Unstable Prototypes Read online

  "If they do, they will find my room refreshingly free of drug paraphernalia. Landing pad six, please," Garotte said.

  Lex maneuvered the ship to a bay with a faded six painted on the door. After a moment, the door shuddered open, one half of it visibly grinding as it retracted in a way that did not bolster the pilot's confidence. He took the ship in and landed it on a pad that looked to be in worse repair than the doors. Most landing pads had a degree of heat damage from unskilled pilots using a bit too much thrust on departure. This one seemed to have two neat holes burned into the edge of the main platform. The door rattled shut behind him and vents began to pump in atmosphere.

  "I gotta say. Considering the fact that the only thing keeping the place from explosively decompressing is these airlocks, you'd think they'd take better care of them," Lex said, nervously watching the external pressure slowly creep up to the appropriate level.

  "It would appear that the narcotics industry reinvests an insubstantial portion of profits into infrastructure," Ma remarked.

  "Sound business planning is not a hallmark of the profession," Garotte said, "At least, not until they get picked up by one of the better crime families."

  Lex snapped Garotte a look.

  "That didn't happen here, right?" he stated urgently, "And if it did, we won't be collaborating with these people, will we?"

  "Clearly not. Why the sudden concern?"

  "My girlfriend won't put up with me working with the mob."

  "But she feels differently about war criminals?"

  "Probably. She's weird like that."

  "External pressure equalized," said a voice recording.

  "Thanks Ma," Lex said.

  "That was not me, that was your ship's control system. We share certain voice files."

  "Oh... Uh... Right," Lex remarked, popping the cockpit.

  The trio climbed out of the ship and dropped down lightly onto the control pad.

  "Please tell me they have artificial gravity," Lex said, unsteadily making his way along the poorly lit catwalk to the door.

  "I'm afraid not, my boy. What's the problem?"

  "I can handle zero-gravity, and I can handle full gravity, but this low-g stuff screws with my stomach."

  "Well, you'll get used to it before too long. They say it is good for your joints."

  Garotte swiped his thumb on a keypad at the door, and it labored open with a whine of machinery. The hallway inside was every bit as cramped as the shafts in the space station had been, but in a different way. It was interesting that the building was dubbed a dormitory, because it reminded Lex of his own residence hall back in college. That is, if it had been constructed in half an hour by the army corps of engineers. Most of the structure was visible, modular aluminum beams fitted together with thin sheets strung between them. Half of the support struts were bent or missing, leaving the walls to bow outward worryingly. Seams were all sealed with strips of an adhesive that Lex dearly hoped wasn't the run of the mill duct tape that it appeared to be. There was no official paint job, but the residents had helpfully supplied their own in the form of the complex and stylized wall murals of the modern age, graffiti. The designs probably served a useful purpose, labeling territories or proclaiming who 'hearts' who 'foreva', but for Lex it seemed that they were either illegible, in a foreign language, or both. Here and there a strip of lights provided the sickly blue-white illumination indicative of cheap LEDs. What few locals lingered in the hallways didn't seem like the friendly type. There was a healthy mix of races, but they all dressed like grease-stained mechanics, dark blue coveralls a favorite, and they all watched the newcomers as they made their way past door after door. Another thing that they all had in common was the baggy way that the coveralls hung off of them. It wasn't that the clothes were oversized, it was that the limbs underneath were undersized, shriveled and spidery.

  "I can't help but notice you're drawing less attention with your prison duds than I am with my jeans and t-shirt," Lex whispered to Garotte.

  "Yes, state-issued attire isn't a rare sight in this establishment," Garotte agreed.

  A scrabbling sound drew Lex's attention in time to see Ma go sprawling onto her belly. She'd been less than graceful since getting out of the ship.

  "Something wrong, Ma?"

  "I hadn't anticipated a low-gravity destination. The funk's muscle memory and balance are improperly adapted to it, and I did not include an adaptive locomotion module in my command subset," she said in his earpiece, getting unsteadily to her feet.

  "If I can get the hang of it, you can."

  Another few steps very nearly sent her tumbling forward.

  "Current evidence would appear to counter-indicate that supposition."

  "Let me give you a hand," he said, plucking her up and catching up with Garotte.

  Another swipe of the orange-clad gentleman's thumb unlocked a door leading to a room that continued the hastily deployed motif. It was about the size of a prison cell, and crammed with enough equipment to make it difficult to move around. There was a folding chair, the flimsy kind kept on hand by auditoriums for the occasional assembly or ceremony. A bunk bed was bolted to the wall on the left, and a small flatscreen was attached to the one opposite. Most of the rest of the floor and wall space was occupied by stacks of crates, cases, and boxes. A small and antiquated computer system was clustered on the floor under the screen. Unlike most systems these days, even large ones, this computer wasn't in the typical "large interactive display" form factor. It was a small box, about the size of a lunchbox, hooked up with a precarious network of wires to the display and data network. Another wire led off to what looked like a datapad, but likely was little more than an input tablet.

  "I apologize if the air is a bit stale. I haven't been here in five years," he said, waving off the musty odor found within.

  "Five years?" Lex said, shutting the door and lowering his voice, "Judging from the general criminal element, I'm surprised your stuff is still here."

  "The lock on the door is a bit above the skills of this particular set, and natural selection has weeded out any would-be burglars who think that cutting holes in the walls of a pressurized living area is a good idea," Garotte explained.

  "Even so, I was beginning to think some of those guys were going to try to rough us up."

  "These fellows have been living in ten percent gravity for years. Ma could probably toss them around at this point. Attacking either one of us would be akin to attacking a grizzly bear, and projectile weapons are wisely forgone due to the aforementioned flimsy sheet of aluminum between them and explosive decompression."

  "Yeah, they looked pretty scrawny. Why aren't they taking anti-atrophy meds?"

  "Depending on the length of the labor contracts and the type of work, it is usually cheaper to let them wither down while they're here, then pay for the rehabilitation when their tour is up."

  "That is seriously screwed up."

  "And yet the bean counter who proposed the policy probably got a bonus. Such is the wonderful world of corporate finance. Human decency has no column on the spreadsheet. Try to make yourself comfortable while I get the systems running."

  "Actually, I don't suppose there is a bathroom around here, or better yet, a shower."

  "Down the hall. Unless you brought something to wear on your feet, though, I suggest you avoid the shower. That is, of course, unless you were interested in contracting some exciting new fungal infections."

  Lex dug out a change of clothes and waved a pair of flip-flops.

  "I went to college. I know all about community showers," he said.

  "Mmm. Watch yourself regardless. This place has more in common with a prison than the ambiance. The mere fact that you could snap him in half like a twig might not be enough to discourage some of the more amorous residents."

  "Uh..." Lex hesitated.

  "Would you like me to accompany you? If I understand the concerns correctly, an appropriate idiom would be that you need someone to watch your a-" M
a began to offer.

  "Yes," he replied quickly.

  "One moment," she remarked.

  The light on her neck flickered madly for a moment, prompting the screen of the slidepad on her harness to flip to a directory that quickly filled with files.

  "The information I have that is relevant to the identification of Karter's captors is stored in the indicated directory. Please take the slidepad and begin your analysis when your system boot and configuration is complete," Ma stated, leaning down and offering up the device.

  Garotte took the device without a word. He then poked through one of the crates until he unearthed a few wrinkled but clean towels and handed one to Lex. The pilot made the long walk down the hall, past various shady and suspicious characters, with a house pet under one arm and a bundle of clothes under the other. He opened the door to the bathroom, trying to conjure the worst possible hygienic disaster area he could conceive so that the actual bathroom could only be an improvement. His imagination, it turns out, fell pretty far short of what the enterprising residents of Clearlow Agricultural were capable of producing. The light clicked on, prompting various creatures to scatter toward the dark corners of the room. Roaches are bad enough, but this planet was completely devoid of life prior to colonization. That meant that these pests had essentially been imported.

  "Ma. You know how I said this plan was a good one?"

  "Yes, Lex," she replied in his ear.

  "I've changed my mind."

  "In light of recent events, your attitude shift is not an unexpected one."

  After briefly considering going a fourth or fifth consecutive day in the same pair of underwear, he decided that the shower was the lesser of two evils. He hesitantly pulled open the door to a shower stall, then released a shaky sigh. It was almost immaculate, a self-cleaning model that mercifully still worked. All that remained now was determining how this particular piece of hygiene apparatus worked. It was a nontrivial puzzle, thanks to the quirks that lower than average gravity tended to lend to things we take for granted. As a rule of thumb, the less gravity there was, the more complicated things became. In zero-g, fluid needs to be moved around entirely with pumps and fans. Here on deGrasse, there was some gravity to work with, but not enough to make things easy or pleasant.

  For one thing, water couldn't just fall out of the shower head, because by the time it reached the body it would barely have accelerated at all. While minimally sufficient for cleanliness purposes, it turned out to be a very unsatisfying experience for the user. Thus, it needed to be propelled with a decent amount of pressure, except it couldn't do that either. The reduced weight of the average user would make it very easy for even a moderate volume of water to blast them around the stall as though it was a fire hose. Not only that, but without a good strong tug from gravity, water going down the drain tended to be downright sluggish. The best compromise that the engineers were able to come up with was a stall with a hand held shower head and numerous hand grips to handle any pressure related mishaps, as well as a floor grating with a "drainage assistance motor" that sounded alarmingly similar to a garbage disposal. Lex fiddled with the various settings until it became clear that the range of temperatures ran from "frigid" to "slightly less frigid" and the toiletry dispenser contained some sort of all-purpose body wash that looked and smelled like something used to disinfect crime scenes. He then began to strip down for the fastest shower he could possibly manage. After pulling his shirt off, he realized Ma was staring at him.

  "Uh... could you turn around?" he said.

  "For what reason?" she asked.

  "Remember back when we first met? When you were watching me and I couldn't pee? Same reason."

  "You are planning to urinate in the shower?"

  "No. It's... It's just a privacy thing, okay?"

  "The observation of your physiology and its functionality is a far greater concern for you than it is for Karter," she observed, turning around.

  "Okay, I'm taking the thing out of my ear, so if there's something I should know about, just bark."

  The creature nodded once. Six freezing minutes later, he'd had all he could stand of the shower. He finished rinsing off and snagged his fresh clothes to get dressed in the stall when he heard the short, sharp yip of his overqualified watchdog. He managed to get his pants on and opened the stall. Two of the shady looking individuals from the hallway, a man and a woman, had decided to pay him a visit. Now that he got a closer look, the effects of a low gravity lifestyle became astoundingly clear. It was somewhere between grotesque and cartoonish, normal-sized hands and heads connected to frail looking wrists and pencil necks. The man, a vaguely Asian looking fellow a few years younger than Lex, even had the sleeves of his blue coveralls rolled up. This presented a fine view of tattoos received pre-shrivel which were now squeezed and distorted. His female cohort, someone with the build and features of an Eastern European ballerina, was even younger, perhaps not even twenty. Despite this, each had a posture of intimidation, as though there was no question that they were the ones to be feared. Each of them looked to have an obvious bulge in a side pocket. Lex remembered what Garotte had said about projectile weapons being a bad choice in a pressure controlled environment, but this pair didn't look like they were known for their good decisions. Best to play it cool.

  "You're new here," remarked the woman, chin turned up and lips turned down at the corners.

  "Uh, yeah. Just passing through," Lex said, eying the man as he circled around him.

  "Look at me when I'm talking to you!" the woman snapped, slapping the back of one hand against her upturned palm to draw his attention, "We don't like newcomers."

  "Well, like I said, I'm just passing through. Was the shower off limits?" he asked.

  Ma barked. Lex turned to see the male half of the welcoming committee with his hand in the pocket of the dirty pair of jeans, where Lex had evidently forgotten that he'd still had a handful of poker chips.

  "Hey, hands off!" Lex said, shoving the pickpocket.

  The intention had been a light shove, and it would have been, if this had been a planet a bit closer Earth's size. On the not-quite-planet deGrasse, in a confrontation between a hale and hearty Lex and a low gravity stick figure, it was enough to knock himself off balance and send the thief flying backwards, where he smashed into the far wall, busting open an eyebrow and crumbling to the ground.

  "Oh-my-God-I-am-so-sorry!" Lex gasped as one continuous word.

  Ma started yapping madly when Lex tried to help the injured party. At the sound of the barking, he whipped around again to see the woman at the door holding a buzzing, hand held stun gun. Despite some smaller, higher tech, safer models, the good old-fashion version still had a strong following. The one in her hand looked like an oversized electric shaver with an evil blue spark jumping across a gap in the front.

  "What did you do to Chong! You heavy-worlders, you always think you can push us around! You come to our territory and you attack us! You disrespect us!" she cried, stomping her bird legs forward and jabbing with the stun gun.

  'Whoa, hey," he said, backing out of range with his hands held forward in the universal gesture for 'take it easy,' "First of all, that was an accident. And second, that guy was trying to rob me!"

  "Yeah, well that's nothing compared to what I'm gonna do to you now. Let's teach this heavy some manners, Darla," slurred Chong, who now was holding a switchblade.

  "Come on, do you two really want to do this? You saw what I did to stabby here by mistake. Just think about what I could do on purpose. Look at those arms. Could you even stab through meringue?"

  In retrospect, attempting to reason with them by appealing to his physical dominance may not have been the proper application of psychology with this particular pair. Both aggressors made their move. Lex darted back toward the showers. At least, he tried to. One of the effects of low gravity was that the friction between his feet and the ground wasn't quite up to the task of facilitating his usual level of acceleration. For a few s
teps his feet slipped on the ground like a race car peeling out. When they finally managed to get him moving, he tipped over backwards, his arms flailing wildly. Chong, more accustomed to the quirks of the planet, smoothly sidestepped Lex as he fell to the ground, which was taking much longer than it should have. By the time he hit, Chong was standing over him, ready to drive the knife home. Not a moment too soon, Lex managed to catch him by the wrist.

  "Okay, now you tried to kill me," Lex growled, grabbing Chong by the coveralls, "You earned this."

  Using his average weight and build, which was comparatively superhuman to the locals, Lex rolled to the side, heaving Chong as hard as he could. The bony thug was launched halfway up the wall, where he collided and ricocheted nearly to the ceiling. His knife flew out of his hand and rattled dangerously around the room, prompting Lex to shield his face.

  Darla sprung into the air, stun gun raised, and shrieked, "You son of a b-"

  Before she could finish her sentiment, a furry black and white cannonball rocketed into her midsection. The collision sent the pair of them tumbling out the door, where woman and funk tangled in a mass of scratching, screeching, and growling. Lex scrambled to his feet and rushed out after them, but there were a dozen more thugs waiting for him, most armed with stun guns of their own. If even one of them managed to make contact, there was no way Lex would be able to recover before somebody managed to knife him. He didn't have a weapon. He didn't even have a shirt on. The first attacker charged, and Lex met him with a panicked kick to the ribs, sending him tumbling end over end down the hall. A ten-to-one strength advantage? That he had.

  The rumble started in earnest. Unlike crowd battles so popular in the movies, the gang didn't have the decency to attack one at a time. Lex grabbed the nearest one by the arm and heaved him around in a circle, disarming a few of his partners and clearing out some room. Three men who had lost their weapons dove onto him, but he was able to hoist them all easily and hurl them aside. Unfortunately, most of the people he tossed got back on their feet and back into the fray with little damage, except for those unfortunate enough to hit support beams. Things rolled hectically forward, with Lex trying desperately to avoid electrocution. A larger part of his mind than he would have liked to admit was reveling in super-heroic glee in the pitched battle, so much so that he had to consciously avoid flinging people at the flimsy outer wall. After a minute or two, most of the gang members decided that discretion was the better part of valor, but some were stubbornly refusing to back down. A knife or two had managed to graze Lex, and a stun gun had gotten close enough to stand his hair on end, but he was still on his feet when he heard the sound; a crackling discharge, followed by a yelp of pain.