Dale Mettam

by The Pub at the Center of the Universe (retail) (epub)

  Chapter Four

  The vehicle was now hurtling through space, away from the Earth. With no more need for subterfuge, Lu switched off the Forced Reality Bubble. The mismatched curious helicopter disappeared revealing the sleek lines and powerful engines of a Swooper.

  Inside, Kirk reclined his seat and placed both hands over his face.

  “Sarge,” Lu addressed what Kirk thought was a tape player. “Take over for a while, I think our passenger is going to need some help adjusting.”

  “As you command,” a stern voice replied. Lu spun her seat around and climbed towards the back compartment of the Swooper. As she stepped past Kirk, she patted him on the shoulder.

  “Come on, I’ll do my best to bring you up to speed.”

  From a small storage compartment above Kirk’s shoulder, she pulled out another apparent tape player, sat on a long padded seat at the rear and waited for Kirk to get comfortable.

  Slowly, Kirk raised his seat then followed Lu into the rear of the craft. Sitting down again, he looking anything but relaxed. “You ready?” She asked.

  “No.”

  “Sorry, we do not have the luxury of allowing you time to get used to the way things really are. You want a drink?”

  “Do you have any vodka?” Kirk asked.

  Lu looked confused.

  “Alcohol,” he expanded.

  “Sorry, I only have water.” Kirk shook his head, no.

  “O.K., first thing I need to do is give you your F.R.B.” She handed Kirk the tape player she had taken from the storage compartment moments before.

  Kirk looked at it carefully, and once again, it hurt his eyes just as the chopper had.

  “Why does everything I look at hurt my head?”

  Lu smiled. “I guess you are more sensitive than most to the bubble.”

  She pointed to the F.R.B. “This is your F.R.B. It stands for Forced Reality Bubble, though it does much more than just generate the bubble.”

  “You keep talking about bubbles, what bubbles?”

  “You are about to enter the universe at large. Up to this point, your experiences have only prepared you for everything you might encounter on Pangaea.”

  A look of further confusion flashed across Kirk’s face.

  “Sorry,” Lu said. “For everything you might encounter on Earth. However, there are going to be things you see now that you had no way of preparing for. Additionally, you will hear languages spoken that are, amongst other things, beyond the range of your limited hearing. You will need to talk to aliens in languages that your vocal range is completely unable to cope with. Do you remember when I told you that I could not speak English?”

  Kirk nodded.

  “I was not lying. I am not speaking English now, but Sarge, my F.R.B., is translating so that you can understand me. Trust me, it makes things a whole lot easier. With all the species that are out there, even if you had the ability to speak the languages, there are just too many to learn.”

  “And the F.R.B. can change the way something looks?”

  “Kind of. I am sure you know that when you look at something, what your eye sees, is actually the light bouncing off the object.”

  Kirk gave her a blank look.

  “O.K., well, what happens is, as that light passes through the bubble, it is bent to form a shape that your brain can deal with.” She smiled, “Trust me. Some things are just too strange for your brain to cope with. At best you are likely to simply pass out at the strangeness, at worst, you could suffer a complete cerebral shutdown, and that would be very bad indeed.”

  “How does it know what my brain can deal with?” asked Kirk, suspiciously examining the F.R.B. in his hand. “Is there some hideous brain surgery thing going to pop out at any minute?”

  “Nothing like that,” Lu smiled. “simply hold it up to your face and press that green button there.

  Kirk gave her a dubious look, but raised the F.R.B. towards his head. Unconvinced, he slowly pushed the button. A cloud of metallic dust plumed out and surrounded his head. Kirk gasped for air and swallowed a mouthful. A slight static buzz filled his ears. He blinked wildly, and as the dust cleared, he saw bright flashes of light floating before his eyes. He sniffed angrily and sneezed.

  As his head began to finally clear, he shot an angry look at Lu, who was watching him with studied interest.

  “You might have warned me.”

  “If I had, you would have braced for the nanoprobes, severely reducing its effectiveness.”

  She turned towards the controls. “Sarge, you can switch to passive now.”

  “Very well, ma’am.”

  “What was it you said before, about nanoprobes?” Kirk asked.

  “You’re now linked to your F.R.B. In order for the F.R.B. to translate sound and vision for you, it needs to be linked to, amongst other things, your sensory awareness nerves. It sends in nanoprobes that it can communicate with. They in turn send signals via your senses that you can understand.”

  Kirk looked down at the small device in his hand. “You mean this jumped up calculator can read my mind?”

  “Who are you calling a calculator?” The F.R.B. asked.

  Kirk was surprised by the sudden voice in his head.

  “So, does it have artificial intelligence?” he asked Lu, still a little shaken by the F.R.B.’s interruption.

  “I have real intelligence, ape boy, but I do have an artificial personality, and it’s getting pissed with you right now. Let’s have a little respect shall we? We may be working together for quite some time.”

  Kirk looked sheepishly at Lu. “Artificial Personality?”

  “F.R.B.’s have the ability to do pretty much everything you would think that a sentient life form can do, but being an artificial life form, it was found that they were far more useful if they had a programmed personality. It helped them better relate to their user and vice-versa,” Lu explained.

  She pointed to her own F.R.B., nestled in the console. “I have a military background, therefore I chose a personality program for Sarge that fit my requirements. Based on the research we did on Pangaea... sorry... Earth history, we felt a slightly confrontational personality would make you feel a little more at home.”

  Kirk gave her a dubious look.

  “We can change it when we get back, if you prefer.”

  Kirk played the F.R.B. through his fingers. It looked smaller now, and it obviously had no place to put an audiotape of any kind.

  “You should name it,” Lu said.

  Kirk look up at her and smiled. “Yeah, Okay, I’ll call him Casio.”

  “An excellent choice,” Lu said. “The name of a famous warrior or wise elder from your planet’s history?”

  Kirk gave a sly smile. “Something like that.”

  “So where are we going?”

  They were back in the cockpit of the Swooper.

  Lu checked the readouts and turned to Kirk. “Sevres Prime, in the Sevres system. It’s the administrative center of the Universe, and where I report to.”

  “How far is it?”

  “From Pan... Earth? It is approximately 531 light years.”

  “And we’re going in this? Hadn’t you better kick in the light speed engines or something? I assume we’ll be traveling faster than light?”

  “Of course we will, but not in this. The Swooper is a rental.” She patted the console. “An way too big to make a Hyper Luminal Jump.”

  “Too big? What about mixing the matter and antimatter in the warp coils?”

  Lu gave him a confused look.

  “He’s referring to a ridiculously ill-informed entertainment projection,” Casio interrupted.

  “Must be,” Lu sighed. “The last thing I’d want to do is be anywhere near a ship mixing matter with
antimatter. I can see why your planet is so far away from entering the rest of the universe, if you have been thinking along those lines.”

  “So how do we travel faster than light?” Kirk asked. “I mean, I thought it was impossible.”

  “Tachyons, but you’ll see all that when we get to Titan.”

  Kirk gave her a suspicious look. “Titan? The moon, Titan? Orbits Saturn?”

  “That’s the one,” Lu answered. “We’re still about an hour away, so do you want to fly for a while?”

  Kirk smiled. “I haven’t even been a passenger in an airplane before, and you want me to fly a spaceship?”

  Lu reached over and gave him an encouraging, surprisingly forceful slap on the back. “Casio will help you. All he needs to do is make the controls conform to something you can relate to. I assume you had some mode of transport back on Earth? Think of that and the bubble will do the rest.”

  Kirk gave her a doubtful smile then slowly closed his eyes.

  “Okay, Casio. I’m thinking of the old Ford Escort I had at college. What can you do?”

  He opened his eyes and jumped at what he saw. The complex console had changed and he now sat behind the wheel of not just any Ford Escort, but the one he had as a student.

  He looked at the seats, which were covered with mock furry zebra skin. Sitting in the middle of the window was a rearview mirror, which was cracked in the bottom left corner. The effect was only slightly diminished by the view of stars visible through the screen.

  Lu sat back in her chair. “Go for it. Sarge will wake me when we’re nearly there then I’ll take her in.”

  Settling back into the Rally Cross bucket seat she was now sitting in, Lu closed her eyes.

  Palms sweating slightly, Kirk took the genuine imitation kid leather-wrapped steering wheel and began his first lesson in spaceflight.

  Kirk was surprised by just how easy it was to fly the Swooper. He had some initial problems, but remembered the sticky clutch on his old Escort and it soon settled down.

  He was sure they must be traveling faster than the speedometer read, but just like his Escort, when the needle swung past 75 mph the entire Swooper began to vibrate ominously, settling down only after the needle moved past 80 mph.

  After settling into the controls, Kirk got a little bored. It was very much like driving a long, straight road at night. There was nothing to mentally engage him and his attention began to wander. Clearly not the best thing to happen while piloting a spacecraft further away from Earth than he was sure anyone had ever been before.

  “Hey, Cas?”

  The F.R.B. didn’t respond.

  “Cas?” With no answer from Casio, Kirk worried that he might be flying the Swooper without back-up.

  “Casio? You on? Busted? What?”

  “I am not speaking to you,” came the disgruntled voice in his head.

  “What do you mean you aren’t talking to me?”

  “I did a full archival search of Pangaean history,” the F.R.B. put emphasis on the word

  ‘Pangaean’.

  “I see.” Realization dawned on Kirk.

  “To find the historical giant that you chose to name me after.”

  “Look,” Kirk explained. “I had this really cool little Casio calculator that saved my neck in many math tests at school. It was meant as a term of endearment. Honest.”

  Silence.

  “That superior piece of technology had some amazing functions, and I was often left marveling at how such a small piece of hardware could be so much smarter than me.”

  Silence.

  “That awe for technology just reminded me of you.”

  “Really?” Casio sounded doubtful, but Kirk took it as a good sign that he even answered.

  “Really!” He seized on the opening. “And since I’m going to be traveling so far from home, the more things I can find that offer even a small link back are of great comfort.”

  There was a long pause then Casio spoke. “What can I help you with?”

  Kirk sighed in relief. “Is there anything that plays music in this thing?”

  “This model of Swooper comes with a basic entertainment unit, you will see it located between you and Agent Pillah in the lower part of the console.”

  Kirk looked and was strangely unsurprised to see a tarnished looking AM/FM radio with a broken volume button.

  “Let me guess, it can only pick up one talk radio station and an oldies rock station.”

  “I noted the faulty entertainment unit and reported it immediately to the rental company as we left,” Sarge said.

  “Figures.” Kirk sighed.

  He looked out the window and was astonished to see just how rapidly they were approaching Saturn.

  “Ma’am?” Sarge said. “We are closing in on the spaceport. I believe it would be an appropriate time for you to resume control.”

  Lu stirred in her seat then stretched. Smiling, she turned to Kirk. “Have fun?”

  Chapter Five

  Kirk resigned himself to the fact that every time he thought he had seen the strangest thing ever, something new would pop up to trump the last one.

  Admittedly, Saturn, looming ahead of them, filling the front window, and the giant moon of Titan were equally awe inspiring, but the real surprise was the sprawling spaceport that lit a large area of the dark side of the satellite.

  “How come no one on Earth has picked this up? I mean, there must be radio signals and the like that we could hear.”

  Lu held up a finger, hushing Kirk, then hit a button on what looked suspiciously like a CB radio, though he was sure his Ford Escort never had one.

  “Titan Control, this is Special Agent Lu Pillah requesting immediate clearance to land. Authorization code, alpha, zero, alpha.”

  There was a short burst of static before a voice came through the speaker on the radio. “Agent Pillah, this is Titan Control, you are cleared for landing. You are within our command override range, please set your controls to external command, sit back and enjoy the landing. Titan Control out.”

  “Acknowledged, Titan Control. Pillah out.”

  Lu hit the off button on the radio, then ran her hands across the console flicking switches before sitting back in the seat and turning to Kirk.

  “It’s shielded,” she said.

  “But how can you be so close with all the scanning they do, and no one on Earth hears a thing?”

  “Partly it’s the wavelengths used here. And partly it’s the fact that we shield our communications in what humans read as background noise. One sign that you’re ready to join the wider community out here, is when you start to pick up the signals bouncing around.”

  “So are you the first to visit Earth?” Kirk asked.

  Lu smiled. “No. Aliens have been on and off your planet for thousands of years, though having scanned some of your history files, not the way you seem to think. But we really don’t have time for this now.” She pointed out the window.

  Kirk watched as the ship swept effortlessly into the spaceport. As they closed in and he could make out buildings, he was a little disappointed at how normal the structures appeared.

  “I expected it to look different somehow. Maybe more futuristic.”

  “Well, don’t forget that the F.R.B. is going to compensate a little, but in many cases, you’ll find there are what you might call, universal constants. It doesn’t matter where you are in the galaxy, some things are just the same.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, one thing is baseball.”

  “Baseball?”

  “Hey, I don’t understand it any more than you do, I just see it all over the universe, and believe me, I’ve seen enough planets to see it’s a serious thing.”

  “But baseball?”
>
  Lu shrugged.

  The Swooper floated into a hanger and came to rest in a large bay filled with what Kirk guessed was maintenance equipment. Once the Swooper came to a complete stop, Lu spun in her seat and pulled Sarge free of the console.

  “I programmed our F.R.B.s to stay in contact, so you’ll hear everything that Sarge says, and I’ll be able to listen to Casio. It also means that we can stay in contact as well.”

  She headed for the door then looked back.

  “You ready?”

  Kirk gave a nervous look out of the window, and attached Casio to his waistband. “I guess so.”

  Lu hit the release button and the door hissed open.

  After the amazing sights Kirk had seen so far, the spaceport on Titan was a let down. It was filled with aliens, but they looked either human-like, or similar to animals he’d seen in zoos. Sure, an additional limb here and there made for something a little interesting, but overall, nothing he hadn’t seen in a cinema before.

  “So, what would happen if I switched off Casio.” he asked as they walked down the wide promenade leading from the docking areas to the main commercial concourse.

  “Well, anyone here with an F.R.B. set to Active status will appear exactly the way they did when you saw them before. They are the ones that know they’ll stand out in a serious way and use the F.R.B.’s Active status to avoid that. Though they are pretty rare. Everyone else you see will be revealed as they really are. Though I wouldn’t recommend it.”

  “I just can’t help feeling I’m missing something. I mean, I’m the first human to get this far...” Kirk stopped when he saw Lu shaking her head.

  “I’m not the first human to get this far?” She smiled. “Not by a long mark.”

  “Even so, I bet I’m the first person who went to technical college that got this far, and as such I think I’m duty bound to witness this place as it really is.”

  Lu looked around nervously. “Okay, there aren’t too many around at the moment, if you do react badly, it shouldn’t be that terrible. What do you think, Casio?”

  “You haven’t seen his head from the inside,” the F.R.B. replied. “However, I feel that if the stimuli are not too great, there’s little risk of any permanent damage.”