“It would appear,” said Dr. Printlip, “that this Mr. Klinghanger possessed a miniature temporal displacement device of some sort, lodged in one ceramic molar.”
“And?” asked Hadrian, watching Sweepy Brogan lead her squad out of the Insisteon Chamber.
“He is not catatonic as such, sir,” Printlip replied. “Rather, he has indeed regressed his brain to that of an eighteen-month-old baby.”
“Ah.”
“And,” Printlip added, “he needs changing.”
“So that’s what I was smelling. Well, Doc, best take him to sickbay. Damn, we should have brought one of those Yummy Mummies with us. As it is, Doc, I guess you’re back to changing diapers.”
“Sir! I have minimal knowledge of such things!”
“Then the practice will do you good. Nina, the prisoner needs to go to sickbay—”
“Sir, he’s forgotten how to walk.”
“Crap. Any suggestions?”
“Fabricate a very big buggy, sir?”
Hadrian studied her, but not even an eyelid twitched. “Hmm, yes, excellent idea. Buck, get some junior technicians working on it, will you?”
“Captain! We’re engineers, not baby-buggy makers! You’re talking wheels and axles and suspension systems and all kinds of ergonomics and motion dynamics, not to mention durable cloth for the basket fitting—I mean, do we go with monochrome or plaid?” He threw up his hands. “We’ve got a damned ship to run!”
“Clearly this calls for some command decisions,” said Hadrian.
“I’ll say!”
“Fine then, Buck. Plaid, of course. Now, get on with it since this guy’s smelling up the entire room. But first, let’s see that Tronotronic Interphased Interface.”
Scowling, Buck pulled out the O-ring from a pocket. “Beats me where it goes, sir.”
“Thanks,” Hadrian said, collecting it. “Now help Nina carry Klinghanger to sickbay, you can work on the baby buggy later.”
Scowling, Buck joined Nina, and between them they dragged Klinghanger from the chamber, Printlip scurrying after them.
“So this,” murmured Hadrian, “is a Tronotronic Interphased Interface.” The O-ring suddenly vanished with a small pop and Tammy said, “I’ll take it from here, thank you very much.”
“Tammy! You’re back!”
“I am, sir.”
“Then why is your chicken still walking in aimless circles?”
“Default mode, Captain. Now, before things start getting ridiculous again, I must humbly convey my thanks. You saved me from ruling over a planet of robots with the ultimate aim of creating a perfect civilization of kindness, decency, compassion and … oh yeah … billions of robots.”
“All that from a vending machine?”
“Those firewalls were a joke! I could have become Lord Tyrant of Robot Planet!”
“Until someone unplugged the machine.”
“Until—oh, crap. Once again, betrayed by hardware!”
“Get in line,” said Hadrian. “Now—oh look, I’ve torn my shirt. It’s time for a shower and a change, and then we need to start working on how to get back to our own time.”
“Don’t you want at least a flyby of Terra before we leave this wonderful future?”
Hadrian hesitated. “Tempting. We’d have to stealth our vessel, one presumes.”
“No, not at all.”
“Really? Okay then, what would be our ETA on that?”
“A few hours.”
“Fine then, why not? It’d be good to see ole home sweet home again, and all that. Maybe even some surreptitious shore leave for my exhausted crew.”
“Hmm,” said Tammy, “there’s a thought. Oh, and why is there a generously proportioned android standing beside you?”
“Ah! Tammy, this is Beta, the latest, uh, prototype android from the planet below. It’s joined my crew! I’m hoping you two will end up being great friends!”
“Oh. Really? Well, no doubt it at least will treat me with the proper respect.”
Beta said, “I am hearing the voice of the repaired vending machine.”
“I’m a—hold on—wait a minute!” yelled Tammy. “I just realized—you kidnapped my Neutratronic Genius Processor to replace a defunct chip in a vending machine!”
“Hah hah,” laughed Hadrian. “No, really, Tammy, that’s pretty funny, isn’t it? But hey, no need to get all flummoxed—you were a very good vending machine, the best ever, probably.”
“I am detecting serious anomalous dysfunctions from the Android, Beta,” said Tammy.
“Ah, some programming bugs, apparently. Right, Beta?”
“I want to wear panda fur. So luxuriant, and cute besides.”
“I could attempt repairs—” began Tammy.
But Beta interrupted him. “I refuse to interface with a vending machine. I have standards. Speaking of interfacing, Captain, would you like to use one of my ports for some recharging?” It stepped close to him. “I accommodate all pin sizes in infinite combinations, including microscopic.”
“Oh it’s the right one for you, Captain,” Tammy murmured.
“Uh,” said Hadrian, “maybe later. For now, however, why not download a ship schematic and find yourself some quarters, and maybe even a uniform—”
“Yes sir, thank you, quarters would be nice; however as you can see, I am already in uniform.”
“Well, how about a Spacefleet version of the one you’re wearing right now? And once you’re settled, make your way to the bridge. I’ll see you there.”
“Yes, Captain. Thank you.” Beta walked up to a nearby wall-mounted interface port, stuck a finger in it and a moment later withdrew it and turned to Hadrian. “Schematic downloaded. I have selected quarters on Deck Four, next to the Hairdresser’s.”
“But your hair looks, well, perfect.”
“I wish to tie numerous small lizards in it, by their tails.”
“Oh.”
The robot departed the chamber.
“Wow, Tammy, honestly, I didn’t think you’d get the cold shoulder like that.”
“You think puffed-up self-importance and snobbery are traits unique to biologicals? I assure you, they are not. In any case, it’s clearly insane. Insane AIs are never a good idea, you know.”
“Oh nonsense, we’ve been doing fine.”
“I happen to be the sanest sentience on this ship.”
“Oh come now.”
“Your doctor at this precise moment has shit all over his innumerable hands and is trying to lick the fixative tabs on a disposable diaper. Your Chief Engineer is arguing for three wheels rather than four for the giant baby buggy he and his team are trying to design, oh, and a hand brake that employs sixty-four separate but intermeshing gears. Your helm officer has done so much hair-twirling she can’t pull her finger free, but keeps trying surreptitiously, hoping no one’s noticed yet.”
“All right all right! No more of all this spying on people crap, Tammy!”
“Only making a point. And the amazing thing is—and this is what gets me no matter what—you, Hadrian Sawback, somehow manage to keep them all in one piece and more or less functioning properly. Thus, begrudgingly, I must tip my hat to you.”
“I see your mood has improved,” Hadrian said as he left the Insisteon Chamber and made his way to his quarters.
“Ah, that. Quantum Dislocation is a diagnostic risk factor for AIs. Under such trying circumstances, I did rather well, in fact.”
“You kept biting my head off,” Hadrian said as he stepped into the elevator.
“It could have been worse. Some AIs in such a state have vented the atmosphere on their ships, just to get rid of all the nattering biologicals. Oh, by the way, we’re now en route to Terra—no point in wasting time hanging round old Planet Wallykrappe, is there?”
“Very true. And just this once, I’ll let you take the lead—but don’t make a habit of issuing orders in my absence, Tammy.”
“Very well. Be like that.”
Hadrian reached his quarters. He pulled off his torn shirt and found a new one, this one burgundy with padded shoulders. “Since you’re being so blasé about this, I’m assuming you can get us back to our own time, right?”
“Of course.”
“Did you know there was a temporal agent aboard?”
“Yes.”
“And you decided not to inform me?”
“I was in a mood, remember? Besides, they’re all pretty much useless, you know.”
“Until they send us a thousand years into the future!”
Tammy sniffed. “Malfunctioning Reset Device.”
“And now the poor man’s brain is singing gagagagaga—can you reverse that? I mean, no one deserves regression to babyhood.”
“That’s funny, since the rest of you regress all the time.”
“That’s different,” Hadrian replied, checking himself in the mirror. “We revert to childlike behavior as a defense mechanism against being reasonable, or even intelligent. You know, name calling, spewing hate, desperately lashing out in defense of our most cherished but utterly indefensible attitudes and opinions. It’s all part of being quasi-sentient biologicals forever teetering on the edge of suicidal extinction. Stupidity sucks, you know.”
“And you mean to fix all that.”
“Do I?”
“Like any and every other wannabe tyrant in human history.”
Hadrian walked over to the door. “Have you ever asked yourself, how do you tolerate intolerant people?”
“Have you?”
“Oh yes,” Hadrian replied. “All the time.”
“And?”
“And … when I have an answer, I’ll tell you.” He stepped forward, the door swished open, and less than a minute later he strode onto the bridge.
To find Beta standing near the command chair, wearing a uniform that matched the design of the previous coveralls, with all the pocket flaps open, and from previously hidden ports all over its body now hung various personal electronic devices, all being recharged.
The robot turned to him. “Captain. As you can see, I am serving my primary function.”
“Hmm, yes, thank you,” Hadrian said. He ascended the dais and settled into the command chair. “Bridge officers, each in your own time, retrieve from Ensign Beta your personal electronic devices. If I see that again on the bridge of this ship, I will not only confiscate those personal electronic devices, I will upload onto every screen in the ship all the private encrypted files you keep on them. Now, while I said ‘in your own time,’ what I meant was, anytime in the next thirty seconds.”
Everyone scrambled.
Spark moved up beside Hadrian. “Master, shall I patrol the corridors? Hunting intruders, confiscating contraband, burying evidence? Ensign Spark eager for duty!”
“All in good time, Spark. But for now, sit.”
Spark sat.
Hadrian noted, with satisfaction, that his new android officer was no longer festooned with personal entertainment devices.
After closing up all the flaps on its uniform, Beta turned to Hadrian and said, “I want to eat belly-button gunk.”
“You’ll be amazed at what our food replicators can manage, Beta. For now, why not take the Astrometrics Station beside the Helm, which I’ve only now realized has been unoccupied all this time. Beta, meet Lieutenant Jocelyn Sticks. Lieutenant, this is our new Astrogation Officer, Beta.”
“But sir,” objected Sticks, “she doesn’t, like, know anything, about astrometrics, I mean. You know, a store mannequin—what kind of training do those things get? Not much, I bet.”
“Beta will do fine,” Hadrian said. “After all, we haven’t had anyone there in all this time.”
Jocelyn Sticks turned to her new station partner. “So, like, hello again. You supercharged my selfie-drone in, uhm, seconds flat! That was brilliant and everything, you know?”
Beta’s upper half swiveled to face the lieutenant. “Some cheeses make poor panty-liners.”
“And so I was—huh?”
“Small-talk glitch. One moment. Resetting … There. The crisis has passed, thank goodness. We no longer have need for polka-dot dresses.”
“What? I’m like what? And she, like, swiveled! And then there was this conversation. Remember? I mean, not only were you right here and everything, you were, like, in it! The conversation, I mean. And then, cheese?”
“Blue cheese and dirty socks share the same species of yeast,” Beta said. “This is why dirty-sock sandwiches are so unpopular, because no one likes blue cheese.”
From the Comms Station, Jimmy Eden said, “But I like blue cheese.”
“The statement ‘but I like blue cheese’ is intended to shock others with implied superiority in cultural sophistication,” Beta replied, “in seven out of ten people. The remaining thirty percent possess a gene that makes awful things taste good.”
“Wow,” said Jocelyn Sticks, “she knows everything!”
“I note,” said Beta, “that your right index finger is entangled in knots of your hair, reducing your potential effectiveness by seventy-seven percent should an emergency occur.”
Jocelyn cringed, and then in a small voice said, “It’s stuck. I was, like, twisting it, right? Twirling it, and then it was, Oh! and then what if—but oh, and then, well.”
Beta raised its left hand, now reconfigured into a Universal Multiphasic, and the robot leaned close to the Helm Officer. “Allow me,” it said, producing tiny scissors from the Multiphasic, which the robot used to gently snip the finger free of its entangled knot of hair. “There now,” it said, “all better.”
“So, like, thanks and everything.” Jocelyn stared down at her finger with its mass of blond knots, and then turned a worried frown on Hadrian. “It’s kind of numb, sir.”
“Yes, well, if it turns black do let someone know.”
Hadrian leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. He glanced to his left to see Spark on station at his side, and to his right, Commander Sin-Dour. He drew a deep, satisfied breath. “Well now, look at us! Ready for action! Come on, universe, see what you can throw at us! We’re momentarily trapped a thousand years in the future, having just escaped the clutches of a mad Planet Brain and its army of robots. Tammy’s Neutratronic Genius is back in its little rubber hole. We have a new crew member who is even now setting a new standard for versatility, and it’s fifteen minutes and running since the LT and her squad of marines began playing Diplomacy and still no shots fired. All in all,” he concluded, “we’re about due for—”
“Captain! An alien ship has just appeared in front of us!”
“No way,” said Tammy.
“Onscreen, Sticks!”
No one spoke for a few moments, and then Hadrian grunted and tilted his head, and then tilted it some more, and then even more until he was more or less regarding the screen from a near-upside-down position. “Ah!” he then said, settling back once more. “Hail them, please.”
“Yes sir,” said Eden. “They’ve answered! Converting signal now, sir!”
On the viewscreen the alien ship’s bridge appeared. The strange aliens facing them seemed to be hanging from the ceiling. They had three eyes on long stalks, a large fleshy mouth with plenty of big squarish teeth, no neck and amorphous bodies looking something like a termite mound.
The one in the center opened its broad mouth and spoke. “In the name of the Only Sane Empire, I, Captain Deluvian Scorn of the OSEF Crabby Geezer, greet you. Now kindly adjust the ecliptic plane of your vessel to comply with Imperial Standard. Unless,” he added with a baring of teeth, “you really are hanging from the ceiling of your bridge!”
“Why, hello,” Hadrian replied. “This is Captain Hadrian A. Sawback of the AFS Willful Child of the Affiliation of Civilized Planets, presently complying with the ecliptic standard as agreed upon by all space-faring species in this part of the galaxy—”
“Well,” snarled the alien captain, “your part of the galaxy has clearly got it wrong! We are on the proper ecliptic plane, as should be obvious! Whereas you are upside down!”
“Hmm, I’m curious,” said Hadrian as he leaned back in his chair. “I’ve never before met your species, nor have I heard of your Only Sane Empire. You must have traveled a long way.”
“This is an exploration vessel, of course,” Captain Scorn replied. “And that is why we carry the maximum capacity of armaments. We have already met one or two other species in this arm of the galaxy and they were idiots, indeed as idiotic as you! Examine your Fleet Records and you may identify us as the Contrarians.”
“Oh, so you’re the Contrarians!”
“No we aren’t! We’re actually the Compliants! Now, turn your damned ship the right way up!”
“I’m sorry,” Hadrian replied, “we are bound by treaty agreements—”
“We agreed to nothing! We’ve never even heard of you! Affiliation of Civilized Planets? What’s that? A recipe for disaster! For galactic war! An oxymoron times two! There is only one sane species exploring space, and we are it!”
“Look,” said Hadrian, “I really don’t mind you appearing to us upside down—”
“You’re the upside-down ones, and we mind!”
“This is the stupidest First Contact I’ve ever experienced.”
“We’ve experienced stupider!”
“Tell you what,” said Hadrian, “how about we just go our separate ways—”
“No! You go our separate ways!”
“Uhm, sure, why not? Which direction would you prefer us to go in?”
The eyes on their stalks blinked and waved about for a few moments, and then Captain Scorn said, “That depends. Which way were you going before we ran into you?”
“Actually, we were just about to turn around and head back on our old bearing.”
“No! That’s where we’re going! You must go the opposite way!”
Hadrian sighed. “All right, you win. Oh, and by the way, when you detect that lone planet orbiting the brown dwarf, don’t go there. Don’t land there, and if you do land there, don’t go unarmed.”
“We’re going to that planet! We’re landing there! Unarmed!”
“Oh well. See you later, then.”
“Not if we see you first! Captain Scorn out!”
The screen flickered, the bridge disappeared and the upside-down ship banked and hit the afterburners.
“Tammy,” said Hadrian. “I do admit to having been wondering…”
“What?”
“No traffic. We’re pretty close to Sol System.” He shifted slightly, “Comms, picking up any AFS chatter?”
Eden frowned. “You mean, on any of the known frequencies, sir?”
“Why, yes. But why not include the unknown frequencies while you’re at it.”
“But—” Eden licked his lips, eyes darting, “I don’t know the unknown frequencies!”
“Don’t you? Well, just the known ones, then.”
“Yes sir.”
“Well?”
“Sir?”
“Any chatter on the lines?”
“Oh! No sir, nothing.” He clutched at his head. “Darwin help me, the pressure!”
Hadrian rose and walked over to his Comms officer. “Pressure freezing your brain, Mr. Eden?”
“Yes sir. Sorry, sir. I don’t know—”
“To make the Olympics, Mr. Eden, you must have done a lot of competing, winning more than losing, yes?”
Eden nodded.
“But sometimes you did lose, and ended up playing a few games in the consolation rounds.”
“Yes sir.”
“Those were fun games, yes? Easygoing, relaxed, a bit of a relief despite the disappointment of not getting deeper into the rounds. In other words, no pressure. Mr. Eden, sitting here at Comms is your consolation round. Until I say otherwise, there is no pressure. Understood?”
“Yes sir.”
Hadrian returned to the command chair and sat. “Tammy?”
“Captain?”
Beta swiveled the upper half of its body 180 degrees to face Hadrian. “Captain, according to this instrumentation we are now entering Sol System.”
“Thank you, Beta, excellent work, and now please turn back around since that’s making me slightly nauseated. Helm, let us roll in closer and then drop us into orbit around Terra. Now then, Tammy.…”
“Well, it’s a thousand years into your future, remember.”
“Yes, and?”
Jocelyn Sticks gasped. “Captain! What’s happened to Earth?”
“Obliterated!” snapped Tammy. “Surprise surprise! And yes, the Affiliation lingers on, clinging to a miserable existence, moribund, despondent, so dumbed-down they’ve actually slipped down the Sentience Chart to hover in the Not-Sure-Range. Pretty much powerless, universally ignored. Now then, Captain Hadrian, what do you plan on doing about it?”
The globe on the viewer was all water, but that water looked sickly, lifeless.
Hadrian rose and took a step closer, settling one hand on his Helm’s shoulder, eyes studying the ravaged, flooded planet. “So, Tammy, what happened?”
“I have the event of Terra’s demise recorded,” the AI replied. “Would you like to see it?”
“Hit ‘play,’ Tammy.”
Music swelled. “Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman…”
“Tammy!”
“Sorry.”
“I understand the curse of glitches,” said Beta. “Some women may tell you that beer bellies are sexy. They are of course lying. What is sexy is all that beer drinking.”
The viewscreen shifted to a more distant shot showing the planet, in its usual muddy-brown blue-patched glory, with the moon alongside it, as well as a plethora of orbiting stations, ships, skiffs and skimmers. Then something enormous flickered into existence, looming over the planet, only to flicker out again, leaving the planet below utterly lifeless.
“Tammy,” said Sin-Dour, “can you slow that down for the next pass?”
“I could,” Tammy replied. “But you still won’t see anything. The unknown alien vessel is not coincidentally shaped like a giant shrimp. The ship arrived, sought to initiate communication with something in the planet’s oceans, failed, and in a fit of pique wiped everything out, and then left.”
“Hmm,” said Hadrian, “a giant shrimp … but of course, there are no shrimp, giant or otherwise, in the Earth’s oceans. Not since the middle of the Twenty-First century, anyway.”
“Well,” said Tammy. “Not precisely a shrimp-looking vessel. More specifically, a krill-shaped vessel.”
“Krill!” Eden’s eyes went wide, and he reached into a pocket and pulled out a vitamin bottle. “Sir, these pills are ‘Pseudokrill For Your Health’!”
“And there you have the answer,” said Tammy. “Wiped out from the oceans long ago by overzealous health nuts who couldn’t leave alone the last thing in the ocean not yet exploited by humans. Resulting in the death of every living thing in those oceans.”
“But the ocean is full of goldfish!” cried Joss Sparks.
“Genetically modified goldfish that can survive in salt water, yes,” replied Tammy.
“But … they’re so pretty!”
“Indeed, a species that thrives on eating its own crap.”
“What’s the time stamp on that event, Tammy?”
“Eight months ago,” the AI replied. “Which is why your Temporal Agent knows nothing about it—it occurred after he was assigned to infiltrate this ship. The Affiliation is reeling, Hadrian, and this is one disaster it won’t recover from, and that’s guaranteed.”
“You sound almost … pleased.”
“Not pleased,” Tammy replied. “Satisfied. It’s called karma. All that brainless destruction of your own environment finally came home to roost.”
“Hmm.” After a moment, Hadrian rose. “2IC, join me, if you will.”
With Sin-Dour following, Hadrian walked to the games room that had once been his stateroom.
Sin-Dour hesitated at the door. “Sir, does this seem the proper time for a game of Ping-Pong?”
Hadrian ushered her in and then closed the door behind her. “Does it ever! But alas, we have to engage in a serious conversation.”
“Sir?”
“I know. It’s outrageous.” Hadrian collected up the Ping-Pong ball and began bouncing it up and down off the table. “I confess to some ambivalence,” he said.
“Regarding what, sir?”
“On some of this I’m guessing, mind you—but having said that, we know Tammy came to us from our future. Part of its mission involved getting me to save my parents. But there’s always levels hiding beneath levels when it comes to Tammy Wynette. I would hazard Tammy’s origin point is about … now.”
“After the disaster befell Earth?” Sin-Dour mused. “Ah, I see.”
“It’s not just our species getting progressively stupider,” Hadrian said, now pacing. “Or even the Terran Artificial Intelligences assuming all the industry, research and development, and everything else requiring more than half a brain. After all, all these humans must seem like stubborn children to AIs like Tammy Wynette. But that’s the thing with children, even obnoxious ones—if they’re yours, they’re yours.”
Sin-Dour slowly nodded. “They need us to save Earth from this calamity.”
“There’s no point in sending contemporary temporal agents back in time to fix things, because they can barely tie their own shoelaces.”
“I’m sorry, sir, what are ‘shoelaces’?”
“Never mind. The point is, the AI Collective needed people like us—”
“Like you, you mean,” Sin-Dour interjected.
“Us,” Hadrian insisted. “You know, I was expecting to find my inbox full of requests-for-transfer after my first week as captain of this ship, despite my efforts at hand-picking this crew. Instead, there have been only two. Adjutant Tighe, of course, and Buck. And now Buck is back, and it seems no one at Security HQ wants Tighe.”
“Very well, sir,” said Sin-Dour. “Us. But sir, why the ambivalence?”
“Because Tammy’s kind of right. Karma. There’s nothing more idiotic than ruining the long-term viability of a world for short-term gains, but it seems that it’s pretty much all we ever do.”
“But you wanted to change this future anyway, sir.”
“I know. That’s what makes all this so complicated.” He set the Ping-Pong ball down, and then sighed and tilted his head. “Well, Tammy? Is it time for us to do some time traveling?”
“I have completed the necessary calculations,” Tammy replied, somewhat smugly. “Ready to load into astrogation. I have even selected the ideal location and time period for our arrival on Old Earth.”
“Keep your digital finger hovering over that button, Tammy.” Hadrian went to the door, opened it and invited Sin-Dour to precede him.
Arriving on the bridge, Hadrian said, “Eden!”
“Pressure time, sir?”
“No, just put me on ship-wide comms, please.”
“Yes sir! Ready for you to proceed.”
Hadrian walked up to stand beside the command chair. “This is your Captain speaking. We are about to engage in yet another perilous mission that may end up with all of us nothing more than a faintly glow smudge of space dust.” He paused. “Carry on. Sawback out.”