Strange Tails

The portal room still clung to its dim light. It was a glum welcome, relieved only by a succession of low-watt halogen lamps strung listlessly about, as if commemorating a very sorry Christmas indeed.

Potbelly shuddered. Before her were the pods. Their ovular translucent membranes, peeled back like corn husks, remained, in the half-light, just as intimidating now as they had before. Snodberry showed uncharacteristic curiosity by shuffling close to one and wiping a banana-sized finger down its length. He gave it a lick. The flavor induced a memory and he closed his eyes, holding out both arms as if soaring through the air. What was he doing?

“Oh! The shower stalls!” said the human. “They gave me a funny tingle. Where do we go now?”

“As I recall,” said Potbelly, “you think of where you want to go, and then you just sort of go there.”

With a small chewing gum pop! the human disappeared.

“Oh great,” said Mildred. “Another one.” With a single pour of gravity-defying oil she slid her way up the centrally located console, the one Stinkeye had so intuitively operated before, and tapped her scaly tail upon its touchscreen.

“Derek the Deep, didn’t I tell you to switch off the think-yourself-there machine? Is your memory no better than the fish?”

“Oh, right,” returned a chastened voice, and after some background mumbling and an inverted popping sound, an opo, the think-yourself-there machine was considered off. “Try it now,” he said.

“You mean, experiment with trying to kill myself by accidentally thinking about the turbines or the high-density photon emitter, which, having mentioned them, I am now thinking about? I have a better idea, you try.”

“He switched it off,” said Potbelly. “I just thought about the squid but I’m still standing here looking at you. Sorry, didn’t mean to use my disappointed voice.”

Mildred’s impassive face registered no offense. “A klipspringer thought its way into the impulse engine, and then a mandrill thought itself inside the klipspringer trying to rescue it. When I left they were still cleaning up the mess.”

The cobra remained roped around the console, deliberating its offerings. “Fascinating thing, the impulse engine,” she continued, almost absent-mindedly. “Energy source is rolled up in what looks like a toothpaste tube. No matter how much you squeeze there’s always some left. Practically infinite power.”

“Lovely. So, about this wotnot-machine. Now it’s turned off, do we walk?”

“Do I look like I’m going to carry you?”

“I mean, the inner doors are closed. How do we get where we’re going?”

“The same way anyone does around here: blind luck and patience.”

Mildred tapped more indecipherable-looking icons on the touchscreen. Lights flickered, some unnecessarily sharp things wheeled themselves out and then wheeled themselves back in again, and a smell wafted up like a wet mouse eating garlic—though that could have just been Snodberry, who was given, still, to flapping his arms.

The confusion ended when Stinkeye activated, remotely, the one item Mildred had not yet jabbed at with her tail. The far door opened and she muttered a relieved thank you. “Still haven’t got the hang of this mind control thing,” she explained.

“So,” said Potbelly, looking at the supposedly-in-charge Mildred. “The people who invented this think-yourself-there machine—you reckon we’re smart enough to beat them in their own back yard? Assuming we ever get out of ours, that is?”

“If we find Cedric, he’ll know what to do. And you might not think them so dangerous when you see what’s inside. Follow me.”

The newly opened doorway was more Snodberry-sized than any doorway Potbelly had seen before. It was the shape of a letterbox, assuming one had a six-foot letter to post—she wondered if the original plans for the doorway had been turned on one side. They single-filed through the opening, with Snodberry waiting for all to pass, his arms finally at his side, paying attention, and careful to avoid any small-animal squelching.

As promised, the room beyond proved quite intriguing.

If a swatch of Day-Glo paint consumed its bodyweight in rhinestones, dipped itself in glitter, and then vomited itself over a six-year-old’s birthday party, doing so would have provided a more subtle interior design than the one they now encountered. The only things attached to the walls that were not neon pink were the things that were even more neon pink; a shade so startling it had not yet been named, for no Earth creature had gazed on it long enough without fainting. A hall of mirrors wearing highly polished shoes and a tinsel hat would have been less dazzling than this room. In short, Potbelly loved it.

“Wow,” she cooed. “This is why they invented the word disco.”

“It’s giving me a headache,” whined Stinkeye. “I came through here before. Once was more than enough.”

“I recommend you batten down any senses that have shutters,” advised Mildred. “Follow the line we painted on the floor.”

The travelers obeyed, except Potbelly, who dallied to take in the majesty of the scene. She felt oddly relieved the room contained no abstruse, hi-tech devices like the ones she’d found at the Silence, and then again at Nevermore. Those things slid her so far down the evolutionary chain she could feel the small wooden handle in the crease of her special place.

Instead, she saw … were they salon chairs? She had a limited frame of reference, being a small dog, but a small dog that had seen a fair few shopping malls in her time. These chairs, though, had too many arm rests; too many leg rests; in fact, too much of everything. She hoped they had no sinister purpose. Nothing so gorgeously bubblegum should have to witness anything ugly.

Their senses overwhelmed, the group finally stumbled through another door and into a cavernous chamber which, thankfully for all but Potbelly, held only the same dim light and muted colors as the laser portal. This vast new space contained a honeycomb of pods extending up and out, each linked by dark organic tubing, vein-like and fibrous, but still dotted here and there with highlights of blush and cerise as if the inhabitants of the previous room needed to add just that little splash of something to brighten the place up.

“Cryotubes,” said Mildred, her tongue relishing the sibilant ending. “How they transported the humans. We found two in there, asleep—a couple of our scientists from Nevermore carrying locators for our confuser ray. Don’t know what happened to the rest but it means this wasn’t Cedric’s craft. Of course their brains are jelly, sadly. It’s as we guessed—the pods are both a form of mind control and a stasis chamber. I’d wager for a long space journey.”

“How long?” asked Stinkeye, recovering from his neon-pink trauma.

“Based on the star chart Squirrel observed, and assuming the aliens expect the humans to survive when they get there, any one of three possible destinations—the closest being fifteen light years away.”

Potbelly began to feel the pinch of that evolutionary chain in her special place again. “Really,” she ventured, timorously, but wanting to know what she was in for. “And … how far’s a light year exactly?”

“The distance light can travel in a year.”

“But wouldn’t that depend on how fast it went? I mean, a year’s a long time, right? Wouldn’t it need to stop for snacks or something?”

“Light isn’t a thing. It doesn’t get tired. It’s a wave.”

“But I get tired if I wave.“

“Do you do this deliberately?”

“No,” she replied, brightening. “I just have a naturally inquiring mind.”

“Well, as inquiring minds may observe, the rest of the cryotubes are filling up with our colleagues. Except for Itchynuts, of course, he’s too large to fit. His role is to stay with the fish and oversee their work. Rhinos may live fifty years or more, and we have replacement fish in cryo, they seem to keep well frozen. Stinkeye, please accompany me into the control room. I believe you’ll find it familiar.”

***

“Goddamn hippies,” muttered Squirrel, kicking an open box of small gray somethings down to the floor. The contents spilled out onto a larger pile of small gray somethings already there. He was investigating the promise of General Supplies the room had advertised.

“Oatmeal!” he declared, as if it were the sorest of insults.

He perched on the edge of the highest shelf and surveyed his meagre winnings. Baked Vegetable Chips. Dehydrated Mango. Sodium-Free Bread. Oatmeal. His eyes rested briefly on an enticing box labelled Midnight Naughty Snacks. On inspection, it contained cashews.

“Goddamn stinking weirdos.”

Squirrel reached for a vegetable chip and ran it across his tongue like a connoisseur might a fine cigar. He took a nibble and then spat it across the room. It stuck, splotch, against a jar labeled Lactose-Free Milk. Yeah, said the jar, I’m crappy milk, watcha gonna do about it?

Everything Squirrel tried was full of some horrible thing they called herbs. Too much thyme on their hands, he decided. He wanted to laugh, but it wasn’t the same without Potbelly’s disapproving face. He was starting to feel like the straight man to life’s comedy.

From outside he could hear the roar of the spaceship engines. They’d be on their way soon, and good luck to the fools. He’ll be in here, pooping his entire body weight in barely-digestible health food, every day, and for the rest of his sorry life—but at least he’d have one.

“Humans,” he huffed, and then again louder, “Humans! Ha! Wouldn’t piss on you if you were alight!”

The far wall echoed its agreement.

“We need all the bodies we can get,” declared Squirrel, mimicking Itchynuts’s rolling, fleshy lips. “Bodies! How appropriate!” He chuckled, pleased with his insight.

Squirrel reached for another hand-cut, ultra-vitamin, artisanally baked chip, and ate it, joylessly. He took another and stabbed it repeatedly against his head until it was dust.

Intelligence, he thought. Who needs it? When you come across it, it finds a logical and well-reasoned argument to kill you. Nothing civilized about civilization. It was your turn to find that out, eh bipeds? He chuckled again. “A taste of your own medicine,” he said aloud. “How you liking survival of the fittest now?”

Something fluttered past the broken doorway. Fluttered, he thought, because it passed through the center of the doorway and not along the floor. He didn’t quite catch what it was. Maybe he was hallucinating. Lack of artificial food coloring, maybe. Gelatin withdrawal. He’ll check it out anyway.

“Zoltan?” he called, reaching the doorway. His voice chased down the empty corridor, a puppy after a stick. “You there?”

Squirrel hopped into the corridor and noticed, for the first time, how depressingly sad it was—all the gaily-colored murals, all those children of every hue, laughing and throwing balls, playing games. He made a mental note to deface it later.

Overhead lights picked him out, motion activated, sparking the corridor bulbs into life, leaving the rooms to each side in darkness. I am floating up to heaven, he thought. Go towards the light.

But find what there? More humans? Imagine having the infinite power of God and all you do is surround yourself with those two-legged idiots. Does He do the same for squirrels? Do all squirrels go to heaven?

The disheartening vibrancy of the mural distracted him so much that he walked past, stopped, and then had to turn back to visit something he just missed. It was a fine and rather delicately wrought feather. He scanned along the linoleum floor to a dim side room where, if he wasn’t very much mistaken, and he never was, lay another one too. He stepped forward and picked it up. It was red.

It looked a lot like the kind he’d seen before on that strutting, pompous, homicidally-inclined parrot.

“Coralane?” he said.

***

The ship lurched forward, stopped, and then lurched forward again.

Potbelly stumbled about in that exaggerated way she thought only happened on Star Check. Michel loved that show. Why, she had no idea. Any captain who lost control of their ship that often just needed to be fired.

“What was that?” she asked, to no one in particular, when the seesawing finally subsided.

Her answer was a great cheer from the creatures about her, at least, the few remaining who had not yet ensconced themselves in cryotubes. She considered their jubilation for a moment and decided, as answers go, it wasn’t a very helpful one.

“What was that?” she repeated, this time louder, and in the direction of Itchynuts, who responded by immediately engaging in conversation with a beaver.

“Anyone?”

The voice of Stinkeye poured into her head. “We’ve re-engaged the squid!” he yelled, sending her jumping in all directions. “That lurch was the motive systems kicking in. The engines are powering up.”

“You can fly this now?”

“Maybe. We just need to finalize where we’re pointing it. Up seems the popular direction.”

“And the beepy noise?”

“What beepy noise?”

“The beepy noise. You can tell it’s the beepy noise by the way it goes beep.”

“Can’t hear it.”

“The beepy noise,” said Itchynuts, shooing away the deferential beaver, “is telling us there are more ships in the vicinity. I suggest you cryotube immediately.”

“We’re going to be attacked?”

“That I cannot say, but my gut tells me we shouldn’t be caught standing here waving to the nice aliens.”

Potbelly looked at his gut. It did seem quite clear on the matter.

“What about Squirrel?”

“I could tell you where he sits on my list of priorities but I fear you’d be disappointed. Move aside, please, I have work to do.”

“Is it too late for me to get him?” she asked, but Itchynuts had already waddled on. She watched him attempt to squeeze his rotund frame through the adjacent letterbox-sized doorway, and decided, however big these aliens were, and she assumed they were big given the size of the doorway, they’d clearly not reckoned on the magnitude of a sedentary rhino’s backside. Despite Snodberry’s assistance from the rear Itchynuts admitted defeat. He requested Stinkeye turn on the think-yourself-there machine and in a pop! he disappeared.

Snodberry remained, offering Potbelly a shrug. She shrugged back, and then gazed up at Siobhan’s disintegrating visage, one eye missing with some skull socket showing. Snodberry nuzzled her affectionately, knocking off an ear.

She smiled at their devotion, albeit one-sided, before sitting down and closing her eyes to think. She tried not to think about light speed. Or waves. Or Itchynuts’s backside. Instead she thought of the laser portal, bringing to mind a clear image of the room. Keeping her eyes tightly closed, and with a pop she disappeared too.

When Potbelly opened her eyes she saw the pods, the central touchscreen console, everything she remembered about the room. This time, though, the laser portal door was closed. In fact, all the doors were closed. She yapped at the console, too high to reach, and then yapped louder to attract attention. Wherever attention was to be had right now, it wasn’t in the laser portal.

Potbelly let out a howl she did not know she possessed, a howl that would have been hidden her whole life if she hadn’t seen Cujo. Losing breath, the howl died to a whine so heavy it dragged her snout to the floor.

“Are you planning on doing that all day?” asked Squirrel. “It’s bad enough they’ll be flying through space in a cookie tin without your Bee Gees impersonation.”

“Squirrel!” yelled Potbelly. She leapt up, not caring how much enthusiasm she showed him.

“The one and the only,” he grinned, or again, tried to, but ended up looking like he was chewing a wasp.

“You changed your mind?”

“No, not really. Well, truth be told, I did start to go off the idea of spending the rest of my life on Woodstock’s leftovers, but actually I came over to deliver a message. Then I couldn’t get the inner door open, the scissor thing collapsed, and the outer door closed too.”

“A message?”

“Coralane is still alive.”

“She is?”

“Yes, I just said so. Keep up. Didn’t know if it mattered, seeing as you were all about to be go play with Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, but it seemed like something of a civic duty. Y’know, notifying the authorities when a homicidal lunatic is about.”

“You changed your mind, didn’t you?”

“The only people round here who’ve changed their minds are you lot, having swapped them for bags of wet lettuce. Seeing as you’re here, though, you can pass on the good news. I’ll be on my way. How’d you open this door?”

“You’d leave me again?”

“Of course not. This would be the first time. Before, you left me.”

“I did not. You were like that bit of ick that gets stuck to a band aid when it’s pulled off a wound. The band aid isn’t wrong in coming off, it’s just time for it to come off. But you have to always be that little bit of ick, don’t you.”

“We’ve come a long way from I love you, Squirrel.”

“Platonic love, like I said. Like you feel for Plato. Like you feel for some ancient dead dude they made you read in high school until you wanted to poke your eyes out with a stick. That kind of love.”

“My heart swells with diseased enlargement. I’ll open the door myself.”

Squirrel hopped up to the console and began tap dancing across its touchscreen. A draw shot out and back again, something went eeeeeekerrrrr and started smoking a little, and that strange ancient waft that Mildred found earlier, reappeared. So it wasn’t Snodberry after all.

The face of Itchynuts appeared on the console.

“What on earth are you trying to do? We have enough on our plates trying to reach low orbit.”

“Low orbit?”

“Yes, you might want to hold on to something.”

“Will it help?”

“No, but it’ll make you feel better. If you open that portal door who knows what’ll happen? Wait, I know what’ll happen, you’ll be asphyxiated and sucked out to your doom. Give me a moment, I’ll find the right button.”

“No!” they yelled.

“Are you sure? I have it right here.”

“We’ll open the inner door,” said Potbelly, exasperated, but finding just enough calm to speak normally. “Or we’ll think our way back to the cryotubes.”

“Very well.” His dark-gray bulk disappeared, to be replaced by the dark-gray façade of the monitor.

“You could have asked him to open the inner door for us,” pointed out Squirrel.

“I didn’t want to tempt fate.”

“Now there’s a first.”

“Can you think about cryotubes?”

“Do I have to?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

Potbelly explained.

Pop, they disappeared.