Rabbit and Robot. Andrew Smith

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СКАЧАТЬ I am a happy flying squid!”

      And Lourdes’s skirt lifted up again.

      Rowan caught me staring at her underwear.

      In the weightlessness of space, you might not be able to get Woz, but if you’re a sixteen-year-old guy, you can always get erections.

      I was embarrassed. Stupid thin paper orange spacesuits.

      So I said, “I don’t know what’s happening to me, Rowan.”

      “It’s been a long trip, Cager. I think we’ll all feel better when we get off this transpod,” Rowan said.

      And I added, “Hand job from a robot or not.”

      Rowan, as usual, was not flustered by my comment.

      And Lourdes gurgled, “Whee! Whee! Strap yourselves in for docking! This is my favorite part! I think I just bubbled out some squid ink in my undies!”

      I wondered what color “Friday” was.

      And behind us, through the sealed doorway that separated us from second class, as the cogs I’d nearly forgotten about stirred to their active modes, came the muted sounds of imitation humanity: cries of joy, and pained screams of outrage. And inconsolable sobbing, too.

      All of human history was with us, hardwired into the circuitry of machines that had never been born and were not predestined to ever die.

      The first thing that happens after the docking mechanisms link on the Tennessee is the sudden generation of gravity on the transpod. It’s a deeply sickening feeling—like suddenly being uncomfortably full after a ridiculously large meal. It hurts in the deepest pits of your stomach—like you’ve just been kicked in the balls.

      It takes a while to catch your breath. Unless you’re a cog, that is. The ones in second class were all as noisy, happy, furious, and despondent as they had ever been.

      Billy Hinman groaned and cupped his hands under his balls.

      I said, “That always happens to me, too.”

      And before the deck crew on the Tennessee opened the portal to allow the first-class passengers out, Lourdes came through the cabin with an eye scanner that would automatically identify us, assign and unlock our cabins, and credit our accounts with money—something that was limitless as far as a Hinman or Messer was concerned.

      We also had to sit through one last presentation—a show with Mooney and Rabbit and a bunch of actor cogs in orange flight suits—demonstrating the terrifying procedure for getting into one of the Tennessee’s lifeboats, which were smaller versions of transpods designed for twenty passengers, if we were ordered to do it. I shuddered to think how horrifying it would be if we ever had to evacuate the Tennessee, and what might possibly cause that to happen.

      I tried to ignore the show, but it was impossible.

      “Don’t worry, folks!” Mooney told us. “We’ve never had to use lifeboats on a Grosvenor Galactic cruise ship! Yet! Ha ha ha! Just kidding, folks!”

      Then Mooney got sucked out an open bay door on the lifeboat deck and shrieked wildly as he contorted dancelike in the weightless black of space.

      It was the stupidest and most frightening thing I ever had to sit through.

      The hatch finally came open, and I was immediately assaulted by all the strange smells of the Tennessee. It definitely did not smell anything like burning and toxic Los Angeles.

      “I hope you feel better! Have a wonderful time on the Tennessee! It made me so happy to spend this time with you! I can’t wait to see you again!” Lourdes squealed as Billy passed her. Then Lourdes threw her arms around Billy Hinman and clutched his hair passionately in her coggy fingers and began humping her hips into his.

      “Whee!” she gurgled. “Whee! Whee! Whee!”

      Things like that just seemed to happen to Billy all the time.

      Rowan pried his hands between them like he was shucking apart an enormous part-man, part-machine oyster. “Please. Lourdes. Get a grip on yourself.”

      Then Lourdes farted and started dancing again.

      We left the transpod and stepped out into the vast arrivals hall of the Tennessee.

      I sighed. The next couple of days were going to be impossible.

Parker, My Valet

      Once Billy and I were inside our room, I came unglued, then went back together the wrong way, and fell apart again.

      It felt like bugs were crawling all over my skin.

      I tore at the paper spacesuit I’d been wearing. Billy tried to calm me down, told me to take a shower. Although there were showers on the transpod, I hadn’t taken one in days. Billy pointed out the clean clothes and underwear that had already been prepared for us in advance of our arrival, but nothing he did seemed to make any difference to me.

      I panicked. I was covered with bugs.

      I tore the spacesuit off and began scratching everywhere, leaving railroad tracks of red welts all over my skin.

      “Dude. Get into the shower. You’ll feel better.”

      “I can’t make them go away,” I said.

      Billy Hinman ran to the bathroom and turned on the water, then wrestled me into the shower, holding me under the stream until I stopped scratching.

      It must have been pathetic and frightening for Billy.

      I finally calmed down. The water poured through my hair and into my mouth. Billy was soaked. He looked like he was in pain, like he was about to cry.

      But crying was something I had never in my life seen Billy Hinman do.

      And then I said, “You’re so perfect, Billy. Everyone loves you. If I hadn’t watched you grow up, I’d swear you were a fucking cog.”

      Billy turned off the water. He managed to get me to lie down on my bed and tried to cover me with a sheet, but I kept kicking it away.

      “Whatever,” Billy said. “I’m going to get Rowan. I’ll find some help for you, Cager.”

      “Fuck you, Billy. Get me some Woz. You promised you’d get me some Woz.”

      I had no idea how long I’d been dead.

      That’s what it was like, crashing from Woz. There were no dreams, just an empty and sweat-soaked blackness. When I woke up—maybe it was two hours later, maybe it was four days, not that such measurements amounted to much up here where time loses its calibration with suns and shadows—I was twisted up in my sheets, completely naked, and I felt as though I’d been entirely hollowed out, as though the skin that contained what there was that made Cager Messer Cager Messer was nothing more than an eggshell. It was like I was a desiccated СКАЧАТЬ