Far-out Show (9781465735829)

A Novel

By Thomas P. Hanna

Copyright 2011 Thomas P. Hanna

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“Tell me what I am to do again.”

“Talk to us, Nerber. Tell us everything that
is going on in your head. What body sensations you are feeling,
whatever thoughts occur to you since they may be parts of your
unique experience, bits we do not already know about you. Nothing
is irrelevant. Nothing is too minor to mention or even complain
about. Nothing is taboo. It will all distract the audience and
maybe even fascinate them which would be a nice extra and make you
even more valuable to us.” The female voice was a synthesized
version of Feedle speaking but at this stage Nerber wasn’t
distracted by that bit of artificiality, a quirk the engineers
hadn’t been able to overcome in the communications with the
transport system.

“All in the name of commerce. Okay, I am not
arguing against that, only commenting in case you want to edit a
section to hint that I started off more worried than I am or am
willing to tell our whole kind that I am. I did take a briefing on
what was expected before I applied to do this.

“Okay. I was hatched at a very young age...
Just yoking... Ow! Okay, okay, no more of what even I know are
pudgerbip comments. I, Nerber, being supposedly capable of deciding
such things for myself, certify that I am off on the next and
probably greatest stage of an adventure to outdo all that have come
before this. Of course I could not do this by myself alone but
since it is not customary among our kind to share credits without a
lot of lawyer fights and... Ow! Stop doing that! If you tell me to
say what comes into my head then you have to listen to it whether
it is what you want to hear or not. I know this is supposed to
distract me during this so far untested stage of the game – you did
not know I knew that did you? One more shock and I shut up and you
do not have anything expect total fakery to work with and we all
know how fakery affects the audience interest when it is recognized
– and how soon it is recognized in this day of constant...

“Whoops, that puts a stain on the floor! Save
the scientists the earful about how their stuff did not work. I
blocked the part of your system that is supposed to shoot those
soothing chemicals into me on your command. I do not trust those
substances not to remove my edge when I am in position to do the
challenges – or to have other intended effects on me. Like letting
you manipulate me from inside myself without knowing what is
happening to keep me from so far outdoing the other contestants
that the audiences’ anticipation wouldn’t be at the high-most
level. I am doing what I can to make this as fair a competition as
I can. If you do not like that you can stop this process and
disqualify me right now without making me a test subject for the
many parts of the new technical processes that, despite your
repeated assurances to those of us risking ourselves using them for
the first times, have not been extensively tested and proved
entirely and beyond question safe.

“You will want to edit this out so future
competitors will not get the idea to sidestep your hidden control
factors, but you are going to heavily edit it all anyway so that is
not
artcram dipply
on a
heepnitz
.

“Something is happening. I cannot hear
machinery running but I seem to be vibrating. Of course because of
the blocking strap I cannot see anything and that also makes it
hard for me to hear but this is an all-over feeling. I am not
willing to be the test subject on this point but it will make the
moving up and down a lot easier if you can truly show that the
transport system does not damage the seeing sense so the extra
precaution of covering our eyes during that phase is not
needed.

“Bright light but not too bright. Hmm, feels
good. Refreshing. Top me up. I get why I have to do this with near
empty body reserves since it is a new technology and, again despite
your firm assurances, no one knows how things might get mixed up in
the process and create unsustainable mis-mixes. Having to stay
there long enough to face the game challenges while staying in a
near-depleted condition in case a faster than anticipated
bring-back is needed focuses you on the risks and hardships in
doing this. Is it really worth the possible rewards even if you win
big? Something for those who bother to do that to think about. I
get that stressed contestants make for more audience satisfaction
but what are the limits? When do the risks win out and argue
against for doing this or letting anyone else be enticed to do it
without truly proven safeguards?

“Oh my
wimpledimples,
I am blind! Huh,
oh wait, I do not know if I am or not since I forgot I have this
blocking strap around my head. Of course with that in place I might
truly have become blind but would not know it. Maybe you and I all
need to be concerned whether the stress or some radiations from the
machinery or some other factor affect memory and the funny bones
during transfer.”

“Tell us about what you think you will find
where you are going, Nerber.” He recognized this as the synthesized
version of Lacrat’s voice. He liked Lacrat; didn’t entirely trust
him but liked him. The others he didn’t trust as far as he could
gerlup
a
fingfangfong
but they were the keepers of
the gateway to what he wanted so he went along with them as much as
needed.

“If the few images we are told our scientists
have detected are truly accurate, there must be very exotic places
there. A few familiar ones but many strange looking ones where
there are things all around that we have nothing like so I cannot
much imagine what they are truly like. Of course some or most of
that might be imaginative additions by your technicians. Only a few
insiders would know about that for certain. I do not trust any
business guys to make decisions except for their own short-term
profit but I assume that means I will find myself in a concentrated
living area, not out in a barren space where I would be unlikely to
find very many inhabitants so I would not be able to attempt the
show’s challenges.”

Lacrat said to him in a quiet sing-song
manner, “Keep it in your focus that you want to see, and especially
expose Wilburps to, as many different locations, situations, and
types as you can. There is more credit for getting close enough to
multiple units of a type than for spending extended time with only
one or a few. Variety, Nerber. Strive for a variety of contacts and
experiences. Do not be boring. See that world. Be useful.”

“Strange... Never felt this way before. Has
anyone ever felt like this before? How to describe it? Nerber
through the snaggiewarp. It is
premcuckle
in
nitpickflub.
Like I am floating free. Like I am becoming a
vapor and... Oh yes, this must be it. Here I go.” Nerber’s voice
quickly faded away.

“I knew this would be a worrying moment but I
didn’t expect to be one of the worryingers,” Lacrat said in a mere
whisper.

“There has to be a first time to try
everything. That’s what we reward a few for doing,” Feedle said
matter of factly.

“...Not unpleasant but not what I am used
to.” Nerber’s voice faded in and quickly returned to his normal
tone and volume.

“He’s back,” Lacrat said with a sigh of
relief.

“Do we have confirmation that he made the
move and arrived where we wanted him to?” Feedle asked.

“Huh? What is going on? Was I dreaming? I
feel sort of normal but sort of truly strange. Where am I? Oh,
right, I remember where I was and what I was doing but did I get
where I was going? How can I be sure? What is this thing I am
holding? Oh, right, I know what it should be. I thought I would
feel different when I knew I had moved to the next step but mostly
I feel confused with a touch of groggy. What am I supposed to do
now since I am lost and confused?”

“Pull yourself together, Nerber. You have
challenges to face and honor, or at least notoriety, to claim.”
From its sound this synthesized voice was coming from right beside
him. Nerber knew that should be giving him important information
but his mind was still minimally functional with mostly buzz and
dullness to report.

The most notable feature of Oakline Street in
Swiftyville was the total lack of oaks or any other kinds of trees
lining it. It was a pothole-pocked back street that mostly ran by
old three-story buildings that had once been bustling factories but
were now mainly empty eyesores behind metal-mesh fencing.

This particular block of Oakline formed the
fourth side of a city park that was the updated version of a three
block long one that was here back when this was a separate town. A
remnant of forest formed the other three sides, wrapped loosely
around an open grassy area that had a small pond with a gazebo and
two benches spaced around it toward one end. An additional pair of
back-to-back benches faced in and out of the park’s grassy area at
the street edge.

There was little traffic on the street but
what there was tended to be large trucks by-passing the traffic
lights and stop signs on the main streets. One such truck rumbled
by now, rattling noisily each time a tire tried but failed to fit
into a pothole. Conveniently for all concerned, the driver was so
focused on avoiding the pits in the road ahead that he didn’t
notice when an object the size of a seated man clasping to him a
box almost half his size appeared in the middle of the street just
behind him. A few seconds difference in the timing and this story
might have been very different.

The object appeared in the street seemingly
out of nowhere. It wasn’t flung here from off to the side, didn’t
fall out of a passing aircraft, and didn’t fall off the truck
although that last seemed like the most likely explanation.

It was not immediately clear what the object
was. An avid sci-fi enthusiast might have assumed he was
day-dreaming it; most others would scratch their heads and say they
had no clue.

Then it moved.

In fact as one large part tilted up and
others swung out to the sides it became recognizable as a humanoid
creature that was sitting on the ground, head bent forward a bit,
with its arms wrapped around a rectangular box-like item about
eighteen inches by fourteen inches and ten inches thick.

The creature placed the box beside it while
it carefully stood up and checked itself. Its basic humanoid shape
was evident now. It had the general appearance of a slightly
odd-looking human male in his late twenties who was wearing a
knock-off of a long-sleeved denim jacket over a blue chambray shirt
buttoned to the collar as if to minimize the amount of exposed skin
available for close examination. His denim jeans flared enough to
accommodate clownishly large shoes that were high enough to qualify
as boots. The overall effect was nerdish but by that fact not as
attention-grabbing as it might have seemed otherwise. This creature
also had some hard-to-overlook non-human traits.

Its skin was pale but definitely had a green
color; its feet seemed awkwardly large even hidden inside the big
shoes; its head seemed strange, with what looked like a large ridge
running entirely around it at the level where we might expect there
to be eyes, which were not in evidence, and an off-center mass of
light brown hair-like stuff under what was a large Australian-style
bush hat pulled down tight on it unless all of that stuff was
actually part of the head. Overall, the creature looked odd but
beyond its skin color it wasn’t really clear why.

When its hands brailled its head, it pulled
off what was indeed a tight-fitting big hat, adjusted the connected
mass of what was indeed hair-substitute, aka a wig, into what
humans would consider a more normal position and patted that into
place. Then it peeled off the ridge from around its head that now
seemed simply to be functioning as a blindfold.

Nerber blinked his obvious but not
extraordinary-looking eyes and looked around saying, “There, that
is so much better. They said I should wear that as extra protection
but only I ever need to know that even in that short time I got so
used to not seeing that I almost forgot to take the thing off. Wow,
this place is as exotic as we thought. So much to experience and
learn and challenge. But first things in the first place.”