Tuesday, February 18, 2014

47. Rehired

Of course, Portia's miraculous recovery and Lyle's return and second exit made all the news reports within minutes and most of them were heavily editorialized, making Lyle and the team from the Waste-REL look like the most dangerous hucksters to ever try to con the public.
And that's how the next month went.  The crewmembers of the Waste-REL were vilified for being the worst kind of grifters; held responsible for multiple injuries and even Edgley's death.
The million or so folks who attended the GAG Festival were all starting to get sick, and rumor had it that the Waste-REL had been emitting radiation.  Of course, the real reason everyone was getting sick was that they wallowed in mud filled trichloroethylene, but nobody knew that -- not even Jules.  However, Jules did follow the news reports and, after reviewing the reported symptoms of the festival patrons that were clogging the hospitals, deduced that it couldn’t be the Waste-REL's fault.
Mickey traveled all over, using his fame/infamy to get shots on the talk show circuit, trying to convince folks that it hadn't been a big hoax.  But everyone believed the mainstream media and assumed the whole thing was an elaborate publicity stunt gone bad, brought off with the full cooperation of the organizers of the GAG Festival who had gone missing long before due to a financing mix-up with a family of private investors in Chicago or a tax problem, depending on the applicable indictment.
Furthermore, there were attempts on the crew’s lives.  In one case a big Japanese guy came rushing out of an alleyway just as an assassin dressed in black pajamas was about to knife Mickey in the back.  The big Japanese guy shot the assassin and then smiled at Mickey and walked away. 
"Well, I guess that's a big thanks to Aya," Mickey said to himself while making a hasty exit.
STC was sued, but with Edgley dead they just blamed him for everything and used their floor of lawyers to delay all court dates until the next millennium.
Portia was fired, as was Verna and the rest of the team.  Jules had to hack into the STC mainframe and convince it that Portia never borrowed her quantum SPECTACL or she'd have had to return it and Jules would have had nowhere to live.
Donny went to Japan with Ayame.  Ayame was able to go home looking like a hero, but that was only because everyone figured she was a victim of the hoax herself.  No one wanted to listen.

It didn't look like they'd ever get back into space.

"Hire them back," said the "Petroleum Jelly President", Derrick J. Firth.  "Put the entire crew of the Waste-REL back to work for STC!"
President Firth was one of the few Presidents of the General Assembly of the International League who ever had any real power.  This was because the Secretary-General was his former employee and, more importantly, might be again.  This was also because he personally owned 7% of the world's oil production capability, including oil fields and refineries as well as a national chain of dry cleaners and a petroleum jelly factory.
He was originally from Idaho, but moved to Texas at the turn of the Century, attended Yale; worked his way up the corporate ladder at ErGenta Corporation; ran for office; became Governor of Texas and then spent 2026 through 2030 as President of the United States of America.
Due to decades of excessive abuse of an erectile dysfunction drug, President Firth was a pretty cranky guy, known for fits of rage and general mean-spiritedness and he spat when he talked so that people never wanted to be any closer than 10 feet from him when he was angry. 
He was now ranting and raving and the board room table in his office only afforded a distance of 6 feet in any direction.  His cronies, most of whom were not only tremendously powerful but also permanently engorged, all wished they had an umbrella.
"What do you mean you tried to have him killed?!  Have you no sense?  We need these people!  If we don't send them back into space, how are we going to follow them back to where they went and then stop the aliens before they kill us all?"
"You mean, it wasn't a hoax?"  This was spoken by a new member of the Security Council, a nice old painter who was appointed by the Czech Republic.
"OF COURSE NOT, YOU STOOGE," yelled the petroleum jelly president, punching the table with his index finger.  "And we're going to surprise the butt-mellos out of those freaking aliens by showing up on their doorstep and hitting them with the biggest damn nuclear bomb they ever saw!"
"Uh," said the painter.  "Aren't you assuming that they live on only one planet?"
For a moment, President Firth looked at the little Czech painter with an expression betraying the kind of contempt normally reserved for rats and cockroaches.  Then he thought about it.  "Right.  We send an armada of Nuclear bombs."
"Uh, that's not what I meant…" started the painter, but he was interrupted.
"Good thinking there," said the petroleum jelly president.  "You can stay."
"I thought I was…" but the painter was interrupted again.
"So, we're in agreement, aren't we?" said Firth.  "We're going to war." 

Everyone nodded vigorously except the painter who tried to speak again, but the chair didn't recognize him and they went on to other business related to a popcorn storm in East Asia.

Inkelis was sent to prison, not for stabbing Daffi, who recovered, or for attempting to kill Lyle -- since Inkelis was the hero of some popular sentiment for the attempt.  No, Inkelis went to prison for the attempted murder of Portia Summers, even though there was no evidence to suggest that she was ever wounded.  This was mostly to remove him from the public eye.
His prison term was mostly for show and he enjoyed the respite, using the time to begin his first book of history:  "The Age of Incontinence".

Within a couple of months, Inkelis was paroled into the care of the National Security Council of the International League.  As an astronaut, petroleum salesman and assassin he was perfect to lead the team that would secretly follow the crew of the Waste-REL back into space.  He was given the title "Director of Earth Security".
The twin missions were planned, with the refurbished Waste-REL Mark II and the space shuttle Armada being built simultaneously.
Inkelis set up the pheely stations in the Waste-REL II training pods so that the machine could simultaneously scan their brains for data.  This data would give him an unfiltered debriefing on everything the crew of the Waste-REL had experienced on their trip to meet the alien.

Once he had everything in place, he called for the crew of the Waste-REL to be rehired.

Verna was a woman obsessed.  She had tried to get her hands on seventeen different space going crafts, but despite her stellar record as an astro-pilot and her completely restored eyesight, she couldn't get a job as a flight attendant on a commuter shuttle.
Mickey's fame lasted more than 15 minutes, but not much more and people became tired of his stories of how it was all true and Lyle really did go to the other galaxy and they really are going to kill all the Boomers if we don't stop destroying the planet and the glaciers are falling and the coastal cities will be destroyed in a few months … yada yada yada. 
So now he was a formerly famous/infamous (depending on who you talked to) guy who couldn't get a job at Gyroworld.  He lost his appetite for living in pheely-space and found himself reading books, something he'd never really tried before.  As he traveled he searched through old bookstores, looking for information about spacecraft construction, electronics, astronomy, anything on paper that he could find, old or new and it was mostly old.
Donny was out of place in Japan.  He was a bit of a novelty because they didn't get to see many romantic American gangsters in Japan and so he couldn't go many places without being swarmed for autographs.
Ayame was similarly well known, mostly for being the astronaut who got dragged onto the Waste-REL and fell in love with her captor.  She couldn't get anybody to understand that Donny wasn't her kidnapper.  This was doubly true after a Japanese pulp author released an unauthorized and utterly apocryphal romance docu-novelization entitled "He Captured My Heart in Space" (it sounds better in Japanese).
Donny didn't want to cop a pheel any more than Mickey.  Now that he'd experienced a substantial amount of reality, he'd come to prefer it and spent much of his time just walking around Osaka, being occasionally swarmed by schoolgirls but otherwise just enjoying the scenery.  He didn't get much time with Ayame because she was back at work with NASDA and preparing to go back into space on a routine mission to the International Space Station IV.  She was paid inordinately large sums of money so Donny wasn't obligated to work and instead spent his time writing a memoir of their trip.
Ayame had tried to get the NASDA people to hire her former crewmates but they just laughed as if it was a really good joke because they were so embarrassed by the request.  Ayame looked for a commercial space Captaincy but every company backed off once she mentioned her former crewmates.
Portia spent the first month of the alien countdown looking for a new condo and trying not to get too depressed.  Portia and Mickey were mostly apart as Mickey traveled from city to city doing press interviews and speaking at any local meeting that would let him talk.  Of course, Portia had Jules for company, but he was morose, missing the incredible computing power he'd had in the metaquantum computer.  Jules hated performing the role of a personal agenda and glorified clock.  His one consolation was that the war-bots could never threaten him again.  The Sagittarian satellite had provided him with an impenetrable algorithm with which to protect himself.
Then Portia got the call from STC and everything changed.
"We want you ALL back," said the new president of STC, Mr. Lackner.  "We want you to crew the Waste-REL II."
Portia was thrilled.  The fact that she was thrilled -- considering how much she hadn't wanted to go up in the original Waste-REL -- made her laugh.  Her new boss had no sense of humor but he didn't care why she was laughing -- he was under orders. 
"Is that a yes or a no?" he asked.
"It's a yes," chortled Portia.
When she hung up, Jules burst into a song of celebration and she danced about the room with a virtual Jules in the SPECTACL field.  "Wait 'til Mickey hears!" she laughed.

"I'm going to be big again!" cried Jules.
Next: Friends

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