Casserole Diplomacy and Other Stories (32 page)

This is so much fun that I really don’t mind that I’m not flying the real thing.

I’ve never loved a job this much. I really am the happiest when I’m in the motion capsule tugging at the control-tendrils and scoping out all the 3D imaging.

Do you remember Sue’s youngest and how he was with his old Nintendo system? How he would bang away at the controller for hours on end? Silly kid used to cry and scream like they’d just pulled his teeth out if he couldn’t move up to the next level. And when he did finally beat the game it was like he’d just found out that he was a junkie who just won a lifetime supply of morphine from the Lottery.

I told the kid that the cube was just a simple computer and what happened in the game was really just how you were interacting with the game programmers.

“No way!” the kid yelled at me. “It’s all about how
good
you are,
how much you believe in the game!
The game knows you are trying your best, and it rewards you!”

That really creeped me out. The only thing that was creepier was the way the kid started lying in the dark all day in his room. Waiting for the time when Sue finally gave up and said he could play some more.

You were at school so you probably don’t remember how Sue had a yard sale a few months later and the game system mysteriously disappeared. The two weeks of withdrawal symptoms were a bit rough but I hear the kid turned out okay eventually.

I’m a bit like that kid these days. I lay around my room waiting for the next sim-run. What’s really creepy is the fact that I love that part too.

Shivering and sweating here.

Andrew:

I got some new medicine and I’m feeling better.

The Process continues.

I can now see lower frequency sound waves and I don’t need solid food any more. This makes grocery shopping a little more complicated but the family hasn’t complained too much.

At least there’s enough of my original physiology operating that the Prozac-like capsules I’m taking still work. There are no more outbursts of domestic telekinesis or spontaneous combustion. But I’m still obsessing about how everyone managed to miss first contact.

First Contact.

Remember when people used to capitalize those letters? Seems rather silly now.

I agree with those sociologists who finally decided that we all just “kind of noticed” that alien concepts and information were seeping into the collective (un)consciousness of the human race.

I also remember an interview with that Carl Sagan wannabe who said that this had probably been happening for quite some time but only recently had the phenomena reached the “cosmological tipping point” where we could now expect an “exponential increase in these intellectual manifestations.”

Billions and billions of weird new ideas, all raining down on us.

Fuck, that was pretty good television.

I remember the interview because I felt so sorry for that astronomer and all his buddies. They’d had all those antennae stretched out all over the planet and the aliens weren’t using radio signals to communicate with us.

They weren’t even trying to communicate with us.

“The Vgotsky Effect” is what they eventually called it. I looked it up on the Internet if you actually care.

God, I’m ranting about nothing here. Must be the pills.

Anyway, we discovered that we were picking up the alien civilizations through “sublingual mental processes.” Which apparently is the only way that information can be conveyed on a faster than light basis. Which is pretty handy if you’re running a vast Galactic Super-Culture. (Ah, more obsolete capitalization.)

When I was younger I used to think all of this was pretty monumental stuff. Why doesn’t anybody care about this kind of thing anymore?

Maybe it’s like computers. You probably don’t remember how exotic and exciting they used to be. Then we all got one, then we all had to start using them—so computers went from being a part of The Amazing World of the Future to yet another boring thing in everybody’s pain-in-the-ass job.

So what’s the outcome, I write in my drug-addled state.

Well, we are a very practical people. If alien concepts are seeping into our minds, then the best thing to do is to try and put them to some kind of commercial use.

In addition to the pills, I’ve been drinking quite a bit lately. Therefore, I’m pretty drunk right now. I’m sitting out on the porch, and my youngest is next to me building towers with Lego. Cost quite a bit to replace.

I’m trying to get some fresh air to help the bacteria breathe. The little buggers have penetrated the walls of my stomach and now there’re rows and rows of little flesh valves in my gut, struggling hard to suck and push the air.

Isn’t that a great conversation starter for my neighbours as they walk their dogs past the house? My youngest doesn’t seem to notice, bless him.

It’s about five in the afternoon, and the fact that I look so bloody horrific is one reason that I’m knocking back gin and cream soda so early in the day. Another reason is that I’m not sure how much longer my body will let me get drunk.

Now, how unfair is that?

Sorry about all the tedious free association, it won’t happen again.

The next time I write, I’ll be a genetically evolved super-being with the capacity for more coherent communication.

Toodles,

S—

Toodles?

Breathing through your gut? Are your abs just a big balloon now? Did you do all those sit-ups for nothing?

Sorry, guess I shouldn’t make fun; it’s just that I’ve had a hell of a week. Not exactly bad, just very different from what I was expecting. And since I spend most of my days exploring a simulation of the outer fringes of an unknown quadrant of the galaxy, that’s saying quite a lot.

Things were going great until Wednesday. Just coming up on noon. Middle of the week, middle of the workday. Good time for something extreme.

I was steering out of a really complex five-sun solar system with 18 gas giants, when I noticed that I couldn’t let go of the direction controls.

It felt like the skin on my fingertips had fused into the hardware. Did I mention that something had happened to the console? No, well, now it looked a lot softer and it was throbbing.

That just didn’t seem right. I was still on a high from my hot piloting, so while I was interested at the intellectual level, I was more than willing to carry on with the mission profile.

“What the fuck is going on?”

That was what the shift controller was screaming. Which, I guess was a good thing. I mean it was nice that somebody out there was actually paying attention.

Anyway, the controller hits the master switch and shuts down all the sims. So I’m sitting there waiting for the techs to show up and unscrew me from the capsule. Meanwhile I sit there and watch the console kind of sigh and shudder, like somebody had just let all the air out of the electronics. (Yeah, I know that makes no sense!)

Then I pulled my hands away from the controls and saw the gooey pink tendrils that linked the insides of my fingertips with the wiring of the sim’s hardware.

Definitely one of those Cronenbergian moments.

What was even stranger was the fact that while this hurt like ten simultaneous root canals, it also felt quite wonderful. Hard to explain, really.

So they used some tiny lasers to cauterize the tendrils, and wheeled me off to the medicos. Once we got there they jammed sensor probes up every orifice you can imagine, and put us on 24/7 monitoring.

So I lay there with a wire up my ass until Sunday. The good news is that they say we get to go back to the sims tomorrow.

Toodles to you too . . .

Andrew:

I guess this is a big week for transformations.

My skin has wrinkled up, turned green, and my eyes are all puffy and yellow. I look like one of the Incredible Intergalactic Turtle People.

Maybe that’s not a joke. Maybe I really am one of the intergalactic turtle people.

Hard to say these days.

My doctor says that my Evolutionary Transformation Process has pretty much spiked, and very soon I’ll be comfortable with all super-human abilities.

I don’t know what qualifies him to make a statement like that, but I actually think he’s right. Every time I have a bowel movement, I spontaneously factor quadratic equations while experiencing powerful flashbacks of the last time my neighbours had sex.

Which I’m sure will come in handy in the office environment at some point in time.

Best,

Stephen:

I received my official briefing today. Here’s the short version:

The software we’ve been running in our simulators is turning me into an alien organism. Not just me, the whole team on my shift.

You can imagine, as I watched the new tendrils slither out of my fingertips, what a big surprise that was.

Gosh, doctor, I said (the gill slits in my cheeks made my voice really wet and sloppy), I thought it was just a case of the flu.

No, they aren’t that stupid. There must be some legal reason they gave me the news in this way. Sure enough, the medico opens up my file and takes out a document that I must have signed when I accepted the job.

“It’s important for you to understand that, even though this is an unexpected development,” the guy says, “you gave us full consent at the outset of the project.”

That’s an interesting medical opinion.

The chair in this office is making what passes for my ass these days really uncomfortable. All terrestrial furniture is bad these days. I only feel good inside the sim. I really don’t care what the Company doctor is telling me. All I want to do is get back to my mission runs.

“We’re shutting down the project,” the doctor says. “We’re just not sure what directions these transformations are taking.”

Shutting it down? No runs?

Shit. Shit, shit
and shit
.

The doctor peers at some notes. He sounds a little uncertain because this communication was written by people who went to different schools.

“Apparently the missions you’ve been training for seem to be for some part of the galaxy that we’re not likely to access for another two or three millennia.”

I should have said something at that point. Raised some objection. But I didn’t.

Maybe my mutant lisp was making me feel self-conscious.

“We just don’t see any practical applications.”

Bullshit. They just don’t feel like spending any more money.

At that point, I do remember standing up really fast. Then I remember the flash of the doctor’s needle, and the last thing I remember was noticing how quickly the floor was approaching my face.

The tranquilizer must have worked very fast. Guess my physiology hasn’t changed that much.

Take care,

Andrew:

Sounds like we had some very similar days.

At least as far as needles and the lecture on “informed consent” were concerned. They have a better case with me. Unbelievable as it sounds to me now, I actually signed up for all this nonsense.

They called me up from my cubicle, on yes, a
Wednesday
.

I was doing lateral data matches from different Company divisions, and I was doing some good work. I didn’t appreciate the interruption.

It’s hard to get back on track when you’re on a good telepathic roll.

Elwood was waiting for me. He was waiting in an office with a window.

Big domed forehead, brain the size of twelve supercomputers, bulging purple bloodshot eyes. As I recall, Elwood had those ugly eyes before he underwent the Process.

I never liked Elwood. I didn’t like Elwood when he was an intern in human resources, I didn’t like him when he had xeno-plasmic goo oozing from his ears and nose, and I didn’t like him on that particular Wednesday.

Even though he was a highly successful super-being.

It’s interesting to discover what changes in a person and what doesn’t.

“Stephen,” Elwood spoke very quietly, very carefully. “We’ve been accessing your Actualization.”

Yeah, tell me something that wasn’t completely obvious, you ultra-craniated moron, I thought.

Then I briefly wondered if empathic telepathy was one of Elwood’s evolved skills. Oh well, he might as well know the truth.

“We feel that the synergy between your potentialized self and our corporate objectives . . .”

This was not going to be good.

“. . . isn’t yielding the sorts of benefits we had hoped for.”

Like you, maybe I should have said something. I could have tried to argue this point. Maybe I wasn’t as smart as Elwood but my task-functional I.Q. was probably pushing 350 and I had been charted as a much more creative thinker than he’d ever be. So what, if I had slimy grey skin, a perpetually running “nose,” and breathing pores up the sides of my body that emitted gasses that made me smell like a dead raccoon most of the time.