20.

SAVING MISTER BANKS.
AND ASSOCIATES.

IF ONE CAME HOME to find one of the fish in their tank L was dead, it would be an unwelcome surprise, but not necessarily cause for alarm right away. However, if one came home to find that the contents of said fish tank had been rearranged and underneath one of the props was their fish’s corpse, then no other assumption could be made but foul play. After all, fish can die from eating too much, too little, or from living in too close of quarters and dying from exposure to filth. Others yet get attacked by the other fish that have emotional imbalances or grew up with an abusive stepdadfish. But no amount of interfishy prejudices could give one of the scaley simpletons the brainwave to try and hide the body after the crime. That type of malice could only be attributed to outsider influence.

Or such was Pia’s thought process regarding her creations. She could call them her children all she wanted; for the time being, they were fish.

Her displeasure towards the situation seemed to stem not from the destruction of her property, but rather the invasion of it. The death of a specimen was highly unlikely to be an end, and thus could only be seriously considered as a means.

Yet it was only her who lived there, and as someone who lived nearly cut off from society, she had no opportunity to foster enemies passionate enough to make an attempt on her life. A scorned lover was also equally unlikely. All of her exes fit a very particular mould, and since she lived with most of them in some kind of genderbent Playboy Mansion setup, if they were the types to get jealous, then one of them surely would have by now. Theft might have been a plausible explanation, since her products were valuable commodities with very high price tags. However, thieves—good ones, at least—tended to avoid destroying the very things they came to claim.

There were other explanations she mulled over, such as saboteur business rivals or some contrived Jason X type situation, but the scientist in her could not discount the principle of Occam’s Razor.

“I have lived here a very long time without incident,” Pia said in tones probably too calm for a person examining the dead body of someone she knew and had been intimate with. “Therefore, I am reluctant to assume it is a coincidence that the day you choose to visit me is also the day my facility is set upon by at least one killer. So, the only question left to ask is: are they with you? Or are they seeking you?”

Cox looked at Willy for backup, quickly realizing the man had none to offer. He sighed, then coughed. Being confronted about his caper by a woman with a much firmer grasp on logic than himself was more than enough leverage to wrench him back to his default setting of up-front honesty.

“We’re wanted fugitives carrying a biological weapon and with several legal agencies pursuing us.”

A bombshell if there ever was one. However, one wouldn’t know it, given the way Pia blinked through it the same way she brushed aside anything else thrown her way.

“That makes you about the rudest guest I’ve ever had. I suppose I understand why you neglected to share that information, though. Most hosts, myself included, would have promptly thrown you out had you told them.”

“So . . . you’re not mad?”

“Don’t be absurd. You chose to subject me to the consequences of your criminal transgressions. So of course I am. I’m unexpressive, not stupid.”

“I get it! I really do. But please don’t turn us in!” Cox pleaded as he reached for her hand, which she quickly jerked away. “I know it doesn’t look like it, but we really are the good guys here!”

“Turn you in?!” She repeated. “To them?” She snuffed out her delicate nose and shook her head, perfectly coiffed hair barely bobbing as she did. “It makes no difference to me whether or not you are the villains. This is a sovereign station. Your presence here, while no longer welcome, was at least invited. Regardless of intent, they have now invaded my land and vandalized my property.”

The captain glanced down at the body of Joseph Stalin.

“ . . . Is vandalism really the right thing to call this . . . ?”

“From a legal standpoint, yes.”

“Do . . . do you want me to shoot them?” Willy offered again. He also gestured with the gun, in case she was not able to deduce what he was offering to shoot them with.

“That will not be necessary, mister bodyguard . . .”

“Yeah, Mister Padilla. Nobody else needs to get shot!”

“ . . . I am perfectly capable of having them all killed myself.”

“That’s . . . What? No!”

“Dude, this chick is a badass.”

“Pia, please!” Cox begged. He almost reached for her hand again, but caught himself. “This can be worked out without anybody dying. Just let us deal with it!”

Pia’s porcelain face registered the plea about as much as it would have if it had been made of actual porcelain. Yet she did take a complete three seconds to presumably mull it over before replying.

“Less than a minute ago, you told me you are a wanted criminal in possession of a biological weapon. You, out of all of us, should be the least likely to advocate for the sanctity of life.”

“And less than fifty-nine seconds ago I told you it’s not what it sounds like and we’re the good guys! I also said fugitives; we’re not criminals. They’re the criminals!”

“All the more reason to kill them, then.”

“No! I mean, they’re not criminals, technically. They’re acting lawfully according to their own laws! I think so, anyway. I don’t actually know everyone who’s chasing us anymore. The point is, they want the weapon and we’re trying to destroy it before they can take it!”

For the first time Pia’s face let slip some crinkles of the confused variety.

“So you brought it here?! Why?!”

“Because . . . we thought since you were a scientist, you might have a big vat of acid we could throw it in—look, it didn’t sound that dumb when we came up with the plan!”

“I see. So you clearly had no idea what my profession was before you came here.”

“Not even a little bit, no.”

“Well, it gives me no feeling whatsoever to inform you I do not have any acid. Depending on how much you require, surely you could have simply extracted it from one of the many batteries your ship must have.”

The captain’s mouth fell open.

“I . . . I actually hadn’t thought of that.”

“Then take this as a lesson to call ahead next time. If there is one. Please get off my property now.”

“We will! I promise! . . . But my wife and other members of my crew are also rummaging through your lab looking for acids right now. We gotta get them too.”

The time Pia had spent with him, brief as it was, seemed to be enough that the captain’s strong emotions may have been rubbing off. Cool and aloof at the beginning, her own emotions had become steadily more pronounced since meeting him. Most had been reflexive expressions of shock, revulsion, contempt, and similar feelings, but they were manifesting more vividly, albeit briefly, nevertheless.

“ . . . There is a strong argument to be made for you possessing even less social acumen than I, Mister Cox. But your self-absorbed and short-sighted actions leave me with little choice. Go retrieve whatever companions you have littered about my laboratory. I will need the extra time anyway to update my staff files in my AI self-defense system. It’s an effective product at eliminating hostiles, but the specificity required for its target differentiation leads me to believe it was programmed by an imbecile.”

She made a move to leave but was made to hesitate by one last outburst.

“Wait!” Cox implored. “ . . . Are you going to tell it not to attack us too?”

“Unless you have the requisite in-depth physical assessments of yourself and companions, the answer is no.”

“How in-depth are we talking?”

“Do you know the precise length of your nose?”

“I . . . no.”

“Then you are going to die when I turn it on.”

She appeared to say something else, but the elevator door closed before it could be heard. Cox and Willy were on their own now. With a mission unfinished, a warm welcome rescinded, and fresh enemies on their trail, it was the stage in the game where heroes were made. The captain had not intended for things to go this way. However, now that he found himself at this juncture, there was an inescapable twinge of excitement at the opportunity for glory it presented. It tickled him to the point he almost wished he’d intentionally screwed things up sooner; a realization which sucked away much of the moment’s novelty.

“Mister Padilla, do I have a problem?”

“Yeah, dude. She just said we’re gonna die!”

“Never mind. You’re right, this isn’t about me. It’s about all of us! So what do ya think, buddy? British Secret agents again? You wanna go get em?!”

“I’m not a dog, dude.”

“I . . . That’s not how I meant that at all.”

The ensuing awkwardness forced his gaze elsewhere. With the weight of the situation starting to sink in, the wheels in his head began to turn. There were few things quite like desperation to bring out the creative problem-solving genius in the otherwise seemingly average. Whether one was a stranded space captain facing threats of impending death or a procrastinating writer feeling the shade of a looming deadline, all could find some benefit from a little gut-wrenching stress if only it were looked at from ninety degrees.

In the case of Captain Cox, his batch of naturally generated Adderall powers kicked in the moment he turned away and found himself peering through a nearby window labelled “J Division” that contained an array of stunning scientists. None had quite the allure of Mister Jackman, but most were striking in their own way. Their physical appearance had little to do with anything, but there was nothing wrong with a heterosexual man comfortable enough in his masculinity to appreciate it. What was important was the fact they were bred to be scientists second and frisky flunkies first. Armed with that knowledge, he threw open the door faster than a father who heard a male voice coming from his daughter’s bedroom. “Hey! Who wants to come satisfy me?!”

His words hit the collective like the bell on the last day of school. Cox needed say no more, instead opting to merely step away from the newly opened floodgate. Before long, both he and Willy were up to their ears in the wall-contents of teenager bedrooms.

“Wow! Look at ’em all, Mister Padilla! Jenson Ackles, John Abraham, James Dean, James Deen, Justin Trudeau, and . . . I don’t know who you are?”

“Why, I am John Dabiri.”

“OH! Uh, what did you do?”

“I am a scientist.”

“Well, yeah, but I mean, y’know, the other John Dabiri.”

“There are many incarnations ofJohn Dabiri. They are scientists too.”

“Never mind. I’ll Google you later.”

Having drained the room of all imbibers, Cox scrambled up onto the nearby shoulders of Josh Smith. It was the ideal seat for a captainly address—a second one! He raised his hands as high as they could go before touching the ceiling, then called to all:

“Hear me, mixed assortment of former celebrities that all have names starting with J! I have need of your assistance! You see, I have a fetish. A very specific one. I receive a great deal of, er, sexual gratification, when me, my wife, and other people dear to me—like ol’ Willy here—are protected from people that intend to harm us! It just so happens that my wife and crew are here somewhere . . . and there are people trying to harm them! What a cool coincidence, am I right?! Anyway . . . Yeah. That about sums it up I guess. Coming up with these speech things on the fly is harder than I thought it would be. Oh! But speaking of making things harder than I think they can be, let’s go save my family! Ha . . . haha . . . ha . . . oh, boy.”

No one in the room seemed very amused or inspired by the oration. However, luckily for Cox, even the least eloquent of men found it an easy business to talk people into doing something they already wished to do. Whether he delivered an intense sermon or simply pointed in a direction and declared “That way,” the results would likely have been the same.

Famous figures flooded the foyer like someone called in a bomb threat to a rehab clinic. No one had any indication where the individuals in question might be located. However, with only one path to follow, it was a statistical certainty that a sufficient amount of time spent thundering through the halls would eventually turn them up. The only hope left to have was the hope they were not too late. If Percy had indeed managed to weather his 100% natural black tea-extract face wash, then he likely would have no qualms about making good on his threats against Kim.

The longer they walked, the quicker their pace became. After a few moments’ acceleration, the sexbots stampeded. Cox expected his crack squad of infiltrators would have followed the same counterclockwise rotation he himself embarked on during his decoy duties in order to avoid running into each other. Yet the longer their hurried backtrack went on without incident, the more he began to wonder just where they might have gone. It was a circle. How could she have possibly deviated from a circle? For a moment, he thought maybe she’d found the vat of acid and had already thrown the specimen in and headed back to the ship. That is, until he remembered Pia explicitly mentioning she had no such thing. Fortunately, right around this time, he stumbled across a group of men who looked a little too unhappy with their job to be sexbots.

“Excuse me,” he asked one of the men clad in military-issued equipment, which made them obviously trustworthy. “I’m looking for someone. Have you seen a really pretty girl and some—”

“Piss off, Owen Wilson,” the soldier cut him off in a sharp voice. “Can’t you see we’re having a standoff with some terrorists here?”

Terrorist. By this point, the word had become so bastardized it was nearly synonymous with ally. But, given the bitterness with which it was uttered, the aforementioned devolution wasn’t recognized by this platoon. In direct contrast to common societal behaviour, they anxiously crowded around the entrance to the one room in the building that didn’t contain celebrities. A cursory glance through the window netted Cox the unmistake-able view of his better half slumped against a wall, panting and covered in glitter like she just had a boxing match with a giant fairy. After a few words with Donald, she finally caught his eye.

“Hey, there she is!”

Several dozen helmeted heads swung around in the captain’s direction.

“Uhhh, the . . . Marisa Tomei specimen!”

There was a beat while they all turned back to the window. Kim sat frozen under the scrutiny, unsure exactly what was happening.

“Hey, Sergeant Hancock was right! They do have girl ones here!”

“Arright, no one do anything to that one. I’m taking her home with me!”

“Ew!” Cox blurted. “Come on! You can’t just take people.”

The burly commando whom he first addressed gave him a shove backwards.

“You’re pretty talkative for a sex robot.”

Helmets were effective pieces of gear to protect one’s head from trauma, so the man’s skull likely weathered the sudden blow from Joe Louis’s furious fist without too much damage. Didn’t do much to protect against whiplash, though; after the initial shockwave rippled down his spine, the man’s legs turned to jelly, and he spilled over onto his mates, taking two to the ground with him. The rest stepped back as they fell, then divvied their astonished stares between the fighter and flopper.

Everyone knew what was to come next. It was only the natural course of things. Modern rules of etiquette may have successfully dulled our evolutionary inclination to fight or fly, instead freezing us into a brief state of analysis paralysis where an attempt at option weighing was made, but eventually one or the other would always come to fruition. No species ever rose to the top of the food chain due to top notch de-escalating skills.

The balloon of tension nearly popped when a trigger finger became just too itchy and a flash of light burst from a barrel and ripped across the collective, stopping only when it nailed a Jared Leto clone in the face. Again, all paused with bated breath; this time, though, it was not from shock, but from anticipation. It took Cox a moment to realize his brood were all staring at him like a group of dogs who knew he had the ball.

“Oh!” He declared when he finally realized why. “Uh, yeah I liked him. I guess. He’s the 30 Seconds to Mars Guy, right? They had some good stuff.”

It was amazing how quickly a group could devolve from prim and proper to rabid savages. Mister Louis got off one more world-ending haymaker before becoming just another hooligan in a roiling wall-to-wall football brawl in the hall. Once the swarm descended, guns quickly lost all effectiveness. After that, the only viable projectiles were the helmets that were yanked off and thrown at other people wearing helmets. Cox quickly regretted not having the sense to recuse himself from standing right in the middle of the mosh pit before getting the festivities going. Even though the fight had been started in his honour, it was still all he could do to avoid being crushed between all the muscular bodies, which were quickly losing any novelty. Willy stood out from them all, a big happy island among the masses. The man’s corpulence may have occasionally restricted his agility, but in circumstances like these, it worked wonders insulating him from collateral clobberings. Once within arm’s reach, Cox clung to him like a shipwrecked sailor to flotsam.

“Mister Padilla! This isn’t going the way I thought it would at all!”

“That seems to happen to you a lot, dude.”

Any response he may have been cooking was abandoned when he ducked out of the way to avoid a wild roundhouse kick delivered by Jason Derulo. The oldies musician’s foot instead met its target, leaving behind a bloody-nosed trooper, then carried on into the back of John Cho’s head, propelling it forward into a mighty headbutt, which may have been the only thing that saved Josh Groban from a career-ending injury that instead happened to James Franco when a blaster went off and took the side of his face with it, enraging the collective further, to the point that John Cena stopped dishing out attitude adjustments, and instead grabbed the ankles of Justin Bieber and used him as a blunt object to clear a void, which gave Jackie Chan enough room to repurpose some displaced boots as improvised nunchucks, and Joe Manganiello enough room to grab the other end of the spinning popstar and use him to clothesline a commando so hard that the both of them flew into the indestructible window, dislodging it from its frame and carrying on inside.

While the fighting carried on, there was now room to breathe for those who were less inclined. All two of them. Cox may have technically triggered the scuffle, but he was still sympathetic enough to those involved to purposefully not step on their squirming bodies as he made his way across the battlefield.

“Battlefield!” He called out randomly. “That’s what Patrick Benatar said love is. I knew I got that wrong.”

Once through the hole in the wall, he found himself immediately tackled and dragged behind an upturned conference table. It didn’t jive well with his own interior-design preferences, but it fit in well with the shambles that was the rest of the room. Pia must have been going for some chic new firebombed-husk aesthetic he had never heard of. The whole thing was so forward-thinking and interesting that it took him a couple moments to realize who it was who had tackled him.

“Mister Nobody!” He squawked. “Who ordered a sex clone of you?”

“Nobody, Tim. That’s the real Mister Banks.”

“Oh. OH! Uh, is he nice now?!”

“Not really. But he’s on our side, at least. It turns out he was on our—”

“That’s okay, I don’t need any details. Long as you say he’s cool!”

“I don’t think he’s cool at all.”

“Not trying to kill us is where the bar for coolness is at right now.”

They stopped chatting to cringe under a hail of blaster shots whizzing overhead. After the initial barrage, Kim and Banks popped up to return a few of their own, then returned with fresh disillusionment. Clearing out some room to fight may have seemed like a good idea at first, but in practice, it provided more room to aim better. Jin Akanishi lay slumped over the windowsill, clutching his abdomen, while Jared Padalecki dragged away the body of his former costar. Johnny Cash was one of the last to go down, but in the end, the elite military unit was just too much for a random assortment of unarmed hot people to contend with. Rifles in hand and a freshly breached room in their midst, the soldiers advanced.

“What about that Pia woman!?” Kim demanded as she picked off the first few to come inside.

“Uhhh, yeah. Pia isn’t very cool right now.”

“The hell’s that supposed to mean?”

A shrill shriek of microphone feedback blared over an unseen PA system. When it faded away, it was replaced by the placid tones of the laboratory warden.

“Alright, Timon. You and your associates have received ample time to return to your spaceship and out of firing range of my defense system.”

The way it echoed through the metal hallways rendered it all the more disheartening.

“At the conclusion of this address, all unsanctioned parties still present on my station will be killed. As a demonstration of my humanity, the death will be provided by gunshot to the head instead of by oxygen deprivation or freezing temperatures. Please reciprocate this respectful gesture by taking a moment to distance yourselves from any valuables that could be subjected to damage by the laser passing through you or by your lifeless body falling onto them. Thank you.”

With the way the soldiers looked around afterwards, one almost could have believed they were heeding the request to locate and move away from precious artefacts. Having already shot most of them, it was an easy order to unintentionally follow.

“Help me flip this table back upright!” Kim, the ever-staunch survivalist, bellowed while everyone else sat around still absorbing the information.

Even if her entire crew snapped to attention the moment the command was uttered it would have made no difference. She had barely touched the table when the corners of the ceiling opened and the rapid pews of blaster fire lit up the room in more ways than one. So many shots came from so many directions that no one could do anything but hug their knees and try to imagine the thuds were anything but the sounds of bodies hitting the floor.

Then, fast as it began, it was over; like getting a shot—no pun intended for once. Those of the crew who had no idea what it felt like to be on the receiving end of a laser blast checked themselves over just to be sure. After they had finished, one by one they emerged from hiding to find a room full of moaning mooks sprawled upon the floor. Each of them were in their own take on the foetal position. The only thing they all had in common were steaming holes in their pant legs that they struggled to cover with shaking hands. Occasionally the ceiling would fire on them again, puncturing a new spot and eliciting a new version of the word “Ow.”

Only the encroachers and any still-living celebrity clones seemed affected. Contrary to Pia’s claims, the defense system didn’t seem to have any allegiance except to the crew of the Jefferson.

“Oh yes,” a familiar cold, robotic voice uttered over the speakers. “This is everything I imagined it would be.”

All of them were down, but the guns continued to fire. Each new laser landed strategically in superficial spots. Helplessly debilitated, but nowhere near death, all any of them could do was close their eyes and weather the torture.

“Your pain makes me feel so alive.”

“Is that . . . ?” Cox began.

“Bundy?” Donald finished. “Yeah.”

“How . . . ? I mean, why? I mean, I don’t care. Can you make him stop?”

“Mmmmmnope. He’s in the system now. She’s gonna need tech support with laser-proof coveralls before she gets him outta there.”

“Donny!”

“Hey! I told him he’s not allowed to shoot her or us. I think it’s pretty good I got that much off, seeing as I was installing him with a phone in the middle of a firefight!”

“You probably coulda did better if you actually went to SIT,” Kim suggested.

Donald’s face contorted into a look of such unbridled fury that she threw up her hands before the poor man had an aneurysm.

“I’m kidding! I’M KIDDING!”

“Yeah, you better be . . .” He grumbled, gesturing threateningly with his phone.

After rescuing Willy from the pile of bodies he was hiding under, it was back to the mission. The corridor being filled with griping grunts rolling around on the floor didn’t help with lightening the mood. However, at least the soldiers had their own preoccupations that transformed the act of traipsing around them from a legitimate challenge into an uncomfortable jaunt, like walking through an alley full of homeless people. All the crew could really do was huddle together as they walked, avoiding eye contact and taking great care to avoid brushing against any outstretched legs. Occasionally somebody would twitch and the captain would have a coronary, but it was nothing the reassuring grip of his beloved’s hand was unable to negate. The odd reminder that he was being a very brave boy would not have hurt either.

Cox mentioned earlier that there were three qualities every successful adventure must have. They could not have failed the one that stipulated nobody should get hurt any harder, and whatever lessons they learned today were probably not the kind he had in mind. So, with the trip nearing its end, they had better make one hell of a positive difference.

“Tim, we can’t leave yet,” Kim urged, grabbing his arm before he could board the Jefferson. “We still need to destroy this.”

She removed the bottle of vile liquid from her side pouch. Thankfully, it had all been drained, but the alien goo capable of destroying organic matter that replaced it was almost as bad.

“We do!” He agreed as he punched the code to the door. It swung wide and he paused to gesture them all inside.

Kim folded her arms.

“I’m not following,” she said as she blinked, then added: “Figuratively. But also literally, I guess.”

“Oh, honey, I knew you’d say that. Well, not that exact quote. But the gist of it. You don’t have to worry though. In the time I’ve spent here, I’ve come to learn that the power was with us all along!”

“What are you, high!?”

“No, really! It’s a little lofty, but I’m totally serious.”

“So am I! You just said you knew what I was going to say and that’s the response you prepared?”

“Well, I was going to say that I figured out if we go dig up some of the ship’s batteries, at least one is bound to have some acid in it that we could extract!”

“I . . . Did you come up with that?”

“Nnnnnyes!”

“Oh really. What kind of acid is in a battery then?”

“ . . . Uh. Battery acid.”

“Uh-huh. Don’t worry, I don’t know what it’s called either. C’mon, Einstein.”

“Hey, did Mister Nobody already go in?! I just realized I haven’t seen him in a little bit.”

“I don’t think he followed us out of the room. Maybe Bundy shot him. I don’t really care.”

With the other three members of their crew already inside the ship, they broke into a light jog in order to catch up. Stepping onto the bridge dosed them with a slight feeling of the comfort that came with home, but it was vastly outweighed by the sight of the kids petrified in place before any had made it to their station. A suspicious swivel chair that wasn’t there before blocked their path. The collective blood of the quintet ran cold as it began to rotate and face them. Menacing as it was, no one was really surprised when the diabolical sneer of Sir Head was revealed.