Saturday, July 20, 2019

Once again I've entered the #NYCMidnightFlaashFictionChallenge.






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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