Anton's Odyssey Page 12

  Mother and Cotton weren’t home when I arrived back at our living quarters. Strangely, our vid screen had been turned on, and the volume was unmuted. Rather than the usual ship announcements, the vid displayed actual programming, an obnoxious game show. An icon in the upper left hand corner indicated I had a personal message. I accessed it, and it read, “Anthony. Thank you for your help back in the Information Technology Archives. I really do appreciate it. Mike and Jeff could have really hurt me if it weren’t for you. To show my gratitude, I have over-ridden security and given your family free access to all entertainment channels. Thanks again. Your friend, Allen. P.S. This message will delete itself as it would be rather incriminating evidence if used against me.”

  I wasn’t certain if Allen was really a friend at that point in time, but I was moved by his gesture of gratitude. Cotton showed up shortly afterward and was thrilled when I told him the good news about our vid system. We scanned through the channels and, just as Allen said, we had access to everything: all television channels, movies on demand, video games, and even an adults only channel where women walk around topless with their boobs flopping around.

  “Bob the steward can go shove it!” Cotton said with a grin.

  “Yes, he can.” I agreed.

  Chapter 4: The Packard

  In the weeks that followed, Cotton lost himself in the digital alternate reality that was the multiplayer video game. Back home we almost never played video games because the computer we managed to shoplift from the local thrift store was at least a decade into its obsolescence and had a processor that couldn’t handle anything more taxing than the purchase of train tickets.

  With little prior experience and no innate aptitude, I was a rather hopeless player at the ship’s most popular video game, a particularly gruesome shooter titled Psychotic Rampage. I couldn’t figure out the mapping system and became lost easily in the maze. I could never find any weapon more deadly than a butter knife or a tree branch. I had no idea where the other players could hide and was completely clueless when it came to ducking behind cover. Over and over again, I would watch my digital body explode as other players mercilessly pierced me with explosive flechette rounds. To add to the humiliation, the game had a feature where other players could kick my disembodied head around like a soccer ball or even wield my severed limbs as weapons like a club. My poor performance became a running joke on the ship, and the kids in homeroom were never too courteous to point out that I was consistently ranked dead last. Discouraged, I quit playing all together.

  Cotton, on the other hand, was a particularly gifted player. The controller seemed an extension of his body and he could easily execute complex commands, effortlessly mashing long difficult button sequences. My little brother quickly became addicted, playing the game for hours on end. He became the top ranked player, defeating the former champion, Stick Geek Allen in a one-on-one death match. Fortunately, Allen was a good sport and even sent Cotton a personal congratulatory message. Allen could have easily manipulated the steward’s computer and terminated our access to video gaming to regain his title, so I found myself starting to really appreciate the small guy.

  Cotton’s new interest in video games was stronger than his desires to slither around in the ductworks. As a consequence, his clothes and body were less filthy and fewer crewmembers held their noses when he walked by in the passageways. Of course, Cotton completely neglected his homework. Mother received several messages from his teachers about his poor performance in school.

  “Can you believe the nerve of those teachers?” Mother complained. “They want me help Cotton study! They’re the ones who get paid to teach Cotton! Not me!”

  Sadly, with no math processer at my desk, my own math grade took a beating. Within a few weeks after my return to class, I was failing again. I decided I needed expert assistance. I asked around if anyone knew where Stick Geek Allen lived, so I could pay him a surprise visit. Hammond offered no help.

  “You mean that funny looking kid in homeroom with the glasses?” Hammond asked.

  “Yeah, that’s the guy,” I said.

  “What do want to find him for?”

  “I need help with my math problem.”

  “Don’t do it. I mean he can probably help and all, but he’s an officer’s kid. You don’t want to mix with his type.”

  I was relieved to discover Ellen was actually good friends with Allen, and she gave me directions to his living unit.

  “You’re not going to pick on him are you?” she asked.

  “No, what I had in mind was more like a bribe.”

  “What for?”

  “I need help with my math problem.”

  “Oh I’m good at math, I’ll tutor you.” As much as I yearned to spend more time with Ellen, I didn’t want her to see my stupid side.

  “Well, it’s for a really advanced problem,” I lied.

  “Are you taking calculus?” she asked, impressed. Apparently, she was the only kid on the ship who didn’t know about how, in 7th grade math, I was both the oldest student and the worst performer.

  “Oh yes,” I said deceptively, knowing I would never take any math class as remotely advanced as calculus in my lifetime, “I am taking calculus, but I’m falling a bit behind.”

  “You’re right, then. Allen’s the right guy for the job.”

  I wasn’t sure what Allen liked, and I had no money, so I decided to steal for him some pudding snacks from the mess hall. Of course, for all I knew Allen hated chocolate pudding and even if he liked it, he had the option of going down to the galley and getting it for free. The only service I had to offer was pudding in the convenience of his own living unit.

  Cotton, who loved mischief, volunteered to help. I gave him two dozen packets, and told him to sit by the door and eat six servings. The rest he hid in his shirt. I waited for Jim Boldergat to rant and rave to an officer about our non-existent rodent problem, and I gave Cotton the signal to sneak out into the passageway. When the officer left, Jim surveyed his surrounds. He initially seemed alarmed that Cotton had suddenly disappeared but quickly became satisfied that my brother took no food with him when he noticed the empty cartons left on the table. He found me on the opposite side of the mess hall and barked at me to clean up after my brother. To make the true crime less conspicuous, I feigned indignation and protest at having to clean up someone else’s mess.

  Allen lived on the far side of the ship where the passageways were cleaner and the carpeting was less drab. I knocked on the door hoping his parents wouldn’t answer. There was no response initially, so I knocked louder.

  The door swung open and Allen stood wearing a worn white tee shirt and boxers. “Hello!” He said with surprise.

  “We brought you pudding,” I said, holding up the sealed plastic cups.

  He was silent for a while, contemplative and appropriately suspicious.

  “How did you get them past Sergeant at Arms Boldergat?” Allen asked.

  “We waited until he was distracted,” I said.

  Allen nodded, and continued to just stare at us for a while. “Do you want to come in?” he asked politely.

  “Sure, if it’s all right with your parents.”

  He gestured for us to enter. “It’s just my uncle and me, and my uncle’s working right now.”

  Allen’s place was huge; the living room alone was bigger than our entire unit, and much more comfortably furnished with a padded sofa and matching chairs. We followed him back to his room. Allen had his own vid screen, at least half a dozen computers, a bookshelf, a desk, and some sort of workbench that was cluttered with amp meters, microchips, sections of wire, and small mechanical pegs and wheels.

  “So you’re the one who finally beat me at Psychotic Rampage?” He asked Cotton.

  “Uh huh!”

  “Congratulations,” Allen said sincerely. “Let me ask you this: how did you get those combos down so fast? Did you tap into the open source code and write in some automated sequences?”

  Cott
on stared at Allen blankly, giving no hint of understanding. I sort of knew what Allen was talking about. “We don’t really have a computer other than our pocket modules and neither of us can program machine code,” I explained.

  Allen looked back at Cotton. “Then how did you do it?”

  Cotton shrugged, “Fast fingers I guess.”

  Allen was silent for a while and seemed to inspect Cotton the same way a doctor would examine a patient. He took in my brother’s vacant expression and concluded, “Fast fingers indeed! You must be some sort of savant.” I wasn’t sure if Allen meant it as an insult or a compliment, but Cotton smiled.

  “You got any comic books?” Cotton asked.

  “No,” said Allen. “I am afraid I don’t, but I do have this space marine trireme you can play with.” He reached over to his workbench and handed Cotton a grey model spaceship.

  “Careful,” I said, “he’s likely to break it.”

  “Oh it’s broken already. He can keep it if he wants it.”

  “Thanks,” I said, “we appreciate it.” To Cotton, I asked, “Hey, what do you say when someone gives you something?”

  Cotton didn’t say anything. Preoccupied, he swung the ship around in the air making engine noises with his lips and aerosolizing small droplets of spittle all over Allen personal space. Cotton was never exactly well mannered.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Allen laughed. “It’s not my best work and I am eager to get rid of it. He’ll be doing me a favor.”

  “Well, thanks again,” I said.

  “Ellen said you wanted to talk to me, said something about a math problem, but I didn’t expect you to show up at my door.”

  “She your girl?” I asked, feeling irrationally jealous.

  “No,” Allen laughed. “We go way back. Her dad and my uncle are close friends and have worked together before as officers on several ships, including this one. We would never think about each other in that sort of way.”

  I was about to say something when Allen cut me off. “You didn’t tell her about the fight in the archives did you?”

  “No,” I said, “why would I?” I was going to add that I didn’t tell her about his unusual ocular condition either but changed my mind, concluding that he was probably self-conscious about it and that if Ellen and Allen really were that close, she already knew.

  “Did you tell anyone at all?” he asked, surprised.

  “Well, no. No point really.”

  “The incident in the archives, that sort of thing happens to you a lot doesn’t it?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say ‘a lot.’ Not around here at least. Back home, though, we’d get into scuffles at least once a week.”

  Allen was silent.

  “You didn’t tell Ellen I’m not taking calculus?” I asked.

  “You said you’re taking calculus?” Allen said in disbelief.

  “Yeah, I know, it’s pretty weak, but she wanted to help me with my math problem—“

  “And you didn’t want her to know how bad you are at math.” Allen said, finishing my thought.

  “Exactly!”

  He nodded to the marker board next to the workbench. “Just write down the problem, and I’ll show you how to solve it.”

  “No,” I clarified, “I don’t need you to help me with a math problem, I need you to help me with my problem with math.”

  “You want me to tutor you?” He asked. “I don’t have time to tutor anyone, not with my robotics hobby and my heavy course load. You should just come clean and get Ellen to help you. She’ll be pretty understanding if you apologize for lying.”

  It never occurred to me to get a tutor, but the last thing I wanted was to do school work in my free time. I came to the point. “I want to know if you would do that thing you do with the computer security system so I can activate my math processor during class.”

  “That would be cheating!” Allen said, shocked.

  “Yes it would,” I admitted.

  Allen was silent. He looked sort of angry. After a long awkward pause I decided I needed to cut my losses and stay on Allen’s good side. “Look, I’m sorry I asked.” I said. “I won’t ask you again. Come on Cotton, we need to leave Allen alone!”

  “Oh come on,” Cotton whined. “This place is cool, and we just got here!”

  “No Cotton, we’re intruding!”

  “Wait!” Allen said. “You should stay.”

  “You sure?” I asked.

  “Yes, you can stay,” Allen said. “The other kids consult me all the time for my computer expertise, and I almost always say no. But in your case I will make an exception. You’ve actually made the effort to express an interest in me. It looks like you even made your brother take a shower, which is no small feat from what I’ve heard about him. You even brought me a gift. Most kids just make empty, worthless promises like, ‘I’ll owe you,’ or ‘I’ll be your friend.’” He scratched his chin and opened one of the pudding packets.

  “You like pudding then?” I asked.

  “Actually, I do, and chocolate is my favorite. I have no problems running circles around Sergeant at Arms Boldergat when it comes to computer security, but sneaking food by him is a separate matter entirely.”

  “Like I said, the key was to wait until he was distracted.”

  “I suppose that sort of thing never occurred to me. I’m a complete neophyte when it comes to mischief in the physical world.” I guessed that by “physical world” Allen meant anything that was not a computer.

  Cotton had put the trireme down and was glaring at the open packet of pudding, drooling.

  “You want one?” Allen asked politely.

  “No he doesn’t.” I said. “We got those specifically for you, and he’s had six already!”

  “Six already!” Allen cried in disbelief. “That would fill me up for a week!”

  “It would fill just about anybody up for a week, except for Cotton and that Sergeant at Arms Boldergat guy.” I replied.

  Allen shook his head, “Poor old Sergeant at Arms Boldergat. He’s a bit ‘over employed’ as the expression goes. He is a complete incompetent when it comes to computer security. Pretty much breaks every rule in the book. I shouldn’t complain though. His shortcomings make my life as a hacker pretty easy. Everyone knows he was hired on for his celebrity status and not because of his meager skill set as a security technician. If you have any important digital documents, let me know and I can secure them behind a firewall that’s independent from the ship’s system.”

  “Celebrity status!” I said with disbelief. “What are you talking about?”

  “You’ve never heard about Jim Boldergat before?”

  “No,” I said.

  “What about the Packard! You must have heard about the Packard?”

  I thought for a while. “That was a ship right?” The name rang a bell, but I could not recall any specific details.

  “Yes,” Allen said. “About ten years ago, when we were little kids – I’m actually pretty glad you can’t remember because it’s a great story.”

  “Story!” said Cotton exited. “Oh, I love stories!”

  “And this one is a good one!” Allen said. “I love telling it. It never gets old.”

  Allen continued with Cotton’s full and undivided attention, which, away from a comic book or video game, was a rare event indeed. “Ten years ago, Jim Boldergat was an ordinary starman assigned to a ship called the Packard. The Packard was a small freighter re-fitted to transport cryogens as well as standard cargo.”

  “Cryogens?” I asked. I could tell from the puzzled look on Cotton’s face that he was unfamiliar with the term as well.

  “Cryogenically preserved persons,” Allen clarified. “In this case prisoners being deported to some dust bowl planet in the 14 Herculis system. ‘Cryogen’ is a general term used for any person glaciated for easy transport.”

  “Why do they need to do that?” asked Cotton. “Freeze people?”

  Allen pushed his glasses further up the
bridge of his nose. “It’s simply a matter of logistics. Let me ask you this: How much food do you think you eat in a year?”

  Cotton shrugged his shoulders.

  “Okay basic math: The average 70 kilogram American eats around 2000 kilocalories a day. Around 30% from fats at 9 kilocalories a gram, 40% from carbohydrate…”

  Perhaps Allen could see the discomfort on my face as my throat tightened. I wouldn’t have been surprised if I had broken out in hives as if I were undergoing a full anaphylactic reaction, a type of math allergy. To put me out of my misery, Allen cut to the answer. “650 grams of food a day plus an additional 1000 grams water weight or about 600 kilograms in a year.”

  “That’d be more than 1200 kilograms for Cotton.” I joked. Even some Math I could do in my head.

  Allen continued. “Now keep in mind that the average American excretes 400 grams of feces a day, or 146 kilograms in a year.”

  “That’s a lot of poop!” Cotton and I said in unison. Neither of us had to be good at math to figure that out.

  Allen seemed pretty annoyed at the interruption. I inferred that he didn’t like his calculations reduced to toilet humor. What he didn’t understand, though, was that if he told us to imagine a big pile of food and a big pile of poop, he could have purveyed his message much more concisely and effectively.

  “Compared to normal metabolism,” Allen said, “a cryogen requires only 9% of the caloric intake and produces only 11% as much feces and urine. So, for 100 cryogens, you would expect…” Allen paused, the same way Mrs. Hallisworth paused when she wanted her students to perform a calculation that would finish her thought. Cotton and I looked at one another, and our silence made it clear that we were both equally clueless. I thought about guessing “900%,” but I was pretty sure that wasn’t the right answer and hesitated. Impatient, Allen sighed to let us know that he was disappointed that we were no match for him arithmetically. In a grave voice he concluded, “The savings in cargo weight and space as well as fuel and oxygen use are considerable. The financial savings alone from cryogenic stasis for a single voyage is in the billions.”