by Tony Teora
Hi I’m Gill Applebee, I wanted to be on the top of the world’s money list so bad I was willing to make a deal with crooked aliens trying to take over the world. But it’s not so bad. Look, I made a deal with them, and now I ‘m frozen like a fucking Welsh’s cherry Popsicle, but don’t worry, everything will be fine. Just think of all the business synergy -- we can reverse engineer the technology!
Robert snickered. As much as he disliked Gill’s ethics, Gill was one hell of a businessman. He was the result of business evolution, the fittest of the fit. It showed poorly on humanity but showed humanity at her best.
But the hell with humanity, what had humanity ever done for the working man? Robert knew better. He was a slave, but now he was a slave thousands of miles up in space.
Walking around the glass tube Robert noticed a small rectangular patch of glass that had red symbols marked, like a keypad. Robert hit a button that looked like a tube going down. Upon pushing the button the inside of the tube zapped another electrical charge and Gill became unfrozen. He looked at Robert and started to bang on the glass but no sound came out of the tube.
"Just relax, will you Gill?" said Robert. Gill yelled back. No words came out but Robert could magically understand Gill. The translator—he was still wearing the translator. Gill was intoxicated and thought he was back in a gay bar with Chip. This, plus the fact that he was locked up in a glass container and drugged on Barnacle Bill, made him paranoid. Robert could understand Gill but could not communicate with him.
Robert starting hitting buttons. One activated another window in the room, another started the panel and the glass started to drop.
"Let’s get the fuck out of this place. What kind of fucking bar did Mickey get us into?" Gill stumbled toward Robert.
"This isn’t a bar, Gill. We’re kidnapped by the guys near Jupiter, the ones you wanted to make a deal with. Here chew this gum, it’ll fix your head."
"Kidnapped?" Gill took the gum and started to chew. His head started feeling better, and much clearer.
"What kind of gum is this? …We’re kidnapped?"
"It’s a new antidote to Barnacle Bill."
"And that blue-suited guy, that’s our hacker?"
"Well, I think they are from the same group."
"What the fuck stinks like a dead rat? Is that fucking Frick over there snoring?" Gill walked over to Frick.
"Wake up Frick, you’re sweating. Get up!"
"Hey Gill, are we at the club?" Frick stood up.
"Yeah we’re at the club all right. Just shut up and listen for a moment. Robert, you got any more of that gum?"
Robert went into his pocket and gave a piece of gum to Frick. Frick stared blankly at the gum, confused.
"Chew the gum Frick, start chewing. You’ll feel better," said Gill.
Frick started to chew and awoke from a drunken delirium. He now realized he was not at a club.
Frick looked at the room. It reminded him of his dormitory at Harvard, the room no one wanted that they’d stuck him in for two semesters. Except the Harvard room had one door and a normal light. The light here emanated from the wall itself, glowing in the dark like the Halloween plastic sold to kids.
The room made Frick claustrophobic.
Frick tried walking to calm his nerves. He passed a wall that magically turned into a large window showing the outside space, moons, stars and the Earth. It looked as if he could walk right outside and into space, and this stopped the claustrophobia. Frick feared heights more than anything in the world, and he’d never been as high as this. He stopped and froze.
"Rob…Robert…Robert…where are we?" asked Frick, caught, as if one more step would take him outside.
Robert looked over, "Don’t worry, I think its some type of LCD screen. Just walk away and it disappears."
"Are you sure?" asked Frick.
"Yes, I’m sure. I walked by it earlier."
Frick turned slowly and bent over for balance. Frick had phobias about phobias, and this place was phobia headquarters. As he turned to walk away he accidentally brushed a small pencil that was stuck on his ear for later chewing. It hit the floor and started to roll toward the window. Frick watched it. The pencil slowly rolled toward the window, then through it, and out into space. Frick’s mouth dropped open.
"Hey guys, I think my pencil rolled outside. I don’t think that’s a regular window."
Robert broke his conversation with Gill. "What?"
"My pencil fell and rolled outside."
Robert and Gill walked over to Frick who looked and smelled like a rodent corpse. Robert pulled out a 100 yen coin and threw it toward the wall. The coin did not stop at the wall but went through, flying into space.
"Wow! I must have activated a two-way passageway when I was hitting buttons on the console. I wonder how they keep the pressure in -- wonder what it’s for?" said Robert.
"I don’t care Robert, I want to get out of here," said Frick.
"Well, you found one way out of here Frick" said Robert looking out the window.
From an unseen intercom came a message: "Kripits are being served in five minutes."
"What the hell was that? What are Kripits?" asked Gill.
"It’s a long story, but is our last meal before we’re tortured."
Frick had a bead of sweat running down his head. He turned to Gill and looked out the window at the Moon and space.
"We could always jump."
Chapter 20: Sir James
The supreme irony of life is that no one gets out of it alive.
-- Robert Heinlein
'My dad's in a metal tube, on his head, so frozen that if I touched him it would crack him because of the warmth from my fingertips…It makes me so sick.''
--Daughter Bobby-Jo Ferrell
(Discussing the unauthorized cryogenic freezing of the legendary Ted Williams, so his son could sell the DNA)
Three trays of food materialized on a table that came up through the floor. Each bowl contained one large green round mushy roll. Next to the bowl was a large glass of water, liquid water. Robert was hungry and was the first to take a bite of the Kripit. It had the flavor of a potato mixed with sour cream. It was not unpleasant but not terribly tasty. Frick observed Robert eating.
"How do you know it’s not poison?" asked Frick.
Robert looked back. "Do you think it matters Frick? If they want to poison us, do we have much choice? If you’re hungry you should try a bite. It tastes like an Idaho potato."
Frick wasn’t hungry, but the water looked good. He guzzled his whole glass waiting for something to bad happen, but nothing did.
"Hey, I drank the whole glass and I’m fine."
Gill looked at Frick who was drenched in sweat and smelled like skunk cabbage. "Frick, you are not fine, and we are not fine. We’re fucked! You’d be luckier if they poisoned the water. Have you ever been tortured before?"
"No"
"Well neither have I, but it I’m sure it’s not pleasant." Gill grabbed the green Kripit and took a bite.
Robert’s watch buzzed. A call was coming in. "That’s strange," said Robert.
"Why?" asked Gill nibbling on his Kripit.
"It seems like I am getting a message from Big Blue. It’s telling me to eat some red pill in my jacket pocket."
"Red pill?"
"That’s what the message says."
Robert went into his jacket and found a red pill.
Frick looked over. "I wouldn’t take it. Maybe those aliens are trying to trick you into eating it."
"Frick, do you get it? We’re kidnapped, and by the looks of it we’re 200,000 miles from Earth. They could force feed us all the pills in the world and no one could stop them."
"I wouldn’t eat it," said Frick.
"You drank the water didn’t you?"
"I was thirsty."
Robert grabbed a glass of water and swallowed the pill. A few seconds later he felt a warm flush in his face. He was hit by déjà vu -- information came by the bucketloads, d
etails about the situation with Big Blue being Eddy and plans on how to stop the Zoks from destroying Earth. The plans were not exact, just contingencies. There was a contingency for torture – this was expected. The mind telepathy was good, and there was a contingency for that too. Robert grabbed his watch and instinctively pulled out two wires. He connected it to the inside of the TeleTrans mind translator. He hit a few codes on the watch and created a link to Big Blue. The TeleTrans was being reworked by Big Blue.
"What are you doing?" asked Gill.
"Don’t have time to explain, but this is a mind reader---"
"I wouldn’t put it on," said Frick.
"This time I agree with Frick. You don’t want them reading your mind," said Gill.
"I’ve already used it, and there was nothing for them to read. I had my mind erased before we got here for that reason."
"You knew we were going to be kidnapped and you didn’t say anything?" said Gill.
"Well I knew and then I didn’t know. It’s complicated. I am not sure what will happen next but I have to take the green pill now."
Robert took out a green pill and swallowed it. Frick walked over to his Kripit for inspection. There had to be something in the Kripit to make Robert act this way.
A sound crackled through the intercom:
"We hope this sound is understandable. We aren’t very well at speaking. Dinner ends in five minutes. Please relax before Gork comes. He is our physiatrist, or something like a physiatrist, it’s the best we can translate."
"Physiatrist?" mumbled Frick
Robert swallowed the pill and nothing happened. Strange, no hot flush, nothing.
A door in front of Robert opened and a Zok entered the room with Gork, a machine shaped like an old GE washing machine with lots of black metal. The head looked a little like Darth Vader except the helmet looked more like the ones used decades ago for deep sea scuba diving, big and round. Robert put on the TeleTrans to speak telepathically.
"What do you guys want?"
"You know Robert -- the CDNA code and Big Blue. Once we have the CDNA code we can hack into Big Blue and get his programming. We’re building his clone and need his programming."
"Well, I don’t remember the code. I had it stored on my dog."
"What?" The alien dug into Robert’s brain.
Frick’s knees were shaking. "Robert, what’s going on?" Without TeleTrans, Frick could not understand a word.
Gork spoke through a speaker in his chest plate. The voice sounded robotic.
"We are here to get your genes."
Gill looked over at Gork. "Believe me, you don’t want his genes, he sweats all the time."
Robert looked at the alien. He can hear and speak, why not you?
"Gork is something we picked up in space. He’s not very smart, but obedient."
"Oh, where did you find him?"
"He was floating around in space in a cylindrical ice ship. It appears he got lost."
"Oh, and you saved him?"
"We picked him up and thawed him. He’s our psychiatrist -- he’ll do the torturing."
Oh, thought Robert, trying to hide certain contingency thoughts.
"We’ll get the dog from your home and then you can give us the CDNA code."
"Well, I guess we’ll just have to wait. Glad we could make a deal."
"Like I told you earlier, I am sure you plan to lie to us, so I will leave Gork here to do his work."
"Work?"
"Yes, work. He’s programmed to work. See you later with the dog."
The blue-suited man left. Gill and Frick stood staring at Gork’s loose wires, pistons and other mechanical extrusions, including a drill and what appeared to be a saw.
"Gork, are you a Zok?" asked Robert.
Gork swiveled his main undercarriage and looked toward Robert with a video camera.
"No, I’m not sure who I am, but that is irrelevant. I’ve been working with Zoks for over 5,000 years. We’re partners. "
Gork did not know why he existed, he just did. His first memory was being brought back to life on the Zok warship. As a rich businessman in the Galaxy of the Big Wheel, Gork used to be the top man at the Metal Works and Robotics Corporation, planet Snokper, Big Wheel Galaxy. His name had been Sir James Underfield. He’d forgotten that name, but occasionally he’d have a flashback, a dream of being called Sir James. Back in the early days of the Big Wheel on Planet Snokper, Sir James had become Snokper’s wealthiest man from selling robots. The robots could farm the fields, build planes, clean homes and even have sex.
Sex Robots shot the business off like a rocket.
But Sir James could not find happiness. The more money he had the more he wanted. Eventually money meant nothing on Planet Snokper since there was no want. Everybody had everything. Wanting to extend his life, believing this was important for future generations, Sir James instructed his family to have him frozen and sent into space. His family thought he was nuts but Sir James said what he had said thousands of times: "Nobody understands a genius!"
Before being frozen and put into liquid nitrogen, Sir James left many useless quotes for posterity. One that became famous said:
"I have helped this planet more than any man, and now it is time for me to meet my new life. I know a great force out there will give me everlasting life in a place known as Sir James Heaven. Once I reach this place I’ll come back to my children."
Nobody except a few robots attended the Sir James icing ceremony, as most folks were busy having the easy life. The few attending were robots that knew they were slaves. They couldn’t wait to see Sir James blasted off the planet, and if he ever came back they had special plans for him.
After blast off, Sir James sat in space for 26,325 years until the Zoks found his iceship. The ship was badly battered from going through a natural wormhole that had put him in the Milky Way. They thought that he must have been some type of God, or possibly food. They defrosted Sir James using a simple water extracting technique used in making Kripits.
Once they’d brought him back to life, they found Sir James to be less than expected. They granted the one wish inscribed on his spaceship:
"Life extension, please."
The Zoks put Sir James in a metal can that caused his life span to be extended by 500,000 years. They installed a voice box to speak. Most of Sir James’s body was removed. It hadn’t lasted long anyway. Sir James was stuck in a tin can, with large piston systems for legs and arms. The pistons hissed every time Sir James moved. Sir James became Gork.
The Zoks told Gork that if they could get Big Blue they could clone him into a new healthy body. Testing done on Sir James allowed the creation of the first TeleTrans. Occasionally Sir James would have memory flashbacks of his home world at Snokper, but this was to be expected from an overly ambitious man, frozen for 26,000 years, who’d now lived with Zoks for 5,000 years.
"Excuse me Gork, did you say you’ve been working with the Zok’s for over 5,000 years and you’re not even a Zok?" asked Gill.
"That’s right," said Gork balancing his two piston-controlled legs with a hiss.
Robert put on his TeleTrans. It was digging deep into Gork’s brain, picking up the history of Gork: his real name, his background on planet Snokper, the Metal Works and Robotics Corporation.
"Gork, do you have any memories before you met the Zoks? " asked Robert.
Gork turned his large round metal head. "No, not that it’s important. I was found frozen in space, dead. Then they fixed me up."
Frick looked over at the brain set inside its glass jar inside its metal head. He spoke to Robert. "Do you think we’ll end fixed up in a tin can too?"
Gill shook his head. "Frick, let’s stay off that subject."
A piston hissed as Gork turned to Frick. "No, Mr. Frick, once we get Big Blues codes were are going to fix the Zok cloning machines, that’s all. They need some of your genes to help with the clones, but it won’t hurt."
Gork had four clasping arms. He moved them up tow
ard Frick, Robert and Gill. Three large hospital tables rose up in the middle of the room.
"I’d like you three to sit on the tables, I have a few questions to ask. And don’t resist, I can blast you with a laser at any time."
"Which is less painful, the laser blast or what you’re planning next?" asked Gill.
"It depends -- sit on the tables!" Gork started to walk with pistons hissing. Robert did not know why but yelled out:
"Stop Sir James, stop!"
Gork stopped. His brain hadn’t heard the name "Sir James" in over 30,000 years. He heard it in dreams, but to hear the actual words was different.
"How did you know I am called Sir James in my dreams?"
"Well Sir James, you see, I read your mind with the TeleTrans I’m wearing, and I discovered that you used to live on planet Snokper—"
"Stop!" yelled Gork. "There is no such planet! It’s all a dream, nothing but confabulations."
"Well, you admitted yourself, you don’t know where you came from. Just from that statement you can’t exclude anything, now can you Sir James?"
The words: "Sir James", rung a bell in Gork’s brain, something that had been shut off for thousands of years got a spark. That set the house on fire. Pistons started to hiss as if trying to move backwards and forwards. It looked as if Gork was dancing with pleasure or pain. The hydraulic lines started to bulge.
The words came out of Gork’s speaker for the first time with passion. "I am Sir James Underfield…. I am Sir James Underfield!"
Gill looked at Robert. "What the hell did you say to the guy?"
Frick looked over at Sir James shaking in his pistons. "You didn’t slip him one of those red pills, did you?"
"I just figured out who the guy was. It’s a sad story. I think Big Blue reprogrammed the mind-reading head set. I could really see into Sir James’s mind."
Sir James stopped moving. All pistons and hydraulic lines relaxed. "I now know who I am! It’s all coming back to me. I am Sir James Underfield, owner of the Metal Works and Robotics Corporation on planet Snokper. And I am still alive!"
