The Forgotten Planet

“I think I’m going to keep the gun,” Adan said from his couch. We each have our own couch in the living room. They’re both brown leather, but that’s where the resemblance ends. His smells life malt vinegar and fungus, and probably looks like a bug-splattered windshield under a UV light. I strictly avoided that piece of furniture like Servine Ringworm.

I realized then that the holster and pistol hadn’t left my brother’s waist since we’d finished up at Milton’s. I tried my best to answer with measured patience. “Dude, you’re a dumbass,” I said from my stool in my lab. Well, I said I tried. My lab and the living room are all technically in the same ground floor of our loft, along with the kitchen and Adan’s workshop. It’s all about proper partitioning. “The whole point of the heist was to get that gun for Ash.”

Adan shrugged and continued to flip channels on our grande video screen. The screen was our free parting gift from a jam-auction scam we ran a few years back. Ah, the simple days of the street hustle – our bread-and-butter when Adan was my age and I had the beginnings of peach fuzz on my upper lip.

Speaking of freebies, we’d gotten a nice little haul from the previous evening’s work. In addition to the gun and holster, we’d scored a satchel of cut rubies and emeralds, a few books I was dying to read, one-hundred thousand Palance bluebacks, as well as a number of dusty ivory, jade, porcelain and clay statues of various ancient deities. I’m positive I’ve heard more than a few of their names screamed out by Adan’s various sleepover friends over the years.

Poochy sat on the couch next to Adan, and they were sharing a bag of salt and vinegar Starchies. Adan held the remote in his left hand and fed both the dog and himself with his right. He used the one-for-you, one-for-me method, even though Poochy licked the salt from Adan’s fingers after every one of his own chips. The fact that we shared a kitchen, and that our food commingled in the lone refrigerator, literally made me lose sleep at night.

“Brozilla,” Adan replied, “Ash just wants it for a costume he’s gonna wear once or twice when he gets his freak on. I have all sorts of outfits he can get freaky in.” I’m sure he knew this from experience. “There’s the Mendelian biker outfit with the ram’s horn helmet, or the dragon kimono with the silk sash. I think I still have the Samurai sword that goes with it. Worst case scenario I could throw in my black-velvet Bat-suit, but only if Ash is willing to add a hat and some spurs.”

I rue the day I showed Adan the first episode of that ancient satire. Batman was a live-action feature from Earth’s post-nuclear era that chronicled the adventures a pudgy man in bat-themed pajamas and his effeminate acrobat-lover as they battled clowns and scantily clad women with low-tech gadgets. I assume it was a biting commentary on the events of the day when it was first produced, but without the cultural references, it just seemed silly. So of course, Adan watched all hundred-and-twenty episodes multiple times.

“Me and that Bat-suit have had some good times.” He peeled his eyes away from Gladiator Challenge and smirked. “You know, velvet doesn’t chafe-”

“La la la la la, I don’t want to hear this...”

“Bro...”

I sighed. “Fine, I’ll make the call.”

He looked back at the screen. A giant in white power armor painted with flaming angel wings was chasing a smaller guy in a faulty stealth suit around the ring with a chainsaw.

“Hat and spurs...” he said distractedly.

“Yeah, I heard you the first time,” I answered. “You could make yourself useful, you know. I looked over at Adan’s workshop and sighed. The carbon polymer packing crates I’d left for him were still sitting mostly unused next to his hoarder’s collection of tools, scrap metal and kitschy items that he’d arranged haphazardly along the far wall and in a horizontal pile of organized chaos that separated his work-area from mine. In between his walls of junk, our sometimes-operational Gazelle air-and-land vehicle sat making that irritating clicking sound as its engines cooled.

“You’re probably right.” He continued eating fried starch and not making himself useful.

There was no way I was going to speak with Ash face-to-face about this one – mostly because I’m not a sex-costume salesman. Oh, and also this situation was totally unprofessional. I knew guns weren’t Ash’s thing, and I was pretty sure he would say yes to the costume swap. Still, it was embarrassing. So instead of opening a private holo-channel, I sent a quick text via his wrister.

That chore done, I turned my attention back to the golden disk. I’d stuck it in a touch-less clamp, where it floated in a bubble of electromagnetism while I ran a computed tomography scan. One side of the disc was a series of concentric groves that took up the outer two-thirds of the surface, while the inner third was taken up by a laser-etched label in an ancient text that seemed passingly similar to Cali. I recognized a few words like “the” and “Earth,” but not enough to make sense of the overall meaning of the message. I was pretty sure the groves had embedded data, but I didn’t know how to get at it. At the very center of the disc was a hole about five centimeters in diameter.

I gave the disc a little flick, and it flipped over onto its other side. There were no words on that side, only pictographs. After a few moments studying the first few pictographs, I knew what the results of the scan would be. I flipped off the CT unit and powered up our 3-D printer.

“This disc is supposed to be played on a phonograph of all things,” I told Adan.

“You don’t say,” he replied, eyes still fixed of the video screen.

“The plans for reading the disc are all right here,” I said, stupidly pointing at the pictures of the disc and reader on the top two pictographs on the left. He wasn’t paying any attention whatsoever, so I didn’t bother explaining the video waveforms of the top right-hand side. Apparently, there were audio files and images imbedded in the grooves.

“I don’t know why you’re messing around with that thing,” he added with his mouth half-full. “We’re selling it to Vance.”

“We’re not selling this disc to anyone,” I said with all the righteous indignation that I could muster. “This is almost certainly a priceless artifact from the dawn of human space exploration.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s got a price,” Adan answered, “and one with a lot of zeros, I’d be willing to bet.”

While the printer turned tubes of raw materials into a decidedly lo-fi playback machine at an agonizingly slow millimeter at a time, I studied the remaining pictographs on the back of the disc. The one that looked like a set of bifocals was most likely an illustration of a hydrogen atom in its highest and lowest electron states. I figured it was there as a key of sorts for whatever data was encoded in the disc.

The last pictogram was the most interesting and also the most cryptic. There was a central point with fourteen lines of different lengths shooting out at non-linear angles. It was obviously a map of some sort – the center point was either Earth or her sun, and the lines represented distances to... something. That something was the big mystery. It could be black holes or wormholes or distant galaxies for all I knew.

The old printer squealed as it switched from the cadmium tube back to the black polymer. It was an old model, held together with soldered paperclips more than a little duct tape. Adan turned at the noise and frowned at the half-built player. “What are you up to anyway?”

“Like I said previously when you were nodding but not listening, I’m building a phonograph to play the data on this disc,” I said. But now that I had his attention, I angled the back of the record so he could see it and added, “This is a map to Earth. I just don’t know how to reference it yet. I wrote a program to run it against all known star maps in the Galactic Depository.”

“We’re not searching for Earth, Galen. We’re going to Xanthus, and you’re going to make us wealthy. Then I can live the lifestyle I so richly deserve.” He pointed at me with an oblong Starchie and added, “Got it?”

“Whatever,” I replied.

Poochy started whining because his turn had been skipped, and Adan rewarded the dog with the chip in his hand. Poochy wolfed it down, and then licked Adan’s hand clean of any lingering salt and crumbs.

“Why don’t you feed him his own food?” I asked, while crinkling my face at their unsanitary display. We’d picked up a bag of dog food on the way home from Milton’s. I’d bet my left pinky toe that the green globular chunks were made out of pencil shavings and recycled pets.

“He tried it, but he doesn’t seem to like it,” he replied.

“That’s because you keep feeding him human food, dumbass,” I replied reasonably.

“No, I don’t think that’s it at all,” Adan answered with irritating smoothness. “It probably doesn’t have all the nutrients he needs.”

“Starchies are made entirely of corn starch, vegetable oil, high fructose corn syrup and salt,” I replied. And probably people, I didn’t add.

He shrugged and fed the dog another Starchie. I knew that he knew that I was right – but he wasn’t going to budge, so I let it go. When he realized I wasn’t going to argue the point, he changed the subject back to the disc. “So, how’s that contraption work?” I looked at his video screen and realized why he was so chatty all of a sudden. There was a break in the action. A small tractor was using a steel cable to drag a still-smoking armored combatant out of the ring. I couldn’t tell if the fighter trapped within the crushed exo-frame was screaming in pain or anger.

I pointed at a group of etchings on the back of the disk and said, “These pictures are instructions on how to build a device to read whatever’s on the disc.” Adan nodded, but his eyes were getting that glazed-over look. I tapped the floating disc lightly, spinning it one-hundred and eighty degrees, and instinctively began to talk faster. I was losing my audience. “I think these grooves along the front are where the data is held.” I looked up and realized that Adan was no longer paying attention. He’d pulled his data pad out from its spot under the couch cushions and was flipping through a magazine – probably looking for ads with pretty girls, because his lips weren’t moving.

I shook my head and started putting the printed pieces together. It was a simple but elegant machine: just a little box with a rotating table, a metal nub that held the disc by its center hole, and a needle-tipped armature that rode along the disc’s groove. I was about to place it into the machine when a red light flashed on my HUD. Someone had entered Milton’s back room, and my Rover® had powered out of stand-by mode.

I’d left a Rover® at Milton’s for a couple of reasons. First of all, I’m not a sadist. I figured Brar and Milton had at least a day’s worth of air in there, and if no one came to let them out by midday, I could always call in an anonymous tip to the po-po. Second, both men had seen Adan’s face, so I wanted to keep tabs on any heat on our tail.

Of course, it’s hard to get a good eye-witness account of the subtle features of a stranger’s face with a gun in your own. Plus, I’d scrambled Milton’s security feed and Adan had unnecessarily smashed Milton’s security hardware, so I wasn’t afraid of that footage leading anyone to our doorstep.

Fun fact! Your average black-market scrambler does what the name implies – it scrambles video feeds into a chopped-up visual soup. But with the right algorithmic key, and a whole lot of skill, those feeds can always be unscrambled and reconstructed.

As with all my proprietary technology, I added my own personal touch to the scrambler unit as well. My rig rewrites the video feed in a way that’s basically impossible to undo. Any white hat (i.e. salaried techie working for the man) that tried to reconstruct a feed I’ve scrambled will see a stick figure man with an oversized, yellow smiley-face head, walking through a forest filled with unicorns prancing around and pooping out rainbows. That last bit was Adan’s lone contribution to the technology. Not the code, mind you. I wrote that. He just sketched the visuals on the back of a bar napkin and asked me to handle it.

Back at Milton’s, I saw two Terrans – a dark-skinned woman and an olive-skinned man the size of industrial refrigerator – standing in front of the Titan VI safe, staring at the hand-written sign that said, “Free Stuff Inside. Please enter the code 1234.” I’d actually changed Milton’s password to 1234 and rewrote protocols to make it essentially impossible to ever change it from that simplistic code. I hoped Milton would appreciate the humor of it in time.

I threw the feed from Milton’s backroom up on the tabletop screen at my workspace and invited Adan over to watch it with me.

“No, I’m good,” he replied. I glared at him, but he ignored me. On his screen, a woman in sleek black armor was jumping up and down on a downed opponent. The crowd was in a beer-fueled frenzy and Adan remained focused on the action.

I shook my head and looked back at the feed from Milton’s backroom. The male wore white, scout-class power armor – which had been standard issue for infantry in the Great War a century prior. It wasn’t much bulkier than cold weather gear, and in addition to augmenting strength and endurance, it protected the wearer from light arms fire and shrapnel-styled explosives.

Instead of a standard helmet, the man wore a tight-fitting cap with duck-billed visor. His face was rough and weathered like he’d spent too many years in the hot sun. That and the flecks of grey in his mustache and sideburns made me guess he was in his early fifty’s.

The dude certainly believed in a well-armed militia. In addition to the military-grade armor, he had a plasma rifle slung over his shoulder, a string of grenades in a bandolier and a pistol on his left hip. The armor and weapons screamed either bounty hunter or mafia enforcer. Considering that we knew Milton did business with Vance, the mafia connection was the obvious choice.

The woman was about my height and lean in the waist, but she filled out her blue, one-piece bodysuit in a way that I knew Adan would appreciate. She wore her black hair pulled back in a tight ponytail that reached the middle of her back and sported black boots that laced past her mid-calf. She had plasma pistols holstered below her amply hips in the low, quick-draw style. I watched as she typed the simplistic code into the safe’s terminal and moments later the door popped open with a loud click.

“Adan, you’ll really want to see this,” I said.

“I told you, I’m good.” I’m pretty sure that’s what he said. His mouth was full again.

“No, seriously bro, you’ll be sorry if you miss her.” On Adan’s screen, the two combatants appeared to be taking turns walloping each other with spiky balls on sticks. He grudgingly tore his face away from his screen, eyes rolling in their sockets, until he focused on my screen and took in the woman’s sharp-featured face and voluptuous frame.

“Holy Toledo, Batman,” he exclaimed, and in moments was crowding me out of the way. I’ve heard so many variations of that stupid line I no longer bother to roll my eyes at it.

“Dude, don’t drool on my monitor,” I said. Adan’s mouth was wide open, and his eyeballs were practically coming out of their sockets.

“Right there is the future mother of my children, broheim,” Adan said breathlessly.

“You say that all the time,” I replied.

“Whaaat? I do not,” he said with a wounded look in his eye.

“Remember Donna?” I asked.

“Yeah, but she turned out to be crazy,” he replied.

“And Bethany...”

“Lacked a certain stamina of the bedroom variety.”

“Jill...”

I actually liked Jill. She was well read, intelligent, confident, so, yeah, she didn’t stick around long. She was always nice to me, and I wanted to ask her out, but…

He pursed his lips. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“Amber?”

“I believe she joined a nunnery after we broke up so that shouldn’t count...”

“Of course it counts! You drove her to it.” I could feel my face getting hot.

“All right, fine,” Adan finally relented. “But this time I really mean it.”

Brar and Milton had just stumbled out of the safe and were blinking at the bright light pouring in through the window.

“Thank the gods you found us Miss Vish,” Milton said.

“No gods involved, Mr. Blane,” the words more purred than spoken. She stood with her hands resting on her impressive hips. “We had a morning appointment scheduled with you, but we found the store locked up tight well past the time you advertise that you open. And please, call me Maxine. We’re all friends here, right?”

“You may need a new door Milt,” the man in armor said, in a voice that sounded like tires on gravel. He was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed and was giving off a generally menacing vibe.

“You broke my door, Russell?” Milton asked pointedly.

“I prefer Mr. Bardin in this case,” the imposing man said through narrowed eyes. “I don’t consider you a friend.”

Maxine smiled apologetically for her rude partner. “We did that out of concern for your welfare, Milton,” the woman soothed. “Without us, you’d still be in that safe, remember?”

“I suppose a door is easy enough to replace – and I thank you for your kindness, Mr. Bardin,” Milt said, verbally back-peddling from the angry giant.

“What the hell were you doing locked in your own safe?” Russell asked, and before Milton could answer, the man added, “And who’s this fella?” He inclined his head in the captain’s direction.

“This is Captain Brar,” Milton said, gesturing with a hand towards the man. Brar nodded and flashed a roguish smile at Maxine – a smile that died on his lips after glancing at her partner’s cold glare. “He’s the one who discovered the disc you were here to purchase,” Milton continued. “Unfortunately, we were robbed last night.” Milton looked at the ground at the last bit. It reminded me of a guilty child whose ball had broken the neighbor’s window.

“I see,” Maxine said, with the slight hint of irritation slipping into her smooth voice. “I hope the golden record wasn’t one of the items stolen. My friend here takes disappointment very poorly.” She inclined her head towards Russell, and his granite-chiseled frown-lines somehow deepened a few millimeters further.

Milton looked nervously at Russell, then back to Maxine while avoiding eye contact with either of them.

“It was actually,” Milton finally answered, “along with some lesser items and an unconscionable amount of cut stones and bluebacks.”

Russell detached himself from the wall and walked towards Milton. “You’d better be telling the truth Milt, because if you’re holding out on us...”

Milton flinched – either at the verbal threat or at the large mass of man bearing down on him – and opened his mouth to answer, but was silenced by a hand gesture from Maxine.

“She’s incredibly hot,” Adan interjected.

“Quiet,” I said, but he continued anyway.

“You think her and that gorilla are an item?”

“When’s an entanglement like that ever stopped you?” I asked.

“True.”

We turned out attention back to the screen. Maxine was saying, “...and we will get the item back. You’ll still be reimbursed, but our retrieval services will come out of the million we originally agreed upon.”

“And our services aren’t cheap,” Russell added.

Milton allowed a bit of righteous indignation to creep into his facial expression. He looked like he wanted to say something, but the previously silent Captain beat him to it.

“A million?” he roared. “Milton, I had to press you for eighty-five thousand.”

Brar looked like he was ready to fight Milton right then and there, but a look from Russell cooled his heels. Milton stepped back and shrugged sheepishly.

“That’s bad business practice Milton – screwing over your supplier.” She shook her head and pursed her lips disappointedly. She reminded me of a schoolteacher, correcting a guilty student. Well, maybe a slightly naughty teacher. I’m sure Adan had a costume for that. He was practically vibrating next to me by the way.

Maxine continued, “We’ll need a description of the thieves and access to your security feeds.”

“Well, you can see the condition of my security system...” Milton said, as he gestured to the pile of rubble on his desk.

As mentioned, Adan had decided to be extra-thorough with Milton’s security terminal. Adan really likes to break stuff sometimes. And besides, it was less time consuming to let him work the system over than it would have been to argue with him in the moment that it wasn’t necessary.

“... and I can’t say that I got a good look at the man.” Milt was looking smug and I found myself feeling sorry for him. He probably thought he could stonewall the two thugs, and then hire someone to track us down. Naive obviously, but he didn’t think like a criminal – at least not the kind of criminal who wouldn’t blush at the thought of breaking a few of his fingers to make him talk. However, Russell was busy frowning at his wrister, so Milton got a little more of Maxine’s good-cop routine rather than Russell’s bad.

“Milton, I feel like you’re being disingenuous with us, and it’s starting to hurt my feelings. Now, I’m not one to make rash, emotional decisions, but Russell, on the other hand,” she looked over at her looming partner and sighed before continuing, “he’s all about rash, emotional decisions.”

Russell looked up from his wrister, clearly annoyed with the device and likely equally annoyed at having to play the heavy at that moment. He took a deep breath and glared at Milton. “You know how hard it is to get blood out of armor like this?” Russel asked calmly.

Milton’s eyes went wide, and he shook his head.

“It’s a real pain in the ass,” Russell continued. “It seeps into the cracks and crevices. I have to use a toothbrush to get it all out.” He sighed and shook his head. “But, you don’t seem to be leaving me with any alternatives.”

Milton looked ready to talk at that point, but Brar beat him to it.

“It was a large, light-skinned man with goofy hair,” the Captain said. “And he appeared to be schizophrenic.”

“See, that wasn’t so hard,” Maxine said smiling. “Milton, your associate seems to be the more reasonable of the two of you. Perhaps we should just bypass the middleman...”

Russell cut her off, “Max – I think we’ve got a live wire in here, but I can’t track it down.”

“Then fry the room,” she answered calmly.

“No!” Milton exclaimed. “I’ve got delicate electronic antiques in here.”

Russell ignored him and started to fish around in a pouch on his belt. They had somehow picked up on the feed I was transmitting, and they were going to let off a controlled electro-magnetic pulse and fry my Rover®. At that point, I cycled it up to full power and tried to fly it past them. It was worth a try. The last thing we saw on my screen was Maxine gracefully drawing her gun and tracking the Rover® with her barrel. I saw a smile cross her lips before the feed went blank.