Randoms (7 page)

I opened the door and looked inside. It was small but serviceable with a cot, a desk built into the wall, and a swivel chair bolted to the floor. On the wall above the desk sat a viewscreen—clearly not an actual porthole—which provided a view of the Earth below.

“I've made sure you all have quarters with species-appropriate latrines,” she said, gesturing to a small door in the corner.

“That's the way I like it.”

“Across the hall,” the captain said, “is a common room. We like to provide a space where each species can bond, though of course you can also invite the Ganari to join you once they are on board. Additionally, you may socialize with any of the crew who are off duty. Your data bracelet is automatically linked to the ship's communication network, so it can provide you with a map or directions if you get lost. It is not possible to gain access to any sections that are off-limits, so feel free to explore.”

“That sounds great,” I said. I looked at her weird, alien features and felt a strange affection for this creature who did not know me at all and who was making such a concerted effort to make me feel comfortable. “You clearly like your job,” I said.

She snorted. “Captaining an interstellar ship is about the
best thing I could imagine doing with my life, but some tasks are better than others.” She patted me on the shoulder. “This is one of the good ones. Now, I must return to the bridge. There's a visitor's mess at the end of the hall that will accommodate your species, and you'll find mealtimes via your data bracelet.”

“Got it. Thanks.” I was secretly hoping she would invite me to dinner, but instead she clumsily shook my hand, perhaps having read about the custom, and left me in my room.

I set down my bag and sat on the bed for a moment. Then I began to go through the tutorial for the data bracelet, which I figured I'd need to understand to survive. I opened up the HUD, found the tutorial, and started it. There was no voice and no instructions; a kind of understanding washed over me. It was like getting kung fu uploaded into your head in
The Matrix
. I didn't know how to use the data bracelet, and then I did.

I was so overwhelmed by it all, I didn't really feel social. I wanted to lie on my bed and stare at the ceiling or look at the Earth through my fake porthole. On the other hand, I didn't want to seem unfriendly. My fellow humans were across the hall, and getting to know them seemed like the smart move. They had already been hanging out together for days, and that made me a little uneasy. Moving around like I did always made me the odd man out at school, and I didn't want that to happen again. I told myself I was worrying about nothing. The four of us were arriving from different places and we were all pretty much equal. I was going to be one of them, the human team, starting on the exact same footing they were.

I walked across the hall into the common room, which consisted of a thin metal table and a series of metal chairs bolted to the floor. The three of them were sitting at a table, and they all
had their data bracelets off their wrists and spread out. Charles had summoned a keyboard and was typing away furiously. Park was reading from a wall of projected text. Nayana was examining a three-dimensional display of an alien board game, involving different-sized cubes, and seemed to be puzzling out a strategy. The three of them looked up briefly, and then, as if on cue, they looked away as if I were nothing of any interest.

I stood there for a moment, frozen, unsure how to act. There were some crazy-looking aliens walking around this ship, but there was no mistaking me for anything but what I was. There had to be some explanation, I thought. It couldn't be what it looked like, because if it was, it meant that they were giving me the cold shoulder.

“Hey, guys,” I said. “Zeke Reynolds, of the planet Earth. I come in peace.”

Charles D'Ujanga's voice was unmistakably cool, a far cry from the enthusiastic kid he'd been back at Camp David. “We recollect you, Zeke.”

“Yeah,” I said slowly. “Good to see you again too, Charles. Likewise, Nayana. Park.”

The Asian girl glowered at me. “I'm Mi Sun. Park is my family name. In Korea they come first. Not everything is like it is in the United States. You might want to keep that in mind since we're going to an entirely different part of the galaxy.”

“If you do not mind,” Charles said, without looking up this time, “we are rather busy.”

There wasn't any misunderstanding them now. They were giving me the ultra-icy shoulder. I was standing there, holding my metaphorical lunch tray, with no place to sit.

“Uh, what gives? I am part of Team Humanity, and we're all
in this together, so I'm not sure why you're treating me like the turd in the punch bowl.”

Nayana scowled, finding the expression kind of gross, but
I
thought it was kind of gross too. We all agreed it was in bad taste. Wasn't that grounds for bonding? Apparently not.

Charles stood up and faced me. “It is not my wish to hurt your feelings, but you are indeed, as you so colorfully said, the turd in the punch bowl. You may not like it, but it is so.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked. “I'm one of you.”

“No, you are a
random
.” He gestured toward the hovering text display coming off his data bracelet. “We have been doing research while you were delaying our departure. Historically, applicants that ostracize the random member of their group score much higher than those who attempt equal participation. In fact, if we exclude you from all group activities, our chances of success increase by almost seventy-two percent. You will, no doubt, gain some levels on your own, but we will gain many more if we don't have you to limit our potential. The data support this, and certainly what we see before us right now only further cements the case.”

At first I didn't know what he meant, and then I saw it. Hovering above his head was a faint number. Five. He had already risen to level five. Nayana and Mi Sun were both level four. I was level one with a total of zero experience points.

They'd had a full day to get a jump on me, but even so, I felt humiliated, exposed, like in one of those dreams when you realize you're not wearing any pants.

“Don't you think you ought to get to know me before you judge me?” I asked.

“No,” Charles said. “We are following the numbers, and the
numbers do not lie. We wish to make the best possible impression on these aliens, and that, I'm afraid, means we must keep our distance from you.”

•   •   •

For the most part, my dad loved the movie
Star Trek: First Contact
. His only real gripe was with the end, when Zefram Cochrane operates his warp drive and attracts the attention of the Vulcan explorers. The aliens land, and humanity has its first encounter with a starfaring species, an experience that will change the future of the human race and, indeed, the galaxy. Besides the fact that it is impossible to see James Cromwell's Cochrane as the same character who appeared in the original series episode “Metamorphosis,” my dad always hated how Cochrane conducted himself with the visiting and somewhat judgey aliens. He's meeting beings from another world, acting as an ambassador for humanity, hopefully beginning an exchange of technology and ideas and culture, and what does he do? He gets drunk and dances around to some—let's be honest here—second-rate rockabilly. Roy Orbison? Give me a break. “If you ever meet aliens,” my dad said, “I hope you'll represent us a little better than that.”

Now, here I was, meeting aliens, but
I
wasn't the problem. My fellow humans were.

“How do you think this is going to make us look?” I asked. “Do you think the Confederation wants selfish grinders or people who know how to cooperate?”

“The
beings
who followed this system succeeded in the past,” Mi Sun said. “Clearly it didn't hurt their chances. It won't hurt ours.”

“That is unfair!” Once again I was the outsider, late to the
party, on the fringes. I hadn't asked to join the human delegation, but I'd been selected, and I should be part of the group.

“It is not about fairness,” Charles said, his voice icy. “You are American. If we fail, you go back to your life of luxury and ease. You know nothing of the poverty and want in my country. Going to school for me is like winning the lottery for you. Every day in Uganda people die from illnesses easily treated in the United States. People starve. People are killed in pointless wars. Children are pressed into battle. You cannot understand what the prospect of plenty and justice means to us, and I'm not about to risk all of that so your feelings aren't hurt.”

“You don't know anything about me,” I said. “You don't know what I'm fighting for.”

“Your mother. Yes, Ms. Price told us,” Charles said. “I know you want to gain the levels for her. I understand that. If you want the cure for her, then stay out of our way and let us succeed. You will only drag us down.”

I stood there, silent, not knowing what to say, feeling like it would be admitting defeat if I walked away, but not knowing what else I could do.

Nayana looked up from her projected board game. “For example, you're keeping us from our work right now. We're trying to hit level eight before we arrive at Confederation Central. That is considered the hallmark of excellence.”

She looked down, and I stood there, realizing that none of them were going to make eye contact with me again. And so, humiliated, I walked out and into my own room, where I curled up into a ball and tried really hard not to give in to despair and homesickness.

CHAPTER EIGHT

I
couldn't decide if I should go to dinner. I didn't want to face the other kids, and I guess I was secretly hoping that one of them would come knock on my door and apologize. It never happened. Instead, I lay on my bed, looking at the faux porthole while we broke orbit and headed to wherever the Ganari homeworld was. At first I felt pathetic, but as I watched the Moon and then Mars pass by, the wonder of it all made me momentarily forget how miserable my first day in space had been.

Then an automated voice came over a speaker system. “Prepare to exit standard space.”

I was trying to decide how exactly you prepare for something like that when there was a flash of light—but in my mind, not on the screen. I experienced an instant of vertigo in which I felt I was falling and flying and tumbling even though I hadn't moved an inch. Up and down were reversed, and I felt pressure as if my entire body were being squeezed down to the size of an egg, but also erupting out of my skin. The sensation was weird and vivid but only lasted a fraction of a second. Meanwhile, the wall screen didn't turn off so much as vanish. Where there had been a simulation of a porthole seconds before, now there was a blank wall. We were in hyperspace or whatever it was, which meant that I was one of the first human beings ever to exceed the speed of light. I wanted so much to talk about it with
some
one
—
to toast this incredible achievement with intergalactic colas—but here I was, alone in my room.

Soon after, I heard the door to the common room open and the others talking and laughing and, worst of all, whispering. I lay there trying to decide which would be worse: seeing them in the mess hall or going without food. I decided to go without food.

What would I do if I were at home, feeling lousy about my life? I laughed as I thought about it. Maybe I'd talk to my mom, but most likely I'd reach for some sci-fi to distract me. Now here I was, living the dream. I wouldn't say the dream stank, but it was certainly stinkier than I had hoped.

I activated my data bracelet and began to search for games. Maybe I could take my mind off my woes with a little cool high-tech diversion. These Confederation guys could build starships, run rings around the laws of physics, and construct machines that allowed me to speak to creatures from another world. Their computer games would
have
to be immersive and thrilling. I had visions of being transported to realistic environments, swinging my +3 battle-axe of doom, the sights and sounds and maybe even smells of the game world so vivid they were indistinguishable from reality.

As it turns out, being part of an advanced civilization does not guarantee that your games won't be pathetic. I figured out pretty quickly that I was hooked into the ship's network, so maybe that was why there wasn't much to choose from, but even so, I was unimpressed. There were a bunch of basic board and peg and stone and token games—the cultural equivalents of chess from a few dozen different worlds. I saw the one with cubes that Nayana had been playing—Strategic Adumbrations—and though the text assured me it was one of
the most popular games in the Confederation, it looked dry as dust to me. It was all about deep strategy, thinking multiple moves ahead, and that felt more like work than fun.

I found a few slightly more compelling things, including a game based on the idea of spreading galactic culture to other worlds, and the mechanics were actually kind of similar to Settlers of Catan. There was a game using tiles that had the strange title of Approximate Results from Endeavors. Each tile had a monetary value or was worth points, or could perform actions, which made it kind of like Dominion. There was also a dueling element, which reminded me of Magic: The Gathering. I spent about an hour playing against the computer, and then I went onto the shared network and played against someone with the code name Ystip for another hour or two. There was a chat function, but I felt too shy to activate it, so I never talked to this Ystip. Even so, I learned a few things about the game from him or her or it. After we'd played for another two hours, I went to sleep. A late night of gaming, just like home.

•   •   •

The next morning I woke up early—a side effect of the longer day, I supposed. I was hungry from having skipped dinner the night before, and I wanted to avoid the self-impressed trio, so I threw on some clothes and went in search of breakfast. Using my data bracelet to guide me, I found the guest mess, a small room where they'd set out food with which we were already familiar: some canned fruit and bread and cheeses. It was nothing exciting, but it was edible. I had the feeling they were going to great lengths to accommodate Earth tastes, and I hoped when we got to Confederation Central there would still be food that looked like, well, food. I wolfed down a muffin
and canned peaches and some OJ, and then got out of there before I ran into anyone who might be inclined to exclude me.

Just before 0800, I followed the directions from my data bracelet, which projected a translucent yellow path onto my HUD, and headed out to meet the captain. I made my way to a stairwell and up three flights. Then I stepped out onto the bridge, where I did some primitive-planet gaping-in-wonder.

It didn't look exactly like the bridge of a science-fiction ship, but it was awfully close, maybe a little less
Enterprise
and a little more
Space Battleship Yamato
. Captain Qwlessl sat in a chair in the center of the room. A table contained a variety of instruments and screens, which she fussed with perpetually. About ten feet in front of her was a series of consoles at which sat four aliens, and there were more workstations all along the walls. On the bulkhead directly across from the captain was a massive front screen depicting the forward view of the ship, and all around it were dozens of smaller screens showing various alternate views of machinery inside and outside the vessel, scrolls of texts, numerical readouts, and graphical displays.

“Good morning, Mr. Reynolds,” the captain said. “How do you like our ship?”

“It's pretty great,” I said, absolutely meaning it.

“I like to think we don't do too badly,” she said, raising her trunk. Almost certainly a smile, I decided.

Some of the aliens looked at me or pointed ocular orbs or waved sensory stalks in my general direction. I wanted to think I was being paranoid, but there was no getting around it. I heard the word “random” whispered several times.

The captain turned to look at me. “Where would you like to begin?”

What exactly was my most pressing question? I decided to start with the basics. “How do we travel faster than light?”

She rose from her chair and walked me over to where an earthworm with limbs had a station. “Mr. Zehkl, would you care to explain to our guest about our propulsion systems?”

“Sure thing,” he said. His eyestalks jiggled distractingly when he spoke. “You understand the basic problem of approaching light speed in normal space?”

I told him I did, though my understanding was, I had no doubt, limited by his standards.

“We have conventional engines that allow us to accelerate to somewhere in the range of one quarter light speed, though warnings go off like crazy once we hit velocities that risk incurring time-dilation effects. For interstellar travel, the physics is quite complicated, and there is some debate about whether we move at all or if we actually stay still while the universe moves around us. But we use technology that essentially allows us to punch holes in space-time and then navigate through the apertures we create. Right now we're not technically in the universe, and we're not really moving faster than light, so we're safe from the effects of extreme speed.”

“So you create wormholes?”

His eyestalks stopped jiggling and met my gaze, and he pressed one hand to his wormy body, an evident gesture of confusion. “
Worm
holes?”

“Like passageways in space?” I tried again.

He thought about this for a moment, or perhaps his translator was compensating for the idea of worms, which might have struck close to home. “I think so, yes. We call it tunneling. You enter an opening, and then you come out at the determined
location. It's not quite instantaneous, but this ship can traverse nearly sixty light years in the course of a standard day.”

“Very concise, Mr. Zehkl,” the captain said, taking me by the arm and moving me away from his station. “He used to spend an hour saying basically the same thing. He'd actually explain the equations to anyone who was polite enough not to walk away.”

“Ma'am, the equations are interesting,” Zehkl called as we walked away.

The tour continued, and I spoke briefly to Wimlo, the stick insect communications officer, and then we went to the helm station, which was operated by a giant otter with a sharp and hooked beak.

“Ms. Ystip,” the captain said, “can you explain the basic functioning of the helm to Mr. Reynolds?”

“Maybe,” the creature said, in a high and distinctly feminine voice, “if he promises me a rematch in Approximate Results from Endeavors.”

“That was you?” I couldn't suppress a smile.

“It was me,” she said. “You're good for a beginner. If you'd like, you can meet me in the officers' lounge after 2200 and we'll play a few rounds.”

“I'd love that!” The humans didn't much like me, but the beaked otter thought I was okay.

After Ystip gave me a quick rundown of how the helm works, we moved to the weapons console. Sitting there was a short and squat being with large black eyes that had no irises. A decidedly hoglike snout protruded ungracefully from its face, and it had a pair of menacing tusks on either side. It was covered with tough gray hide, and thick ropy hair, like dreadlocks, hung from its head.

“Mr. Urch,” the captain said, “please show our guest how the weapons station works.”

“Do you use weapons often?” I asked. “I thought the Confederation was peaceful.”

“We are,” the captain said, “but not everyone else is.”

Urch rose from his seat and gestured toward it. He was the same height as I was, but broad and muscular, and he held himself like he was struggling against the urge to commit unspeakable acts of violence. “Sit,” he said with a grunt.

It seemed like doing what he said was a good idea. I sat.

“Let me show you a simulation.” He pressed a few buttons on his display console, and a grid appeared, green against a black background. The outlines of two enemy ships manifested. On the right side of the panel were multiple weapons sources, while data about distance, shielding, speed, and posturing of the hostile craft scrolled on the left.

“Many ship functions are automated,” he said, “but in combat, all targeting and weapons discharge must be handled by a sentient.”

“The computer can't do it more accurately?”

“No,” he snapped as though the question offended him. “It is standard ship design to vent radiation exhaust, which distorts an enemy's sensor readings. There is no known way to compensate. Targeting must be done by cruder means. It's not a task for all beings. To operate the weapons, you need a steady hand and a fierce heart.”

One of the enemy ships turned and fired some sort of weapon at us. The left side of the screen relayed information on damage. “Here is an enemy ship. It will destroy us if we do not fight back,” Urch said with a grunt. “You tap on the ship to tar
get a particular sector.” He placed a long, clawed, and strangely delicate finger on the ship, which immediately enlarged and broke down into a dozen hexagons each marked with data like
LIFE SUPPORT
or
ENGINES
or
COMMAND
. He tapped
ENGINES
. “You then choose your weapon—the phased particle beam, or PPB; the dark-matter missile; or the plasma lance.” He tapped the PPB button; then, when the word
COMMIT
appeared on screen, he tapped that. A mock beam fired at the ship, and there was a simulated explosion on the screen. The ship was crippled.

“No offense,” I said, “but that looks kind of easy.”

“We're in teaching mode,” he snorted. “Real combat is fast and chaotic and messy. Achieving a weapons lock is challenging. Do you want to try a more lifelike simulation?”

“Sure,” I said.

He pressed a few more buttons. “See what you can do, random.”

The screen cleared for a moment and then blinked back to life. Three enemy vessels appeared on the screen, and they were all turning to fire at me. It was, in fact, fast and chaotic and messy. Damage reports scrolled down the side of the screen faster than I could read them. The ship itself moved constantly, and when I reached out to touch it, it was already gone. I tried again, this time anticipating its movement and targeting its weapons systems. I then considered the relative merits of my three weapon choices, but since I had no knowledge of what each did, I wasn't sure which way I wanted to go. While I tried to make up my mind, the screen informed me that I had been destroyed.

“Not so easy,” Urch said with a grunt.

“Can I try again?” I asked.

“I see you like to lose,” Urch told me.

I did not actually like to lose. However, I started to feel like I understood the system a little better. The setup reminded me of a much more complicated and unforgiving version of the minigames you sometimes find in sci-fi action or role-playing games. I'm not saying that playing video games somehow trained me for real space combat the way it did in the classic film
The Last Starfighter
, but I didn't feel entirely lost.

When the simulation began, I focused immediately on the weapons system of the first ship and fired at it with the PPB, which missed. I still didn't know what the difference between the weapons was, but I knew this one worked, and that was good enough for now. The ship flittered around my screen, making it difficult to get a weapons lock, but I saw a pattern to the movement after a moment, and the third time I tried, I was able to jump in an instant before it shifted position. I obtained a lock and fired the PPB and then immediately targeted the weapons systems of the two other ships. It took a few tries, but I was able to cripple their offensive capabilities before my ship took too much damage. Then I quickly fired at the life-support systems of each ship.