Jump Starting the Universe Read online

  JUMP STARTING

  THE UNIVERSE

  By

  John David Buchanan

  Cover Art by Ryan Orosz

  July 28, 2015

  Many thanks to:

  De Lynn for so many reasons there is not enough

  paper to write them down,

  Brittany Koester for editing the final draft,

  My poet friend Danny Gilstrap for his interest in my progress,

  Ryan Orosz for his spanking good job on the artwork, and

  June Powell for being June, for her support and

  always positive comments.

  .Text copyright © 2015 by John David Buchanan

  Cover art copyright © 2015 by Ryan Orosz

  All Rights Reserved. Published by John David Buchanan

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION - In the Beginning, More or Less - 5

  CHAPTER 1 – Budging - 12

  CHAPTER 2 – Double Occupancy - 17

  CHAPTER 3 – Crossing to Alphus Nebulum - 23

  CHAPTER 4 – The Giggley - 28

  CHAPTER 5 – Interstitial Stuff - 47

  CHAPTER 6 – Doing a Runner - 53

  CHAPTER 7 – Lactropodectepoi - 71

  CHAPTER 8 - Back In Harm’s Way - 74

  CHAPTER 9 – The Planet Tree - 79

  CHAPTER 10 – Tugurro - 87

  CHAPTER 11 – Twenty Eight Years and Counting - 112

  CHAPTER 12 - Military Artificial Intelligence Release 2.2 - 146

  CHAPTER 13 – The Voids in Space - 168

  CHAPTER 14 – Eyes That See - 189

  CHAPTER 15 – Gladys and Gladys - 213

  CHAPTER 16 – A Weapon Not For Killing - 249

  CHAPTER 17 – The Gift - 260

  CHAPTER 18 – Family Secrets - 293

  CHAPTER 19 – The Eastern Ridges of Umbreathe - 304

  CHAPTER 20 – The Common Language - 322

  CHAPTER 21 – The Scoops of Trahl – 335

  CHAPTER 22 – Lesson from the Past – 346

  CHAPTER 23 – The Hall of Halls - 358

  CHAPTER 24 – Vengeance is Mine - 363

  CHAPTER 25 – Ninety Five and Gone - 374

  INTRODUCTION

  In the Beginning – More or Less

  Dad chased my brother around the room with a leather strap having more than his normally stern look – Dad, not the strap. My brother looked like he was thoroughly displeased with the event and tried to alert Dad to his displeasure by giving off high, then low ahhh sounds at a very high decibel level; I mean really, really loud. If my brother was trying to find the frequency response to Dad’s off switch, or one to at least slow him down, or perhaps make him re-evaluate what he was doing to my brother’s backside, it didn’t appear to be working. In fact, all the times my brother tried his frequency response method on my Dad it appeared to fail miserably. Maybe he should have tried it when a leather strap was not involved, just to see if it affected Dad at all. All those high and low ahhh sounds may have been a complete waste of time, but what else are you going to do when someone is so intent on coaxing the most hideous stinging sensations from every dermal cell on your legs without leaving permanent damage?

  I marched into the dining room and asked my Mom, “What did Mark do?”

  “Why do you ask?” she replied.

  “Because I’ve decided I shouldn’t be doing it.”

  Our house was not air conditioned, so pretty much all the neighborhood knew what was going down in the back bedroom of 1206 West Villaret. More specifically, they knew someone was getting a thrashing, and if you had tallied the bets, even though the odds appeared to be one in two (no one would have bet on my sisters getting a thrashing so they were summarily excluded from consideration), most of the neighborhood would have wagered correctly. Not that my brother was any more mischievous or trouble prone than me, he was just older and therefore more suspicious. I was sneakier and more advanced in the arts of deflection and stealth. I’m not suggesting in the least a superiority of my methods, I’m just saying I’m fairly confident my Dad’s leather strap generally knew who I was, but considered my brother Mark a close associate. You might say our differences were like the difference between a bull in the china shop and …. a casual visitor to the china shop. I worried about this. Mark’s bat-out-of-hades approach seemed more honest, I think that’s why I admired him; still do.

  Several weeks later as my brother and I were headed out the front door Dad said “don’t play ball in the front yard, I just parked the new car in the drive.” The immenseness of the intervening 40 feet to the front yard resulted in both Mark and me completely forgetting Dad’s semi-prophetic comment of impending doom. It wasn’t until after Mark pummeled the windshield of Dad’s new Cadillac with an errant fast ball that he or I remembered Dad saying something about us enjoying playing ball in the front yard. Mom called us to dinner just after Mark’s fastball hit that windshield like a meteorite – a completely logical excuse for the shattered windshield that eluded me later when I desperately needed it. Having covered the same 40 feet back into the house we completely forgot about the baseball, the windshield and everything else but dinner.

  The next morning I sat at the breakfast table trying to figure out how to beat John in our morning game of toe-rock before we were off to school on the bus. Coincidentally, sitting in their respective houses Mom and Aunt Claudie were trying to figure out why the tips of their sons’ shoes had holes in them. Dad slipped out the front door and I didn’t have a second thought when the car horn sounded several times. I didn’t give it a thought when Mom suggested Dad wanted to have a word with us outside and Mark flinched badly, as in bad enough to move a large rock maple dining table three inches north across the vinyl tile floor. There Dad sat in the Cadillac. He was mostly obscured by a beautifully intricate web of fractures in the front windshield. It reminded me of the spider webs I found in the brush behind the house, the kind spiders spin in the fall when it’s cool, as if they perceived the impending dew point and intentionally spun a web to condense and capture the silvery looking water. I suddenly had second thoughts about that horn. Mark seemed to understand Dad wanted a word and proceeded to the driver’s side door. Mark’s intuition begged him to stop around 40 inches from the car; Dad had a 32 inch sleeve. Lowering the fully intact glass and pausing for a moment (Dad was never in a hurry to discuss such issues) he said, “We will talk about this when I get home from the base.” That was military speak for…. well you know what that was military speak for, don’t you. I started obsessing over the leather strap and the visions of my brother dancing the light fandango around the back bedroom. I wondered if this time the neighborhood might not hear the wailing soon to come. I considered my defenses – a meteorite was plausible but I didn’t think Dad would go for it, and for all I knew someone at the base tracked meteorite activity and reported it to him. I determined my best defense was Mark. I mean he did throw the ball. My plan began to take shape. I couldn’t rat Mark out as the thrower, but I could be dangerously quiet. If Dad asked for details of what happened it would look like I was deferring to my older brother. Yeah, I liked that, I liked that a lot. Dad would ask, “What happened?” And I would slowly turn my head toward Mark and not say a thing. I admit this seemed to cast a shadow of guilt on Mark, subtly suggesting he was the culprit, but I was okay with that. Mark had much more experience with his frequency response method and was faster at dodging the leather strap than me. It was best to leave as much of that to him as possible. I would play the part of the little brother who was probably only guilty by association.

  Deep in thought about how to handle Dad’s inevitable inquiry, I moved toward the street to wait for the school bus like I wa
s walking through freshly poured concrete. I stood there in a very heavy stupor until John said “ready to play?” It turns out that a good game of toe-rock with your cousin absolves all worries, and even though John abused me with the worst toe-rock defeat I ever endured, I boarded the school bus with nary a worry about the windshield issue. Mark didn’t play toe-rock, so I’m sure his visions of past leather strap incidents were not as easily diffused. But something tells me it was a ridiculously short amount of time before Mark was swept up with his friends and all things ominous were casually dismissed, at least for several blissful hours.

  Dad came home from the base at the exact time we expected and proceeded to never say a word about the windshield incident. In fact, the windshield didn’t have so much as a sacrificial flying insect on its shiny new surface. Dad liked cars to be clean and well-kept so it doesn’t surprise me that he replaced the windscreen on his trip home. The thought occurred to me that the spidery web of fractures in the old glass was much more interesting, but common sense restrained me from commenting. As I contemplated the lack of character displayed by the new windshield I realized Mark was nowhere to be found. Having not been soothed by a good game of toe-rock before school, and in the throes of waning jubilance from being with his school friends, he must have dreaded the oncoming event beyond measure and had the sense to abscond. I’m sure Dad chuckled his normal chuckle. The sweetest punishment of all, not a word was said.

  Naturally one might think that incident taught Mark and me a lesson we would never forget. Well, that’s a no-brainer isn’t it? A person might also think the Cadillac incident had some dramatic effect that led us to give more thought to what we were doing. That is just nonsense. A case in point might be the time Mark made an a-frame from wood stacked next to the back fence of our yard so he could lift a new engine into his 58 Chevy. The a-frame broke in the middle of installing that very large engine and crashed into the windshield, just missing my head. Mark let out a loud wail and tore into the house in disgust, leaving me pinned inside the engine compart. In a moment of unexplainable clarity Mark realized I had not accompanied him inside the house and he reappeared at the car several minutes later to find me patiently waiting with an engine and transmission on my leg – what else was I supposed to do – contemplate what that a-frame could have done to my skull. In any event, Mark grabbed a piece of lumber to use as a lever and lifted the engine slightly so I could get free. When my leg was out Mark let loose of the two by four. The engine and transmission rattled around inside the front end of Mark’s car and to our surprise fell perfectly onto the engine mounts. All reason for despair was forgotten, I dodged yet another potential trip to Wilford Hall, the military “hospital” and we went inside for lunch.

  Don’t get the wrong impression of Mark; he didn’t always vanish when there was trouble. Quite the contrary he would never ever purposely abandon someone in trouble. Years later it was Mark who told me about Dulliform feter, although I couldn’t hear him because he had his big mitts covering my ears so tight I felt like my head was going to gush my brains out. Dulliform feter is a delightfully gorgeous bird whose elegant song is first deliciously complex and beautiful, but unfortunately is fatal to its unsuspecting admirers after 13 seconds or so. Much like most of what passes for food at universities on the planet Terra Bulga, or Earth as its inhabitants staunchly called their planet until about the 21st century, in spite of the name used by the rest of the universes. Mark said so, so it must be true.

  CHAPTER ONE

  BUDGING

  Now and again the edges of parallel planes of existence tend to budge up against each other. Of course the frequency of “now and again” isn’t exactly specific is it? And the locations of such occurrences are difficult if not impossible to predict, so be on your guard. Why this budging up occurs, I don’t know. It’s not like there isn’t enough space out there in space. I’ve been led to believe it isn’t too important, but I’m not comforted. Budging really isn’t the problem anyway is it; it’s the blending that causes all the uproar. That’s when the edges of parallel planes of existence cross over, like the diagrams you’ve seen where one circle is blue and the other circle is yellow and the overlapping part is green. Well, it’s that greenish part that’s the problem isn’t it. Or like when you see two people occupying the same seat on the bus. It feels a little problematic; unless of course you’re one of the two people – and happy.

  Mark didn’t care about budging. That’s how Blackie got crammed into the back of Wayne’s 57 Chevy Nomad station wagon behind a set of Majestic drums. Off they were to a gig; not to be deterred by man, beast or cosmic idiosyncrasies as Wayne may have said. “We are going to get paid, how cool is that?” said Mark. Wayne was not sure he would have said how cool IS that; “It’s only cool after it actually happens,” he thought. Since Blackie was in the back of the wagon, behind a set of drums, two amplifiers, and assorted other equipment, and was light headed because of the exhaust fumes wafting in the open rear hatch window (the Nomad wasn’t air conditioned) he couldn’t hear a word of what they were saying or offer a retort. That was fine since the advancing level of his carbon monoxide poisoning made him dizzy, and he worried about what might happen if he voluntarily opened his mouth. The thought made him convulse slightly.

  “Where are we meeting Buster?” asked Wayne. Buster was the lead singer who lived 35 miles northwest of town and booked a convenient gig blocks from his own house.

  “The parking lot behind the bar,” remarked Mark, who wondered if Buster had forgotten to tell the owner that Blackie was slightly under the legal drinking age. It wouldn’t have mattered to Wayne, he could have fooled the owner; he was tall, with a swarthy complexion and he acted like he knew stuff. You know the type; Wayne just seemed to always get on with it. He exuded confidence like dry ice gives off gas. Mark possibly could have passed the scrutiny of a suspecting bar manager if he needed to; he had been working out to get ready for basketball season, and he was left handed. People perceive left-handers differently. Mark knew this and scrupulously took full advantage. Blackie had no chance of fooling the manager or anyone else, especially if he asphyxiated before he arrived. Blackie was a year younger than Mark and Wayne and no matter how he tried to puff himself up, sit with his shoulders back and down, or put on a scowl, he didn’t look quite old enough yet to be in a bar.

  The sky was partly cloudy with big puffy white clouds that seemed to be climbing to heaven, and it was hot. The temperature was 36 degrees Celsius and heat waves could be seen rising from the pavement creating mirages like smooth, shallow lakes in the distance. It was the kind of heat that made you want to find a cool place under a tree and have a nap. Of course if you had an excessive amount of adrenaline pulsing through your veins in anticipation of a paid gig a nap was simply not in the cards. They were all swept up in that idea as they blistered down the highway looking for The Getaway Bar and Grill. That’s when it happened. Not the budging, the white tailed deer. It ran straight into the side or Wayne’s station wagon. Wayne yelled, Mark let out a high ahhh sound and Blackie was silent, having seen nothing through the mountain of equipment and not having felt anything because his senses were impaired by severe oxygen deprivation. Wayne pulled to the side of the road in a maelstrom of words selected specifically to condemn the poor beast in the most vicious means, then he turned off the car.

  “It’s ruddy three in the afternoon! What’s an antelope doing out at this time of day?” swore Wayne, who wasn’t the group’s most practiced biologist to say the least. There stood the deer about 10 meters away from the car seemingly unharmed. It stared at us like it wondered why we were driving down the road at three in the afternoon. A few more unpleasant words showered the air. The deer didn’t move.

  “I’ve never seen a deer quite like that” said Mark, as if he were an authority on the indigenous deer populations.

  “Now that you mention it, neither have I,” replied Wayne, who seemed at that moment to struggle with constructing a sentence that d
idn’t include choice expletives for the offending deer. The side of the Nomad was completely unharmed.

  “Real steel in this one” said Wayne as he patted the car, “not that mamby pamby stuff they use now.” He pulled a small tuft of hair from under the side molding and tossed it to the ground.

  Blackie, who had slumped to the bottom of the rear deck, popped up above the hatch opening to inhale and see what was going on. The fresh air must have revived him, and he looked out wondering why Mark and Wayne were goggling at a deer standing on the shoulder of the road. The deer gazed at the back of the Nomad as if thinking, “Dang, there’s another one.”

  “You stupid antelope, you are going to get killed,” yelled Wayne, “let’s go.”

  “Suits me” offered Mark as they made their way back to the front seat of the car. That is not a regular white tailed deer thought Blackie, gazing at the deer, and just as Wayne started the car Blackie was sure the deer winked at him – twice.

  Wayne pulled back onto Otis-hell Highway headed north at an alarming rate of speed. Mark started musing about the set list, Wayne was humming, and Blackie started to get dizzy and didn’t notice the speed or the humming. Unnoticed by the band, which isn’t saying much really, and any other passersby, the tuft of deer hair was caught up in the draft of a big truck that rushed by, swept up high into the air and having developed the slightest of greenish tint, vanished. It completely and utterly vanished. No one noticed.

  Sometime later this event was described during development of the Theory on Interspecies Dependency, which was presented to the Volareie Commission on Deltaloy 18 in the Byzintian System - year 53566.2. However, since there were purportedly no witnesses to the events of that fateful day (Terra Bulga not having an interplanetary travel treaty would have precluded that) no one is sure where the description came from. It wasn’t me. Maybe that antelope wasn’t just a deer after all.