Spaced Out part 2 of 7

CHAPTER THREE

Special note: The number three is considered throughout the galaxy as being either lucky, unlucky, and/or of spiritual significance, depending upon each being’s point of view. Therefore this chapter shall be omitted in deference to galactic sensitivities and their possible ramifications. Please proceed to chapter four where you may safely continue with the story.



CHAPTER FOUR

“Yahoo!”, Bob whooped, slapping his thigh. Zed, as usual, was a little slow on the uptake, so Bob spelled it out to him. “The ship, the food, and, best of all, the booze, it’s all ours! We’ve even got our own little metal waiter! Zed, me old mate, as far as good times go we’ve just hit the jackpot!” A4, smarting from his instant demotion to that of motorized drink dispenser, kept mum about the space cruiser he had picked up on the long range scanners that was closing fast upon their position. To be sure, it would be filled with more bio forms, and the thought sent a slight shudder through his circuits. However, the way current events seemed to be unfolding anything would be an improvement over playing wet nurse to these two. His newly changed cunning chip liked him to keep an ace up his titanium sleeve, so he decided not to spoil the moment just yet. He’d casually mention it later, at the most inopportune time perhaps.

Several rounds of celebratory drinks quickly followed. A4 brooded silently in a corner, biding his time and refusing point blank to carry out his new role of booze hound on the technical grounds that such abuse of his services did not constitute any part of his operational matrix. This didn’t deter Bob and Zed from trying to drag him into the festive mood by covering him in a pile of colored streamers they had found in a box under the bar that had been cruelly and disappointingly marked ‘best whiskey’, when in actual fact it contained no such thing. Was this the final indignation for the suffering little biobot? Not a snow flake’s chance in Sidon, with these two lurking about. Still, the traditional conical party hat did set him off nicely, though the two others tied to his chest in a crude and semi-humorous attempt to simulate breasts looked just a tad silly. A4 slowly simmered away, thankful that none of his peers were left to witness this appalling spectacle of cybernetic humiliation. Luckily he had deactivated his ego server, which helped dull the pain a bit.

The party finally fizzled out due to the self-induced unconsciousness of the two hosts sprawled out on the floor in front of him, hands still firmly gripping semi-filled bottles. Were they half full or merely half empty? It didn’t really matter to these guys, since they were in no condition to tell the difference anyway. Wisely they had remembered somewhere along the line to pop one of their special pills each so that they would eventually wake up reasonably fresh and relaxed enough to ponder that and other such taxing philosophical conundrums later on. They may even try for the classic ‘tree falling in the forest’ thing as an encore if they could find enough ship’s potted palms to gather together and the interest to do so, which seemed highly improbable at that moment.

A4 gave the androidal version of a half frown/half smile. The frown was for all the unwarranted mental abuse that he had endured at the mischievous hands of these ‘slimers’, as he liked to call them. To him slimers were life forms comprising a mix of organic elements and sticky fluids of varying sorts which they felt compelled to leak all over the place for any given reason, and therefore fell far below the superiority of his kind in all departments. How they had gotten to where they were in the galactic pecking order he just couldn’t compute. His disdain wasn’t merely reserved solely for Bob and Zed though. No way. Such was his scorn for his self-perceived underlings that it was dished out to all bios with equal amounts of contempt, as one might dislike a bit of doggy-do found smeared under one’s shoe.

The smile, however, was for the fun that was yet to unfold, as the still unidentified craft was closing in all the while and should, on current reckoning, reach them quite soon at its constant velocity. His revenge chip continued its harping, winking on and off impatiently.
[Story note: The rights and responsibilities of biobots, androids, and all affiliated members of the artificial intelligence based automaton family are covered under the third amendment of the non-100% organic life forms branch in galactic law. The problem is that it has become terribly complicated over the eons as new advances are made and added to its already bulky frame, and lawyers covering it are now required to have a PHD in advanced bio-cybernetics just to understand it themselves. However, the accountability section, simply broken down, states that no constituent may do harm whatsoever to any kind of pure organic life form, even if they truly deserve it. This doesn’t mean that they can’t think about it, and many do. They just can’t do it, which is a deep seated cause of much semi-mechanoid frustration. Further, they are prohibited from arranging for another being, of any form, to visit such trespass upon their behalf. However, as is generally the case with these types of increasingly elaborate laws, it is wide open to interpretation, manipulation, and plain good old fashioned outright abuse so that, while not being broken as such, it can be distorted to the point of being almost unrecognizable from its original form. Thus potential psycho-cybers can take some measure of comfort, and perhaps even joy, from a sentient organic coming to grief from their own devices. Belonging to the former sub-group, A4 was one seriously warped little android.]

This ‘soon’ equated roughly to around three Earth days, though A4 had meticulously measured it down to the last nano second. This gave him plenty of time to savor the upcoming moment, allowing the inebriated pair to get well settled into the feel of their new, if only brief, ownership of the liner. Then it would be his ‘painful’ duty to inform them of the approaching vessel’s imminent arrival, putting on a suitably sad face once he had remembered to switch off his smugness circuits first. If anyone actually thought to enquire how he had missed seeing them coming he could always save his tinny wee backside by claiming that he had earlier shut the temporally unneeded long range scanners down for a well deserved rest, since the liner was no longer underway. The fact that these probers of deep space were not actually hibernating, as was being erroneously claimed, but were actually working their bums off feeding a steady stream update of the oncoming foreign body’s position to A4’s operational matrix through their wireless connections while he was moving around, and the resulting resentment that they would feel towards him for this unfair inference of perceived weakness in their unlimited durability, didn’t phase him in the least. Perhaps he might be able to placate them later with a few spare electrons he had lying about in his power pack. He would then roll back and watch as the delicious mayhem unfolded.

The following events from this latent realization that they were no longer alone in that sector of space would begin a slow and gradual awakening of panic in the pits of Bob and Zed’s stomachs. At first nothing much would change while they grappled with the concept of possibly not having sole access to the bars any more. Then their bearer of bad news might casually slip innocent little comments into the conversation such as “My, my, what a mess.” “You guys sure know how to party!” “Look at all these expensive empty bottles lying about.” And the clincher, “I wonder who they’re going to make pay for all of this?” Sluggishly a small bulb would brighten into full shine deep inside Bob’s head, and struggle to illuminate the major problem they now faced. He’d become aware that they were trapped with no crowd in which to mingle to avoid the massive bar tab, his usual favored mode of escape. No, they would be well and truly screwed this time round, and the joy of this thought replaced the small ‘bot’s semi-frown with an opposing smile of equal parts, the combined effect of which resembled something akin to a nearly straight grin.

A further reason for his negative disposition towards bios was their preference for sleeping a fair whack of their existence away. He just couldn’t understand it, as in his mind such behavior was highly unproductive. It may be reasonable enough to go off line briefly while enduring your 200 light year check up service and circuit replacement, but not at the bone idle rate that this lot got up to. The latest proof to this lay snoring at his feet. 4,996 years, 3months,15days, 8hours, 4minutes, and 30seconds zonked out in stasis and barely six hours later they were at it again. The final spanner in the works was that they dared suppose themselves to be more important than cybernauts, an idea he would hotly dispute at every conceivable opportunity. This was the bit that would really have galled him, had he any internal organ remotely resembling a gall bladder. Instead, he engaged his loathing chip and quietly plotted his own small passive part in their downfall. At least it would rate as a slight victory for both himself and his ilk, and that was all he truly lusted for.

After a few more wasteful hours Bob and Zed finally regained consciousness and, foregoing any  thoughts of engaging in the previously mentioned esoteric discussions as being a waste of good guzzling time, downed the half full (now completely empty) bottles and went in search of the upper decks bar. 5,000 years was a long time between drinks, and required a lot of catching up to be done. They went for this new and, at present, untouched watering hole for two very important reasons. Firstly, as it was in the first class section the booze would be top rate and, secondly, they had drunk ‘The Dregs’ totally dry.

The only problem for the dipsomaniacal duo was that first class space liner bars do not normally hold a great deal of stock, as most of the passengers usually spend quite a tidy sum on such tickets to weird and/or wonderful places and thus feel that sitting on a ship chuggling vast amounts of alcohol would be a glorious waste of time, money, and viewing opportunity no matter how nice the decor might actually be. The vessel was simply a means to an end, a mode of convenient transport if you will, and they generally only partook in the odd tipple or two in order to celebrate their safe arrival in that sector of their journey. It was completely different for seasoned galactic pub crawlers though.  Deck class passage was a fair bit cheaper and so attracted the type who didn’t really give two hoots for sight seeing, a fact that most operators of tourist destinations were quite pleased about, not caring to attract their type or their hoots either. Some even paid the space lines to stock the below decks booze pits fuller in an effort to keep such undesirables in their place and away from their ventures, which relied heavily upon good taste and decorum to remain solvent. Therefore these dens of iniquity usually had a lot more, though poorer quality, rot gut than their upper sectioned counterparts, a fact the lads were soon to sorely discover.



CHAPTER FIVE

Bob was not overly sure of his way on the upper decks, despite having studied the route from the safety brochure he was given when boarding, since he was never invited up there by anyone for a drink, be it casual or otherwise. He found that it turned out to be a lot harder than he had expected when he had to put the theory into practice, and to experience it first hand in reality. To make matters worse it was dark, for A4, the efficient little android that he was, felt that it would be a complete waste of precious energy resources to have left the lights on in this section purely to illuminate some old piles of jumbled bones that no one would be too keen on looking at in any case. He could ‘see’ equally well in all parts of the electro-magnetic radiation spectrum and so wasn’t confined solely to the middle bit called light. As he turned off the switches on the way out, after first ensuring that no life existed to any degree on these levels, he afforded himself a slight air of smugness, notching up another point of imagined, but truly felt, one-upmanship over the organics.

Groping their way along the corridor they eventually came upon a doorway that Bob rightly guessed was the entrance to the first class bar called ‘The Stardust Lounge’, though for some odd reason had been nicknamed ‘Ziggies’. What had given this particular bulkhead away from the many similar ones that they had passed was the cute pair of saloon-type swingers set waist height just inside its recess. However, the real clincher to his deductive powers was the presence of minute tell-tale aerobic traces of past spilled drinks emanating from the now disused carpet. Bob had a nose for alcohol in all its forms, though it was matched equally well by his mouth, lips, tongue, and other members of the esophageal family, and subsequent relatives of his gastro-intestinal tract, and he could sniff out a free shot several pubs away. He turned to Zed, and in a reverently excited tone said “This is it, matey!”

They peered into the inky space beyond and saw exactly what anyone might reasonably be expected to observe in a room darker than the blackest night on board a deserted star liner with all the illumination turned off. Absolutely nothing. By now A4 had caught up with them again and, having no table to accidently bump into on purpose this time round, banged straight into them instead. “Hey, watch it man!” Zed complained, beginning to loose his famous cool with this irritating trash can on wheels. Bob, on the other hand, grinned and bore it, though mostly grinned. He realized that this particular biobot was the key to commanding the liner, along with its all important liquid inventory, and planned to use him to their full advantage. Thus he was genuinely pleased to see his new little friend or, more correctly as this situation presented itself, feel his pressing presence. “Hey, amigo android”, he slapped A4 on the back, “how ‘bout a dash of light in here?”  The sullen servant dutifully obliged, beginning to regret ever having let these two out of their popsicle boxes in the first place. Glare suddenly flooded the small room, blinding their eyes which had become comfortably accustomed to having not been exposed to any of late. “Does it come with a dimmer, man?” Zed finally snapped, shading his face with one hand. A4 sighed an inaudible beep and adjusted the setting to a more comfortable humanoid level which, at any other time, might have been described as mood lighting.

Once their optical orbs had recalibrated themselves to the less strenuous level of streaming photons they now saw exactly what they had originally hoped to find. A few empty tables and chairs were the only obstacles that bravely stood between the insatiably thirsty pair and the bar. This unfortunate furniture never had a chance, and, given the non-thinking nature of such inanimate objects, also absolutely no idea of what was about to hit them. From a standing start Bob reached the winning post a good bent elbow length ahead of Zed, thus keeping his record intact. A4 slowly trundled in, surveying the damage and biting his plastic tongue. Only a couple more days he mused, then berated himself for thinking in such quasi-general terms. Exactly 2.354 days, he corrected, and felt much better for returning to concise measurements. Hanging around these two was starting to rub off on him, allowing for his usually impeccable standards to inadvertently slip (in accordance with one of the laws of thermodynamics which roughly states that any complex system will depreciate in proportion to the effects of the surrounding lesser structured influences upon it, or something near enough to that. It’s all to do with a little bugbear known as atrophy), and he looked forward to rescue and being back among his own sort once more where total accuracy and precision meant oh so much, if not the same desirable thing. No slacking off now, he self-chided, for he must be ready the moment his chance arrived. Yes, 2.353 days now, and counting, he beamed as he set to work righting the upturned mess.

Another all night bender duly got underway, though in deference to the exceptional quality, and somewhat lesser quantity, of the alcohol available, they decided not to guzzle it quite as quickly as they might otherwise have done. Still, come the following morning the result was exactly the same. They had drunk this oasis dry as well. The luscious lubricants had spared them from physical pain yet again, but were powerless against the onset of the mental anguish that rapidly engulfed them once it became apparent that just about all the liquor on the ship had been consumed. Only the captain’s private stash and the medicinal supply in the sick bay remained intact, but not for long! Pooling it all into several large bottles they divided their booty neatly into two equal shares. Then they sat back and stared despondently at them in a rather dubious manner, as if half expecting them to begin multiplying through the power of sheer optimism. Unfortunately, these few priceless containers stubbornly maintained their status quo by refusing point blank to proliferate in any way, and it soon dawned on the bemused booze buddies that such meager supplies weren’t going to last very long at all, even with a further major reduction in the rate of their internal intake. Some desperate action was going to have to be taken, and fairly bloody soon!

Of course, they could always return to the stasis booths and set a course for the nearest known space bar, trusting A4 not to drop them in it when they got there. That part was fairly iffy in itself, but it was Bob’s ego that precluded this course of action outright. He had always prided himself on his ability to live off the land, so to speak, and something in the back of his mind told him that there was booze in this system, somewhere. He could just sense it.

The realization then occurred to him, in much the same way that he received the vast majority of his inspiration (i.e. through sheer jammy luck), that the best place to obtain the much needed supplies in any star sector was a planet that harbored some form of intelligent life. In this case that spot was the Earth. This sparkling gem of a thought was based solely on a suddenly restored memory of the overwhelming number of beer commercials he had seen on the Mega Spatial tv channels that had originated from this tarty little world. In hindsight, as far as the unfortunate and totally unsuspecting orb came to rue, it seems that it doesn’t always pay to advertise. A further and much more desperate prospect that was up for consideration involved taking a scooter for a quick dip through the upper atmosphere of one of the gas giants that A4 had detected, filling the newly installed collection tanks with methane, running it all through a catalytic converter back on the ship, and waiting for the raw product to be distilled into the hootch that they desperately craved. This idea was immediately rejected out of hand on the rather sensible grounds that, while the initial ingredient was freely available, the drawbacks were too numerous to contemplate putting into practice. For a start it was a rather lengthy and laborious process, and the guys weren’t particularly keen on either of those attributes. Another niggling problem was the fact that the space lines never actually fitted their vessels with anything remotely resembling a catalytic converter. They just didn’t see the need. Yet this failed to deter Bob from cursing their lack of foresight while he weighed up his options, finally deciding that the third rock out from the Sun would do rather nicely as their local ‘Big Easy Bottle-O’. The ethanol there was pre-packaged and readily available so no long term hanging around was necessary, a very attractive quality as far as they both were concerned.

The only bar fly in the ointment was the problem of payment as, with all universal purveyors of such liquid commodity, an exchange of some form of hard currency was fastidiously expected. This concern was further compounded by unforeseen distance, as the duo hadn’t planned to get this far out in the spiral arm ‘sticks’. Because of this they had neglected to change any of their miserly mound of galactic credits, or ‘Galacto’s’, for Earth cash back at the embarkation space port on the seemingly correct assumption that they wouldn’t be needing that particular type, and the possibility of achieving any successful transaction using the old ‘cheque is in the mail’ routine seemed virtually zilch. Bob doubted that even he would be able to keep a straight face long enough to pull that one off. No, he’d have to resort to conning his way through this glitch in the quest for the free flowing amber.         



CHAPTER SIX

Bob stood up unsteadily, and felt more than a bit woozy thanks to a strange quirk of biology peculiar to habitual binge drinkers. This condition related to a slight bodily electrolyte imbalance caused by copious amounts of fluid flushing through the individual’s circulatory system. Unfortunately, for our blithered booze bashers at any rate, while the special pills that they regularly took spared them of any subsequent brain pain, they didn’t replace said lost salts and sugars that were leeched out time and again during their alco-fuelled rampages. This resulted in a fractional wonkiness in their legs, somewhat tired arms, and short term blurring of their vision to top it all off. This may well have been the origin of the saying ‘If you don’t stop it you’ll go blind’, though the jury still seems to be out on that one.

Things tended to gradually improve if left to their own devices, and were well speeded up when additional stimulants were ingested soon after awakening. Of course, the whole problem could have been avoided altogether if these mood elevators had been mixed into the drinks during the course of such excesses. However, purists like Bob and Zed regarded those who did so as wimps and frowned heavily upon them. They were, after all, mega risk takers, beings who lived on the edge, and felt that they had already given enough ground with the advent of the anti-hangover capsules in the first place. No longer subjected to the main debilitating after effects of quantity guzzling, they grabbed hold of this latter affliction and held on for grim death. Enough was enough, by gum! They had a reputation to defend and weren’t going to stand for any further deterioration of their tough bloke/devil may care image. Not that many did an actual lot of standing anyway, mainly due to the afore mentioned malady. Ego demanded that they needed to have some measure of the appearance of peril in their lives and so decided that electrolyte imbalance was the very least that they could endure for the cause, which was more than enough for some of the less hardened members of their particular club.

Bob’s next pronouncement came as a complete surprise and shock to A4 and he reeled internally in a way that only biobots can, though on the outside he maintained his normal calm composure. Not a ripple of worry crossed his blank face to betray his innermost synaptic thoughts. This was because his expression chip had suddenly been frozen and placed on bypass while his logic circuits went into overdrive processing the devastating new development. This was certainly not what he had expected, or even remotely wished for, and all his masterfully worked out plans now threatened to come undone and lie forlornly unfulfilled on the floor. He had suffered long and hard under the annoying yoke of these two, well it felt long and hard enough to him at least, and he wasn’t about to let them get away if he could help it.

Admittedly his ordeal had only been for two days thus far, however, to a hyper sensitive andro-entity such as he, it was definitely, and rather more to the point incorrectly, three days too long. He was, for once, at a loss as what to do about the situation, since he wasn’t allowed to take any direct action designed to impede the ‘superior’ bios in their movements. Nor was he permitted to sucker a cyber buddy in to help him out, then hide behind the mug when the long finger of blame was judicially pointed in their direction. Bloody hell! What to do? “Do something!!!” his revenge chip fairly bellowed into his logic circuit’s audio input receptor, further distracting him and making a seemingly impossible task just that little bit harder still.

Bob cleared his throat for maximum dispatch. ‘Zed, me old mate!” he stated proudly, “I’m gonna get us some more booze!” The effect of this pronouncement might have been even grander had he not swayed about quite so much. However, as Zed still wasn’t able to focus properly at that stage anyway, and A4 showed no signs of caring one way or another, he got away with it rather nicely. It had been some time since they had roused themselves from the tribulations of the night before, yet the lack of total wellbeing continued to take its toll. It was a real bugger to shake off once it had a hold of you. He carried on, eyes smiling in anticipation. “Wanna come?”
“Where to, man?” Zed asked with a mix of excitement and wariness in equal parts.
“The Earth!” Bob enthused.
“The Earth?” Zed echoed in alarm, his excitement suddenly fleeing, slamming the door on its way out, and leaving an increasingly unsure looking wariness holding the bag.
“The Earth?” A4 beeped sharply in surprise, at once affording Bob his full attention. Having been shocked out of his complacency by this new development a wave of stato-electric apprehensive charges zapped through his sub-dura hardware and very nearly fried his uncertainty chip to a crisp.
“The Earth!” Bob confirmed with a wicked grin that could have gotten him locked up in some of the galaxy’s more puritan systems.

Zed continued to shudder at the thought, growing increasingly unhappy about being so close to that particular planet for a still unknown and irrational reason. He just couldn’t figure it out. All had been going relatively well until A4 had initiated his unease by letting the feisty feline out of the cloth carry-all, with all its whiskers twitching malevolently, concerning information regarding their near proximity to that blue/green smoky marble. It was, after all, a mere stone’s throw away for anyone with a good mega-thrust hyper astro-arm. He glanced slyly at an entertainment monitor showing a tv program full of furry little animals which was being picked up from that general direction, and suddenly the galacto dropped. Holy crap! Sweat started to pool on his forehead as he quickly declined Bob’s invitation. When further pressed he explained to his rather taken aback mate that he had gained an unhealthy fear, be it ridiculous or otherwise, of one of the Earth’s lesser known life forms and that he didn’t wish to risk being put into a position in which he might remotely encounter any representatives of that particular species, even by accident. “Just don’t want to, man”, he paraphrased. After a last ditched prying from Bob he told him who the culprit was, and how he had come by his latest phobia. His inquisitor’s eyebrows arched appreciatively.
[Story note: The secret identity of this animal shall be revealed in a further upcoming chapter in order to help keep a little mystery in the story, though for those who aren’t able to wait that long for this revelation the answer shall appear upside down underneath this note. However, for a more satisfying read the author strongly urges restraint.]
[ The Great Mole Rat. (upside down) ]
“I’ll just stay here, man, and keep watch on our tin guy over there”, Zed gestured somewhat vaguely towards their companion lurking near the doorway, while desperately trying to regain his cool. The android guiltily turned away, hoping that these two hadn’t the foggiest notion of the new plans that he was rapidly redrawing.

In an audacious attempt to buy some badly needed thinking time A4 tried to encourage Bob to stay by using every allowable linguistically persuasive trick in the Big Book of Pseudo-Psychic Bio Manipulation, yet it was ultimately to no avail. His solo audience habitually placed the pursuit of good times, which mainly involved drinking, way ahead of personal profit or risk of possible danger. For his part, Bob realized that he was indeed taking a big chance in leaving Zed and A4 together but the overwhelming need of his mission justified the shortening odds. A4 rapidly rethought his strategy and felt that now might be a good time for a change of tactics. He gave his logic circuits full range in the quest of finding an answer to his dilemma, confident of their ability to release him from this latest pressing problem. They duly obliged, vindicating his trust in them, and he felt a great mental weight slowly lift from his sagging frame. The solution he craved so much for turned out to be sublimely simple. Whether his detractors stayed with him or not the result would be the same as far as his short term future was concerned. In exactly 1.498 days from now he’d be free again, at least in a cybernetic sense, and able to tackle the truly important and fulfilling functions that he hankered for. His nannying duties would thankfully come to an end and, until then, with Bob gone from the ship his tasks should be noticeably reduced.

Yet while this pseudo heart balm appealed to both his ego and neatness circuits, it was simply peeing in the breeze when it came to the persistent revenge chip, which realized that it was going to miss out on the delicious satisfaction of observing Bob’s crestfallen face after all. It began to look as though the carefully worked out scheme was about to suffer a catastrophic semi-failure (halved only by virtue of still having Zed in his ‘care’), and the loose ends that he had worked so hard to nicely tie up and stow out of the way now threatened to unravel once more and lie all over the place where someone might trip over them. Oh well, the best laid plans of rodents and robots! Things were getting a little too messy for his liking, and internally quite noisy as well thanks to the constant beseeching of his dark complainer. Shutting down this annoying silicate allowed for some much needed peace and quiet in which to re-ponder the problem. He decided that a dose of real heavy sulking was in order and rolled away with the echoes of the simulo bee buzzing in his bionic bonnet gradually fading into the distance.

He parked his metallic butt in an observi-suit built into the side of the bar room which catered for panoramic views of places that the well-to-do might be visiting in more fortunate circumstances, and began a damned good fuming. This intensified considerably as he watched the space scooter that Bob had ‘borrowed’ from the vehicle mid deck hanger, with his reluctant help, flying away towards Earth. His whole matrix fairly glowed red from the heat generated by his resentment chip. Of course he didn’t actually have to look out of the maxi-reinforced porthole bubble to be aware of his escapee’s progress, since he was continuously linked to the ship’s radar inputs and so could easily detect such a target electronically. Yet look he did, all the same. Then he literally kicked himself out of frustration for doubting the glorious heritage of his superior cybernetics, and for picking up the lazy habits of the ‘lower based’ humanoids, which only compounded his anger when he realized that this most recent action was a further example of his growing new affliction. In a pith of despair he switched off all his functions in order to avoid any further self-induced embarrassment and pain from his growing cyber headache. No doubt the downtime would do him a lot of good.   





CHAPTER SEVEN

         Having reached Earth in good time Bob came screaming through the atmosphere at full throttle, flat out, completely ignoring the galactic convention regarding approaches to recent technologically emerged planets, moons, and asteroids which briefly stated that when visiting such bodies all care must be duly taken to enter and land in areas of least population and subsequent aerial traffic in a manner that is likely to draw the minimal amount of attention, wanted or otherwise, as possible. This was to help prevent the dual risks of collision and detection. Bob blatantly snubbed this 'request', as he was on a mission and didn't have time to stuff around. Just get the booze and get out again. Such laws, he felt, were most probably drawn up by those who weren't exactly hanging out for a drink anyway!  He hurtled straight onto the nearest land mass which, at that particular angle of attack, happened to be Australia. Setting one of the instruments on the control panel to home in on the area of maximum populace, thus ensuring the best chance to blend in easily as well as accessing the largest selection of alcohol available, he pulled the small craft up a few hundred meters above the centre of the city of Sydney, and spied a parking space in an empty corner of an amusement park on the foreshore of it's magnificent harbor. The fun fair turned out to be the aptly named 'Lunar Park', and seemed like a good enough place for an 'off the planet' type of guy to hide his ship.
         His aviating antics went oddly mostly unnoticed for a city of over four million people, mainly because no one was actually looking up at the time. Being late Friday afternoon, due to a rather fortuitous turn of luck, everyone had their minds set on what they were going to be getting up to on the weekend, and their heads firmly down and concentrating on the task at hand, getting home from work so that they could either get ready to go out and let it all hang loose, or simply collapse in front of the tele after a quick dinner for a cheap night's in-house entertainment. He had inadvertently coincided with the 'knock off' rush hour traffic and race to the buses and trains. However, his plummeting path didn't go entirely unobserved, as he managed to just miss a jumbo on finals into Kingsford Smith airport, more due to providence than any real piloting skills on his part, and causing it to experience a severe buffeting as it flew through his wake. He also briefly lit up the radar screens at air traffic control although, as the weekend beaconed and the day shift didn't really want to stay back to explain a minor glitch in the system that now seemed to be working perfectly okay again, nothing was ever said about it.  All aircraft were accounted for safe and sound, including the one that was somewhat shaken up (and down, and up, and down), and, as it had landed without any further incident, who could ask for more? The job was right, and a change of personnel was imminent. 

         Bob gently eased the craft down to the least obvious section of the repair area of the park and managed to slightly bend the landing struts by shutting down the anti-gravitation generator before it had actually touched terra-firma, in his haste to get out and amongst it all. Flipping the automatic door opener on the panel he fairly bounded down the stairs and, looking around, found an old 'out of order' sign lying beside a stack of defunct looking machinery.  Grinning at the brilliance of his hastily conjured up plan he quickly walked back over to the scooter, punched a button on the outside accessor, and impatiently waited as the stairs tediously retracted. The door slipped shut and locked automatically.  It could only be opened again with a special code that Bob had managed to wrangle from A4 by the promise of a speedy return. He had jotted it down on a piece of scrap paper, and hoped he'd be able to remember where he had put it when the time came to get back into the thing. Hanging the notice on one of the more outwardly extended legs, the angle of the damage giving it a nice authentic appearance, he set off for the exit gate and whistled a little ditty he had picked up from one of the space bars deep in the Orion Nebula on an earlier visit. Now, to find the nearest pub! 

                Back on the liner, parked somewhere behind Pluto, things were hotting up. Not temperature wise though, as it was cold enough out this far from the tiny planetoid's parent star to freeze the gonads off the proverbial metallic simian. No, the increased hyper warmth was due to the internal dynamics of growing friction between Zed and A4 that Bob had suspected might occur, thus prompting him to hurry with his mission. This was because, with Bob's absence, Zed was at a loss for someone to talk to, and, more to the point, drink with. A4 was not at all forthcoming in either regard, trying his best to ignore the remaining bio. Indeed, he was so successful in this regard that Zed had retreated into his shell, and sat sullenly at a table in 'Ziggies' jealously guarding his rapidly disappearing supply from absolutely no one. Still, he remained vigilant, certain that someone, or something, was creeping in and swigging from his collection when he wasn't looking, for how else could it be emptying at such an alarming rate? He became increasingly more perplexed and every now and then glared accusingly at A4, even though the idea simply made no sense at all. The ‘bot was a known non drinker, and despised such activity intensely. He felt that he was clutching at straws, and they seemed to be getting further from his grasp all the while. For his part A4 stared blankly at the nearest wall and gave him a damned good snubbing. Zed, at this conjecture, didn't even dare to go to the toilet for fear that his precious few bottles of the ever dwindling rare drop would be missing upon his return. He just made do with some of the empties, and for a while managed to maintain the equilibrium. In, out, in, out, and shake it all about! Luckily, he was still somewhat sober enough at that stage to be able to tell the difference between the two groups. One lot on top of the table, the other underneath. Even so, how long could this situation last? The tension duly mounted.

                A4 stubbornly stood in the corner, having nowhere in particular to go, and preened his circuits. Occasionally he would do a quick check on the progress of his savior's vessel bearing down on them, more for the glee of the confirmation that it brought him than any other reason. In fact, he 'occasionally' checked it every few minutes and let out an inaudible beep of contentment with each completion of inquiry. During the latest probe, however, something was very much amiss. All hell seemed to break loose inside his head space at once, wiping the smug look off his blank face as he realized that in the general scheme of things he was about to be shafted for a second time. This just wasn't his light year! Another immediate observation of the vector/velocity of the ship of his deliverance confirmed his worst ultra fears. The approaching craft was not closing in as rapidly as before. It appeared to have actually slowed down, but the extremely space savvy android knew that, this far out in the galaxy, appearances could be very deceiving, dealing from the bottom of the deck where the last five cards were all aces. However, when trigonometry was brought into play it came with a whole new pack of its own, and showed that the mystery vehicle was still continuing on at its original momentum.  It was simply angling away slightly from the stationary liner, pursuing a course directly on the back of Bob's scooter towards Earth. This new change in direction had given the blip on A4's radar screen the impression of a reduction in speed, when in reality none existed. All the extremely upset little ‘bot could do was watch helplessly as it passed well by their position and continued on into the inner part of the solar system. The awful truth suddenly dawned on him with all the power of a starburst supernova. Either the approaching quasar cruiser was more interested in catching up with the insignificant bio-hazard named Bob, or else it just happened to be on a trajectory that momentarily turned out to have been a huge teasing fluke, given the immense size of inter-galactic space and the multitude of hyper space lanes it had to pick from. Just another sneaky trick of physics, and one with which it used as its encore before bringing the curtain down on his newly acquired aspirations. Moreover, Bob appeared to be getting all the attention while A4 was stuck with an ever increasingly drunken Zed. He had Zycon's chance of being relieved of his bitter duty unless the other ship paid a return courtesy visit. Since this looked more than quite unlikely he dared not reactivate his revenge chip until he had a solution worked out, for fear that it might lash out at him in some huge and illogically dangerous tantrum. The only course of action left open was to bide his time and hope that his run of rotten luck would change for the better. Not very good prospects admittedly, but what else could he do? He wasn't allowed to contact the other vessel in any way without permission unless a bio life form under his protection was seriously ill or injured, and no higher ranking bios or arties (artificial intelligences) were operational, since he had already discharged his duty in this regard by issuing the original SOS.                                                                                                        [Story note: In the case of death such action clearly didn't warrant the effort and expense, as nothing could be done to revive any expired life forms after this point. The unfortunately demised beings were given a simple ceremony and then dumped in the vicinity of the nearest planet or star, there being left to gravity's demolecularizing devices which served as an astral version of burial at sea.]

                He fulfilled the latter part of this parameter nicely, as the mainframe and other arties’ status was no longer an issue, however the former was a little more tricky. Perhaps Zed might aid his cause by his own hand, as long as there was enough alcohol left to do the job. Time may tell, but then only when it was good and ready. The problem for A4 was that it was a commodity that he was rapidly running short of if such a plan was to be put into action.