Scum of the Universe

by Grant Everett

  An insult! Tuesday's heart soared. Now this was something he understood.

  “Hilarious.” Tuesday said with an evil grin. “So do you write your own material, or did some random sailor just scrawl that on your lower back when he was done with you?”

  Eulogy's smile was locked in place for a few moments, as though his brain refused to acknowledge what it had just heard. After a couple more moments he smoothly drew a black pistol from a hip holster, pointed it at Tuesday's forehead and pressed the trigger stud without any reluctance. Tuesday only had time to take in the SONY logo stamped above the barrel before his brain locked up.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  BEING JACK SPASM

  On the bright side, Tuesday wasn't dead. Whatever he'd been shot with was a non-lethal weapon, and there didn't seem to be any permanent effects. However, when Tuesday's brain began working again he immediately registered that he'd been strapped to a cold metal plank against a wall, and his head was locked firmly in place within a Perspex box. Worse yet, a bracket was holding his mouth open, and two more were preventing him from blinking.

  Rolling his eyes, trying to process was was happening, Tuesday screwed up his face when a whole swarm of some sort of striped invertebrates crawled directly into his line of sight. Although he didn't recognise what they were, their red, yellow and black bands clearly spelled DANGER in all dialects of the language of Nature.

  Tuesday's line of sight flicked away from the bugs as the face of Commander Redmond Eulogy appeared on the other side of the Perspex. He was wearing an especially punchable smile.

  “Good afternoon, Mister Spasm.” Eulogy growled. “As you were already on your second strike before the bloody ship even left the bloody dock, I decided that your third strike warranted some administrative behavioural correction for the sake of your future performance. Unfortunately, it would be hard to get approval to space you within a convenient timeframe, so I've decided to introduce you to my pets, instead.”

  Tuesday flinched away from Eulogy's expression as one of the worms slithered onto his lower lip. It left a trail of itchy slime in its wake. The striped creature was soon joined by dozens of others, and the boil of invertebrates started to head for Tuesday's facial orifices: his tear ducts, under his eyelids, up his nostrils, into his ears, towards his mouth...

  “Have you ever heard of Hivers before, Mister Spasm?” Eulogy enquired casually. “Amazing creatures. See, while mankind has discovered many kinds of creatures that have a form of hive-mind connectivity, Hivers are by far its most pure expression. You could take these drones, place them in a sealed box a hundred metres away with no conceivable way for them to communicate with each other, and yet the Queen will remain completely aware of where the rest of her Hive is located, as well as their health and current disposition.” Eulogy buffed his nails on one of his many medals. “So please note that if you try to injure one of them, the others will know, and I guarantee they'll stop being so gentle.”

  Tuesday's expression twisted into total horror as the Hivers started to slide into his facial orifices. He could feel them vomiting out some sort of lubricating slime to assist their journey through places that should have remained uninhabited, and the itching sensation grew and grew until it became unbearable.

  “Now, Mister Spasm, those slithering little devils are going to carve away lots of little nurseries in the depths of your head in order for their Queen to have plenty of options for where she lays her eggs.” Eulogy gave a grim little chuckle as Tuesday's entire body gave a jolt. “Also, please keep in mind that if you don't remain perfectly still you'll upset the drones. If they get annoyed, then they'll start pumping capsaicin into their slime, and the sensation will change from being merely itchy to growing hotter than ghost chillies...”

  Eulogy produced a lead-lined matchbox from his pocket. Sliding it open, he carefully drew out a creature the size of a goldfish by her posterior. The invertebrate had the same red, black and yellow stripes as the Hiver drones, but unlike the slithering little horrors she had a dozen long, thin tentacles that gently waved about as though looking for something. Tuesday made a choking noise as he watched the foot-long tentacles extend in his direction like the eye stalks of a snail.

  Eulogy took a step towards his prisoner.

  “Now, once the Queen lays her eggs in all those little burrows, they'll have to gestate within your head for around a week. Once the young Hivers hatch they'll need to feed on you a bit, but they should be on their merry way within a couple of hours so they can report back to their Queen. Yes, you will be horribly disfigured in the process, but I need to assure you that this isn't lethal...in most cases.”

  The door behind Eulogy opened with a swish. Managing to turn his head just enough to get a look at the portal, Tuesday witnessed a frail little bird of a man dressed in a midnight-purple uniform slowly make his way into the room. Grandpa was adorned by so many stripes and badges that he resembled a gold brick which had sprouted limbs. Tuesday knew that Pops must have outranked anybody else on this ship by a wide margin. He was also old. Very, very old. Biblically old.

  “Red, I was going over the figures...” The officer stopped in shock. “Good Lord, Eulogy! What the Green Hell are you doing?”

  Eulogy dropped his line of sight to the carpet in deference. He smoothly put the Queen back in her lead-lined matchbox and put the packet behind his back.

  “He was disrespectful, Fleet Admiral Aslan! And he was...”

  The Fleet Admiral known as Aslan turned as purple as his uniform.

  “I've told you, Red, burrowing is only to be used to punish the most heinous of traitors, not for every minor scofflaw who forgets to tuck their shirt in properly! Get him out of there! Out!”

  “But-” Eulogy began.

  “GET HIM OUT NOW!”

  Tuesday fell to the floor as all the restraints disengaged at once. Whacking at his ears and spitting, all the Hivers enacted a quick exit from Tuesday's face and scurried back into the safety of their Perspex skull cell. The elderly Fleet Admiral smacked Tuesday on the back much harder than his delicate old limb should have allowed.

  “Are you all right...” Fleet Admiral Aslan glanced down at Tuesday's nametag. “Spasm?”

  Tuesday had barely nodded when Aslan spun about and began to verbally tear bloody chunks of flesh from Eulogy’s ego.

  “How dare you contradict my direct orders, Red! You are to never, ever break protocol in such a way ever again...”

  The rant went on for several minutes, broken only by a miserable-looking Eulogy muttering “sir” at appropriate intervals with his head hung in shame. The Fleet Admiral eventually finished berating the brutal git, and hit Tuesday on his shoulder a second time. He smiled with a row of bright white dentures.

  “Now, what happened here today is not okay, Mister Spasm. I'm not going to lie to you: what was about to take place would be classed as a war crime. However, I'm going to make it up to you. How would you like to work for me? Bit of a promotion, if you will. At my age, my bathroom always needs a good janitor. What do you say?”

  Tuesday was stunned. Not only had he managed to pretend he was a part of the crew, but he'd been promoted within a matter of minutes for doing absolutely nothing. Nodding happily, Tuesday realised that he had just found exactly what he needed the most: a soft touch. Somebody who would look out for him. A father figure.

  A patsy.

  *

  Getting back to “his” room was an easy process. After all, Bob Tuesday and Jack Spasm were a perfect match in every conceivable way, and the ship didn't seem to have any idea that Tuesday had pulled a fast one. Stepping into the nearest turbolift, Tuesday had barely finished muttering “Now how am I supposed to find my room?” to himself when the capsule sealed shut and stormed away at three times the speed of sound.

  Stepping out of the turbolift on wobbly legs five seconds later, Tuesday got a good look at Alpha Deck, which was a very different section of the ship: the walls were all daubed with obscene graffiti
and gang signs, deafening torture metal music was blasting from a dozen different rooms, and all the crew members he could see would look more in place in a police line-up than serving on the most deluxe starship in the entire Unison. It was easy to tell with one glance that the inhabitants of Alpha Deck were the scum of the crew, such as janitors, cooks, technicians, test subjects, and other garden-variety organ-bag redshirts. Tuesday didn't bother talking to anyone as even his standards were too high, but he did wonder why these useless cretins had been brought along on the voyage. What possible use could they serve?

  The ship registered that Tuesday didn't know which way to go, and a glowing path helpfully guided him the rest of the way through the warren of graffiti. Looking around his new room (though “cell” might be a more accurate term), Tuesday got a good look at how its former occupant, Jack Spasm, had existed for the last few months. The small box didn't have much in the way of furniture beyond a bed, a bedside table and a wooden chest, and the only thing that gave the room any personality were dozens of tranquil posters of waterfalls and sunrises. There was also a whole shelf of self-reading therapy books with titles such as How To Manage Severe Explosive Anger Issues and How To Stop Plotting The Deaths Of People Who Have Slightly Upset You. The impression that Jack Spasm was a total psycho was verified when Tuesday opened the black chest to find what appeared to be a full-body woman suit made out of sewed-together sections of pig skin.

  ...at least, Tuesday hoped it was pig skin...

  Watching for witnesses, Tuesday quickly discarded the tranquil pictures, the books and the woman suit into the nearest incineration bin without delay. Checking if there was anything else he should ditch, Tuesday opened a small closet at the foot of the bed to see that Jack Spasm had used it to store a solid wall of toilet ducks and urinal cakes. Grumbling that his sparse quarters were tight enough without wasting the entire closet on supplies, Tuesday moved the sanitation items out by the handful.

  And then he found it.

  “Jack Spasm, you piece of...”

  It turned out that the toilet products had been stacked in the closet to hide a hole that Jack had bored deep into the wall. Inside of the hidden chamber was an impressive moonshine still that reeked of decaying vegetables. Tuesday could smell that the still appeared to be fuelled by potatoes and apples. Looking behind the collection of dripping pipes and stolen chemistry equipment on a whim, Tuesday found that the back wall was actually a loose slab of thin plaster. Moving this second fake wall without much effort,

  Tuesday found a leafy surprise.

  “Tobacco!” Tuesday said in delight.

  The plant was growing under a UV light and had been nestled into a complete hydroponics setup, all of which Jack Spasm must have stolen from somewhere. Spasm had also hung up a few of the larger branches to dry out, and they were looking mighty fine to Tuesday's beady eyes. Sniffing one of the hanging brown leaves, Tuesday plucked a handful of desiccated tobacco and jammed the stash into his pockets, deciding that the chances of a strip search were minimal.

  There was a sudden noise that was best described as DONG, and Tuesday startled as the walls flashed all different colours. A calm voice spelled out what was going on.

  “Sanitation engineer Jack Spasm is to report to the Department of Dimensional Plotting for his next shift in approximately five minutes.”

  Spraying a bit of toilet duck under his arms for the sake of freshness, Tuesday stepped out. However, he soon met a new problem.

  Her name was September.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  BOLDLY GOING

  A glowing path led Tuesday to the Department of Dimensional Plotting, the first stop on his shift. The trip involved a couple of turbolifts and a few corridors, but Tuesday got to his destination in a matter of minutes.

  Using a mop to push his floating bucket over the threshold of a clinically white room, Tuesday looked up to see the profile of a beautiful black woman dressed in the snappy white uniform and purple piping of a high-level Unison scientist. She was shaped like an hourglass, had straight ebony hair flowing all the way down to her shapely buttocks, and was the sort of beauty who could get away with not wearing make up even at the most exclusive of venues.

  It took Tuesday a couple of seconds to close his gaping mouth.

  The scientist was standing next to a hovering sphere the size of a yoga ball. Circling the shape, her face pinched in concentration, the woman ran her hands over its surface. This caused the globe to open up into hundreds of wafer-thin layers. Every segment was a different colour, and composed of literally hundreds of thousands of different shapes. It brought three-dimensional Tetris to mind, a game that Tuesday never been particularly good at.

  The woman clicked her fingers and ten thousand multi-coloured lines instantly appeared, spearing into the layers at wild angles. They seemed to be threading the segments together in complex ways, tangling them up like a box of badly-packed Christmas lights and tinsel, plunging back and forth seemingly at random.

  She tapped her foot, her almond-shaped eyes rapidly skipping between sections, until her face lit up in realisation. Gathering one of the lines – a striped purple one – she removed it from its lodging and threaded it through a green block less than a centimetre away from where it was situated. An encouraging sound blorped from a wall speaker.

  “Waypoint is no longer lethal.”

  Millions of multicoloured segments merged back into a white ball, and the sphere resumed its gentle rotation. Rubbing her hands together in a satisfied way, the woman startled as she turned to see Tuesday standing right behind her. Tuesday raised his mop as an explanation.

  “Uh, janitor?”

  She looked away from Tuesday in a total lack of interest and went back to circling the sphere. She hadn't so much as acknowledged him, as though he was little more than a potato. Looking about, Tuesday noticed that the entire room was just one smooth white seamless cube. There wasn't anything obvious to clean.

  “Where did you want me to start, miss?”

  This got her attention. She glared bullets.

  “I've already made it clear on several occasions that you are not to use gender-specific pronouns when you speak with me, Spasm. You will address me as Professor.”

  “Professor what?”

  Her eyes narrowed dangerously.

  “As you well know, my name is September. Now, my apologies, Spasm, but I have so little time to spare that I am unable to be anything above rude, dismissive and borderline hostile with you, or with anybody else who isn’t announcing an imminent disaster. I'm busy plotting a decade of slides through no less than one-hundred-and-nineteen different dimensions, most of which will be instantly lethal to everyone on board if I make the slightest mistake, so I would appreciate it if you buggered off somewhere else.”

  Tuesday just stood there, stunned by the rant. Deigning to spare Tuesday an entire second of her valuable time with a sigh, September clicked her fingers at the other side of the room. Tuesday glanced over to see that September had a pet hamster in a small, comfy hutch on a ledge.

  “Fine. Look after Mister Boodle for me.”

  Tuesday immediately set about changing Mister Boodle's shredded newspaper, stocking a tiny food dish with pellets, and filling a drip bottle. He resealed the hutch with pride in a job well done. Although she wasn't watching, September knew when he'd finished. Rather than offering her thanks, she provided another rant.

  “Just to be absolutely clear, Spasm, your designation of sanitation engineer fifth class means you are on board in order to deal with restrooms and nothing more. As you may have noticed that the Department of Dimensional Plotting has a distinct lack of overflowing urinals or diarrhoea-splattered toilet bowls, this means you are not required to return to this room ever again. As such, I would appreciate it if you went about your duties somewhere else from now on.”

  “But the ship told me to come here. I just followed the glowing line,” Tuesday said in his defence.

  September sighed.
>
  “I have better things to do than deal with some glitch in your work schedule. Sort it out yourself.” September sucked at a drinking straw in a violently-coloured aluminium can. “Empty,” she said to herself, distracted by the glowing white ball again.

  “Fancy a refill?” Tuesday beamed, hopeful that this may score him some points.

  September glanced at him before reaching into her pocket.

  “Triple-caffeinated sugar-free Red Vee, and count my change twice before you get back, Spasm.”

  Approaching the Red Vee machine out in the corridor – a device which had more options than an attractive bisexual at a residential orgy - Tuesday eventually selected the right drink and fed in September's creased note. A few coins and a safety cup full of crimson liquid gurgled out, and Tuesday made it back to the Department of Dimensional Plotting a few seconds later. Smacking the change on her empty desk, Tuesday passed the safety cup to September. Giving Tuesday a strange look when their hands accidentally touched, September’s face suddenly went crimson and she began screaming hysterically. It took Tuesday a couple of terrified seconds to realise he wasn’t the one she was yelling at.