Pew! Pew! - Bad versus Worse Read online

  Wow. Apparently, what we’ve seen from her is her tactful mode.

  I have no defense to this sudden revelation, other than to dig into my biscuits and gravy with renewed fervor, as if consuming this food is my sole purpose in life.

  It’s a bad defense, sure, but it’s all I’ve got right now.

  Greta seems to have lost her enthusiasm for her blueberry muffin, but doesn’t quite know what to do with the remaining baked-good carnage, either.

  In a burst of inspiration, I ask her, “Have you ever tried biscuits and gravy?”

  Like a fool, I spoon up a bit of it—no, I’m not over my fork phobia yet, let’s please not dwell on that—and extend it toward her.

  As if she wants to take a bite of my half-eaten breakfast, from my pre-used spoon.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  But miraculously, she leans forward and accepts the offering. She chews slowly, looking uncertain at first, then curious, then pleasantly surprised.

  “That is not at all the most awful thing I’ve tasted!” she exclaims.

  I’m not sure how to take this.

  She notices my expression. “I mean, I’d try that.”

  Elation rushes over me, far out of proportion for the situation, but I don’t care. I offered Greta something, she took it, and she liked it.

  “Pinky,” I call to my big friend’s back, “could you order Greta some biscuits and gravy? In the spirit of the season, she’s trying something new.”

  Greta beams at me. Her natural luminescence seems to increase at moments like this. I’ve read that a Garbdorian’s emotional state can do that.

  “Sure,” Pinky calls back.

  I half expect some witty retort, but it doesn’t come. Maybe she’s reining herself in.

  Greta puts her napkin over her muffin dust, as if burying a dead thing. “How’s your nana settling in?”

  “She’s adjusting to life aboard a starship. Some things she’s taken to right away. Others are taking time.” I don’t mention her habit of trying to assimilate me. Some things should be kept within the family.

  “It’s only been a few days,” Greta says, looking sympathetic. “I’m sure at her age, it takes time to adjust.”

  I finish off my breakfast and push the plate away. “You’d think so, but ever since she became a cyborg, she’s surprisingly adaptable.”

  A porter arrives to whisk away yet another tray of drinks and Pinky returns to stand across the bar counter from us.

  “Makes sense,” she says thoughtfully. “Otherwise, how could she function? She’s been through a lot of changes. I don’t know what Nana Rose was like before, but she’s A-OK with me. She’s a great cook and a fantastic driver.”

  I say nothing and merely nod. Nana’s cooking these days is inedible, and her driving is terrifying. Somehow, though, Pinky and Nana bonded almost immediately, and I haven’t decided yet how I feel about that.

  I mean, it’s mostly good. I think. It’s just that I haven’t conquered my ingrained pessimism and the feeling that most things will somehow cause my untimely demise.

  Some habits are hard to break.

  I’m working on it, though. I’m making progress, right along with my ability to peacefully coexist with forks. These things take time.

  “Has she ever been to Earth’s International Space Station?” Greta asks.

  “No,” I answer. “She was never much for traveling before her assimilation. She’s gotten much more adventurous since. Actually, I’ve never been there, either.”

  My people don’t typically travel.

  “Oh, you’ll like it, I think,” Greta says. “I’ve been there a couple of times. It used to be this place of scientific research for Earth, but now it’s more of a museum for your whole solar system.”

  I look at her and wonder if I should verify the definition of “museum.” There have been times when a word means something to her that is entirely different than what the word means to me. “You mean, like, a place you visit and look at things, but can’t touch, and stuff’s usually either really old or really expensive?”

  She gives me an odd look. “Yeah. A museum.”

  I nod agreeably. “Okay. Sounds cool.”

  Very, very few deaths ever occur at museums.

  “I’ll show you and your nana around,” Greta says. “I might not be able to spend all day, because I need to memorize my lines for my movie role, but we should be able to get in a few hours of sightseeing, anyhow.”

  Pinky has bent down and is rummaging inside a cabinet.

  I call to her, “Hey, Pinky, do you want to check out the space station with Nana, Greta, and me?”

  Pinky’s forehead appears above the bar top, immediately followed by her eyes, like a frog surfacing in a pond. Startled, I grasp the edge of the bar to keep my balance.

  She stands all the way up. “Museums aren’t my thing, most of the time. I’m not much for fawning over some piece of crap because it’s supposed to be historically significant. But since Nana Rose is going, I’ll check it out. With her along, it could be fun.”

  A porter arrives with Greta’s food, and she scoops some up with a spoon. In an unspoken kindness toward me, Pinky doesn’t stock forks in her bar.

  I wonder, though, if I’ve made a mistake by inviting Pinky to a museum. “Fun” is a more of an extreme sport for her than a pleasant passing of time.

  But it’s too late now. I invited and she accepted, and now we’re all going to have some sort of time on the International Space Station.

  I can only hope for an uneventful day.

  ***

  “I don’t get it.” Nana stares at a cartoonish neo-Schrodingerian portrait.

  “It’s a commentary on how space travel has made life more convenient, and yet more complicated,” Greta explains. “It represents duality and ambiguity.”

  Nana continues to stare. “It’s a cat on a flying saucer. And a drunk monkey could have done a better job of drawing it.”

  So far, Nana has not been impressed with the museum. She’s pooh-poohed paintings, scoffed at sculptures, and downright dissed drawings.

  To be honest, for the most part, I agree with her. Maybe art just isn’t something the Kenny clan can appreciate. I’d much rather look at my Renard robot-western paintings than the strange mélange of display pieces I’ve seen here. Robot-westerns might not be high art that’s worthy of a museum, but it’s what speaks to me.

  Greta seems a little disappointed that we aren’t enjoying ourselves more. Pinky got bored and wandered off some time ago while Nana and I have dutifully followed our intrepid tour guide.

  We stop in front of a collection of painted vases. Greta sighs. “You two aren’t having any fun, are you?”

  I try to form an artful reply that will confirm our boredom while tempering it with something positive that won’t hurt her feelings.

  Nana speaks before I can. “The last time I had such a crappy time, I was having my eyeball bored out by a cyborg.”

  So much for artful and positive.

  Greta looks stricken. “Oh, my goodness! Well, let’s find something else to do. Maybe you’d like to see the history of the station? There’s a lot of old technology on display.”

  Nana perks up. “That could be interesting.”

  Back when she was purely human, Nana was not a fan of technology. I once caught her repeatedly poking a refrigerator door, expecting it to open itself, and getting increasingly frustrated that it wouldn’t oblige. It was strange because spring-loaded refrigerators have never been a thing.

  Now, though, it seems she has a great appreciation for technology. As we walk along, viewing a portion of the hull of the very first International Space Station and other historic Earth treasures, Nana avidly reads every word on the displays and listens to every audio clip.

  I become increasingly suspicious. It’s almost like she’s collecting information, like an advance reconnaissance scout.

  “Nana,” I ask, “are you going to report on all this
to the cyborgs?”

  She blinks at me. “Of course. Union rules. All members must upload all information regarding technology. Even obsolete tech.”

  “Right.” I want to edge away, but don’t want to hurt her feelings. It’s just strange sometimes that my cookie-baking, canasta-playing nana is probably subconsciously planning to overthrow Earth’s government.

  It’s not her fault, but it’s creepy and there’s no handbook about how to deal with this sort of thing.

  Greta also looks concerned, but she shakes her head and plasters on a cheery smile. “Should we go find Pinky? She said she’d meet us for lunch.”

  Nana’s reply is immediate. “Yes! I love that big pink girl.”

  “She’s a peach,” I agree. It’s something that Pinky frequently calls herself, and it amuses me to say it.

  Greta grins at me, so I guess it amuses her, too.

  Score.

  Even in a large place, Pinky isn’t hard to find. If her size isn’t enough to do the trick, we can usually just follow the trail of startled or disgruntled people she’s left in her wake.

  We find her near the entrance of the art gallery, standing by a water fountain. She’s posing with one hand on her hip and the other fist thrust forward, toward a growing group of onlookers. I’m not sure exactly what’s happening.

  “Three, two, one,” Pinky announces in a booming voice, then she shifts so that she’s shielding her eyes with one hand and pointing ahead and to her left with the other.

  The crowd murmurs.

  “What’s going on?” I whisper to Nana and Greta. I don’t know why I’m whispering, except there’s a hushed sort of atmosphere, like at a library or a doctor’s office.

  They both shake their heads in puzzlement.

  After a few minutes, Pinky says, “Three, two, one,” and squats down, her arms straight out to her sides.

  I’ve seen Pinky do a lot of unexpected things, but this is new.

  After a full four minutes in her squat pose, she stands and announces in a booming voice, “We must be thirsty together.”

  She bows. The crowd, which has grown quite large, applauds for a full thirty seconds before beginning to disperse.

  Pinky joins us, looking pleased with herself.

  “What was that?” I ask.

  “Performance art.” She’s clearly very happy about this.

  “Okay. But, um, why?”

  “Right place, right time,” she says decisively. “I was bent over getting a drink from the fountain. As you know, it takes a lot to quench a Pinky-sized thirst. So as I’m drinking, I sense a crowd gathering. And I think to myself, now here’s an interesting opportunity.”

  I’m almost afraid to ask, but she clearly wants me to or she wouldn’t have paused in the middle of this story. There’s nothing to do but pose the question. “What happened next?”

  “I stood up and announced in a big voice, ‘We are all thirsty. The universe is thirsty.’ A couple of people nodded as if this meant something, so I struck my favorite dance pose.” She demonstrates, standing with her legs apart, one hip thrust to the side, her left arm pointing down toward her foot and her right finger pointing at the one o’clock position.

  Maybe one thirty. It’s hard to be sure.

  Onlookers notice the pose and begin drifting toward us again, perhaps thinking it’s time for a second show.

  “Yeah, great pose! You’re such an awesome dancer. We should tell Nana about the time you two took me to the laundromat. Should we start walking to the restaurant? We don’t want to miss our reservation.” I take a few steps in that direction, hoping move our little group onward.

  Pinky looks at me. Crap. She’s onto me. But then she nods. “Sure, let’s walk and talk.”

  Whew.

  “Anyway,” she continues as we go, “the crowd is loving the dance pose, but I start thinking that standing still isn’t all that entertaining. So I switch it up with a Statue of Liberty pose, you know, one hand holding a pretend torch and the other holding a pretend book. The crowd loved it. I wish I had my pointy hat so I could have really brought it home, but no matter. From there, I just made up some poses and let the folks make of them what they would. I’d say it was a very successful exhibit.”

  “What was that squatting one at the end?” Greta asks.

  “To be honest,” Pinky says, “I was running out of ideas. I’m kind of glad you guys came along when you did. I was trying to think of a big finish to wrap things up, like tearing the fountain clean off the wall or something. But I don’t want to be banned from yet another place for that kind of thing, so it’s lucky it was lunch time and I didn’t need the big finish after all.”

  Yet another place?

  How many places have banned Pinky? Before I can ask, we’ve arrived at the restaurant and a waiter is eager to show us to our seats.

  The place smells great and I’m perusing the menu when Pinky says, “Greta, you should have a sandwich and eat it bite by bite.”

  Greta freezes and her eyes widen like someone suddenly stricken with stage fright. “Oh. Today? Um…”

  Though I’m far from the poster boy for trying new things, I decide to jump on this particular bandwagon. “Yeah, you should try it. It’ll be great. Right, Nana?”

  Nana looks up from her menu to blink at me. “What the hell do I care how she eats? I’m busy trying to find something to eat that won’t gum up my servos.”

  I have no response to that.

  Greta fills the awkward pause. “What the heck, I’ll give it a try. The pastrami on rye looks good. What kind of meat is that?”

  “That’s kind of a long story,” I say. “The short short version is that it’s delicious and you should definitely try it.”

  Greta’s looking at the menu. “Oh, and there’s a picture of cavalamitsi. I’ll have that.”

  “On Earth, we call it macaroni and cheese,” I remind her gently. “But I’m sure it will be tasty.”

  “Ah, that’s right. It’s hard keeping all the food names straight sometimes.” Greta laughs at herself.

  I know she tries, though. As the Chance Fleet ambassador, she likes to be able to talk to people about their home worlds and suggest things to try at new destinations.

  I love her natural inclination toward helpfulness. You just don’t see a lot of that these days.

  In solidarity, I choose a pastrami on rye and macaroni and cheese as well.

  “Well, I don’t want to be left out,” Pinky says. She hands the server her menu. “I’ll have what they’re having.”

  “One more pastrami and macaroni,” the waiter says agreeably, tapping the order into his telcoder.

  “No,” Pinky says this in a particularly duh tone of voice. “They’re not sharing, are they? Two sandwiches. Two noodles. That’s what I want. Don’t shortchange me, bro.”

  She gives him a hard look.

  “Certainly, ma’am,” he says quickly. “My mistake.”

  Normally, I’d be concerned about someone taking a server to task before he delivers my food. Since nobody’s stupid enough to serve Pinky a sneezer platter, I remain confident of my lunch’s lack of contagious diseases.

  “I’ll have the entrée-sized clam chowder,” Nana says. “But strain out the chunks. They gum up the works.”

  This, the server takes in stride. He must be accustomed to cyborg customers. “Anything else?”

  “Extra crackers.” Nana frowns thoughtfully. “You don’t have any DW-101, do you?”

  “We get a lot of requests for it,” he says regretfully. “But no. Health codes prevent us from storing and serving commercial oil-based lubricants. I’m sorry.”

  “Not your fault,” Nana assures him. “Laws never keep up with the needs of the people.”

  The waiter smiles. “That’s true. I’ll get this order in for you.”

  As we wait, Nana shifts her attention to Greta. “Charlie tells me you’re going to film a movie while we’re here? That’s so exciting.”

  Greta n
ods, glowing with enthusiasm. “Yes, I did a tiny walk-on role for a film on Mars, and the director wanted me to be in his next movie, too. This is a named character and everything. It’s going to take two whole days of shooting. And Pinky’s going to be working on the second day, too. She came to check out the movie set on Mars, and the director said she was born for the movies.”

  “Of course she was! Look at her!” Nana points at Pinky. “She’s the whole package.”

  “Thanks, Nana Rose.” Pinky looks pleased.

  Nana frowns, looking at Greta. “Not that you’re not special, too, dear. You’re quite pretty, and you sure do light up a room.”

  Greta laughs and waves a hand at Nana’s worry over having hurt of feelings. “Oh, Pinky’s definitely the eye-catching one. I look like anybody. Nothing special.”

  She means it, too. I love that about her. And while I know that most people see her as merely cute or pretty, I like that I’m the only one who can see how beautiful she really is. I’m like that ancient history dude who pulled a sword out of a lake because no one else could see it there.

  “So what’s your part in the movie, Pinky?” Nana asks.

  “Oh, I’m this horrible monster.”

  This is news to me. I’m sad to learn that my magnificent friend is being reduced to a stereotype just because she’s big.

  “What?” Greta asks in confusion. “That’s not the script I got.”

  “I sit around saying these super obvious things,” Pinky says. “Then the other characters are all inspired and stuff, and go solve their own problems. Totally lame.”

  “Yes, you’re the wise woman,” Greta says. “The sage. Not a monster. You are the catalyst of enlightenment.”

  Pinky frowns, picking at her fingernails. “This must be a different kind of movie, then. Where I come from, boring people who sit around saying smart stuff are monsters. The heroes are the ones that make exciting things happen, like buildings blowing up. Which I saw no mention of at all in this story.”

  “Oh.” Greta presses her lips together. “Well I don’t know if this makes it better or worse for you, but in this movie, your character is a sort of hero. There aren’t any explosions, but your character is highly respected and revered.”