Emperor of the Universe Read online

  Fortunately, Craborzi, unlike caterpillars, are not fragile sacks of bug skin wrapped around disgusting greenish-brown fluids. They’re built more like a layer of fresh Saltines stuck to a tube of fairly moist modeling clay. So, Nicholas, Henrietta, the package of ground beef, and the nearby walls weren’t splattered with ichor and goo.

  Nicholas, still half numb and quivering from the adrenaline rush that had fueled his deadly actions, turned his attention to the table where Henrietta lay. She was panting violently and staring at him with wide-open eyes. He yanked at the straps and prodded the various buckles until the restraints pulled loose, then scooped her up and cradled her.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “For the most part,” she said.

  Only the huge overload his brain was already digesting prevented Nicholas’s fingers from contracting in shock and adding Henrietta to the list of the day’s smushed victims.

  “You can talk!” Nicholas said.

  “I share your surprise,” Henrietta said. Her voice was quiet, though louder than a whisper. The pitch was high, but her enunciation was flawless, except for the tiniest hint of a lisp, and a slight popping sound whenever she pronounced a p or a b.

  Nicholas relaxed his grip, cupping her in his palms. “How…?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “There’s a lot to sort out. I don’t have any memory of having memories before now. It’s like I’ve been dropped into the middle of my life’s story. At least, I hope it’s the middle.”

  “You remember stuff?” Nicholas’s mind raced through everything he’d done in the privacy of his bedroom. “What sort of stuff?”

  “Running.” She reared up and bicycled her front paws like they were on a wheel. “Chewing newspaper. Sniffing things.”

  “What about stuff with me?” Nicholas asked.

  “Good memories. You fed me. You petted me. We watched movies.” Henrietta nuzzled his hand with her cheek. “How can I just suddenly get memories?”

  “Maybe there’s some sort of neural field in here,” Nicholas said. He’d watched enough science-fiction movies to know that anything beyond the reach of an easy explanation usually involved a field of some sort, as well as a neural or a cyber something or other. Occasionally, there was also need of a photon or neutron thingy. And in the rarest of cases, when all else failed, one could bring in antimatter to save the day.

  “There has to be something like that. What do you think?” he asked.

  “I think a talking gerbil is still a gerbil,” Henrietta said. “Don’t mistake speech for brains.”

  “That was fairly deep,” Nicholas said. “Sophisticated, actually.”

  Henrietta blinked like someone dazzled by a laser-bright flash of purple light, or a revelation. “I seem to have picked up some depth, as well as a degree of…” She paused, as if in search of the proper phrase, blinked several more times, sniffed the air, then said, “… self-awareness! That’s it. I know myself. Oh, sweet cedar shavings, I’m a gerbil! And I can think! I have thoughts. I exist. I’m a living being with a unique identity, capable of rational thought. I am. Therefore, I think!”

  Alarmed by a stream of words he only partly understood, Nicholas held her closer. She went stiff, and then wriggled violently in Nicholas’s hand.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “I need to chew something,” she said.

  “No cables.” Nicholas put Henrietta on the floor. “You don’t want to get electrocuted.”

  She ran to the table she’d been strapped to and began gnawing one of the legs. Nicholas joined her there and studied the reddish fat-flecked hunk of hamburger meat, which was still strapped to the table. “Do you think it picked up anything?” he asked as he worked on the restraints and extracted the still-cool plastic-wrapped slab.

  “No.” Henrietta shuddered. “It’s just dead meat.”

  Speak for yourself, rat, the hamburger said in a slow-paced, low-pitched voice that seemed to come from a spot somewhere inside Nicholas’s head, or just an inch or two outside his right ear. Exact placement was difficult to determine.

  “Oh, roach brains.” Nicholas, once again, barely managed to avoid squeezing what he held. He dropped to a seat on the floor, crossed his legs, and scooped up Henrietta. He placed her on his upper thigh, and put the package of meat by his side. “This is a lot to absorb.”

  You think it’s a lot for you? Imagine my surprise. Last I remember, I was grazing on a hillside in green pastures.

  “That’s all you remember?” Nicholas asked. “Grazing?” He tried not to dwell on the fact that he’d just asked a package of meat a question.

  Yes. No. Wait … My friends and I were rounded up, herded into a truck, and taken for a bouncy ride. We thought we were going to a party. Everything after that is hazy. Hey! Where’s my tail? Something’s wrong. Something’s terribly wrong.

  Nicholas patted the package of ground beef and spoke the two words he hated hearing the most from his parents: “Calm down.”

  Henrietta slid off Nicholas’s leg and sniffed the hamburger meat.

  Back off, carnivore!

  “I’m a vegetarian,” Henrietta said. “Actually, a pelletarian.”

  You’re a pest! Rats and mice ruin my grain with their poop. The package seemed to jerk slightly. Why can’t I flick my tail? What if there are flies here? I hate flies.

  “Quiet, you two. I have to think,” Nicholas said. As much as the communication abilities of his pet and his former future dinner were impressive, and possibly bordering on the miraculous, Nicholas was fairly certain that, of the three of them, he was the one most capable of figuring out how to get back home. As he thought about the problem, his eyes drifted down to the crushed remains of the Craborzi.

  Nicholas made another intuitive leap, though this one was somewhat less accurate and far less productive than his previous guess. Perhaps whatever was enabling speech in a gerbil and a package of ground beef might also allow smashed insectoid corpses to communicate, providing both guidance about returning to Earth and a chance for Nicholas to offer a heartfelt apology to his victims for ruining their day, and their anatomy.

  “Sorry about stomping you,” Nicholas said. His eyes shifted from corpse to corpse. That was when he finally noticed the instruments they’d been holding when he’d smushed them. Some were still clutched in fractured claws. Others were scattered across the floor. But all of them were obviously artifacts from an advanced civilization. This both deepened Nicholas’s hope that he could communicate with his victims and broadened his growing feelings of guilt.

  He stooped to take a closer look at the nearest item. It resembled a miniature drill with three separate bits, combined with a tube that issued a barely audible hiss, as if sucking in air.

  Nicholas stood and repeated his apology.

  And then, something amazing didn’t happen.

  WHAT DIDN’T HAPPEN NEXT

  This would be an ideal time to whittle down the narrative from virtually infinite pages toward something that can be carried in one’s hands without risk of pulling one’s arms from their sockets or snapping one’s spine (assuming one has a spine or arms, and is in the presence of a respectable amount of gravity).

  As mentioned, something amazing didn’t happen. Many physicists believe our observations help determine the nature of reality, and our decisions create parallel universes. There might be a universe where Nicholas, upon opening the fridge, decided to make a cheeseburger. Spinning off from that spin-off, he might have had an enjoyable lunch, or he might have left the meat in the pan while he hunted for Henrietta, and accidentally set his house on fire. And there are infinite universes where Nicholas was never born. Happily, ours isn’t one of them.

  As for what didn’t happen at the current moment, it was this: immediately after Nicholas apologized to the smashed Craborzi corpses, he noticed a device at the head of their dissection table. Though it resembled a lamp of the sort that is a particularly attractive subject for animation studios,
it was actually a Craborzi invention known informally as a GollyGosh! This lamp-like device generated a concentrated neural field that allowed anything capable of thought to gain self-awareness.

  Self-awareness is the only trait that separates humans from toadstools in a meaningful way. A mushroom has thoughts, but it is unaware that it is thinking. It doesn’t really know, or appreciate, the fact that it is a mushroom. The same holds true for a pencil or a Porsche. (The ability to think is far more common and less special than self-aware creatures believe it to be. This ignorance is probably a good thing when one is engaged in the act of slicing a mushroom or sharpening a pencil.)

  As for why the GollyGosh! was created, the Craborzi scientists felt that any life-form they were dissecting deserved to be fully aware of what was happening, so the victim could appreciate the brilliance and skill of its vivisectors, and the vivisectors could enjoy the pathetic pleas of their subjects as they begged for mercy. This is not even the least charming of the Craborzi’s traits, but it is the only one we need to mention here.

  Had Nicholas’s attention lingered on the GollyGosh!, he might have decided to touch the stem and accidentally toggled the pressure-activated power switch. At that point, the resulting beam would have given the Craborzi corpses self-awareness similar to that given to the package of ground beef. The resulting conversation between stomper and stompee would have been far from pleasant. On top of which, in response to Nicholas’s request for help returning to Earth, the Craborzi would have explained that the teleporter only worked in one direction and guided him to a cubicle they’d claim was a teleporter aimed in the return direction, but which was actually a trash incinerator. Fortunately, this did not happen in our universe.

  Nor did Nicholas tilt the GollyGosh! before activating the switch, thus giving self-awareness to his left shoe, burdening our account with a fourth character who would do little other than wag its tongue and complain about being trod upon.

  This concludes our discussion of what didn’t happen. At least for now.

  BACK TO NICHOLAS, HENRIETTA, AND A SOON-TO-BE-NAMED PACKAGE OF GROUND BEEF

  Nicholas’s apology was met with dead silence from the Craborzi. Feeling uncomfortable talking to mangled corpses, but not yet ready to give up, he reached out to touch the stem of an interesting lamp-shaped object at the head of the dissection table. But, spurred by a need to find forgiveness, he let his hand drop before he made contact, and turned his attention back to his victims.

  “I’d change all of this if I could,” he said. He pictured a scene running in reverse, where his feet magically lifted off the carnage as the bodies formed back into living creatures.

  “Really, I’d do anything, if it would help. I am so sorry.”

  More silence.

  I don’t think they’re going to answer you.

  Nicholas regarded the package of hamburger meat. It seemed awkward to think of this sentient hunk of beef as the package of hamburger meat. “Do you have a name?”

  No. None of us had names. Except her … The voice paused, then spoke a name, as if it had been jogged loose from a jumbled cluster of memories. Marike …

  Nicholas leaned over and read the wording printed in bold green letters on the front of the package. The first letter of each of the first two words was outlined in gold. “Grass Fed … G.F. I could call you by those initials. Hey, Gee Eff sounds like Jeef. There we go. You’re Jeef.”

  And you’re Adam? Who gave you permission to name me?

  “No. I’m not Adam,” Nicholas said. He didn’t catch the scriptural reference, but he realized he had been presumptuous. “I’m Nicholas. Nicholas V. Landrew. And this is Henrietta. Sorry about sticking you with a name. I was just trying to make things easier.”

  Jeef somehow snorted, then said, You’ve failed pretty badly when it comes to that.

  “Be quiet!” Henrietta said, displaying the fierce loyalty common among gerbils, though never before now so clearly observed by the object of that loyalty. “Let Nicholas think.” She hissed at the hamburger meat, and snapped her teeth for emphasis, producing a tiny click.

  “I didn’t know gerbils could hiss,” Nicholas said. He forced back a smile. No matter what they’re doing, gerbils are incapable of appearing as anything other than cute cartoonish creatures, even when they try to be threatening. But he didn’t want to hurt her feelings by grinning at her attempted fierceness.

  “It’s a day full of surprises,” Henrietta said. “Perhaps we should stop arguing and look around. What do you think, Jeef?”

  I’m not … Oh, fine. Whatever. Call me Jeef if it makes you happy.

  “Nothing is going to make me happy today,” Henrietta said. “Though I’ll admit I’m feeling better than I was before Nicholas showed up and rescued me from that table.”

  “Jeef the Beef,” Nicholas said, recognizing the catchy aspect of the name he’d forged. “Jeef the Beef needs relief from grief.”

  Henrietta and Jeef issued parallel, harmonizing fart-like sounds of disapproval. The sight of Henrietta’s tiny tongue vibrating over her lower lip brought back Nicholas’s smile.

  “Sorry,” he said. He went to the cage where he’d materialized. There was a control panel on one side, at the aliens’ height. He dropped to his knees and examined it. A display screen showed Henrietta’s cage from above. There were various blob-shaped knobs to the left of the display.

  “That’s my room! Maybe we can send ourselves back home.” He tapped one of the blobs. The display switched to the peak of a snowcapped mountain whipped by high winds.

  “Well, that didn’t increase our odds of survival,” Henrietta said.

  “I can fix it.” Nicholas tapped the blob on the other side. The display now showed a rocky terrain that was both strangely alien and weirdly familiar. It took Nicholas a moment to realize he was viewing a crater on the moon. Thanks to a passionate interest in astronomy that had lasted through all of fourth grade and half of fifth, Nicholas actually recognized the crater. “That’s Tycho. We definitely don’t want to go there.”

  “Maybe we should look at other options,” Henrietta said. “Based on what I saw in all those movies we watched, this almost has to be a spaceship. I wonder whether we can fly it.”

  “Yeah. Good idea.” The thought of landing a flying saucer in the middle of his school’s football field was pretty appealing. Or dropping straight through the roof into the principal’s office. He grabbed Henrietta and put her in his shirt pocket, then scooped up Jeef and scanned around for an exit from the chamber. “Come on. Let’s find out where the bridge is.”

  There were octagonal exit hatches on three of the four walls, but they were Craborzi size, barely reaching midshin on Nicholas’s leg. He approached the hatch on his left. “I wonder how it works.”

  I’ll kick it. That opens lots of things, Jeef said. She jerked slightly in Nicholas’s hand. Startled by the unexpected motion, Nicholas jumped, but managed not to drop her, or fling her away.

  After several more spasms, followed by a brief pause, Jeef screamed, Where are my hoofs?

  In a pathetic attempt to dodge the question, Nicholas kicked the door. It expanded with a whoosh, growing large enough to match his height, and irised open with a whirr, revealing a corridor.

  “Smart door,” Nicholas said.

  Are you going to give it a name, too? Jeef asked.

  “How about Iris?” Henrietta suggested. She squeaked out a giggle, which was even cuter than when she hissed, though not as adorable as her mouth farts.

  Nicholas ignored both of them and stepped through the hatch. “Whoa! This is weird,” he said as his mind tried to sort out what his body was feeling. He took a small hop and drifted through a lazy arc, like he’d seen astronauts do on the moon. There was gravity in the corridor, but far less than in the room he’d just left.

  “I guess they can adjust gravity, somehow,” Henrietta said, “like in that movie where everyone decides to leave Cleveland and live on a space station.”

  �
��Escape from Ohio?” Nicholas asked. “Yeah, I remember that. It was a lot better than Escape from Wyoming or Escape from Connecticut.”

  “But not as good as Escape from Oklahoma,” Henrietta said.

  “For sure. But I think all fifty of those movies were pretty good. It’s definitely cooler actually being here.” Nicholas moved between the room and the corridor several more times, trying to decide whether he loved or hated the lifting and tugging he felt crossing the gravity boundary, or the weird spinning sensation that came if he stood right in the middle of the two fields.

  “Maybe we should explore a little more,” Henrietta said.

  “Good idea.” Nicholas headed down the corridor. It led nowhere interesting or useful, so he backtracked to the lab. The second hatch took them to the bridge, which had a bit less gravity than the first room, and felt just as sterile. The wall that held the hatch they’d walked through, as well as the walls on either side, were straight. One of the side walls had the octagonal outline of what might have been a larger hatch. The fourth wall, past more shin-high panels of instruments, was made of a reflective material. It ran from floor to ceiling and curved outward like a viewport.

  Nicholas smiled when he saw his reflection standing there with a gerbil peeking out of his pocket and a package of ground beef in his hand. “This would make a cool school photo,” he said.

  Jeef jerked again. Where did I go?! she screamed.

  “You’re right here in my hand,” Nicholas said. He hefted Jeef up and pointed at her with his other hand. As did his reflection.

  Noooooo! That’s not me, Jeef said.

  “I’m afraid it is now,” Nicholas said.

  Put me back together.

  “I would if I could.” He stepped closer to the reflection.

  But you’re a person, Jeef said. People can do anything they want. They have all sorts of power.

  “I wish,” Nicholas said.