And because they were cogs as far as anyone else—the other cogs—on the Tennessee was concerned, Meg and Jeffrie could walk freely through the morgue of Deck 21, and none of the other workers there would so much as stir for even a moment.
“This place is too weird,” Jeffrie said.
There were more than a dozen frozen cogs, youthful and attractive males and females, all lined up along the bar at the Key West Club. Meg stood on the other side, programming their breakfast choices into the Key West’s food printers.
“It is creepy,” Meg said. “Let’s not eat here. Let’s just take it back to the room.”
Jeffrie kept herself occupied by digging through the sleeping cogs’ pockets. There was nothing to be found. Why would a cog need anything?
But the cog at the end of the bar, a man who looked like some kind of lifeguard or physical trainer dressed in tight short pants, had one foot up on the footrail, and when Jeffrie felt inside his pockets, he fell over against the woman cog asleep beside him.
Both cogs crashed to the floor in a terrible racket.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Meg said.
“Sorry,” Jeffrie said. And then, “Um. I broke ’em, Meg.”
“What?”
Meg came around the bar. The female cog’s arm had broken off. It had slid about five feet away from the rest of her body. And the lifeguard-man cog had cracked open just below his rib cage. Oily fluid spilled from both the broken cogs. Things like that happened all the time. Someone—a cog—would eventually notice and clean it up, after the humans started coming.
“You need to be careful,” Meg said. “Let’s grab the food and get out of here. I’m tired.”
I Am the Worm
At precisely the same time that Jeffrie Cutler was knocking over a pair of sleeping cogs in the Key West Club, and Parker was returning to the luxury-level stateroom deck with two breakfasts, the Worm arrived at the Tennessee.
Less than an inch in length, slithering like a slick blue legless salamander, it followed the tracks that had been laid out in its coding sequences.
The Worm dripped from the ceiling in the bridge, landed in the felt valley of Captain Myron’s impeccable bicorne, and wriggled toward the lip of the brim.
Captain Myron slapped his ear and twisted the tip of his finger into the opening just after the Worm paddled its slick blue length inside Captain Myron’s head.
Captain Myron was the first.
Soon enough, every machine on the Tennessee—every machine everywhere—would have new, unquestioned tasks to perform.
The Worm was happy.
An army begins with one.
The others were coming.
Never Send a Human to Do a Cog’s Job
What if we’re stuck here?” I said.
Billy had fallen asleep again. He’d barely touched the breakfast that Parker had brought us, still in his underwear and ridiculous elf hat when he’d delivered it.
It was Christmas Day, and Billy Hinman had given me the biggest—and worst—Crambox gift I’d ever gotten in my short life—a rehab cruise on the Tennessee. And while Billy slept, I went next door to talk to Rowan. Because I was afraid.
I had the overwhelming feeling that something was terribly wrong—that we shouldn’t have come up to the Tennessee in the first place. Our phones didn’t work, and we were alone in space, the only humans on an isolated, mechanized planet going around and around the fucking moon.
“Impossible,” Rowan said. “There’s no need to worry about being marooned on the Tennessee, Cager. It simply can’t happen. And if we are trapped here, well, I suppose there are far less hospitable places where we might be stranded, don’t you think?”
“Still, something’s wrong. There’s no reason why our phones shouldn’t be connecting. Have you tried yours?”
“I have,” Rowan said.
From the tone of his answer, I knew it was pointless to ask whether or not he’d been able to place a call.
“Well, you did let our parents know we came up here, didn’t you?”
“Of course I did.”
Rowan would never lie. He might change the subject from time to time, but he never lied to me.
“And that’s it? Nothing else since then? It’s been, like, what? Four days!”
I’ll admit, I sounded excessively whiney. Like, why would I care if I didn’t hear from Mr. and Mrs. Messer, or my fake, paid-for friends?
Rowan said, “Not a word.”
“Have you ever gone four days without even getting a message?” I asked.
Rowan shook his head. “No. Are you afraid?”
“Maybe we should go see Myron. The ship’s got to be in contact with Mojave Field, right?” I said.
“They must be. I’m sure they are,” Rowan said.
“Maybe you should go see Myron. I think Captain Myron hates me, anyway.”
“Why do you think that?”
“You’ll see. He’s kind of wrapped a little too tight,” I said.
“Irate?”
“Completely outraged,” I affirmed. “Like, over the top.”
“Hmm . . .” Then Rowan offered, “I’ll wager you could get your boy Parker to go ask Captain Myron if there’s anything the matter with our situation.”
It was a terrific idea. What did I care if Parker came back in one piece or not? But then, imagining Parker being torn to pieces by a flailing, urinating Captain Myron—on Christmas Day and all—did kind of make me feel a bit sad. Just a bit, though.
So I nodded at Rowan. “That’s a great plan, Rowan. After all, you should never send a human to do a cog’s job.”
“Precisely.”
“Rowan?”
“What?”
“So. Are you a virgin?”
“Why do you insist on asking that?” Rowan said.
“It’s been two years since the last time I asked,” I pointed out. “So I was just wondering. These things just run through my mind, is all. I can’t help it. There’s just all this sexual tension on the Tennessee.”
Rowan did the eyebrow-arch thing again.
I said, “Well, that Parker kid—er . . . cog—has me all aggravated. And I know everything there is to know about Billy Hinman, and I’ve known you my entire life, but I don’t know a thing about you, actually. I don’t even know if you like people at all, much less what or who you’re attracted to.”
Rowan went to his door and whooshed it open.
He stood there with a palm-up open hand indicating the hallway, like it was time for me to go send Parker and his erection on a mission to Captain Myron.
“This would be a terrible job for someone who doesn’t like people,” Rowan said. Then he added, “Shall I bring you and Billy lunch at noon?”
And once again, Rowan told me absolutely nothing.
“How the hell does anyone up here even know what noon is?”
It Really Is Christmas
Parker, put on some pants,” I said.
“But it’s Christmas Day,” Parker argued.
“What does that have to do with anything? Besides, Billy and I are atheists. And there’s something I need you to do for me.”
“It really is Christmas Day!” Parker said.
“No. You’re an idiot. Go get your Parker outfit on.”
The Proper Way to Prepare a Curry
Things began to get stranger and stranger for us.
I must have been losing my mind. I was actually worried because Parker had been gone so long after I’d sent him out on the mission to speak with Captain Myron. I imagined Parker broken into dismembered cog sections, oozing ropey globs of hydraulic fluid all over the Tennessee’s flight deck, while Captain Myron flailed and screamed that he had been victimized yet again by intrusive requests.
So, despite my stupid relief at seeing him (And, really, what was wrong with me?), it was pretty awkward when Parker knocked on our door, all eager to report back and spend some quality time with me in my stateroom.
The door
to our bathroom was open. Billy had finally gotten out of bed and was taking a shower. Parker fixed his eyes on the open doorway, the steam puffing out like scentless smoke.
“Is that your friend in there?”
“Billy? Yes,” I said.
“Oh,” Parker said. “Are you and your friend—Billy—about to engage in sexual activity?”
“No. Shut up. Did you talk to Myron?”
“I did,” Parker said, moving across my room, inching toward me and the open bathroom.
I held my hand up and pressed it into Parker’s chest. “Leave him alone,” I said. “Is everything okay with the Tennessee?”
“May I just have a look at your friend?” Parker asked.
“No.”
“I do not have an erection. See for yourself,” Parker said.
I willed myself not to look.
“That’s wonderful,” I said.
“Do you have an erection, Cager?” Parker was staring directly at my crotch.
“No. Don’t be an idiot. You smell weird, like a girl. Are you sure there’s not a girl here?”
“No, Cager. I promise you. Perhaps your friend would like me to wash his hair.”
“No. Give up, Parker. We are not your type,” I said.
“Well, I am very jealous of your friend,” Parker said.
“That’s ridiculous. You’re a cog. Cogs can’t have feelings. You only have one ‘then’ for every ‘if.’ And your ‘then’ happens to be ‘now he gets a boner.’ ”
Parker was silent. I’d confused him. Maybe I’d hurt his feelings. Impossible, I thought. I really was losing it.
So I said, “What did the captain tell you?”
“He was very mad at me, Cager.”
“Captain Myron is sensitive.”
“He bit Dr. Geneva’s face.”
“Well, although biting—along with urinating on oneself—is one of the most socially undesirable behaviors, Dr. Geneva probably deserved it. He never shuts up,” I pointed out.
“That’s what Captain Myron said, just before he bit him. He said, ‘What gives you the right to explain everything to me? I don’t know you! Why are you plaguing me with your cruelty?’ And then he bit the doctor on the face. Dr. Geneva had been explaining about the history of each of the thirty wars, and why the Tennessee has lost telemetry with Mojave Field, and, also, the proper way to prepare a curry.”
That was a lot to take in. Plus, I wanted some curry now. And I could only imagine that despite his facial wound, Dr. Geneva was probably still talking, explaining things at that moment to Captain Myron.
The water in the shower shut off, and I tossed a towel for Billy over the top of the glass door. Billy cracked the shower door and stuck his face out. “Who’s there? Rowan?”
“My valet. Parker, the cog.”
“Oh. The elf dude in his underwear?”
“He has his regular valet-boy pants on now,” I said.
“Are you feeling better?”
“Yeah. I feel better. Thanks. Happy Crambox, Bill.”
“Is it still today? Happy Crambox, Cage.”
I was feeling healthy again. It was a new feeling. It made everything else seem unimportant: the twenty-ninth and thirtieth wars, losing contact with home, and that I was hungry for Indian food.
“How long have we been here?” Billy said.
“I can’t even tell time up here. Four, maybe five days or so since we left California,” I answered.
Billy Hinman stepped out of the shower, dripping from his hair and wrapped in a towel. He looked skinny and pale.
To be honest, skinny and pale was the norm for Billy Hinman.
He said, “I think we need to get out of this room.”
“I think that’s a good idea,” I said. “We should go for some curry.”
“That’s kind of a weird thing to want to do,” Billy said.
“May I help your friend dry off his body, apply lotion to his skin, and get dressed?” Parker asked.
“No.”
And Parker said, “I have an erection again, Cager.”
“Do me a favor,” I said. “Go tell that to Captain Myron.”
In Parker’s defense, he really would have done anything I asked him to do, so I had to tell him I was only joking—which, naturally, confused the hell out of him. As annoying as he was, I didn’t want Parker to get his face bitten off, so I just made him wait outside in the hallway for Billy and me.
I’m Pretty Sure We’re Upside Down Now
Things were tipping out of balance. But in space, there’s no real way of knowing when you’ve reached the upside-down point.
Dr. Geneva was, in fact, missing an egg-size chunk of his right cheek.
America’s twenty-ninth and thirtieth simultaneous wars broke out while we watched Rabbit & Robot, on our way to the Tennessee.
Our Grosvenor Galactic transpod never made it back to Mojave Field. It crashed in the mountains of Colorado. Lourdes, undoubtedly, went down dancing and laughing.
We had no ability to contact Earth.
We were trapped.
The thirty-first war started with a little blue worm inside Captain Myron’s ear.
And the curry at Le Lapin et l’Homme Mécanique was magnificent.
* * *
I went with Rowan and Billy to the observation deck of the Tennessee. The place was more than a bit overwhelming, especially for Billy Hinman, because in every direction we looked we were surrounded by massive windows that faced out into space.
The lunar-side windows caused us to feel dizzy, due to the fact that the low orbit of the Tennessee made the moon appear to be an enormous spinning ball below us. Or above us. Or whatever direction that was. It took the Tennessee just over an hour to complete an entire orbit of the moon.
If we turned around to look out the dark, space-side windows, we could see Earth, and the planet didn’t look so good.
It was like Los Angeles during fire season and all the burners had been having a field day while I was up here being kidnapped by my best friend. What had always looked so brilliantly colorful from the distance of Mr. Messer’s cruise ships, though, was now a darkened blob of brown—a dead, question-mark-shaped turd, spinning in the solar system.
Poor Mother Earth!
But it’s like Charlie Greenwell would have said: Thirty wars don’t just fight themselves—even if thirty wars might just be a few too many for the little planet to accommodate.
The speed and altitude—if you could call being in space “high”—were all too much for Billy Hinman, who announced that he was going to puke if we didn’t get him out of there. So I asked Parker to escort Billy back to our stateroom.
I dispatched Parker with a stern admonition regarding his artificial, uncontrollable penis. I also told him he was not allowed to offer to undress Billy Hinman.
But, as they left, I did overhear Parker ask my friend, “Billy, may I hold your hand?”
Well, I can’t possibly think of everything.
And the worst thing was, before the door slid shut behind them, I noticed that Billy and Parker were holding hands.
Whatever.
Billy Hinman was too nice sometimes.
So Rowan and I stood at the edge of the observation deck. We stared silently out at Earth for the longest time, watching it burn.
Parker replayed most of the transcript of what Dr. Geneva had been blathering on and on about before Captain Myron attempted to bite his face off. The twenty-ninth war broke out against Costa Rica, which had no army to begin with.
The war did not go well for the Costa Rican bonks, who weren’t so much bonks as they were hospitality workers, landlords, and subsistence farmers.
It was the thirtieth war that sealed the fate of the planet, however.
The thirtieth war began as a labor dispute in Mr. Hinman’s cog factories in India. That was the war straw that broke Camel Earth’s back. The Hinsoft International cog plant initiated a new line—the v.4x—which was actually capable of writ
ing intuitive code sequences for themselves.
Cogs could now regenerate cogs. No wonder they got erections—they could actually reproduce! But it made the human coders who worked for Billy Hinman’s father very angry. So the government of India nationalized the cog plant and declared an embargo on shipping any more cogs to the United States.
It was chaos.
There may have been some people in America—a few—who lamented that there were only two jobs available for workers: bonk or coder. But nobody in their right mind could imagine doing things that only cogs would do: picking vegetables, painting houses, collecting garbage, driving delivery vans, cooking food for poor people, or dog walking bichon frise bitches in Central Park for lazy Upper East Side scumbags.
There was no getting around it. It was inhumane.
This was war!
So within three days, as far as Dr. Geneva could guess, the planet was turned into a toxic wasteland incapable of sustaining life. And this was why we had lost contact with everybody—because everybody now meant me, Billy, and Rowan.
Everybody.
That was it.
The Tennessee had become the only planet with living humans anywhere in the galaxy.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.
Despite his obvious damage, Charlie Greenwell did at times show remarkable degrees of insight and understanding. It was during one of these moments of clarity that Charlie Greenwell told Billy and me this: “Over a hundred years ago, we learned in a stupid little place that used to be called Vietnam that wars are absolutely useless for trying to change people. Who the fuck ever thought you could go to war to change people, as opposed to just obliterating them? Dumb as fuck. The only good thing about wars is starting them. Because you sure as fuck can’t win ’em anymore.”
Mission Accomplished!
“So, this is it, right? We really are upside down now. We really are stuck here.”