The Ultimate Inferior Beings (20 page)

Read The Ultimate Inferior Beings Online

Authors: Mark Roman

“Be brave,” she told herself.
With a determined look, she got up off her seat and left the emergency
deep-space survival module. As she left the boat hangar she paused, thinking
what to do about LEP. She liked LEP. She liked him a lot now. And, as any woman
who likes a man, she would need to change him; to improve him. She believed she
could do it as she knew enough basic electronics. And her first priority would
be LEP’s wit-box...

She dithered outside the boat
hangar. The temptation to start work on LEP’s wit-box right away was strong.
But the danger was that she’d get so wrapped up in her work that she would
completely forget about the bomb – until it was too late.

Reluctantly, she headed
towards the forward engine room.

Which was just as well, as
there were less than ten minutes to go before the neutrino bomb was due to
blow. But, then again, perhaps it was already too late...

BUF was certainly worried
that it might be too late. The main computer of the forward engine room was
getting desperate. He frantically scanned and rescanned all his memory banks
for information on neutrino bombs. There had to be some standard procedure for
dealing with them. All his searches so far had drawn a blank. But now, at last,
he had found a file that looked promising. Could this be it? As he opened it, a
faint glimmer of hope flickered to life in his circuits...

The ten Benjaminites were in
Alf – a small city with only two high-rise sponges. Randolph was sorting out
some equipment and handing it out to the other Mamms to carry.

Jeremy paced about
impatiently, occasionally giving Randolph disapproving looks. As far as he
could see, time was running out and they were not getting any closer to
destroying The Dogs. The fate of the Universe was in the balance. The End was nigh.

Finally, Jeremy stopped his
pacing and asked, “Look, why exactly are we doing all this?”

Randolph
looked up at Jeremy and
smiled. “For the Good of the Species,” he answered, his smile broadening.

“In the Light of the Dark,”
responded all the other Mamms, also smiling at Jeremy. He glared at them
hatefully.

“Here,” said Randolph, handing Jeremy the heaviest piece of equipment. He looked at Jeremy’s unhappy
face and had to look away again as it was such a pitiable sight. “With this
equipment,” he explained gently, “we’ll be able to prove whether the humans are
The Dogs or not.”

“Well obviously we’ll prove
that they are!” said Jeremy with conviction.

“Perhaps,” said Randolph. “But what if the tests prove negative?”

“Then that’ll be even
stronger proof that they are The Dogs! It will be as Benjamin predicted.”

Randolph
wished he hadn’t started the
conversation. “Enough!” he said, turning his back on him and getting on with
his work.

“I am the Chosen One,” yelled
Jeremy.

“Quiet!”

“I will do what is Wrong in order
to do what is Right!” yelled Jeremy, even louder.

“Please.”

And then,
uncharacteristically, Jeremy fell silent. He made no response at all. Even Randolph turned to look at him, surprised that Jeremy had for once listened.

But Jeremy’s sudden quietude
had nothing to do with him listening. He didn’t take orders from others. He was
no Dog; he was the Chosen One. In fact, he had been meaning to point this very
fact out and had opened his mouth to do so. But, to his astonishment, no sounds
had come out. No words, no utterances, nothing whatsoever. For, at that very
moment Jeremy had, inconveniently and, tragically for him, completely lost his
voice.

He looked about him in
horror, open-mouthed, and tried again to speak. But still nothing came out. It
seemed that all that shouting and yelling, particularly at The Dogs, had
finally taken its toll. Jeremy was suddenly mute. At this crucial turning point
in Mamm history, the Chosen One was unable to utter a sound.

Time was now most definitely
running out. Right in the heart of the forward engine room, the neutrino bomb,
with its casing still glowing red-hot, continued intermittently firing its
laser-rifle at any moving object within range. The decimated insect and rodent
populations of the forward engine room, and its incinerated cleaner droid, had
not been the only casualties. BUF’s magnetic tape spools – a throwback to a
bygone era of computers – had also been irreparably destroyed.

The bomb’s penultimate timing
device was now in operation. This meant that there was just over a minute to
go. In a minute a small hammer would fall. The fall of the hammer would cause a
match to scrape past a piece of sandpaper and ignite. The match would then come
to rest in its precision-engineered holder where its flame would light the fuse,
the fifteen-second fuse. The fuse that constituted the very last of the bomb’s
sophisticated timing mechanisms, the fuse that would detonate the bomb.

Once that fuse was lit, there
would only be fifteen seconds to prevent the total destruction of the entire
Pseudogravitic Continuum and all life within it.

With growing anxiety and
desperation, BUF scanned the memory file he had located. It was headed
‘Sabotage’ and its index list contained the entry ‘Neutrino bombs... Code 859’.
Why hadn’t he thought to look under ‘Sabotage’ before?

In trepidation he requested
code 859. Something told him he didn’t have long to go; some silicon-based
sixth sense warned him that time was most definitely running out. A video
screen flickered and then settled to show the list of contents for entry 859.
BUF hurriedly scanned the list until he found what he wanted. ‘Standard
procedure for dealing with neutrino bombs... Code 18’.

“This is it,” he thought with
joy as he requested code 18. He waited. The network seemed interminably slow.
He wondered what was taking so long.

Then he had it. The screen
flickered and settled. BUF read what it said. ‘Standard procedure for dealing
with neutrino bombs’. Underneath, it said, ‘There is no standard procedure for
dealing with neutrino bombs’. And, underneath this, it said, ‘Use initiative.’

BUF almost screamed. No
standard procedure! How could there not be a standard procedure? “What am I to
do?” he asked himself in panic. BUF was the sort of computer that never dared
stray from standard procedure – largely because he lacked initiative. Indeed,
he didn’t even know the meaning of the word.

“Use initiative,” he read
again, wondering what it meant. But desperate situations required desperate
measures. Surely it was worth a try. So, he commenced another scan of the
ship’s memory banks, this time looking for the meaning of the word
‘initiative’.

It took an even longer time
to find as the seconds ticked away. But finally the definition he was after
flickered onto the screen in front of him.

BUF read it and re-read it
several times before he fully understood what initiative meant. It was only
then that he realized he didn’t have any.

anaX approached the door of
the forward engine room with some trepidation. She knew all about the neutrino
bomb’s highly subtle anti-tampering devices, and the one that worried her most
was the bomb’s laser-rifle with its reputation for shooting first and asking
questions later. Would the bomb recognize her, or would it shoot on sight?

She stopped outside the door,
her heart thumping, and planned how to get into the room. She couldn’t just
open the door and brazenly walk in. Any movement of the door would trigger the
laser-rifle; she’d be dead before she had a chance to show her face.

A plan formed in her mind.
With shaky fingers she removed the belt from around her waist and carefully
hooked the buckle onto the door handle. Then, standing well to the side, she
gave the belt a quick tug downwards to turn the handle. The movement of the
corresponding handle on the other side of the door did not escape the neutrino
bomb’s notice. There was a flash of light and the door handles on both sides of
the door glowed red-hot for a few seconds.

anaX wiped the sweat from her
brow and lowered herself to the floor. She positioned herself so she would be
able to kick the door open with one foot while remaining out of sight of the
bomb’s scanners.

She took a deep breath and
then gave a powerful kick, flinging the door open and at the same time cowering
up against the wall.

The corridor burst ablaze
with brilliant light as the laser-rifle discharged megawatt after megawatt of
energy into the opening door causing it to burst into flames. Even when the
door had stopped swinging open the laser-rifle continued firing – now targeting
the flickering flames.

An instant later, the
emergency water sprinklers in the forward engine room sprang into action and,
shortly afterwards, were blasted out of action by the laser-rifle.

anaX remained huddled on the
floor in the corridor, with her head in her hands. It took several long,
drawn-out seconds before the specially treated flame-resistant door stopped
burning. The laser-rifle continued to sporadically fire at the wisps of smoke
still rising from it, but finally it, too, ceased.

All became silent apart from
the faint ticking of the neutrino bomb’s penultimate timer as it counted down
its final minute.

anaX took her hands from her
head and looked up. The door was wide open. Now was the most dangerous part.
She had to peer round the doorframe and show her face and hope that the bomb
recognized her. What expression had she had when the bomb had taken her
picture? Had any of her make-up faded? Was her hair out of place? And were her
fear-lines making her look much different?

She swallowed hard. It was now
or never. She summoned her courage and, with her heart pounding faster than
ever, took a deep breath. She forced a smile onto her face and poked her head
round the doorframe.

“Hello,” she called to the
bomb. “Don’t shoot, it’s only me. Remember me? I planted you. Please don’t
shoot.”

The laser-rifle fired... but
only to annihilate a recently orphaned earwig scuttling across the engine room
floor. anaX closed her eyes and sighed with relief.

Breathing slowly and deeply,
she edged her way into the room, approaching the bomb very, very slowly,
praying that it wouldn’t suddenly change its mind. She stopped in front of its
red-hot casing and looked at the screen. The message read: ‘Bomb about to
detonate – Please wait...’

anaX wondered why there was
no countdown timer, and made a mental note to write to the bomb’s manufacturers
about it. She located the bomb’s micro-switch keyboard. It was small and
awkward to reach, but fortunately anaX had reasonably long fingernails to tap
in the 5-digit PIN number.

As she prepared to key it in,
she realized to her horror that she didn’t know what the number was. She
blinked twice as a sense of panic engulfed her. She had completely forgotten
the PIN. “Oh my God!” she thought, her terror mounting. “What was the
number?!?”

Just then she heard a small
“phut” from inside the neutrino bomb, followed immediately by a hissing sound.
anaX’s heart stopped. “That’s not the fifteen-second fuse, is it?” she wondered
aloud, checking her watch. “It can’t be,” she said, her voice edged with
desperation. “There should be hours to go yet.”

But the hissing sound
continued. And there weren’t hours to go. There were only seconds to go.
Fifteen seconds.

anaX wiped the sweat from her
brow, wracking her brain for the code. And as she wracked, the fuse burned.
Fourteen seconds. Thirteen. Twelve.

The mnemonic. What was the
mnemonic she had devised to remember the number by?

Eleven.

It was something like:
Alien
Starship Swallows Orange
.

Ten.

Which would make the number
5886. But that couldn’t be right as it contained only four digits.

Nine.

Or
Alien Ship Swallows Orange Star
. Which would be 54764.

Eight.

Or
Orange
Alien
Ship Swallows Star
. 65474.

Seven.