“Everyone over-explains everything?” His passenger asked sotto-voce.
“Everyone over-explains everything,” the chauffeur continued, oblivious to his passenger’s response.
“Take you and me for example. They could explain the reason that the two of us look the same with something puerile like convergent evolution. You know, the idea that there is a perfect form for every function in nature, as if opposable thumbs were required for tool use or higher brain function.”
“You do have opposable thumbs.”
“Not the point I’m trying to make. Let me put it to you a different way. Take this fine vehicle we are traveling in. You don’t need to know how to build one to be able to ride comfortably in one.”
“I have you for that.”
“I’m not even sure I know enough about the mechanics of it to build one from scratch. Sure, if I can buy the parts from my local parts shop, I could put it together, but I have no idea of the specific variances or measurements of any of the individual bobbins or widgets.”
“Don’t forget the cogs and sprockets.”
“Now you’re making fun of me.”
“Not in the slightest. I don’t even know if there are any sprockets or cogs in this vehicle. How does the steering work anyway.”
“I only understand the basics, really. Sure, I know if part A is broken, I replace part A. I know part A inserts into slot B and so on.”
“The ankle bone connected to the…”
“Basically.”
As they continued on their journey, silence lapsed for a little while. The passenger looked out the window at the stars thinking about what the chauffeur had been saying. It seemed an eternity before the driver began to talk again.
“Take fantasy for example. No one worries if the monster has a proper evolutionary history. He can have 2 heads, breathe fire, and every time you cut one head off 2 grow back and no one questions it.”
“I think that’s because it’s magic.”
“Is that really an excuse? You get right down to it and everything is ‘magic’ from far enough away. Take your television for example. You may know the principle behind it, but could you really explain it as technology to someone who had never seen anything like it before? It looks a lot like a magic mirror if you ask me, especially the flat panel models that seem to be all the rage.”
The passenger laughed at him. “Aren’t you supposed to call it a vid-screen or something if it’s sci-fi?”
“Why? Human nature rails against it. People are, by and large, creatures of habit. If you called it a TV as a kid, chances are you’ll call it a TV as an adult. Consider when we started shifting from the standard definition screens to the high-definition ones. No one started calling them HDs, as much as the media would have liked us to. No, they are HDTVs, or simply TVs. Radio is still radio how many years later?”
“That’s different.”
“How? It’s simply named after the band of the electromagnetic spectrum that it uses. Tele-vision: two words meaning far sight. Auto-mobile: self moving. It is like coming up with a different name for a home planet of an alien species. Chances are it will be something like soil, earth, ground, or any similar word for the surface that the alien creatures live on…or in. Why even invent a name for an alien race? They’re just going to be human-kind, at least they will be in their own language.”
The passenger laughed a bit at this. Before the chauffeur could continue, an alarm went off.
“What’s that?”
“Something that can’t be there…atmosphere…” Before he could elaborate the vessel shook and there was a loud boom in the relative quiet of the cockpit.
“What’s that sound? Tell me! We’re going to die, aren’t we?”
“That was the sound of something important being sheared off by the force of us skipping along the surface of a planet’s atmosphere. I need you to belt yourself in because we’re going down.”
The passenger looked out the window that, until this moment, had shown him the splendor of space, and watched as the first wisps of vapor began to stream by. The view shifted as the craft rolled, barely in the control of his chauffeur. He caught sight of some landmasses as the vessel continued to roll. They passed into the night side of the planet, and he saw the lights dotted across the landscape in a parody of the stars they were leaving behind.
“It’s inhabited,” the passenger declared, a smile splitting his features.
“Yes, there are natives. How is that a good thing? Primitives. I’m only showing rudimentary communications satellites. No inter-stellar communications array of any sort. This is a backwater, and it’s not on the maps.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that if I don’t land with enough of the ship intact enough to take off again, that we are going to be stuck here for a very long time. Let’s hope that they breathe the same air we do. Now I need to concentrate.”
The passenger could only look on in horror as the lighted landmass got closer and closer with each pass around the globe.
The driver became more and more frantic as he lost more of the control surfaces of the craft. It hadn’t been designed to enter an atmosphere, and the closer they got to the planet, the less of his ship responded.
“Pray to whatever god you believe in, because I’m about to turn on the final safety features and leave our landing in the hands of fate.”
“But…”
“There’s not enough left to fly.”
Images from horror movies flashed through the passenger’s mind in the instants it took the driver to enter in a code on the computer panel and hit the enter key. After that he didn’t think a thing.
Take the object that is even now coming to rest upon the surface of the planet that the natives call Earth, as alluded to by the former pilot of the object.
It is strange to this world, being designed for use in a vacuum, and not in an atmosphere. Much of the portions that used to stretch out have been melted, sheared, or otherwise smoothed flat with the surface of the vessel. It glows with the heat of its passage through the atmosphere. A trail of smaller pieces is being shed even as it approaches the embrace of the planet it was never meant to meet. Most of those will burn up with their speed of entry.
And that speed is much greater than gravity itself would impart to the small bits of space rock that most planetary inhabitants call ‘shooting stars.’
Perspective tells you that the ship is graceful, and not all that large. You watch as it oh so slowly approaches the planet, almost a controlled descent.
Perspective lies to you because it knows your mind isn’t ready to handle the immensity of what you are seeing.
You get an idea of the size when the ship bounces off one of the mountains in the distance. The ship doesn’t dwarf the mountain, but for a moment, as it makes contact, perspective tells you that not only is the mountain a lot closer than you thought it was, but that it is much smaller. You thin that it might only be a hill. There is no way, perspective tells you, that the ship can really be that big.
Mountains block horizons, and this ship could easily be half the size of the mountain.
Easier, perspective tells you, to believe that the mountain is smaller.
Pieces of the ship spray out at the impact it made, and the trajectory of the ship shifts slightly as it begins to come in a little cockeyed. Even the mountain was only able to begin it moving, and not send the ship pin wheeling, as perspective tells you it really should have.
It is only a moment or two after this impact that the ship first kisses the Earth. Now it does tumble, shedding bits and pieces like clothes after one of your better dates. You know the ones I am talking about. Apparently the ship doesn’t stop there, as it is still shedding its material all over the desert basin where the Earth wants it to come to rest.
The ship continues to disintegrate, slowing as it does, until the only thing that’s left is a slightly glowing, mostly spherical object that is much smaller than the ship that it emerged from.
In fact, perspective would tell you it was only a bit of dust, but the cloud of dust that it raises tells a different story, and the enormity of the object that just tore itself to pieces aided by mother Earth and Gravity finally comes to you.
It is as if a city just crashed to the ground.
Now, if you were anything more than the lizards, birds, or rodents that really did see this now would be a great time to faint.
The thing about the so-called lower life forms is that they don’t really care about higher brain function. They are slaves to perception.
The cockpit continues to roll, shedding speed in the loose sand of the desert basin. The cloud of sand and other debris kicked up by its passage is huge. It dwarfs even the original size of the ship.
Slowly, the cockpit’s speed is reduced by friction until, finally, it comes to a halt. The dust tail still hangs in the air and points like an arrow to the final resting place of the cockpit.
He only realized he was screaming when the rawness of his throat added it’s own demands to the rest of the pain he was feeling.
He relaxed then, because thought was once again becoming. Becoming what he had no idea, but it was becoming…something.
His laugher was hysterical, which he could tell because a small dispassionate portion of his mind was critiquing it and comparing it to other hysterical laughter he’d heard in the past, thankfully none of it his own.
He took some breaths to try and calm his hysteria, only to realize that the act of breathing actually solved some of the pain he was feeling. Apparently suffocation hurts.
He got up and began to walk a bit, trying to restore circulation to his body, and realized that his heart was now beating again. And then memories began to worm their way into his head.
George. His name was George and he was now trapped on an alien planet. At the angle that the former cockpit was leaning, he knew that there was no way the ship was in any way intact.
His former passenger hadn’t stirred yet, so he released himself from his harness and tried to check the other man’s vitals. He couldn’t detect a pulse, and he quickly looked at the computer screen to see how long it had been. The numbers counted off time, and he was amazed that it had been that short; mere moments had passed when it felt like an eternity while he was trapped by the pain.
He rushed to action. It wasn’t that he particularly like the man, but he didn’t want to be here alone. If the ship was as bad as he thought, then this would be the only familiar face that he’d ever see again.
Resuscitation took moments, as the man’s body ached to live, it had just forgotten how. George collapsed in relief. Without proper preparation, the chances of surviving the stasis system were one in eight. With two people that made the approximate odds of survival about one in four. Or is that one in five. George knew how to pilot a star ship, but that didn’t mean he was any good at math.
George left the passenger to awake to his surroundings as he went to survey the damage. He had to use the secondary emergency exit, as the other two were at the bottom of the cockpit, and were likely flush, or close to it, with the ground.
The only things still connected to the cockpit had been inside the stasis field. The damage was about as bad as it was possible to get. He looked at the miles-long debris field, and felt a stab of fear. He noticed the telltale signs of investigation already at the site. Contrails attached to jet aircraft traveled across the sky. It would be a little longer before anyone on the ground could get there, especially with the technological advancement that he’d noticed coming in. They were still using fossil fuels if the smog clouds over their major cities were any indication.
That would limit their ground speed to somewhere between…
He began to laugh at himself a little bit. It wasn’t like he knew exactly where the nearest military base would be, or research station, or whatever group they sent when there was an ‘extra-terrestrial’ incident just like the one his ship had created.
It was funny to think that he was the alien in this encounter.
“You opened the cockpit. What it we’d been unable to breathe their air?”
“Then we’d be dead. I don’t know how to convert non-breathable air into a nice N2/O2 atmosphere.”
“But you’re a pilot.”
“And the movies have told you that all pilots are special ops geniuses who can make a spacecraft out of duck tape and bailing wire? Let’s examine this another way: You’re a what?”
“Accountant.”
“Okay mister accountant. I assume that you use a computer to keep the books? And you have an accounting program on that?”
“Sure.”
“Are you good with this accounting program?”
“I’m considered a wizard around the office. I can do things with numbers…”
“So, you could program the software you use into the guidance computer.”
“What?”
“Should be simple if you’re so familiar with the use. Just right here.”
“But I’m only an accountant.”
“Exactly. Anyway, we’re wasting time. We need to move away from here. The natives noticed our crash landing.”
“But don’t we want to interact with them. They might…”
“Be a super advanced race that chooses not to interact with the galaxy at large and will just give us a ship and send us on our way?”
“When you put it that way.”
George grabbed the two survival packs from their storage container behind the pilot’s seat and handed one of them to the Accountant. At some point he needed to learn the man’s name, but now wasn’t the time. Now was the time to run.
“Yes, Alfred, I know.”
“I still don’t understand why you persist in calling me that. My name is…”
“Unimportant. You’re my butler, for all intents and purposes.”
“I’m a full service AI with heuristic…”
“Exactly, butler.”
If Alfred had been able to, he would have signed at that moment. Of all of the things in this world that he hated, and there were a lot of them, he hated his creators most of all. To think that they would create him able to interact on an emotional level, but then never allow him to express those same emotions as he saw fit.
At least they installed him in a warship. He might not be able to take out his frustrations on his creators, or this little prima-donaa who walked his halls, but he could take it out on someone, and it looked like someone was about to receive his wrath.
“Angela, I have detected the presence of six ships on the edge of our scanning range.”
Angela rushed to the bridge, half dressed, in order to take a look at the consoles there.
“Hmm…not a standard formation. I wonder if they’re playing with me.”
The main screen came to life. “Looking good, Angela.”
Blushing, she closed her top and did up the ties. “Shut up, Brad. My AI made me think I might actually be in trouble. I rushed only to find you bozos.”
“We’re not the ones clowning around. I don’t know anyone who changes clothing as much as you do.”
“I just wouldn’t be comfortable wearing this clothing out there.”
“I get it,” Brad said with a knowing look.
“No, you don’t. Maybe sometime I’ll meet with you, but right now I think we have a mission to accomplish.”
“You and your missions. Don’t you get tired of the cloak and dagger?”
“It’s like the clothing, Brad. It gives me an outlet. Besides, isn’t part of the point here to push the limits?”
“Ok, babe. Whatever you say. There are some limits I’d like to push with you though.”
Angela blushed again, but didn’t smile.
“You know your part in this thing, then?”
“Yeah, we got it covered. I just hope that you uphold your part of the bargain this time.”
“That was a one time occurrence. See you on the other side, Brad.”
She was under no illusions of death by so called ‘explosive decompression.’ The physics just didn’t support it. It was much more likely to be instantly baked on sun side, and frozen on shadow side.
Well, it would be like dying in an explosion. There wouldn’t be enough time for your mind to process the pain before you were dead, which was as close to a painless death as anyone could hope for.
That, however, didn’t get her any closer to actually completing her part of the mission.
Space was really cool, in her opinion. There was no friction to stop something from moving, so Newtonian Laws of Motion ruled the day. She’d leapt out of her ship almost three hours ago, and only now as she approaching her destination. The time before now had been floating and looking around her at the majesty of creation. That and the occasional adjustment of her trajectory to make sure she landed in the proper place.
While it was difficult for her opponent in this little game to detect a single person floating in space, it was not impossible. Wearing the completely plastic suit helped that as well, but the main problem was the speed she was moving.
Saying that she jumped isn’t exactly accurate. Her ship was specially designed with a very deep airlock. Specifically it was three feet wide and twenty feet deep. With the artificial gravity of the ship, she was able to get a running start, and then when she peaked her speed, usually around twenty-five or so miles per hour, she would cut the gravity and “drift” out through the airlock.
Before she became really successful, the threshold speed of the sensors on most space stations had been thirty miles an hour.
Of course that was before she became successful.
Her helmet chirped. “Angela?”
“What is it, Alfred?”
“Just so you know, you are about three degrees off course at this point.”
“Good to know. You didn’t ping me with the laser just to let me know that.”
“It seems that active sensors have been upgraded again. We’re going to have to start from about a hundred twenty miles or so next time.”
She chuckled to herself before continuing, “So, what you’re saying is that I’m going to have a much longer trip home than out?”
“Pretty much exactly what I was thinking, yes.”
“Ok, good to know.”
“Alfred out.”
“Angela out.”
She adjusted her course minutely from the information on her HUD. She’d never been this far out of line before and was beginning to wonder a bit about this job. Something was beginning to feel off.
A space station was even more anal than a ground based air traffic control tower. After all, if an aircraft crashed it was only a lost of the aircraft and its cargo or passengers that suffered. If a spacecraft crashed into the station it could mean the loss of life of everyone aboard.
Angela smiled as the ships began to slow their approach and were moved into a proper closing pattern. She never saw if any of them docked, as she was coming in for a landing herself at that point.
She laughed to herself at that point. Her final course correction had been as close to perfect as you could expect. She was only three feet from the maintenance hatch she’d been aiming for.
Now, her true passion showed itself. Brad and people like him wouldn’t understand this, but women’s fashions mattered. Even if a man wouldn’t notice a problem, women would. They’d notice if you were wearing something that simply wasn’t available on the station. However, wear something just slightly out of date and you’d be noticed as well. You needed to hit that center point where you weren’t fashionable and weren’t out of fashion.
This was the reason that Angela owned more than a hundred thousand credits worth of clothing and that her ‘closet’ comprised almost a third of the interior of her tiny ship.
She quickly stripped off the now useless plastic suit and smoothed out the dress that she was wearing underneath. Out of a pack she took the shoes that matched and then seamlessly moved into the population of the station.
If only life were as simple for her when she was at home, then she might not feel the need to play these games.
And she considered this to be a game. It was too simple to be otherwise. Get in, retrieve some object or other, and get out. Smuggling was too simple a term for it, but she would be considered one.
Usually what she stole, however, was information. Information was so much more worth its weight than any other object she’d ever stolen.
It wasn’t long before she left the populated sections of the station behind. Now came the fun part. She walked confidently down the hallways. A left ahead and then a right, and she was in front of the office she was looking for.
She opened the door quickly and stepped inside.
“Mr. Connors, I was wondering…”
She cut off when her information proved correct and the aforementioned Mr. Connors was not in his office. She sat down to wait on one of the chairs. The thumb drive at her hip was one of the newest models that just needed to be within bluetooth range to be able to connect up. What wasn’t standard was the hacking package she’d installed on it.
There was a slight vibration when the drive got the data she’d programmed it to find. She rose, walked to the desk, and wrote a note. It was the same one she always left.
“Thanks for the game.”
Getting out was as easy as getting in, and that’s when she really started to worry. They should have discovered her note by now.
What was going on? Something about this really didn’t track. The fun part was always getting out of the station without getting caught. That was why she left the note. The makeup that blurred her features on the internal monitors was an added bonus.
No one knew what she looked like, except for a few like Brad who she’d met in person a long time ago.
This time, however, contrary to every protocol she’d tirelessly memorized about this station, there was no police presence. No port lock down. No response whatsoever.
She shook it off and continued to the maintenance hatch and her suit.
"Hello, the suit." She called out quietly. The voice activation system on her suit replied in her voice, "Hello, Angela." Only once in all the time she'd been doing this had she lost her suit completely. Someone had moved it. Since then. she'd used the voice activation system to tell her where it was.
She dragged the suit over to the airlock so that she could prepare for her return journey.
She smiled thinking about it. Alfred was always there to catch her. She cried a tear or two as she thought about what the most likely outcome of today would be.
It was for the best, though. Time to retire anyway. They were getting too close to catching her as it was. This one last score would be enough to set her up, if not for life, then at least for a long time, and if she got a real job, then maybe she could keep herself in the luxury that she loved for a long time to come.
Space was still beautiful, and with nothing to do but watch as she waited she looked at the stars. They were nothing like the stars on Earth, but that was to be expected. She was halfway across the galaxy after all. The constants were the other galaxies. On earth they looked more like stars with the intervening atmosphere softening them out. Out here, she could see the sweeps of starts that made them up and not just the center point that suggested the galactic core.
Her current field of view wouldn’t let her see the center of the Milky Way galaxy, but she’d seen that enough in her life. She lived here after all.
She supposed it was something like being stuck on a single planet and wanting the ‘alien’ vistas of a beach or desert when you had seen nothing but deciduous forests your entire life.
Then the ship was looming over her suit and collecting it into the capacious airlock.
Just as the door closed, a hail came from the space station.
“Unidentified craft, you are ordered to stand to and prepare to be boarded.”
A voice called into the airlock, “Angela, we’ve got a problem. They spotted us.”
“Be there in a moment, Alfred.”
“I’m sorry, but the lady of the ship is currently indisposed, could I help you?”
“You have thirty seconds to heave to. Noncompliance will be met with deadly force.”
“Angela, I need you up here now!”
The AI was getting frantic. This wasn’t supposed to happen. There’d been no active sensors on him. He was the next best thing to a hole in space on passive sensors like video.
“Be there in a moment, Alfred.”
“Not good enough,” switching channels the AI spoke again to the station, “I’m sorry but we need a moment or two longer, I’ve not been authorized to take any…”
He never completed that sentence; in fact he never did anything ever again. The core of his computer home, as well as the rest of the ship, was an expanding cloud of dust and debris. The fire that had consumed the atmosphere only lasted a moment or two and wasn’t much more that a flash. There isn’t much that burns in the vacuum of space, and the wreckage of the small pirate vessel was not exception. There was nothing left of the ship in less time than it took to read this paragraph.