My Arm Almost Got Me Killed

Sorry this post is late. Mum and Momma, please stop messaging. I’m alive. But your concern is warranted, because I’ve been comatose all weekend.

On Friday, after I published my story on VersePress, I docked onto the verse’s craziest space station, known by humans as Zandrabak. It’s as big as a small city on Earth, and they call it everything from “the capitol of interstellar pit stops” to “The Silk Road of the century.” I’ve wanted to see this place since I was a kid, check the cool alien tech for sale and see aliens I’d never seen before.

But we had to save tourism for another day. Zeux doesn’t want any delays on our trip to her home world, she wants to get there sooner than ASAP. We just needed to stop, grab supplies, then boot. But instead, a few… unexpected things happened.

Maybe I’m just a spoiled brat raised on all the wrong sci-fi shows, but… I expected there to be more of a… human presence in the universe. I mean, on Star Trek, Star Wars, even on Doctor Who, every other person is a human. There’s over 8,000 beings on this “heavily diverse” station at one time, and I figured a good 2,000 of those beings would be human.

I was the only one.

Let me repeat this: I was the only human on Zandrabak.

You’ve got weird bugs climbing on the ceiling, some skinny green plant-looking thing, midget gnomes with six arms, giant elephant people with wings—most aliens aren’t even humanoid. I thought aliens were mostly like the aliens that immigrated to Earth, that they’d at least have a similar facial structure, but no. Everyone’s so different.

Life is much more swert than television.

But once I got over the awe of it all, I started feeling awkward. I was the only human there. Sure, Hogarth was hiding back on The Escape, but… I felt sore as a thumb, or however that expression goes. People would stop and stare at me. Some even sniggered. Well, I think they did. This guy had tentacle-ly things coming out of his nose when he “sniggered,” so who knows.

Anyway, Zeux and I split up so we can buy up supplies faster. I’m going to grab some more packets for the autofood, when I see this really nice alien pot. My allapp translated all the alien gibberish on the ad (I think the language is called Mazo, it’s as popular to the universe as English is to Earth) so I learned about all the cool features the pot had. I’m thinking that I owe Zeux a pot already, and this was on SALE SALE SALE, so I grab it up and try to buy it before Zeux can find me again.

Here’s the thing; there still isn’t a universal allapp that can apply to every machine. My allapp’s got my credit information, but I couldn’t buy it where I saw it. I had to stand in line like a gizmo in the 21^st century. And when I stood in line, I stood with other “lower-class” aliens that didn’t know Mazo or have Mazo tech. (Stupid Mazo.)

Standing right in front of me in line is this huge Lallik. They’re a little humanoid, they’re basically apes with four legs. This Lallik’s hand was as big as my face, and they had big black eyes like a beetle. They smelled funny, but other than that I wasn’t bothered by them, and they weren’t bothered by me.

And then my arm started clicking.

It’s been doing that a lot lately. I’ve been meaning to have it checked out, to make sure it’s not about to break. My arm is always humming softly, with all the gears that must be churning inside, but this was like, “hummm—CLICK!—hummm—CLICK!—hummm—CLICK!” oh mans was it annoying.

It annoyed the Lallik.

Apparently Lalliks find it to be offensive to not immediately apologize for things beyond your control. They also find it offensive when you apologize after they’ve pointed out your mistake. I did my best, “Sir, I have respect for your culture, I just don’t know it” speech, and wound up making the universal offense of not realizing the Lallik was female.

She flatted me with her fist.

So I’ve been staying on Zandrabak in recovery. I’m almost out, seeing how I can stay awake long enough to use my allapp. I’m okay, no terminal or lasting harm. I’m still in one piece. Well, at least, I haven’t lost any new arms.

If anyone knows of a good common alien culture’s guide on the webs, please direct me to it before I get myself killed.

I Accidentally The Whole Stove

So I set The Escape on fire today.

I was writing an article for UniversePress when my muse craved tea. Everyone has their writing thing, and my thing is my cravings. If I don’t satisfy them, I get stuck in writer’s block. Usually I just crave small things, though, like applestix, or raisins, or popcorn, or tea. It’s never really been an obstacle to my writing before, more like something to help it along. If I get stuck, I just roam through a cupboard, heat something with the autofood, chow down and Boom! back on track.

But the autofood broke. It just… broke. It even let out a puff of black smoke, as if to say, “Don’t bother, man, I’m down.” I had three backup autofoods on Blazegaze, but those autofoods are scattered ashes all across the Milky Way by now.

Here’s the part where I get whiny. Zeux brought a stove onto the ship. She doesn’t like autofood foods, she makes her own food. It was a human(ish) stove, so I should’ve been able to use it, but… well, I’d never used a stove before. My moms and my girl made me food all the time, back home.

And for some reason, I’m brave enough to ask Zeux if I can use her stove, but too much of a gizmo to ask her how to use it. I figured if I asked that, she’d just make one of those “what in the worlds is wrong with you” faces and just make my tea herself. I wouldn’t learn how to make anything that way.

I only have one box of non-autofood tea that my girl got me. It was a joke gift, because the tea was called “love potion” tea and we hooked over me joking about giving her a love potion. I only kept it because she made a point of giving back all of my gifts when she booted me, and I wanted to show I was better than that. Who am I showing that to? I dunno, myself?

So I put the box of tea in a pot, turned the stove on, and walked off. I figured I’d give it six or seven minutes and check back on it. I was messing with my allapp when I thought, hey, why don’t I look up how to make tea on the webs? So I did.

1) You make tea in a teapot, not a potpot.

2) You use the bags in the box, not the whole box. (I still don’t know what the box is even for.)

3) You boil water first, then add the bags.

And 4) the box does not come with water, nor is it meant to be melted into tea, like I’d assumed.

I came back to the kitchen to find my funeral pyre.

I’ve ruined Zeux’s pot, destroyed my box/bags of tea, my allapp wouldn’t shut off its fire alarm for ten minutes, and there’s now a big black stain on the wall of the kitchen. This ship’s been shinning for years, and it took less than a week for me to wreck it.

On the bright side, I got my article done.

Hogarth finished fixing the autofood an hour ago (“You should have just asked!”) but that doesn’t make me feel less awkward. Sure, this ship is mine, and my job at UniversePress is paying for ship expenses and Zeux’s new pot, but I otherwise feel useless on this ship. Messing up in this fashion doesn’t help.

Ah well, I didn’t want any “<3” tea, anyway. Let the glitch’s shit burn. 

The Engineer

This morning, I thought I had picked the best engineer to compensate for the worst pilot. Once again, I am fail.

I hadn’t met my engineer face-to-face before, I’d just interviewed him over the allapp. His name’s Hogarth Olenick, and he seemed like any other dweek. He could sit and talk at your forever, and even when he stammered and stuttered and stumbled on his tounge, he still kept right on talking through it. He also seemed to know what he was talking about, and some other “engineers” I’d interviewed earlier couldn’t even use the words “hull integrity” right. I thought he’d be great. Maybe a bad conversationalist, but he could still fix my ship when it broke.

It was the goggles. People look smarter when they wear goggles. They also look taller over the allapp. Or should I say, older.

He’s nine.

Fourteen would’ve been okay. Twelve would’ve been pushing it. But nine? Bleeping nine?

Zeux was not happy either. I checked the kid’s allapp for a parental permissions slip, which he had, but she said we couldn’t “keep” him. He was too young to be travelling in space with two strangers, “especially a cyborg,” as she put it. Part of me agreed, but I had to think about UniversePress. I have to post my first article on interstellar space travel by next Friday, and I wouldn’t be able to write anything if I didn’t travel through space.

That, and he’s not a normal kid. Maybe he shouldn’t be treated like one. He’s not a grown kid, either, he’s a natural. He has this ugly birthmark over his eye to prove it. I knew naturals sometimes came out looking weird or with mental problems like ADHD or whatev, but I never thought they could come out smarter than… well, me.

So now, he’s on the ship, playing annoyingly loud video games on his allapp. He hasn’t been much of a conversationalist at all, so far. I don’t blame him. Now that I think about it, he probably only saw me from the neck up over the allapp. Maybe he was as shocked to see me and my arm as I was to see him and his age. At least he isn’t being a Zeux about it.

Speaking of, Zeux got us out of the Milky Way okay, but now that we’re on autopilot, she can’t stop rambling nonsense about how everything I do is wrong. I turn the volume up on my allapp, she rambles. I drink one can of light liquor, she rambles. I enable the five secs rule when I drop an applestix, she rambles. She acts like the boss of me just because she’s flying the ship and I’m not. Pilots get possessive like that. She’ll get over it. I hope.

I should be more annoyed than I am, after everything that happened today, but I’m just glad to be out here. We just jumped out of hyperspace a while ago. We were in there for hours. I’d never been in hyperspace before. I was staring out the bridge view pretty much the whole time. I literally sat on the floor and watched the stars fly by. It was like a meteor shower, but faster, never ending. I could see other galaxies drifting by us, as if they were moving instead of us. I sat there so long, my allapp powered off. I never ignore my allapp long enough for that to happen.

All in all, it’s going pretty well. I just need to get my engineer to start talking to me and my pilot to shut it.

The Pilot

So I met my pilot today. I wish I hadn’t.

Her name’s Zeux, and she’s a Pharllus, AKA big skinny smurf. Pharllus are the ones known for their jaw-breaking foods, temperature preferences, and technophobia. She’s one of the overtly religious ones, and even said to my face that robotic implants should be illegal on Earth. Downright outlawed. She says she can “tolerate my presence,” so I guess she can’t be that bad, but I feel like she won’t understand until she loses an arm. It’s like she’s offended by my existence. Am I supposed to stop existing before her hell freezes over? 

It could be worse, I guess. Some Erigak clans have serious cases of raging homophobia. I know because I got into a fight with one as a kid, as in a fist fight. I can deal with a technophobe, but not a homophobe. I love my moms too much to hear anything against them. I’d rather someone bashed me for hooking a chunk of metal on my shoulder than judged Mum and Momma for nonsense.

Anyway, I only need Zeux to drive to her solar system, and then we’ll dump her on her home planet Dzhchalf. (How do you pronounce that?) It’ll take about two months, and by then I’ll have my pilot license back, so it shouldn’t be a problem. I’d have picked someone else out, but I still want to leave by the 13^th. Most pilots have their own ships, so I haven’t gotten many offers. Unlike engineers. I have four hours of interviews tomorrow for those.

On a brighter note, I named my ship today. It was called Asimov, which is berzonk, and it didn’t mean anything to me. I like ship names that mean something to you, because then the ship means something to you. That’s why I’m calling it The Escape. Makes sense, amiright?

It was either that or Salvation, and that one’s just bad. Plus Serenity’s way overdone these days.

I’ll try to update on Friday once we’re out of the Milky Way. Assuming my arm doesn’t scare off all the engineers, too.

How to Unruin Your Life Days Later

I’m one lucky son of a glitch.

After New Year’s Eve, fans hit the shit. My girl booted me the second I got home, she was so ridiculous. I’ve been staying with my moms, sleeping on the couch because they’d just turned my room into their art studio, with real paint and canvases. (Really moms? Are you trying to be hipster?)

Without a ship, I would lose my freelance job at UniversePress, and stay stuck on Earth for the rest of my unnatural life. I know, that’s whiny. I’ve been avoiding the webs to keep from whining.

But yesterday, I got a ship thrown at my face.

One of the people I rescued—a human named Prisma—called me on my allapp and said she could replace Blazegaze as a thank you. She said she wanted to get rid of it anyway, that it was no big deal and that I did much more for her. I felt a little guilty just taking it, but I didn’t say no either. Now I can keep my job and go travelling, so my plan isn’t completely ruined. But that’s not the best part.

The ship’s a 2986 Manta Ray. Who doesn’t want to travel through space on a 2986 Manta Ray? Small enough for a small crew, fast enough for a fun manual override, and oh mans is it not the sleekest thing you’ve ever seen. Only upgrade would be a TARDIS.

Reminds me: Momma was watching a video the other day of this oldold movie she liked, and there was this random TARDIS in the background. It wasn’t even a sci-fi movie. I asked about it, and she said it was a police box, like those oldold telephone booths, but just for the police. That makes nonsense. I know us humans used to be kinda fail back in the oldold days, but why would someone decide to make a police box look like a TARDIS? What’s up with that?

Anyway, I have a Manta Ray.

Only problem now is that my girl still hates me, which means I’ll need a new engineer. And a pilot, until I can get my license reinstated. DSV dug into my allapp records and saw my alcohol levels at the time of the crash. They weren’t happy. So ridiculously ridic.

I’ve posted ads on three different newsites asking for beings to tag along. Considering how eager my girl and I were to fly around in a bucket, finding someone willing to live in my new ship should be easy. It’s not newnew, but it doesn’t look like it’s gone a day in space, no scratches or scuffs. It has hella lightyears on it, though, being how old it is. I can only imagine it was run by OCD robots. I’ll ask Prisma about it.

So the plan’s back on. I just need to find crewmembers. Preferably ones that don’t hate me. I’ll need more luck for that, if I have any left.

Only time will tell, as it does. 

How to Ruin Your Life in a Few Hours

This New Year’s Eve, I crashed my ship into the sun.

I was drifting around the system, trying for nothing. I wasn’t supposed to be out on Blazegaze, I was supposed to be on Earth with my moms and my girl. I was supposed to be where there is such a thing as time and holidays and New Year’s Eve. But I’d felt like escaping all of that, just for an hour.

An hour turned into two hours, two into four. Just like how one beer turned into two and three. My allapp kept prompting me with reminders, about the party, refueling the tank, and my current alcohol levels, as if it knew I was on the path to self-destruction. But like a gizmo, I just ignored the warnings.

I know this will sound fail, but I wasn’t even doing anything. At all. Just walking around in circles on the bridge, blasting classical dubstep and nursing my drink. I could have done zillions of things in that time—planned my route for when I left on January 13^th, fixed the auto-clean bot, written an article for VersePress. But I did nothing. Just ran circles around the sun and watched other ships float by. This is why my moms call me “such an achiever.”

In a way, I was suffering from shock, which makes nonsense. The most I’ve wanted in life was to get out of the Milky Way, and soon I would get exactly that. Life should’ve been feeling swert. Instead, even now, I feel numb and out of place, like I don’t really exist or matter. It was more than my last ride through the system for the year, it was my last ride before my new life. I should have been excited, but instead, I was further down than I’d ever been.

Tell me I’m not the only one who wrecked his life for no reason. Well, I guess there was a reason. It’s not as if I can apathetic myself into the sun. I’m not that epic of a fail.

I was taking one last speed-orbit round the sun, (though it was one of many last speed-orbits, to be honest) when a ship nearby just exploded. We think it might’ve been shield malfunctions and it overheated. Don’t have much to go on, since most of the wreckage burned. It wasn’t a pretty sight.

Anyway, explosion. Ship bits wound up flying everywhere, so much at once that the shields couldn’t take it all and it hit Blazegaze. I fell down the bridge stairs and hit my cheek so hard it also exploded, splattering hot red all over my face. Ouch much? I got over to the controls, but Blazegaze could barely fly when she wasn’t badly beaten by debris.

The ship I’d been flying by was a human ship called Cleo something. I only saw half the name, and half the ship. That sight was even less pretty. I could show it to you (I took a snap with my eyecam) but I don’t think you’d really want to see it. Maybe I’ll post it when the image doesn’t make me feel like a dweek anymore. That’s really all I felt then, small and useless. And mildly drunk. That never helps.

I sobered up once I got OSSed by someone on the ship. She said her friends and her were trapped against an airlock on the good half of Cleo, and asked (well, begged) that I swoop by and grab them before they drifted into the sun. I spent thirty secs looking for my allapp, but by the time I saw my wrist and replied to her over it, I was sober enough for a funeral. I told her I was on my way, that she’d be fine, and please, stop crying.

The sick part is, when I glided my ship over to Cleo, I finally felt like I was alive. I can’t remember the last time I felt like that, and all I was doing was docking against their airlock. When the handful of survivors arrived on my ship, laughing with relief, I felt amazing.

Then the engine died, and I felt numb.

Blazegaze was notorious for shutting off when I needed her. I hit the flight panel in a burst of anger, and kept trying to start Blazegaze with my allapp, my wrist sore by the time I was done. The sun’s gravity kicked in, and soon we were drifting towards it, my allapp too busy warning me of raising heat levels to start the ignition.

Only one of the handful was an alien—he looked like a centaur with spider legs—and oddly enough, he was the one familiar with my ship model. He activated the escape pods and helped people into them, then threatened to leave me behind when I didn’t run over. I couldn’t stop staring at the bridge, couldn’t compute that this would be the last time I saw it, that I’d finally managed my epic fail in life. Dragging myself out of there was the hardest thing I’d ever done.

I sat in an escape pod with the alien, and he found some first aid for the cut on my cheek. Then I watched Blazegaze find an end that matched her name. Just as the sun ate up the last of my ride, my allapp announced that in San Fran, Cali, America, United Earth, it was officially the year 3012. Congratulations.

I’m such an achiever.