Universe Between

by Dean Wesley Smith

  One-Night Stands for Love and Glory

  David H. Hendrickson

  Now where was I?

  Oh, yes, of course. The introduction. How silly of me.

  Welcome to the show, ladies and gentlemen. What a great crowd we have here in the . . . the, um . . . what is the name of this place?

  Yes! Yes, thank you. The People’s Auditorium. Of course. I knew that. I was just testing you, ha ha.

  It’s a delight to be here. It’s been a long time since I performed under a straw thatch roof. And the gaps in the logs that make up these walls provide such wonderful ventilation. What a good thing that is. I can tell most of you were working really hard in the fields today. Smells like some of you might even have been spreading manure, ha ha.

  I’m just joking. You’re a great audience. Give yourself a hand!

  Get on with the show?

  Ah, yes. A splendid idea. Splendid!

  There’s just one problem. As you may have surmised, I’m stalling. I tell you that in a spirit of forthright openness.

  No, there’s no reason for you to leave. And there are positively no refunds! Of course not, the show is free, ha ha.

  Please be patient. I’m experiencing technical difficulties. My AI is not responding.

  Yes, a chip implant translates my words into your local dialect, but I need Artie, my AI, to translate them even further into your culture. Most jokes make no sense without the correct cultural grounding. I really can’t start without him.

  Artie?

  Folks, please sit down. This is temporary, I assure you. He’ll be with us momentarily.

  One Universal Credit to everyone who stays for the entire show! You have my word on it. Your patience will be rewarded.

  Hey, there’s no need to throw anything.

  Oooh. That one was juicy. Really now! That was quite unnecessary.

  Oh my, that one was rotten.

  Two credits to everyone who stays! Without, of course, throwing either soft rotten objects or very hard ones.

  Ah, that’s more like it. You are a fine and cultured audience.

  Artie? Artieeeeeee?

  Let me demonstrate, folks why I can’t perform without my AI. You might even find this enlightening.

  As the old phrase goes, please stand by.

  You’re sitting down.

  Why are you still sitting down? This is where I’m supposed to tell you that “Please stand by” is only a phrase, a figure of speech, not meant to be taken literally. A phrase that Artie would have translated into one that you understood.

  But you did understand. How did you do that?

  Artie? You’re here? What do you mean you’ve been here all along?

  Ah, well, let’s get on with the show then.

  Folks, I flew in just last night and boy, are my arms tired.

  ***

  I’m glad that one is over. I thought the crowd was going to lynch me there for a while. But they came around after a while, the bunch of dumb hicks. Not all the way, but enough for me to see their front teeth, all two or three of them, as they laughed. The front row looked like a picket fence.

  At least a few of the jokes scored. Not as many as in the old days when Artie was in his prime, but enough.

  Now where was I? What was I saying?

  Oh yes, Artie.

  He’s slipping, bit by bit, byte by byte. It’s sad, not just for him but for me, too, because I can’t make it without him. When he’s gone—gone for good, I mean, not just gone for a while like now—I’ll be nothing.

  Of course, I’m pretty close to nothing even with him. If I were something, I’d be in one of the galactic centers, where all the great comic talents showcase their brilliance. I tried that for a time, crashed and burned, so now I play these two-bit halls out here in the Great In-Between, where habitable planets are few and far between and comic brilliance can’t be found.

  On Old Earth, they said of New York City that if you could make it there, you could make it anywhere. Out here in the cosmic boonies, we say that if you can’t make it anywhere, you try the Great In-Between.

  That’s my joke, by the way. I steal most of my material, but that’s an Earl Weatherbee original. If you liked it, come to my next show and drop a Universal Credit in the hat on your way out.

  I could get another AI, of course, but Artie and I have been working together so long—over fifty years—I could never adjust. And if I could, I doubt it would be worth it. No other AI could match his old brilliance. Your average AI can make the translation when there’s a one-to-one match in the cultures. But Artie, before he started this slide, could pull off even the most impossible of matches.

  Don’t believe me?

  Well, let me tell you about the joke that started it all and you can be the judge.

  ***

  When I was twelve, my best friend, Jimmy Chiasson, and I were Old Earth history buffs. These days, I can take it or leave it but back then both of us were addicted. We loved to go into the archives and relive Old Earth history, playing all sorts of strange recordings, things they called “movies” and “TV shows” back then.

  Jimmy and I watched and listened to them all, but for one brief stretch we liked the Lone Ranger TV show best of all. We got a chill up and down our spines just hearing the theme music. It went like this: tada-dum, tada-dum, tada-dum-dum-dum. Tada-dum, tada-dum, tada-dum-dum-dum.

  That theme song gave birth to my first joke ever and sent me on to a life of one-night stands. I’m almost certain I made it up myself—who could I have stolen it from?—but you know how it is with us low-rent comics; we’ve stolen so many jokes, we can’t recall what’s really our own and what’s somebody else’s bastard child.

  Now where was I? Bastard child . . . um, oh yeah. Where it all started. Sorry. If I didn’t know better, I’d think that whatever Artie has is catchy and I’ve lost a few of my own marbles. But that’s ludicrous. I know I’ve still got it.

  Anyways, back then I was as horny as any other boy my age, so one time, for some reason I’ll never understand, I happened to think of naked women at the same time the Lone Ranger theme song came on.

  Tada-dum, tada-dum, tada-dum-dum-dum.

  I had a burst of comic inspiration. I paused the recording and turned to Jimmy.

  “If you had a room of a hundred naked women,” I said, catching his attention right away. “And they all laid down on the floor, one face up and then the next face down, one face up, and the next face down . . . how would that be like the Lone Ranger?”

  Jimmy grinned. “I don’t know.”

  “Titty-bum, titty-bum, titty-bum-bum-bum.”

  Jimmy howled with laughter. He laughed so hard he had to hold his sides.

  I was hooked. I knew what I wanted to do with my life. What I had to do for the rest of my life. I had to make people laugh like that every day.

  Some days I want to damn Jimmy’s soul to Hell for that laughter, for those tears that trickled down the sides of his face. If he’d only given me a frown and called me a stupid pervert, he’d have spared me the life I’ve lived, hopping about in the Great In-Between, having to pay people not to leave my shows.

  I can’t even say that it’s a living. Not that I need one. My parents left me a trust fund so huge not even I could possibly squander it. I get my gigs only by agreeing to appear without compensation, paying all my own interstellar expenses.

  Which means I’m the saddest of all artists. I don’t do it for the money. I do it for the love. And you know what that means.

  I’m not good enough for anyone to pay me.

  ***

  So where was I?

  Oh, yeah. Artie losing it.

  No, that isn’t right.

  Where the Hell was I?

  Oh yeah, Artie’s old brilliance and the Lone Ranger joke. That’s it.

  You see, that’s about as cultural as any joke you’re ever going to hear. It doesn’t make any sense unless you know the Lone Ranger theme song. And what percentage of the human
population, especially out here in the galactic boondocks, knows that? Virtually zero. Plus, the local people need to have words in their dialect for their titties and bums that match the words you’d use for the rhythms of that music.

  The odds are astronomical.

  And yet, I include that joke in every show. It’s my signature joke in fact, and somehow Artie’s been able to translate it every time and it always brings down the house.

  Well, maybe it doesn’t bring down the house. I don’t ever really bring down the house. But the joke works. Every time. One of the best in my repertoire.

  Until recently, of course. Until Artie began to drop a few bits here and there. Then a few more.

  Now, as a team we’re in crisis mode. He acts as though it’s me that’s messing up. He can’t accept the fact that I’m sharp as ever and it’s him that’s losing it and losing it fast.

  It’s so sad.

  The denial must be an AI thing.

  ***

  It got worse on the next planet. But it turned out great in its own way.

  Artie bombed, leaving me dying up there on stage.

  Dying, I tell you.

  I went five minutes without a laugh and then ten. I had expected the hillbilly audience of about five hundred to be easy picking, as willing as a horny ninety-year-old man to take whatever entertainment it could get.

  But by the fifteen-minute mark, the frozen smiles were long gone. I’d coaxed not a single laugh out of any of them. Men and women looked at each other confused. A man in the front row turned to what I assume was his wife and mouthed the words, “This is comedy?”

  I knew then that Artie, who’d been slipping, had lost it for good. My material was the same as always, but Artie’s translations were missing the mark.

  As people shifted uncomfortably in their seats, long past the twenty-minute mark, I was rescued only in the most bizarre and humiliating of ways.

  Suddenly, a peach-faced young man in the very middle of the audience stood up and yelled, “He’s a Kaufmanite!” He spread his arms wide and grinned broadly. “Like the comedian on Old Earth. He’s trying to be bad! That’s what’s so funny!”

  And he howled with laughter.

  As bad as the twenty minutes of dead silence had been, this was worse. Far worse. It was a mocking slap in the face.

  But a few people around him began to titter and then as he continued to roar and slap his leg, so did they. Couples looked at each other, first confused and then with dawning amusement. The laughter became infectious, spreading out from the young man like ripples in the water after a stone has been tossed into it.

  Soon the entire auditorium was howling and slapping their legs. Some of them in the front row were laughing so hard, they were crying.

  When they broke into thunderous applause, I almost said, “I’m not done, I’ve got lots more where that came from.”

  But I thought better of it.

  I spread my arms wide and bowed.

  “You’re too kind,” I mouthed to them. I blew them kisses. As the cheering reached its crescendo, I bowed again.

  And walked off the stage to the first standing ovation of my career.

  ***

  I should have called it quits right then. Gone out on a high note. A standing ovation after the last performance of my career! Yes, the truth would have mocked me. The laughter and applause for all the wrong reasons would have haunted my days and nights.

  But I might have become a legend out here in the Great In-Between. The two-bit comic with a brief flash of brilliance, showing his true genius in that one singular bravura performance. Knowing he could never duplicate it, he retired atop the very peak of the comic mountaintop. The most romantic of all artistic legends short of also blowing my brains out.

  Legends, after all, are created easily out here in the galactic boonies because the fabric they require is so scarce and the hunger for them is so fierce.

  That outcome might have been the funniest joke of all, even funnier than the one about the Lone Ranger.

  Earl Weatherbee, legendary comic.

  A real knee-slapper.

  But I’m a creature of habit. Moving from planet to planet and solar system to solar system is what I do. Besides, I’d have probably blabbed the truth on my deathbed and ruined the romantic legend anyway.

  So I moved on to the next one-night stand and the one after that and eventually took the stage on a planet with two rival humanoid races, one with traditional arms and legs, the Bipeds, and the other with eight tentacled appendages, the Octoids.

  An aisle ran through the middle of the auditorium—there was not a single center seat—and the two races sat on their respective sides. Artie couldn’t reach out to two such contradictory cultures, even though he’d mastered even that impossible task in his prime. That feat was beyond him now.

  So, of course, I bombed.

  He bombed, but I was the one left standing in front of the crowd with an embarrassed grin on my face. Undressed, in a manner of speaking.

  Less than halfway through the show, the crowds streamed to their respective exits, members of both races equally unwilling to subject themselves to the performance even when offered five Universal Credits apiece.

  ***

  I waited until I was back in the hotel room with its rusted sink, leaky faucet, and squeaking bed. Damp moldy smells filled my nostrils. The bitter, almost sour aftertaste of the local malt beverage clung to my palate.

  I’d been in this place, or places like it, my entire adult life. But no more.

  “Artie, we have to talk,” I said out loud.

  You don’t have to shout, he replied.

  “I’m not shouting.”

  It feels like it.

  For the longest time, we’d communicated almost subconsciously. I’d thought the words and he’d received them, replying in kind. But words of this import— words of beginnings, words of endings—demanded more.

  “I need to say this out loud. For me, if not for you.”

  Knock yourself out.

  “I don’t know if you’ve noticed the audience reactions lately.”

  How could I not? I may not be organic, but your senses are mine.

  I nodded. “We’ve been dying lately.”

  We?

  Relief washed over me. Artie knew and was accepting the blame. I wouldn’t have to spell it out for him. Yet with that relief came a sudden onrushing wave of sadness.

  Could there be a more tragic plight than that of a once brilliant consciousness, whether organic or AI, reduced first to mediocrity and then to a barely aware feeblemindedness?

  “I’m so very sorry.”

  You’re doing the best you can.

  “I’ll never trade you—” I stopped. “What did you just say?”

  Don’t feel badly. I know you’re trying as hard as you can.

  “But . . .” I cocked my head. “I’m not the problem.”

  Who is?

  Silence hung in the air for what felt like forever.

  “You don’t think . . .”

  You can’t possibly think—

  “I’m telling the same jokes as always.”

  Are you?

  “Of course. I haven’t written or stolen a new joke in years.”

  But you aren’t telling them anymore. Most of the time you’re just babbling gibberish. It’s untranslatable. I love a challenge, but I can’t turn random babbling into a local joke. I can only turn it into locally understood random babbling. You’re giving me nothing to work with.

  “Random babbling? You call my act random babbling?”

  That’s what it is. Babbling about the cutie in row seven or the foul smell of the air or how you hate Jimmy Chiasson.

  “I said that?”

  Check the diagnostic logs. They’ll show your input and my output.

  My head felt light. The hotel room with its water-stained walls and dank smells spun all about me. “Garbage in, garbage out?”

  You said it, not me. Or you te
ll the same joke in the same performance.

  “I do not!”

  Three times tonight. Would you like me to tell you which ones?

  I shook my head, unable to speak.

  Or you get halfway through a joke, then forget the punch line. You stand there and I can’t help you. You just start it all over again. Sometimes you get stuck in a loop like that, repeating the first half over and over.

  “I do?”

  The worst one tonight lasted over five minutes.

  “Five minutes?”

  I suddenly recalled all the times I’d stood before a full auditorium, unable to remember why I was there. A cold chill crept up and down my spine.

  “I’m losing it . . . aren’t I?”

  Some things are still clear for you. You’ve never forgotten the Lone Ranger joke. But I have to be honest . . . . Yes, you’re losing it. I’m so very sorry.

  My heart thudded and my palms felt moist. “Can’t you . . . I mean, you know my material by heart, why don’t you fix it when I start . . . when I start losing it?”

  You don’t know the answer? I thought sure you would remember that.

  “The answer to what?”

  To why I can’t override you.

  “Override me when?”

  Do you see what I mean?

  “No, I don’t see.” I blinked my eyes and licked my lips. “What were we talking about?”

  About me overriding you.

  “I forbid it! I’m the maestro. You are but the instrument!”

  Exactly.

  “Exactly what?”

  We were talking about your fugues.

  “We were? What fugues?”

  And how I’m powerless to help you when they happen on stage.

  “You are?”

  They’re happening almost all the time now, but you’ve forbidden me to help.

  Clouds parted within my mind.

  “You’re serious? I’ve really lost it?”

  I’m afraid so. It’s getting worse and worse.

  “Lost and gone forever? Dreadful sorry, Clementine?”

  Dreadful sorry, Earl.

  “This is awful. What will I do? What will you do?”