Far-out Show (9781465735829) Read online

  The Far-Out Show

  A Novel

  By Thomas P. Hanna

  Copyright 2011 Thomas P. Hanna

  Smashwords Edition

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  Chapter 01

  “Tell me what I am to do again.”

  “Talk to us, Nerber. Tell us everything that is going on in your head. What body sensations you are feeling, whatever thoughts occur to you since they may be parts of your unique experience, bits we do not already know about you. Nothing is irrelevant. Nothing is too minor to mention or even complain about. Nothing is taboo. It will all distract the audience and maybe even fascinate them which would be a nice extra and make you even more valuable to us.” The female voice was a synthesized version of Feedle speaking but at this stage Nerber wasn’t distracted by that bit of artificiality, a quirk the engineers hadn’t been able to overcome in the communications with the transport system.

  “All in the name of commerce. Okay, I am not arguing against that, only commenting in case you want to edit a section to hint that I started off more worried than I am or am willing to tell our whole kind that I am. I did take a briefing on what was expected before I applied to do this.

  “Okay. I was hatched at a very young age... Just yoking... Ow! Okay, okay, no more of what even I know are pudgerbip comments. I, Nerber, being supposedly capable of deciding such things for myself, certify that I am off on the next and probably greatest stage of an adventure to outdo all that have come before this. Of course I could not do this by myself alone but since it is not customary among our kind to share credits without a lot of lawyer fights and... Ow! Stop doing that! If you tell me to say what comes into my head then you have to listen to it whether it is what you want to hear or not. I know this is supposed to distract me during this so far untested stage of the game – you did not know I knew that did you? One more shock and I shut up and you do not have anything expect total fakery to work with and we all know how fakery affects the audience interest when it is recognized – and how soon it is recognized in this day of constant...

  “Whoops, that puts a stain on the floor! Save the scientists the earful about how their stuff did not work. I blocked the part of your system that is supposed to shoot those soothing chemicals into me on your command. I do not trust those substances not to remove my edge when I am in position to do the challenges – or to have other intended effects on me. Like letting you manipulate me from inside myself without knowing what is happening to keep me from so far outdoing the other contestants that the audiences’ anticipation wouldn’t be at the high-most level. I am doing what I can to make this as fair a competition as I can. If you do not like that you can stop this process and disqualify me right now without making me a test subject for the many parts of the new technical processes that, despite your repeated assurances to those of us risking ourselves using them for the first times, have not been extensively tested and proved entirely and beyond question safe.

  “You will want to edit this out so future competitors will not get the idea to sidestep your hidden control factors, but you are going to heavily edit it all anyway so that is not artcram dipply on a heepnitz.

  “Something is happening. I cannot hear machinery running but I seem to be vibrating. Of course because of the blocking strap I cannot see anything and that also makes it hard for me to hear but this is an all-over feeling. I am not willing to be the test subject on this point but it will make the moving up and down a lot easier if you can truly show that the transport system does not damage the seeing sense so the extra precaution of covering our eyes during that phase is not needed.

  “Bright light but not too bright. Hmm, feels good. Refreshing. Top me up. I get why I have to do this with near empty body reserves since it is a new technology and, again despite your firm assurances, no one knows how things might get mixed up in the process and create unsustainable mis-mixes. Having to stay there long enough to face the game challenges while staying in a near-depleted condition in case a faster than anticipated bring-back is needed focuses you on the risks and hardships in doing this. Is it really worth the possible rewards even if you win big? Something for those who bother to do that to think about. I get that stressed contestants make for more audience satisfaction but what are the limits? When do the risks win out and argue against for doing this or letting anyone else be enticed to do it without truly proven safeguards?

  “Oh my wimpledimples, I am blind! Huh, oh wait, I do not know if I am or not since I forgot I have this blocking strap around my head. Of course with that in place I might truly have become blind but would not know it. Maybe you and I all need to be concerned whether the stress or some radiations from the machinery or some other factor affect memory and the funny bones during transfer.”

  “Tell us about what you think you will find where you are going, Nerber.” He recognized this as the synthesized version of Lacrat’s voice. He liked Lacrat; didn’t entirely trust him but liked him. The others he didn’t trust as far as he could gerlup a fingfangfong but they were the keepers of the gateway to what he wanted so he went along with them as much as needed.

  “If the few images we are told our scientists have detected are truly accurate, there must be very exotic places there. A few familiar ones but many strange looking ones where there are things all around that we have nothing like so I cannot much imagine what they are truly like. Of course some or most of that might be imaginative additions by your technicians. Only a few insiders would know about that for certain. I do not trust any business guys to make decisions except for their own short-term profit but I assume that means I will find myself in a concentrated living area, not out in a barren space where I would be unlikely to find very many inhabitants so I would not be able to attempt the show’s challenges.”

  Lacrat said to him in a quiet sing-song manner, “Keep it in your focus that you want to see, and especially expose Wilburps to, as many different locations, situations, and types as you can. There is more credit for getting close enough to multiple units of a type than for spending extended time with only one or a few. Variety, Nerber. Strive for a variety of contacts and experiences. Do not be boring. See that world. Be useful.”

  “Strange... Never felt this way before. Has anyone ever felt like this before? How to describe it? Nerber through the snaggiewarp. It is premcuckle in nitpickflub. Like I am floating free. Like I am becoming a vapor and... Oh yes, this must be it. Here I go.” Nerber’s voice quickly faded away.

  “I knew this would be a worrying moment but I didn’t expect to be one of the worryingers,” Lacrat said in a mere whisper.

  “There has to be a first time to try everything. That’s what we reward a few for doing,” Feedle said matter of factly.

  “...Not unpleasant but not what I am used to.” Nerber’s voice faded in and quickly returned to his normal tone and volume.

  “He’s back,” Lacrat said with a sigh of relief.

  “Do we have confirmation that he made the move and arrived where we wanted him to?” Feedle asked.

  “Huh? What is going on? Was I dreaming? I feel sort of normal but sort of truly strange. Where am I? Oh, right, I remember where I was and what I was doing but did I get where I was going? How can I be sure? What is this thing I am holding? Oh, right, I know what it should be. I thought I would feel different when I knew I had moved
to the next step but mostly I feel confused with a touch of groggy. What am I supposed to do now since I am lost and confused?”

  “Pull yourself together, Nerber. You have challenges to face and honor, or at least notoriety, to claim.” From its sound this synthesized voice was coming from right beside him. Nerber knew that should be giving him important information but his mind was still minimally functional with mostly buzz and dullness to report.

  Chapter 02

  The most notable feature of Oakline Street in Swiftyville was the total lack of oaks or any other kinds of trees lining it. It was a pothole-pocked back street that mostly ran by old three-story buildings that had once been bustling factories but were now mainly empty eyesores behind metal-mesh fencing.

  This particular block of Oakline formed the fourth side of a city park that was the updated version of a three block long one that was here back when this was a separate town. A remnant of forest formed the other three sides, wrapped loosely around an open grassy area that had a small pond with a gazebo and two benches spaced around it toward one end. An additional pair of back-to-back benches faced in and out of the park’s grassy area at the street edge.

  There was little traffic on the street but what there was tended to be large trucks by-passing the traffic lights and stop signs on the main streets. One such truck rumbled by now, rattling noisily each time a tire tried but failed to fit into a pothole. Conveniently for all concerned, the driver was so focused on avoiding the pits in the road ahead that he didn’t notice when an object the size of a seated man clasping to him a box almost half his size appeared in the middle of the street just behind him. A few seconds difference in the timing and this story might have been very different.

  The object appeared in the street seemingly out of nowhere. It wasn’t flung here from off to the side, didn’t fall out of a passing aircraft, and didn’t fall off the truck although that last seemed like the most likely explanation.

  It was not immediately clear what the object was. An avid sci-fi enthusiast might have assumed he was day-dreaming it; most others would scratch their heads and say they had no clue.

  Then it moved.

  In fact as one large part tilted up and others swung out to the sides it became recognizable as a humanoid creature that was sitting on the ground, head bent forward a bit, with its arms wrapped around a rectangular box-like item about eighteen inches by fourteen inches and ten inches thick.

  The creature placed the box beside it while it carefully stood up and checked itself. Its basic humanoid shape was evident now. It had the general appearance of a slightly odd-looking human male in his late twenties who was wearing a knock-off of a long-sleeved denim jacket over a blue chambray shirt buttoned to the collar as if to minimize the amount of exposed skin available for close examination. His denim jeans flared enough to accommodate clownishly large shoes that were high enough to qualify as boots. The overall effect was nerdish but by that fact not as attention-grabbing as it might have seemed otherwise. This creature also had some hard-to-overlook non-human traits.

  Its skin was pale but definitely had a green color; its feet seemed awkwardly large even hidden inside the big shoes; its head seemed strange, with what looked like a large ridge running entirely around it at the level where we might expect there to be eyes, which were not in evidence, and an off-center mass of light brown hair-like stuff under what was a large Australian-style bush hat pulled down tight on it unless all of that stuff was actually part of the head. Overall, the creature looked odd but beyond its skin color it wasn’t really clear why.

  When its hands brailled its head, it pulled off what was indeed a tight-fitting big hat, adjusted the connected mass of what was indeed hair-substitute, aka a wig, into what humans would consider a more normal position and patted that into place. Then it peeled off the ridge from around its head that now seemed simply to be functioning as a blindfold.

  Nerber blinked his obvious but not extraordinary-looking eyes and looked around saying, “There, that is so much better. They said I should wear that as extra protection but only I ever need to know that even in that short time I got so used to not seeing that I almost forgot to take the thing off. Wow, this place is as exotic as we thought. So much to experience and learn and challenge. But first things in the first place.”

  He slipped a thin rod with different protruding ridge patterns on its two ends from his left sleeve and fitted it into the end of a shorter and thicker tube that he pulled out of the top of his left boot. Fitted together that way they were a reasonable equivalent of a screwdriver. He used the other more flattened end of the tube like a dull blade to slice the thin opaque layer that covered all surfaces of the boxy item. He cut it along the top and sides edges of one of its smaller side faces. That allowed him to open out that side far enough for him to reach inside. The innards were a mass of complicated looking hardware, like the insides of a computer but in this device everything appeared to be continuous, no removable parts.

  Reversing the rod so its other end became the tool that fitted into a spot, he twisted the tool ninety degrees and pulled firmly but lightly on it. A boxy unit the size of a deck of playing cards with small embossed markings on all of its six sides, no two the same, detached from the lining of the box and fell into his waiting hand. “Hello again, Wowseyla, newest of the mini-zerpy devices,” he said.

  Without delay he closed up the large boxy item, reversed the rod and used the original tool end to reseal the side.

  Then he slipped the tool into a pocket, not concerned about it being noticed now. He pressed one marking on Wowseyla and waited with a bit of apprehension.

  When the unit vibrated in his hand he smiled and relaxed a bit. “You made the transfer intact, you are functional, and your self-diagnostic program finds all your systems undamaged. Multiple excuses for a really pomidipser quidniffop although there is no time for one right now. I owe me one and I will not forget.”

  He held one of the smallest faces of Wowseyla almost touching a spot on the upper right hand corner of one of the two largest faces of the large box, touched a marking on Wowseyla, and waited.

  Nothing visible occurred but significant things happened inside the boxy thing. A vibration of Wowseyla indicated when the process was completed.

  “They will be worried by this delay in connecting so I will not keep them waiting longer than I need to. I will stay out of monitoring range just long enough to get myself ready to give me an edge in case they play nasty as they are likely to think they can do without penalties. They do not need to know what I brought along with me that they did not know about, only that I may surprise them when I can soften the effects when they try to prod me.”

  He touched a sequence of the embossed markings on Wowseyla and it altered its outer appearance to a fairly nondescript rough rock-like look. He pressed this to the front of the crown of his bush hat where it stayed in place as if pinned there. “That should let you goodly record the views around me as I go about my adventure but with you not be much of noticed. You seem like nothing of for being important.”

  He put the hat aside while he peeled the thin layer from all the surfaces of the large box, crumpled that matter up, and tossed it aside. After a few seconds it disintegrated into dust and blew away.

  “Are you intact, Nerber?” The odd-sounding synthesized voice came from the box that on closer inspection without the covering was apparently intended to look like and be worn as a large backpack. For those alert to such things, that closer look also made it clear that the item hovered several inches off the ground rather than sat on it.

  “Yes, I seem to have all my parts and they all seem to be working so I guess Nerber’s great adventure continues. Did you sustain any damage you can detect, Wilburps?”

  “A full self-check is underway but so far I am working. I did need to be uncovered though before I could do anything. Now I need to be fully activated.”

  “That is good news for the technicians. Both Ormelexians and their zerpi
es can be transported safely by the previously untested system. I collected as a remember-the-moment the first that-of-interesting-to-look-at-it-is that I saw,” Nerber said as he tapped the top of the box in a three taps, two taps, three taps sequence. After a moment all the visible sides of the box changed from looking like rough cloth to looking like a smooth surfaced solid rectangle with odd embossed markings on several sides. The carrying straps stayed in place.

  “Helpful alteration. That lets me survey your surroundings better and record things within range as well as make communications with the others easier. Strong recommendation, Nerber! Move us several pizmarks to your right before you do anything else? Do it, do it! Do not question!”

  At the sound of a loud air horn Nerber looked up from checking to be sure his clothes were intact, in place, and not soiled to find a large tractor-trailer headed for that spot at a moderate speed.

  Nerber dropped his hat, grabbed his backpack by the carrying strap, and ran onto the park side pavement where he hesitated to see if further evasive action was needed. He copied the driver’s gesture, a sort of wave with one’s middle finger raised, back at the man. The driver swerved his truck just enough to be sure it ran over the hat.

  To the driver’s surprise and confusion his whole rig tilted over dangerously as it passed over the hat. From the cab he couldn’t see the detail but the vehicle moved over the hat without actually contacting it even though the tires went directly over it. He was too busy trying to keep the truck from rolling onto its side, something he knew he would never be able to explain to his employers, to ask himself why or how this could be happening. His wife often told him his rudeness might be the end of him one day and this seemed like that coming true.

  Once it was beyond the hat, the truck settled back with all its tires touching the roadway but the driver was too relieved to do more than wipe the sweat from his forehead.