Emperor of the Universe Read online

  In another intuitive move, Nicholas touched the reflective surface. It shimmered for a second, then turned transparent, revealing that it was actually a viewport in the hull of a spaceship.

  “Oh … wow…” Nicholas said as he saw what lay on the other side. All his internal organs clenched in various unpleasant ways, as if he’d just stepped off a towering cliff, though no cliff on Earth came close to rising this high above the ground. He staggered and looked for something to grip.

  “Sorry,” Henrietta said. “I just pooped in your pocket.”

  “I don’t blame you,” Nicholas said. He didn’t care. Gerbil droppings were far down on his list of concerns at the moment. He tried to absorb what he saw. As terrifying as it was on first impression, it was also thrilling in a gut-gripping roller-coaster way that Nicholas found hugely enjoyable.

  They were orbiting Earth, but from far enough away that the whole planet fit within the viewport. Even at this distance, blue and cloud streaked, the world was recognizable enough for him to feel a dizzying slurry of awe, homesickness, fear, and wonder. The moon, to the right of the Earth, and still far-off, gleamed like a spotlight.

  Nicholas leaned forward until his nose pressed against the viewport.

  “Wow…”

  He tried to absorb the vastness of the empty space between him and his home. “This is way beyond cool,” he said. After a moment, during which he tried his best to avoid thinking about the future, and just enjoy the present, reality crept in. “It’s also very bad. We’re in trouble.”

  We’re in deep dung, Jeef said.

  “That’s hardly a news flash,” Henrietta shouted.

  “Activating,” someone behind them said in a voice best described as a sultry purr.

  AT YOUR SERVICE

  Whatever role they choose to play, emperors serve two purposes. First, they sit, by definition, at the center of the universe. This is crucial because of two incompatible facts. The universe, if it is infinite, has either no center or infinite centers. And most civilizations, after realizing they are not at the center of the universe, develop a desperate desire to find that center.

  Second, and also bordering on the incomprehensible, once a civilization discovers that they are not alone in their valley or continent or planet, they begin (and rightly so) to fear attack by other civilizations, first from other valleys, then from other continents, and eventually from other planets, followed by other solar systems, other galaxies, and inevitably, and somewhat ridiculously, from other universes. (Note that these other universes aren’t the ones of the parallel universe theory. These are entirely different universes, usually populated exclusively by creatures that resemble whichever life-form the thinker fears the most.)

  There has been no aggressive move against the universe from outside. This is not surprising since, by definition, there is no outside. There is only elsewhere. Or nowhere. Despite that, the fear persists among all but the most rational of societies. Thus arose the theory that only a ruler who is in charge of everything will willingly defend everyone. The emperor is the only entity motivated to defend the entire universe. This is the most important of the emperor’s traditional duties.

  Among the few other tasks traditionally given to emperors, it is their job to solve what can’t be solved, and accept blame for all things for which no one is to blame.

  Speaking of blame and unsolvable problems, let’s get back to the scene of the crime.

  BIG NEWS

  Nicholas spun around, found the source of the voice, and let out an involuntary “Roach brains!” A young woman stood in the center of the control room, framed with flowing black hair, draped in a flowing green dress. Nicholas’s own blood flowed faster at the sight. The woman looked like a younger version of his algebra teacher, Miss Galendrea, whom Nicholas had a severe crush on.

  “Hey, can you help us?” Nicholas asked. “Do you know how to fly this ship?”

  She didn’t appear to notice him. Nicholas was not unfamiliar with this reaction from his female classmates. In their presence, he seemed to become both inaudible and transparent.

  “She’s beautiful,” he whispered to Henrietta as he waited for the woman to answer him.

  “For sure. I’ve never seen fur with so much sheen,” Henrietta said. “And it’s not a she. It’s a he. Do you humans have trouble telling boys and girls apart?”

  “He?” Nicholas asked.

  “He,” Henrietta confirmed.

  He, Jeef said.

  “He?”

  “He.”

  He.

  This exchange was repeated several more times, as if three people were sharing the task of laughing at one mildly amusing joke.

  Finally, Henrietta broke the pattern by asking, “What do you see?”

  “A girl. Beautiful. Dark hair. Blue eyes. Green dress. An impressive ability to factor quadratic equations. And an inability to notice me.”

  “I see a gerbil,” Henrietta said. “A very handsome one. Sleek light-brown fur. Stunningly beady eyes. Adorable twitching nose. Marvelous quivering whiskers and splendid incisors. I think I’m in love.”

  Nicholas realized he and Henrietta each saw an entity designed to be personally attractive. He was simultaneously pleased by how quickly he deduced that the image in front of him might not be real, and deeply disappointed by the realization that he wasn’t about to meet the girl of his dreams. Though, actually, that was exactly what Stella was.

  Yes. Her name was Stella. Stella Astrallis. She was designed to be a star. And her appearance was crafted from the depths of Nicholas’s imagination by means of a process not unlike sonar in function, though far more complex than a mere pulse of echoing sound waves.

  Stella spoke, but not in answer to Nicholas’s question. “And now for the headlines,” she said. “The evacuation of Plenax IV is proceeding as planned, well ahead of the supernova event.”

  Above Stella’s right shoulder, the image of a planet appeared, with thousands of shuttles leaving it. That switched to an animated graphic of a sun exploding, followed by what seemed to be an ad for sunglasses that were exactly the sort Nicholas would have coveted, had he been able to draw his eyes away from Stella for more than a microsecond.

  “It’s a news report,” Henrietta said.

  “I guess so.” Without turning away from Stella, Nicholas asked Jeef, “What do you see?”

  A bull.

  “That makes sense,” Nicholas said as he noted the dreamy tone in Jeef’s response.

  “The Sagittarius war has entered its twelve-thousandth year, making it the three-hundred-and-ninth-longest war on record,” Stella said. A new image appeared, showing missiles raining down on a planet, while antimissile missiles blew some of them to pieces. “Or its nine thousand, eight hundred, and thirty-sixth year, depending on which side’s calendar you use. This, to put things into an historical perspective, is actually what caused the war. They’ve been fighting over the length of a year for centuries.”

  The image faded into a scene with enormous yellow-and-red-striped spiders jabbing each other in the side with ornate sticks and screeching in anger and pain. Nicholas cringed at the footage of enemies locked in battle. “Violent news,” he said as he braced himself for another war report. “The missiles were bad enough. But this up-close combat is horrible.”

  “And mega smash group Xroxlotl has announced the dates and locations of their next series of concerts,” Stella said. “They’ll be launching the tour on Felmbad, the largest dedicated stadium planet in the Andromeda Galaxy.”

  Nicholas found the music oddly appealing, once he understood that it wasn’t war cries. It was definitely better than anything his parents listened to. He thrashed his head from side to side, capturing the brutal rhythm that was the bedrock beneath the screeches. He froze in midthrash as Stella moved to the next story and a familiar image replaced the spiders. He opened his mouth, but failed to find any words to fit the slurry of shock, amazement, and disbelief that was swirling though his brain.
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  Henrietta broke the silence with the unnecessary observation, “That’s you.”

  Nicholas shushed her as Stella spoke.

  “But in breaking news, to the horror of their viewing audience, seven Craborzi scientists who starred in the reality series Let’s Cut Things Up! were brutally assassinated by Earthling Nicholas V. Landrew in a tragic and senseless rampage. We caution our viewers that the following footage contains graphic and disturbing images.”

  The static picture of Nicholas’s face was replaced by a video of his recent stomping.

  “Brutal assassin,” Henrietta said. “You’re famous.”

  “I didn’t mean it,” Nicholas shouted at Stella. He halfway expected her to respond. That’s how real she looked.

  Once again, Stella didn’t reply to him. Though she had one more thing to say: “A spokesperson for the Universal Police announced they are on their way to the scene of the crime to detain this vicious criminal and bring him to justice.”

  Nicholas ran back down the corridor and scanned the ceiling of the lab. In each corner, he spotted an orb the size of a softball, with a lens in the front, aimed at the dissection table. He realized those had to be cameras. That was how they had the video, and how they knew his name. Everything that had happened in that room had been captured on camera.

  “We need to get out of here,” he said when he got back to the bridge. He’d seen stories on the news—the real, back home, same-for-everyone Earth news—about people who got arrested in foreign countries and suffered horrible fates. He couldn’t imagine what would happen if he got thrown into an alien prison.

  “How?” Henrietta asked.

  Nicholas looked around the bridge for an accelerator or a steering device. The experience was not unlike listening to a language so foreign that none of the words come at all close to resembling something familiar. Or, in Nicholas’s case, hearing his classmates converse in French. He approached the console by the viewport and studied it for a while, hoping to make some sense of it. Nothing seemed designed for navigation. He had no way of knowing that Craborzi pilots flew their ships by crawling into holes at the bottom of the console and flexing various segments of their bodies against the controls. The devices on the panel served other purposes than flight.

  Eventually, he reached toward a large red blob shaped like a soft pretzel tossed by a nervous baker. “I’ll just have to try some of these things to see what they do. What’s the worst that could happen?”

  “Agonizing death in the brutal, frigid vacuum of space,” Henrietta said. “We saw that in lots of movies. Or cremation as we plunge into Earth’s atmosphere like a meteor, generate friction against the air, and turn into a liquid puddle of red-hot metal with a deep-fried meaty center.”

  “That’s a rather negative attitude,” Nicholas said.

  “Sorry,” Henrietta said. “I’m still sorting out how to handle all this self-awareness that’s running through my mind. Unfortunately, awareness of self seems to come with awareness of the end of self. There also doesn’t seem to be any OFF switch for thoughts about mortality. Maybe that’s why so many of the movies people make are about the end of life on Earth.”

  Jeef let out a whimper. I don’t want to get cooked.

  “Oh, stop it,” Henrietta said. “You were born and bred for the flaming grill.”

  What are you talking about? Jeef asked. I was born to graze on a hillside in a beautiful valley. The hay appeareth, and the tender grass showeth itself, and herbs of the mountains are gathered.

  “It looks like you were born to chatter,” Henrietta said. “But now you’ve been ground to—”

  “Cut it out!” Nicholas slammed his fist down on the console. He didn’t think this was a good time for Jeef to learn her role in the food chain. His fist landed on the pretzel-shaped red blob, which expanded past either side of his hand like a squeezed balloon, and emitted a squeak like a rubber clown nose.

  The ship lurched with a violent shake, as if a giant had smacked it with a sledgehammer, hurling Nicholas, Henrietta, and Jeef toward the side bulkhead. Nicholas barely managed to catch Henrietta in one hand and Jeef in the other as he slammed to a stop. It was the single most athletic achievement of his life so far, easily beating a half-court nothing-but-net basket he’d made last year in the elementary school gym when nobody was around to see it, and an unintentional somersault with a decent landing he’d managed when his bike hit a rock three weeks ago. The simultaneous catches would keep a firm grip on this record for at least a day.

  A second shake, along with a deafening boom, jolted the ship, and jammed Nicholas even harder against the wall. He was struck by the uneasy memory that the area he pressed against seemed to contain some sort of large octagonal hatch. An instant later, as Nicholas braced for a third impact, the wall behind him exploded outward into space.

  Jeef let out a startled moo.

  Henrietta let out a startled squeak.

  Nicholas, who no longer had anything supporting his back, let out a word that would have startled his parents. As he fought to keep his balance, he prepared himself for the inevitability of being sucked through the hole into the cold-as-death vacuum of space, where he was pretty sure his eyeballs would freeze and his blood would boil, though not necessarily in that order.

  Two thoughts raced through his mind.

  I hope the worst parts happen after I lose consciousness.

  I can’t remember whether I closed the fridge door before I left the planet. Mom’s gonna kill me.

  He had to agree with Henrietta. Self-awareness definitely had some major disadvantages.

  WHAT’S NEWS?

  News is one of the most valuable commodities in the universe, since most members of most societies find it comforting to see how much worse life is for someone else, whether that someone is right across the river or several galaxies away. It’s also not a bad thing to get advance notice when one’s sun is about to undergo drastic changes.

  The most crucial aspect of news is a trusted source. Stella was designed to be trusted. Her creators wanted to generate an image that would lull any viewer into a receptive mood and keep that viewer’s attention for as long as possible. Unfortunately, her designers were less skilled at biocybernetic feedback networks than they believed, and painfully unaware of some basic concepts of psychology. Stella actually took the form of whomever the viewer loved the most, and enhanced that image to remove any flaws that stood in the way of total adoration. As a result, most viewers paid little attention to the content of the news, or to the advertisements that supported it. But a minuscule percentage of an enormous audience is still a large market. This was good, because Stella’s creators had a lot to sell. More about that later. For now, let’s return to the young man who is currently tumbling backward through the breached hull of a spaceship.

  ALL ABOARD!

  Though Nicholas fought valiantly against the laws of physics, he lost, mostly because you can’t lean against a wall that is no longer there, no matter how frantically and comically you windmill your arms.

  Nicholas fell.

  Happily, instead of the deadly eyeball-freezing, blood-boiling vacuum of space, Nicholas found himself flat on his butt in a short accordion-like tunnel resembling an airplane jetway. The opening in the hull of the Craborzi ship was ringed with eight hinged triangular sections that appeared to form a sort of hatch. Essentially, someone had knocked twice, and then opened the door. Violently.

  A boarding party, currently seen upside down, which made them no less threatening, raced toward Nicholas from the other end of the tunnel, waving cutlasses and screaming “Avast!” and “Arg!” and other unfriendly pirate cries.

  “Pirates!” Nicholas screamed. He rolled over, leaped to his feet, and backpedaled into the control room.

  Actually, it only appeared to be a boarding party. In truth, it was a party of one, accompanied by four holographic images, all costumed as corsairs. The being who rushed into the control room was close enough to humanoid that a d
etailed description of the differences is unnecessary, other than to note that his pupils never contracted or dilated when the light grew brighter or dimmer, his eyebrows never moved more than an eighth of an inch, no matter how surprised or puzzled he might be, and his chest never rose or fell, no matter how deep a breath he took or how large a sigh he released.

  These were the sorts of seemingly insignificant differences that would leave an Earth observer feeling there’s something odd about this guy, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. As for descriptions of external similarities, like many humans, his skin was dark brown. Like many who work alone and have no family, his hair was long and uncombed. Unlike many, that hair was rather glorious to behold.

  He was from the Earthlike planet Menmar. This should not be surprising. There are countless Earthlike planets. There are also countless un-Earthlike planets. And countless sorta-Earthish planets.

  The Menmarian approached Nicholas and pointed a two-foot-long metal tube at him. The leading edge was fluted like the barrel of a miniature blunderbuss. Nicholas, whose brain was still in “Aagggh! Pirates!” mode, shielded Henrietta with one hand over his pocket, and thrust Jeef forward with the other hand, using her as a totally unsuitable meat shield. Nicholas flinched as the Menmarian squeezed a bulb in the base of the tube.

  Death, injury, or paralysis did not result from this action, despite Nicholas’s firm belief, once again, that the end was near. Instead, a flash of purple light expanded from the muzzle of the tube into an orb that enveloped him and the pirates, before collapsing back into the tube. Nicholas decided purple was now his least-favorite color.

  The Menmarian, whose name was Clave, tapped the end of the tube against a copper-colored spiral-shaped tattoo on the back of his wrist. “Sweet,” he said as a panoramic image of Nicholas and the pirates appeared in the air. Clave leaned over the tube, tapped a tattoo on the inside of his wrist against it, and said, “Well, look who I stumbled into.”