another GENERAL SPECIFIC

The Baggage Dump was not the best bar in the departure ramps. At least once a Tera week some dead traveler is discovered there in a trunk locker. Drunks, mostly, sprawled among the stuff they were trying to ship back home. People routinely move into the boxes. The business model of the place is flawless: Stow your luggage in a big rigid plastic box so you can medicate and drink and party while you wait to clear your flight.

I left Space here once for a week. They fed him and walked him and cleaned up after his little markings, they said. He must remember this well as he won’t come through the door. I snap his suits suction-cup-tether to the door frame and leave him growling lowly at the entrance. It was during the Imogen Research when we were both still young still new to drinking alcoholic beverages in low-g. When I found this place I felt right at home, and so I stayed for a fortnight or two. The Imogen Report was decidedly a low budget affair. Not paying for a real hotel room gave me much more money to spend on booze. Waking up at a mining chute monitoring shack on the backside of the Moon made me realize that researching a liquor smuggling scandal was maybe not such a good choice for a report. I had to start studying the booze situation from the other side of the bottle. It took me a week to get back to Balance station to my stuff and my dog at Baggage Dump. I felt so bad about it I never checked out, I still have my big box there by the bar. In it I keep a spare no-g, fresh package of sani-liners and refill pouches of suit booze. It’s my address on Balance. Place seems darker then I remembered it to be. People are scattered around the tables twixt the lockers. No-g’s are stretched out on the deck. At this moment the Dump is home to several widely separated slouching drinkers, heads down, hoods pulled low, ent coms cones set narrow. With a nod I acquire a Marstini in a dented scuffed launch tank its slightly discolored reddish olives bobbing beneath the CO2 haze. It’s not long before I’m spotted by the General. She dodges the surly dog at the door and makes her way to the bar. She’s dressed casual in an athletic low-g track-suit. She’s gorgeous and deadly. She drinks Marstini.

“Mr. Dvorak.” She’s beautifully taught, nearing sixty but obviously having spent fifty of them rigorously exercising.

“General. You can call me Paul. Anytime.” She ungloved for a handshake as she sat down on a bucket stool next to me. With a smooth motion she slid a plug into the seat jack and the momentary glimmer that indicates an ENT cone forming blinked. Our view fields meshed. Baggage Dump may skimp on the décor, not on the coms service.

“Debbi.” She met my eyes. General Debbi I’m falling in love with you.

“We should meet like this more often…Debbi…”

“Paul, I have to warn you. I’m dangerous.” And she looked it.

I stared hard at her. “So is my Librarian.”

She sips marstini. Somehow they found her a clean launch tank, in fact it looked brand new. Well I guess the bartender must think she class’s up the place.

“I happen to know you haven’t any librarian at this time.” She smiled. “The only librarian involved here is documenting you. They are second guessing you. Studying you studying god gives them some insulation.”

“They think I’m gonna crack up!” I accompany this with a deep swig of my drink.

“We don’t.” Stated rather matter of factly. “Many of my colleges think of all people you should meet God.”

Is that a threat? She comes right to the point. “Well, meet these aliens at least.” That’s a little better. They must think I’m already so scrambled and somewhat incoherent that no one would notice a change in me. The thought of answering some ones query of “what is God like?” sends me into confusion loop anytime. I am permanently in can’t give a straight answer mode. I’m not after an answer I’m after all the answers. Lies, truth, straight, or crooked. How can I say what is or isn’t truth without lying about it?

General Debbi has devised a test for the aliens. If they are real aliens from elsewhere across space, then they want a demonstration of these “aliens” space travel capabilities. With me as test subject to take to their alien home world to see for myself. If Gods actually involved then it shouldn’t kill me if I ask them nicely.

“We just need you to swallow this tiny transmitter so we can track you by dopler triangulation.”

This plan of course is truly worthy of my standard response choice of: “Whhaatt…”

“Oh don’t worry. It’s very very tiny and could be suspended in a delicious beverage…such as say for instance…a marstini.” She smiled with apparent satisfaction as I peered into my nearly empty launch tank. Not this again. It took so long to flush out the last pack of nano bot parasponders. I start the treatment by signaling for another Marstini.

“What if they don’t want me to visit their particular folded universe alti-dimensional bizzarro world.” I am more then a 1 dimensional or 2 dimensional kinda guy. I’m complicated.

She does a quick data transfer of 280 character Solsys coordinates space address.

“See if they can maybe just drop you off here. We’d like to know how fast you get there. It’s also a place you’d be interested in.”

The first 16 digits and letters told me that it was for someplace out in the vicinity of …

“Saturn! Oh no! I’m not going out there again it just took me 3 years to get back!”

“If they can really travel interstellar or can fold space to get from place to place then it should be a snap. Some sort of giant disc or spinning force field or spiraling vortex or just like a shimmery wall or antiquarian telephone booth or actual ships.”

“Why don’t you go?” Fresh launch tank of no doubt bug spiked cocktail arrives. She paid the smiling bartender with a tap of her wrist lami. I’ve never seen him smile before. He got a hefty tip. I sip at the vaporous membrane. It tastes perfect, its zero-g gin unbruised, its roiling olives the ripest shade of ochre.

“Oh, I would if I could, I will if I may, I fully intend to if I can.”

Oh and I’m sure she would too.

“But you Paul Dvorak, you Kel Paul, Paul is zoobum, have a much better chance of them showing you a convincer, a magic carpet ride, that will tell us if we are being Aztec’d or not.”

“Shouldn’t you be throwing people off of pyramids then?” Looking every bit as if that was ordered of her she would. “So you want me to tell you if they are running a game with this God stuff in order to conquer and exploit us.” It has of course worked quite well repeatedly through history. The military is worried that its too late. Typical-y in past instances of when technologic-ly miss matched civilizations met it was too late for the techno-inferior prevailing military structure to adapt. Wooden clubs against guns not really a fair fight. Throw God into the clash and it’s over for the techno disadvantaged. God must have given them steel. He likes them better cause look they got such great stuff. And who can say for sure He doesn’t. That’s the hook.

And if they can’t give me a whirlwind tour of cross dimensional folded space then it must be a fraud, a scam, an outta control absorptive conjectural cascade. Which I’m sure the military strategy will be to continue to ignore as an exclusively religious phenomena. That’s just good defense. Who knows with religion? Having dubious ambiguous or non corroborative access to God is a cornerstone of every human religion. Every religion of human origin has contact with beings and entities that do not exist beyond individual experience. An alien cast in the role is only a more modern twist. So the military can not fight it but must let it run its course to stabilize as accepted by the New Policy religions as qualifying for full Government support. Meaning a lifetime of wealth and luxury in which to contemplate the Zoo and the Bum.

We pushed several of the loose boxy lockers, waking a locker dweller who helped, to clear a space large enough for her to have a nearby fake drunk in her employ as sec support set up a quite plush General grade loungi-cliner.

“I see clearly now see how dangerous you are Debbi.”

It was not long till someone, the bartender…?… released Spaces tether and he joined us by pushing through the curtain. He introduced himself and attacked her with a full barrage of cuteness. Soon as he was curled up to her beneath her carress's he turned to me and growled. He stole my date! Thanks to Space she was looking much less dangerous.