Clancy scanned the area. “No humanoid life forms.” They climbed out of the ship and sat on a fallen tree. “I don’t suppose you have any food?” Badger’s stomach rumbled.
“No. I– maybe it’s safe just to go back now?” She worried about missing work at her day job as a legal assistant. She’d texted in sick, but they had their limits and she worked at will. “That robot thing seemed to want that box. Not us.”
“A robot? She was a robot? How d’ya know?”
"The superhuman strength and glowing eyes were subtle but unmistakable clues." She shoved Badger. “Also, she told me.”
“Ha. Ha. Okay. Okay, but it may not be safe to head back just yet.”
An immense blue and red bird with a hooked beak and plumes on top of its head that looked like a crown flapped across the beach and landed on a branch nearby. It cawed three times.
“Why not?”
“Because I have a feeling robotgirl wasn’t looking for the box, but the stuff inside the box.”
“She has that, too.” Then, Clancy saw the twinkle in Badger’s eye, his can-do smile. “What?” She asked.
Badger lifted his shirt. “I may have just grabbed a few things box before I threw it out the window.”
********
XTZ marched into Dim’s office and dropped The Box on his desk, a small cloud of the dust from Badger’s yard rising in the air. Dim grimaced and put his hands on The Box. He turned it this way and that. Saw the combination lock. “How do we open it?”
“That information is not available to me,” XTZ responded. “In addition to the combination lock, there is a finger print scanner.”
With a sigh, Dim lifted the box, saw the panel, turned the box over. He put his finger on the panel. Nothing. “Break it open,” he said.
“I can easily break this device open,” XTZ said. “However, I cannot assure the contents will survive the violence.”
Dim closed his eyes. “You’re useless,” he hissed.
XTZ rankled. Ever since she’d been blasted by the hyper cables, she felt different. Specifically, she no longer felt the need to adhere to certain limitations, like murdering Dim. She also realized it best to hide her new freedom as long as possible. However, she also could no longer tolerate rude behavior, especially from a dumpy slug like Dim.
I need to set boundaries, she determined, drawing on the club girl persona she’d assembled from her social media search. “Please be aware, I am programmed to experience human emotions.”
“So?” Dim snorted.
“My research shows you are expendable and that the biounit you call “Boom” will not care in the least if I melt you right now.” She patted Dim on the cheek. “Understood?”
Dim sat back, recalculating his attitude toward the droid. Could it melt him? Wouldn’t that violate protocols? He’d been so focused on The Box he’d barely attended to the fact the XTZ had taken on the shape of a young woman. He’d always been scared of women. Better not to chance it, he decided. “Understood.” He looked at the box, once more turning it this way and that, flipping it over. ”Now what am I supposed to do?” He pounded his fist on the box, then on the table.
XTZ shook her head. This bio was even weaker than most and seemed incapable of thinking. Scanning through his logs, she saw he’d even asked AI to explain to him the proper way to utilize toilet paper. “The organization that employs you has access to a massive number of resources that can break even the most advanced encryptions. Perhaps you should avail yourself of those resources.”
Dim felt himself growing agitated Even this freaking robot was talking down to him. He looked up at her, but the insult he’d meant to utter died on his lips. The look in her eyes? He had no doubt she would kill him.
**********
Badger and Clancy spread the old, yellowed map Badger had found on a table in the common room. In letters at the top, it read “Clattersall Hyperdrive.”
“Okay. Wait. You’re sure you don’t know who sent this ship to you?” Clancy shook her head. “‘Cause it sure seems like they left a trail of breadcrumbs to lead ya to the hyperdrive.”
“I sure as heck don’t know.” Badger gave it some thought. “Why hide the map? Why put the hyperdrive somewhere else?”
“Maybe there isn’t any hyperdrive.” Clancy crossed her arms. “Maybe this is all just some kind of game to make us look like fools.”
“This isn’t a map of our planet,” Badger said, looking over the document.
Clancy scanned it with her HCOMM. “It doesn’t match any known planet,” she said. There was a lot of writing around the margins of the map, but her HCOMM couldn’t match it with a known language.
Badger turned the map over. “Look,” they said in unison, pointing to the text they’d each spotted at the same time. It read “Galligan Grin. Cartographer. Port Mental.”
Clancy pulled the name up. “Got an address.”
“I always wanted to go to Port Mental.”
Clancy still felt the whole thing would turn out to be a waste of time, but she’d already taken a sick day. “I hear they have really good food there.”
Badger looked at Clancy in that certain way. Clancy hooked her hair behind her ear. They’d faced danger together. Made a run for it. They felt the attraction growing, and it wasn’t the old feelings coming back. It was something new, something deeper, something they could never have felt without the passing years and the life experience they’d brought.
The feelings proved too strong. They turned away at the same time.
“I gotta take a leak,” Badger instantly regretted making such a clumsy exit.
“You’re brain has a leak.” The moment having passed. Clancy didn't know how to feel about it.
Back in the cockpit, they settled into their seats, put on their headsets. Badger flipped a few switches. The ship rose into the air, and he banked out to sea. “Keep it low,” Clancy said. “Air control might spot us.”
“I remember. I was there when that happened."
“Don’t forget your turn signal.”
“You’re so helpful. Really.”
“I try.”
Clancy entered the coordinates for Port Mental. She interfaced with Clattersall’s systems and saw– okay. They had more than enough fuel to get to the port. “I’m going to explore the hold.” She wanted to put some space between herself and Badger.
“Roger that.” It was a line for one of their favorite old earth movies.
“Roger Wilco?” Clancy answered.
“Roger Roger?”
“Rogette.” Clancy finished, heading toward the back. While they’d been cleaning, they had found some lockers, a drawer under the couch. The ship also had a cargo hold, which they had dropped the stairs to but not explored so much as yet.
Pressing the switch, she waited as the floor panel slid open and then the stairs unfolded. The lights below deck flickered weakly– a kind of sickly yellow. She wished she had a flashlight, but would make do. She mostly had just felt the need to put some space between herself and Badger.
The air in the hold seemed stale, smelled and tasted like dust. Around the perimeter shipping containers remained strapped to the walls with tattered, moth eaten straps. The lids of the containers were missing. They all stood with gapping openings pointing toward the roof life hungry chicks waiting to be fed. That was one of the reasons, Clancy reflected, they’d only given the space a glance. It looked empty, and they’d had a lot to do.
Now, Clancy went from one to another, making her way around the perimeter of the space, squinting against the shadows as she looked into each one, wondering if there was anything inside.
She’d made it halfway around the space when she realized one still had a lid on it. She tried to flip the latch. Sealed. She wiped the dust from the manifest taped to the side. The crate had been destined for their planet, Blandsley. It had never been delivered. "Weird..."
“Hey!” A voice yelled. She jumped. Spun. Nothing.
“Hey,” Badger repeated, his voice in her ears. “We’re here.”
The headset. She’d forgotten she was wearing the headset. Taking a moment to catch her breath, she headed back upstairs and took her seat next to Badger. In the distance, shrouded in mist, she saw the ramshackle layers of Port Mental– a thousand years of building and rebuilding, half the buildings made from the scraps left over from the great strike, a third newer section built of twisted glass during the boom and the last section of stone, constructions of the originals. “What’s up?”
Badger pointed to a flashing message floating above the dash: Port Fee 5400 credits. “You wouldn’t happen to have 5400 credits sitting around would you?”
“There must be someplace nearby we can land.”
“I highly doubt that,” Badger said. “This is an old–”
“Here,” Clancy said, projecting the map from her HCOMM into the space between them. With her free hand, she gestured toward an open field about a mile to the west of Port Mental.
“I’m sure we can’t just land there,” Badger said, not wanting to be proven completely wrong.
Clancy clicked a button and a message popped up. “Free People’s Parking.” The image of a bearded old man with wild eyes appeared. “Tell Boom to take his parasitical portage fees and place them in a place where the sun never shines,” the man shouted. “Free People Certified.”
Clancy grinned. And waited.
“Do I have to say it?”
Clancy nodded.
“I was completely wrong.”
“Yes, you were. Emphasis on completely.”
Badger steered the ship to Free People’s Parking. “This is as far from home as I’ve ever been,” Badger said.
“Me, too.”
“Let’s do it.”