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“I didn’t know it’d take this long!” said Cal. “We told you,” said Mech. “We said, ‘That will take a very long time.’ We literally said those words.”
“You know I don’t listen to things, Mech,” Cal said, as if this was somehow the cyborg’s fault. “You know that.”
“Hey, it’s not like you can talk,” said Cal, crossing his arms across his middle. “I mean, what do you weigh? Eight-thousand pounds?” “I’m two feet taller than you,” Mech pointed out. “And almost exclusively made of metal.” “Sure. Go ahead. Make all the excuses you want, big guy. But, the first step to recovery is admitting that you have a problem,”
Tyrra gasped. “You’re taking his side?” “What side? There is no ‘side’ here,” Cal said. “This isn’t a nuanced discussion. You keep sticking knives in me!”
He turned on his heels and pointed dramatically to the door. “Mech, suit up. We’re mounting a rescue mission!” A moment of confused silence followed. “I don’t need to suit up,” Mech said. Cal sighed and lowered his arm. “No, I know. I was using dramatic license. I just thought ‘Mech, suit up, we’re mounting a rescue mission,’ would make it sound more exciting than, ‘Let’s go and pick up a houseplant.’”
“Shh. Quiet,” Mech hissed. Cal’s eyes darted along the corridor ahead of them. “Why? What is it?” “Nothing,” said Mech. “I just want you to stop talking.”
“I like the bloops,” Cal said. Mech frowned back at him. “What?” “The bloops,” Cal replied. He raised a finger and waited, then said, “Bloop,” in time with a steady chime being emitted by the ship. “It’s like on Star Trek. They had bloops. And, like, a woo-woo-woo noise. Sometimes, if you were lucky, a bting.” He counted in his head, then said, “Bloop,” in time with the chime again. “We should get bloops for our ship.”
“Come on, there are no bad ideas.” “Well—” Kevin began. “Except whatever Kevin was about to say,” said Cal. “There are no bad ideas except that. So, come on. Hit me. What have you got?”
He folded it down, revealing a photograph of a scantily clad alien woman with more breasts than anyone would reasonably know what to do with.
“I don’t know how!” Cal hollered back. “I don’t know how it works. It’s not like there’s a button that just deactivates all the…” His eyes fell on a bright red button in the center of the console. A label had been affixed to the plastic beneath it, clearly stating its purpose. “Wait, no. There is,” Cal said. “It literally says ‘Deactivate robots.’” He pressed the button.
“They’ve already lost over three crews.” Cal glanced up. “How many over three?” “One, sir.” “So… they’ve lost four? Why didn’t you just say they’d lost four crews?” “Dramatic effect, sir,” Kevin replied.
“Wait. We have a cargo deck? Since when did we have a cargo deck?” Cal asked. “Since always, sir. Haven’t I mentioned it?” Cal struggled his chair around and looked at Miz. She shrugged back at him. “No. You haven’t mentioned it.” “Oh. Are you sure, sir? It sounds like the kind of thing I should have mentioned,” Kevin said. “You’re right, it does sound like the kind of thing you should have mentioned, doesn’t it?” Cal agreed.
Cal’s eyes flicked from the ceiling to the screen and back again. “Kevin, can I assume that you did mute the microphone before you said all that, yes?” “You may go ahead and assume what you like, sir,” Kevin replied, after a pause. Cal pinched the bridge of his nose. “OK, so you didn’t mute the microphone.” “No, sir,” Kevin admitted. “You think maybe you should have?” “Hindsight’s a wonderful thing, sir.”
“They’re very… sexually motivated. And, well, nobody really wants to see that.” Cal turned to the others. “Is it wrong that a tiny part of me absolutely does want to see that?” “Yes,” Loren confirmed.
His best defense so far was that the door control button had been fixed to the wall in a very silly place. Specifically, directly at his eye-level. Whoever had made it bright red and marked, ‘Do Not Press,’ on it had been asking for trouble, too, and he felt that they should share at least a portion of the blame.
device that was much like a Swiss Army Knife, albeit without the knife part. Where the knife should have been was an extra spoon. (Quite what he was supposed to do with one spoon, much less two, he had no idea. He felt for example that, even with the help of the additional one, he was unlikely to be able to spoon a Sloorg to death, even if they agreed to let him try.)
“So, we stole it?” asked Loren, strapping herself in and flicking a row of switches on her console. “Only in the sense that we unlawfully took it from the people it belonged to, ma’am,” Kevin said.
