Outer space pleased Godwin, and it was only moreso here in the dark nowhere of the Infiniverse. Black nothing. Pin-prick stars. A tortuous ghosting of tubes like distant nebula. So well-ordered. So cold. So clean. He stood by the viewscreen marveling at it, practically lost in its nocturnal folds.
So lost was he that he didn’t even notice the hand tapping him on the shoulder.
“Sir,” came a voice.
Godwin turned, one corner of his mouth tilted downward in a perfect 45 degree angle.
It was the pilot of this spaceboat. A Googol Man. Blinking like an idiot. They were all idiots. He supposed that was not inappropriate; cannon fodder was best-served when it was blissfully unaware of its status as food for a howitzer. Still. He’d have much preferred men from his own Shields Squadron piloting.
“Yes.”
“We had a text message.”
“Go on.”
“From the Guiding Hands. From Brin.”
Godwin felt his shoulders tighten as words played out in his mind: “Chillax, Ernie. We got this all wrapped up like a sweet little burrito. You want a wheatgrass and Acai berry enema? I can get you one.”
“And?”
The man smiled. “They’re coming! They’ve found a way in. Finally. Finally, we can all chillax a little.”
“If you say the word chillax again, I will wear your esophagus as a leg warmer.”
Blink, blink. “Oh. Sorry? They want us to reroute our course to the coordinates they provided. That’s where they’re going to upload—er, where Operation: Manifest Destiny happens.”
“We’ll do no such thing,” Godwin said. “Hold steady on our current trajectory. We’re successfully tracking the signal from the Stuffopedia search engine—“ The severed head, he thought. “And I do not intend to lose our quarry simply to witness pomp and circumstance, much as I enjoy both of those things in tandem.”
The pilot looked left and looked right, like he was being punked.
“Obey, little Googol Man,” Ernst said, his words so cold they might form an icicle and stab through the man’s temple. “What do you think they’re going to do to you? Worst that will happen is that they’ll force you to eat vegan for a week. And while I’ll admit that’s bad, I assure you – it’s far better than being forced to eat your own hands and feet for a week, which is what I’ll do to you.”
The pilot gave a clumsy mockery of the Shields Squadron salute, and hurried off.
“Hrmph,” Godwin said, and turned back to the viewscreen to once more find his center.
He watched for a few minutes.
Then–
A giant dolphin with a profound erection—a human erection, by the looks of it—floated by, smiling. It drifted through the bleak blackness. Its tail flipped in a jaunty fashion.
That was abnormal.
Space suddenly became less pleasing.
•••
“It’s like liberals and conservatives,” the Avatar said after many minutes of silence. The ringing in his ears had finally softened to a dull eeeeeeeeee tone.
Grebok cast only an eye toward his friend, since the shock collar wouldn’t allow him to do otherwise.
“Getting political? Consider me intrigued,” he said. “Go on.”
“You have your liberals. Right? On Moritania, they were the the Sandopolans of the Desert of Sand. Sand worshippers, though the gods only know why. No blander substance than sand. It’s like… salt, but with fewer meaningful qualities. They were humanists, free thinkers, vegetarians. Vast libraries built out of the cavern walls. They endeavored to know everything. Very intelligent people. They sought to understand every outcome before proceeding—something about a billion grains of sand, etcetera. One time, their tent villages were attacked by a hungry flock of Fenmoor Geese—vicious, toothy birds with wings that could cleave a man’s skull with a motion that looked not unlike a karate chop. The geese started eating all the food and babies. So, the council had a meeting to go over all the options. To understand the threat, they said. Of course, it took them seven years. By then, the geese had eaten everybody and taken over that half of the world. Only the Sandopolan Council itself was left, holed up in their big tan temple.”
“Their dogged pursuit of intelligent choices doomed them.”
“Yes, precisely.”
“So, who then, were the conservatives?”
“Oh. The Fenmoor Geese.”
“The geese were the conservatives?”
The Avatar nodded. “Strict moralists, the Fenmoor Geese. And, as mentioned, karate experts. When the Fenmoor Geese saw something that could possibly one day become a threat, they just flew over, beat it half-to-death, and ate it. Only after eating its babies, of course.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
“Well, strictly speaking, it’s not. But, you have to admire the purity in that. They see. They act. Consequence be damned! Is that food? Eat it. Is that a soft spot of grass? Sleep on it. Is that a baby? Karate chop it. I’m not advocating the exact approach, but frankly, the Fenmoor Geese simply weren’t all that intelligent. It gave them a competitive edge.”
Grebok hmm’ed. “I see your point. I continue to see it.” He looked over. “I also see that you have a corn snake around your neck.”
“Hm?” the Avatar asked only moments before noticing that a red-and-yellow corn snake was coiled around the Keykeeper’s neck, as well, its little mouth biting its own little tail. “Oh. You too.”
It seems the corn snakes had replaced their shock collars.
Grebok looked up.
“My hands are bound with…” He had a guess, so he lowered his hands, and brought the sticky red substance to his mouth. He chewed it for a while. “Yes. Yes. A Fruit Roll-Up. Mm. Strawberry.”
The Avatar was already eating his. “Mine’s apricot.”
“Well, that’s different,” Grebok said. “I do believe we’re free, old friend.”
“We are. Though, I’m not entirely certain how.”
•••
Denthead clung to the bottom of the spaceboat.
At first, it wasn’t easy to find this goddamn ship.
The Recyclo-Boy had served its—er, his?—purpose, and tore himself to pieces only to rebuild himself into a giant wireless router box. He still had one mitten flapping free, and he gave some rough semblance of a thumbs-up before Denthead thanked the dumb-bot for his sacrifice and started reprogramming his consciousness to connect to the wireless frequency.
Once connected, he uploaded himself—his entire self, every rivet, every process, every chip—wholesale into the yawning wide open nowhere of Infiniverse space.
And then he floated there for a while.
He twiddled his thumb-pistons. He pondered his future. He floated some more.
It occurred to him that the chances of a ship passing by were as statistically as likely as a giant dolphin with a human boner floating by at just that moment. He thought very hard about this, because he had little else to think about, and it amused him in the great wide open nowhere, a cartoon playing out in his mindscreen.
Thirty seconds later, a giant dolphin with a human boner floated by, propelling itself with swishes and rudder-flips of its tail.
It was at this point that Denthead realized something he had forgotten. He was a hacker. A mighty hacker. What did he hack? The Infi-Net. Where was he, now? The Infi-Net—well, really, the Infiniverse, the Giant Baby Huey of the Infi-Net, but the same idea applied. This wasn’t real. This was all loaded onto a chip somewhere. All it would take was—
He imagined a keyboard in front of him. He probably didn’t need it, but it helped him think.
Quick piston-taps, clickity-pickity. The dolphin floated back over at his command.
It smiled at him.
Denthead climbed aboard, grabbing its dorsal fin like a bareback rider might grab a horse’s mane. He tapped in a few lines of code into his ghostly keyboard, and –
Voom.
The dolphin was off like a shot, its profound erection leading the way like a ship’s mast.
The instructions Denthead had typed?
Locate Grebok, Son of Drogmar, Keeper of the Seven Somethings of Something, and Lord Chuckles.
•••
“It was bound to happen,” Grebok said, licking the last taste of Fruit Roll-Up off his fingers.
“What’s that?” Chuckles asked.
“The whole thing. With the corn snake. And the Fruit Roll-Up. None of this is real. This is just a fake universe. A computer program gone out of control. Every computer program has bugs. These are probably just error codes. Bugs. Viruses.”
“That’s a captivating thought. Though, I’ll add: the Storyverse isn’t real, either. Not exactly. It’s just a universe of stories. Stories are ephemeral. As insubstantial as a summer breeze.”
“Then perhaps we’re not real.”
“Perhaps we’re not.”
“Is it possible we’ll find freedom in that? Will that be what allows us to once more gaily throw punches and fire off laser rounds with unholy abandon?”
Chuckles pondered. “I don’t know. So far, I’m not feeling it. Mostly, I just feel existential dread.”
“Same.”
“Shame.”
Just then—the sound of tearing metal from somewhere outside their cell. The soft lighting of the room suddenly went dark before being replaced by bright, glaring red alarm lights.
Gunfire. Screams. A… dolphin’s cackle?
“I heard a dolphin,” Lord Chuckles said.
Grebok shrugged. “At least it’s not Fenmoor Geese. Shall we go see what’s going on?”
“Gods, no. Much safer here.”
They sat down and waited, hoping whatever crisis was happening would kindly pass them by.
It wouldn’t, of course. It never did.
