Then the rest of the night dissolved into a kaleidoscope of images. One minute Bruce thought himself sober enough to still exercise some judgement. The next thing he knew Rufus was shaking his hand and leaving, so Bruce thought he’d better get going as well. The room had thinned out, and he recognised most of the people left were from a school of serious drinkers that he didn’t want to be a part of tonight.
At some point he felt Sue tug him to his feet, and he found himself stumbling around on the dance floor, boogying with a complete lack of coordination. Then, before he knew what was going on, he was standing practically naked beside the bed in their hotel room with Sue making a concerted effort to get the rest of his clothing off.
Five
Bruce came to with a start and peered around in the darkness. He was in bed without any real recollection of how he had got there, though a montage of images immediately started to flash through his mind. At some point he remembered taking all his clothes off and hopping into bed. Otherwise the previous night was something of a blur, and he hoped he had behaved himself. Beside him Sue was snoring gently, and he sensed that she was out to it completely.
He glanced at the bedside clock and cursed. He had no idea what time he had gone to bed, but it felt like it had been only a few short hours ago and he should have been sleeping for much longer. It was only five thirty am but he knew from bitter experience he was not going back to sleep and would have to suffer with his hangover for hours, instead of just sleeping it off like he assumed most other people did.
Not only did he have a hell of a headache but his guts were gurgling and churning away merrily, making such a racket he was surprised Sue hadn’t woken up to complain. He attempted to recall if he had played up, got out of hand, or generally made a dick of himself the night before and failed.
He knew most everyone else besides the Clarks and his mother were probably in pretty much the same condition he had been in, and few of the guests would have noticed anything out of the ordinary – unless he had behaved really badly. He was also pretty sure that the Clarks themselves had made a beeline for the exit as soon as decently proper, and he could clearly remember events fairly well up to then. So he felt he was in the clear until otherwise proven wrong.
I can adjust your blood alcohol levels if you like, his newfound companion offered. I am also sure your liver is not performing optimally, judging by the monitor programs I have loaded, and it appears you are very dehydrated. I would also think you probably have a headache.
That he was feeling under the weather was an understatement. In fact, even though he liked having a few beers, he rarely felt as dodgy after a night’s drinking as he did at the moment. He blamed the red wine someone had put in his hand – and the second, and the third, which he was not used to.
Bruce nodded his assent and immediately started to perk up – as though someone had mainlined some sort of rejuvenation drug straight into his veins. In a minute or two he felt as right as rain.
However, feeling right as rain did not solve the problem of not remembering what he had got up to the night before. It was the not knowing whether or not he had made a dick of himself that increased his anxiety levels and almost made him physically cringe in shame and embarrassment at the very thought of what he might have got up to. His attempt at reassuring himself that everyone else had been too pissed to care failed to do the trick. It was the inability to pick out any indiscretions from the blur of events was what really troubled him.
“Now what the fuck have I done?” he muttered to himself. He couldn’t even slip away with his tail between his legs and hide under a rock; after all, he had a world to save later on in the day. This was not how a superhero should feel!
He lay there in the dark for a while, twisting around now and then to check the time on the bedside clock as the minutes ticked away excruciatingly slowly. It took him a while to ask his new companion the obvious. Why torture myself like this, even if it opens up a whole new can of worms?
Nothing you need to be ashamed of, was the unbidden answer.
The response wasn’t enough to satisfy Bruce. Just because he had not embarrassed himself or apparently done anything to be ashamed of, it did not mean he had not done anything to be self-conscious about according to his own set of standards, which were ambiguous to say the least. He set himself quite high standards of behaviour, but he also set himself up to fail sometimes and last night was a case in point. But to be fair, his wedding night was one night when he could probably be forgiven most things.
He lay there uncomfortably for a while longer, trying to keep still and not wake Sue; he’d never hear the end of it otherwise.
“Fuck it!” he muttered to himself, then rolled out of bed, as quietly as he could and slipped into the toilet. He went about his business then splashed water on his face. He returned to the room, pulled on some strides and a shirt, and silently let himself out of the room.
He padded down the hallway and out into the car park where he lit up a smoke. He could have done with a decent cup of coffee as well, but it was far too early for the hotel restaurant.
You are under surveillance, his companion informed him, as he sucked greedily on his cigarette.
“Where?” It was a weird feeling to have his head turn without his conscious command and then have his eyes zoom in on a vehicle parked a hundred metres away. “How did you manage that?” he asked, wondering whether he could talk whoever was in the car into taking him somewhere to get a coffee. Might as well give it a go, he decided, and wandered over and tapped on the passenger window.
“Hey, I’ll make things easy for you,” he began. “How about taking me down the road to find a decent cup of coffee?”
To give them their due, the two men in the front seat kept their composure and did a good job of not looking too surprised at the request.
“OK, get in the back and put that cigarette out,” one of the men commanded.
Bruce flicked his smoke away and got into the vehicle. “I want decent coffee, mind, and I don’t have any cash.”
“Taking target one for a coffee,” the front seat passenger muttered into an unseen microphone. “Car two take our position.”
This was the extent of the conversation. The two agents were not very talkative, though Bruce had a sense there were some instructions being fed through their earpieces.
I implanted you with various enhancements when you were on Skid. You will be able to access and control them once I have finished calibrating the software packages. This means you should be able to access the conversations these two are having, if that is what you want to do, the voice in his mind said by way of explanation.
Now he had a moment, Bruce asked, “Who or what are you?”
I’m a subroutine, an autonomous self-contained mini AI split off from the Main Processor Unit (MPU). The MPU maintains all Skidian infrastructure and manages most of the planet’s governance systems.
“So what do I call you?”
You don’t have to call me anything. I am just here. What you think, what you feel, what you want, how you are going to act, I am cognisant of it all.
“Shit. And if I want to turn you off? What about my privacy? Can’t I have any privacy?”
I’m not sure what you mean, the MPU replied. I can’t exactly tell anyone else, can I?
“So what are you doing in my head?” Bruce asked, watching the men up front silently keeping an eye on him in the visor and rear-vision mirrors.
The main MPU sent me along on this trip just in case I was needed in an emergency situation.
“So are you connected to the main system back on Skid then?”
Yes, via a tiny wormhole connected to the ship and one from the ship focused on you.
“OK, so remind me why you are riding along in my head then?” Bruce tried a slightly different tack remembering he was talking to a computer and if he wanted a precise answer would need to ask the right question.
The MPU thought it might require your assist
ance at some point in the future.
“So you’re not riding around in my head for my benefit then?” Bruce asked and the MPU decided not to answer.
The car drew up outside a chain coffee shop Bruce had never heard of. The driver got out and motioned Bruce inside. Somehow he was not surprised to find Wisneski sitting at one of the tables looking as bright as a button, given the early hour.
Wisneski gave Bruce an odd look. “You don’t look much the worse for wear this morning,” he began. “Given the amount I saw you drink last night I wouldn’t have thought you would be out of bed much before midday.”
“Constitution of an ox, me,” Bruce replied happily. “Might as well have breakfast, eh. You don’t look too bad yourself. Americano to start off, please,” Bruce said to nobody in particular as he picked up the breakfast menu.
Wisneski nodded to one of the men. “I’ll have one as well.”
He turned back to Bruce. “Unlike some, I haven’t been to bed yet. I’m too busy trying to save the world, so I need a bit of a pick-me-up.”
“Well, that’s a job you should not attempt on an empty stomach,” Bruce said, trying to find something edible on the menu. “Where’s the bacon and eggs?”
“These places are kosher,” Wisneski informed him.
Bruce grunted and shrugged his shoulders to hide his embarrassment. How the fuck was he supposed to know what a kosher restaurant looked like?
“So when do we start?” Bruce asked. In his mind there were a few issues that needed to be sorted out. Not least whether he should simply blow the asteroid to smithereens or gently nudge it off its current trajectory. He was still a little unclear as to why simply blowing it to bits was not an option. Surely lots of little bits hitting and burning up in the atmosphere was preferable to one big bit chunk potentially blowing a huge hole in the planet?
He was also a little concerned about what would happen to him afterwards. After he saved the world from a fate it was not even aware of. Whatever he said now, whatever he demanded in terms of his ongoing privacy and that of his immediate family, he knew sometime, somehow, whether by accident or design, news would leak out regarding the imminent threat and how it had been averted. Whatever Wisneski, the doctors, the old general, and Wilmot said and promised, news would eventually leak out how the asteroid threat had been batted away and by what means.
In the back of his mind, while he secretly wanted his fifteen minutes of fame, he also realised once that happened it would be quite difficult to put the genie back in the bottle and have anything approaching a normal life again. He would not be able to slink away afterwards and live quietly ever after, away from the glare of international publicity.
The situation would be even worse back home. Even if he was ‘small beer’ in the big, wide world, he would be world famous in New Zealand, and that would make life quite difficult at times – even in a relatively isolated community. The more he thought about it, the more he wanted to be able to walk away afterwards from whatever it was he was going to do, with the public being none the wiser, so he could live a normal life.
As Bruce reflected on the situation, he did not stop to consider he had no choice in the matter or that other powerful forces might have ideas to the contrary. After all, having a spaceship at your service with some pretty heavy-duty technology available was a great leveller.
“There are a few issues to deal with, not least your old friend Mitchell’s performance at the UN yesterday.”
Bruce had conveniently forgotten about his involvement with President Mitchell. God knows what people around the world thought of Mitchell’s performance which had, with any luck, been overtaken by the attempted assassination of him by Myfair’s exiled brother, aka Arnold Rumbold. Rumbold had been scooped up off the street he had been walking along trying to get his bearings on the day he had been unceremoniously dumped on the planet into a college basketball program by a talent scout who just happened to be passing. Today Rumbold was a noted NBA player who had somehow gained entry to the session of the United Nations General Assembly that Mitchell had asked to address, as President. Initially reports had focused on the failed attempted assassination and the motivation behind the attack. It had been established that Rumbold had been a member of and chief source of funds for a hitherto unknown activist group highlighting the plight of the urban poor in the inner suburbs of some of the major United States cities.
Hopefully, in light of this, Mitchell’s performance would have a quick half-life, meaning fewer people would grasp the possibility that the President of the United States had gone loopy in office and there were aliens in their midst.
In the overwhelming deluge of information that invaded the senses of most connected humans, reruns of Mitchell’s rambling speech were completely swamped by the hysterical, incoherent and biased coverage of Rumbold’s actions by the right-wing media organisations, who seemed to drive opinion among the law-making class in the United States. It also highlighted that the United States was actually more at risk from internal rather than external security threats, which was a problem if your current bogeyman lived overseas.
Hopefully no one would connect the dots and find Rumbold’s player bio had a few holes in it that would stand up to any form of real scrutiny.
Bruce was struggling to remember what the silly old duffer had even said, in all the excitement since. Something about being an alien ambassador coming to fix the world’s problems. Claims which were no more outlandish than those of your average politician, most of whom, in Bruce’s opinion, seemed to think it was okay to tell porkies and not even flinch when they were exposed for telling barefaced lies or failing to fulfil their campaign promises. Bruce had a strong belief most politicians must live in some kind of delusional dream world to believe anything they said themselves, let alone function like a normal human being.
“The credibility of the United Sates on the international stage is about zero today after that performance,” Wisneski continued. “The speech is being dismissed as some kind of misguided publicity stunt that went horribly wrong.”
“Oh?”
“We don’t want to fuel that flame any further,” Wisneski added. “So if we can pull off dealing with the asteroid without any further ado – and I mean any publicity – I think it would be for the best. We don’t want to panic the world’s population any more than they already possibly are.”
Wisneski paused while a waitress brought their coffee.
“Would you like to order breakfast now?” She was like something out of a Hollywood movie, with big, firm breasts filling her uniform shirt, a big toothy grin, plenty of big blonde hair, and a little white apron and short chequered dress that showed off her long flawless legs. Although it was still some ungodly hour of the morning, she looked as bright as a button. Pulling out her order book she took a pencil from where it had been tucked behind her left ear and waited for them to order.
“We’ll both have the works,” Wisneski told her, “and eggs over easy.”
“Why sure, gentlemen,” the woman drawled making a note on her pad.
Once she had moved out of earshot Wisneski continued. “It’s lucky nobody was killed yesterday at the UN. We have managed to dismiss Mitchell’s speech as an elaborate hoax, with a double taking his place to successfully lure an assassin into the open. Seems to have worked pretty well, although the conspiracy sites and parts of the foreign media are having a field day at our expense.”
“Is Mitch OK?” Bruce asked a little guiltily.
“As well as he ever will be. We don’t really care what the rest of the world thinks about our Presidents, anyway.”
Bruce grunted noncommittally, which Wisneski took as a sign to continue.
He sighed. “I didn’t expect to be talking about this kind of thing yesterday morning. It’s quite a heady experience, to be honest. Not long ago I was head of security at the Portland Airbase, probably in the departure lounge as far as my career was concerned, and now here I am dealing with the most senior
military and government officials in the land.”
Bruce looked at the man. Wisneski didn’t seem incompetent. It sounded like he was still getting accustomed to being involved in something way over his pay grade and it was taking him a while to get his head around it all. It made Bruce realise the two of them had a lot in common; they were kindred spirits in a way.
“What did you expect, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“I’m not sure really. I’m in the loop because I had met Myfair previously, but the first I had heard anything about killer asteroids was yesterday morning as a crash team was being put together to bring him in after he had been identified in the public viewing area out at the airport.”
“What did you think was going on?”
“I thought we were trying to get control of Myfair’s spaceship to get a hold of the technology and get alongside the aliens, er Myfair’s people, to ensure that the United States gets the lion’s share of any potential benefit.” Wisneski seemed blithely unaware the statement sounded as though the United States was entitled as of right to benefit from any technology transfer at the expense of the rest of the world.
“So what’s stopping you?”
“We’ve been trying to work out what he’s doing here on Earth, and what part, if any, you played in his appearance. We initially believed the connection was purely coincidental, and you and your wife, or the guy who owns the restaurant, had bumped into him by chance.”
“Well now you know part of the story,” Bruce replied. “The poor bastard is basically an exile. He can’t really go home even if he had control of his ship, which now it looks like he doesn’t, so he is doubly stuffed.” I will decide who gets a share of any Skidian technology, Bruce didn’t add. He would ensure any benefits the Skidians cared to share would be distributed evenly across the world for the benefit of all mankind.
The Lifeboat Page 7
