FAR GALAXIES - Excerpt
their path. "I'm positive. We want to relocate to New Terra."
The RLC employee who'd encouraged them to choose New Terra, Just Right Hair,
nodded approvingly. "Good choice, ladies. Emigrants to New Terra don't have
to pass the tests like emigrants to Mars. New Terra takes all comers."
"You said come." Long Hair, beside Cassie, uttered a dirty laugh. "Heh heh
heh."
"They're not hard tests," Short Hair argued.
"You said hard," Long Hair said with an even dirtier laugh. "Ho ho ho."
"Whatever." Short Hair grudgingly handed the New Terra enthusiast several
credits. "You win. Again."
"I don't want to leave Olde Earth," Cassie whined. "I don't want to leave my
scummy bummy Gerald behind. He loves me."
"If he loved you, he wouldn't have hiked our rent," Trish said in a loud
whisper. "He doesn't love me or you. He used us for you know what."
"His managers made him do it," Cassie claimed. Then she began to cry. "It's
not fair! And I don't understand why I cry at the drop of a hat these days,
plus I'm tired every afternoon and I have these odd cravings for salty goo
and sweet goo at the same time!"
The RLC employees herded them through the opening in the high fence around
the landing port. Electric spits and barbs lined the top of the fence in an
ominous fashion Mari Shu failed to note until she was on the other side of
it.
Almost as if...they were prisoners.
"Have a good trip!" Just Right Hair said. "Your meager belongings are
already on the SS Rentaprise."
"Wait...how did you know which ship we'd choose?" Mari Shu asked.
Instead of responding, the RLC workers slammed and latched the final gate
behind her and her sisters as if dusting their hands of the problem.
Considering they proceeded to literally dust their hands, Mari Shu wondered
at the author's ability to come up with fresh descriptions.
A horn blared from the SS Rentaprise, proceeded by mechanized loudspeaking.
"Departure for the final frontier in five minutes! All aboard!"
Mari Shu and her sisters raced up the gangplank of the SS New Terra. She
ignored the flash of the Rentaprise's engine glow on the silver hand of the
cybermech, watching her from the ramp of the other ship. Good riddance. She
didn't want to associate with criminals. Unless they were her treasured
sisters. Voyaging into skies unknown was such a better choice than breaking
her unbreakable vow to her sainted grandmother about becoming a sexxorer.
On New Terra, there would be no boundaries! No barriers! No drudgery! No
crime after dark! They would have a real shot at happiness! And the chance
to eat grass, like people on Mars! Perhaps there would even be unicorns and
snowflakes of the special variety!
Mingling among the other thousand passengers, give or take, in the long
corridors, the sisters located their assigned bunk, denoted by their names
on the door panel. Inside, the tiny room featured a sonic shower and
shitter, three narrow beds, and their possessions in a pitiful heap. Their
new quarters were smaller than their flat, barely large enough for all three
of them at the same time.
A screen above the door scrolled constant announcements and helpful
factoids, such as, "Passengers will report at six am and six pm to the mess
hall for nutrition. Lights out at eight pm. Peak fitness will be maintained.
Jobs will be assigned for New Terra training. Violators will be spaced.
Unless they're below the age of consent. Then they'll be put in cells until
they turn twenty, at which point they'll be spaced. Also, don't have babies.
We have to keep our population stable until we get to New Terra due to
oxygen constraints."
"Spaced? I'd like more space," Cassie said. "As well as new pants. I seem to
get bigger every day. Luckily, sturdy females are all the rage. What do we
have to violate to get this space?"
"That's not what spaced means, goo for brains," Trish said. "It means shoved
out an airlock."
Mari Shu stiffened in horror at the thought. It was one thing to be sent to
a Venusian penile colony for committing felonies, but it was another to
simply be killed! What kind of extremist ship had they boarded? What kind of
freedom was this?
"How long does this trip take if having babies would disrupt it?" Perhaps
they'd only be on board a few days. They could follow yet more rules for a
few weeks. The trip to Mars only took a couple hours.
"Approximately ten Olde Earth years. I saw it on the data scroll," Trish
answered.
"So we'll be decrepit hags by the time we get to New Terra?" Cassie
shrieked. "My glowing orange skin wrinkled like a peach pit, which I've
never seen but the readers have, so they'll know what I'm talking about?
What kind of joke is this? I want off this ship!"
"We can't go back. We're already billions of light years from Olde Earth
since we passed through the gatestar technological device that enables
transport between far-flung galaxies," Trish said. "I saw it on..."
"The data scroll?" Mari Shu guessed, wishing she'd paid attention, too.
However, she'd been stiff with horror, which wasn't conducive to observing
pertinent details like a device that provided whatever information the
characters needed to move the scene forward. "If our people invented these
convenient gatestar devices, why does it take years to get to New Terra? Why
couldn't they slingshot us into the proper galaxy?"
"That I don't know." Trish shook her head. "I'm not an astrophysicist."
"What's an astrophysicist?" Cassie asked.
All three women looked at each other and shrugged.
"It probably doesn't matter," Mari Shu decided. "We're merely passengers on
a pilgrim-filled ocean liner through the stars. We don't need to know
anything about astros or physics. It will never affect us. We'll never be
asked to emergency land a ship or navigate through a wormhole."
"That's a relief," Trish said. "I'm sure the jobs we'll be assigned on New
Terra will be modest, productive occupations with zero chance we'll be
auctioned off to rapacious, extremely patriarchal lizard men waiting for
their promised human concubines to arrive. I'm also sure our ten-year
journey will involve some type of cryosleep so the readers don't have to
endure such a lengthy segment without any action."
"Unless," Mari Shu hypothesized, "I were to wake up halfway through the trip
and find out someone was secretly killing off the cryosleeping passengers. I
mean, it really depends on what the author's going to spoof next."
"There's no guarantee of cryosleep," Cassie argued. "A wreck is more likely,
with the three of us plus a few eligible male passengers and at least one
annoying child forging an intrepid path through the titanic vessel that was
billed as the ship that couldn't possibly fail. We'll have to race against
time to the lifeboat pods before we drift into a star or self-destruct."
"If we don't wreck, my money's on New Terra being a backwater mining
planet." Trish smacked her fist into her palm. "I foresee low tech crime
capers with a dose of bad weather, corrupt drug lords, and some kick-ass
lesbians in hard hats."
"Silly. You don't have any money. Nobody's going to take that bet," Mari Shu
pointed out. "We'll probably get blown off course by a stellar tornado or
mistimed gatestar explosion into a quadrant where no human has e'er
ventured, with no way to contact our scientists back on Olde Earth and Mars.
Talk about getting stuck in the boonies."
"We should totally call it the boonie quadrant if that happens," Cassie
said. "I call dibs on the hive-melded hunk we rescue from the Galactic Bee
Queen and attempt to waken back into individuality."
Mari Shu threw up her hands. "Have you considered we might accidentally time
travel into the Earth's past where we must ponder the ramifications of the
butterfly effect weighed against the fact that the future we're building
toward kind of sucks anyway, and that we'd be better off altering the space
time continuum?"
"Timey wimey stuff." Trish nodded wisely. "One practically has to be a
doctor to understand that. However, I really don't think that's the way this
segment is going."
"What makes you say that?" Mari Shu asked.
"Because a space cowboy's sneaky ferret class vessel has uncloaked right
outside our tiny porthole. And look, it's called the Quietude. I get the
feeling it's ironically named."
***
About the author
Click here to learn more about FAR GALAXIES at Jody Wallace’s site.
Related TGE post: Let The Hilarity Begin: Jody Wallace’s THE ADVENTURES OF MARI SHU
Joyfully yours,
Heather