Ever since the incident with all the shit on the Kansas, passengers on Mr. Messer’s R&RGG cruises had to go through medical examinations, take disinfecting showers, and put on specially sealed, full-body suits made from recycled paper. Passengers were not allowed to bring anything with them from Earth, not even the clothes they wore into the terminal.
Besides, everything anyone could possibly need was already waiting on the Tennessee. Clothes, food, recreation— all managed by my father’s company. It only took a quick scan of our eyes—mine, Billy’s, and Rowan’s—and the v.4 cog at the Mojave Field terminal whisked us through our medical scans and into the changing rooms.
A Messer could write his own ticket anywhere on Rabbit & Robot Grosvenor Galactic.
I still thought we were in a train station, about to go to Nashville.
Embarrassing.
My father’s transpods looked ridiculous—all painted in the clown-suit colors of his television program, with caricatures of Rabbit, the bonk, on one side, and Mooney, the robot, on the other.
The process of preparing to board the transpod was a little personal and awkward for us. Billy felt it was necessary to stay with me so I wouldn’t do anything weird, like getting lost or passing out and drowning in the chemical showers. I’d been to space plenty of times—on the Tennessee when it was in the final stages of construction, and a couple times on the Kansas before the shit thing (I was also lucky that the sewage system on board the Kansas worked just fine when I sailed on it)—so I knew the routine.
But I believed Billy Hinman when he told me that nothing out of the ordinary was going on.
Woz.
We completely stripped out of all our clothes and left them in sealed locker vaults. Then we had to endure a medical examination from a depressed male nurse orderly v.4 cog who stared and sighed and put his grabby, poking hands on a little too much of me for my comfort, even if he was a cog—a sad one, at that.
After our exams, the nurse led Billy and me, naked, into a decontamination shower cubicle.
Together.
Yeah. Nothing out of the ordinary.
Billy kept saying, “Isn’t this train station great?”
“But we’re naked,” I pointed out.
“So what?” Billy said.
In all honesty, Billy Hinman had seen me naked plenty of times in our lives. I had seen Billy Hinman, who was thoroughly comfortable without clothes, naked just about every day I’d known him. When we were babies, Rowan, or sometimes Hilda, used to give us baths together.
“We haven’t taken a bath together in . . . forever,” I said.
“It’s almost like we’re four years old again,” Billy said.
I looked down at my bare legs, like I couldn’t believe my trousers were missing. I patted my thighs as though trying to convince myself my pockets were actually no longer there. I was a mess. “Where are my clothes? When can I get them back? I left a lot of money in my trousers.”
Billy didn’t answer me.
And I had a feeling I would never see my clothes, or anything I’d left behind, again. I turned out to be right, but for reasons I’d never considered.
The showerheads came on. They sprayed from above and all around us—up from jets on the floor, and out from the sides of our cubicle, which was big enough for more than two people, spraying us with a warm coating of mist and then a downpour of warm water. It was actually very nice.
“Don’t worry about it,” Billy said. “Trust me. You don’t need money or your clothes right now, and we can get some Woz for you in just a little bit.”
“You’re my best friend. I love you, Billy. And the shower feels really nice.”
I felt myself beginning to fall asleep on my feet, standing on wobbly legs in the steaming mist.
Of course, my caretaker Rowan went through his medical screening and decontamination process ahead of Billy and me, and once we met him on the other side, sterilized and uniformed, the three of us were led down a walkway toward what I still assumed was our train to the Volunteer State, among a group of cogs dressed in identical uniforms.
It was hard for me to tell if anyone among our fellow travelers was human, or if we were isolated in a platoon of cogs. We all smelled exactly the same in our disinfected orange paper flight suits, which was to say we smelled like nothing at all. As soon as someone burped or started sweating, though, Cager Messer’s cursed nose would pick it up, and I’d get some clear sense of whether or not we were completely alone.
But I was pretty sure that with the exception of Billy, Rowan, and myself, none of the sixty or so passengers with us were human. But what did I know? Because their coders may have been hungry during final program uploads, some v.4s ate printed food too, which was the only kind of food we’d be getting now. But a cog that can eat may just as well be human, with or without their proclivity for obsessing over a single emotion.
Plenty of v.4s were like that. They were just beginning to exhibit the ability to act with human emotions, although their range was narrowly constrained to just one mood— angry, depressed, horny, happy, and so on. Billy’s father, Albert Hinman, who owned Hinsoft International, the company that manufactured the world’s supply of cogs, thought the new, emotional v.4s were funny.
Albert Hinman was also the richest man in the world.
Billy Hinman and I were spoiled pieces of shit, in my opinion.
And Billy detested cogs, especially the ones that were exceedingly happy or mad, or horny, for that matter.
There have always been plenty of human beings like that too—people who only eat, and then obsess on how depressed or outraged or horny they are, and nothing else.
It would end up taking two miserable days for us to get to the Tennessee, not that things like days counted up in space the way they counted down on Earth. It was going to be a rough ride, and it was made worse by the flight attendant in our first-class section, a v.4 cog stuck in an endless loop of elation.
The attendant cogs in second class were all outraged, which had to have been even more unbearable.
In fact, before the transpod slid out of the terminal on its gleaming runway rails (I was still convinced we were on a train), we heard a shouting attendant in the cabin behind us. Chances were that she was probably yelling at nobody. Outraged cogs frequently did that.
“Sir! You need to buckle your restraints immediately! This is outrageous! I am so angry right now! I can’t take your rubbish! Sir! Hold your rubbish until after takeoff! This is so unfair to me! I am filled with rage! I can’t take your rubbish! This is complete racism! I quit! I fucking quit! Get me out of here!”
Of course, it was already too late for anyone to get out of the transpod, and cogs are not allowed to quit, no matter what. The doors had been sealed, and we were about to depart.
They bother most people, but I love v.4s. They were the best things Billy’s dad ever made, even if about one-third of them hated human beings. Well, hated everything, really.
I said, “What the fuck is this place, Billy?”
Billy cleared his throat. “Um. We’re on our way to Tennessee, Cage. Trust me. Are you hungry or thirsty?”
Billy buckled me into my seat.
“Why are you tying me up?”
“Trust me, Cager. Do you want some more Woz? We can get some in just a little while.”
Rowan sat across the aisle from us. We were the only three passengers in first class. Rowan waved at our attendant, and she stepped from her post in the galley as the transpod slid away from the gate.
“Can