Virtual
Blues
Sci
Fi convention fans often create or buy fantastic costumes to show how into it
they are. The weirdo waiting in line for my exhibit had failed. He wore a robot
costume made of grey boxes with crude cutouts for the mouth and eyes. The guy
behind him had on a Klingon costume and a surgical mask. It seemed an odd smash
up, but it was realistic.
“Scott,”
I told myself. “Embrace the unusual.”
There
had been a staff meeting earlier in which we were told to watch for a saboteur,
a former employee, intent on causing trouble. I swilled coffee, half-listening.
Who would bear a grievance against sci fi lovers? They were obviously obsessed, but that hardly
seemed reason to threaten them. There were worse people. Country Western singers
and gourmet pizza aficionados for instance.
I idly wondered why the robot
guy had bothered, but he looked harmless. He didn’t register on my radar as
being “incoming” material. Not much got by me. Or so I thought.
There were bigger
problems looming on my horizon. Things like student loans and me still being
years from my PHD. I might think Sci Fi
conventions a complete waste of resources, but when I got the opportunity to
work the Delta Fifteen Space Station virtual room at the convention 2019, I took
the plunge. The pay was decent, the hours okay. It gave time to write a better
thesis than Molly Carter, my top rival in the cybernetics program. It also beat
bathing poodles, that fancied themselves wolves, at the local pet spa.
My
entire job consisted of running the space station exhibit. There’s a wealth of
NASA info the designers could have used, but the whole virtual experience they’d
concocted looked more like a Trekkie dream than the real space station. I’m a
science major. I didn’t enjoy giving people false information about life in space,
but I followed the script I’d been given.
I wasn’t religious, but there
were times I mused whether the ghost of Einstein might be watching me with disapproval
for selling out. However, since he had no outstanding student loans, I felt any
judgment on his part was highly unfair. That made me wonder why I was thinking
about something so stupid, which made me speculate on my state of mind. That’s where
the self-analysis stopped. Every time.
I took
the next group of gullibles in and told everyone to grab a handrail while I switched
off the lights. I forgot about the yokels for a few minutes while the movie of
a pseudo space station played around the walls, on the ceiling, and the floor.
It had been impressive the first time I saw it, but only because of all the
camera angles that made it seem like we were moving. Now I chafed at glaring
inaccuracies as we appeared to drift at low gravity through corridors and into
more wings than a chicken fast food joint. There were groupings of weird angled
furniture and happy people with fancy drinks in their hands, like they were in
some damn country club vs a scientific laboratory. People were mesmerized even
as they maintained a death hold on their safety rails, especially when the film
makers took us around corners. When it was over, a slightly dizzy, but happy
audience filed out the exit. I was thrilled there weren’t any bodily fluids to
deal with as that occasionally happened.
It took
two more groupings before the robot entered. My lunch break should have started,
but my back-up hadn’t showed. Probably chatting up some girl in the cafeteria,
I thought bitterly. Women never seemed to notice me. Wasn’t I good looking?
Didn’t I have a lucrative career ahead? My blood sugar was low and making me woozy.
I pointed my hand-held projector control at the wall, and once again started
the film. I closed my eyes for what I
swear was merely a second or two.
The
screams woke me. I blinked. The movie was out of control, ricocheting us in
circles, up and down, and swinging us out like we were in maelstrom. Stars spun
past viewports as the film advanced faster. There were sounds of deep retching.
“We’re all going to die,”
someone screeched, having totally lost touch with reality. People were on their
knees, desperately clutching the rails, and wailing like they’d entered hell.
I pressed
the stop button on my control, but the film raced on. Telling my brain I wasn’t
really sliding down a wall, I ran across a kaleidoscope of stars, pressed the
manual override lever in the wall, and entered the projection room. The robot
guy was already in there, and he lunged at me. Unprepared, I went down, but
managed to grab his foot and throw him off balance. His boxy head popped off,
unleashing a mane of red hair and startled green eyes. It took a few startled
seconds for me to register the robot wasn’t a male.
“You,”
I yelled, staring into the face of my nemesis, Molly Carter. Remembering to
stop the movie, I shouted,“Why?’
“I
had to get your attention somehow.” She grabbed my face and kissed my mouth. As
hard as she was in competition, her lips were soft. Confused, but always the
opportunist, I kissed her back.
Then,
suddenly remembering I had a group of unhappy customers. I backed out of the
projection room, assessed the damage. Security had the exit doors opened, and
people in various shades of green were staggering their way out. I sighed. A
lot of lunches had been left behind on the floor. Suddenly, I reconsidered the
poodles.
I managed
to keep my job. The convention decided not to press charges against Molly
because people talked up the space station. Attendance grew so great, they had to run the
convention an extra two weeks. I took Molly to a country western bar, her
choice, for our first date. She ordered flatbread artichoke pizza.
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