Scum of the Universe

by Grant Everett

  “You'll kill us all?” Tuesday said helpfully.

  “Thank you, Commander Eulogy,” Aslan said drily, casually stopping the Commander before he could separate Tuesday's head from his spinal column. Eulogy bared his teeth, but swept back to his chair. “Your comments are noted. However, I very much doubt you will need to take matters into your own hands. Now, has everyone seen the evidence?”

  The Heads and Commanders all nodded solemnly.

  “And are you all in agreement that their many offences constitute an execution-level verdict?”

  Tuesday's heart sank as the panel unanimously struck the green domes attached to the desk. He could clearly hear Jimmy whimpering and gagging, followed by a thunk as the fat chef passed out from stress. Aslan raised a piece of cotton paper in front of his eyes and scanned it intently.

  “As September is of exceptional operational value, I believe that the panel has requested a stay of execution until a clone can be decanted and her memories transferred over?”

  The Heads all hit their green buttons unanimously. The Commanders did the same. September made a choking noise, but her expression didn't change at all. Aslan sighed.

  “Very well. Before we conclude proceedings and work out the exact method of execution, I have just one thing to say.” Fleet Admiral Aslan leaned closer to his microphone bead. “Ruska forty-three-alpha.”

  Aslan snapped his fingers as punctuation. To Tuesday's immense surprise, every single person in the courtroom – whether judge, spectator or defendant - instantly slumped as though dead. To Tuesday's great satisfaction it looked as though Eulogy had slammed his face into the desk so hard that his nose was broken. Inspecting September, it was clear that even though her eyes were wide open, the dimensional plotter was in a deep, deep sleep. Her pupils were facing in opposite directions, something that Tuesday had heard described as “wall-eyed” on a couple of occasions. He poked Jimmy in the face, but there was no response. Looking up at the very awake Fleet Admiral Aslan, Tuesday shook his head in wonder.

  “How did you do that? Are you psychic or something?”

  Aslan chuckled and put his feet up on the desk. He fetched a green cigarette out of a gold-lined pocket.

  “Nothing so impressive. I secretly programmed the entire crew with hypnotic conditioning before they came on board. They were all told it was a standard eye test. Depending on what command words I use, I can make them do just about anything. For instance, the Ruska trigger instantly switches off the conscious parts of their brains for as long as I want. If I was an evil man, I could use the Seriopath trigger to put them out the closest airlock without an ounce of resistance. Of course, there's nothing to be gained from that, is there? Obviously mass murder is rarely my first option.” Aslan made a casual hand gesture. “Now, to be clear, the people in this courtroom are the only crew members who have any knowledge of your little jaunt through time and space, so I'm going to perform some extensive memory alterations to rid them of these troublesome facts. Once they have forgotten, your problems are solved. As September has an eidetic memory and was far more heavily involved in your capers than anybody else, excising all of her memories of the incident may result in some confusion and logic gaps. She'll be fine, but she will require some...enthusiastic modifications.”

  “So why didn't the command word work on me?” Tuesday asked.

  Aslan looked disappointed again.

  “Because you're a stowaway, remember? You didn't go through the hypnotic conditioning, did you?”

  “Ah. Right.”

  The Fleet Admiral sighed in frustration.

  “Before we go any further, I need to make it clear that we are only having this conversation once. This is your one and only chance. In a matter of minutes, that chance will be gone for good.” Aslan smiled at Tuesday's stunned nodding. “You know, I've waited many years to give this little speech exactly as I remember it. I wondered if it would be the same, or if it'd be different altogether. So far, it's been identical.”

  “You have? It has?” Tuesday asked, not understanding one bit.

  Aslan smiled again.

  “Okay, first I need to explain a few things. Centuries ago, when human starships only had a top velocity of around half the speed of light, one of the biggest problems with founding colonies on distant worlds was the inbreeding issue. After a certain point, every citizen will be cousins - or closer - with every other citizen. This is bad. In order to add variety to the genepool whenever it was required, scientists developed a reasonably simple treatment known as genetic cycling. Basically, genetic cycling involves using a mutating chemical that scrambles a tenth of a percent of your DNA into a new setting. So you drink some muck, and you essentially become a new person, one who is genetically dissimilar to your own family. Of course, organised crime caused a fantastic amount of damage with this tech, so it was banned and sealed away within months. It's now top-level illegal to have anything to do with genetic cycling.”

  “But a tenth of a percent doesn't sound like much.”

  Aslan ashed his smoke in Eulogy's hair.

  “Yes, but remember that humans share ninety-eight percent of their genes with chimpanzees. Twisting a tenth of a percent makes an enormous difference. And I should know!” Aslan winked. “It hurt like hell, but it worked. My eyes changed colour, I grew two inches, my cowlicks shifted across my head, my teeth bent into different alignments, and I even acquired a taste for Diet Doctor Pepper. And as for my genitals...” Aslan paused mid-sentence. “Well, you'll find out the last part in time.”

  The penny finally dropped like a horse thief in a hangman's noose in the Wild West.

  “Are you...are you me?” Tuesday gaped.

  Aslan winked again.

  “How old are you?” Tuesday asked.

  “Three hundred and eighty-nine, and I still have a little longer to go.” Aslan expanded his arms. “Really? That's what you want to know? Surely you have better things to ask! Try harder!”

  Tuesday raised an index finger.

  “Actually, there was something. When I first went through Jack Spasm's room, I found...things. Bad things. Is he...am I...will we be...”

  Aslan's face darkened.

  “Sadly, I cannot answer that particular question. In addition to numerous rounds of genetic cycling, from what I can tell I have chosen to deliberately and permanently excise substantial chunks of my own memory. Some of the shortest gaps were a single word from a conversation, while others have taken away the better part of three years.” Aslan shrugged. “I honestly don't know if Jack Spasm was a person-skinning serial killer. But there's a chance that Spasm was from a different timeline to ours, and I sincerely hope that was the case.”

  Tuesday squinted a little.

  “You lost me.”

  “Okay,” Aslan stubbed out his cigarette on the biggest medal on Eulogy's shoulder. “To put it simply: time sucks. It follows no concrete logic. It isn't a river; it's a bitch queen from the deepest pits of hell who hates all things that make sense. It's beyond complicated. Even after many experiences of giving time itself a nipple cripple, there is no conceivable way that I can explain how it works. As impossible as time travel is, after you've managed to do it once it becomes far, far easier. You are...we are...unstuck in time. Remember when you woke up with that message burned into your arm? I still don't recall exactly what happened, but I do know that we lived a whole day at least twice, even though we don't remember it. Since then, time has developed an...an interest in us. But there are downsides. For instance, I've seen different versions of myself die on no fewer than fifteen occasions in all sorts of ways. My advice is simple: don't take it personally.”

  “Don't take it personally?” Tuesday asked incredulously.

  “Now, I do have a glimmer of hope for your future, something that will keep you going through those many dark nights.” Aslan leaned closer. “You already know that you aren't special. That you are nothing. That you are a bad joke God has played on the Universe. But your life is spe
cial. The things you see and experience, the places you go and the events that happen around you, will be unique.” Aslan flicked his dead cigarette butt into Eulogy's pocket. “Finally, my last advice is this: even if you know about future events in advance, be sure to look appropriately surprised. It unnerves people, otherwise. It's common courtesy.”

  Aslan tapped his nose and pointed at the table full of smashed-up evidence.

  “You might want to take your things with you. And lock the door behind you, please. This is going to take me a while.”

  And with that, Aslan's revelations were over.

  *

  “Miss? Can I take your tray?”

  September looked up, startled, to see the agonised face of Jimmy Slummer blubbering down at her. The spherical chef seemed to be locked in a state of total awkwardness. He obviously wanted to carry out his duty of cleaning September's table, but he was too sad and introverted to do it without permission. There was a good chance he'd been there for several minutes, silently waiting to be acknowledged.

  She looked down at the bowl of Pad See Ew noodles and chicken-flavoured cricket chunks, then back up at Jimmy. A glance over Jimmy's shoulder informed her that she was at Nourishing Noodles, one of the many food bars situated within a couple of levels of her deluxe cabin. For a couple of moments, she didn't know what to say.

  September massaged her temples, using some of the relaxation techniques she'd learned during her time with the Jedi all those years ago. Sure, they didn't have any real Force abilities or anything, and everyone knew the Jedi were basically a thin splinter of Buddhism with a thick layer of Star Wars fluff slathered on top, but that didn't mean their breathing exercises didn't work.

  She didn't know what was wrong with her. For the last three days September seemed to have developed the irritating habit of occasionally losing touch with reality, of daydreaming when she should be solving the mysteries of the cosmos. Worse yet, after a long meditation yesterday September realised had that she seemed to have misplaced a serious chunk of her recent memories. As she had possessed total eidetic recall for as long as her brain had been capable of storing memories, it was like walking into a palatial library and noticing a huge charred gap in one of the shelves. Obviously she hadn't told anybody about these issues, as the last thing she needed was for Sacks, Hemming and the other gits from the Dimensional Plotting department to get the scent of any potential weaknesses they could exploit for their own gain. When it came to poor life choices, allowing her understudies to see an opportunity to have her removed from duty was roughly one step down from moisturising herself in barbecue sauce and jumping into the velociraptor pen down on floor ninety-three...

  “Miss?”

  “Hm?” September ummed. She blinked at Jimmy, then down at the cooling noodles, then back at Jimmy again. “Oh. Right. Thanks, James. They were nice. I think.”

  Glowing red, Jimmy swept up the bowl and vanished as fast as his flapping thongs would allow. September screwed her eyes shut and massaged her temples. Did she have a concussion or something? What was wrong with her? No matter how hard she concentrated, the last bit of conscious memory she'd managed to store before that tiny abyss was heading down to Tuesday's room to respond to his chemical injector running out of Hiver Queen neural gel. What had happened? Did she slip and hit her head? Surely she hadn't been insane enough to try some of his moonshine?

  The Omni in September's hand vibrated and a cute little computer generated three-toed Sloth appeared on the back of her hand.

  “Hiya, September! Just thought you'd like to know that somebody is secretly attempting to track your location. As you've arranged, I will block them until the firewall collapses in thirty-two seconds.”

  She went stiff at the news. As September was nobody's fool, she'd secretly hidden some powerful (and not altogether legal) hacks on her Omni before coming aboard The Frontier, just in case she needed them. Although not in the habit of breaking the law, it certainly didn't hurt to have precautions in place. This particular exploit was six hundred lines of vapourware that was programmed to automatically trigger if some high-ranking dolt decided that he or she was going to try and sneak up on one of the greatest minds of this age. After blocking the search function for as long as possible, the code would disappear into the ether without a single digit of evidence. September gave the little sloth avatar a scratch behind its fluffy grey skull, and it wiggled its flat face in ecstasy.

  “Rank?”

  The sloth's graphics glitched as it carried out a series of illegal hacks.

  “Commander.”

  September wiped her mouth with a linen napkin, trying not to panic. So, Eulogy had finally caught up with her. Luckily, her illicit programs would allow her a bit of a head start.

  “Distance?”

  “Two floors, six corridors. Estimated time of arrival: two minutes, eight seconds.”

  “Misdirect him by one floor. Make it look like a navigation error in his Omni software.”

  Rubbing her face, September did some mental mathematics. She calculated the distance to her room, how fast she could walk there, and balanced several other variables, such as the very thin chance of her usual elevator being out of order. It went without saying that immediately sprinting for her room the moment that somebody started to track her location would look suspicious, so that wasn't an option. And another problem with bolting back to her room was that she would need to reach an incineration bin to dispose of all the evidence, and there weren't any of those on her plush level. After all, installing loud industrial cremation hatches that smelled like Vindaloo-scented demon farts would be a very efficient way of removing the “prime” adjective from “prime real estate” in one stroke. So, to reach a cremation bin, she'd have to power-walk to her room, hurry back into the elevator, and get to another floor. But once the firewall went down and she was being tracked, making a frenzied trip would only raise more questions and compound any accusations of guilt...

  Then suddenly, September had the answer, an answer that would be otherwise useless to any other question ever posed by anyone anywhere. That answer was Jimmy Slummer.

  The exact timespan between asking her Omni to illegally misdirect Eulogy and coming to a decision to utilise Jimmy in her naughtiness had taken less than two seconds. Most people would have trouble figuring out if they were about to sneeze in such a brief window. September raised her hand and hissed at the plastic flap that led back to the dish pig area behind Nourishing Noodles.

  “James? I need your help with something.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  WELCOME BACK TO SQUARE ONE

  Two months later, Tuesday's life had settled into a lonely, monotonous routine. He'd barely seen September and Jimmy for that entire span, let alone spoken with them. It had become pretty clear to Tuesday that they were doing their best to avoid him. Then again, Tuesday spent most of his time hiding and sleeping in secluded nooks around the ship, and whenever he emerged to pretend to work he was always rostered into The Frontier's yawning series of cargo bays on solo shifts. It was as though nobody wanted him around actual people for some reason...

  Like all enormous long-range Unison starships, the warehouse decks took up a majority of The Frontier's mass and volume, and were stocked to the rim with every conceivable item that may be useful in a new galaxy. These supplies were meant to last for the two decades this particular mission was scheduled to take (a decade there and a decade back), as well as enough to start up to a dozen permanent colonies. Such a huge scale meant that getting lost in these labyrinths was easy. If it wasn’t for the voice-activated guidance systems that had been installed in every corridor, someone would have surely starved to death in here a long time ago.

  For a perfectionist like Tuesday, pretending to work hard was almost as difficult as actually doing it. He was a master at looking busy, a consummate genius at appearing to be run off his feet. Although the automated warehouse decks were capable of taking care of themselves, during each shift Tuesday
was expected to lay out a kilometre of wax to the shiny floor, dust a suburb of shelves, spend at least three hours checking vacuum seals on the countless boxes, shake ladders and forklifts every now and then to make sure they weren’t going to fall apart, and finish off his day by thoroughly documenting everything he'd done during his eight hours of labour in fifteen minute blocks. Of course, Tuesday had performed absolutely none of these tasks even once, and he usually just spat a wad of chewing tobacco in the logbook rather than sign it.

  Even Tuesday couldn't sleep all day, so he'd devised a few fun pastimes he could engage in between naps. What he got up to depended on where he was stationed for that shift. For instance, Tuesday loved trying on new shoes (you just can't beat the smell of pristine cricket-leather), so whenever he was posted into one of the many Footwear Levels the hours just flew by. By now, he'd also made filching little things from the restricted food and drinks stores marked as LUXURY ITEMS into a fine art. The trick was to skim off enough fine cheese or dinosaur sweetmeats to enjoy a mouthful, but not so much that somebody could tell that he'd shaved off a thin layer, then painstakingly reattaching the vacuum seal. Another hobby was destroying the tiny cleaning robots who were quickly making his job obsolete. His goal was to flatten the little scrubber domes to less than an inch high in one stomp, or it was a fail.