Chapter Five: Fellswig Robot Slippers
Jackson Fickle was in the 98th percentile of dream-rememberers. Most mornings, Jackson was able to recall his previous night’s dream. From the age of seven onward, he had experienced at least 4 recurring dreams (recurring being defined as a dream that has been repeated at least twice). The first took place in a jungle, and involved Jackson’s family needing to be saved from a wild tiger. In the second, Jackson lived in a clear hamster ball the size of a house, but his roommates did not resemble anyone from his real life. The third recurring dream took place under the ocean, where Jackson found he had no problem breathing, but did have a problem with a group of angry merpeople. The last and most recurring, involved Jackson sitting in a pitch black room where only another set of eyes are visible. This is the dream Jackson likes to speak about the least.
But as Jackson regained consciousness and opened his eyes next to a still sleeping, Tarza, he could not remember a single dream. He could not remember why he had fallen asleep in the first place. And he could not remember where he was. It was the Boss of Ships, and their muffled voice, that reminded him of his situation.
“Is he awake yet?” asked the Boss.
“Looks like he’s coming to right now,” said an assistant.
Jackson could barley make out the shapes and faces of the speakers through the hard hazy foam that encased him. He tried moving his right hand, then his left. When neither budged, he tried moving his right leg, then his left. In a rather desperate attempt to feel some sense of freedom, Jackson tried to wiggle his ears, but then remembered that he had never been able to do that.
“Let me talk to him,” said the Boss.
The assistant raised a glowing mechanical wand towards Jackson. He watched as the tool turned the foam around him a dull orange. It receded rapidly until Jackson’s head and right shoulder were uncovered.
Jackson shook his head from left to right, happy to once again be able to move and wiggle whatever he liked, excluded his ears, whose lack of mobility could not be blamed on anything other than genetics. Jackson, having been around Byzongs for a small but significant amount of time now, and being adept at assimilating into new cultural circumstances (a trait of his that you may not have been aware of until this moment) asked the Boss of Ships a question, using the proper Byzong etiquette.
“Wonderful ship you have here! May I please be let go?” he asked.
The Boss of Ships gave an approving smile.
“You have excellent manners for a prisoner. No, you may not,” he responded.
Jackson began to smack his lips involuntarily.
“What’s that last in my mouth? Is that foam strawberry flavored?” he asked, still smacking.
An assistant with ears so long that they flopped down behind her head, stepped forward with a soft clang and a smile.
“Excellent observational skills. That is the flavoring that I added to make the experience more pleasant.”
“Well I don’t like it one bit,” said Jackson candidly. “I’d prefer chocolate.”
The Boss puffed his chest out.
“How dare you question Maartosh! She is a galaxy-renowned flavorologist. She decided the taste of everything on this ship!”
“You must mean ‘every bit of food on this ship,’” Jackson corrected.
“No, I mean everything on this ship,” the Boss replied.
“But… not everything has a taste,” Jackson retorted.
The Boss scoffed. “Solarwind! Name one thing that doesn’t have a taste!”
Jackson was flabbergasted. Surely, The Boss wasn’t serious. He looked around.
“The floor. The floor doesn’t have a taste,” said Jackson proudly.
“It certainly does. It tastes of bitter metal,” said Maartosh. “I made sure of it.”
Jackson shook his head.
“No, but, that’s not a taste like a taste that you would enjoy, that’s just…”
“Ah ha!” shouted The Boss. “You are confusing taste with good taste! Of course everything has a taste to it, they’re just not all to your liking. Imagine if everything tasted sweet and wonderful. No one would get anything done!”
Maartosh nodded. “They’re be licking everything, all the time. That’s why I make sure that the things that shouldn’t taste good, don’t taste good.”
“But… but, you don’t need to do anything to make a floor taste bad. It tastes bad already!” said Jackson.
“Ah ha again!” said the Boss. “A moment ago, you said it didn’t have a taste.”
Jackson was about to shout something back, until he realized that the Boss had a point.
As he often did when he had nothing more clever to say, he tried to change the subject.
He looked over at Tarza, still frozen in foam.
“If you’re going to leave me stuck here, could you at least let Tarza join us?”
The Boss of Ships stomped his excessively loud boot.
“You mean your co-conspirator??” he howled.
“Co-conspirator? I just met her a few moments ago,” Jackson defended.
The Boss gave a cocky smile.
“You’ve been set in our Intruder Immobilizer foam for three hours, so I highly doubt that,” he said.
“Three hours?!” Jackson said with alarm. “You’ve got to her out of there, now!”
The Boss sighed.
“Oh, she’s perfectly fine. The foam allows all necessary functions while providing essential nutrients. We’ve been monitoring you both the entire time. After all, you are of great importance to us, President Racha.”
The Boss nodded again to the assistant.
“Nevertheless.”
The assistant moved their foam-melting wand around Tarza’s until she was free to move her head. Almost immediately, she started to rouse.
Jackson breathed a sigh of relief, then turned his attention back to the Boss.
“Thank you. But stop calling me President Racha!” he insisted.
The Boss grabbed a tablet from another assistant and reviewed the information beaming from its surface. As Jackson had already learned, Byzongs place a good deal of importance on names, and the Boss was embarrassed at the potential blunder.
“How is it that you pronounce it, then? Earth names are all so odd-sounding to me,” he said sincerely.
Jackson shook his head.
“No, you don’t understand. I’m—“
“Charming belly you have!” interrupted Tarza, still groggy from the foam. “What he’s trying to say is that his title is President Supreme and Ultimate Ruler of the Earth, Racha, The One and Only.”
The Boss gave a demonstrative bow.
“Ah, yes, sorry to have been so disrespectful,” he said with a chuckle. The assistants behind him joined in as well.
Jackson looked at Tarza in shock. He could not understand why Tarza had lied. He had just told her hours-that-felt-like-moments ago that he was not in fact, President Racha. And he was equally in shock that she knew the full title that President Racha had given herself in an oft-ignored executive order meant to “jazz up the office a little bit.”
“Pardon us your Supremeness, but we’re going to go get Inquisitor Slah,” said the Boss. “I understand she never finished interviewing you.”
The Boss walked up to Tarza and stared her right in the eyes.
“And I imagine she may have some questions for you as well.”
Upon hearing the word “interview”, Jackson again began to sweat profusely again.
“We’ll be leaving you in the care of two of our most advanced ROBs, Prod and Dusty,” the Boss continued.
Jackson whispered to Tarza, “‘ROBs’?”
“Short for robots,” she whispered back. “What do you call them on Earth?”
“Bots,” he answered.
“How odd,” she said.
Prod and Dusty, walked into the room just as the Boss and the assistants left.Their footsteps were practically inaudible, given that each was wearing a pair of bright yellow Fellswig Robot Slippers, designed to make sure that no robot, no matter how large and no matter how heavy, makes more noise than you with their metal feet.
“Hey, Prod. Hey, Dusty,” said Tarza nonchalantly.
“Hello, Tarza,” said Prod.
“Hiya, Tarza,” said Dusty with a wave of his mechanical arm.
“You know them?” asked Jackson.
“Of course I do,” smiled Tarza. “I’m the one that built them.”
Jackson felt more sweat get trapped by the foam.