The Half-Life of Johnny Seiko_Hard Lessons

by C. F. Shifflett II

  “Easy!” he said, prying the panel faceplate away.

  The inner hatch silently slid open to reveal a pitch-black corridor, as a loud WHOOSH of stale atmosphere escaped. Moebius hopped from the boy’s shoulder and straight into the darkness. The boy, however, still at the mercy of his imagination when it came to the unknown contents of the dark, pulled a self-activated torch from his backpack to pierce the gloom. It revealed nothing more than a deep passage.

  “Moebi, look for a switch or a light panel, or something like that,” he reminded the Catsimile.

  While the boy made his way inward, he monitored the cat’s progress via his headset’s goggles. Without such trivialities as fear or concern for personal safety, Moebius was able to cover more ground alone.

  In this way, the boy and bot were alike.

  Just like his homeworld predecessor, Moebius’ ability to see in the dark was essential for hunting and survival. As a creation of advanced technology, the faux feline could see in multiple visual spectrums, and possessed unparalleled sonic colocation as well as other unique technological abilities. But unlike the toybot, the boy was a primarily stereoscopic creature, and often found the live feed distracting, yet he always somehow managed to keep one eye trained ahead of him so he wouldn’t trip and fall over anything directly in his path.

  “Even though it looks big enough, I don’t think this thing is a Dreadnaught,” he surmised, “plus, I didn’t see one cannon on the hull.”

  “Perhaps it’s a cargo ship of some kind?” offered Talkie.

  Meters away, Moebius meowed-out a possible find.

  “Check it out, Moe.”

  The toybot’s feed revealed a small recess, carved into the corridor, which appeared next to a long hand-railing of some sort. The cat jumped up onto the tiny, notched shelf on the otherwise featureless wall. They’d found similar control panels on earlier “expeditions.” Making short work of it, he pawed the appropriate switches in the correct sequence.

  The sound of reenergizing relays preceded the systematic activation of the lighting grid in Moebius’ immediate area, briefly flooding the boy’s vision with a blinding glare. He removed the goggles to follow the light at the end of the corridor ahead, which lead to a much larger expanse.

  “Good kitty!” the boy shouted.

  Aside from its tilted vertical orientation, most of the interior appeared to be in perfect condition. The boy was again impressed by the vessel's sleek space-faring design and construction, seeing that the multiple levels surrounding the centralized lift provided direct access to any deck to allow for rapid deployment. He looked up from the safety railing into the cathedral-like interior, now illuminated by shafts of light emanating from tiny sources overhead.

  “What were these ships for...and where is the crew?” he wondered aloud. He knelt down to reward his furry scout with several well-applied chin scratches. “Let’s see what we can find, fuzzy head.”

  A purr of satisfaction gave way to a quick lick of the boy’s hand, and Moebius was off again, leading the way.

  Using Talkie-Book to work as an interface had, by now, become standard practice for the experienced salvaging team. Most of the panels and consoles that they’d found in other wrecks had the same ports and plugs as Comet, and once connected, it was just a matter of running the Digitome’s “invader specific” decryption key to trick the dormant technology into accepting new commands.

  The origin of this indispensable “key” was another mystery altogether. It was a subject the grateful boy never once questioned, and one that the tight-lipped learning tablet would never disclose.

  “What do you see, Lieutenant?”

  “Just a moment, while I traverse the system ...” Talkie-Book replied as a high-speed montage of maps and images flashed across its display, adding, “I’ve located the blueprint schematics.”

  “Can you find a listing of what’s on board?” asked the boy.

  “Any available databases are not accessible from this location. However, if we head up to the command level, I should be able to find that information there,” it replied.

  “All right, to the command level. Find us a path, Lieutenant, we’re going up,” said the boy as he unplugged the Digitome.

  “Let’s go Moebi!”

  No answer.

  “Moebius?”

  Without warning, a crushingly loud klaxon shattered the silence. It was followed by the abrupt closing of all opened sections in the safety railing that lined the central shaft. A rumble began to emanate from the top of the towering structure, accompanied by the sharp shrieks of metal scraping metal.

  This stopped the boy dead in his tracks as the noise began to descend toward him.

  “Uh, Moebius?”

  Still no answer.

  The boy slipped on his goggles, only to find a garbled static display.

  “Lieutenant, are you getting a feed?”

  “No, there must be some sort of structural interference at work.”

  The descending platform drew closer.

  Not sure of what to expect, the boy reached into his pack for his multi-tool. Setting it to “blade mode” he stood fast at the landing, waiting defiantly. After a few moments he reconsidered this bold strategy, instead opting for a less suicidal one, and promptly hid behind a nearby bulkhead.

  “Moebius, where are you?” he called into his headset, his voice a loud whisper.

  He was beginning to worry; it was unlike Moebius to lose contact.

  “Moebius!” the boy shouted, as his heart pounded hard in his chest, each beat rhythmically rattling his vision.

  To the young boy, the screeching cacophony from above sounded like a very large and very angry creature, and one that only grew scarier with proximity. His imagination was vast and unrestrained, so it often gave no logical resistance to a frightening sound, or the mental picture it conjured up.

  He looked down at his sadly inadequate blade, and cursed himself for still not having found a decent weapon worthy of providing real protection from anything as big as whatever was on the platform.

  The huge, screaming lift arrived, heralded by the sound of its imposing doors opening to unveil an interior newly filled with unsettled dust and apprehension.

  As his imagination peaked, so did his anxiety. With blade in hand, and with all the courage one little boy could muster, he opened his eyes and peeked around the corner of the bulkhead to see what horror awaited for him on the platform, only to find...

  Meow?

  “Moebius!! You scared the crap out of me!”

  The faux feline looked at him pointedly, before playfully rolling over on his back.

  “You made your point. I won’t ever leave you behind again, OK?” the boy said, rubbing the toybot’s tummy.

  “Are we there yet?” asked Talkie-Book.

  • • •

  The ride back up the lift was just as loud as its descent, but a bit more gratifying since he’d found a weapon of sorts at the rear of the platform: a broken, jagged-edged pipe about a meter long. Moebius wove figure eights through the boy’s legs, as the boy held the long, blunt object in his hands, considering its effectiveness.

  “How did you get up here so fast, Moe-Moe?” the boy asked.

  The ridiculous question was answered with a stretch as the cat extended his paws far out in front of him and raised his haunches high up in the air, exposing the once-concealed mechanical workings that now peeked through what was left of his old fur covering.

  Reminded again of his friend’s tattered state, the boy administered a fresh volley of chin rubs as a consolation, while the little toybot went into his preprogrammed feline rapture.

  “You’ll always be real to me, fuzzy head.”

  The lift stopped and opened its doors onto another pitch-black corridor. The boy glanced down at the power scanner before slipping his goggles back on, and cautiously peered out of the lift.

  He tried his goggles again; they were now working perfectly.

  “We’re
ready for that map, Lieutenant ...” he reminded Talkie.

  Noticing an opened access panel, the boy moved to inspect it.

  “Are you sure none of these panels will work?”

  “Yes, Detective. All the auxiliary equipment on the lower decks is non-functional; only the central lift and the command core secondary data streams seem to be operational. Here’s that map.”

  A schematic of the deck appeared in the upper portion of the boy’s goggles.

  “Ah, I see! Are you getting this Moebi?”

  A meow of confirmation came over the headset and echoed in the passageway as the toybot resumed his reconnaissance. The boy shined his torch in the direction of the sound and caught a glimpse of the cat disappearing into the long passageway.

  He sprinted to catch up to his fearless guide, following the map closely, until he found a single word written on a large, sealed hatch: COMMAND.

  “The panel for this hatch should permit access to the Command deck,” Talkie pointed out.

  “Well, let’s get it open then.”

  Pulling out the Digitome’s jumper cable from his bag, he tapped into the panel, and Talkie-Book got to work.

  After a brief argument with the locked level’s security protocols, the doorway submitted to a safety reset, opening without further delay.

  The faint stench of death greeted him from the breeched seal, inflicting itself on the boy, who desperately tried to keep from breathing it in.

  “Moebi, go check it out...I can’t go in there yet,” he said, firmly pinching his nose closed.

  Unencumbered by a functional olfactory system, Moebius went in to make a cursory inspection of the room, while the boy waited outside for his stomach to settle before making another attempt. He pulled his undershirt collar up over his nose, but it was a poor filter against the putrid ambiance of decay.

  Resolving to breathe through his mouth only, the boy was finally able to cross the threshold, and pulled out the power scanner.

  Met by a pair of glowing green eyes reflecting back at him from the top of a workstation at the far side of the room, he found Moebius sitting on a cabinet filled with scores of tiny power signatures. But with his attention keenly focused on the scanner, he failed to see any of the “obstacles” that lay on the floor directly ahead of him and stumbled over and onto one of the corpses – one they would later identify as that of the ship’s captain.

  “Ah!” he cried, scrambling to get back on his feet.

  “I assure you, they are harmless, Detective,” Talkie reminded him.

  “Harmless and horrible,” the boy replied, trying to regain his composure, less than thrilled at the introduction.

  Six dead uniformed bodies surrounded him inside the darkened command center. Some were still at their workstations, while others were huddled together, holding each other closely in a final embrace. Seeing dead things up close was nothing new, but seeing this many “fresh” dead people in one place was.

  With the hermetic seal of what had become their tomb broken, the corpses’ long-preserved flesh began to react to the warmer atmosphere, gassing out into the new mix.

  Trying not to gag, the boy made his way to the console and crawled underneath it to remove part of its housing to gain access to the maintenance port that would accommodate Talkie-Book’s jumper cable.

  “What happened to them Lieutenant?” he asked.

  “Traversing...I can find no information to indicate cause. With the primary A.I. database offline, I can only speculate.”

  “OK, guess,” urged the boy.

  “Judging by their condition, I believe they either suffocated or froze to death.”

  “But how? How could they let that happen?”

  “Unknown, Detective.”

  “What would it take to find out?” asked the boy.

  “I believe an engineer and a team of technicians could resurrect this ship’s A.I. in a matter of days.”

  “Oh.”

  “With that said, I may be able to access some cached segments from an auxiliary data-stream.”

  “Something is better than nothing, Lieutenant. Let’s see what you can find, before I add this to my long list of weird mysteries,” urged the boy.

  Returning to the scanner, the boy followed the indicated blips to another locker and opened it, but due to the ship’s list, the compartment doors swung open, spilling out unused power cells onto the grated metal flooring.

  “This should be enough to last us for years!” he shouted excitedly. Forgetting for a moment to breathe through his mouth, he was unavoidably assailed by the urge to wretch.

  Despite his best efforts, he submitted, emptying his stomach’s soured contents onto the frozen flooring.

  “I suggest you relocate the bodies to another compartment.”

  “Oh no, you can’t be serious,” the boy pleaded.

  “I am always serious, Detective,” Talkie replied, adding, “We may be in this location for some time...if you think the odor is bad now, just wait until they begin to thaw out and ...”

  “All right! All right!” the queasy kid shot back.

  He looked around the room hoping for a large closet to hide the bodies in, but found only more stocked lockers and bins. He would have to drag the bodies out into the corridor one by one, and into some other place that he could seal up tight.

  It was at times like this when the he really hated being alone, so he distracted himself by searching each body hoping to find some sort of weapon. Beginning with the first one he’d “met,” he pulled back the corpse’s coat to expose not much more than its uniform tunic underneath.

  Grabbing the captain by the boots, he slowly peeled the warming corpse away from the frosty floor grating, taking special care not to break or tear off any of its exposed flesh, and dragged it into the corridor. As he continued his examination and relocation of the bodies, he found the crew uniforms appealing and made a note to himself to try to find one close to his size.

  Of the six dead invaders, not one of them was armed.

  Chapter 3

  TOMMY

  With the deceased crew thawing inside a utility closet beyond the main lift – out of sight and thankfully out of nose range – the sickened young corpse-wrangler returned to check on Talkie-Book’s plunge deeper into the ship’s technology.

  Believing his student was ready for a new challenge, Talkie-Book decided it was time for the boy to take a more direct, hands-on approach.

  “Detective, I require your assistance.”

  “I’m not moving any more bodies today, Lieutenant…I just thought you should know.”

  “Quite understandable. Fortunately, only your eyes and hands will be required. Please put your goggles on, and take your multi-tool to the row of panels directly behind you,” Talkie-Book instructed him.

  “What are we doing?”

  “Today, we will examine the finer points of multi-phasic, hyper-optic rerouting, and the basics of exotic long-term cache sifting.”

  “Really? I get to do something techie? Finally, something fun!” beamed the boy, trusty tool in hand, poised for action.

  The boy eagerly looked forward to these lessons, which always seemed to occur whenever they discovered a new example of the invaders’ technology.

  Expertly following Talkie-Book’s instructions to the letter, the boy rerouted entire sections of the system to draw power from the upper deck’s long held reservoir, restoring a larger portion of the ship’s vast database in the process. Working inside the guts of the command console, the boy was in his element. His natural interest in this field was a major asset to the tiny band. The boy never passed up an opportunity to access, examine, or deconstruct any piece of technology, when allowed. He thoroughly enjoyed all things technical, mechanical, and otherwise steeped in science, savoring every opportunity to learn more.

  “The engineers on these ships must have been a bunch of second year students," he declared, wiping the perspiration off his brow, “because if a kid like me can fix
up their broken-down pile of junk with a multi-tool and an old beat-up Digitome…

  “I beg your pardon ...”

  “Sorry, Lieutenant, I meant that in a good way.”

  “Perhaps you are simply an individual of exceptional intelligence for your age,” reasoned Talkie-Book.

  “Perhaps,” the boy grinned, he knew when Talkie-Book was being supportive. “Try it now, Lieutenant.”

  A brief blackout preceded the complete restoration of the rest of the upper deck’s lighting. From the corridors to the compartments, the boy could finally see everything in “COMMAND,” and quickly spotted a storage locker across the room labeled “ARMORY.”

  While the console’s main display returned to functionality, Talkie-Book began remapping all the available systems, reordering as much of the database as he could from the restored primary streams and saving the data to the ship’s recently reactivated backup systems. This was the best of all possible results. With this obstacle removed, nothing prevented the inquisitive Digitome from digging further into the ship’s manifest, mission, and what remained of its memory.

  “This vessel’s courtesy functions have been restored. Lighting and power to all online sections will now self-activate to accommodate your presence, Detective.” Talkie-Book announced, accompanied by an uncomfortable audio feedback.

  “That’s kinda loud, Lieutenant...I’m just standing right over here.”

  The grimacing treasure hunter’s ears rang as he viewed the open weapons locker containing a compliment of lethal goods. He could easily identify the rifles and pistols, but the package of weird, little, black orbs with the red shiny buttons on top were completely unknown to him. He couldn’t imagine what they did exactly, but he was determined to find out, stuffing as many of the items as he could into the hard-shelled carrying case also found inside the locker.

  “Let’s hurry up and find those power cells so we can go, Lieutenant. I don’t want to keep Comet waiting too long,” said the boy.

  “Very well. The entire ship’s manifest is at your disposal, Detective.”