Anton's Odyssey (11 page)

We were right around the corner from the mess hall.

“I still know there are dozens of places you haven’t been.”

“Naw, I’ve been everywhere. Except the engine room,” Cotton protested.

“Oh yeah, when’s the last time you’ve been in an airlock.”

Cotton thought for a moment. “You’re right. I haven’t been in an airlock. How did you know?”

“Running ventilation ducts through airlocks defeats the whole purpose of a pressurized vault.”

“Why?”

“You open an air lock and it’s connected to a ventilation duct, the whole ship depressurizes.”

“What’s ventilation?” Cotton could amaze me sometimes with his ignorance.

“You know, ventilation, moving air around.”

“Well why do you need to do that?”

“To fan out your smelly farts!”
I snapped. “That way everyone gets a whiff!”

We arrived at the mess hall. We ate dinner. Cotton skulked off to continue his escapades in the ventilation ducts no doubt. I stuck around, looking at every person as they entered and exited the mess hall. No one looked anything like
Fiona Mammalot. When Mary came in, I felt the need to divert my eyes, as if her gaze could somehow pierce into the depths of my mind and discover that Cotton had seen her naked.

I remained at the mess hall for hours. Hammond sat down to eat with me and asked why I was being so quiet. I told him I was working on something really cool but that I couldn’t tell him yet because it would ruin the surprise. He smiled and tried to take his meal to go.

The fat security guard chased Hammond out the door and started screaming. His face turned red, and every time he huffed and puffed to inhale, I thought his man boobs were going to rip through his tactical vest. I had never seen him so pissed off before. I thought he was going to draw his taser and shock Hammond until his hair stood up. Even Hammond, who could probably take the guy under normal circumstances, looked pretty terrified. He returned to the mess hall and finished his meal without saying a word.

The security guy sat down. His man boobs stopped swinging but his face stayed pink. One of the officers asked him what was wrong.

“They’re here already!” he snorted.

“Who’s here?” asked the officer.

“The rodents!”

“How do you know?”

“I hear ‘em in the ventilation ducts. It’s only a matter of time before they overrun the entire ship.”

“That’s just the air moving,” said the officer. “Makes the ducts rattle. Some of them are pretty loose.”

“That’s what I was hoping,” Jim said, adjusting one of his man boobs in his tactical vest, “but then I took a look for myself. Some of the grates have been knocked loose. And not only that, in some of the older ducts — not the nice new clean ones we just put in as part of the refit, but the older ones that have been in place for ages with decades’ worth of dirt and grime — I’ve seen that the dirt’s been disturbed.”

“I am sure there is some perfect
ly logical explanation for that.” the officer said.

“Yeah like what?” the security guy snapped.

“Like…” the officer paused for a second, “…turbulence. Turbulent air flow could have disturbed the dirt.”

“Naw, no way!” the security guy huffed, “long streaks.
Goes all the way through the grime down to the metal. I know tracts when I see them.”

The evening was a total buzz kill. As I walked home, I came to the conclusion that
Fiona Mammalot was not on the ship. Cotton had probably just seen a naked woman with similar boobs in the washateria. His recollection of her facial features was probably the product of a disturbed and dysfunctional mind. I knew he wasn’t deliberately lying. I could usually tell when he lied, but there was no way he could be telling the truth. I had spent hours staring at thousands of faces between shift changes and nobody looked like Fiona Mammalot.
Because she’s still in prison,
I thought.

To make matters worse, both the head of security and the first mate would soon have separate yet good reasons to jettison C
otton out the airlock. What I initially thought was a thrilling story turned out to be merely one more of Cotton’s idiot shenanigans that would cause me to worry for the rest of the voyage.

Over the two-day break, I hung out with Hammond. Cotton shadowed us non-stop, which would normally annoy me. However, I knew that if I could see my bother nearby, he wasn’t scurrying around in the vents like a sewer rat. By the time I returned to the Information Technology Archives to finish the second half of my sentence, I was my old self again.

Ms. Gross asked us to write an essay about something controversial. I figured most kids would write about hoity-toity bioethics stuff, such as the neural stem cell microprocessor grafting that was debated to death on those annoying TV shows they force us watch in science class. I wrote, instead, about how I overheard the sergeant at arms warning an officer about how we had a rodent infestation. I embellished the truth a little, stating that Jim Boldergat reported finding turds in the vents and seeing rats up to a
half-meter long. He worried that they could eat all our food or transmit disease. Towards the ends of my essay, my embellished truths deteriorated into frank lies. I alleged that the officer told Jim Boldergat to keep things “hush hush” because the food was sealed in rat proof containers and that nobody was in danger unless somebody unhooked a grate to look in the vent after hearing a noise. I wrote that according to the officer, space rats carried rat bite fever and they could jump out of a vent and bite you on the face. I didn’t completely invent the part about rat bite fever, however. This one kid who lived in my old complex got infected and nearly died.

Right before lunch, Ms Gross sent me a message explaining I was the only one in the class who wrote about the ship. She said that my story was “disturbing” but gave me an A minus. She would have given me a full A if I used the word “droppings” instead of “turds.”

I finished my math work and even did some extra credit. Stick Geek Allen came in after lunch and sat at his usual table. He nodded at me and smiled as if I were his best buddy or something. I contorted my face into an icy stare, and he quickly looked away.

Near the end of the school day, these two big kids in ball jerseys swaggered into the archives.

“Mike! Jeff!” the archives clerk scolded, “I told the two of you to stay out!”

Cotton’s pursuers were real goons. Both had fighting histories permanently etched into their faces. Each boy’s ugly mug was
marked and scarred, and both boys had several low-end dental implants that didn’t quite match the color of their remaining real teeth. Although not nearly as big as Hammond, they could certainly tear Cotton limb for limb if they worked together.

The kid with the crooked
nose and dark hair explained, “We were told to come here. We gotta remediate our biology homework.” The other kid had greasy blond hair, a strong jaw, and pimples on his chin. When he wasn’t squeezing his pimples, he would loop his thumb in the thick gold chain he wore around his neck. He had a pretty nasty rash underneath, so I guessed the gold wasn’t real.

“If you know what’s good for you,” the archives clerk said, “you better tell me the truth.”

“Naw,” Mike said, moving his hand from his pimples and into the front pocket of his baggy pants, “we wouldn’t lie to you, again. We got in ‘nuff trouble last time.” He took out his pocket module and opened it, flashing his pass.

The archives clerk eyed him suspiciously, took his module and plugged it into the side of her computer. The pass authenticated as valid, and she sighed.

“Very well,” she said, “I’ll have my eye on you, so you better behave yourselves.”

“Oh yes ma’am,” Jeff said with phony sincerity.

The two sat down at a computer workstation nearby. Jeff plugged in his module.

“What lesson we supposed to do?” asked Mike.

“Lesson 13, peripartum.” Jeff said.

Mike pecked away on the datapad. “Ok… lesson 13, okay now what?”

“I dunno,” Jeff said. “Click the pic, I guess.”

Mike shrugged, “Okay here we go.” Like a kindergartener, he sounded out a big word he didn’t know how to pronounce, “PERRY-KNEE-UM.”

“Damn,” Mike said, his eyes goggling, “we should have done this lesson last night like we were supposed to.” On the screen was a close up of a woman’s nether region, totally bare without her underthings. I could see everything. It was more graphic than any of Hammond’s skin mags. “I think I’m gunna go back to my living unit to go pull it,” Mike joked.

Upon further inspection, the picture ceased to be arousing. Although the pic’s depth of field was shallow, it looked to me like the woman had a large gut. Big butts I didn’t mind at all. A small amount of stomach pudge could be cute, but a large beer-swilling gut on either man or woman was downright unattractive.

“What I do now?” Mike asked.

“Hit play.”

I could see the woman’s neither regions clinch a little, but the picture didn’t change much. The woman started groaning.

“Why she hurting?”
Mike asked dimwittedly.

The archives clerk shushed them, and the two boys lowered their voices.

“Just hit fast forward,” Jeff advised.

“You see this before?”

“Yeah, back at my old school.”

Mike shrugged and flicked the fast forward icon with his stylus. The woman’s groans became high pitched. The videographer must have adjusted his camera because the background became too light and the woman’s neither region too dark.

“Too much contrast,” Jeff said insightfully.

“Huh?” asked Mike, clearly the stupider of the two.

“Oh just wait,” Jeff said. “You’re in for a surprise.”

“What’s happening?” Mike said. “It’s too dark! I can’t see! It looks like something’s trying to come out! There’s liquid. Did she just pee? It looks kinda bloody.”

The videographer corrected the contrast, providing a nice crisp picture. There was a gush of yellow fluid. A small face appeared, features scrunched, eyes closed, skin blue. At first I thought the baby was dead but then his lips started moving. Another gloved hand entered the picture with some kind of rubber squeeze bulb and suctioned out the baby’s nose and mouth. Dropping the bulb, the provider attempted to grab the baby around the neck. The baby seemed to get sucked inward, and the provider was unable to get a good grip. Someone barked an order and the woman pulled her knees to her chest. The baby’s front shoulder popped out. With a firm grip, the provider pulled out the rest of the baby’s body. There was another gush of yellow fluid, even larger this time, and the provider passed the baby out of the camera’s view. I could hear the baby crying, which I knew was a good thing from watching really old movies. The provider returned and tugged lightly on some kind of blue cord that was hanging out of the woman. Behind the cord followed some sort of membranous hunk of meat, like something from a gory horror flick. There was gush of blood, and the provider rubbed the woman’s stomach. The bleeding stopped, and the video ended.

Mike looked pale. “That was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen.” As stupid as he was, I had to agree with Mike. I felt a bit queasy myself.

“Why did they show us that?” Mike asked, indignantly. Without continuous prompting from the archives clerk to be quiet, the two boys had allowing their voices to get louder and were talking at a normal conversational tone. Stick Geek Allen kept looking up at them and sighing, clearly annoyed that they were distracting him from his advanced physics homework or whatever he was doing.

“To tell us where babies come from I guess,” Jeff replied.

“I know where babies come from!” Mike barked. “Why the hell couldn’t the woman in the video just commission a polymer-gel incubator like everyone else? Or if she’s broke, why couldn’t she just get a section?”

“Dunno.” Jeff shrugged his shoulders. “It’s a real old video. My grandpa saw it back when he was a kid.”

“That’s just nasty!” Mike said. “I bet they make us watch this to gross us out and keep us virgins.”

“Could be.
My grandpa said he didn’t talk to girls for weeks after seeing the video.”

“What are we supposed to do now?” Mike asked.

“Write an essay.”

“I don’t wanna write an essay!” Mike whined loudly.

Stick Geek Allen looked over at the archives clerk’s workstation. She had wandered off into the stacks, so he thoughtlessly told the two boys to “shut up!” The archives clerk no longer in sight, they grinned menacingly.

“You shut up!” barked Jeff.

“Yeah, shut up!” Mike agreed.

“That was you being born in that video wasn’t it?” Jeff said.

“Probably,” said Mike. “That’s why he’s all skinny and messed up. Your mom was probably some sort of veggie eater and wanted to have you naturally. Now look at you, you’re all…” Mike stammered racking his brain to find the perfect insult.

“Cretinous,” Jeff suggested. Of the two goons, he clearly had the best vocabulary.

“Yeah, you’re a cretinous,” Mike said.

“I think you mean ‘cretin,’” Allen corrected in a superior tone. I cringed. Allen’s mouth had just landed him into some very dangerous territory.

“I’ll show you ‘cretin,’ you little turd.” In an instant, Mike had hopped over to Allen’s work station and had him in a headlock. Allen’s face turned red as he struggled to breath. I found it remarkable that his glasses didn’t fall off. His eyes continued to dart back and forth, back and forth. They didn’t bug out the same way Cotton’s did when I felt the need to strangle him.

“Quick, I think I hear the clerk coming!” Jeff warned.

Mike let go of Allen and pulled him back upright. Allen’s face turned from red to a more normal shade of pink just as the archives clerk rounded the corner.

“What’s going on?” she demanded.

“Nothing,” Jeff and Mike said in unison.

“Nothing,” Allen said pathetically, his voice quivering.

“You boys done yet?” the archives clerk asked.

“Yes ma’am.”

“Then leave!” she barked.

In the passageway I heard Mike say, “Crap! We didn’t write our essay.”

“We’ll just say the archives clerk kicked us out before we could write it.”

“Good idea,” said Mike,
although it didn’t seem like a very good idea to me at all.

The archives clerk returned to her workstation, and Allen rubbed his neck where Mike had man handled him. “Why didn’t you help me?” the small boy asked.

I felt bad for Allen, but I couldn’t think of any circumstances in which I would be willing to take a beating for him.

“You brought this upon yourself,” I said. “Don’t make it my problem.”

It was 15:00, so I turned my back and left the Information Technology Archives before Allen had a chance to reply.