Catachronism

In submission to the May Greater Friday Challenge, "The Land Before Zip Codes." Inspiration came too late for me to work up what I would write to change science fiction history, so we're left with Mr. Scribbler's crummy piece.

UPDATE July 2010: A reworked version of this story was bought and published in Stupefying Stories, Vol. 1 "It Came from the Slushpile"! You can purchase the short story collection from Amazon.


I glanced up as I typed the salutation line, then looked up again, idly drawing my eyes over the papier-mâchéd surface of the wall as the metal heads of the typewriter struck ribbon and paper.

There were seventy-nine of them, posted there on the wall before me. I had tacked up the first in defiance of its criticism, determined that within a week I should be able to face it triumphant and call it a liar. Instead, it was joined by more like it: first a dozen, then two, then more. Each was tacked up in the same haphazard orderliness that governed my small city apartment, random at a glance but organized in discrete sections according to publishing magazine and extent of criticism. I saw them as a challenge, a symbol of the adversity through which I would persevere, a source of resolve and occasional self-pity that would evolve into the motivating energy of righteous anger, assuring myself that one day I would clear them all away and in their place post an acceptance letter, the first of many.

But at the moment they still hung on the wall, puffing out like ruffled feathers on the neck of a strutting pigeon, each letter mated to a failed story. And this one would fail, too, I thought. So is the lot fate has given me.

The thought came unbidden, and hung in the air like a tossed bedsheet, the sudden snap of its movement nearly causing me to gasp out loud, and then it softly drifted down and blanketed my shoulders, head, and even the typewriter with weightless oppression. The ribbon continued to jump steadily with each strike of a key, and my hand moved with fluid and practiced ease to slide the spool back after each line, but the hopelessness could no longer be denied, and it marched quickly in time with the drumbeat of the typewriter directly into the waiting arms of despair; then the emotions spilled out onto the page without reservation.

I concluded the cover letter with morbid finality, and next I knew I found myself in my coat and locking the door to my shabby apartment, my manuscript still inside by the desk and the letter still scrolled into the typewriter. Pocketing my keys, I headed quickly down the narrow streets of South Bronx.

I needn’t cross so far as to be over the water, I reasoned, just to the tower, at which the height was sufficient. Soon enough, though not too soon for my legs to have grown tired and my breathing to have become audible, I came within sight of my destination: the Hell Gate Bridge. I walked along the edge, glancing over the side as I went to continually gauge the distance to the ground below. Heights did not bother me like the water.

The tower rose up before me, and soon its brooding shadow blotted out the warm spring sun. I steadied myself against the smooth concrete while gazing over the grounds below and the river further beyond. The subdued coolness of the tower’s shadow seemed to heighten the intensity of the green of the grass and trees, the baby blue of the sky, the deep red of the bridge, and even the sickening brown of the water. I put the toes of my shoes over the edge and willed myself to spread my arms and fly, but my hands stayed by my side at the end of limp, unresponsive limbs. The resolve I had built up pushed feebly against the deeper, unconscious drive of self-preservation, with as much effectiveness as a palsied elder pressing against a boulder. I sighed and sat down, dangling my feet over the edge.

An hour or so later, a train brought me back into my thoughts, its immense passage causing my teeth to rattle and ears to ache. I walked the lengthening shadow of the tower and headed back to my apartment.

In the hall, I hardly noticed the familiar tapping sound until I stood in front of the door. It sounded odd, distant and muffled as it was by walls and wood, rather than directly before my face as usual, accompanied by the smell of electricity and ink. Confused, I looked to the metal numbers on the door. 714. I did not have the wrong door. Yet the sound of typing continued steadily from within the apartment. Is this how my neighbors perceive me?

I quietly slipped my key into the slot, gritting my teeth as the lock turned with an audible click. I held my breath. The typing continued unabated on the other side of the door. I heaved open the door, letting it slam into the wall as I burst into my apartment to confront the trespassing typist.

A young man with short, curly brown hair sat at my desk. His fingers continued to fly across the keyboard, heedless of my interruption as he peered through rectangled reading glasses that rested on his large triangular nose. I gaped at him. He was wearing a pair of my slacks and a wrinkled shirt from my closet. My clothes hung loosely about his thin frame.

He reached the end of a page and pulled it out of the typewriter, laying it facedown on a surprisingly thick pile on the desk. He glanced over to me as he reached for a blank page and began spooling it into the typewriter. “Couldn’t go through with it, huh?” he said. “Can’t say I’m surprised.”

“Cripes, man!” I stared at him, dumbfounded. “What on earth do you think you’re—”

The young man shushed me, holding up a finger. “Don’t make me lose my place. This is the last page.” He then continued his work at the typewriter, not giving me a second glance.

Feeling somewhat awkward standing at the open door, ignored by this complete stranger tapping away on my typewriter in my apartment as I stood with my knees bent and arms spread wide like a football player preparing for the play, I sheepishly shifted myself to close the door and then looked again on the young man, trying to decide whether or not I should call for the police.

“Ah, there. Finished it.” The young man pulled the sheet from the typewriter and added it to the stack on the desk. He turned and smiled at me, leaning the chair back onto two legs while resting his arms on the back of his head. “Congratulations.”

“Congratulations? What in—congratulations for what?”

“For your first successfully published story, which also happens to be the greatest piece of science fiction in history.”

I stared at him. “What are you going on about?”

The young man let the chair slam back forward onto all four legs, clapping his hands against his thighs. “This calls for a toast. Hey, grandfather, you got those drinks ready yet?”

I jumped a full foot off the floor in surprise as an older man entered the room from the kitchen. His white, curly hair was pulled back in a shoulder-length pony-tail. He too wore clothes from my closet, though my brown tweed suit flapped loosely across his frame. He smiled genially, as if perfectly understanding of my reacting to his entrance as if he were the bogeyman, and handed me a glass of Scotch. He pulled out the near chair at my dining room table, apparently meaning it for me because he then seated himself at the other side and sipped from his own glass as he gazed out the window.

I stared back and forth between the two intruders. “Who—who are you people?”

The young man smiled. “I guess the most honest response is that we’re travelers, though seeing as how we’ve raided your closet, pantry, and liquor cabinet, I suppose it’d also be fair to call us Bandits.” He stood. Picking up the manila envelope in which I had placed my recently completed story, he pulled out the manuscript and tossed it into the wastebasket.

I cried out in protest.

“Oh, it was rubbish, anyway, and you know it, as your cover letter so clearly proves.” The young man picked up the papers he had typed and put them in the envelope instead. “Anyway, I hope you won’t be miffed by our presumption upon your living space. In my opinion, it’s all a fair exchange for the history that will be made in your name.”

He sealed the envelope and set it on the desk, then returned to the wastebasket. Reaching in his pocket, he brought out a matchbook. He struck a match.

Feeling protective over my creation, even if one that had nearly caused me to toss myself from Hell Gate Bridge, I rushed to set my drink down on the table and stop the young man, but it was too late; by the time I reached him, he had already dropped the burning match.

My face grew hot. “Now, wait a minute! What right do you have to—what do you think you are doing? That hasn’t even been submitted yet!”

“And it won’t be,” said the old man at the table, still staring out the window. His voice was gravelly and quiet. He took another sip from his glass.

I felt the heat as my manuscript took to flame. I dove for the wastebasket.

The young man held me back. “No, no, friend, you’ll burn yourself. Don’t worry about this flaming heap. Instead, we’ll be submitting your pièce de résistance, which I just typed up for you. It’ll forever change science fiction.”

“That…you just…typed?” My body began to shake, most like as a physical expression of the complete and utter confusion I was experiencing psychologically. “What…what do you…what is…?”

The young man patted me gently on the arm as the flames licked up the last of the contents of the wastebasket. He steered me over to the table and sat me down, pushing the drink back into my hand.

I pushed it aside and looked over to my addressed and stamped envelope in which the young man had put his papers. “Do you mean to say that in that envelope is a science fiction story that will finally be accepted?”

“Not only accepted, but pivotal in your writing career,” said the old man.

I stared at him, incredulous.

“Oh, sure,” said the younger man, “it’s a bit odd in its unconventional first-person point of view, and it’s ridiculously dull, mostly being the record of a conversation in a failed writer’s apartment, but the ideas that it expresses will forever alter the course of history.”

“The course of history?” I repeated in stupefaction. “How in the world can you say that?”

“When you’ve lived to be my age,” said the old man, “you’ve seen a lot of history. Some of it twice. History repeats itself, you know, but doubly so when you run a loop.”

I looked back over at the younger man. “And you expect me to believe this history-shaking piece of fiction was just written by you the few hours that I was gone?”

“Well, no. I memorized it beforehand, so really all I had to do was type it out just now.” He laughed at my dumbfounded expression. “Careful, at this rate your face will freeze like that.”

I simply shook my head.

“Here, let’s see if I can’t explain.” He walked back over to the desk and dragged the chair up to the table, then sat backwards on top of it, straddling his legs as if on a horse, his elbows leaning on the back of the chair. He helped himself to the glass of Scotch I had thus far neglected, and exhaled with satisfaction.

“I picked up a science fiction anthology as a child that had your piece in it,” he said. “I found the premise fascinating, so I never forgot about it. Later, when it became more of a big deal, I was already familiar with it. Now I know what you’re about to say,” he continued, when I started to speak up. “If I read the story as a child, doesn’t that preclude its being published now by you, but it doesn’t, because it hasn’t been published or read by me yet. Won’t be for another couple of decades.”

I blinked at him. “Are you saying that you are from the future?”

“See? That’s the mind for the fantastic that made you famous. You’re not as stupid as your baffled looks would imply.” He grinned at me.

I frowned. “I don’t—this is some sort of a scam.”

“No, no! Here, let me show you.” The young man emptied his glass down his throat and leaped up to run over to the desk. He pulled two blank sheets of paper and a pair pens, then returned to hand me a set.

“Write anything. Anything at all! Make sure it’s got some length to it, not something simple with half a dozen words or anything. I’ll be over at the desk facing the other way.”

I watched him sit down at the desk and begin to write. I considered for a moment, then wrote down. Seventy-nine rejection letters in mated pairs with my stories; so robbed of my dignity, why should I not be robbed in my apartment by lunatics, too? I fear they took my sanity while I was out.

As I finished scrawling the note, the young man spoke up from across the room. “Finished? OK, let me read it aloud to you.” Then, looking at his sheet, he spoke what I had written verbatim.

I stared at him. “I, uh, think I need that drink now.”

The young man nodded. “Grandfather? Nobody makes them like you do,” he said with a wink, “and I’m afraid I stole our esteemed host’s drink. In addition to his sanity, that is.” He grinned, obviously pleased with himself.

The older man nodded and raised himself up from the table. I guessed him to be at least in his seventies, though he looked healthy for his age. There was an obvious resemblance between the two. It did not take the old man long to return with another drink, nor for me to drain it and require another, which he also politely got for me.

“How did you do that?” I asked the younger man, after I had taken a gulp of my refilled drink.

“It’s no parlor trick,” the young man said, returning to the table. “I only knew what you were going to write because I had read it thirty-eight years from now in the story you will publish this year.”

“How is this possible?”

“OK, roughly fifty years from today, mankind will begin to make breakthroughs in time travel, largely through the efforts of a company financed by grandfather, here.”

The old man nodded. “Expensive investment, but a lifetime of an unbelievably consistent ability to invest in startup companies that become Fortune 500s will make me wealthy enough to undertake it. When it finally came down to developing time travel, the biggest hurdle to overcome was finding a means to specify the targets of travel. Eventually a solution will be reached involving DNA signatures and nanotechnology—”

“—tiny robots—” inserted the young man.

“—that will allow specific individuals to travel through time. Unfortunately, the process will prove unstable, because the nanorobots will replicate outside the timeline and outside our control, pervading humanity in an instant, and then simultaneously firing indiscriminate of destination. The end result? A population of six and half billion scattered throughout history.”

I tried to grapple through the fog of my shock and confusion to understand this revelation. “And you two get sent back together to 1960?”

The old man shrugs. “As I said, the program was designed specific to an individual’s DNA. It’s not surprising that we’d both end up here together. As to the year, well, that’s a result of random chance.”

“And then you broke into my apartment? Why?”

“Traveling through space and traveling through time is equivalent.” The old man ran a finger slowly across the surface of the table. “You can’t travel through one without passing through the other. In fact, the first successful time travels were actually attempts at teleportation.”

“OK, say all of this is true. What does this have to do with me successfully publishing a story?” I asked.

“This event is the inspiration for your story; it tells about two men from the future visiting you in your apartment,” said the young man. “Which means your story will predict the fallout of humanity’s timeline half a century before it occurs.”

“How is it my story if you wrote it?”

“I didn’t write it,” said the young man, rolling his eyes. “I just memorized it and typed it out for you.”

I stared at him blankly. He continued, “It ends up being published, but mostly ignored for the first couple of decades, not really garnering any attention until after some events take place which it predicts with uncanny accuracy, such as the giant leap of mankind in walking on the moon, the assassination of the President of the United States in the same year as a prominent black pastor, and the clay army in China. After that, some people begin to wonder to themselves, ‘What if this story isn’t fiction after all?’ The idea particularly grips sci fi geeks and nerds on the internet.”

“The int—”

The old man coughed. “Er, think of it as a telephone system using television sets.”

I took another swig of my drink and tried to picture that concept, but it failed to make any sense to me.

Meanwhile, the young man had become excited with recounting the historical impact of the story, his eyes alight and a big smile on his face. “The idea of modern humanity scattered across timeline gives a strange amount of sense to a lot of the fantastic mysteries of history, you see. Cave paintings of airplanes, that human footprint inside a dinosaur print, as well as fabled personalities like Merlin and the Greek gods. The speculation regarding the theory will begin to grow and take shape, eventually gripping a significant portion of the population.”

Flipping the piece of paper on which I had written the note, the young man drew a straight line across its entire length. He then scribbled darkly over both ends, leaving only a small segment in the very middle. “You see, the greatest portion of the population will be instantly killed: sent too far back or forward in the timeline, they’ll land in a period of history during which life on earth is unsustainable—if they land on earth at all. The remainder will also be disadvantaged, probably landing in hostile localities or situations resulting in their deaths.” He bisected the small segment and put a big X through the right side. “Half of those will end up in the post-apocalyptic world that will necessarily follow the sudden timeline disappearance of all humanity in 2012.”

Then, with obvious relish, he slowly circled the remaining inch of the line. “But a tiny fraction of the population will land in the historical timeline. And of those, the ones that survive to leave a historical footprint will largely be those who prepared for the event. From that realization, those who believed your story to be a truth stranger than fiction began a frenzied search of history, hoping to find a clue their future self will leave in the past so that their past self can prepare for their future destination.”

The young man sat back, obviously at ease as he prattled on. “I know one guy in our user group who was convinced he would be Genghis Khan. And I’m rather certain myself that that short Italian I met was Napolean—how else do you explain France’s biggest general turning up from some nowhere island? And everybody was hoping that they would give birth to twins in the year before the event, so that they could claim to be the parents of Romulus and Remus.”

I found myself losing focus on the young man’s words, whether from disbelief or disinterest in such posturing I couldn’t say. Outside the sky was beginning to fade into pinks and purples, while the sun’s reflection burned brightly across the rooftops. Writing normally kept me up late into the night, so my drowsiness couldn’t be on account of the hour. I sniffed and shook my head, then finished off my drink and brought my attention back to the young man’s words.

“Of course, all of these historical speculation shenanigans are poorly received by society at large; most of them regarded us as lunatics on par with UFO abductees. Our community’s avid interest in preparing the skills we expect to need in the past ended up getting us labeled as a cult. Then Catholic and Protestant clergy became particularly hostile after someone speculated idly that in all the infinite possibilities for destination combined with the unique DNA of a child in the womb could feasibly end up with at least one babe transported back into a virgin’s womb.” He snorted. “He was mostly trolling for trouble at the outset, but it certainly was a terrible blow for our already-weak PR.”

I was losing track. Certainly I need to understand all of this, I thought groggily, if I am to write about it. I pointed across the table at the young man, resting elbow on the table and propping up my head with my hand. “And you were one of these individuals? You knew you’d be sent back to my apartment today?”

The young man winked at me. “Of course.”

“And you’re happy with this?”

He pursed his lips. “Oh, sure, it would have been cool to watch the building of the pyramids or captain a pirate ship in the Caribbean. But in the end, I’m rather content with my assigned role in history. After all, it’s pretty cool to be the inspiration of the story that will alert humanity to their fate, which makes me nearly as instrumental as you, who wrote the story. Certainly everyone who will have learned of it—who are truly the only people of importance, in the end of things—will know of me, so I’ve made my mark on history, without even having to leave the era of modern convenience. Plus, it’s rather relieving to know that I’ll lead a long, successful life.”

The young man smiled at the old man. I frowned, trying to understand. My mind seemed to be growing duller by the minute. I rubbed at my eyes. “But, how does the story end up being published? I’m a failed writer, I can’t see why they’d pick up this nonsense and after rejecting all of my other submissions.”

The old man cleared his throat. “There’s some mystery surrounding its publication. It’s a known fact that you are extremely hydrophobic, yes?”

I nodded, but furrowed my brow. Long word, and I felt as if I suddenly had to grope in the dark for its meaning. Was I truly…whatever he said?

“How do you bathe?” the old man asked.

“Only standing water is bad,” I replied, blinking. “I just take showers and never fill the tub.”

The old man seemed to expect this answer. “So, when the hydrophobic writer is found drowned in his bath tub on Thursday, and his manuscript postmarked on the following Monday, there’s some strangeness afoot. Sure, the police rule it a suicide based on the cover letter in the typewriter, and people will later say some soft-hearted officer posted the manuscript, but you have to wonder, don’t you? Just like the rest of us will do: ‘What if it’s true?’ So, a certain amount of pity, combined with the calculated hope that the mysterious death will create a buzz of interest in the work, will lead to its acceptance by the editor, it being received posthumously and all.”

Somewhere in the back of my mind I screamed a warning to myself, but darkness and confusion drowned it out. Had I had too much to drink? Something was wrong. The old man looked grimly across the table, while I faintly felt more than saw the young man stand and haul me out of my chair. I looked blearily at the old man, whom I could no longer tell apart from the young man, with the world gone all fuzzy like it had, and I heard him saying, as from a distance, “…will haunt us for the rest of our life, but history must be made, you understand.”

One does not paint lilies

One does not paint lilies, or one their beauty erases,
Smothered away into stiffness, a splendor conveyed
With which even King Solomon was never arrayed;
Yet we take the beauty of walls and put them on faces.
A certain pride in appearance, no critique I impart:
Errant hairs aligned or clipped, teeth whitened, skin scrubbed and smoothed,
Form-fitting threads; likewise, on occasion, how marvelous
The effects of shadowed eyes and ruby lips in thumping heart,
Twist-turned curls turning heads.

Yet still, in the wont of men, we exceed limits and sense
Piling on the foundation of beauty with powders and creams,
Superfluous weight cracking where should be laid frames and beams;
For no house needs two foundations, aside from mere pretense.
Yet press we on, architects of our own master plan,
And stultify life's vibrancy with death, solid and white
From mercury and lead; what means to beautify buries
Our image six lengths beneath illusion desired by man,
And poisons and blinds instead.

The social spotlight shines none near as bright as actor's venue.
Why veil the spots where e'en the Sun yielded to desire and kissed?
Quite more thrilling true blush than the rouge that cause it to be missed,
To bring away memory of soft cheek than residue.
Allow me a rag, some oil, to gently remove the veneer
And unmask concealed beauty that my heart has been longing.
I beg you, I plead: Shed the layers, look into my eyes
And in their reflection see, as I daub away your tears,
There is no need.

A Squadron with One Pull

In submission to the April Greater Challenge, a re-telling of one of my favorite fairy tales in a sci-fi setting. Alternatively titled "the Brave Little Repairman."

Once upon a time a spacedock worker was flitting about in his repair craft. Having just fitted a new custom propulsion and pulley into his ship, which was no larger than a taxi-craft, the worker was in high spirits as he performed flips and loop-de-loops. Then a division of Imperial Fighters docked at the shipyard. The worker’s boss told him to re-panel all four of the much larger space ships, as well as run maintenance on their pulleys.

“That is not fit for someone with so great a craft like this one,” said the ship repairmen to himself. “Fighter pulleys are bulky, only interested in pulling large asteroids to crash into enemy ships. They do not have the finesse of my craft.”

Nevertheless, he set about his work. “I know, I will make challenges for myself!” He pulled panels and slung the new ones two, three, even four at a time. “I wonder how many I can do?” he asked himself, hoping to stretch the limits of his skill and his craft’s new pulley system. Gathering a dozen panels, he lined them up carefully and then glided his craft back and forth before them like a general rallying his troops.

“You are my Squadron,” he told them. “With you I will repair this Fighter.”

And activating his pulley, he slung all of the panels into place. He zipped over to the Fighter and found not one joint out of place.

“Aren't you someone?” he said to himself, surprised at his own bravery. “The whole system shall hear about this." Leaving his work, he docked his repair ship and designed a new V-RFID for it, A Squadron with One Pull (the words glitzy and animated with sparkles and spinning letters). “The system?” he said further. “The whole galaxy shall hear about this!” And his heart flamed up within him like a comet’s tail.

The repairman installed the V-RFID into his repair craft and set forth into the universe, for surely a fringe system dockyard was much too obscure a place for a man of his bravery. But before leaving he looked about his hangar for something to take with him. Finding nothing, he decided to strip a Fighter of its impact rod. Then, he hitched his craft onto a passing comet to escape without his boss or the Imperial pilots noticing him.

Having saved much of his ship’s energy reserves by latching onto the comet, he figured that he could travel three systems further before refueling. Reaching the edge of the comet’s orbit, he decided to pull it along with him. Since it was not dense, it did not slow him down at all.

The second system was a mostly-abandoned sector of fringe space, with a dull red giant at its center. At the edge of the system drifted an immense freighter class ship, with a large pirate vessel beside it.

The repairman flitted straight up toward the pirate ship and hailed them, saying “Good day, friend. Can you see the whole wide galaxy from here? I am on my way out there to prove myself. Do you want to join me?”

The pirates looked at the little repair craft and sneered. “Lolwut? Wut a nub! Where you gonna go in that little blip?”

"I would scan my V-RFID before saying something like that!" said the repairman. “And then you will find out why my craft is called the ASOP.”

The pirates accessed the V-RFID on their screen and saw A Squadron with One Pull (the words glitzy and animated with sparkles and spinning letters), and thinking that the repairman had destroyed a full squadron of fighters with one asteroid, they gained some respect for the repairman and his little craft. But wanting to put him to the test, the pirates fired up their engines and rammed a drifting piece of debris that had broken off the freighter, destroying it.

“Let’s see your little ship do that,” the pirates messaged the repairman, “if it is as awesome as you say.”

“Is that all?” said the repairman. “That is child's play for a ship like the ASOP.” He spun and loop-de-looped and performed all sorts of dizzying theatrics and then charged an even larger piece of debris: a drifting fuel cell. The repairman slung the impact rod at it, and then he slung himself beneath it, but to the pirates it looked like the ASOP had punched through the cell and caused it to explode. “I did you one better, didn’t I?” said the repairman.

The pirates could hardly believe their eyes. “Hax!” they exclaimed. They pulled a nearby meteor and slung it toward the red giant at the system’s center, so expertly that it took up orbit about the star, until after the sixth revolution it fell into the burning surface. “Now, let’s see you do that.”

“A good pull,” said the repairman, “but it fell into the star. I'll pull one that will break away after three or four turns.” Pulling the comet that he had drug along with him, he tossed it expertly at the red giant. The heat of the star melted away from of the ice so that on the third revolution it suddenly broke off back out into the universe. “How did you like that, friend?” asked the repairman.

“You can pull well enough,” replied the pirates, “but can you tow? If your ship is strong enough, then help us tow this freighter to our base in the center of the system.”

"Gladly," answered the repairman. “But my craft is custom-built and tows by pushing. You tow from the front, and I will lock onto the back and fire my engines as if they were the freighter’s itself.”

The pirates towed from the front of the freighter, but the repairman just latched onto the rear end of the immense ship and the pirates, who could not see him, had to tow the entire freighter plus the little repair craft.

The pirates, after towing the heavy freighter halfway across the system, began to run out of fuel. Hailing the repairman, they said, “Stop pushing. We’ve oomed, we’re gonna have to respawn and come back later.”

Zipping around the ship, the repairman responded, “What, such a big vessel and you already are running out of fuel? I’ve hardly used any myself.”

They moved on together until they came upon a pair of nearly planet-sized asteroids. The pirates pulled the asteroid and slung it into the red giant, then waited expectantly for the little repair craft to throw the other. “Lawl! Can’t your little ship throw this ‘roid?”

“It sure can,” answered the repairman. “Do you think that that would be a problem for a ship named ASOP? I was just looking for something that might be a challenge, instead. But the most I can see is that smallish star over there.”

And with that, he gave a tug on the pirate ship so that it looked like the red giant had suddenly been pulled toward them. So the pirates remained astonished at this mighty little repair craft.

The pirates said, "Dock for the sleep with us at our base."

The repairman agreed and followed them into port. Several other pirate ships were docked, each in their own hangar. “Come inside and we’ll drink space grog!” said the pirates, hoping that they could kill him and take his leet ship, but the repairman refused.

“I am sleepy, I will catch up with you after I wink,” he said.

The pirates directed him to his own hangar. But the repairman needed to refuel, so he left the hangar and went to another to siphon energy. Seeing no reason to go back to the first, the repairman latched his craft to the second hangar’s ceiling and went to sleep. The pirates, thinking that the little craft was still where they had put him, initialized the first hangar’s purge code, incinerating its contents. Then they sang space shanties and toasted grog to one another, thinking they had put an end to the grasshopper.

After they woke up and got over their hangovers, the pirates set off in their ships back to the freighter, having completely forgotten about the repairman. Suddenly, he flitted up to him in the ASOP, hailing them cheerfully and boldly. Fearing that he would destroy them all in one pull, the terrified pirates burned thrusters and left the system, never to return.

The repairman continued on his way, going wherever whim pulled him. After wandering a long time, he came to the central system of the Galactic Empire, and having exhausted his fuel cells, he docked his ship at commercial hub. While he was refueling, everyone about the hub saw his V-RFID, A Squadron with One Pull (the words glitzy and animated with sparkles and spinning letters).

“Oh,” they said, “what is this great fighter doing here in the midst of peace? He must be a famous prized mercenary.”

They sent word to the Empress, thinking that in the Empire's efforts to rule the galaxy they should in any case have this incredible hero on their side. The Empress was pleased with this advice, and she sent one of her Imperial Cruisers to draft the repairman into her fleet.

The Cruiser pulled up into the commercial hub, dwarfing the little repair craft, and then hailed the repairman with the Empress’s offer.

“That is precisely why I came here,” answered the repairman. “I am ready to enter the into the service of the Empire.” Thus he became a valuable asset in the Imperial Army.

However, the flyboys in the Imperial Fleet did not like the little repair craft or its mercenary pilot, and wished that he was light years away. “His allegiance is only to money,” they said amongst themselves, “and so he has no honor. What if he turns on us because our enemies offer him a greater bounty? Whole squadrons will be destroyed with each pull! A fleet like ours can’t stand up to that.”

So they made a pact with one another, and all together they reported to the Empress and asked to be released. “We were not born,” they said, “to fly with mercenaries who destroy squadrons with one pull.”

The Empress was angry that she was going to lose all her devoted fighters because of one man, and she became resentful of the repairman. She wanted to get rid of him, but she did not dare insult him by commanding him to leave, because she was afraid that he would destroy her fleet and then set himself on the imperial throne.

So she schemed and schemed, and finally hit upon a plan. She sent an imperial missive to the repairman, in which she honored him with a special opportunity. Out on a fringe sector there were two great pirate dreadnoughts who were a thorn in the Empire’s side, raiding settlements and plundering freighters. Not even the Imperial Fleet had been able to engage these massive battlecruisers. If he could destroy them, then the Empress would give herself to him in marriage and he would rule along with her. Furthermore, ten full Imperial Squadrons would go with him for support.

“Now I have gained the recognition I deserve,” thought the repairman. “Not just every man gains the attention of the Galactic Empress and is offered her hand in marriage.”

“Yes,” he replied. “I shall destroy these two dreadnoughts, but I do not need the ten squadrons of fighters. Anyone who can take a squadron in one pull has no cause to be afraid of two.”

And so the repairman set out in his little craft, and the Imperial Squadrons followed him. At the edge of the sector, he hailed them. “You all maintain position here. I shall take care of the pirates myself.”

Entering the asteroid field in which the pirates were known to hide, he zipped about with ease, looking hither and thither. Soon he came upon the two dreadnoughts, orbiting just inside the belt. The repairman latched his crafted to an asteroid, and then gathered many smaller rocks about him. Then he began pulling the stones at one of the dreadnoughts.

For a long time the pirates did not notice the debris hitting their hull. Then an instrument panel was struck. Assessing the damage, the pirates hailed their companions. “Why ru trolling us? You broke an array!”

“You must have a broken array,” replied the other pirates. “We’re not hitting you.”

Then the repairman pulled a meteor at the second dreadnought.

“What is this I don’t even…” they exclaimed. “Why ru pull rocks at us?”

“Lawl, nubs, we aren’t pulling nothing,” the other pirates responded.

Further angry words followed between the two groups of pirates, but finally they made peace with one another, for they had long worked together to dominate this sector. They sent out teams to repair the damage to their respective ships. Then the repairman continued his fun. Choosing a rather large meteor, he pulled it directly at the main bridge of the first dreadnought. The rock struck true, denting the blast hull and causing the pirate captain to believe himself lost.

“That’s it!” shouted the pirate captain, then commanded his men to open fire on the other dreadnought. The other ship responded in kind. An epic space battle ensued, with the two pirate ships pulling asteroids from the belt at one another, until finally they both managed to rupture the other’s power containments, and the dreadnoughts were destroyed in massive explosions only seconds apart, killing all of the pirates.

Then the repairman detached his little craft from the asteroid. “I’m rather lucky that they did not pull the asteroid to which I was latched,” he said, “or I would have had to flip away in time and onto another. But the ASOP could’ve handled that.”

Then he went back to the waiting Imperial Squadrons and hailed them. “It is done, my friends. I destroyed them both, but it was quite the battle. In their desperation to destroy me, they pulled nearly the whole asteroid belt to defend themselves! But little good it did them, against me and my ASOP that can handle a squadron with one pull.”

“Is your ship not even damaged?” asked the fighters.

"Everything is all right," answered the repairman. "They did not so much as scratch the paint."

Finding this too much to be believed, the Imperial Squadrons went into the sector and inspected the asteroid belt where the dreadnoughts were known to be. Rings of blackened debris, all that remained of the two pirate vessels, spun in the void.

The repairman returned to the central system in order to receive his promised reward. Regretting her offer, the Empress once again began to scheme for a way to get rid of him. “It is a tradition in Imperial weddings,” she said, “for the guests to dine on roasted space worm. So we cannot be married unless you capture a worm for our wedding dinner.”

“I am even less afraid of a space worm than I was of two dreadnoughts. A squadron with one pull, that is my thing.”

Furling up a massive solar sail, the repairman set off in his little craft to where the space worms are known to burrow. Once again he told the Imperial Fighters accompanying him to wait at the edge of the sector. It did not take him very long to find a space worm: one soon appeared, attempting to swallow the ASOP in one gulp!

The repairman spun the solar sail into a cylinder, and flitted about at the open end. “Come on now,” he said. “Time to thread the needle!” The space worm lunged, chasing him into the cylindrical tube of nano-reinforced fabric. Exiting out the other side, the repairman drew the sheath taut and tied up both ends, the space worm wrapped up inside.

“The early pull gets the worm,” remarked the repairman, and he pulled the captured space worm back to the Empress.

Having no other way to put off the repairman, the Empress was forced to go through with the wedding. At the altar, had she known that it was not some powerful mercenary but a dockyard worker who had once stolen an impact rod from one of her Imperial Fighters, she would have been even more chagrined. The wedding was thus held with great ceremony but little joy, and a repairman became a Galactic Emperor.

Soon after, one night the Empress overhead the repairman speaking in his sleep, “I need to hurry, hurry, if I am to re-panel a full squadron of Imperial Fighters!” From this she determined where the repairman had come from. The next morning she arranged for her Imperial Guard to get rid of him, because he was nothing more than a dock worker.

“I will leave our chamber door unlocked, and you will stand outside. After my husband falls asleep, come inside, bind him, and we’ll put him on a ship set adrift to the Black.”

The Guard Captain agreed. However, his lieutenant, who had a liking for the new Emperor, stole away and told the repairman everything.

“So that’s how it’s going to be, eh?” said the repairman. “I can fix them!” That night he behaved as any other night, bedding down with his wife. When she thought that he had fallen asleep she got up and opened the door. Then the repairman, who had only been pretending to sleep, spoke out as if he was talking in his sleep. “I need to hurry, hurry, if I am to re-panel a full squadron of Imperial Fighters! Because next I will re-fit my Imperial chambers to hold the ASOP, so I won’t even have to leave my pajamas to be battle-ready! I handled a squadron with one pull, destroyed two dreadnoughts, and captured a space worm, and I am supposed to be afraid of a few Imperial Guard standing just outside the bedroom!”

When those standing outside heard these words, they became so terrified that they ran breakneck down the hallway and out of the Imperial Palace, not stopping until they reached the hangar and burned thrusters to another sector. None dared return to the central system ever again.

And so a dockyard repairman was Emperor, and so he remained as long as he lived.