Jimmy, Super Kid (part twenty-seven)

The ride is a silent one. Everyone is deep in thought. I’m sure it’s not the first thing on Ricky’s mind but I can’t stop trying to figure out why take the car? I can see how it could have been used to get Ricky’s dad into the truck without a fuss, they could have offered him a bunch of money for it and then said they needed him to help them unload, or gave him a ride to pick up his wife’s car. There are all kinds of things wrong with that idea but even so, they would have left the car in the abandoned truck. Why would anyone want that old rusted out thing? There has to be a connection between the car and Ricky’s dad but I need a lot more information. I’m eager to get this police business done and start getting some answers. Number one on my list of questions is: Just what does Ricky’s dad do for a living? Is he working on some top-secret government project? But how could a government project involve a nineteen-seventy Honda N360? So did he invent something in his garage and it has nothing to do with his work? I’m starved for information as we park in front of the police station. The police have a room saved with a table for us to sit around, there is no two-way mirror but there are plenty of places to hide a camera. I smile at each likely place just in case someone is watching. I may watch too much TV.

“So you did not see him leave?” the police officer asks for the third time while re-reading his notes.

“No he was already gone,” I answer for the third time.

“So how do you know he just left?” again for the third time.

“We saw a car parking in his spot,” I’m losing my patience.

“So you don’t really know when he left,” the officer really wants to make this point, I’m not sure why.

“Traffic was backed up clear around the whole town! We talked to the guy who saw the truck and trailer!   You know, that empty trailer you found by the side of the road!” I’m pretty sure that if this goes on much longer it’s me they are going to lock up.

“But you don’t have a name for this person you presumably talked to?” the officer smiles like he’s really onto something.

“I didn’t presumably talk to him, I really talked to him. Ricky talked to him too. But how does this even matter?” I think the police officer is getting tired of talking to a kid.

He turns to look at Ricky’s dad and answers my question, “ we are trying to establish a time line here and it’s important that we not include speculations.” He turns back to me looking very satisfied. I let my forehead rest on the table and wish for the end of this meeting. My wish comes true two full hours later. We stumble to my father’s car all of us completely exhausted.

My Life (part 67)

No news came from the Earth.  She showed signs of life but it appeared all of her satellite communications stations had been taken out of commission.  Ships were sent.  Sally called Ned Barns and left her herd in his hands.  He would have her entire herd delivered to his ranch in one load.  He promised to keep her breeding program alive.  Ned’s herd was the largest on Jasper’s and his experience was far beyond mine and Sally’s so trusting him to take good care of the girls was not a problem.  My side of our farm was pretty much dormant going into winter so all I needed to do was set a few chickens free.  It took all of two days for us to move back into our house in the almond orchard near the university and Jasper’s old office.  By the time I had activated Jasper’s office we had news back from Earth.  The first time Oaxiom had attacked Earth the war between Oaxiom and Earth was into its fifth year.  The people of Earth were prepared and ready to flee into underground bunkers and other places of protection.  This time the attack came with almost no warning at all.  Oaxiom’s  missiles and ships had greatly improved both their speed and their ability to hide from scans.  Earth had twenty-two hours after the warning went out.  Twenty-two hours was just enough time to throw the population of Earth into complete confusion.  It was suggested that the Earth would have done better without any warning at all; as it was, thirty percent of Earth’s population died when the first wave of missiles made it through their defenses.  It sounds bad to say but those that died in that first wave caused less continuing problems to the people of Earth because most of them were completely vaporized.  The ten percent of Earth’s population that died over the next few days presented health problems that were the Earth’s first concern.  The portion of  Earth’s population that weathered the attack the best were those that had clung to living in the domes.  Complete factories that had remained in their underground facilities still functioned and began work at once to restore Earth’s damaged infrastructure.  Earth would survive.  The first ships from Jasper’s World did what they always did and unloaded payloads of food.  The ships also did something they had never done before, they loaded their empty hulls full with migrants desperate to flee the Earth.  On Jasper’s our first task was to prepare to accept thirty thousand Earthers and to prepare as rapidly as possible for millions more.

“You and Sally are the only ones who can put this together,” Sarah, my sister, said for the third time without listening to any of my excuses.

“I’m a farmer.  I’m not even an up to date farmer.  We’ve been living in the past.  As far as our holdings on Jasper’s for the last years we’ve delegated everything.”

“And you can continue doing that.  We need your faces.  The two of you are the two best known faces on Jasper’s and you have strong ties to Henry Jasper and what he stood for.  We need to move from our detachment from Earth and embrace the Earth, this time.  Henry kept us clean of Earth’s contamination.  Everyone on Jasper’s was willing to work hard to save the Earth but it was always them being helped by us.  To get through this we need to accept that people on Jasper’s are Earthers.”

“That’s not going to be easy,” Sally said.  “I don’t think of myself as an Earther.  I’ve lived here my whole life.  Our way, the Jasper’s World way, is better.  Only a million people live on Jasper’s.  Millions coming from Earth will overwhelm us and we will become just a suburb of Earth.”

“And because you feel that way and because people know you feel that way you and Trenton are the best possible choices to be our spokes people.  We need to change attitudes and change them quickly.  The thirty thousand Earthers already on their way here will set the tone for Jasper’s next fifty years and well beyond that.”

My Life (part 55)

“There’s someone you should talk to first,” I pulled out my pad and called up Jasper.  His holo image was only three inches tall due to the small holo deck on my phone.  I enlarged the image until he was just a floating, three inch tall head.

“Trenton, how can I help?”

“Sally and I are here talking to Sarah,” I move the phone’s camera so he can see them.

“ ‘Bout time.  Come on over,” Jasper said and then he broke the connection.

“He’ll shoot me,” Sarah said.

“He’s Henry Jasper, he’s not going to shoot anyone.”  There was really nothing to discuss, when he, king of your planet, says come over you come over.  It was never really like that.  Jasper wasn’t that kind of a king.  He had never been and never wanted to be king but Sarah didn’t know him near as well as I did.  She had said hi in passing on a sidewalk and I’m sure she had heard him speak in classrooms and at assemblies but, at that time, I don’t think she has ever just sat and talked to him.  Jasper and I had had long talks about just about everything since my first days on Jasper’s World.  I probably knew him better than anyone.

Jasper’s home was maybe half a mile away if you were a bird.  The university had not been laid out to get anywhere in a hurry.  We walked on red brick walkways, around buildings and then reached the housing development that circled the school.  Jaspers home was just beyond the new houses, near the McDonald’s.

“What’s he going to do to me?  Could he send me back to Earth?  You won’t let him do that will you brother?”

I had been fairly silent for most of the walk.  I could tell Sarah was nervous but when we got close enough to see Jasper’s house I was afraid she would turn around and run if I didn’t try to calm her down.  “You know, as well as anyone, that Jasper is a good guy.  I think you’ve built up a wall that just isn’t there.  Everything is going to be fine.  Just relax, hear what he has to say and then tell him what you think.  Be honest and open.  Don’t worry about hurting his feelings, you won’t.”  She calmed down a little but I added, “he likes you Sarah.”

“What do you mean he likes me?  You talk about me to him?  How could you do that brother?”

“We talk about everything Sarah.  He’s not the enemy and neither are you.”  With that said the door to Jasper’s small home opened and an old man in a long robe smiled at us and waved us into his home.  

Jasper explained a few things in just a few words as he prepared coffee and brought out some cookies.  He told Sarah about his will and my becoming owner of most of the world; something I had not shared with anyone beside Sally.  He told her of my plans to create a low tech farm of about fifty million acres.  And then he told her something I had not heard.

“So I’m going to retire Sarah.  I’ve accomplished everything I set out to do.  I never wanted a planet of my own I just wanted to help the Earth through some hard times and Earth is going to do fine with or without us.  Jasper’s World is going to need some protections, call them treaties, or agreements.  Jasper’s will most likely need some sort of defense and I’m not the person to see to that.  I don’t see how anything about this is going to be easy but Jasper’s needs to form a government and separate itself from the rule of the Earth. 

I could see the workings of Sarah’s mind through her eyes as she shifted gears from fighting for freedom from Henry Jasper to fighting the politics and overwhelming structure of Earth.  I saw surprise, and then understanding, and then fear.  She’s my sister I’ve always been able to read her like a book.  Before she spoke I could see that she had focused on the next steps she would have to take.

“I’m going to need a lot of your help Mr. Jasper.”

“Call me Henry, Sarah.

My Life (part 36)

“There is something I want to see,” I say to Sally as she folds up her holo platform and slips it into her jacket pocket.

“And I know what it is,” we leave our seats and wander around the medium sized commercial vessel.  “You’ve never been on a passenger ship right?”

“Never, I’ve only been on the one flight, the cargo ship from Earth to Jasper’s.”  She leads me into the dinning area where a few passengers are already sitting at tables sampling what the galley has to offer.  Most of the passengers on board were already on board before the ship stopped on Jasper’s World. There is a gym, an entertainment room and a room sectioned off with personal boxes.  Each section with just enough room for one person to change clothes and there is a bed for sleeping in each box.  Two deck hands come out of a room with engine room written on the door in white block letters.

“Excuse me,” Sally says to the deck hands.  The man and woman dressed in dark blue jump suits stop and wait.   “Can we look inside there?”

“It’s generally off limits to passengers,” the lady, about the same age as Sally and myself answers with a smile.

“This is Trenton Jennings and…” Sally starts.

“The Trenton Jennings,” The male deck hand reaches out his hand to shake Trenton’s.  “The one who stowed away in a fuel cell container?  You’re famous man.”  He looks at his fellow companion for approval and she nods, grinning.  “Sure you can look around.  I thought after what you did you might never want to see an engine room again.”  The lady opens the door and motions us in.

“I never really saw much of the engine room, just the inside of the container.”

“How did you take care of things man.  That was at least seven years ago right?  That run used to take six or seven days.”

“It wasn’t pleasant,” I look around the engine room and realize at once that these are not memories I want to dredge up.  I look around quickly, thank the deck hands and reach for the door.

As soon as the deck hands leave Sally says, “So…no more engine room visits right?”

“Let’s go check out that entertainment room.  This is a much better way to travel.”

Passenger flights have always been faster than cargo vessels but the vessel that takes us to Earth is a newer model and the entire flight only takes three days.  There is much more to do on board ship than there ever was to do on Jasper’s.  Sally and I keep busy and are almost disappointed when it is announced we need to strap into our gravity seats for a landing on Earth. 

My Life (part 22)

The building would cover a good square city block, at least two acres,   Inside it was warm and humid with outside light coming in from all sides and the top.  On tables, about thirty inches off the ground were thousands upon thousands of small green sprouts.  Each sprout was in it’s own brown container and each brown container was on a tray of a hundred or more containers.  Trays were side by side covering tables that covered all the floor space leaving only enough room for walkways between the tables.  Everything but the plants and their containers was coated with a heavy coat of army green paint.  My fellow students scattered throughout the building and busied themselves reading gauges, taking notes and picking at plants.  I stood with my mouth half open for a good minute until Sarah decided I might need some instruction.

“Come on,” she pulls me by the arm a little until I start to follow her, “every other day we have Agricultural class and plan our on-site day.  Most of the time, when it’s raining, we come in here.  This is more of a just do whatever you find to do day, ‘cause of the rain.”  She walks me to a pile of smelly dark brown dirt and points to stacks of the small brown potting pots.  “We can put that in them,” she said, “if you want, or look around, just do what the others have found to do.”  I grab a pot in one hand and a scooper in the other and fill a pot while she talks.  “Pack it in just a little,” she says.  I pack it and then, without even being told I place it on a tray from a stack of trays sitting on the potting table.  Sarah nods at a job well done and starts filling pots herself.

“I bet they’re having a big meeting on you right now to decide what to do with you.  You worried?”

“Already had the meeting.  My life is planned.”

“They sending you back?”

“No,” I start to tell her I’m her new brother but think better of it.  I should let her parents break the news.  “Some kind of work study program Mr. Jasper got me into.”

“Really?  Never heard of it.  I’d bet Jasper just made it up.  You stowed away on a barge?  How’d you think of that?”

“We lived near a space dock.  I watched the ships come and go all the time and I knew I wanted to go.  There aren’t many stowaways?”

“Jasper’s is always looking for workers but they aren’t kids.”

I look up at the clear plastic ceiling at the sheet of water covering us, “how long will it rain?”

“We’ll get some sunshine before the end of the day.  People will be back in the fields in the morning, they’ll have to wait a while before the equipment can go back in.”

I watch the water come off the side of our building and run away in channels it has made in the ground outside our protected area, “do you have any idea how beautiful this is?”

“I’ve lived here my whole life.  My parent’s came with Jasper on the first settler ship but I’ve seen films of Earth, I’m glad I’m here.”

We fill pots for a good hour more before a bell rings and various transportation comes to pick up students.  I get into the car with Sarah.  She doesn’t seem to think anything of it.

I do get in a bit of a rush to finish my homework in my room but it comes with cookies and milk so I feel pretty good about it.  I hear a loud, “what? You’ve got to be kidding? come from the kitchen but it was just something Sarah was required to say if she’s going to be a proper adopted sister.  My next task in achieving my goals is sitting before me.  Half the homework sitting on the small desk in my room is the same as in my classroom on Earth but half is very different.  I hurry through the old stuff and then slow down and really start studying.  Instruction in horticulture, agriculture, cultivation and a short article in “Today’s Farmer” are all on my reading list and these are not about how to grow a bean in a jar but things a real farmer needs to know.  I get lost in pages about irrigation, hurry through my dinner as much as I can without being a total jerk and then return to my room.  I’m not only behind the rest of my class on these subjects I’m behind the kindergarten classes.  

There is a tap on my bedroom door.

“Come in.”

Mrs. Armstrong peaks into the room, “You’re still reading?  Time to sleep, young man.”

In class I move to the lead in English and near the lead in math within days but when it comes to farming my question’s are considered to be worthy of laughter.  I even get sent to room two afternoons every day and a couple of times I go out into the fields with the almost babies in room one.  While my classmates are grafting branches onto root stock I’m learning how to tell a weed from a desirable plant.  Over the next months I slowly move from being the class joke to at least being trusted to do some basic stuff with irrigation and I’m a decent tractor driver.  By the end of my first school term on Jasper’s World I’m awarded the “Most Improved Dirt Farmer” award.  It’s not a traditional award, it was created just for me by my fellow students.  It’s a cube of clear plastic filled with what I’m pretty sure is manure but I accept it with pride that is in no way contrived.

I make friends.  Working together for an hour or two every day makes it easy to get to know each other.  There are sports too and I’m a natural runner.  Running outdoors in good clean air on dirt is something I could do forever so cross country is my sport.  I do okay, I’m not the star or anything like that but I keep up enough to be respectable.

I get a vid chat from at least one parent every night.  My sister even misses me enough to poke her face in once in a while.  Within six months my mother’s eyes don’t even water.  The whole group is planning a visit but space travel is expensive when you travel in the passenger section of a ship.  It could be awhile before they can come to Jasper’s.

Instead of summer vacation on Jasper’s they have planting season.  There is a constant shortage of people and equipment.  Everything with an engine is  involved and everything with two legs is working from sun up to sun down.  Before the war farming techniques were becoming fairly advanced, at least on Earth.  When Jasper’s World first started farming it was almost like caveman days, they were using hand tools and homemade tractors made out of parts of old cars and trucks.  It’s not all that much better now-a-days.  With some of the war effort tapering off Jasper’s has a deal with the Army and army green equipment is getting more common but real, made for farming, equipment is still rare. 

One of the things Mr. Armstrong is good at is putting together different parts from several vehicles and creating useful farm equipment.  On rainy days or when the crops can do without him he creates his visions in a small green plastic barn near our home.

“Grind that down good and clean, that arm needs to get under the ground and push the potatoes up the the surface but it can’t be sharp so it’s going to have to handle a lot of force.”

I run the grinder until I can almost see myself in the metal and then Chester hands me the end of the wire feed welder, “you sure?” I ask, he’s only trusted my welds to things of lesser importance.

“You’re getting good at this Trenton, just take your time, I’ll check the weld.”

I join up the metal with clamps and find myself a comfortable position; by the time I’m through even I would compliment myself on my welding, if that sort of thing were considered polite.

One of the most important tasks while plants do their growing is to check on them.  There is some skill involved.  Although there are very few insect type pests on Jasper’s World there are a few and when they make a stand it is important to deal with it as soon as possible, so I needed to learn how to identify these small creatures.  A basic understanding of irrigation in order to see malfunctions, even though most of these malfunctions come with large flooded areas, is needed.  The primary skill is that a person be able to walk long distances without getting too badly lost; turns out I’m pretty good at walking and not very concerned with getting lost.

The cotton plants are just getting started good and only come up to my knees.  I walk in a foot wide path that receives no irrigation if everything is working right.  If I find myself walking in mud it’s a sure sign something is wrong but I also look for plants that are not getting enough water.  I carry a round point shovel balanced on my shoulder and stabilized with one hand on it’s wooden handle.  My baggy knee length tan shorts contain a pair of pliers in my left back pocket, my right front pocket is filled with peanut sized replacement water emitters, my left front pocket holds a bottle of water, my right back pocket contains a smashed packet of trail mix and a small steel safety pin is pinned to the edge of my right front pocket opening.  These are the tools of my trade.  For comfort I have a broad brimmed woven grass hat, a very white tee-shirt (to reflect the sun) and light weight running shoes.

The cotton seed was drilled into place, two plants eight inches apart then a foot of space before the next set of two plants eight inches apart. I can hear the gurgling of water on each side of me as water drips from emitters located in between every two sets of cotton plants.  I scan from side to side taking in two rows of cotton plants on each side of me as I walk at a brisk pace.  On the next row over to my right I spot a set of plants that have wilted slightly.  I carefully pass through the wide spot between plants, stand my shovel in the dirt path and unclip the safety pin from my pocket.  I bend down and find the thin black plastic tube with an emitter pressed into its opening.  Very carefully so as not to damage the emitter I clear a bit of scale from the orifice of the emitter and water starts to drip out of the tiny cleaned exit hole.  I watch for a few seconds and time the drip to make sure I have not damaged the emitter.  I set the emitter back into place between the two cotton plants.  Another life saved, actually two lives saved.  Life, as we observe it, is never created, it never begins, it is just passed on.  Life that comes to an end cannot be restored, at least not by people and I have saved two.  There is no way to know how many other lives will come from the seeds of these two plants or how many people will benefit from the cotton used in materials or the seeds pressed into oil or used for feed, it’s good to be a farmer.  I continue my brisk walk constantly scanning from side to side looking for another life to save.

Sometimes I think about all the things that could have gone wrong with my plan and I’m amazed that it worked at all.  Without the people here going to bat for me I’d have been on the first barge back to Earth before the mud dried on my shoes

Randy 6 part 11

 

“So what did you decided? I’m assuming you are deciding something,” a holo image of my sister Sally sits at a kitchen table that does not belong in the front room of my rented Cayucos home.  The holo image only includes half the table so the top balances on two legs like it should not.

“Mac thinks I should take up drinking.”  

“You’d be a natural.  I can see you sleeping under a bridge drinking from something in a brown bag.  Are you coming back to work or are you permanently retired?  I need to know.”  With the improvements Mac made to this house’s holo system Sally is life sized and there is no digitalization at all.  It it wasn’t for one side of the kitchen table hanging in space I could believe she came to visit.

“I’m coming back.  This doing nothing is about to drive me crazy.”

“I’ve got a task you might find interesting.  Let me know when you are ready.”

“Couple of days.  The next people to rent this place are going to be amazed with what Mac has done to the holo system.”

“If they can afford the utility bill.  You would not believe the energy drain.  A system like that uses enough energy to run a small town.”

“Hadn’t thought of that.  I’ll check with the owners, see if it’s okay to leave it.  See you soon sister.”  The holo disappears and the living room returns to normal.  Mac appears and plops himself down on the other end of the sofa. 

“Sorry you couldn’t pull it off Randy.”

“What’s that Mac?”

“Not everyone can be a beach bum, it takes more dedication than most people realize.”

“What could you know about it Mac?”

“I read.”

“Contact the owner of this place Mac.  See what we need to do to move out.  Mention your computer upgrades and your holo array.”

Moving out turned out to be as easy as moving in.  I don’t know if the owner is going to keep the upgrades or sell them but he was fine with us leaving them.  The first morning back in Bakersfield I have Mac drive the fifteen minutes to Cayucos Coffee, it’s a long drive for an Americano but the one thing I’m going to miss in Cayucos is Trenton.

“Thought you moved.” Trenton put my coffee in front of me on my table by the window.  He pulls out the chair across from me an sits down with his own foam and sprinkles covered drink.

“Did.” The Americano is perfect.  Mac is capable of making a perfect Americano.  

“Nice to have you visit.”

“Sally is sending me on a mission.”

“Top secret?”

“Not yet, it may get that way.  You remember A. J. Spire?”

“Perhaps the richest man in the Galaxy, I’ve heard of him.”

“You remember what I told you about his part in inventing Living Matter Transfer?”

“He paid for the whole thing.  You and your friends, in effect, stole it from him when you sent out the plans to people all over the Galaxy.”

“And he’s put a lot of money and effort into finding a way to fold space.”

“He’s the one who tried to get into the computer of that prototype you tested a while back.”

“Right.  He was very big on providing a way for living matter to move out into the universe.”

“Was?” It was just a small word but Trenton didn’t miss it, one of the reasons he’s so nice to talk to.

“He’s dead.

“That’s big, he owns a bit of everything.  Owned.  When did this happen?”

“No one knows.  I may have jumped the gun a little.  He is assumed dead.  He’s missed some important meetings and no one has heard anything from him in months.”

Questions part 1

Once upon a time a story started without goal or destination.  There was no outline or even a place to begin or end.  What tense or voice?  No one knew and no one knew less than the person typing away at the keyboard.  But the words continued zipping across the screen, forming lines, becoming thoughts.  Does a page of words need a purpose?  Can a sentence that has no substance be?  If there is no question offered does a question need to be answered? My head spins but the words continue on their own, one after another they offer meaning but to what end?

I have thought to place a card next to my desk, “questions answered for free.” it would read.  For I have found I can answer any question.  Any question at all I could answer and many of my answers would be at least nearly correct.  My best answer is one that is seldom used, “I don’t know”, I love that answer, it’s so open and airy.   Just try to think of all the great debates that could be answered with that one short answer, “I don’t know”.  I would shout it to the streets but that involves the seventy-two hours of observation and those people are way too free with the drugs.  For the most part I keep it to myself.  I’m surprised at how many people think I do know.  People, in a very general sense, do not pay attention.

“Is there one true God who rules Heaven and Earth?” a shy young girl with her hair died purple, very dark purple lips and a ring of diamonds piercings through the columella of her nose stand at the edge of my desk.  When I look up my blank stare must communicate something because she points to the sign on my desk.

“No real reason to think there is not,”  I smile and return to my typing.  She continues to stand at the edge of my desk.  Out of the corner of my eye, I have great peripheral vision, I can see her belly button showing under the rim of her shirt.  It’s very distracting.  

“Yes?” I ask pushing my laptop to one side of my desk.

“The answers are free, yes?”

“There is no cost.”

“Then why is there no reason to think there is not one true God who rules Heaven and Earth?”

“There is no real reason.  People have come up with plenty of reasons, pro and con, but they are all just debate.  Take the big bang theory we hear so much about.  Everything compresses and then boom!  We still have never figured out how to get something from nothing.”

“So it’s just a choice?” I notice that she is starting to take me seriously so I think about my answer a second or two longer then I normally would.

“Choice, faith, decision, pick one.”

“I would really like for their to be a God.”

“A nice one right?”

“Well, yes, but what I decide isn’t going to change reality,”  the person standing next to my desk is a person of thought.  A very rare find.

“Personally, I believe, have faith, have made the choice, that there is a God.  My first giant leap of faith is that there is a definable knowable good.” 

“Definable by who?”

“That is my second giant leap of faith, we know right from wrong or at least we can know right from wrong if we take the time to think about it.  That takes a lot of faith for me.”

She thinks for a second and then says, “‘cause there is no example that would suggest that in the humanity we see around us?”

“Exactly.”

“So is there a third leap of faith?”

“If we have a definable right and wrong that we can know; put that in a box and call it God.”

“Huh,” she says.  “At least it’s free.”  

The young girl leaves.  Black letters forming words continue to fly across the white screen in front of me.

Picture Books

https://www.flickr.com/photos/183809022@N04/albums

Randy (4) part 11

Days drip by.  Sally responds to the packet of information I sent her, I respond to her’s.  After the first couple of exchanges I have nothing new to say.  Sally keeps me up to date on the daily working of our private eye business, her two sons and anything else that comes into her populated life.  My life is contained within a silver tube.  I watch news feeds from three different worlds all of which are at least half a day old.  Mac does his best to keep me entertained.  Mac does not feel the passage of time nor does he ever long to be somewhere he is not, partially, perhaps, because Mac is several places at once.  Mac’s program is installed in a coffee shop on a water world, he drives cars on several worlds, he still maintains a presence in a world’s satellite computer, on earth he takes care of my home and waits in my ground car for a destination.  He’s in no hurry to arrive on earth not only because he lives only in the current moment but because he is already there.

“How long Mac?”

“Seven days three hours and a few minutes Randy.”

“I didn’t get my mind set for this Mac.”

“How is that Randy?”

“I wasn’t planning on being in space this long.  Before a long trip I always consider the passage of time and resign myself to it.  I go over all the things I will miss and how many days I will sit in this nothingness.  I make a choice to loose the days necessary to make the trip.”

“And how is this trip different Randy?”

“Well the plan was to fold space and travel just a few minutes, not two weeks.”

“I’ve heard of folding space Randy.  As far back as two hundred years ago there were fiction books written about space ships that could fold space and travel vast distances in seconds.  But why would you think we could travel in that way Randy?”

“We did travel that way Mac.  It took us a total of twenty-three minutes to arrive at Sentra Two.  We were half way home in ten minutes.”

“Could you be experiencing space sickness Randy?”

“No Mac I am not space sick.  I’m sick of space but not space sick.”

“But you feel this ship should be able to fold space?

“We were testing the Quantum Point B15 System for the Quantum company.  The program was installed into this ship’s memory.”

“I have no memory of this Randy.”

“Oh come on Mac!  The program imploded, destroyed twenty percent of our hard drive.  We stopped at Spire’s planet, Solitude.”

“I remember the stop at Spire’s planet Randy.  He has one of the finest ship’s computers I have ever met.”

“You have no memory of the Quantum Point B15 program?”

Mac pauses for a second, “none.”

“Do you remember the trip to Sentra Two?”

Mac pauses a little longer this time, “I remember nothing from the time we left earth to the time we arrived on Sentra Two.”

“How about the time we spent on Sentra Two Mac?”

“You rented a car with a very nice computer and installed me into it.  We were there three days.  We found out how the thieves were redirecting shipments of Corbomite and the criminals were arrested.  I remember everything about our visit to Sentra Two Randy.”

“And how did we travel from Sentra Two to Solitude Mac?”

“I do not know Randy,” Mac looks worried, it’s not a look he usually has.

“Mac, I think your computer has been tampered with.  Look for any bits of the Quantum Point B15 program that may still exist.  Check for missing files or erasures.”

Mac goes blank and stays blank.  His holo image flickers and pixilates.  A full minute goes by.  I start to panic.  What have I done?  I should have waited until we were safely on earth before I confronted Mac with the damage to his computer.  After two full minutes Mac’s image stabilizes but his eyes remain unfocused.  Another thirty seconds pass before he speaks.

“You are correct Randy.  First there is no sign of any program called Quantum Point, absolutely no sign, not a single stray bit.  But something was there.  There is a section of my computer’s hard drive and a space in active memory that is whistle clean.  Absolutely nothing exists in those areas.  Something has been removed from my memory and it has been done with surgical precision.”

“How could that happen?  Would a program imploding do that?”

“A failed program would leave tons of garbage behind Randy.  This requires a computer expert, not just an everyday tech,  whoever did this really knew his stuff.”

“A. J. Spire.”

“Yes, Randy.  A. J. Spire is one of the few people with the necessary skills.”

Skinny Girls

“Skinny girls, that’s all we get now.  The chubby ones all go to the place up the street.”  He was talking with his back to me but something in his voice and in the way he stood told me he was about to quit the whole thing.

“Reason?”  I sat at the counter on a red, upholstered stool without a back.  I could do about a quarter turn to the right or to the left before stops built into the stool stopped me with a jerk.  I had taken to turning slowly to the  left until I felt the bump and then slowly to the right until I felt the other bump.  Once I get started on a repetition like that I can do it all day.

“Bigger muffins.”  He started wiping the stainless steel work space behind the counter, still facing away from me, “cheaper too.”

“How can they do that?  You over charging?”

He turns enough to look at me over his shoulder, it’s one of those looks worth a thousand words.  He goes back to cleaning.

“So they’re just trying to put you out of business?” I stop rotating back and forth on my stool long enough to take a sip from a paper coffee cup with his shop’s logo on it.

“Could be, or they’re just using some really cheap ingredients.  You wouldn’t believe the size of these muffins.  Twice as big as mine and for a dime less.  Some of the chubby girls even took the time to tell me how sorry they were but they’re still up the street.”

“But you’ll be okay right?  This will all blow over and things will get back to normal, right?”

He finishes polishing the stainless and turns completely around to face me, “I think some of the skinny girls are pairing up, buying one muffin and getting it cut in half.  But, yeah, I’ll be fine.  I still got you and that small cup of brewed coffee every morning.”

I don’t tell him I went by the place up the street and sampled one of their huge muffins.  The muffins are great and it’s true all the chubby girls are hanging there.