In Favour of Fools: A Science Fiction Comedy (These Foolish Things Book 1) (7 page)

Chapter 14 – A little tense at the Squirtport

I wasn’t in the best of moods. Strange hadn’t let me ride my bike to the Squirtport, so my body had already been exposed to an irrational quantum process and there was another one on the way.

It’s quite surprising how long this instantaneous interstellar travel can take. We’d already been queuing for a couple of hours and the end of the line had showed no sign of coming any closer. I’d tried all of my best conversational gambits and the well was close to dry. At first, Strange had emitted a couple of grunts every now and then; followed by maybe a nod or two. Then he started with that stare. You try and make light witty conversation under the glare of those hard blue eyes.

We spent the last hour in the line in virtual silence, which wasn’t that bad, really.

Interstellar squirtbooths are much grander affairs than their rather more mundane terrestrial cousins. There’s somewhere to sit, and a place for your luggage. There are advert screens displaying the best features of all of the 21 planets available to the discerning traveller. If they were really discerning, they’d stay at home, in my humble opinion. But no-one seemed too interested in my opinion.

Strange lowered himself to the seat and crossed his legs. Within seconds, his eyes were closed and he appeared to be asleep. How he could be so relaxed when his body was about to be deceived and squirted across the galaxy, I don’t know. I myself was still feeling more than a little tense, and I’d doubled up on relaxers before I’d left the office.

The booth started to hum and I assumed this was normal, as it built up to whatever power levels were required to propel two bodies and their luggage across the breadth of space. I tried to distract myself by reading up on our destination.

OK was a planet with a large temperate zone that now provided 90 percent of the beef required by Earth’s multiple chains of fast food ‘restaurants.’ As I read on, I vowed never to visit such places again. It seems that the cattle walk into the Squirtport, all healthy and relaxed, and are then squirted directly to the chains’ factories. Their squirtbooths are modified and actually deliver the cattle ready minced.

The principle mode of transport on OK seemed to be equine and there were no substantial settlements. There was no AI supervision and minimal internet. Law enforcement was rudimentary at best, and it was recommended that all visitors carried side-arms.

Not my sort of place at all.

The hum seemed to level off, and the booth started to vibrate. That didn’t feel right to me, so I nudged the big guy.

Somehow, without me really understanding anything about the process, I ended up with my face against the wall, one arm pushed far too high up my back, and something alarming and hard pressed into the middle of my back.

‘You don’t want to ever do that again, believe me,’ he whispered directly into my ear.

I was a believer.

Jim Evans ended up missing nearly a full week of work after the explosion. Mid-twenty-first century recreational drugs are supposed to be non-addictive and harmless; but not the way he took them. When he saw the news on his wrist-top, he reached straight for Maggie’s Bliss, a powerful stimulant designed to convince its user that, no matter how bad things seemed for everyone else, you were really quite lucky to be alive.

He backed it up later with a double dose of Tony’s Smile, and that really was too much. As ever, it had seemed a good idea at the time, until the good feelings wore off, and he was left with the usual feelings of regret and embarrassment. To counteract the effects, he went with a single shot of Bush Babe, which left him without the ability to string consecutive thoughts together for the rest of the week.

As the following weekend arrived, he realised that he had to get a grip on himself. If he didn’t do something soon, he was going to lose his job and any chance of getting back at Masters. So he put on his running shoes and went for a long run. He’d always been a runner. His dad used to take him out to New Mills and they’d run through the Derbyshire hills.

After all these years, he cherished those memories above all else. When his dad had been killed, he ran from the house without a word and was gone for the whole day, though, in truth, he was lost for much longer.

When he saw Masters jailed, he had tried to make himself see it as closure; so that he would be able to move on with his life. But the look on Masters’ face as the sentence was passed down; the slight snarl and the barely visible nod, told him the truth. Masters wasn’t concerned about his sentence; it wasn’t going to be proper punishment. He’d sail through his time and emerge even more arrogant that he had been.

If Masters was to receive his just reward for his crime, Jim was convinced that he couldn’t rely on the state. He would have to do the job himself. So he trained himself in the use of weapons and explosives; in martial arts and computers. He tracked all of the gang members and put auto tracers on their social media uploads. He did the same with their wives and the police and court officers who had been involved in what he saw as a lenient sentence. He developed a detailed picture of the world Masters would come back to.

When Masters was released, he was ready. And, despite the two failures, he wasn’t going to stop. He would stop when the job was done; when Masters was dead.

After the run, and a long hot shower, he sat down to a snack of his mother’s cherry scones. Although he shared the same building with his mother, he maintained that his rooms formed a separate apartment, so, technically, he wasn’t living with his mother.

As he munched, he scanned the updates on his holo-screen. Why criminals would allow their ‘phones to upload their current locations to public social media sites was a mystery. Perhaps they didn’t appreciate the ramifications, or simply didn’t know how to disable the feature. He could see that Deed and the others were meeting at the hospital, but he couldn’t trace Masters; he was far too smart for that.

He really wanted to know if Masters was there, so he accessed the local surveillance cameras. He set a couple of face recognition programmes running and finished off the last of the scones. He was considering popping downstairs to root out some more, when an image of Masters flashed up, showing him approaching a large white building.

Jim watched him swagger towards the entrance, and his appetite left him.

James Johnson, or JJ as he liked to be called, left the office at the end of a long fruitless day. He had spent all of the day trying to find something that would impress his boss; anything to make him stand out from the rest of the workers as the perfect candidate for promotion.

The best he had come up with was a new way to file paperclips, and no-one had seemed at all impressed. Even young Henry had failed to do more than shrug, and he was always amazed when the Sun came up in the morning.

To make things even worse, just before the end of the day, Haddon had brought out his new spreadsheet tool that would save everyone time and the company money. With his extra-smart clothes and cultured accent, he was going to get the promotion; there was no doubt about it.

So JJ decided that he deserved a quick pint or two; the first just to relax him before he squirted home, and the second, a slower pint, to delay his return home to the inevitable postmortem on his many, many deficiencies.

His work local was just around the corner, so he strolled down the street, not paying much attention to the road.

When a white panel van pulled up beside him, it took him a couple of seconds to notice the guy at the window.

‘Sorry?’ he said, when he realised that he’d missed a question.

‘How do I get to the A6 from here?’ the driver repeated himself; speaking very quietly.

JJ stepped closer to hear better.

‘The A6?’

‘Yes. It’s on this map, but I can’t see an obvious route.’

JJ bent until his head was level with the driver.

‘It’s quite simple, you just...’

The bag that was thrown over his head was something of a surprise. As were the strong arms that grabbed him and began to drag him towards the back of the van. He was a big man and he did his best to resist, but he was not at all fit and the blow to his stomach left him helpless to prevent them tumbling him into the van.

‘This is...’ He wasn’t sure what it was, he just knew that he didn’t like it.

Then he felt a sting on the side of his neck and his weak protests died away.

The van drove him from the town centre, along the A6 to Levenshulme, to a large white building, and down into its underground car park.

When consciousness revisited him, he was strapped into a heavy chair in a bright spacious office. The unusual sunshine glared into his eyes and it was some time before he realised that he was not alone; that there was someone sitting behind the desk.

‘Who..? Where..? Why..?’ Obvious questions.

‘Hello, Mr. Johnson; James. We’re sorry we had to be a little rough with you, but we didn’t have time to attempt to persuade you to come of your own will.’

The speaker was a tall, lean man with dark hair and immaculate nails; he studied them as he talked.

‘What do you want with me? I don’t have any money.’ JJ went for a forceful bluster.

‘We don’t want your money. In fact, if you are co-operative, there will be a good deal of money coming your way.’

The man stood up, and walked around the desk until he was very close to JJ. He could smell his moisturiser and see his own face in the guy’s shiny shoes.

‘If you don’t co-operate, there will be deaths. Believe me on that. Not just yours, though you will be the first. Next we will visit your delightful wife; Mary. It won’t be a pleasant visit, and when it is finished, she will also be dead. You parents are still alive, aren’t they? For now, at least.’

He walked back to the desk, and planted his skinny buttocks on its edge.

‘Now that the unpleasantness has been dealt with, I hope we can move on and not talk about it again. How does that sound?’

‘I don’t know what you want. ‘

‘It’s quite simple. I want you to go on a journey. It’s a one way trip, I’m afraid, but that doesn’t mean it has to be bad; does it?’

‘Where?’

‘We’ll come to that in a moment; it’s hardly relevant. Before you go, you’ll have to undergo some basic visage modifications; nothing too drastic. We just need you to look like someone else. You might even find that the change makes you more successful with the ladies. In any case, it’s a non-negotiable part of the deal.’

He smiled at JJ and examined his nails again.

‘How does that sound?’

‘I still don’t understand what you want.’ JJ wriggled in his chair; it was not a pleasant sight.

‘I’ll put it in simple words, if that’s what’s required. You will leave this building, when your appearance has been changed to match that of another, and squirt to a planet of our choice. You will stay on that planet for the rest of your days and, as payment, you and your quite delicious wife, and your poor parents, will be allowed to live, and there will also be a considerable financial inducement. Does that cover all of your questions? Or is there something else you feel the need to know?’

JJ closed his eyes for a moment. Was this really happening?

‘Why?’ he said, at last.

‘Why? I’m afraid that’s privileged information. It’s on a need to know basis, as they say; and you don’t need to know.’

He smiled then, and JJ felt a cold chill run down his back. 

Twenty-one planets had been opened up by the strange, hardly understood miracle that was Fool’s Squirt technology. Planets that otherwise might have taken mankind thousands of years to reach; if the journeys were even possible at the snail-pace required by speed of light restrictions.

Far more than these twenty-one had been visited, of course. Over the fifteen years since the process was perfected, more than a thousand planets had been investigated. Most of those were unsuitable for a host of reasons, even though they were all situated in the supposed Goldilocks zone; not too hot, and not too cold; just right. On many, the atmosphere was not just right, or there was insufficient surface water; or too much water. There was no need to consider terraforming these planets, as there was always somewhere else with a better chance of providing the good life.

Two days after the departure of Mr. Masters, that day’s probe set off for a planet orbiting a star some fifty or so light years from Earth. The Intergalactic Search and Settlement Bureau had a fine-tuned system that resulted in daily probes being sent to promising planets to seek out future potential colonies.

Each day a semi-sentient probe was squirted to the target planet to investigate its viability as a host for mankind’s expanding billions. If things looked good, then a human team would be sent to set up a base and provide a comprehensive report. A positive report would lead to a larger scale landing party, which would live and work on the planet for a full year.

The ensuing report would be studied and, if no drawbacks were found, the place would be opened up for settlement; both voluntary and imposed.

The probes were not armed in any way.

In the words of Magnus Sheckle, the founder of the ISSB: ‘We don’t want our first contact with another intelligent race to be a shooting war.’

The only defense the probes had was their built-in squirt capability. If they found themselves in any dangerous situation, they could squirt back to the safety of Earth in a matter of seconds.

On the day in question, the probe left as usual, with no fanfare or ceremony. In fact, no living person was there to see it go; although it was recorded by the ever present CCTV.

The probe was never heard from again.