“Tell him to go away and shut up,” Billy said.
“What do you want?” I yelled back to the shore.
It was a dumb question, I thought, because I pretty much always knew what Parker, my valet cog, generally wanted.
Not so much this time, though.
“I don’t quite know what that thing walking around below me scratching at your clothing is!” Parker shouted. “Do you know what it is?”
But when I focused on the brush near the bottom of Parker’s tree, I could see what it was that Parker had not been coded to identify.
Because why would a horny teenage valet cog on a lunar cruise ship ever need to know what a full-grown Bengal tiger looked like?
And Billy Hinman said, “Well, that’s fucked up.”
I wondered what fake, fully grown Bengal tigers in space liked to eat.
The Lost Girls, and the Boy in the Bucket
The “All Clear” song came on while the girls were lost, exploring deck after deck of empty, lifeless staterooms and finding nothing at all but locked doors and parked, sleeping, or broken cogs.
Meg and Jeffrie left their cast-off helmets sitting on the floor of one of the Tennessee’s elevators. When they became exhausted from searching for anyone else who might be on the ship with them, they slept in an ice and beverage-vending room, where Meg told Jeffrie stories about Missing Boy Mountain and the people who lived at Antelope Acres.
They were hungry and alone, and none of the restaurants they found were unlocked. At night Meg would go back to Deck 21 to print food for Jeffrie, who was too afraid of the damaged cogs there to go along with her.
And two days later, frustrated and disoriented, Meg and Jeffrie entered the wreckage of Le Lapin et l’Homme Mécanique. Everything was upended and broken. The floor was puddled with thousands of gallons of aquarium water and cog slime.
A half dozen tuxedo-clad cogs lay mangled and dismembered in the restaurant. They looked as though they’d all been eaten—just like what happened to the cogs the girls had left behind on Deck 21.
“We could probably change into some tuxedos if we wanted to,” Meg said.
“That’s fucking gross,” Jeffrie said. “I’ll keep the spacesuit. I refuse to undress a dead cog.”
A miniature-sperm-whale snake crawled across the floor between Meg’s feet.
Meg said, “Well, there’s going to be food here, I can tell. I won’t have to go back to Twenty-One tonight, at least.”
From somewhere in the darkness of the vast restaurant came the soft sounds of a crying young boy.
“Clarence? Clarence? Is that you?” the crying boy, Milo, called out. “Please don’t eat me, Clarence. My life is horrid enough as it is. Clarence?”
“Boy,” Meg said. “Where are you?”
Milo wept harder. “I’m over here, hiding under the mop bucket.”
Milo wasn’t exactly hiding under a mop bucket, but he did have an upturned yellow pail covering his head, and he was sitting in a pool of slime and salt water, shivering in a narrow busboy station at the rear of the dining room.
“It’s just a cog,” Jeffrie said.
“I don’t deserve to live,” Milo said. “I’m not even good enough to eat.”
Meg lifted the mop bucket from Milo’s head. The boy cog was wet and streaked with filthy muck from the bottom of the bucket.
A stray cog seahorse the size of a monkey had curled its tail around Milo’s ankle and was grazing on the leg of his trousers, which was completely detached from the waist down.
Seahorses have very small mouths. This one had been trying to eat Milo for two days.
“Go ahead. Eat me. I don’t care anymore.” Milo covered his face with his hands and sobbed.
Meg shook her head. “He thinks we’re cogs.”
“We’re humans, not cogs, you idiot,” Jeffrie said. “Stand up and get a grip.”
But Milo kept crying as the seahorse took tiny nibbles out of his socks.
Meg rummaged through the drawers in the busboy station and pulled out a wood-handled steak knife. She stabbed the knife into the cog seahorse’s head, skewering the thing through one eye socket and out the other. Cog goo spurted up, coating Meg’s arm and splashing Milo in the face, which caused him to cry even harder.
Then all the lights in Le Lapin et l’Homme Mécanique flashed red. Music played, and an announcement sounded, reminding the Tennessee’s guests of the upcoming New Year’s Eve ball.
“People are here,” Meg said.
And Jeffrie said, “It’s about fucking time.”
And Milo, who was no longer being eaten slowly by a gigantic seahorse with a very small mouth, wept.
Duncan’s Horses
Which brings us, basically, to the point at which I opened this narrative.
Our world was upside down.
Cogs were eating cogs.
The Worm had come to the Tennessee.
In Macbeth there is a scene—my favorite, I’ll admit, although most people would describe it as short and somewhat inconsequential—in which Duncan’s horses turn against their own nature, wage war on humankind, and begin to eat each other.
Horses were eating horses, and the world as everyone knew it was coming to an end.
Put Your Welcome Faces On!
After waiting and watching for nearly an hour, Billy Hinman and I were still standing in the middle of fake Lake Louise, naked, watching the gruesome scene as it unfolded on the shore. Maurice, the bisexual talking French giraffe, ate nearly all the gushing, frothy innards out of the tiger, who continued to weep and bemoan the meaninglessness and persistent suffering of life, while Parker hid in the branches overhead, clutching the trunk of a fake tree and fiddling with his penis.
The tiger looked like a flattened, snot-coated rug.
The sky above, which was actually only a ceiling, flickered with two brilliant red flashes of light. Then music began playing. It sounded like the voice of God, but it was actually only the theme song from Rabbit & Robot.
Mooney’s prerecorded voice echoed from unseen sources, announcing, “Wake up! Wake up! All attendant cogs to the lower west skybridge! We have guests arriving! Wake up! Don’t be late! Put your welcome faces on!”
And then Mooney sang a song that was obviously called “Put Your Welcome Faces On.”
The message—and the song—repeated two more times. The sky-ceiling flashed red again.
Put your welcome faces on,
Put your welcome faces on.
Our guests will be arriving soon
To fly with us around the moon.
If you’re not there, they’ll think you’ve gone,
So put your welcome faces on!
Maurice stood up straight and raised his face from the destroyed tiger cog. Thick snotty ropes of mucus dripped from Maurice’s jaw, and even from the pom-poms on his little giraffe ossicones.
And Maurice said, “Shit! Back to the motherfucking zoo! Are you sure you garçons would not like to ride on my back?”
“Um, no thanks, Maurice,” Billy said.
Then Maurice turned around and giraffe-pout-stomped away through the forest.
“Cager? Cager?” Parker yelled from his tree.
I was beginning to think that maybe I should have told him that tigers were nice, and also that they liked to be hugged.
“I think you can come down from the tree now,” I said.
Parker climbed down from the branch he’d been standing on for the last two days, and Billy Hinman and I swam back to shore from the middle of the warm fake Lake Louise we’d been skinny-dipping in for the last two hours.
We emerged from the lake and stood in a vast puddle of slick hydraulic goo that had spilled from the destroyed tiger. The tiger’s eyes and mouth still continued to operate, but his torso had been completely torn open, exposing a jumble of what looked like empty sausage casings and watery mayonnaise.
“This is seriously messed up,” Billy Hinman said, standing at the edge of the lake, shaking the water from his ha
ir.
Nearly all our clothes were destroyed. The goddamned tiger had even eaten our shoes. The only clothing we had left to put on was our underwear.
“I am so happy to see you, Cager!” Parker said.
I held up my flattened palm. “I don’t have any clothes on. Stay away from me.”
“Stupid goddamned tiger,” Billy said. He wiped his feet on the rag of one of his pant legs.
And the tiger—well, to be honest, it was only the tiger’s head—said, “I’m so sorry I ate your clothes. It’s a filthy habit. I don’t deserve to exist. I’m completely worthless to this life.”
“Look, tiger-head dude, whatever your name is, you can’t just go around eating people’s clothes,” Billy scolded.
The tiger wept. “I’m so horrid! And my name is Juan, by the way.”
“Nice to meet you, Juan,” Billy Hinman said as he pulled on his underwear. “I’d shake your hand, but it doesn’t seem to be attached to you anymore.”
Then the tiger head—Juan—began sobbing with renewed intensity while Parker took off his shoes and socks and the valet-cog uniform jacket, shirt, and pants.
“I want to be dressed just like you and your friend, Cager!” Parker said.
I said, “Whatever.”
The sky flashed and Mooney’s voice came on again, directing cogs on the Tennessee to wake up and attend to the arriving visitors. And once more we had to endure the “Put Your Welcome Faces On” song.
“Shall we go retrieve your can opener, Cager?” Parker asked.
I thought about all the things I never thought would happen but that had happened for me today anyway. “I don’t want it anymore, Parker.”
And Parker said, “Then I must report directly to the lower west skybridge, to greet our new arrivals.”
“You don’t have any pants on,” I pointed out. “What will people say?”
“I’ll bet you a ride on Maurice they aren’t people, Cager,” Billy said.
And I assumed that Billy meant a new shipment of cogs would be joining us, but I found out soon enough that I was completely wrong.
So Billy and I left the peace and tranquility of Alberta. We waved a silent farewell to Juan, the weeping severed tiger head, and followed Parker out toward the elevator that would take the three of us, as poorly dressed for a welcoming party as we were, to the lower west skybridge.
The Giant Blue Fetus in Space
These aren’t ours,” I said.
We found two space helmets sitting on the floor of the elevator. They were identical to the ones from the extravehicular suits we’d worn after the incident with the gravity generators on the Tennessee, but those helmets had been left behind in Dr. Geneva’s office.
“Maybe a cog put them here and they’re just fucking with us,” Billy said.
And Parker added, “I have an erection.”
I sighed. What could I do about him?
I picked up one of the helmets, and then the other. I put my face inside them and smelled.
“This one for sure was worn by a girl,” I said.
Parker adjusted his dick.
“The other one, I’m not sure. It might be a little boy or maybe a little girl, but they’re both humans, Billy. There are people on board with us. I can smell them. We’re not alone.”
Just thinking about not being alone made me so happy, I could have hugged Parker. But we were in our underwear, so that was never going to happen.
And I continued, “But whoever was wearing these was definitely here two days ago, when everything got tossed around, and they had to have been here in the elevator, or just getting into it, when the all-clear came.”
“Maybe it’s the girl you saw at the wicket,” Billy said.
I nodded.
It must have been her. If I closed my eyes I could almost see her.
Parker touched some switches to direct our elevator down to the lower west skybridge. He asked, “Cager, are you hopeful for a sexual encounter?”
“Who isn’t?” Billy asked. “It feels like I’ve been up here forever.”
And Parker said, “Well, I could arrange—”
“No,” I said. “Stop it. Maybe whoever they are know they’re stuck here too. Maybe they’re looking for me—for us.”
The elevator slowed, then stopped.
We stepped out into a wide arrivals office that was identical to the one Billy, Rowan, and I had entered the Tennessee through a week earlier. It was crowded with noisy cogs—jubilant, outraged, blathering, and depressed ones, and a few horny ones too. Some of them displayed dripping, oozing wounds they’d gotten during the gravitational crunch, or maybe they’d been bitten by the cogs who’d gone crazy, like Maurice the giraffe, or Dr. Geneva.
Cannibalism—even among machines—is such a socially undesirable behavior.
“Wheee! Wheee! I am so delighted, I could cut my face off and make marmalade with it! Yeee! Yeee! We have guests! We have guests!”
Billy Hinman and I spun around and saw Lourdes dancing wildly in the middle of a swarm of attendant cogs. She flailed her arms, twisted like a victim of demonic possession in her cruise-director skirt, and farted three times.
And she saw us.
To be honest, we’d have been pretty difficult to miss, standing there in the crowded arrivals deck, undressed as we were.
“My friends! My little human boy friends! Yeee! My human boy friends came to welcome our guests!” Lourdes shrieked. Then she pushed her way up to Billy Hinman, put both of her hands in his hair, and started pumping her hips into him. “I am so happy to see you!”
“That’s fairly obvious,” I said to Parker.
Everyone—even machines—liked Billy Hinman.
Also, Saturday.
Lourdes’s skirt hitched up nearly to her hips. Her panties said “Saturday.” I had no idea what day it was down on dead Earth, so I decided to have faith in Lourdes’s panties. I also couldn’t take my eyes off them, and considering what little I was wearing, this was also not a socially desirable situation.
Best thing to do in this case, I thought: talk to Parker.
“So. Was it a nice can opener?”
“It was very adequate.” Parker looked down at me and said, “Cager!”
“Shut up, Parker. Stop staring at me.”
Finally Billy, who generally hated all cogs and was completely unfazed by Lourdes’s enthusiasm, pushed himself away from her.
“That’s so disgusting,” he said.
“Wheee! Wheee!” Lourdes squealed. “Let’s go! Let’s watch the dock screens and welcome our guests! I am completely filled with jubilation! I wonder who it will be. I wonder if it’s the Emperor of China! I wonder if it’s a kitten! Wheee!”
Lourdes gyrated a few more times, farted, and then waved her arms at a wall of screens that showed images of the approaching craft and of the interior of the air lock connecting the dock to the arrivals hall.
I scanned the faces in the crowd, looking for the girl I’d seen, but there were only cogs here. No Rowan. And I did see Dr. Geneva, the hole in his face still dripping a continuous stream of goop.
“Don’t they ever run out of juice?” I said.
Billy said, “Huh?”
“Ah! Cager Messer! Billy Hinman! And, dare I say, you’ve brought along your delightful boy, Parker!” Dr. Geneva, who never shut up, and who also just didn’t have a clue about what was really going on, said. “And look at how you’re dressed! Fantastic, I say! A perfect attire selection for our welcoming party! Ha ha! After all, it is New Year’s Eve, you know!”
In all the turmoil of being stuck here on the Tennessee, I’d completely forgotten that, at least down on Earth, this was the beginning of a new year, even though there would no longer be any reason for anyone to maintain calendars and such.
And Dr. Geneva gusted on, unabated. “Did you know that it was not until the time of Julius Caesar—although New Year’s observances predated him by some four thousand years in other civilizations—that January fi
rst on the new Julian calendar, which added some ninety days to existing ledgers of timekeeping in the year 46 B.C., was first recognized as the official beginning of each new year? He did this in order to honor the Roman god Janus, who had two faces—two faces!—in order to look forward as well as backward simultaneously. . . .”
I couldn’t take my eyes off Dr. Geneva’s own incomplete face, which would allow him to eat in two directions simultaneously, due to the seeping cavernous wound on his cheek.
“It looks like a giant fetus,” Billy Hinman said.
I squinted my eyes and tried to see what Billy saw, but the hole in Dr. Geneva’s face did not look like a fetus to me. It looked more like a cinnamon bun that was dripping icing, which was completely nauseating to think about.
But I realized when a sudden hush descended over the arrivals deck that Billy Hinman was not talking about the gaping wound in Dr. Geneva’s face; he was talking about the ship that was about to dock with the Tennessee.
It was not a Grosvenor Galactic transpod.
And Billy Hinman was right. The arriving ship did look like a giant human fetus—a blue one at that.
Dr. Geneva, who had most likely never spent an operational day on Earth, said, “I daresay this vehicle is not from Mother Earth!”
“I should have bought the blue car! I should have bought the blue car! I should have bought the blue car!”
Apparently, Reverend Bingo was still possessed by something.
“Yeee! Wheee!” Lourdes burbled. “The newcomers are aliens! Maybe they’re from Costa Rica! I love Costa Rica so much, I could eat it! Yeee! Maybe they’re Canadians!”
When she said “Canadians,” she arched her arms gracefully over her head like the petals of a flower in bloom.
Then Lourdes danced and contorted.
Everything made Lourdes so happy.
Somewhere in the crowd, another cog yelled, “How dare they? How dare they victimize me this way? I don’t deserve this! They have no right to inflict such brutality on me! I am so furious! How dare you make this about you, and not about me?!!”
I couldn’t see exactly which irate cog was shouting, but I did hear the sound of him throwing his body down to the floor and punching himself. I couldn’t blame him.