Excerpt from            The Answer

Many were the times I stood in the view port and gazed out upon the vast desolate dusty cratered waste that was my home and thought how I must be crazy to love the moon of tera.

“Paul. O Paul we’ve missed you so.” She was crying honest tears of joy. Or it could have been the acrid smoke of flesh cauterized by the laser blaster battle happening out in the corridors and right in front of my tubes view-port.

“Ah, but what a great view eh Amanda? They don’t make a good view tube like this any more. All under ground deep. Gotta go down a damn float shaft!”

“Yes its spectacular all right. OOOH! Hey! Did he just?!”

Pink cloud. Particle impact. A combatant goes down just against the Compress clear View port wall. “It’ll take somebody all day to clean up that mess!”

“They were right. Life is better with the blast proof decomp-Matic walls!”

“You are such a thorough planner.”

“You can plan for war… err… you can plan a war…. But, can you plan on war?…err …it just wars outside some times… like now… ya know.” I babble when I’m scared; And when I’m not scared too. I babble a lot.

“You have to stop them!” She squeezed my arm tightly. We were interrupted by space marine Jenkins schlepping a dispatch lami from the local demoplutarchic revolutionary zubumarilary lunar governmental council.

“They’re gonna sue for peace.” I predicted. With a fluid motion for ease of reading I stuck the lami firmly against the messengers military cranium.

“It’s a summons! They are suing you! The bastards.” Amanda quickly gets her lawyerness up. She’s a French Foucaltian lawyer which makes her arguments twice as deadly.

“Well that explains this huge battle going on out there.”

“They are trying to trick you into appearing so you could be detained.”

The space marine messenger peels the court document from his forehead and attaches it across my about to speak mouth as he turns to leave. Amanda and I both realize at once:

“Gag order!” She gasped. Only what I said came out: “gaaaderrr”.

“And these attacking guys are the advance shock troops clearing the way for the lawyers of zoo bum!” She shudders. If they’re sending combat lawyers en-mass I have to hire her immediately. Suit starts transferring the funds. Now, legally we can talk without violation.

The space marine turns back to us scowling. “Those attacking guys aren’t zubs. They’re from Idaho. The lawyers of Zubm already have you under tube containment.”

The lawyers of an alien god, The Mormon empire. Everybody wants me. Not the first time two armies have fought over the privilege of killing me.

“The last time I was in this predicament I could only do one thing.”

And so Amanda and I made wild violent passionate frenzied love before the huge blast proof decomp-Matic brand view port as the religious fanatic fascists outside sent each other respectively either to heaven or hell. Love is extra tantric sweet with death so close.

“Um… you are billing me for this time aren’t you Amanda?”

“Just at the consulting rate so far.” Her delightful French accent made it sound worth every monet.

I found the blockade of my home tube proved easy to slip through.

“I saw her on the lift platform going up to the flying esplanade. She looked up at me from the escalvator steps. About three people over. All I said was: ‘Hey, you shaved your eyebrows Hollywood !’ She ran off sobbing! I couldn’t get to her before she got to a restroom and then she just never came out. What did I say? Her eyebrows were bare, it was quite striking.”

“You oaf ! She’s done it!! She’s gone Zubum. She’s over to the whoowhoos! Its sad.” Helen crossed her arms under her breasts and stared holo hard at me.

“What? You think? How do you know?”

“The eyebrows! The lack of them. They say that before you can meet the aliens no hair above the eyes.”

“Come on that’s ridiculous! What about lashes, eyelashes, do they pluck them out as well?”

“No. They dye those bright florescent green. Kinda sparkly like..sorta.”

“You’ve never seen this. This is, oh-my-god, flight deck talk! That’s all you wrench types do is stand around drinking coffee talking bullshit isn’t it. Is that what I pay you for? BS’ing on pop culture cults?”

“Yes of course it is and you know it. And you don’t pay me anyway. I’m a permanent governmental employee twelfth class!“

“Quite right. Of course. Don’t go all calling the union on me again all right okay? I’ll be a good researcher from now on. Um, hey, by the way, did anybody down there mention about depilatory zoo bums fashions elsewhere.”

“Huh?”

“You know down there, hey like, Brazil style?”

“What?”

“You know. A hairless elsewhere? You went in for that once didn’t you? Always swiping my little barber bot. I'd find it later with that silly grin on its face. I was gonna fit it up with a camera.” She grinned at me like a happy barber bot.

“And how was your stay on that power satellite? Did you and Space have fun there? We would laugh for hours at your hairless naked holo calls me and Moody!”

The mention of that arch traitor Moody reminds me that I have to call him soon and apologize for the assassination attempts he’s been encountering lately. It is merely an unfortunate Shakespearean misunderstanding. The group of murderous fanatics only really want to do good things for me. I should not have been complaining about him in their midst, but who takes it seriously when you say out loud sometimes: “I wish somebody would kill that son of a bitch?” I mean come on! Oh, I think I said that out loud again.

“But what do we do about Becky? Paul she’s fragile.”

“Well she is easily brainwashed alright. Look at her career in the military.”

“Lets have an intervention. Deprogram her. Drug her up and fly her out.”

“Dope and hope! She’d kick all our ass’s. Cool your jets Helen.” Oh she hates it when I tell her that. “I’ll see what I can find out from them. After all there would be no zoo without my bum.”

“How well put.” She said dryly as her holo image disintegrated into fading gobs of zubum eyelash sparkles.

This eye hair thing has me thinking that the guys running the aliens have some kind of light show going on with their act, projected down from above perhaps. Visually subjective hypnosis for religious domination purposes is the oldest form of art. Confuse the eyes and the ass will follow. And so I must resort to the most natural enemy of art: the lawyer. I wake up Amanda from her snore accompanied meditative contemplation of my complicated legal budget revenues transfer situation. Suit deposit’s the appropriate amount to her accounts.

“I need you now baby.” I see that she takes obvious note of my word “baby” possibly in order to later inform her lawyers of my perhaps inappropriate behavior. I’ve slept with more lawyers then she can afford.

“You want to consult again? We have consulted all over the tube.”

“There will be time for more consulting later my petite shoe.” She smiles that wonderful honest French smile that makes me think she wants to stab me. “I hope you’re up for the big pay olla ," I say this kind of franciaze like so she’ll understand, “of a full price representing appearance.”

And so to get full value I consult with her some more for awhile.

“You mean there’s only two of you in there?” The uniformed elite zub paramilitary looks to his partner. They both make the face of the particularly incredulous. Another walks up.

“OK pay up.” He says flatly to the other two. Muttering they tap away at their id lami wallet displays.

“You two sound like fifty people having sex!” He peels his lami bugs from my door.

“They thought there was an orgy going on in there.” It’s Jenkins the Space Marine.

“There was.” I reply and try to add some twinkle to my eye. Amanda blush’s and giggles in a most un-attorney like way. Suddenly it seems she’s dropped something and must bend over very far to pick it up. Its very obviously good for bending that she wore such a scanty cut away skin tight ultra micro shuttle suit. This attracts tremendous military attention and I use the diversion to step unaccompanied into the lift.

Ducking the obvious camera clusters and ID panels hood up I make my way by back corridors and maintenance tunnels to what I know was Becky’s last known address, an apartment tube off the third domes ring road. I remember the place had a great view of the new low-g water park. As I casually snuck amongst my neighbor Lunarians I thought about how Becky and I had lost touch after the close of my last report. Did I drive her to this extreme, I wondered, through my neglect and infidelity? We are still married after all and I do feel responsible for her even though she’s always saving my life by not killing me. Who’s going to save my life next time if she’s off in some bizarre cult somewhere?

When I’m sure I’m at the right place I find the tubes decomp door wide open. The place is full of people. There’s a chanting party going on. They sway in a contra harmonic trance of unintelligible mumbling. It’s a crowd of mostly tribal techie types of every race or skin dye hue dressed in as hippie as you can make out of a wired systems laden jump suit. Several are not even real in the sense that they are even in the room or on the moon but cast that shadow less electronic glow that shouts cheap holo caller. Some of the more aware less tranced out ones glance up at me as I weave through their fervent languishing. I sense them scanning my eyebrows.

“Pay oool im zub.” Says the man whose hand I’m standing on.

“Eww. Aw. Sorry. Oh. Are you alright? Ooopps. I guess. Sorry, sorry, so sorry.” I think this song needs music. I let suit pick. It chose a Handel scratch acid mix of the halleluiah chorus at a very low volume level three, almost just above subliminal if you’re deaf.

“Hey, um, anybody know Becky Savage? She still live here? Blond, maybe, no brows, no eyebrows?” By now I had engaged several of the closest ones to the man who rubbed his hand wincing. They all had eyebrows. Certainly they would have noticed her. “Halleluiah!” softly shouts my suit as the sub-woofers in my deck boots thump in slow time to the deepest hum like loop bass in the phrase the DJ's are attempting to repeat. The halleluiah’s give it some skank. A woman whose expression clearly is telling me to go to hell, where ever that is in their alien pantheon, points to the door of the once stylishly decorated tube’s antechamber. Rebecca’s bedroom. A room I know quite well having paid for it. Suit thinks its time for Dean Martin to sing and now I need a drink. She used to keep liquor over there by that hippie ore shuttle driver. Suit sends some marstini up the sippy tube next to my blacked out ID lami. I know I will miss the dusky red olives that come with a fresh full launch tank pitcher; that’s the price I pay for the convenience of a full suit bar amidst the ruble of a cult.

Should I knock on the door or burst right in? It is my bedroom isn’t it? Did I say that out loud?

“Isn’t what in zub?” I’m asked mid chant by a young man in a moon suit adorned with multicolored plastic beads.

“Oh but that’s the rub! Bub.” I poet my way through the unlocked slider door.

“Hello Paul. I’ve been expecting you.” Becky, alone, sits naked at her mirrored table, her back turned to me.

“Well I had to come see you right away. I’ve been worried since you ran away yesterday. That was you wasn’t it? On the steps?“ I moved in closer to her, I wanted to grab her and make love to her again, eyebrows or not. In fact the whole no eyebrow thing was becoming a sort of a turn on. A new dimension of Becky-ness to explore. She’s shaving her eyebrows right now I notice. She looks up at me in the mirror soulfully. We make deep eye contact.

“Stubble.” She says beautifully. “I didn’t think I’d get stubble so quickly” She shakes her beautiful long smooth forehead from side to side. She caught me peeking south of the border.

“Um, do you zoo bums do that everywhere? This shave thing?”

“No silly boy. Just the brows. And only a top candidate does this. I am a terrarista!” She announced quite proudly.

“I’m married to a terrorist!”

She laughs.

“Not terrorist. Terrarista. Terrrraaaarrr. Not terrroooaarrrr. Its like French or Spanish or Cosmeranto or something. It means of the earth."

Solemn moment now.

“You’d make more money as a terrorist. You have the training. You’d be good at it.”

She looked for a moment as if she were seriously considering this.

“Well, maybe when I get back.” I knew it!

“Back! Back what? Where are you going?”

“To meet God of course!” As if I didn’t know! She’s a serious terraaarrrista alright. ”The zubums know God personally and are gonna introduce me. I get a sit down with the man or… the…woman…err… well you know!”

“You get the glowing green mascara too?”

“Yeah! Hey, you know about this too Paul?”

“A little. When are you leaving and where are you going?”

“One… I don’t know. Two…I don’t know. They don’t tell me. The zoo does or the bum does. Or I just know I guess.“

“Well when you tell yourself let me know okay?”

She gazed at me quizzically asking herself.

“What are the other rules? Can I do this?” She squeals with mock delight. “Oh Paul!” “Or this? Can a zubum’s husband do this? Must he be underwater?” Apparently there are few rules of conduct that apply to horny terrarristas. The oddest one I’ve noticed so far is this eyebrow thing. It seems the only proscriptions to social zubumic behavior is the eyebrows, and that you must thoroughly wash your ass. The aliens apparently are sensitive to smells, ass smell in particular. Becky in case she should be about to call herself to zubum takes a bath. We take a bath. I might want to go along.

“Oh no Paul! You absolutely can’t come along with me! It’s not allowed. I am on the solitary path of the chosen.”

“Who chose you?” I tried not to make that sound like I thought that nobody rational would’ve chosen her.

“What? I can’t go on a quest for God? Not me? Look Mr. Senior Researcher” when she capitalizes that I know I’m in for trouble “I happen to enjoy intellectual pursuits. Not like you drinking Marstini’s” she pantomimes me throwing back a launch tank. “I spent half my career an EXTINT officer and had to take the stupidest shit for it: ‘Oh I saw a UFO, it looked like a big butt, ha ha ha!’ “ Her impersonation of her fellow officers was spot on. I could see their pathetic school yard antics. I could imagine their puerile humor. Then she punched me hard in the gut!

“And you ! You’re the worst ever! ‘Oh there’s one over there! Hey made you look…ha!!’ Playing your silly sci-fi soundtrack music! Like right now! Now stop it! Stop the music now!” Suit heard her loud and clear from the corner. “I suppose you expect me to report it all to you! Everything! All of it!”

“If it wouldn’t be too much trouble. I mean when you get the chance. I could use it for some new research I think I want to do.” “NO Paul!” “Big project kinda ties in with last one.” “You can’t!” “Big budget. Long scale.” “Don’t say it!” “ You know I need you now more then ever.” “Not that!” “I don’t know what I’ll be up against, and that’s why I need you.” “You mustn’t!”

“Yes Becky, I think I’ll research God next. And I need you to get us in so we can serve the warrants and subpoenas. Just point to the guy in charge, God, you know, and we’ll do the rest. A crack team of paramilitary lawyers’l get the truth outta God!”

“Sure Paul.” She sounded soothing. She patted my hand. Led me from the bath to the bed. And when I woke up she was gone and so were my eyebrows.

“I just looked in the mirror to see if I was actually alive. I feel like I got hit with death!”

“I can’t see what your talking about! Move into better light. Wait there! There!”

“Turn up the resolution in your phone menu. I tell you they’re gone! Gone! I look like a freak’n thespian!”

“Paul just ‘cause your eyebrows have been shaved off does not make you a lesbian. Besides you’re a ah ah… you know what I mean….?” She was confusing herself here I could tell.

“Man? Man Helen. Man? Is that what you mean?” She acknowledges I’m a man with an infuriatingly reluctant nod. “What I mean is Theatrical person, an actor, a make up wearer.”

“Well there’s improvement then!” What! “That’s what you should do!”

“What!?”

“Cosmetics Paul. We do live in the future after all. This is supposed to be a time of tolerance and enlightenment isn’t it anyway?”

“Lets leave the future in the past between us and get to what you’re trying to tell me!” I manage to say through clenched teeth.

“Just paint in your eyebrows with la lusta number seven. That’s your shade I think. Match your brownish hair. Don’t arch them too high up on your forehead though or you’ll look cheap.”

“Oh I’m cheap alright. Cheap Dvorak that’s what they call me… yup.” She readily nods at this in confirmation. “ Helen I’m not putting on fake eyebrows!”

“Come on Pauly, you want people to stare at you? Surely Becky’s got something there that you could use?” I searched like a good researcher the contents of the vicinity. Nothing, no liquor, no cigarettes, no make up. I sip some fresh suit marstini. Besides empty all I found was a lami pamphlet from the zoobums central. I’ll read this dogma later in the karma. “How about a space pen? Or a zero G sharpie marker?”

“I’ll see if there’s something in the other room.” Is always how I innocently descend into ever more trouble. I have really no thought in my head as to the other room than that there is in the food prep area very many sliding storage bin lockers full of junk recessed stylishly into the highly expensive la lusta shade twenty seven Passion Flower decorative paneling that I paid for. I can smell zoobums as the door slides pneumatically aside. Even Space-less I smell a lot of zoobum smell sort of patchouli sweat and sani hose disinfectant. What was another room of the suite, once splendidly furniture’d in modular low G plush-O-hide, the common media room is now merely a shell surrounding the deepest most tightly packed crowd of wild eyed religious fanatics that this room could possibly hold. I can tell this as the main decomp door to the corridor stands open and the sea of brainwashed heads extends full view. People are so close together that they blur in their tribe’d up tech suits. Shoulder to shoulder they form an arc around me at arms length away. I make no move except to put my hand up feebly to hide where my eyebrows should be. They take this as a salute.

“Paaaauuuuoool iiiimmmm bbbbuuummm.” Echoes vibrate the structure of Crater View Estates itself. Such a tremendous blast of fowl breath hits me that I take a step back.

And thus the door, the tiny mind of it’s sensor program quite sane, closes me back into the bedroom.

“Company at the door Paul?”

“Some sales reps.” I stagger to sit on the bed.

“What are we going to do about Becky?” Helen’s holo image drips thick with real concern. As I open my mouth to say… “I don’t know!” I’m over spoken by: “What do you mean ‘what are you gonna do?’ ” of an angry Becky voice coming from behind me.

“You’ve been in the vacu-spa this whole time?” She looks all smooth brow-ed big eyed. Her cheeks are red and she’s frowning because she’s pissed off.

“You don’t have to do anything about me Helen! I do just fine for myself!” She storms over to me on the bed falls beside me and grabs my arm at my com lami and Helen is gone. She hung up on Helen!

“Thanks. That call was starting to cost me.”

Life is strange enough without a cult outside your door. Angry Becky glares at me. She stands askance arms folded. It takes a minute before I realize she’s staring at my forehead. She bites her lip. I pounce.

“What’s the big idea of shaving my eyebrows?! Some kinda joke? Ha Ha! Think it’s funny?” She reach’s out and takes my hands. We sit on the airbed.

“I didn’t shave your eyebrows off Paul.” Her eyes lock onto mine as if she’s looking deeply into me. “You were laying there asleep and I thought and thought about what you said about God and aliens and asked the zoobum if I should stop you or kill you or love you. I asked and asked and didn’t hear a thing. No copy of my coms. I thought about being a terrarista and what a terrarista would do and I didn’t know and so I asked the only other terrarista I ever met. And she said that humans are good at waiting to see what will happen. Its one of our natural special abilities as animals. Its how we learn things, watching and waiting. Sometimes knowledge comes to those who wait. So I waited to kill you because I love you, we’re married after all. And then when I looked at you again your eyebrows were gone! It was just a moment! I didn’t do it. And that was what I was waiting for.” We gaze at each others reflection in the nearby mirror. Holding hands.

“Well who shaved them off? An eyebrow burglar? A hair fetishist?”

“No one shaved off your eyebrows! Don’t you see? You are chosen! You’re a terrarista too! You weren’t picked by a committee like I was, you were chosen by the Bum itself. You are the Zoo!”

“We are the walrus.” I recite. She looks at me uncomprehendingly. Suit gives us some Beatles medley. I see the positive. “This will get me in there for sure.” I admire the new look of my reflection.

“That’s why they’re here.” She nods at the door. I can hear the monotonous chanting.

“What are they saying? Pay ool im Bub?

“It’s you Paul. They speak so many different languages that when they chant all together it blends like a chord. They’re saying “Paul is Zoobum”. You’re the Paul. You killed Simpson Acca Buddha. There would be no Zoobum aliens here if it wasn’t for you. Those people wouldn’t have the chance to meet God.”

“Becky you know what happened as well as I do. I did not kill Simpson Acca Buddha. He killed himself, or rather his neurotic android copy self -destructed.” On the saturoid Il Buacentaurri. Vaporized. “You tell them I didn’t do it! Explain.”

“It wouldn’t do any good. Things have gone too far. Your myth is written. They’re your followers. Your personal bum. They think if they’re around you their chances of talking to God get better. Every terrarista attracts them. Its like a personal cheering chanting squad. Only yours is big! Really big! There’s at least five thousand people clogging the whole neighborhood tube!”

She’s right. Things have gone too far. I’ve been defaced. They got my forehead hair by remote somehow. A tuned down blast and suck was aimed at my face. I’m the prisoner of a mob of fanatics that think I killed the founder of their religion and they’re glad about it. Soon the soldiers of the Zoobo council will be here angry that I gave them the slip. They want me on tube detention. The Mormons from Idaho want me for war crimes against their military industrial complex rooted in the same events that spawned the alien religion. I know I have to act fast.

“I think we should make mad passionate frenzied love right now.”

“Oh Paul we have to stay pure. We’re the chosen.” And so we did. Several times. In rhythm to the chanting. On the airbed. Against the door. In the other room they must have thought we were encouraging them as they then became louder. We were equal terrarista now Becky and I. When I awoke from my exhausted stupor Becky was shaving her face again. I rubbed for some stubble. Nothing. Smooth.

“How will I get outta here?” I mumbled. Space is with Amanda and I don’t want her corrupting him into some kind of French poodle.

“You can go anywhere you want. They won’t stop you. They’ll probably follow you everywhere chanting.” She finishes her depilation’s.

“Lets go then. Come on with me. Talk to Chevrolet. Get Helen to pick us all up. Amanda and Space too.” I hold her close.

“They have space ships too Paul. They’ll follow you everywhere now that the Paul Dvorak is a Terrarista. You’re a religious superstar.”

“We’ll get away. All of us.”

“No.” She stops me. “Not me I can’t go with you. I got the call last night while you slept. My appointment is set. I have to go now to zubum.” So we bathed in the soapy low-g pod. Clean ass-ish-ness is good alien etiquette.

“So where are you going to meet the aliens who introduce you to God?” I ask innocently.

“Clackamas.”

I think she wants me to spank her and it gets quite splashy before she tells me that it’s a place in Oregon NA on Tera.

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.

• 

  
  

Not another lawyer! Here I thought I could travel incognito. Who at the office told this bozo how to find me? Moody!? That bastard.

“No sir it wasn’t that bastard Reginald Moody, I represent your suit Mr. Dvorak.”

“What suit? I’m not suing anybody! Am I? Suit am I suing anybody right now? Maybe something I forgot?” I glanced down at my lami’d up sleeve for the menu display to ask me where to send the facts this command would produce. It was taking awhile. Must be something from long ago. Sometimes I do yell: “I’m gonna sue you!” within the earshot of hungry lawyers. I press a lami. Nothing. What? More lami’s don’t glow? The powers down! My pants won’t respond! The total system reboot lami strip is of course in my suits ass…damn.

“Um my suits down right now. Is my ass on fire? Is smoke coming through the gill vents?” He looks. “Last time this happened was ‘cause some one poured a big drink down my service duct and shorted out my power shorts. No coms! I couldn’t even call the service department. Boy did I collect on that one! Luxury suite for a month while the burns healed. And six free suits! This is one of them. They said this would never happen again to one of their shuttle suits! Executive elite launch hyper pica power supply my ass!”

“No smoke or sparks.” He reports diligently. I breath a sigh of relief. “Mister Dvorak I can explain the non responsiveness of your Mark 8 opaque Adcom director executive elite garment.” This brand specific kind of talk has me looking squinty eyed sideways at him. Balding, in an age of unlimited choice’s of hair, late middle aged paunchy triple chinned in an era of complete surgical body modifying. He’s certainly dressed as a lawyer in space. Much the same three piece shuttle suit as mine but without the inter-medium broadcast capacity, much more recording and accounting lami buildup over his no doubt puny pectorals. From his shiny silver snake skin deck boots to his platinum Rolex chrono lami to his Burberry crash hood he screams high billings. Some poor sucker is paying a bundle for this guys time. “Mr. Dvorak, Menlo, Shenkcle, and Burt, represent your Mark 8 opaque Adcom director executive elite garment, heretofore to be referred to in all documents as Mark 8 or the party of the first part.“ He hands me a roll of lami’s that I can’t read because my suits dead. “Your suit has not responded as it was felt better that it not be present for the interrogatories.” It dawns on me suddenly that I’m the poor sucker that’s paying for this lawyer! And the person getting sued!? He hands me the summons. His partners, Menlo and Shenkle, holo into our presence on wideband. Two near clones to the live one here. My suits out to triple team me! “Interrogatories! This is the first I’ve heard of this!” On the hotel courtesy lami phone I call Helen. I call Chevrolet. I call Amanda. Helen holo’s in first

“Hello Paul.”

“Oh Helen! Its crazy, my suit is suing me!”

“I know I just got my subpoena. Did you read the charges?”

“It’s shut itself down. It’s on strike or something! I can’t read any of it! I have to go back to the PAUL to get another suit. Unless they’re all in on this?”

“It says its class action.”

“How can my clothes sue me? Where’d it get the money to pay for a lawyer?” I gesture emphatically towards them consulting each other in electronic whispers.

“Hey, Paul. What’s up?” Chevrolet holos close to Helen who’s sitting in some vehicle at her location. Now it’s us three and a dog against my suit and Menlo, Shenkle and Burt.

“Chevrolet, Help! I’m confronted by a phalanx of lawyers sent by my wardrobe!” She’s giggling like a girl!

“I’m sorry Paul but I can’t help you in that matter. Jones and Savage have already been retained by the plaintiff.”

“What?”

“Let me answer your question about our fees.” Burt butts into my confusion. “The plaintiff Mark 8 has at its disposal considerable funds invested in many soft progressive investment structures.” That was supposed to answer how? what?

“Isn’t that my money? Don’t I own the suit the wallet lami is stuck onto?” We all pause to look at my suit hanging there on me saying nothing.

“No.” Shenkle concludes definitively. “After the unfortunate power system failure incident and subsequent systemic psychological trauma your shuttle suit was awarded an operating system failure refund under the Businessmen’s Suit Warehouse warranty program in effect at the time. It has since been reworded. Mark 8 made some prudent investments and is now quite comfortable.”

“Comfortable!” I exclaim to my torso. “I’ll show you comfortable!” I sit down. Space curls onto my lap. Uncomfortable moment while all the holo call displays have to reorient themselves to me on a couch, Burt moves with uncertainty to sit opposite. Our two camps separated now by only a low cocktail anchoring table.

“Should I remove this traitor and toss it over to your side?” I reach for Velcro.

“Please don’t.”

“How come you’re not over there Chevrolet? In the closet with my pants!?” I shake my powered down no-g hood with disbelief.

“Your suit didn’t hire us for this. We’re Sec Ops subs to guard you personally.”

“What?”

“It doesn’t conflict with our other contracts. And it’s an enhancement to your retainer anyway since… well… if you’re dead … well.. It’s all over then… eh?”

“Paul, your suit thought that the safest for it to survive was to have them help guard you. They coordinate the rotating surveillance teams. The pre-screening contacts. The sniper squads.” Helen makes me duck with that one. Burt makes hunted eyes at the ventilator grills.

“A librarian is supposed to provide all that! I’m a researcher not a politician.”

“You’re much bigger then any politician now Paul you’re a religious icon.” Chevrolet certainly knows how big I am alright.

“That of course is part of the problem that your suit has right now. With your religious status it see’s that it’s bound to end up in some cathedral or temple or something, virtually forever after you’re gone, endlessly performing miracles, inspiring ecstatic visions and so forth.” Burt makes it sound horrible. “It feels then that it deserves a bigger slice of the pie.”

“What? Money? I only buy my clothes once.”

“Oh Mark 8 elite does not want money!” They all laugh knowingly trading acknowledgments.

“Exactly how much money does my pants have?” More laughter, head shaking. Shenkle speaks.

“No one knows. There is so much. It fluctuates so its measured only by the quarter for taxes. Today the net worth could be somewhere between 700 and 900 billion solsys monets.” That’s a very big between!

“Mr. Dvorak your suit is the wealthiest inorganic object in solsys according to Forbes soft money five hundred.” Millions of magazine subscribers know my own suit better then me.

To my favorite lami patch on my left sleeve, the lami with what I considered the most pleasing satisfying glow, the suit bar status display, I plead: “if money is not an object then what do you want?”

Not even a beep. “Can’t I at least have some marstini?” I sip at the dry hydration tube.

“Proceeding with the interrogatories is conditional. If we can settle this whole thing now to mutual satisfaction they won’t be necessary.”

“Please tell me how to do that so I can have a drink.”

“First of all is credit.”

“It doesn’t need credit it can pay cash!”

“Not that kind of credit. Attribution. It wants a mention as co-author of your report. For all the work it does entailed in your activities.“

“Entailed indeed! If I give creative credit to a shuttle suit I’ll be a laughingstock! Wouldn’t that seem like a commercial endorsement? Who would take seriously anything I said, people would think the good parts were all written at the dry cleaners!”

“The alternative could be damages that could be too huge to calculate.” Says the hard faced Shenkle. Is that a warning or a threat? I thought it 'didn’t want money.'

How do I appease an insane over-wired very expensive pair of coveralls. “Mention in the ‘shout outs’ section in the appendix?”

They confer quietly.

“Where’s my lawyer anyway? Shopping? Doing girly things?” Chevrolet gets on it.

“I’ll get on it.” She calls Amanda from her suit location.

“What if I just took off this suit and went right down to Harvey’s Orbital Haberdashery and bought a new shuttle suit with different programming huh? What then huh?”

“Harvey’s Orbital Haberdashery is a wholly owned subsidiary of Galaxy Wide Pants Incorporated a division of Total Body Holdings Limited a private Lunar registered sole proprietorship…”

“Of my very wealthy suit.” I finish for him it all becoming obvious to me. I can’t buy a suit anywhere ‘cause it already owns them all. I would just be reprogramming the same system into any suit I could get. It probably held off suing until it knew I couldn’t ditch it. I should have known something was up when the last song it played for me was “Gotcha Gotcha!” by the Go dips trio. Twice! Right before this knucklehead barrister cornered me here in the lobby.

“So you see Mr. Dvorak, as such a sophisticated and worldly modern suit nothing less then title page recognition would be acceptable.” Mr. lawyer Burt smiles across at me with seemingly cosmopolitan good humor. “It has after all, gone with you everywhere.” “You two have been through a lot together.” “Through thick and thin.” Shenkle and Burt are trying to soft soap me with salvos of sentimentality. “Always there when you had a need.” “Your most trusted compatriot.” “Like a second skin for you.” I have to end this before they have me proposing marriage.

“Like a very, very close friend…” I wipe an actors tear. “How about an effluvial gratuity in the first paragraph of the forward and a technical byline in the crew credits?” I was trying to be sarcastically ironic.

Helen’s holo face looks all choked up. It must be the fumes. Her laser lit eyes are red and puffy with whetted corners. She likes my suit, helped me pick it out after the fire. Space gives me that long look that I’ve interpreted to mean that he thinks I’m an idiot. Does he want to be co-author also? Chevrolet’s holo image is turned away from us and she’s waving her arms at some one off call.

It is always scary when a group of hostile lawyers turn their attention toward you.

“I think that the first item can be considered settled.” Satisfied mugs nod at me grinningly. Now I’m getting very scared. They must have thought that that one would have been more difficult. They’re relieved. “Where is my lawyer?” I squeak out in a tiny voice. They produce a projected technical display. It floats on twinkling margins above the beverage holders between us. It is the image of the left arm of an executive elite class shuttle suit its lami’s tabs glow softly in the many shades of active data management.

“ The second action in the lawsuit that is currently negotiable is a suit user interface choice issue.”

I am by now tired of exclaiming: “what?”

“If I can have your attention on the exhibit you’ll notice a service systems display lami about halfway from the wrist to the elbow.” I tap those tabs almost constantly.

“What about it? Do I push down too hard on it when I can’t get a drink?” I test this out till my arm hurts.

“Perhaps you do.” He said evenly. “Be that as it may, the issue here is the interface choice. The screen that has the interface options menu contains over three hundred selections not including unlimited potential download media.” And the page of list floats there where it would if their visual aid were my arm.

“I know this. I set all that crap up years ago on the Brit-Bot 3000. It got dyed pink I remember. On Vorax’s grease satellite.” I chuckle. And then grin when I think about Carla. Carla.

“Carla?” Shenkle murmurs. And Space gives me that look again. Both of the wymyn on my side of the table are rolling their eyes as they look away from me to the walls the ceiling. “Yes, Carla…” I dream, out loud.

“Ah oh… um… it’s all in my report. You can read it through the library. Did the Brit-Bot foul up my suit?”

“No. Um well I don’t know about that. Mark 8 elite requests that you update the interface.”

One particular tab on the sleeve of the video image brightens and dims invitingly. The enter tab. One particular line of the list glows a little brighter then the others. I look close. Voice.

“Voice.” I say.

“Yes Mr. Dvorak ‘voice‘. Mark 8 elite would like you to select Voice Interface option three and activate its lingual response mode in compliance with update 2460.99 of it’s OEM operating system.“

“Or this litigation continues.” Adds a cold eyed Shenkle, playing the bad guy in their ploy.

“I shut down the voice option on the brit-bot because it was bossy and stupid and sometimes wouldn’t shut up. Isn’t this suit the same root program? Why should I let it talk? I like the beeps and boops.”

“You could lose your shirt Paul!” “Your suit could own you!” Helen and Chevrolet are trying hard not to laugh.

“Damages could be huge.” Shenkle threatens.

“This is of course a freedom of speech issue. Contravening freedom of speech is a serious criminal violation in any jurisdiction.” “How can my suit have the right to freedom of speech?” He talks on over my question. “And at any trial the court would no doubt grant a motion to initiate option three activity so Mark 8 elite would testify as to how it had been denied this most basic freedom.“

“The reading of the warranty clause that awarded the Mark 8 the ownership of the monies has allowed it economic recognition as a sentient being though it is basically an electronic mind encased in systems organized to support intimate human activity.” Musically accented English. French. Female. My Lovely lawyer Amanda has arrived by holo call. I’m saved now by her flawless sarcastically disdainful of all not French logic.” “So Paul I must recommend that you comply with these demands for you shall surely not prevail against such suppression of a natural right of freedom.”

“What?…. Don’t you work for me?”

“You will not win my Paul if this goes to court.”

“Don’t say that in front of them!” I try to whisper.

“Option three is not the voice of a brit-bot 3000. It can be modulated. There are parameters.“ Wise barrister Burt soothes at my apprehension.

“Just turn it on and hear it out Paul.” “You can always turn it back off.” “If a corporation can be considered an entity and have freedom of speech why can’t a suit that owns corporations?” “It’s the richest suit in solsys and it deserves to be heard.” “Its freedom of speech Paul.” “You know how much you love the freedom of speech Paul.” She’s right, if it wasn’t for freedom of speech I’d be in big trouble or dead by now. Though most people I deal with invoke their supposed right of freedom to not speak to me, right before I force them with the might of a militant librarian backed by a brigade of assault troops armed with heavy weaponry.

“Okay.” I say smoothly. “I consent.” And I sign the consent decree lami Burt produces from a printer slot in his Italian cut suit. As soon as I finish my typical casual flourish of the ‘k’ I hear:

“Thank you Paul…” It is a voice that stuns me to my researchers core of memory.

“Carla…..?” My suits lami’s are alight. The cooling fans whir with life.

“Yes Paul?”

My suit in the mode of vocal option three has the beautiful voice of Carla Manheim who once I loved so fully beneath the pressure hulls of the Vorax space complex, where my favorite muted suit was turned an embarrassingly unfashionable pink.

Lawyer Burt is gone before I notice. The holo callers all “hang up” and I’m left alone on the couch in the lobby of the Balance Hilton with Space my doggy and my very confused very ultra wealthy space suit.

My suit “Carla” makes me a tasty dry chilled Marstini while I contemplate the irony of how Carla Manheim who ultimately betrayed me now surrounds me. Completely. Total Body Holdings Limited.

“Why Carla? Why?” I ask no one.

“Because I love you Paul. Because I love you…” my suit tells me.

Sonny and Cher sing 'I got you babe..'

Carla’s favorite song.

I gotta find a new tailor.

 “I'll have a Marstini please.”

“I'm sorry Sir that drink is banned here.”

“What?! Why?” No Launch Tanks! And no suit means no suit bar tube.

“Dangerous beverage. People have frozen their faces! Social drinking should not result in horrific disfigurement.” I suppose tattoos are okay down here. Danger of a frozen face doesn't seem so awful in space I guess. “Would you like a Martini instead?”

“What kind of drink is that? Martini? Never had one? It won't freeze my face?”

“You'll have to drink a lot of them for that to happen. Much warmer ice. Shaken or stirred?” She asks me how I would make a drink I've never heard of!

“Lets try it both ways.” If it takes 'a lot of them' to get to a Marstini level of beverage dangerousness I gotta get started.

The previous post is a preview excerpt from  THE ANSWER sequel to THE LESSON

more to follow soon