Custodians of the Cosmos

by Drayton Alan

  Nigel tapped his comm unit and requested robot maintenance.

  “Belle here,” a female voice answered.

  “Hey, Tink, we got another M-bot casualty in front of Xenobotany. You want us to pick it up or you gonna come down.”

  “Don’t touch it. I’ll be there in a few minutes, just clean around it,” Belle said.

  “Okay, sweetheart, gotcha, Nigel out.”

  “That's Chief Robotics Engineer Sweetheart to you, Goat-Boy, Belle out.”

  “Poor thing, she’s got sweet on me, ya know.” Nigel said. “She calls me that Goat-Boy name, it’s one of them terms of A Deer Mint. But that’s my curse, the ladies fall for me, they all have little pet names for me.”

  Kale had seen Nigel without the goggles, breathing mask, and decontamination gear. To have girls fall for him wasn’t his curse. Quickly, after picturing Nigel without his gear, Kale carefully put the goggles and mask back on the memory.

  Nigel’s face was hard to describe, it was also hard to look at. It seemed to have either three eyebrows or three mustaches. A new term, eyestache, might work; placement was no help since his features didn’t quite line up. To say Nigel was ugly wasn’t fair to ugly people. There are a number of ugly people who could look moderately good with the right light and enough alcohol. For Nigel, the amount of alcohol needed would probably be toxic. And the required light level only occurs inside a black hole.

  Let’s just say, that on the spectrum of ugly, Nigel occupied a unique position. Somewhere past hideous, out near the reaches of hold-your-mouth-and-search-for-a-bucket. The fact that Nigel was a good guy, patient and helpful, didn’t change the impact of his appearance when it came to the ladies.

  Mind you, being that hard to look at wasn’t without advantages. If Nigel enters a room, the room was better looking already, just by his being there for comparison. For example, if you take a room containing both the grisly remains of a rotting alien corpse and Nigel, by the sheer mental weight and horror of both images combined, the festering alien gut pile didn’t seem quite as repulsive.

  Lieutenant Lou, the cleaning supervisor, was aware of Nigel’s special ability. Lou utilized this Nigel Effect by putting him in any situation where the senior officers were likely to inspect the custodial crew’s work. If the officers checked a newly-cleaned room and saw Nigel, the room would look immaculate in comparison. It was like driving by an accident, they’d try not to stare, try to see other things, and then remember they were supposed to check for dirt. However, despite their efforts to the contrary, their eyes would be yanked back to the horror that was Nigel. The inspection would pass even if there was a dead Centaurian skunk in the room.

  “Come here, Newbers,” Nigel said, motioning Kale to come closer.

  His voice lowered, and he began. “I got something important to show ya before anybody else gets here.” After checking that they were alone, Nigel bent over one of the larger alien body chunks, pulled out a big knife, and hacked a hole into the corpse.

  “See this,” he said, as he pulled a large pearlescent sphere from the alien’s body cavity. It had a beautiful luster and was about two inches in diameter.

  “This here’s a squidman pearl. Not all the aliens have ’em but I learned how to find ’em. Now if you see any of these, you give em to me. They are contraband and I dispose of ’em. You do that and we’ll be friends. Got it?”

  “Sure, but how do I know if the alien has a pearl thingy?” Kale asked.

  “You don’t, but I do. Just holler when you see a big chunk of dead alien like this one. Then you let me check it, ’fore it gets tossed into the bin. That’s all you got to worry about. Oh, and don’t say nothing to nobody ’bout this. I wouldn’t wanna have to report my new best friend for violations of the Coalition War Crimes Act.”

  “Ah, sure thing, Nigel,” Kale said. He tried not to sound horrified. Kale wondered what Nigel did with the big pearls. But, after a second thought, he decided he didn’t want to know. He needed to keep his nose clean if he ever wanted to be accepted by the academy.

  That was the whole reason Kale had signed on to the custodial crew of the United Coalition Ship Cosmos. He was desperate to get into Coalition Officer’s Space Academy.

  However, none of his family had been space faring, not even merchants. In fact, his mother and father had been freelance software programmers. But that was a secret he kept to himself. Information like that could ruin any chance of his getting a career. Sure, his parents were different, a little old-fashioned, perhaps. If you wanted to try to make them sound cool, you could’ve called them retro, but they weren’t cool in any stretch of the word.

  For example, instead of following current trends they’d decorate in dowdy, hopelessly outdated, styles. For fun, they liked to take part in historical reenactments and drama club events. They had dragged Kale to a number of these, but the reenactments weren’t of a cool period, like the Dark Ages or ancient Rome. Instead, they were fascinated by the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. His dad even had a picture of himself wearing a leisure suit with Mom in a tie-dye tee shirt. Kale hid that picture whenever his friends came over.

  For a costume party one time they dressed as Barack and Michelle Obama. For Kale, as a kid, this was humiliating, none of his friends knew who they were. So, Kale lied and told them they were dressed as famous rappers, musicians from that time. Kale hoped this would be cooler than some old-time president and his wife.

  When Kale failed to get a scholarship to the academy, he’d tried everything. Even some goofy online correspondence course, but when he took the academy entrance exam, he failed miserably. Not because he wasn’t smart enough. He over-thought every question on the test and found a way to make each of the multiple-choice answers correct with the proper set of conditions.

  Now, his only hope was to get a sponsor, but only officers above the rank of lieutenant were permitted to recommend a cadet and Kale had never even met an ensign before. He’d only seen them in the popular holovids the Coalition used for propaganda and recruiting.

  However, Kale wasn’t defeated, he’d come up with a foolproof plan. He’d get a cleaning job on a starship. There he was sure to meet lots of officers; they, of course, would be impressed by him and happy to recommend him. What he hadn’t figured on was the exceptional level of fools his foolproof plan was up against.

  “Holy crap! Who shot Reggie?” an angry female voice yelled.

  Chief Robotics Engineer Belle Sanaa had arrived, and she was mad. It was her maintenance robot that had been shot by the first officer. Not hers by ownership, but hers because she had a responsibility for all the robots on the ship. That she had named each of them wasn’t weird at all.

  Yet, much was forgiven Belle, or Tink as some called her, because she was the best robot tech the ship had ever had. That and because she was pretty. Despite two hundred years of work to advance the role of women in society, there remained certain men that saw a woman’s looks as a determining factor in almost any decision. This was unfair and unwanted, besides Belle never thought of herself as pretty. She was an attractive brunette with blue eyes and a nice smile, but she didn’t consider herself more than fair looking. She was the smartest tech on the ship. Not only in robotics but also a skilled hacker and engineer.

  Her reputation as a great beauty might also be related to the fact that she worked in the same department as Nigel. The Nigel Effect had amplified Belle’s perceived looks so that now she was considered the most beautiful woman on the ship. All this meant was that her ideas were never taken seriously by the officers. But her supervisor, Lieutenant Lou, knew her outstanding abilities and always backed her up when she locked horns with arrogant command officers. Still in general, Belle got lots of unwanted attention and no professional respect. You could understand why she might prefer the company of robots to humans.

  “I heard your good friend Frakes complaining about Reggie blocking his shot,” Nigel said.

  Belle sat down next to the fallen robot an
d soothed it like a wounded child. She gathered its scattered parts into a bag and wrote Reggie on the outside.

  “Good thing Frakes likes you, or he’d put you on report,” Nigel said.

  “If I cared, that might bother me, but I’m sure he will use it as an excuse to torment me.” Belle noticed Kale, and said, “They got you out here already, new boy? Good luck and don’t overload my vac-bots. I used to get after Bob for that all the time.”

  On hearing Bob’s name mentioned, Nigel made a superstitious gesture and said, “Poor Bob. Tink, why’d you go and bring that up?”

  “I’m sorry, Nigel.”

  “Who is Bob?” Kale asked.

  “They didn’t tell you about Bob? He’s the guy you replaced,” Belle said. She seemed about ready to tell the story. But Nigel interrupted.

  “It was real bad, okay?” Nigel said. He seemed to choke up a little—or was he gagging? “Can we not talk ’bout Bob right now, if it’s all the same, Tink?”

  “Sure, too soon. I get it. Sorry goat-man,” Belle said. She stood up from the slimy floor and tagged Reggie with a teleport tag. She pressed its button and he vanished, teleported back to her repair shop.

  Kale wondered what had happened to Bob that would make Nigel, who had just been up to his elbows in slimy alien guts, gag like that. He’d have to ask later when he wasn’t so upset.

  Kale changed the subject. “So, why do they call you Tink? Oh wait, I figured it out, because your name is Belle, right?”

  The girl gave him a blank stare.

  “That character from the story, Tinkerbelle. Right?” He smiled waiting for her to recognize the joke.

  “Not sure who that is, but no. They call me Tink because I repair stuff, duh.”

  “Oh okay, sorry. I just thought,” Kale looked at Nigel, who also stared back blankly. “Never mind.”

  His parents’ fascination with the twentieth and twenty-first centuries strikes again. Perhaps that fairy story they liked to tell him wasn’t as popular as he’d imagined. Kale decided not to explain it. He shoved more alien guts in a pile for the robots to clean.

  “Hey! Watch what you’re doing there, newbie.” Belle scolded Kale. “Those chunks are too big for the vac-bot. Remember, if it’s bigger than your fist give it a swish. Off to the side for the others, otherwise it plugs the vac-bot’s inlet port. See that flashing red light? That means you overloaded it. Now you have to unjam the poor thing. Watch me do this, so you can unjam it without losing a hand.”

  She picked up the robot that had the flashing red light and pressed a button on the rim. A large flap opened on the bottom. Next, she banged it against the wall and two or three large chunks of squidman anatomy plopped onto the floor.

  Kale watched as she explained, but his gaze kept going back to her beguiling blue eyes.

  “You can also clear it by pressing the green button on the top; that forces it to teleport any junk in this cavity without waiting for it to be full. Just don’t have your hand in there when you press it. Got it?”

  She caught him staring at her, she tried to ignore it, but her cheeks reddened as she fought back a smile.

  “Yes,” Kale said. He looked down at the robot again.

  “And if your hand is inside the cavity when you press the green button?” Belle asked, testing to be sure Kale was listening.

  “You lose your hand to space.”

  “Good,” Belle said. “Also, it will make a popping noise if it does a teleport with the door open, that’s the vacuum being released into the room. If you see one damaged, and it’s making a popping noise stay clear of it. It’s liable to teleport anything nearby. Tell the computer to shut it down, then call me.”

  She looked at Kale waiting for a response, so he nodded. “Popping noise, stay clear, tell computer, call you, got it.”

  “I don’t want to have to tell you again. Only the small pieces and you won’t have to worry about jamming. Give the bigger bits to the scraper bots that come after.”

  She tried to take a serious tone with him, but his staring puppy dog eyes made it hard.

  Kale saw the look and wondered, Is there an attraction there?

  “You listen to me and Tink here, and you’ll do fine,” Nigel said. “Now get cracking, we need these floors dry before the other robots can do their work.”

  Kale worked intently, moving the bigger chunks to the side and letting the vac-bots get the liquids and small stuff. Soon the floors were mostly dry and the bigger scraper-bots arrived to pick up the larger chunks. They took the debris and inserted it into their much bigger disposer cavity. The biggest parts and full alien bodies were put in a big automated trash cart by the scraper-bots. These had various working limbs with assorted scoops, claws, and brushes. As soon as the floors were free of obstacles, the scraper robots deployed foamy brushes and went to work on the ceilings and walls.

  Kale realized that at some point another custodian had joined them. Odd he hadn’t noticed his arrival.

  The new custodian, whose name was Phior-Chopi, or Chopi for short, was from a strange alien race Kale had never heard of, called the Xuesi. The Xuesi were human shaped except smaller and more slender. They had scant hair and squinting features that gave them a wizened look.

  Chopi rarely spoke but always seemed busy. Often, he would appear at cleaning jobs without being asked. Nigel said Chopi’s people were natural custodians—they sensed when things were out of place and arrived to straighten and clean. The lieutenant almost never needed to give orders to Chopi; the little man somehow always seemed to know where he was needed. The custodians called him the little dirt ninja.

  After a short time, the hallway was clean and the only reminders of the battle were the scorch marks and holes from blaster fire. Repairing these was the job of the maintenance robots, or M-bots, like the fallen Reggie. Two M-bots had arrived and were preparing to make repairs. Kale had always wanted to see this process. He’d learned about it when studying for the academy entrance exam.

  Kale watched the maintenance robot lock its lasers onto the subtle reference marks that dotted the walls every few meters. The robot next projected a green holo-image over the damaged wall section. It paused, making slight adjustments for perfect alignment then it made a loud click as the image of a new panel superimposed itself over the old. The robot, now frozen in place, made a loud humming noise as it drew power from its fusion reactor. Then there was a loud snap, as the panel shimmered and a new one appeared precisely in its place. The transition process, from old to new panel was instantaneous.

  The M-bots moved down the hallway scanning the walls for damage and replicating replacements. The process was efficient, and replaced not only the outside panel, but also all the circuitry, conduits, pipes, and mechanics that were part of the panel assembly aligning them to adjoining sections within a nano-meter. The schematic of each panel assembly was stored in the ship’s database and the robots replicated them perfectly each time. In addition to damage repair, this process was also used for new construction and scheduled preventive maintenance. Each panel assembly had an internal chronometer that would signal for a replacement every year or so depending on the type and location. An M-bot would get the signal and add it to its daily schedule.

  The creation of these teleporting-replicating robots was the technology that had made the fleet possible. Once the schematics were drawn almost an entire ship could be built from the robot’s reactor energy. Only a few un-replicable elements were needed to complete a ship and make it fly.

  At last, the cleanup job was complete and the custodial crew commander, Lieutenant Lou Clontan, arrived to survey the job. The lieutenant was an older human in his late fifties. He gave the crew a friendly nod and began looking for missed spots. Lou knew the captain would complain about anything out of place when he arrived to inspect.

  “Can’t be violating the first law of custodiotics on your first cleanup job, can we, Yeoman Butterly,” the lieutenant said.

  Kale wasn’t sure if he was serious
or joking. So he said, “No sir, can’t have that now, sir.”

  “Take it easy on the ‘sirs,’ Newbie, I only need one. More than that makes you sound like a boot licking idiot.”

  Everyone knew that Lou despised the protocol and regulations the Coalition required, especially those that regarded addressing officers. It wasn’t unusual for some of the senior officers to use those rules to browbeat the junior officers and other crewmen.

  Lou always pushed back. He did his job to the letter, but he would flaunt any regulation he thought idiotic wherever and whenever he could. He didn’t like rules and didn’t trust authority. Why he had chosen a career in the military was a mystery.

  For example, when Lou had first been placed in command he’d asked his men to use his first name instead of the “stuffy Lieutenant Clontan.” His commander still insisted Lou follow accepted protocol. So, Lou found a loophole. Coalition regulations did allow for addressing officers by other than Rank and Surname. But only for cultures where surnames didn’t exist, were secret, or thought disrespectful. Lou insisted that his family believed use of a surname was taboo. His C.O. wrote him up, but a Coalition committee somewhere agreed with Lou and permitted him to use “Lieutenant Lou” as his official designation.

  Since then, he’s been known to almost everyone as Lieutenant Lou. But if you wanted to get on his good list, you’d call him just Lou when the other officers weren’t around.

  Satisfied with the job, Lou gave Nigel some additional orders and left.

  Nigel called Kale over. Chopi must have already gone, because he was nowhere to be seen. Belle was busy tending her robots, talking to them softly, and wiping the spatters of slime off them in preparation to leave.

  “Hey, Newbers, Lieutenant Lou wants us to check inside these rooms for possible spillage.” He pointed at the Xenobotany Lab doors. “When captain comes, if anything’s messed up it’ll be our fault. Captain’s got his pet projects in there. Report in if any of the plants fell over and such. Sweep the dirt and don’t touch the plants. I’ll take lab one you check lab two—t will take us five minutes.”