The Tennessee was so big, it was almost scary.
As a matter of fact, it really was scary to Billy Hinman. The Tennessee looked like a gigantic eye, floating in a low orbit over the moon. An eye as big as Boise.
“I don’t really want to go on that thing,” he said.
Then Billy shook his head and said, “What the fuck did I do, Cager?”
He covered his head with his blanket and turned away from the window.
On the second day of our flight to the Tennessee, I began to sweat and shake. It was just a little at first, but my guts clenched up in protest at the lack of Woz. I could not eat, despite Rowan’s pleading with me, and Lourdes’s unending manic performances.
Lourdes tried everything to make me feel better. She danced and sang, wrapped me in blankets, swabbed my clammy skin with warm washcloths, and shaved me, which was unnecessary, to be honest.
Billy Hinman, my best friend in life, complained. “You know, he’s not the only human passenger in first class,” he told her.
So Lourdes put chilled cucumber slices on Billy Hinman’s eyelids, and she even asked him if he’d like a hand job, which made me kind of jealous—and horny, too—just thinking about Lourdes and her “Thursday” panties.
Rowan, arching an eyebrow, stared at me silently.
Maybe being in space for two days with a Wozhead in withdrawal was wearing on everyone’s sanity, even our nonhuman flight attendant’s. And Lourdes’s offer to Billy was just typical of my experience around people—and even cogs—who were all so hopelessly attracted to Billy Hinman.
And I wasn’t entirely surprised when Billy Hinman told her, “No,” and shut his eyes. Some people did like to do sexual things with cogs, but for his entire life Billy Hinman always told me how much he’d hated the things on which his father’s empire had been built.
If Lourdes had asked me if she could give me a hand job, I would have probably said yes, but then again, I was in the viselike grips of Woz withdrawal after forty hours’ sitting, harnessed in and hopelessly trapped.
“Are you sure? No?” Lourdes asked.
“No,” Billy grumbled.
“Oh, well! I’m so thrilled to be part of the Grosvenor Galactic experience! I’m happiest when I can make people happy, and share in their happiness!”
I felt left out, ignored, and unhappy. I also wanted Woz and began plotting some method by which I could access a clinic as soon as we got to the Tennessee.
Then Lourdes farted again and did a wild dance that made her look like a terrified, fleeing squid as she floated in the air above our recliners.
“I’m a squid! I’m a squid!” she said. “I am so happy! We are almost at the Tennessee! I am a happy flying squid!”
And Lourdes’s skirt lifted up again.
Rowan caught me staring at her underwear.
In the weightlessness of space, you might not be able to get Woz, but if you’re a sixteen-year-old guy, you can always get erections.
I was embarrassed. Stupid thin paper orange spacesuits.
So I said, “I don’t know what’s happening to me, Rowan.”
“It’s been a long trip, Cager. I think we’ll all feel better when we get off this transpod,” Rowan said.
And I added, “Hand job from a robot or not.”
Rowan, as usual, was not flustered by my comment.
And Lourdes gurgled, “Whee! Whee! Strap yourselves in for docking! This is my favorite part! I think I just bubbled out some squid ink in my undies!”
I wondered what color “Friday” was.
And behind us, through the sealed doorway that separated us from second class, as the cogs I’d nearly forgotten about stirred to their active modes, came the muted sounds of imitation humanity: cries of joy, and pained screams of outrage. And inconsolable sobbing, too.
All of human history was with us, hardwired into the circuitry of machines that had never been born and were not predestined to ever die.
The first thing that happens after the docking mechanisms link on the Tennessee is the sudden generation of gravity on the transpod. It’s a deeply sickening feeling—like suddenly being uncomfortably full after a ridiculously large meal. It hurts in the deepest pits of your stomach—like you’ve just been kicked in the balls.
It takes a while to catch your breath. Unless you’re a cog, that is. The ones in second class were all as noisy, happy, furious, and despondent as they had ever been.
Billy Hinman groaned and cupped his hands under his balls.
I said, “That always happens to me, too.”
And before the deck crew on the Tennessee opened the portal to allow the first-class passengers out, Lourdes came through the cabin with an eye scanner that would automatically identify us, assign and unlock our cabins, and credit our accounts with money—something that was limitless as far as a Hinman or Messer was concerned.
We also had to sit through one last presentation—a show with Mooney and Rabbit and a bunch of actor cogs in orange flight suits—demonstrating the terrifying procedure for getting into one of the Tennessee’s lifeboats, which were smaller versions of transpods designed for twenty passengers, if we were ordered to do it. I shuddered to think how horrifying it would be if we ever had to evacuate the Tennessee, and what might possibly cause that to happen.
I tried to ignore the show, but it was impossible.
“Don’t worry, folks!” Mooney told us. “We’ve never had to use lifeboats on a Grosvenor Galactic cruise ship! Yet! Ha ha ha! Just kidding, folks!”
Then Mooney got sucked out an open bay door on the lifeboat deck and shrieked wildly as he contorted dancelike in the weightless black of space.
It was the stupidest and most frightening thing I ever had to sit through.
The hatch finally came open, and I was immediately assaulted by all the strange smells of the Tennessee. It definitely did not smell anything like burning and toxic Los Angeles.
“I hope you feel better! Have a wonderful time on the Tennessee! It made me so happy to spend this time with you! I can’t wait to see you again!” Lourdes squealed as Billy passed her. Then Lourdes threw her arms around Billy Hinman and clutched his hair passionately in her coggy fingers and began humping her hips into his.
“Whee!” she gurgled. “Whee! Whee! Whee!”
Things like that just seemed to happen to Billy all the time.
Rowan pried his hands between them like he was shucking apart an enormous part-man, part-machine oyster. “Please. Lourdes. Get a grip on yourself.”
Then Lourdes farted and started dancing again.
We left the transpod and stepped out into the vast arrivals hall of the Tennessee.
I sighed. The next couple of days were going to be impossible.
Once Billy and I were inside our room, I came unglued, then went back together the wrong way, and fell apart again.
It felt like bugs were crawling all over my skin.
I tore at the paper spacesuit I’d been wearing. Billy tried to calm me down, told me to take a shower. Although