“Cogs can’t enjoy things, Parker.”
“I have an erection again, Cager.”
I walked away from Parker, my personal valet, without saying another word.
Captains Outrageous
I don’t know the advantage in having a particularly irate cog serve as captain of a ship that could definitely fly itself, but Captain Myron was the angriest, most outraged v.4 I had ever encountered.
Maybe waiting at our table alone for over three hours aggravated him. Who knows?
I wondered if cogs ever thought about the better things they might be doing, or if they were incapable of considering alternatives to their single-track, if-then, one-zero programming. In so many ways, cogs were more human than humans.
And Le Lapin et l’Homme Mécanique was massive. Also, very empty.
Parker waited beside the maître d’s station. He leaned against a wall-length aquarium that had goldfish and seahorses and miniature sperm whales the size of bananas swimming inside it. The seahorses were as big as turkeys. It naturally didn’t matter that such things could never exist together in nature. They were cogs, and they looked fabulous. But Parker just stared at me, occasionally rubbing himself, or looking down at his obvious erection.
My valet.
What an idiot.
Captain Myron was outfitted like some caricature player in my father’s television program. His uniform was blindingly white with gold embellishments everywhere, including his tasseled epaulets and all the buttons on his double-breasted captain’s jacket. He also had a feathered white-and-gold admiral’s bicorne on his head.
And he had the distinct aroma of urine.
When the captain saw me, his eyes widened as though he’d just woken up from a coma. Myron threw his arms up over his head and kicked his white leather boots down onto the floor with such force, he tipped over backward in his chair. A wineglass fell from our table and shattered, and Myron’s feathered bicorne tumbled across the floor.
“Why are you doing this to me? Why? Why? Why?” Myron shrieked, kicking his feet up toward the ceiling in the manner of a dying weasel.
I said, “Cheepa Yeep.”
The maître d’ slid my chair out for me, and I sat while pretty much everyone else present—our waiter, the bus staff, Parker, and an overjoyed sommelier—watched the spectacle of Captain Myron’s incredible tantrum.
A silent busboy whooshed over to my table and poured a glass of ice water for me, then used silver tongs to deposit a perfect lemon wedge into it before unfurling my napkin and smoothing it on my lap. I’m not absolutely certain, but I thought he was weeping slightly, and his gloved hands smelled like butter and rosemary, which made me extremely hungry.
I also felt embarrassed and spoiled about the busboy’s napkin smoothing, as though I was somehow cheating on Parker. I glanced over at my personal valet, who winked at me and licked his lips.
Whatever.
Our waiter gracefully presented the menu card to me. And all this happened while Myron kicked at the air and punched himself repeatedly in the sides of his neck and head, wailing, “I have been wronged! I have been so terribly wronged! All the evils that have ever been inflicted upon me are at this moment magnified tenfold by your terrible, brutal lack of humanity! You pig! You bloody beast!”
Myron had a nice English accent, which made his ranting all the more persuasive and civilized. I actually felt a bit guilty, in a very elegant sort of way.
It almost boosts your self-esteem, being screamed at by someone with an English accent.
Eventually, Myron composed himself. He crawled through the shards of broken glass and retrieved his hat, which was under one of the hundreds of other unoccupied tables in the restaurant. Then he brushed himself off, righted his chair, and calmly sat down across from me.
“Welcome to the Tennessee, young Mr. Messer. It’s an honor to have you aboard, a distinguished representative of your father’s company, Rabbit & Robot Grosvenor Galactic, and to be able to dine with you as my most respected passenger,” Myron said.
There was a triangular shark’s tooth of glass imbedded in Captain Myron’s cheek.
And here’s the thing about outraged v.4s that makes them so endlessly entertaining to me: No matter what I did, I was likely to set off another volatile eruption. Consider all the possibilities: Not responding to him, taking advantage of the lull in Myron’s tirade to order the canard à l’orange, pointing out the wineglass shrapnel lodged in his face, or even saying “thank you”—all these choices were more likely than not to cause Myron to implode in fury again.
I took a calculated risk and ordered the duck and a salade de chicorée frisée.
“What? What?”
My decision seemed to irritate Captain Myron.
The captain grabbed his salad fork and stabbed it forcefully into the armrest on his chair. Then he stood up and began wildly punching the air over our table. “You fucking wanker! You little fucking wanker!”
Captain Myron punched himself directly in his balls. Twice. Then he continued. “I was going to order the salad! You little fuck! You’ve ruined everything! Why do you insist on preying upon me like this? What have I ever done to you? I don’t deserve this! I don’t deserve this!”
Then Captain Myron urinated in his perfectly white officer’s pants. It was real, human urine too. The smell was unmistakable.
I’d heard there were some v.4s that included optional bodily functions—for whatever reasons—but this was the first time I’d ever seen one take a piss on himself at a table in a French restaurant. To be honest, I’d never seen anyone take a piss on himself at a table in a French restaurant.
Again Myron flung himself down onto the glass and pee on the floor and thrashed and flopped, screaming and cursing, like an enormous beached manta ray that was covered in urine and shattered crystal stemware.
I calmly raised my hand and motioned our sullen busboy over to the table.
“Could you please instruct our waiter to make my order to go?”
“I have no reason to live,” the busboy, whose name badge identified him as Milo, said.
“Nonsense. You aren’t alive to begin with,” I pointed out. “Suck it up and make the best of it, Milo. The future is bright, I assure you.”
“We come into existence, and we float through space, doomed, until we all die horribly. No reason to live at all.”
Milo the busboy wept uncontrollably.
He probably knew more than I did, but who can say?
Canard à l’Orange
Billy Hinman was still sleeping.
By the time I’d come back with my carryout duck and salad, I realized how truly exhausted I was. Rowan, who as always declined my offer to share dinner, excused himself, and Billy and I were alone.
I did notice Parker standing in the hallway directly across from my door with his arms folded over his chest, watching silently—was he glaring?—as Rowan said good night. And not thirty seconds after Rowan had gone, there came a delicate knocking on my door. I waved my hand across it at eye level so the door’s wicket screen would light up, and I saw Parker’s face there, outside in the hall.
“What do you want?” I said.
“May I turn down your bed for you, Cager?”
“No.”
“May I help you put on your pajamas?”
“I don’t wear pajamas.”
“Oh. What do you prefer to wear when you go to bed?”
“Go away.”
“Would you like me to sleep with you?”
“Absolutely not. You’re a cog.”
“Do you sleep with your friend?”
“Good night, Parker.”
“Cager?”
I sighed. “What?”
“I have an erection.”
I turned off the screen.
I pulled a chair over to the edge of my bed and ate. To be honest, the canard à l’orange et salade de chicorée frisée were remarkable, but then again it could have had something to do with my stat
e of near starvation.
I felt terrible, but Dr. Geneva had assured me I was out of the woods and was now over the worst part of the withdrawals, and that I should feel back to normal within the coming day.
I never for one moment in my life knew what normal was supposed to feel like.
“Nobody has ever died from Woz withdrawal, Cager,” Dr. Geneva had told me. “It’s a medically documented fact. But do you know what human beings have died of?” And that was when Dr. Geneva went into a lengthy lecture about all the ways human beings have died throughout history, including a particularly disgusting form of execution involving hungry insects, called scaphism; as well as being smothered by hats and cloaks, which is something that happened to a guy named Draco, in ancient Greece. But when Dr. Geneva asked me if I knew who Draco was, I cleverly lied and told him yes, because I didn’t want to hear everything the unrestrained ass knew about Greece. It took a good hour, I estimated.
To listen to Dr. Geneva talk about death, that is, as opposed to being smothered by outerwear in ancient Athens, which probably only took minutes, depending on the weight of the cloaks and if they were real wool as opposed to acrylic; or scaphism, which apparently took many days.
“So, in conclusion,” the massive windbag had told me, “nobody can die from Woz withdrawal. Now, overdoses—those are proven to be causally related to death. You are doing a good deed for your future, young man. A good deed, indeed! Now, strip yourself naked, take off all your clothes, and stand here so I can give you a medical examination! You are my first human patient!”
What an incredible tool.
And Parker was definitely enthusiastic about the request to remove all my clothing, which I did on my own.
Whatever. Cogs.
I put my food away, undressed, and got into bed.
On Earth, it was Christmas Day, and the twenty-ninth and thirtieth wars were well under way.
Good King Wenceslas, and a Serious Obelisk of Friendship
It was the singing in the hallway that woke me up.
I was neither mentally nor physically prepared to deal with singing on the Tennessee, especially given the depths of my unconsciousness.
Billy must have heard me turning over in my bed as I attempted to cover my ears with the pillows. He said, “What the fuck is that, Cager?”
“I’m not sure, but it sounds like ‘Frosty the Snowman,’ ” I answered.
In fact it was “Good King Wenceslas,” but I know almost nothing about Christmas songs. What I was fairly certain of, however, was that our carolers had to have been organized by that sex-obsessed cretin Parker. The thought of this was simultaneously a bit touching and also completely aggravating.
I groaned and threw the bedclothes off me. Naturally, I had absolutely no concept of time, but I was confident I hadn’t slept nearly as long as a sixteen-year-old boy is supposed to sleep, which, to me, is at least fourteen hours.
“How are you feeling?” Billy asked.
“Just like Christmas.”
The singing in the hallway gave no sign of letting up in volume or duration.
I stomped to the door, which was dumb because nobody can hear a teenager stomping in space, and what’s the purpose of stomping if no one can hear you? It’s as ridiculous as programming a cog to get hard-ons.
Then I slapped my hand on the door, and it slid open like the curtain on a very cheap off-Broadway musical, and there I was, standing in nothing but my briefs, on the threshold of my stateroom’s doorway, looking at Parker and three other singing cogs. And they were all dressed in bright-green Christmas elf costumes—two boys, and two girls.
Parker looked particularly ridiculous. He wore a pointed felt hat and a V-neck elf’s tunic opened to just below his belly button and cinched at his hips with a belt of woven holly leaves. Parker had green felt slippers with bells on them too, and he wore no pants—only a very clingy pair of tight white underwear.
I tried not to glance down. I honestly tried.
Damn involuntary responses!
It was Christmas, and it was hell, all at the same time.
But they did harmonize nicely.
Finally, the song ended. I didn’t know what to say. What does a guy say when he’s standing there in his underwear, being sung to by a group of cog elves, one of whom is also in his underwear?
Parker said, “Merry Christmas, Cager! Wow! I very much love what you wear to bed! Look! We match!”
I held up my hand and shook my head.
It’s stupid to be embarrassed—no matter what—in front of cogs. They’re just machines. I may just as well have been embarrassed in front of a coffee grinder. It’s also why I was never intentionally polite to them. Nobody was polite to cogs, or to escalators or clothes dryers, for that matter.
So Parker continued, “Did you like our song?”
“I’m not sure. You woke me up. I don’t like being woken up.”
“You’ve been sleeping for twelve hours,” Parker pointed out. Then, leaning to one side in order to look past me into my room, added, “Oh! Is that your friend? He’s very sexually attractive! What’s his name?”
For an instant—but only an instant—I was perturbed that Parker, my personal valet, had been paying any attention to Billy Hinman, which is something that everyone always did, anyway. But Billy Hinman did not have his own perverted valet cog. Why would he? Nobody would have believed that Billy Hinman would ever voluntarily come up to the Tennessee in the first place.
I glanced back at Billy, who was lying on his side, bleary-eyed, watching me and the elves, and Parker in his felt hat and underwear standing in the doorway. And I thought, man, if this didn’t seem like a drug trip to Billy, then nothing else ever could have.
“His name is Billy Hinman. Leave him alone, Parker.” Then, to Billy, I said, “This is my personal valet, Parker.”
And Billy said, “That dude with no pants has a serious obelisk of friendship going on down south.”
Parker lifted up the bottom of his elf shirt so we could all see what was impossible to unsee. “Yes,” he said, “Cager, I have an erection again.”
“Whatever, Parker. I’m happy for you. Now, why don’t you and the rest of Father Christmas’s little helpers go down and see if you can bring up some breakfast for Billy and me?”
“Breakfast in bed!” Parker said.
I shut the door on our carolers and got back under my covers.
And Billy Hinman said, “Are they here yet?”
“I just sent them. How could they possibly get breakfast and be back so fast?”
“No. Not them. I mean the people who keep talking about Tennessee. I keep hearing them, like there’s a speaker inside my ears. Can’t you hear them?”
Woz messed with my head. Maybe space messed with Billy’s.
“No. I’m sorry, Bill. I don’t think it’s anything real. This whole trip’s been— ”
“Uh-uh,” Billy said. “They know all about us, Cager. They’re coming here, to the Tennessee.”
“Okay. If you say so.”
“And why was that singing dude in his underwear?”
“He’s a fucking horny cog,” I said.
“Horny.”
I lifted my head to face Billy. “And why does your dad make cogs who get hard-ons all the time?”
So it was rather hyperbolic. I didn’t think Parker had an erection all the time.
Billy Hinman said, “It’s a long story. I’ll tell you sometime. But, are you in good enough shape to go out and do something with me today? I’m about ready to go back home if you’re never going to get better, Cager.”
I didn’t have the guts to tell him that our transpod had gone back, so we were stuck there on the Tennessee for at least two weeks, in my estimation, until any others returned.
At the time I also had no idea that no transpods would ever come back to the Tennessee.
Not ever.
Deck 21
We may be stuck here,” Meg said.
“What do
you mean?”
“I mean the transpod left. It’s gone. I have no idea why my phone doesn’t work anymore, but it fucking doesn’t, and I’m worried that maybe nobody else is going to come up here for a long time, so it might just be us and all these cogs for who knows how long.”
“That’s not good enough,” Jeffrie said. “You got us up here, you can get us down, right? Just do your thing. Write that shit.”
“On what? I told you, my phone doesn’t work. I can’t even write you an apology unless I find some fucking paper and shit.”
“Then we own this fucker,” Jeffrie said.
Cogs don’t sleep. They just park themselves somewhere out of the way, where human beings won’t see them, and then pop back into action when they’re needed, which meant most of the cogs on the Tennessee were parked, motionless and silent, waiting for the first wave of human passengers.
It was a ship of corpses that were never alive in the first place.
Being stuck on the Tennessee was a challenge for Meg and Jeffrie, who had to find a place to sleep, and food, and ways to take care of the other things that human bodies routinely need to take care of.
When they arrived on board the Tennessee, the girls kept with their original group of cogs. They had been suited up again in cruise-attendant uniforms that were emblazoned with the number 21, and then they were dropped off at the secure entryway to Deck 21, which was entirely uninhabited except for dozens and dozens of sleeping cogs, which Jeffrie found to be very creepy and disturbing.
“I wonder if cogs burn,” she said.
“Anything will burn if it gets hot enough,” Meg answered. “But don’t get any ideas, Jeffrie. Being stuck here is one thing. Dying in a fire alone up here is another thing altogether.”
“You worry too much.”
They slept in a hotel called the Memphis on Deck 21. At first Jeffrie wanted her own, separate room, but Meg talked her out of it, even though they had to share one large bed. All the rooms at the Memphis had only one bed.
Meg and Jeffrie fed themselves from the kitchen in a nearby nightspot called the Key West Club. Deck 21 was all very cheap looking. It reminded Meg of some of the made-to-look-ancient attractions in Las Vegas, which she and her father had driven to just before their move to Antelope Acres.