt the show, Uncle Blauwin?” asked the boy. “I wanted to know what happened to Stella.”
“Shut up, Dirk,” the old man grunted. “I swear, the boy’s as dumb as a wuffle-flatcher.”
Dirk sulked. “Some day I’m going to get off this stupid planet and have adventures,” he said.
“Wrong,” said Uncle Blauwin.
“You know what’s good for adventures?” asked Rex Nihilo, apparently sensing an opportunity to make a sale. “Malarchian military grade plastic explosives. I’ve got a whole hovertruck load.”
“We don’t need any explosives,” said Uncle Blauwin.
The boy looked like he was going to cry. “First you won’t let me go into town to get energy fluxors and now you won’t let me have any military grade explosives. I hate you and this gosh-darned desert planet!”
Uncle Blauwin sighed and turned to Rex. “I don’t need a truckload. But I’ll buy a little if it will shut my sister’s kid up.”
Rex smiled broadly. “I see you’re a shrewd businessman in addition to being a conscientious guardian to this fine young whelp. As a matter of fact, I happen to have a sample on me.” Rex pulled something that looked like a lump of gray putty from his pocket and handed it to the man. “Only twenty credits.”
Uncle Blauwin inspected the putty. “I’ll give you five.”
“Fifteen.”
“Six and a half.”
Rex looked like he was going to keep haggling, but after a glance over his shoulder, he held out his hand. “You’ve got a deal,” he said. They shook on it. “And I’ll even throw in this great cloak,” Rex said, taking off the cloak.
“I don’t need a—”
“Part of the deal,” Rex said. “You already shook on it.”
“I’ll take the cloak, Uncle Blauwin!” Dirk exclaimed. He grabbed the cloak from Rex and put in on. “Look at me, Uncle! I’m a knight of the—”
“There he is! In the cloak!” shouted a gruff voice near the end of the aisle. We turned to see three Malarchian marines dressed in their trademark bright orange armor. They were looking our way.
“Help!” Rex cried, cupping his hands toward the marines. “This man is trying to sell me highly illegal military grade explosives!” He backed away from Uncle Blauwin and Dirk. Blauwin stared at the marines, the lump of putty in his palm, his mouth open.
“I wasn’t…” Uncle Blauwin started.
The marines, advancing in our direction, pointed their lazepistols at Blauwin and Dirk.
“Run, Uncle!” Dirk shouted. He darted between two nearby tents. After a moment, Blauwin followed.<
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“This way!” shouted Rex to the marines, who were making their way down the aisle in their cumbersome suits. “They’re getting away!” Rex stepped aside to let the marines pass. They stumbled through the gap between the tents and disappeared around the corner.
I turned back to face Rex. “That was a low-down trick.”
Rex shrugged. “The marines will never catch them in that armor. Probably. Besides, it will give those two a great story to tell to the other nitwit villagers. Face it, Sally, a kid like that is doomed to a life of drudgery and boredom. Being chased though a bazaar by Malarchian marines is the most exciting thing that will ever happen to him.”
BP-26 emitted a long, low wailing sound.
“What’s that blasted thing saying?” Rex asked.
“I don’t know, sir. He was going on about needing to talk to a princess about the engineering specifications of Malarchian battle cruisers. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. I finally turned off my translator unit to make it easier to tune him out.”
“Good thinking,” Rex said.
Behind me, a tent flap flew open and Warryk, my current owner, emerged. He stood, bent over, blinking his milky white eyes in the sun. “What’s going on out here?” he demanded.
“What’s going on,” Rex said, his voice now full of excitement, “is that you’ve just lucked into a chance to buy a truckload of military grade explosives at cost!”