The Expense: Walrus Games
[Open with exterior shot of the spaceship Sanchopanza. Transition to the inside of the ship. We see Captain Jack Ford hunched over his radio transmitter, looking not unlike Christian Slater in ‘Pump Up the Volume’]
[Captain Jim Ford] Calling all ships, asteroid stations and planetary settlements. This is Jim Ford of the unaligned spaceship Sanchopanza. I am hailing you on all frequencies with an important message. There is vital information that the governments of Earth, Mars and the Asteroid Belt do NOT want you to hear.
[First Officer Nora Nuggets] Jim, there is a subspace transmission from Fred ‘The Baker’ Jackson of the Asteroid Federation.
[Captain Jim Ford] Thanks Nora.
[Fred ‘The Baker’ Jackson] Ford, I know what you are planning to do. I have to warn you, if you do this I cannot protect you.
[Captain Jim Ford] I won’t be anybody’s pawn, Johnson. This information is crucial. If people are kept in the dark they can’t hope to make their own decision.
[Fred ‘The Baker’ Jackson] You are on your own Ford. You’ll be the most reviled man in the solar system, even more hated than me, the infamous Baker of Kevinanderson Station. Over and out.
[First Officer Nora Nuggets] Jim, you know that me, Jeb and Jethro are behind you all the way on this. People need to know.
[Captain Jim Ford] Which one is Jethro again?
[First Officer Nora Nuggets] Our pilot. The one from Mars.
[CaptainJim Ford] Right. Similar names always confuse me. Now where was I? Oh yeah.
Calling all ships, asteroid stations and planetary settlements. This is Jack Ford of the unaligned spaceship Sanchopanza. I am hailing you on all frequencies with an important message. There is vital information that the governments of Earth, Mars and the Asteroid Belt do NOT want you to hear! [clears throat] (ahem)In The Force Awakens, Kylo Ren is Han Solo’s son and Ren kills Han! Also Rey is a Jedi and Luke Skywalker doesn’t say anything in the whole movie. What’s that all about?
[First Officer Nora Nuggets] [hits the very visible ‘Off’ switch] For christsakes Jim! We agreed you were going to tell people about the conspiracy by a giant multi-planetary corporation to turn everybody into fungus monsters and force a war between Earth and Mars as all part of a secret plan to hide the fact that an alien intelligence has been manipulating mankind for decades!
[Captain Jim Ford] Oohhhh. You see, when you said ‘don’t let that evil corporation hold any more secrets from humanity’ I assumed you meant Disney…
[Voice over intercom] Captain, this is Jeb. Humphrey Bogart has just appeared on our holodeck.
[First Officer Nora Nuggets] [Puzzled] I didn’t even know we had a holodeck.
[Captain Jim Ford] Which one is Jeb again?
[First Officer Nora Nuggets] Our psychotic engineer from Earth.
[Captain Jim Ford] I just find their names too similar. It’s confusing. Can’t I call them something else, like Grumpy and Sulky?
[First Officer Nora Nuggets] I think that would be somewhat demeaning for both of them. A captain really needs to show their crew more respect than that, Jim.
[Captain Jim Ford] Wise advice, Nora. I don’t know how I’d manage without you. Frankly given your level head, your experience, your technical skill and the extent to which your spacer body is actually adapted to living in low gravity you might even be as good a captain as I am!
[First Officer Nora Nuggets] Somehow, I don’t think I could quite manage to captain the ship in quite the way you do Jim.
[Captain Jim Ford] Nonsense! The trick is simply to do the first thing that comes into your head. Never fails. Speaking of which, I better check on that holodeck malarkey.
[Cut to sequence of Jim Ford making his way through the ship until he reaches the holodeck]
[Muller] Greetings Jim Ford.
[Captain Jim Ford] Oh, gosh. Mr Bogart it is a honour to meet you. I’m a big fan.
[Muller] I’m not Humphrey Bogart, you idiot. I’m a projected image of your dead friend Detective Muller.
[Captain Jim Ford] Hmmmm, I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure Muller died or something. Also that fedora makes you look a lot like Bogart.
[Muller] We go through this every bloody time Jim. I am the holographic spokesperson of an ancient artificial intelligence left here millennia ago by a species of beings too advanced for your puny primate mind too imagine.
[Captain Jim Ford] Apologies! The numerous and repeated blows to my head over the course of the last few books have played havoc with my memory. Alien intelligence right? Didn’t you used to be an evil fungus?
[Muller] Initially a scary evil corporate fungus, then a way of creating super soldiers, then a planet-eating super weapon, then a psychic computer and most recently a trans-dimensional gateway to other solar systems.
[Captain Jim Ford] So you are really just a sort of protean-science-fiction-trope generator? You just mutate each book into whatever convenient SF element the book needs?
[Muller] Exactly. Currently I’ve just added this convenient holodeck to your ship so you can have interesting side adventures. In the next book you’ll discover that I’m also a time-machine.
Speaking of which, I need you to travel to the Beta-Draconis system and help out a human colony that is in grave danger.
[Captain Jim Ford] I have mixed feelings about this Muller. I really like this holodeck, really it’s great, but…well when I started, this series was a scaled back and gritty SF adventure set in the near future with only plausible, physically sensible technology. Now I’m jetting around the galaxy, talking to aliens and landing on strange planets.
[Muller] Oh and in other good news your spaceship now has a warp drive and deflector shields! If you keep up the good work, you might get phasers and a teleport system!
[Captain Jim Ford] squee!
[First Officer Nora Nuggets] Jim, you’d better get up here right away. We’ve got trouble.
[More shots of Jim Ford running through the spaceship]
[Captain Jim Ford] Nora! What’s happening?
[First Officer Nora Nuggets] We’ve got company Jim.
[An image appears on the great big view screen on the ship’s bridge which is increasingly looking like the USS Enterprise]
[Captain Jim Ford] Is that screen new?
[A woman appears on the screen]
[Supreme President of the Solar System] Greetings. By unanimous agreement of the governments of Earth, Mars, the Outer Planets, Asteroid Belt and Interstellar Colonies, I have been appointed Supreme President of the Solar System.
[Captain Jim Ford] Congratulations.
[Supreme President of the Solar System] Shut it you obnoxious sh*&Tstain m*&*th**ing **ckwi&^$ **&*%$er. I have been granted this unique honour to accomplish two tasks. The first was to assemble this mighty armada comprising ships from every space navy there is, plus every fleet of space pirates, asteroid rebels and corporate security I could get my hands on.
[First Officer Nora Nuggets] What she is saying checks out, Jim. We are surrounded in all six directions by highly armed vessels. They all have weapons charged and locked on us.
[Captain Jim Ford] eep!
[Supreme President of the Solar System] My second task was to lead this armada, hunt you down and then blow you and your ship to smithereens, then take those smithereens and dump them in a gas giant and then take that gas giant and throw it into a white dwarf star and then take THAT star and throw it into a blackhole, so that there is an absolute guarantee to all of humanity that every last molecule of your %$%^&ing existence need never, ever bother anybody again.
[Captain Jim Ford] Seems a bit harsh. I mean, that movie has been out for decades.
[Supreme President of the Solar System] Jim Ford, since you started your illustrious career as a space captain, this solar system has been ravaged by a mutant space fungus, lost multiple asteroid colonies, had the WHOLE PLANET of Venus eaten by a space monster, had multiple military conflicts and to top it all, somebody just droppe
d several ginormous rocks on a number of Earth cities killing billions and plunging the planet into a nuclear winter. We have backtracked the root causes of all these events and each and every one comes back to you and your *&^%$ing meddling. For the sake of humanity, you, your crew, your ship and your ship’s cat Sparkles have to die. It is not required that you die slowly and in great pain - that’s just an added bonus.
[The Supreme President of the Solar System turns to somebody off-screen]
Open fire!!!!
[First Officer Nora Nuggets] eep!
How will Captain Jim Ford get out of this predicament?! Find out in Book 17 of The Expense series: Ciabatta Burn: Alien Fungus Time Machine.
Iron Chamber of Walrus
Introduction by Camestros Felapton: Timothy hates the word ‘pastiche’, he prefers the word ‘homage’ (although he does confuse that with cheese). People often forget the debt Timothy owes to John C. Wright, multiple Hugo nominee and one of the few self-confessed finest writers in the world today. Yet Timothy also deeply values the work of one of Britain’s great ‘superversive’ fantasy authors. Like Wright, the Reverend Wilbert Awdry was a religious man whose theological perspective informed his inspiring works of speculative fiction - work that anticipated the ‘steam punk’ trends of today. Timothy has crafted this story as a tribute to both men. Having said that, Timothy did get stuck with how to finish the story and how to include a walrus, so I wrote the ending for him.