Screw the Universe (2 page)

“I’ll bet he does,” replied Captain Tyler. “No, thanks. Is there someone else I can see?”

“Uh... the ship’s vet? I guess? I think he just came on. Computer?”

“Yes, First Lieutenant,” echoed the artificial female voice of the ship’s onboard operating system.

“Can you send Dr. Siriporn Porniviriyakul to the Captain’s chambers?”

“Right away,” said the computer.

“Dr. Porn?” questioned Captain Tyler. “I’m going to like this guy.”

“Dr. Porniviriyakul?” called First Lieutenant Duknerts. “Siriporn? You here?”

Dr. Porniviriyakul was indeed there, in the private bathroom affixed to his lab, taking a massive shit. He had been there when the ship had paged him, and for several hours before that as well. The tofu fajita he had eaten for breakfast was doing its best to scrub every inch of his intestines clean. And, while Dr. Porniviriyakul appreciated the fajita’s thoughtfulness towards his colonic health, he didn’t want his first encounter with his new shipmates to be through a bathroom door. So he sat on his toilet, knees high and cheeks clenched, saying nothing.

“Dr. Porniviriyakul?”

Nothing.

“Dr. Porn— What is that smell?”

Still Dr. Porniviriyakul said nothing.

“Oh my God,” continued First Lieutenant Duknerts, “I think something died in here. Oh, sweet jumping Jesus.” He began coughing uncontrollably.

“Computer,” the lieutenant sputtered, “send the janitor-robot in here, ASAP. I... I think something’s rotting inside the walls.”

“Yes, First Lieutenant,” replied the computer.

Dr. Porniviriyakul put his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. This was going to be a long six years.

“Bad news, Captain,” replied First Lieutenant Duknerts, returning to Captain Tyler’s bunk. “We couldn’t find Dr. Porn.”

“I’ve never been sadder in my life,” replied the captain.

“I did, however, find this guy,” said the lieutenant, pointing to the woman standing next to him.

“I’m not a guy,” whispered the woman.

“My understanding is that it’s safer if you pretend you are,” answered the lieutenant.

“That man has the most magnificent breasts I’ve ever seen,” said Captain Tyler. “Who is he?”

“My name is Sarah... uh, toga? Saratoga Springs,” replied the woman.

“That sounds like a porn name. And those are definitely porn tits. Are you sure
you’re
not Dr. Porn?”

“Miss... ter Springs,” replied First Lieutenant Duknerts, “is a doctor. A real one. She— He, HE was hired to be our onboard physician. Before Marshal Orr shot Sodomy in the nuts and gave him the job.”

“Look, Duknerts, I need a
doctor
. Not someone who went to school and got a degree and knows the things a doctor should know.”

“That... I don’t...”

“Mr. Springs,” continued the captain, “what is it you do onboard the Zdravo?”

“My official title is Equipment Manager,” she replied. “I’m in charge of all the sports equipment down in the recreation area.”

“Our recreation area is the size of a Tokyo apartment. What kind of equipment could we possibly have?”

“Knee pads and a variety of balls, mostly.”

“Balls, eh? What else?”

“Half a set of golf clubs, the woods to be specific. And catcher’s gear.”

“Are you sure you’re not having some kind of gay orgy down there, Springs?”

“I don’t follow, sir.”

“The balls, the woods... Do I have to paint you a picture? Because I will. Someone get me some paint. And something to paint on.”

“Captain Tyler,” began Equipment Manager Springs, “I take my job very seriously. I wipe down those balls and polish those woods with regularity and I don’t appreciate –”

“I’m sorry, you what?”

“I polish the woods, sir. I grab a cloth and some oil and I run my hands up and down and up and down those shafts. I’ve been on this ship thirty-six hours, sir, and there’s barely been a minute where I wasn’t running a rod through my hands.”

“Equipment Manager Springs,” said Captain Tyler, “I don’t appreciate that kind of talk. Unless there’s a vagina in this story somewhere, you need to lay off the graphic sexual descriptions.”

“I’m sorry... I... What?”

First Lieutenant Duknerts just lowered his head, sighed, and said, “They warned me about this.”

“Does he get like this often?” asked Springs.

“Really only when I get an STD,” answered Tyler, “or a regular disease, or gas. So about every other week. But that’s not important. What is important is that I need a doctor to look at my ever pustulating eye. And you’re not a doctor.”

“Yes, but, uh,” began Equipment Manager Springs, rifling through a handbag that looked surprisingly like a medical kit, “I was sent here by Nurse Sidemanner to give you this... this small tube of Vagisil? No, that’s not what I was –”

Captain Tyler snatched the tube out of her outstretched hand, popped the top and squirted the cream into his eye.

“Should it burn this much?” he asked.

“Sure...” said Springs, stepping slowly backwards. “The burning just means it’s working extra hard.”

“Ah, good. You can go back to polishing your wood now.”

“Yes, sir,” said Equipment Manager Springs, before turning and fleeing the captain’s quarters. And not for the last time, either.

“My God, Duknerts, look at the ass on that man.”

“Captain, I don’t think you should be –”

The computer’s voice twanged from the captain’s intercom.

“Captain Tyler, a call is coming in from Space Marshal Orr on the View-Matic 7000.”

“We’re on our way,” said the first lieutenant.

First Lieutenant Duknerts and Captain Tyler – the captain being lead by hand due to the trauma currently being inflicted on his eye – were halfway to the bridge when they collided with a crew member carrying a box of several hundred Wang Industries GPS nano-trackers and knocked her to the ground.

“Damn it,” said Private Yvette Redshirt, picking nano-processors from her clothing. “I’m covered in Wangs!”

“My apologies!” said Duknerts, immediately embarrassed. “We didn’t see you coming.”

“I certainly hope not.”

“What?”

“It’s okay,” she continued. “This isn’t the first time I’ve been covered in Wangs and it sure won’t be the last. They’re slippery buggers, always getting... into places.”

“Hey-oh!” cheered Captain Tyler.

Private Redshirt pulled a Wang from inside the waist of her battle shorts and tossed it back into the box.

“Where were you going?” asked First Lieutenant Duknerts.

“To the medical bay,” replied the private. “We were all supposed to have these GPS trackers installed before we left.”

“Installed? That sounds unpleasant.”

“Probably, I don’t know. I’m not a doctor.”

“There seems to be a lot of that going around,” said Captain Tyler.

“Tyler,” began Marshal Orr, “what is the meaning of this?”

“It’s a pronoun, I believe,” replied the captain, “denoting a particular person or thing.”

“What?”

“Where?”

“I called for you FORTY-FIVE MINUTES AGO.”

“I know, but, see, Duknerts and I were holding hands and –”

“I don’t want to hear it,” snapped Space Marshal Orr. “Captain, you are aware you are only two hundred feet from Federation headquarters, are you not?”

“I am not.”

“I can see you from my window.”

Tyler leaned forward in his chair, looking out the small side window of the bridge. Sure enough, there was the Federation space station. And there was Space Marshal Orr, on the space station’s bridge, glaring at the Zdravo. Captain Tyler waved. Orr flipped him the bird. Then he hit a button and a plate of space steel slid across his window.

“Tyler, your mission is not to sit around using up all our resources and blocking our docking bays.”

“That did seem too easy.”

“If you are not far, far away from here in the next fifteen minutes, I’m demoting you. And then I’m setting you on fire.”

“That doesn’t seem right.”

“It was in the fine print in your contract.”

“Probably should have read that thing.”

“Probably,” said Space Marshal Orr. “Fifteen minutes, Tyler.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you should probably get that eye looked at.”

Space Marshal Orr flickered off the monitor. Captain Tyler looked sternly at the blank screen, then at the crew seated along the walls and staring at him, then at the control panel. He furrowed his brow.

“So, uh, what now?”

“We need to go,” said First Lieutenant Duknerts. “Somewhere else.”

At that moment, Equipment Manager Springs stepped briskly onto the bridge, holding a piece of paper and a GPS nano-tracker.

“What the hell is this?” she blurted, waving the paper at no one in particular. “An official order to swallow this Wang?”

“So that’s how they’re gonna do that,” said Private Redshirt.

“Why are we swallowing Wangs?” asked Private Heather Naughtyplaces meekly.

“Whose wangs?” asked Private Kim Boxershorts, decidedly less meekly. “What is going on here?”

“I’m not swallowing anything else for this Federation!” shouted Equipment Manager Springs. “I have put too much stuff in my mouth for these people! I’m not sticking a Wang in there now too! It’s bad enough they’ve got me on my knees, polishing poles, hour after hour. I am a professional, damn it!”

Captain Tyler slid lower in his seat. He crossed his legs. Then he grabbed Duknerts gently by the sleeve.

“I, uh, I may need a minute,” the captain said quietly.

***

Several million miles later, Captain Oswald Van Vanderhoort Van Tyler leaned forward in his chair and stared at the View-Matic 7000 monitor, taking in the hundreds of stars and galaxies before him.

“This is boring!” he stated emphatically. “It’s just empty space.”

“Sir,” responded First Lieutenant Duknerts, stepping to the captain’s side, “if I may. Think about all of the different life forms out there, the planets, the –”
“Blah, blah, blah, BORING!”