Grizz in Space

“So what is this job, anyway?” Zel asked.

The cheer in her voice was still plenty audible over long-range communications, but Grizz preferred having her around in person.  “Special delivery,” he replied, leaning back in his chair.  His gaze went through the call screen and out into space, toward Nicole's ship.  “She gets flustered if I ask too many questions.  Flustered...an' angry.”

“That's okay.”  Zel laughed and stepped away from her camera.  She was back in her home, wreathed with all sorts of exotic finds as usual.  Her tablet was propped up in a cupboard above her basic kitchen.  Somewhere below, out of frame, she was fussing with something on that one-burner stove of hers.  “I'm asking the questions...and none of them are about her.”

Grizz had a meal of his own.  It was Zel's idea; they'd decided to coordinate their meal time, and eat and talk together during the flight to Nicole's destination.  Grizz hoped that being within the fringes of settled space would make trouble less likely, and they could converse in peace.  She'd sent him off with a box that he only just now opened.  Within, seaweed dumplings were arranged neatly into three rows of four.

Zel hadn't packed any utensils, though, just a couple sticks.  Grizz already had an engine dipstick to use for such a purpose.  With it, he skewered a dumpling and stuck it in his mouth.  A gush of fishy flavor oozed through the hole made by his dipstick, while a buttery taste burst from the seaweed on the outside.  “So?” he asked, partly muffled by the dumpling.

Zel didn't ask another question, though.  She simply laughed.  “That's not how you do it!” she chided him.  Rather than elucidate, though, she returned her attention to her own cooking.  A wisp of steam was starting to rise and obscure Zel's face.  “Well, as long as it works, I guess.  So how long have you had the morphopsionic arm?”

“The wha—oh.”  Grizz shrugged.  He finished eating the dumpling in his mouth to give himself time to think.  “Four or five Gregorian years, somewhere in there.”

“Okay.  Tell me,” Zel began, swishing her spatula toward the camera, “have you had any sort of side effects?”

“Like what?”

“You know...”  Zel stopped to fuss with her food again, urging a loud hiss and a plume of steam out of her pan.  “...dizziness, hearing voices, memory loss.  The sorts of things that might happen when you start fussing with the human brain.”

Grizz shook his head.  “Nah.  I mean, I hate takin' it off.  That count?”

“Hm?”  Zel paused her cooking and gave her full attention to the camera.  “How so?”

“I dunno.”  Grizz stopped to eat another dumpling, and gave his frame of mind some thought.  “Just feel...naked without it...nervous.  I've gotten real used to it bein' on.”

Zel nodded sagely, then withdrew her pan from the stove.  Finally, she hoisted it enough for Grizz to see what was inside, and it was some vegetables, sliced and sauteed.  She slid them into a bowl, on top of some grain.  The oily medium she'd cooked the veggies in continued to sizzle as it seeped through the grain.  “Interesting.  That's it?”

“I think so.”

Before he could think any further, though, he was startled by an incoming call from Nicole.  He hadn't been paying any attention to the starfield ahead, but once the call had urged his attention in the general direction, he could see a few Galaxy Patrol ships ahead.

As soon as he answered the call, Nicole was fraught with worry.  “You see that?” she asked.

“The cops?” Grizz confirmed.  “I see 'em.”

“The cops?” Zel repeated.

Grizz gasped.  “Uh, can I call ya back, Zel?”  He didn't wait for an answer, though.  He cut comms with Zel and turned his attention back to Nicole.  “Well, guess this is why we didn't see 'em much on Ratis.  Looks like they're wrapped up with someone else.  We could probably go around—“

Grizz was cut off by Nicole's growling.  “We can't keep detouring!”

“Well, we can't go speedin' by the Galaxy Patrol!”

Nicole scoffed at him.  “You can't, you mean.”

Grizz shook his head.  He didn't need her sass.  He needed to avoid the Galaxy Patrol.  “Well, I'm goin' 'round.”  Before Nicole could protest, Grizz turned off his autopilot and began evasive maneuvers.  He figured he'd just slingshot around the nearby planetoid, for a mix of speed and stealth.

“Grizz!” Nicole hollered after him.  “Grizz!  You idiot!”

Grizz offered her no reply.  He simply continued his planetary drift, using the orbital pull of the barren planetoid to fling himself through a curved path.  The gravity slingshot was a basic stunt maneuver, but a potent one, and one he'd done many times before.  He closed his eyes and let the feel of gravity assist him through the turn.

...grizz...

Grizz's eyes shot back open.  Nicole's call was still open, but the voice he'd heard didn't sound like her.  But then, the voice he'd heard hadn't come through his sound system, either.  It had been a faint voice, but there was no trace of the tinny audio quality he was used to.

...careful...

Wherever the voice was coming from, it was right.

The dangerometer on Grizz's dash spiked, warning him of an incoming collision.  Something large came bursting out from a crater in the planetoid, something fast and large, albeit not Mayor-sized.  His slingshot maneuver put him right in the thing's path.  At this range, the only thing he could do was attack.  Before he did, though, he gave Zel a call back.

Zel answered immediately.  “Grizz?” she shrieked.  “Grizz!  Is everything okay?”

In lieu of a reply, Grizz flexed his control glove in front of the camera.  He focused all his will on his arm, on the subtle movements, the harmony of neuron and muscle to which the ship's arm would dance.  He wrenched his arm around, throwing himself and his ship into a wild punch.

The impact of the—

...that's not careful!

Regardless of the mystery voice's protest, the rushing creature was kept at bay.  Grizz's haymaker knocked the thing out into space, where he could see that it was a serpentine creature.  Three large mandibles wreathed its mouth.  It was a gray snapwyrm, a common sight in empty planetoids.  It extended the fins that spiraled around its body, and attempted to regain control of itself.

Grizz, meanwhile, continued both his drift and his spin.  On his way by the snapwyrm, he gave it another swat with the back of his morphopsionic hand.

...stop it!

“Whoa!” Zel shouted.  He'd concentrated on his arm so deeply that he'd forgotten he'd called her up to demonstrate it.  “Grizz, what's going on?”

“Showin' off!” he answered.  “That's the arm in action!”

“Well...!”  Zel stopped to maneuver a pair of sticks into the bowl beside her.  Grizz could see how they were meant to be used, as she picked up a thick slice of squash with a move somewhere between a pinch and a balancing act.  “It's amazing it's still combat-capable after all these years!”

As she chewed on her food, Grizz took another look at his course.  He'd been trying to be inconspicuous, but a snapwyrm smacked through space might draw some attention.  There was nothing he could do about that, any more than he could have dodged the snapwyrm in the first place.

Grizz finished his orbital drift as best he could, to rejoin Nicole's flight path.  After all, he could already see her speeding away up ahead.  She'd gone right past the Galaxy Patrol, and they seemed to have paid her no heed.  They wouldn't; she was just an ordinary person, albeit a celebrity, apparently.

While she was content to cruise on by, Grizz turned his attention back to his call with Zel.  “Hey, uh, Zel,” he began.  “Ya said somethin' 'bout hearin' voices?”

“Yes,” Zel replied.  She'd finished fer food in the time Grizz had spent drifting, while his dumplings had gone cold.  He stopped to eat one, while they were on his mind.  “Why?  Did you just...?”

“Think so.  Somethin' called out to me, told me to be careful...right before that snapwyrm came at me.”

Zel pondered Grizz's symptom for a moment, but as to the root cause, she could only offer a shrug.  “I...I don't know very much about Alykian tech,” she admitted.  “That's why I'm asking so many questions, so I can learn.  Most of what we know comes from vague Ratisian prophecy and some centuries-old eyewitness accounts.  None of them mention any health risks.  So if you're asking me to compare this sensation to my notes, and tell you definitely what's happening...I can't, sorry.”  Zel seemed reluctant to look at the camera as she admitted that.

Zel seemed to have more to say, but Grizz saw the snapwyrm looping through space up ahead, lining up another attack.  “Hold that thought,” he told her.  Rather than lash out with the arm again, he closed the box of dumplings, then switched his ship back to manual control and threw himself into a corkscrew.

Grizz turned off the artificial gravity of the ship, and let the interior swirl around him as his course wobbled into looser and looser circles.  The arc of Grizz's flight path interlocked with that of the snapwyrm, and the two of them looped past each other.

“Nice moves!” Nicole complemented him over the communicator.  “Now quit screwin' around back there and hurry up!”

Grizz had forgotten her call was still active, from when she'd called after him at the start of his gravitic slingshot maneuver.  She must have heard him talking to Zel about the voice in his head, too, but she must not have cared.  That made his next question feel all the more pointless, but he was starting to get a little worried.  “Nicole.”

“What now?”

“Stop the damn attitude!  Did you hear any voices in the last few minutes?”

At first, there was no reply.  Then, “What, besides yours?” she finally asked.  “No.”

To save a little face, he added, “Not even Zel's?”  She shouldn't have heard it; his work on the ship's audio software and hardware should've prevented his mic from picking up the computer's own output.

True to expectations, Nicole answered, “Nope.”

Grizz sank back in his chair.  With the panels on the left armrest, he turned the artificial gravity back up, not by much, just enough to hold him in the chair.  Then, he put his ship back on autopilot, and turned his gaze away from the destination.

Instead, Grizz stared down at the control glove.  He'd never had any side-effects from using it, not like this.  The voice wasn't one he recognized, though it did feel faintly familiar.  His fingers scratched at the edge of the glove, as he debated taking it off.  The voice didn't seem malicious; it seemed energetic yet gentle, and it may have even noticed the snapwyrm and tried to warn him.  Nothing had seemed amiss back on Ratis, either.  The arm had reacted totally normally with no side-effects through Nicole's entire trip, even while cradling her precious crystal.  There had never been any voices in his head until now, and Grizz was scared by the sudden onset.

“Grizz...?” Zel muttered through the call.  “Grizz, are you alright?”

“Huh?” he mumbled in response.  “Ye...yeah.  I'm okay, just...I dunno.”

Grizz briefly flicked his gaze back to his info screens to see Zel, but she was on audio feed only.  “You probably won't abandon your job,” she began, “but you're headed to planet Rygor, right?  That's not very far away.  After it's over, maybe you should see a doctor there, or here.”

“...yeah.”  Grizz's voice was still shaky with uncertainty.  “Okay.”

“'Okay'?  It doesn't sound okay.”

Grizz shrugged.  “It's gonna have to be, for a little while longer.”

Zel's sigh was audible through the communicator.  “That's what I thought you'd say.  Alright, can you at least stay in touch?  Just in case of emergency?”

“That I can do.”

“What can you do?” Nicole suddenly asked.  “It better be 'make it to Rygor'.”

Grizz laughed.  Nicole was certainly dependable, in her own way.  “Yeah,” he replied, “i was just tellin' Zel, Rygor better be yer last stop.  I gotta see a doctor.”

“It is.”

“Good.  Now...I need some peace an' quiet for a sec.  I'm out.”  With that, he closed the voice comms with both Nicole and Zeltencia.  He was going to need some peace and quiet for this next part.  “Hey!” he called out, into his empty ship.  “Whoever was in my head earlier!”

There was no response, of course.

Grizz shook his head.  Maybe Zel's sudden worries were rubbing off on him.  He was pretty tired, keeping on Nicole's tight scheduled.  And with all of Zel's talk of psionics and side effects, and how weird she'd been around the glove in general, maybe he'd imagined the voice.  “Thanks for the warnin' back there,” he said, just in case.

Again, there was no reply.

“Oh well.”  Grizz shrugged and restarted the autopilot.  Then he wiggled a bit in his chair to get comfortable, and closed his eyes for a nap.