Fiction: The Space Guys adventure, Part 7!

 I was debating whether to post at all this week, I decided I could fill out an off week, which means more of the Space Guys. Here's the chapter I've really had the most fun with, featuring alternate history pop culture. Again, I have a table of contents at the end.

Jason and Alek were smiling and laughing as they returned to his cabin. Jax looked up from a card game with Sarip. His eyes locked on a box Jason was carrying. “What’s this?” he asked.

“I just met with Dad at Deimos base,” Jason said. “He and the folks put together a box of our things. The captain cleared it.”

Jason had grown accustomed enough not to shudder as Moxon approached. “Actually, he sent me to inspect the contents,” he said. “It’s regulations. Strictly a formality, of course.”

Jason set it down and opened it. Right on top were 3 small stuffed toys, a Sparky the Space Squirrel doll, based on an earlier and more stylized version of the character, a weedy birdlike creature known as Tweel the Martian and a well-loved gorilla. His eyes flicked to Moxon, half-expecting him to destroy Sparky on sight. In fact, his lip merely curled in amusement. Beneath that was a mesh bag of what looked like tin soldiers; in fact, it was a circus set, with the clowns, acrobats and animals made from sheet steel. The rest was records, both audio and video, and a collection of microform books. Alek picked up Tweel. “Ooh, I love Tweel,” she said. “I read all the Weinbaum stories.”

She looked through the movies. “Sparky the Space Squirrel on Venus, Sparky On The Moons Of Jupiter… I’m sure we have these in the ship library,” she said. She furrowed her eyebrows at a set. “King Kong, Son of Kong, The Return of Kong, Kong Unchained, Queen Kong, Wrath of Kong… You have the whole set?”

“Everybody loves Kong,” Jax said. He was looking through the audio records. “Okay, we got Spike Jones, Duke Ellington, Elvis Presley… whatever happened to him?”

Alek had reached the books. Each one was a cardboard folio that held a sheaf of strips printed with pages the size of small postage stamps, meant to be loaded in a hand-held magnifier which someone had included three of. The outsides of the folios bore vivid and colorful artwork. The one in her hand showed a tracked vehicle the size of a light naval craft, built around an equally enormous cannon. The text read, Last Stand of the Landcruisers by Martin Caidin. “History?” she said. She picked up another. It showed a man with a broad-brimmed hat facing a bat-faced, hunchbacked ghoul in what might have been either a crypt or a sewer. The title read, Solomon Kane In The Catacombs, by L. Sprague De Campe. She set it down and picked up another. It showed a bare-chested barbarian fighting what looked like a carnivorous stegosaurus. Its title read, The Adventures of Conan by Robert E. Howard. A smaller caption read, “From the creator of Solomon Kane.”

“The stories are not as good as Conan, but I like Kane better,” she said. She picked through more of the books. One showed a biplane in a dogfight with a dragon. The title read, Dragons Over Verdun by Leigh Brackett. Another showed soldiers firing desperately from the ruins of a factory. It bore the title Last Stand At Leningrad and the byline Cyril Kornbluth.  A third showed another barbarian staring into a magic mirror at a city of graceful spires. The text declared, The Wizard of Otherworld by Philip K. Dick. “All this fantasy,” she said after looking through several more titles. “Is this what they read on Mars?”

Jason shrugged. “We all have our tastes, same as everybody,” he said. “But yeah, we usually go for fantasy over the space stories. It’s about people living with nature, not technology.” He held up a single book with a picture of a rocket descending on a village of tentacled aliens. “This is just kids’ stuff.”

“Hey, it’s what got us where we are,” Jax said. He indignantly took away the book. “Hey, show her your trick.”

Alek looked at Jason. “What is trick?” she said.

Jason gave a defensive shrug. “It’s no big deal,” he said. “It’s just… I can read the cards without the magnifier.”

Alek looked at one of the strips from the Solomon Kane folio. The print was just large enough for a keen eye to see it as separate words and characters rather than lines and blocks. “Show me,” she said.

“Fine,” Jason said. He held up the strip. “`Solomon Kane was a Puritan at heart. But his heart could not contain his lust to wander, nor the rage that drove him to avenge the evils he had witnessed…’”

He gave the card back to Alek. She loaded it into a viewer, which was compact enough to hold up by a small handle like an opera glass. “You read it right,” she said. She looked at Jax. “Can you do it? Can other Martians do it?”

This time, Jax squirmed defensively. “Maybe,” he said. “I know other people who can. Most of them can’t get through more than a few words. I’ve seen Jason read two pages. They all say the real problem is staying focused…”

Alek shook her head. “I wouldn’t have thought a human could do it,” she said succinctly.

“Let me see,” Moxon said. “Hand me the Landcruiser book.” Alek gave it to him. “`The Landkreuzer 1500 was the largest land vehicle ever used in combat. It might never have existed if not for its gun, an 800mm cannon intended to demolish the fortifications of France…” He gave his usual smile. “See? No big deal.”

There was an awkward silence. Jason finally broke it with another question. “What do people really like, back on Gaia?” he asked. “What do they watch, read, whatever?”

Alek pondered. “I don’t go to many movies,” she said. “And I mostly read scientific papers, or old books like these.” She held up the Conan folio.

Moxon spoke up. “I go to lots of movies,” he said. “I see them in all kinds of places, too. So, fantasy’s popular, you know, stories about Hercules and King Arthur and Kane. The real money is in war movies, leastways on the studio side. They’re usually about the Second Great War, what a lot of people will call the Last War. A lot of them have been coming out of the Federation They get big budgets, the big stars will line up to appear in them, and enough people will come out to see them to earn their money back. It’s really the same as fantasy movies, just with more prestige. They all give people heroes, adventures, battles, and other places and times, so nobody worries about the here and now.”

He leaned against a bulkhead. “If you ask me, though,” he continued, “the biggest thing is horror movies. A lot of it has been coming out of Edo and Indo-Malaya. The fans call it `real horror’. The critics call it tenement pornography. You Martians probably wouldn’t go for it.  One of the last ones I saw was about a gangster. He goes around beating up people, making ladies of the night give him the goods for free, but he loves his girl. Then another gangster kills her. So he goes to a witch, then she gives him a medallion that lets him turn into a leopard, or leastways, a cross between a leopard and a man. He uses it to start murdering the other guy’s gang, except when he finally gets to the boss, it turns out he has his own amulet that turns him into a tiger. They fight, he kills the boss but he gets hurt and dies. So yeah, not your thing.”

“I see that one,” Alek said. “It was called Man-Cat. They make two more.”

Moxon just laughed. “So maybe I haven’t been seeing as many movies as I used to,” he said. With that, he moved to excuse himself.

“Wait,” Jax said. “Do you know what really happened, in the Last War?”

Moxon looked back, with just a hint of a smile. “It was really before my time,” he said. “It’s all in the books, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, sure,” Jax said. He remained silent as Moxon left.

“Funny,” Alek said. “How do you do that trick reading the cards? And how do he do it too?”

Jason looked at Jax, who shook his head. “We all have our talents,” he said. Then they were all silent for a while.

 

The day of the launch quickly approached. The only thing that caught them off guard was the announcement of a wedding, which proved to be between two of the engineering crew. There was a ceremony and an informal reception in the captain’s cabin. Alek and Jason came slightly late. The Malays weren’t there, nor to his relief was Moxon, but Jax and Dr. Cahill were sitting with Harrison at the captain’s table, and Raeder was on the couch leading three Edonians in an ale house song. Alek hung from his arm as they entered. “There they are,” Alek said. She pointed to a pair in the kitchen area.

8 out of the 12 engineering crew was there, and it was evident that Alek knew most of them. The newly married couple were Anne Baxter and David Carlson. Their peers included one other married couple, an Edonian man named Yukio and a Shen woman named Chyou, and a woman from the Federation named Natasha. The rest, present or not, were all men, mostly well over 30. Alek pointed out the nominal chief, a short man named Potts, and the youngest of them, an American named Donald Johnson, a student of a super genius who had perfected fusion, at the moment trying to talk to Anastasia. Fortunately, she stayed on the opposite side of the passage from Alek.

When Alek introduced Jason to the pair, he casually asked if they had known each other before the mission. Anne had immediately laughed. “No, we met when we got here,” she said. “We did a shift together in the reactor room, we got to talking, then we decided to get engaged. It just made sense.”

“It’s an 8-hour shift,” David added. “The way it really works is, one of us is in the reactor room in a radiation suit, one of us is on the other side of the door, and two more are on the other side monitoring the output to the fusion vessel. That’s really because of how heavy our gear is. After four hours, we’re supposed to take it off.”

“So you talked to each other through a door?” Jason said.

“Yeah,” Anne said. She pressed against her groom. “It was very romantic. We completely connected.”

“Like Pyramus and Thisbe,” Alek said with a bemused glance at Jason.

By then, Johnson had come over. Jason asked the question, “So just one person controls the power to the whole ship?”

The engineers all laughed at that. “Oh, no, the reactor systems are completely automated,” David said. "It’s a fission-fusion system, so it’s really two reactors. We only service the fission component. All we can do is turn it off.”

“Even that’s not really how it sounds,” Donald said. "The set up is, we have a bank of instruments and a few controls in the reactor room, plus a sort of peephole to inspect the reaction chamber directly. We aren’t even supposed to use it unless the reactor is shut down. The controls are two buttons, one set in the reactor room and a redundant pair in the outer chamber. One executes an emergency shutdown. The other continues operations. If three hours go by without someone pushing the second button, the shutdown is executed automatically.”

Jason pondered that for a moment. “So it’s a dead man switch, right?” he said. That drew stern silence from the engineers. “And you’re just canaries in a coal mine, aren’t you?”

“Well, you can look at it like that,” David said. “I say, if we can go at any time, live life to the fullest. Seize the day!” He gave his bride a long, passionate kiss.

As they left, Jason turned to Alek. “What do you think?” he said. “Do you want to get married? Soon, I mean?”

She was silent for a moment. “No,” she said. “I have told you, I am an enlightened woman. Rushing to get married would make me look ashamed of having a man. Besides, we need to do it right. First, you propose; I know we have understanding, but it is not the same. Then we marry. So, maybe… 6 months?”

“I can live with that,” Jason said.

Alek put an arm around his waist. “Of course, we are making love…”

Table of contents

Part 1. The demo!

Part 2. The villain!

Part 3. The world-building!

Part 4. The romance!

Part 5. The killer robot!

Part 6: The shuttle ride!

Fiction: The Evil Possum and the Eurypterids, Part 4!

 Since I'm still deciding how to balance this story with my usual blogging, I decided to try to get ahead with an extra post. This ended up being the chapter with all the exposition I had cut before, and it's actually the one I've revised least. Here's links for the first and previous installments, and why not one for the "first" Evil Possum adventure?

As the new day dawned, Percy was back in the briefing room. He allowed his own partner to stand next to him. On closer examination, the rodent was 1.2 meters tall and probably about 50 kg. His fingers were partly webbed, but still dexterous. He met the gaze of the blue-haired woman; she gave a subtle, perhaps grudging smile. The other rookie who had so far drawn his attention was clearly trying to stay as far from her as possible. He noted one more who looked out of place. It was a rodent, evidently the same species as his new partner but evidently female, with a glossy and distinctly red pelt. “Well, I hope you all had a good night,” Percy said. “Now, any of you have any new questions?”

The blue-haired woman raised her hand. “My name’s O’Keefe, I transferred from Social Services,” she said. “Do you think hate crimes against non-humanoids are a problem?”

“Now you sound like a reporter,” Percy said. “The first thing I’ll say, the Arcostate Administration doesn’t recognize `humanoid’ as a category. `Non-humanoid’ is even less meaningful.”

The nervous rookie spoke up. “Hold on, of course `humanoid’ is a real thing. We know humans built this city...”

Percy gave him a coldly mechanical stare. “Actually, we don’t know that,” he said. “Our founders rebuilt the city, from the core infrastructure and records they found. Records from which all direct information on the original inhabitants had been erased.”

“But you were here,” the rookie said. “Isn’t that right? And you sure look human.”

“It’s not that simple,” Percy said. “But you should be asking the Historians, not me. Now, does anyone have a question about the job?”

An oviraptorosaur raised a hand. “Do we get a gun?”

* * *

 

The marsupial lay on the cushions for well over an hour, motionless except for a sporadic twitching of its ear. “Should we call someone?” Wes asked finally.

“Who?” Daisy said.

Even as she spoke, the creature’s eye opened. He shot upright, drawing the miniature broomhandle pistol from his vest in the same motion, and cried out, “Anja! The panzerfaust!”  After a moment, he took his finger off the trigger and began surveying the surroundings, without seeming to take any particular notice of the apartment’s occupants.

“They are here,” the marsupial spoke, still taking no notice of the humans. “They think they are strong, they think they are smart, and they do as they please because they think that makes them better. Better than ME!”  His gaze darted about. “But I am stronger than they know, and wiser than they can imagine. I have fought them and I have won, every time!  But the rest refuse to learn, and there are more, always more!”

He blinked and twitched his ears, the evident equivalent of shaking his head. “My apologies for any disturbance,” he said. “I appear to have absorbed a small quantity of neurotoxin.  The effects should pass momentarily.”

“Daisy, look at this,” Wes said. The news feed projected onto the window showed a report of a dangerous exotic organism, complete with a heavily blurred image of one of them attacking a large dog. This was quickly followed by lengthy pronouncements about the necessity of the Quarantine department and the foolhardiness and irresponsibility of those who broke it. The marsupial watched for a moment and gave a single “HA!”

“The Department sent me to destroy the first of them seven months ago,” the marsupial said. “It was openly displayed at a high end restaurant in Aster Plaza, frequented by a number of Municipal administrators. It does not appear anyone paid any monetary bribes… The staff were feeding the specimen live prey to amuse their customers. It grew to exceptional size, even for its kind. Finally, they put in a smaller but similar creature, the survivors said they thought it was a juvenile, or another species, but it was in fact a male… The specimen ate it anyway, but not before conceiving young. Afterward, it grew even larger and became far more aggressive. Apparently, they tried to destroy it when they saw it depositing eggs… with a polymer pipe and a sporting bat.” He gave another laugh.

“I found the specimen and destroyed it a few weeks after the escape. By then, the eggs had hatched, but most of the young were still with the female, and perished with it. However, I suspected some had split off and formed a nest. I hunted for weeks at a time, but did not find conclusive evidence of their survival until 48 hours ago, shortly before one was seen by a member of the public. I determined twelve of the surviving young had gone through the first molt and dispersed, except for one that was consumed at the primary nest.”

He attached the pistol’s solid holster as a stock. “So far, I have destroyed three more, and discovered a fourth, a male killed and consumed while attempting to mate. Fortunately, I was able to surprise the female while it was still feeding. A third specimen approached before I was able to confirm if I had penetrated the central ganglion. The female revived, and I lost my primary weapons in the melee. When I engaged the female a second time, I withdrew to a potentially friendly residence… Incidentally, have you seen any large arthropods?”

“Yeah,” Daisy said, “we found something in the kitchen when we moved in a week ago.  I hit it with a meat tenderizer.”

“Excellent! Percy said you are commendably level-headed. Then there are only six!”

“Excuse me,” Wes said, “who… and what… are you?”

“Ah!  I always forget, hominids are always concerned for etiquette,” the marsupial said. “I come from the continuum where the dominant forms of sentient life, developed from rodents and other vermin. From the evidence at hand, it was where the builders of this city came from, though we know no more of who they were or why they departed than you… At any rate, you may call me No-Hands, as many do in my place of origin, though as you see I have one hand. From El Diablo Sin Mano Derecho, or possibly for the time I destroyed a platoon of possums with my hand chained behind my back. I am the holotype of the species Archididelphis invicta, roughly, `unconquered king of the possums’. Your city-state acknowledges my existence, but not my capabilities or the manner of my coming. Suffice to say I came here without their sanction, and after a time reached an agreement to aid them in time of need.”

“Mr., ah, Hands,” Daisy said, “I think you dropped a bullet.” She held up a tiny cartridge a centimeter long.

The marsupial answered with a curt laugh. “Keep it! It will be novel for conversation, and it just might be useful to me if I come by again. Now I must go!” Receding footsteps rang from the vent, including an odd clomping.

“That didn’t happen, right?” Westley said.

Daisy dropped the cartridge in a drawer under the couch. “What didn’t happen?”

* * *

 

As the rookies again dispersed, Percy looked to the female rodent. “Can I help you?” he said.

“Oh, no, I’m not even in Security,” she said. “I’m probably not even in the right place…”

“Well, I’m sure you’re not in the wrong place,” Percy said. “Come with me, and we’ll talk.

Percy went upstairs with the rodents following behind. The rookie carried an armload of forms. “I’m Lindsey DeVaca,” the newcomer said. She held up her own sheaf of papers. “I work in the Data Analysis department of the Power And Utilities Administration. A while ago, I was assigned to a Service Optimization project. The assignment was to study power usage patterns so we could find ways to encourage people to reduce power usage. Six weeks into the project, I noticed something odd, odd enough that I contacted Data Analytics for an independent review.”

They stepped inside Percy’s office. It was small and visibly neglected, but also devoid of almost any decoration, except for a painting that showed an intricate geometric pattern. Lindsey laid the papers on the desk, and then looked at the painting. “Why, that’s by E.P. Bosche,” she said. “You must know quite a bit about art; there still aren’t many people who've heard of him.”

“Actually, it’s by me,” Percy said. He picked up one of the sheets, and then another. Each consisted entirely of charts and graphs. “And believe me, I know… I suppose these measure power usage?”

“Yes, for a subdivision over an eight hour period,” Lindsey said. She pointed to two smaller graphs on one of the pages. “These show power usage in the same area on the days before and after. As you can see, consumption rose almost 500%. Then if you look at the detail here, you’ll see it was all over a very short time, no more than 20 minutes, and maybe as little as five.”

“It must be a power surge, maybe a corroded insulator or a rat chewing on a cable,” Percy said. He glanced at Nick, who shrugged. “But I suppose if it was that simple, you wouldn’t have come to us.”

“That’s what my own supervisor said,” Lindsey said. “Here’s the problem…” She held up two other sheets. “We have identical power surges in completely different districts, two weeks before and a month before that. It’s possible that the phenomenon is increasing in frequency, or it may be there are others we haven’t found. In fact, the distribution across multiple districts is the only reason it wasn’t noticed before my own study.”

“…Which means someone is trying to avoid attention,” Percy said. His visor dimmed and flared, but he shook his head. “I’m sorry, but there’s not much we can do. Apart from anything else, our precincts have jurisdictional boundaries. Then, siphoning power isn’t uncommon, and usually it’s a misdemeanor at worst. I can send out a notice to watch for unusual activity, and sooner or later somebody might get hit with a fine, and that will be it.”

“I see,” Lindsey said. She was already gathering her papers, and Nick helped. “Thank you, anyway, I’m sorry to waste your time.”

“It’s no trouble,” Percy said. “It’s always good to meet with a member of another department. Why, I might just give you a call some time.”

“It was nice to meet you,” Nick said. Lindsey twitched her whiskers in the clear equivalent of a smile, and then walked out.  As her footsteps faded, the rookie turned to Percy. “You’re wrong, you know. You’re a Special Inspector. The whole point of your position is to coordinate investigations between precincts. And you know that.”

“Not my speed, not yet,” he said. He turned to the rodent. “So what’s your story? I’ve seen your species before, but not often, and I’ve never heard of one trying to get in the force.”

“Well, um, my grandfather was a policeman, before we… came,” Nick said. “My father always hoped one of us would take up the job.”

“I see,” Percy said. He leaned back while records scrolled by. “Obviously, you did well enough to get through the academy. So where do you expect to go from here?”

Nick shrugged again. “I want to help people, I guess,” he said. Percy already recognized that this was unusual eloquence. “Then maybe I could go up the ranks, move my folks to a better place…”

“Get a girlfriend?” Percy interjected.

Nick nodded absentmindedly. “Yeah, that would be nice… Say, do you have a girlfriend?”

“Naw, I wasn’t built that way,” Percy said, clearly irritated. He rose to his feet. “I suppose we might as well hit the streets. I’ve got a feeling you just might be good at this.”

Fiction: The Evil Possum and the Eurypterids, part 3!

 To round out the week, here's more of the Evil Possum. Also, here's links for the first and second part. This is as good a time to mention, this is very much a tribute to the movie The Black Scorpion and effects master Willis O'Brien, which is reflected in the tags I've added. Incidentally, I did have more on a character featured here, but decided it would have made things even more random. More to come!

By the time they were ready to sleep, Daisy and Wes were on a mat that unfolded from a storage alcove by the window. It was designed for physical therapy, and what they had done was close enough that they covered themselves with a sheet rather than using the energy to return to their bed. They had been drifting for the better part of an hour when Daisy stirred. “Did you just hear something?” she said. She looked toward the main air vent.

Wes’s eyes snapped open. “I think it’s chemical-energy small arms fire,” he said. “Very small. Probably 4 mm or less. I thought I heard a 9mm earlier.”

“Huh… Is it dangerous?”

“Probably not to anything over 10 kg.”

“Too bad.”

“I, uh, saw something in the ducts earlier. It… he… talked to me, actually.

Daisy raised her head. “Did it have one eye, talk with a weird accent?”

“Yeah… Do you know something about it?”

“Percy told me about him, once. Don’t worry about it.” She closed her eyes and went back to sleep.

* * *

 

The marsupial landed on the roof of the elevator with a thud, hard enough to dent one of the lightweight panels. His one boot smoked from the sole. A moment later, his slug gun landed beside him, sheered in half at the hinge. He slapped another magazine in a miniature Sten gun, perfectly reproduced but strangely proportioned, particularly the distinctly oversized feed. He saw an unused slug roll out of the gun, and snatched it up as he pondered his options. He was in the middle shaft of a three-elevator bank. On his right, another shaft dropped into darkness, with no sign of a car above or below. On the left, a three-decked elevator had stopped six stories above. Two stories below that, there was a clacking of pincers and mouthparts, the female that had forced him to retreat without his main weapon. Then, from somewhere in the darkness, there was a clicking of smaller feet. Beneath him, the middle elevator resumed moving, up.

At a touch, the side of the boot split, revealing a chamber big enough for the recovered slug. He slid it in, and the breach shut with a sound like a clinking coin. The elevator had ascended two stories when it stopped again. The car on the left continued its descent, until it stopped  just above the airshaft where his foe waited. He quickly calculated his options: Face the female creature; hang from the bottom of the next elevator; jump or climb on top of it; or try to squeeze into the space between them until they passed each other. There was a ding from the cabin and a slight jolt as a passenger blocked the closing doors long enough for one more to board.

The elevator had descended 20 stories before the marsupial hauled himself onto the roof. He flopped down, and the Sten gun clattered beside him. His mane ruffled in tiny waves as he rested in a sitting position, his single eye shut. Meanwhile, slowly, silently, the silhouette of a pincer emerged from the opposite side of the elevator. He reached over his shoulder, as if feeling for injuries. Then, just as the mouthparts and walking legs emerged into the view of anyone watching, he unsheathed a stockless double barrel, pivoted, and fired.

* * *

 

At the police station, Percy continued to play videos for the rookies who remained. By then, he was down to legal but sensitive Therapeutics videos. Beside him, Hector made a whistling sound equivalent to snoring, his long tongue flicking in and out.  The tongue snared a piece of popcorn, which the echidna deftly crunched with his vestigial teeth. “The first step in effective lovemaking is to test your partner’s desires and sensitivities,” the narrator said. “Be as slow and patient as they need you to be, but don’t feel guilty if you experience a lapse in self control. Failure is as important to learning as success…” The screen showed a visibly woman scrambling to straddle her partner. Earlier, it would have brought cheers, but now, it only brought a little bemused murmuring.

A pink, snouted creature started to reach for Percy’s liquor bottle. “I wouldn’t recommend that,” he said. “It’s not so much drink as fuel.” The rookie withdrew. Percy began tapping his own visor. “Damn, I know I’ve heard that voice somewhere… Eh, I’ll think of it some time.” He belched, and the resulting jet of flame briefly lit up the room.

* * *

A sound like a very angry woodpecker rang through the ducts. There were additional pops, bangs and a minor explosion as a volley of 3 mm automatic fire tore through a circuit board.  In the midst of the smoke and sparks, the marsupial advanced after the retreating quarry. He glimpsed the creature, and confirmed that he had severed one of its surprisingly stubby pincers, probably the main reason it had not already turned at bay. He tracked with his Sten gun and drew a spray of ichor from its tail. The marsupial leaped back as ominous smoke and steam erupted from the already damaged circuit board. He still was sent flying by a blue-white bolt that arced murderously upward into a steel-capped fang. A spray of chemical foam added to the haze, but a quick glance told him all he needed to know. “Eight,” he said. He looked down at what was left of his fortunately empty submachine gun and snarled.

* * *

 

Percy was almost ready to call an end to the night, when the door opened. He turned to see the blue-haired female rookie scowling as she looked in. “Special Inspector Percy,” the blue-haired woman said, “what the Hell are you doing?”

“Okay, this isn’t what it looks like,” Percy said as he got to his feet. He glanced at the screen, which currently showed the adventures or Eveready Harton. He amended, “Okay, this is exactly what it looks like.”

* * *

 

The female retreated at the marsupial’s approach, and that was remarkable enough. Its kind hunted by smell as much as sight or sound, and it could already equate the scent of the hunter as literal death: The sulphurous powder of weapons that thundered as they pummeled; the residual tang of fire, sparks and strange chemicals; and the pheromones and spilled ichor of its kind wounded and killed. It still might not know fear, but it had learned a measure of respect. So, it sought out a better place and angle for ambush, still unable to envision a chance that it might not prevail. In that, as it happened, its thoughts and those of the marsupial were the same.

The marsupial made his way back to the male eurypterid that the female had slain and partly consumed.  The carcass was still there, looking no more or less intact than it had when he left it. His mane bristled. He holstered the 3 mm broomhandle automatic and drew his 4 mm revolver, just as the female came out of the darkness, almost directly behind him.

He emptied all but one chamber of the revolver in the time it took the creature to cross the shaft, but it was only slowed by its slain and partially consumed mate underfoot. It swung with its tail, but struck the metal ceiling. He ducked under a slashing claw and fired his last shot into the underside of the cracked carapace. The tail spine struck blindly from the side, tearing through his jacket. He dropped onto his back from the blow, then thrust his booted right leg upward. A blast erupted from his prosthesis, while the recoil sent him sliding down the airshaft.

 * * *

At four in the morning, Wes woke up screaming. He cried out that a vampire-demon had tried to steal his soul. She told him she would take his soul into herself and guard it.  He told her she was the demon, and she answered that if she was a demon, his soul was hers to keep. After that, he held her and cried. When he told her he loved her, she told him to go back to sleep.

It was about 4:30 when they heard a series of whipcracks, followed by a screech from the ducts like tiny metal claws, then a metallic clang. Something dropped down. Daisy scooped it up; it was a tiny bullet and casing. A moment later, there was a rustle and a rush of clattering, clicking feet, accompanied by a more ominous chatter of chitinous pincers and mouthparts. A rapid volley of whipcracks rang out, accompanied by flashes.  Finally, when it seemed the combatants were so close they might burst into the room, there was a sound like the clink of a coin, and a blast loud enough that Daisy screeched and covered her ears. There was a final thud and clatter. A milky fluid dribbled from the vent. A muffled, nasal voice called out, "Seven!"

“What the…” Wes approached the vent, while Daisy huddled under a sheet. Suddenly, a heavy blow knocked the cover loose, and they beheld the marsupial, wobbling on his feet.

“I say… Diellza Mladic?” the marsupial said, gazing at Daisy. “I hear you are a friend of Percy’s….” With that, he pitched forward and landed in the couch cushions.

“Oh my god,” Daisy said. “He pronounced my real name right.”

Fiction: Daisy and Dhahka Kaan!

 I didn't have a lot else today, so I decided to trot out a bit more of the salvage job that is the adventure of Percy the Robot Cop. Here's a very early demo I had already rewritten to death, also with some extra detail for the city settings (see the retro future buildings posts). I wrote it up mostly as an introduction for Daisy and the fairly obvious villain. So, here goes...

We approach a city. From above, it does not appear large, about 36 kilometers in span, plus another dozen kilometers in any direction of cropland, airfields, reservoirs, and a couple larger clusters of outlying development. But it quickly becomes apparent that what it lacks in size, it more than makes up for in density and perfect planning. The gridwork is so perfectly laid that the main city forms a perfect circle, with several concentric rings inside. It is subdivided by two dozen surface roads radiating from the city center, and an array of elevated roads whose ellipses and parabola give the whole the appearance of a lidded eye.

Now look just to the north of the city's center, to a great building. It towers almost a kilometer in the air, still only eight times its total span. Its form is crystalline, laid out as a cruciform core filled out into something like a diamond with its corners shaved off. In place of each corner are four square secondary spires, adjoining the main structure like buttresses, and between each of them is a separate building. Footbridges span the space to the central building, and more extend to lesser structures in all directions.  And if you look through a window, you may see a man…

 

Westley worked in Data Analysis, and he would have been at a loss to explain more than that. Every day, he went to an office full of tiny cubicles in the same towering complex where he worked, and tried to decipher or at least organize whatever data they put in front of him. There was no assigned seating, but he usually ended up next to Janxi and two down and kitty corner to Daisy. Daisy was tall and brunette, Janxi was an oviraptorasaurid with a boxy head and a mouth like a boomerang. Usually, he talked to Janxi and watched Daisy. But today was different… He looked at Daisy, and looked away when she looked back. She smiled, and he covered by smiling back.

“…I said,” Janxi said in his nasal but perfectly inflected voice, “do you think he’s really coming?”

“Who… him?” Westley covered rapidly.  “I don’t know. What’s the big deal, anyway?”

Janxi made a honking noise. “No big deal, only the owner of one-tenth stake in the City Administration! And a fifth of the South Arc! And his own building! No big deal! Only Dhahka Kaan!” He began to whistle in anxiety.

“There’s lots of people worth more than the lot of us put together,” Westley said. “We’re bound to run into one of them sooner or later…” And already, he looked at Daisy. She was humming something…

He had been working with Daisy close to a year. If he had been pressed, he would have counted her as a close friend, at least on his own part. He knew her real name was Diellza Mladic, from a language called Siptarese. He was also sure she was rich, or from a rich family, because he knew she lived in a residential floor only 20 stories down from the 140^th-floor office where they worked. If it came to that, he knew there was another explanation, but he didn’t, couldn’t believe it…

It seemed the next moment when Janxi hissed. Zebrowski was approaching, a manager whose height and slender build were his only distinction, and another figure was with him, a meter and a half tall, stout and seemingly headless. There was a rhythmic thudding, and an odd clicking. Westley fixed his eyes on the spreadsheet. In the corner of his eye, he saw the pouch in Janxi’s throat flutter rapidly. The thudding and the clicking grew nearer, and it became apparent that the thudding was the sound of a heavy walking stick, while the clicking was very much like the sound Janxi was making as his clawed fingers tapped the desk. Finally, he turned his head.

His first impression was of a solid mass of black wrapped in an operatic scarlet cape, with two amber points of light deep within. Then the cape parted and a long neck extended, revealing the folded wings and nearly bald head of an enormous bird. “Westlake Powell,” it said crisply.  It shifted its weight, producing a clopping sound with the walking stick clasped in its left wing. “I read your analysis of the demographics of the stacks. You do good work. Mr. Zebrowski agrees. I look forward to seeing more of your reports.”

“Thank you, sir,” he said.

The bird clacked its beak in reciprocal gratitude. “Ms. Mladic, and Janxia Tulatan, your work is also excellent, of course. All three of you are among our best performers, and possibly even better as a team,” he said. He then addressed the office. “I was just explaining to your supervisors, we are expanding our offices in the South Arc. Anyone applying for a transfer can expect due consideration. Further accommodations will be made for those with domestic partners. If any of you are interested, we will consider your applications.”

With that, the creature moved on. Westley caught a vivid parting glimpse of a clawed foot that could surely have torn him open like an envelope, clad in a white spat with a ruby button. He turned to Janxi, whose mouth gaped as wide as his limited gape would allow. Beyond him he saw Daisy, whose eyes were wide. 

“See?” he said. “One of the big shots stops by, and all he bothers to do is say a meaningless pleasantry.”

“That wasn’t meaningless,” Janxi said. “He wants recruits for his office. He wants you!”

“No,” Wes said, shaking his head. “It wouldn’t…”

“He wants all of us,” Daisy said. “That includes you.

“No, they want you,” Janxi said. “They think you’ll say yes as long as they put her in the bargain!”

Daisy looked at him coldly. “What are you talking about?” she said.

Janxi shook his head. “Look, it’s no business of mine what happens between the two of you,” he said. “I just don’t understand why you haven’t sorted things out like civilized…” He punched a button for a break and waddled off.

Wes looked at Daisy, visibly flustered. “I’m really sorry about that,” he said. “I don’t…”

That was when Daisy smiled again, the way that always made him nervous. “Oh, don’t be,” she said. “We just don’t want loose talk, do we?”

A few awkward moments passed. Finally, Daisy looked up again. “You know,” she said, “I do have a housing credit from Domestic Services. It would go up, if I had a partner.”

“Yeah… I figured you had something,” Wes said, shifting uneasily. “I have a credit, too, except it’s more like… therapy.”

“Really,” Daisy said. “So anyway, I was thinking, maybe we could pool our… credits.”

“Yeah,” Wes said. “It’s something to think about. We could talk about it. After work.”

“Sure,” Daisy said. “Or we could take a break and go to the Therapy Room. You know, with your credit.” As she spoke, she laughed. And as she went back to work, he could hear her sing softly, “Today’s the Daisy…”

Futures Past: Retro-Future buildings

 

For this month, I'm going with a reduced lineup to make time for other things. In the process, I decided it was time for something new. Through my life, my strongest influences have been ridiculously outdated sci fi, and as I've tried to return to writing after my dark years, I have increasingly looked at the intentionally "retro", as seen with my first and much more recent second installments of Percy the robot cop. In the process, I finally found an opportunity to delve into the motherlode of retro kitsch, the 1964 World's Fair and its centerpiece, Futurama 2. I also indulged very heavily in autoshape concept drawings, which have proved to be a convenient way to go through what has always been a big part of my creative process. To dive right in, here's one of my concepts and a World's Fair design I based it on directly.

This is a design I called the Aster, and I spent a good deal of time trying to develop it into a major setting before the whole project bogged down. When I thought to try restarting things, I decided to keep the Aster in a more limited role. I also decided to make it two towers as shown in the original, something I took a while to figure out for sure. I also decided on a design that fit better with what I had in mind, which was an arcology-style skyscraper (a concept that fascinated me before I knew the name or full history) with interconnected secondary buildings. Here's my main sketch; for scale, the squares are supposed to be 20 meters on a side. Just how tall it would be is still in flux, but something like 200 to 300 stories. An incidental idea I settled on is that the future city-state government would require all living units to have a window and a minimum of 24 square meters living space (small but not quite the low end for existing housing). Invariably, this meant a bunch of long, skinny apartments with the window filling one end, and undoubtedly a much higher price for anything on a corner.

What I had wanted all along was something huge enough to dwarf everything else, close to but not quite over a mile high. (By comparison, half a mile/ 800m is still the final frontier for anything filled out with practical, occupied interior space.) I settled on 1.44 km, and for a very long time, I held with the idea of something that would be pretty "fat", not more than 1/10th as wide as it was high. However, I finally decided something with a compact profile was in order. I quickly came up with a design that would fit within the footprint of existing buildings but still scale to the height I planned without going past 1/24 for the height and width. Here's the design I came up with, scaled at 60 to 70 meters wide minus the bits on the sides.

Once I came back to this, I quickly decided what I needed was some intermediate structures. Meanwhile, I came across something to awesomely impractical to pass up. It's called the National Commercial Bank headquarters, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, apparently designed for the express purpose of having space for light aircraft to fly through, which of course fitted what I wanted for the story.

Here's a couple shots I took at scaling this up while keeping it practical, "only" 50-100 stories. The first is a main tower alone, the second is envisioned including a "base" and a wider complex with a bunched of tiered courtyards, parking lots and so forth.

Finally, I had had an idea all along for more spread-out housing, and it was the design most directly based on the source material. I call this the "Stacker", and I picture it as a condominium-style development with two or three levels, maybe 30-50 meters wide. This time, I could at least assume a ground-level entrance, with perhaps a pool or gym in the middle.

And with that, I'm done for now. For an extra, here's a video of the exhibit being assembled, including the best image I have found of the "Aster" towers. I still don't know how far I will go with this, but I at least want to get far enough to go through the material I already have (including an adventure of the Evil Possum). That's all for now, more to come!