Got Thrills? A Boxed Set (A McCray Collection)

by Carolyn McCray

  Rob just sat, mesmerized by the tracks of light the spacecraft left behind, like interstellar slugs leaving trails of glistening space slime.

  The sight was even more than what Rob had been expecting. He had studied up on the space station during the week that Jarod was finding a ship, and the stuff he found out was so amazing that he couldn’t stop. He was so stoked about the whole thing that he researched the history of it.

  Back in 2011, when the shuttle program was scrapped and NASA went belly-up, no real space flight existed for about five years. Then a bunch of rich dudes got together and said, “Hey, let’s build a casino out in space!” Everyone thought the idea was completely whacked, and they would all lose their shirts on the deal. Not even. It was such a huge hit with the millionaires and billionaires that they kept expanding the operation.

  The station had zero-gravity rides that put theme parks back planet-side to shame. One called the Eliminator went out into the vacuum of space and flipped around five times before heading back. The gravitational pulls from the flips traded off with the zero grav to create the perfect Hurl-o-Matic ride. Rob was pretty sure that it might kill him. He had to get on that thing before they left.

  A theater also had a totally immersive experience. Like, you were in the movie. You did what the hero did, saw what he saw, and felt what he felt. That was totally creepy! And tighter than a helmet seal. Another must-do.

  And then, the one thing that no one…and Rob meant no one…would keep him from. The arcade. This arcade was the most advanced gaming station in the universe. They had rides that they couldn’t even advertise back on Earth. They were that extreme. And Rob was here, just minutes away from playing them all.

  This was going to be so cool!

  * * *

  Jarod refocused on the instruments in front of him, waving his hand over the panel that would allow him to speak with the space station. He had to wave twice to get it to work. “This is the Eureka, asking permission to dock.”

  During the long pause that followed, Cleo stuck her head into the cockpit. “We’re pretty much ready to go back there. What’s the holdup?”

  Jarod started to reply when a voice crackled over the speakers. “Uh…Eureka, we have you on visuals. Do you need emergency assistance?”

  Jarod darted his eyes around the cockpit to see if he had tripped some sort of alarm by mistake. Nothing out of order that he could see. “Come again?”

  “Your ship…Well. It looks…Are you sure it can handle docking?”

  Jarod sighed as he heard Cleo snicker next to him. He glanced over at Simon, whose face had now gone from normal to dark red and looked to be on its way to purple. He held out a restraining hand as the little person spoke into the mic, “Listen, you glorified—”

  “Control, we are ready to dock,” Jarod yanked the mic away and yelled over what he was sure would have become a withering tirade from their tiny pilot. Simon sat back in his seat, muttering to himself about the questionable heritage of the official in question.

  After another, shorter pause their response came. “Uh…Roger that. Docking instructions passing to your mainframe now. You do have a computer, right?”

  Jarod grabbed for the mic to forestall another possible rant. Simon glared daggers at him and continued mumbling to himself. “Uploaded and ready.”

  Simon sat up and began dancing his fingers over the sensitive instrument panel in front of him. He and Jarod now began the delicate dance of working together to get the ship docked. This was the one part of Jarod’s whirlwind training that had felt like second nature. He spoke over his shoulder at Cleo, “It’s just like pulling our boat into port.”

  “Except here, your patented port-side ‘bump’,” Cleo’s tone was drier than the Sahara. “and we die.”

  Good point. Jarod refocused on the task at hand. The controls were not too terribly different than a plane’s, except that there were a lot more of them. A lot more. Enough that just looking at them gave Jarod a headache. Luckily, this maneuver only required him to use the stick and push a couple of buttons. He was mostly sure that he knew which ones they were.

  As they approached the docking gate, Jarod overcorrected a smidgen, and there was a gentle shudder. Cleo’s hand on his shoulder clamped down like a vise and Jarod heard her make some kind of guttural sound in the back of her throat. And then they were docked.

  “Docking complete,” the rather cheerful computer chimed.

  “Nice work, Eureka,” flight control added. “Refueling and re-ionization will take approximately two hours. Please feel free to explore the station during your layover. Complementary chips are available to first-timers at the casino.”

  Now that was Jarod’s kind of layover.

  Jarod called out to the rest of the crew, “Guess karma’s buying the first round! Didja hear that, Buton?” Jarod glanced at Cleo, who still wore her planet-side frown.

  “C’mon,” Jarod prompted. “How much trouble can we really get into in just two hours?

  CHAPTER 6

  Undisclosed location in the Rocky Mountains

  March 28, 2049

  0814 hours, MST

  The rainbow-colored sparks flying out of the machine were beautiful. Dr. Weigner could not deny it. The fact that they were coming out at all was not such a good thing. This was the hundredth time he had run the tests, and what he had at first hoped was an anomaly had now become an almost certainty.

  And now it was time to tell the general.

  The grizzled Cold War relic had been pushing more and more in recent days, looking for his weaponized peacekeeper. Now. What had not even been a possibility before Dr. Weigner’s discovery was now needed yesterday. Working for the military had its benefits. This was not one of them.

  The scientist glanced at his watch, an antique gold Bulova, his one and only nod to nostalgia. The timepiece had belonged to his grandfather. He had hated his grandfather. A nasty, crotchety alcoholic with a nasty, crotchety voice that he wasn’t afraid to use in the worst abuse a human voice could render. The scientist’s ancestor had made Weigner’s early childhood an absolute hell on earth. The doctor had left as soon as he could. Weigner wore the watch to remind himself of where he had come from and just how far he had traveled.

  And no mere military man was going to take that away from him. Weigner may not be pleased with where the experiments had taken him, but he had a plan to make it work. And this plan would take him even farther than he had already gone.

  Weigner heard the general barking orders at the air near the entranceway, taking out his frustration on anyone who was unlucky enough to be in the commander’s immediate path. The doctor glanced at his watch. Right on time, as usual.

  The general planted himself at attention in front of the computer array. Rather than draw out the moment, Weigner launched straight into the explanation of why he had called the general there. The doctor brought up the specs in a three-dimensional revolving demonstration in the air between the general and himself.

  “As I explained, the limitation of the ‘star’ laser is its dissipation quotient.”

  “Non-Klingon, doctor,” the general growled.

  “The weapon’s range is directly proportional to the size of the crystal.” The general made a face that looked like he had tasted month-old milk. Weigner continued before the general could get a word in. “Let me show you.”

  The display coalesced down to the size of a small gemstone. Weigner stepped forward to cup the hologram in his palm. “A two-karat stone might reach across the street…” The gemstone more than doubled in size. “A five-karat will target across town…”

  “How large a diamond would it take to arm an orbiting satellite and have the laser reach Earth?” Weigner stepped back as a monstrous stone took shape. The general breathed out. “The ultimate ‘peacekeeper’.”

  “Exactly,” the scientist agreed. “If such a mother lode exists.” The general frowned. Weigner gestured toward the conference room. “Let’s sit down and talk, shall w
e?” The general followed the doctor as he led the way.

  What other choice did the commander have, really?

  * * *

  Buton trailed behind, seeking to still the roiling in his stomach as the Rogues walked through the causeway and exited upon one of the most chaotic sights Buton had ever seen. Swarms of people milled about, the mix as heady as any nightclub test tube shot. The visual combinations were stark, with partially suited-up miners blending with half naked clubbers, their subdermal tattoos glowing as brightly as their fiber optic wigs, causing garish shadows to dance around the faces of those they passed. It created a Mardi Gras atmosphere, where everything was permissible and nothing shocked anyone.

  Buton estimated an 87 percent probability that he was about to be ill.

  The central hub where all the causeways leading from the shuttle bays met created a large hall. Encased in plasteel, the outer wall allowed for a crystal clear view of the blue-and-white swirl of the Earth below, the glowing orb of the moon to the side, and the wash of the Milky Way above. The turning of the station created gravity, so that “down” was always toward the center of the station. With no other opaque walls to create the feel of a firm structure, one was left to simply “feel” where the gravity was.

  Buton was now 99 percent certain that he was about to be ill.

  From underneath a banner that read, “The Gateway to Your Moon Adventure,” a welcome girl approached their small crew, her tight, form-fitting latex dress lit from underneath by her subdermals. “Eureka! The crew of the Eureka?”

  Jarod, who appeared to be heading for the casino bar already, stopped in his tracks and did a double take. He sauntered back to the welcome girl and winked, a grin spreading over his tanned face. “Eureka here.”

  The welcome girl smiled. “Holograms are immune to charm.”

  She looked toward the rest of the crew as Jarod’s face fell. Not that Buton would understand. This hologram was far beyond anything seen on Earth. The only odd thing? Why would a hologram have an obvious chest enlargement?

  “Before departing,” the welcome girl continued, “you will need to read the Moon Territory Regulations in full and digitally sign on the last page.”

  She held out a disposable tablet with the information contained within. Buton accepted the device. Glancing at the scroll bar on the side and the microscopic dot that represented the current location of the cursor, Buton estimated that the manual easily surpassed the size of most encyclopedia sets.

  As if to offset the painful size of the manual, the welcome girl produced a handful of holographic casino chips, each one glowing like a miniature sun from the neon gases trapped within. The chips disappeared from the girl’s hand and made their way to Jarod’s pocket in mere nanoseconds.

  As if nothing had transpired, Jarod scrolled through the first few hundred pages with his thumb. The dot on the bar moved about a millimeter.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he sighed, and then his eyes found a lithe Asian woman with a flashing golden tiger pendant. Without taking his gaze from the retreating figure, Jarod mumbled over his shoulder, “Buton, take care of this, will you?”

  That really was too much.

  “Why must the one with the stomach ailments be left the task?” Buton pleaded at Jarod’s retreating back. Jarod didn’t even twitch in response. His attention was now obviously riveted elsewhere. Buton turned to Cleo, his eyebrows asking the question.

  “Hey, I’m heading to the med facility to get something for that space sickness,” Cleo said. “Unless…?” She indicated the tablet. Buton shook his weary head. His need for her medical talents far exceeded his need for her to read the document.

  Buton turned to the last member of the crew as Cleo disappeared from sight. Clearly hurrying before Buton might change his mind.

  Rob answered the question before it was even asked, his teenage voice cracking as he protested. “A, I’m too young to sign a legal document. And B, I’m heading to the arcade.”

  Rob nodded toward a sign that listed “arcade” in every language known to man. The amount of noise and light radiating from the room made Buton’s head pound all the more. He refocused on the welcome girl, who was only a slight improvement over the arcade. Emphasis on “slight.”

  “What happens if we by chance break one of these regulations?” he asked.

  “For a misdemeanor? You get your stake revoked.” The girl pursed her lips, the shadows cast by her subdermals radiating from her mouth. “A felony? Life in prison.”

  “Aha,” Buton answered. “Do you happen to have a magnifying glass?”

  * * *

  Rob darted from Buton as fast as his artificial legs would take him. No way was he going to get roped into reading some stupid manual when the arcade was calling his name. Rob looked around at all the lights and colors bouncing off of the hordes of people milling around, some of those colors radiating out of them. Okay, maybe the arcade screaming his name. This was his kinda place.

  The pings and beeps and explosions of the arcades were a siren song that pulled him through the crowds like some kind of sweet magnet. Rob strolled through the arc of the entrance, which looked like it was made of pure light. Whatever casing had been used for the swirl of neon lights inside, it was almost undetectable. Rob watched the play of the colors across his clothes, his vision blurring. It felt as though the lights were hypnotizing him, luring him in with the promise of the most adrenaline-fueled games he could imagine. And Rob could imagine a lot. He felt the pulsing of the room, the sounds colliding in his chest, that displaced his heart’s own rhythm and forced his stride to the game temple’s throbbing beat.

  Inside the game room, Rob didn’t know what to choose first—a virtual skydiving game, a first-person shooter which mimicked the feeling of getting shot when you got hit in the game…minus most of the pain, and a multiplayer shootout that was something like laser tag. However, it was housed in a real-life bouncy.

  Rob decided to start off a little bit simpler with the Starflight Academy trainer, which was based on the official training game for the U.S. Air Force, which now incorporated all American interstellar ships. Or were they just hyping the military angle to sell the game?

  As he strapped in and played for the first time, he decided that if it was a hoax, it was totally worth it. It wasn’t that the graphics were amazing, although they were. It wasn’t the built-in surround sound, although that was incredible. What really knocked his socks off was the grav field they had built into the game, so that every time he banked, the gravitational forces pulled at him. He walked away from the machine feeling slightly buzzed, his hands tingling.

  This was almost worth the whole trip to the moon.

  Rob lounged in one of the aisles, waiting for his heart rate to return to a more human level. A group of teenage girls caught his eye. They were standing around a 37th generation Dance Dance Revolution, with songs featuring varied speeds and time signatures. It also measured where your eyes were, so you had to be looking in the right direction each time your foot landed. There was one girl playing who hadn’t missed a single step yet. From her score, it looked like she had been going at it for a while. Her blonde hair, with one fuchsia streak, whipped around her head like some kind of psychedelic halo. Her body flowed through the moves as though it was made to dance.

  She was smokin’ hot.

  As the girls giggled at something one of them said, Rob turned to move away. They were like a pack of hyenas, but five times as intimidating. Their laughter beat at his back, feeling like failure. He forced himself to stop and turn back around. What was he so scared of? He had, like, the best example of how to pick up hotties ever. All Rob had to do was think of what Jarod would do, and he would have this gaggle of girls eating out of the palm of his hand.

  Rob squared his shoulders, put on his best lopsided grin, and strutted over to the flock before his brain had time to stop him. One more lesson he learned from Uncle Jare.

  The blonde girl finished her game an
d stepped down into the gang just as Rob arrived at the outer perimeter of their space. As one, the girls’ eyes glommed onto Rob, looking him up and down, lingering on his prosthetic legs.

  And just like that, Rob wanted to sink into the arcade’s glowing floor. How did his uncle deal with this kind of intense scrutiny? He thought back and came up with the answer. Go on the offensive.

  “Hey.” Rob gave his head a slight tip as he honed in on the blonde, her forehead still covered with a light sheen of sweat from her dancing. She looked back at him evenly, her gaze assessing.

  One of the other girls, clearly the queen bee and seemingly upset that Rob was paying attention to someone else, stepped forward. “What do you want, loser? You’re one of the moon trash, aren’t you?”

  “Uh…what?” This was not going the way it was supposed to.

  The girl, a brunette with streaks of pink light tracing swirls on her cheeks from her subdermals, huffed out a breath that spoke of her disgust in no uncertain terms. “One of the Star Diamond hunters? You’re dressed like one. You know…one step up from homeless?” The girls around her broke into titters at that. Rob noticed that the blonde didn’t join in. “This whole station’s gone downhill since that whole MoonRush thingy started. This used to be the hottest place in the universe. Now they’ll let anyone in.”

  Rob tried to come up with a response, but his brain was blanker than a freshly wiped hard drive. Nothing. He had nothing. What was Jarod’s default? Oh, right…the grin. Rob ratcheted up his smile another notch. The brunette was unfazed.

  “And what’s up with your legs?” Again, the nervous titters from the gang.

  Without thinking, Rob blurted out, “They were bitten off by a shark.”

  Complete silence amongst the girls lasted for the space of several heartbeats. Then, they burst out in derisive laughter. The brunette choked out, “Dude, if you’re going to come up with a story to impress us, it’s got to be better than that.” She turned on her heel and stalked off, the girls flowing around her and following behind, like some kind of feminine nebula cloud.