Waking up nude in a pitch-black tube filled with lukewarm liquid was not a good time. My eyes flew open, and I tried to get a gasp of breath, but I was underwater. I started to claw and scrabble, but the metal walls inside were totally smooth, without anything to grip or any way to pull myself out. Panic began to overtake me and I started to hyperventilate, which brought on the strangest thought: If I was hyperventilating, That meant that I was able to breathe, which, in turn, meant that though I was stuck in a dark tube filled with liquid, I wasn’t going to die… For the time being, at least. I figured I’d take stock of myself while I was in here.
First off, that squid had said that I’d be returned to youth, so I touched the top of my head, seeing if my hairline had returned. Kind of a wet peach fuzz feel, but wet peach fuzz with a good hairline. Great. Next I felt my face. Two eyes, a nose, lips, all of them in what seemed the right spot. Ten fingers on both hands, which were both still there. All of that was more or less usual. My hands roamed lower and found that my chest and arms had lost any sign of flab that they’d gained, and my gut was just gone, replaced with the toned muscle I’d maintained when I was active duty. What a treat!
“The squid wasn’t lying!” I shouted with glee. The sound came through odd and warbled in the fluid, but it wasn’t such a big deal. My hand shivering with anticipation, I felt for my most important organ, and couldn’t contain my elation at what I found. The family jewels were a pair again! For a long few seconds I cheered in joy before settling down. My eyes were useless in the pitch blackness, so I fumbled around looking for a handle inside the pod uselessly. It then occurred to me that the ship was operated by voice command, so I figured I’d give that a shot.
“Uhhh, ship… Open tank.”
There was a warbling noise which I figured may have been the ship responding, and then the fluid started to drain. When it slid past my face, there was an awful minute of hacking up fluids, like an endless series of loogies, but I got past it. Finally, all the soup drained out and I heard a mechanical clang as the door unlatched and slid open. The dim lighting of the ship stung my eyes as I stepped out of the pod. I had to wonder how long I’d been in there, but that wasn’t my most pressing concern.
“Ship, where’s the closest place I can get a good morning beer?”
“There is no alcohol presently onboard the ship, Captain Winsor. I have your medical readout ready for you, when you would like to hear it. Would you like me to fabricate some beer prior to giving the report?”
“You can make beer?” I asked, my eyes growing wide.
“I can create a close approximation to beer, yes,” the ship responded.
“Hell yeah! Get me a lager, stat!”
“If you’ll follow the glowing lines on the ground, they will lead you to the fabrication unit,” it said.
The lines led me to a ladder, which I dutifully followed all the way up to the top of the ship. Up there stood a large gray box, about the size of a walk-in freezer, which was making a curious lub-dub noise while it worked. At the front of it was a short conveyor belt, and after about a minute an unmarked metal can, freshly machined to a reflective finish rolled out and sat, shining before me. Eagerly, I snatched it up and looked it over. It was pretty normal as far as cans went, though it lacked the familiar tab on its top. Instead, it had a cap that twisted off, which wasn’t too terrible an inconvenience. What was an inconvenience was that its contents frothed up and spilled over the sides.
“Awwh, come on!” I said, frowning at it and taking a sip. It was lukewarm, too foamy, and it tasted like sex in a canoe. “What the hell, ship, this is all suds!”
“Is this unsatisfactory?”
“You’re damn right it is, this beer is terrible! You know what, forget about it. I’ll just go to the store. Where the hell is Blart?”
“Blart is approximately three kilometers away, inside the hydrogen powered land vehicle you took to get here.”
“He better not have ruined my upholstery,” I grumbled. “Where are my clothes?”
“They were consumed by the medical nanites in your pod. Would you like more clothes? I have taken exacting measurements.”
“Sure, why not,” I said. This computer had some nerve, destroying my corduroy jacket like that. I was pretty attached to it. Were all aliens so cavalierly destructive about others’ property? A few minutes later, a one-piece jumpsuit rolled out of the mouth of the fabricator, dull and gray, complete with footies. Clearly, fashion wasn’t high on the list of priorities in this thing’s silicon brain, but it was better than going nude, so I threw it on. After a trip to the bridge to retrieve my shotgun, I found my way back to the ship’s main entrance. Another verbal command had the ramp open up, and I wandered out into the sunlight.
Looking around, I noticed that the bodies on the ground had all been disposed of. Maybe some critters got to them, maybe Blart ate them. Either way mother nature was fantastic I decided as I practically danced down the path, feeling better than I had in years. A little while later, I reached my car and popped open the driver’s side door. Blart tumbled out and made a rather undignified noise as he landed on the ground. He came up bristling and angry, as ready to fight as I’ve ever seen a pig, before calming down when he realized it was me.
“Oh, finally decided to come back? Decided you didn’t want to starve me?”
“You look fine, piggy. I have to go get some beer. Get in or don’t, I don’t really care.”
“I’m starving,” he whined.
“Okay, well we can go get some grub, too.” I looked up at the sky with a frown and figured it was probably about three in the afternoon. “Guess it’s time for lunch. There’s a nice little diner in town. Maud makes a great bloody mary.”
“I’ve never heard of this Mary, but as long as we can get some food I’ll be happy.”
I snorted but didn’t say anything else, considering leaving the pig hungry. Starved as he might have been, he could still stand to lose a few pounds.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
- - -
When we got down to Maud’s Dine In it was about six o’clock and the sun was well on its way to setting below the horizon. I strolled in, Blart at my side, waved to Maud behind the counter, and went to sit down at a booth. Maud was in her sixties, old, gray, with a weather-worn face that seemed to have seen it all and then some. Her blue eyes looked bored, and she had a slightly displeased expression writ across her craggy features when she saw that I had brought in a pig. It probably wasn’t the strangest thing someone around here had brought in, though, so she didn’t bother me, and the other three patrons in the diner didn’t look twice.
“What I don’t understand,” Blart said as we sat down in a far corner, “is how you managed to kill my partner.”
“Strong gut,” I responded, looking over the menu. I knew what I was going to get, but you didn’t lightly toss aside tradition. Maybe Maud had decided to change up her menu after two decades of serving the same meals.
“No, idiot, our bodies are covered in a mucus which allows us to comfortably exist in the acidic digestive tracts of most organisms. You don’t have assistive digestive nanites, you don’t have a base digestive system, and you didn’t chew him up! I made sure of that!” Maud came by with a bloody mary in one hand and a dark brew in the other, and set them down in front of me. The old gal knew exactly what I liked.
“The usual?” she asked me.
“Make it double,” I responded. “Oh, and a plate of sausage for Blart,” I added, gesturing to the pig. Maud raised an eyebrow. “I renamed him. Didn’t like Jibbly.”
“Alright,” she said as she turned to go, clearly unfazed by the presence of a potbelly pig or the fact that I was talking to him.
“How exactly did you make sure of that?” I asked the pig, my eyes narrowing.
“We can dehydrate ourselves and become very small in doing so. I had him in my mouth and passed him over when we were-”
“Forget I asked,” I said, taking a sip of the bloody mary and letting out a cough. I don’t know if Maud had mixed it extra spicy today, or if it was because I was feeling like I was twenty three again, but the thing hit like a train.
“I don’t understand. I measured your body mass and alcohol intake all night. You should have been within acceptable parameters for him to safely inhabit and take over!” For a moment I stared at him, before busting out laughing.
“Well that’s because I was drinking all day at my job!” The pig stared at me, blinking his eyes.
“What?”
“Yeah, my job’s boring as hell, so I drink a couple fifths of rum nearly every day! I always knew day drinking at work was a good idea,” I said, smiling to myself and taking another pull from the bloody mary. I had a newfound appreciation for the stuff.
“Oh, damn it,” Blart said, letting his head fall to the table.
“Your pig looks sad,” Maud said as she set down two plates of biscuits and gravy with a heaping side of bacon in front of me. She held out her tablet and I ran my right forearm over it to run my chip.
“He ain’t sad, just stupid,” I said, and she put down a plate of sausage for him.
“Well, as long as he’s housebroken he can stay,” she said as Blart began to eat. I couldn’t tell whether he perked up at the food or if it’s downright impossible for a pig to look sad while horking down a plate full of sausage, but when he paused to breathe in between facefuls of meat he seemed considerably more cheery.
About twenty minutes into the meal, I was already finished and had moved on to my second beer, when the town’s sheriff, Alan McHardy walked in. McHardy was a tall man, in his fifties, but he’d kept in good shape over the years. He was an infrequent drinking buddy, since, having spent a good few years in the infantry, he naturally looked up to me. The infantry of the USAS were regular ground pounders. Take and hold the line, the normal stuff, while the drop marines, guys like myself, were the elite of the elite. Marine regulars were the guys who did land, air, and sea operations. They were the spearhead, while the drop marines were the absolute point of the spear, skimmed off the top their ranks.
Our usual missions were to drop from space right on the heels of A-bombs, and everybody knew it. Regular marines would usually follow right after, though they were surface to surface, typically ferried to wherever they were needed by boat or plane. Infantry were the last in line, they held and occupied the land that we’d taken, and protected the homefront. Then, of course, there were the daugs, or as they were officially called, the Drug Augmented Supersoldiers. Those guys were orphans and children born on the prison islands, taken in infancy and pumped full of drugs so they grew eight feet tall, meaner than a bag of rabid ferrets, and maybe a third as smart as the least clever member of that bag. Nobody liked them, but nothing was better for swarming fortified positions.
McHardy walked over to our table, thumbs hooked in his belt, and looked down at me, a frown on his face.
“Melvin,” he drawled as a greeting.
“Heyyah Alan, how ya doin’?”
“Well, I’m alright, how ‘bout yourself?”
“I’m feeling better than I have in fifteen years!” I responded, a wide smile on my face.
“I’d hoped you were sick as a dog or something,” he said, sighing, “But you look healthier than I think I’ve ever seen you.” My smile faltered.
“Well, that’s an odd thing to wish.” He didn’t respond to that, just staring down at me with a stony look, and I got the feeling something was wrong. “What’s up?”
“You’re AWOL,” he said. “I gotta place you under arrest.”
“Oh, come on now, you don’t gotta do that,” I said, taking another pull from my beer bottle.
“No, I think I do. You’ve been gone for nearly two weeks, Melvin. Where the hell have you been?”
“Would you believe that I’ve been on a starship getting my body repaired?”
“As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t,” he deadpanned at me. I looked across the table at Blart, who said nothing. Traitorous little bastard. Without backup, I haplessly looked at the sheriff and shrugged.
“Well it was worth a try,” I said. “Let’s go. I guess I ought to report in.”
“Yeah, I think you ought-” he started, but then stopped as I stood up. “What the hell?”
“What?” I asked. He took a couple steps back and drew his gun. “You don’t need that,” I said, frowning at him and slowly raising my hands, but he held the gun steady on me.
“Melvin was missing his leg, and you’re not. You ain’t Melvin.” His voice had gone from disappointed to alarmed and angry, with an undertone of tension that raised the hairs on the back of my neck.
“Look, they repaired my leg. I’m telling you, it was the spaceship.”
“Save it for the tribunal. You’re coming with me, spy. Guess we know why that dead girl was in his backyard now. You foreigners disgust me.”
“Fine, fine,” I said, my hands still up. I was a little bit worried about the whole “dead girl buried in my backyard” thing, but former Drop Marines got a lot of leeway in tribunals of any sort. “I’ll go peacefully.”
“No you won’t, spy. You’ll fry.” He glanced down to find a set of cuffs on his belt, which was when Blart saw his opportunity and leapt from the booth to bite him on the bicep. McHardy shouted in pain and pulled the trigger. The gun barked once as his hand jerked back wildly as he was dragged down to the ground by two hundred pounds of pot belly pig.
“Oh, holy shit!” I shouted. “What the fuck are you doing, Blart?” But his mouth was full of cop so he couldn’t respond. Alan started to pull a knife from his belt, but I couldn’t have him stab my pilot, so I brought my foot down on his wrist like a hammer, effectively disarming him. “Blart, we gotta cheese it!” I pulled my hydrocar’s keys out of my pocket and ran out, hopping in the driver’s seat. Blart, his muzzle covered in blood, ran out and hopped in after me. “What the hell’d you do that for?”
“He said he was going to kill you by frying! You’re far too important, you cannot die!”
“You crazy fuggin buttsquid!” I shouted at him as I peeled away from Maud’s. I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about, but I had the uncomfortable feeling that he wasn’t going to allow me to remain blissfully ignorant.
