The Secret of RBII (Patreon)

@ChristopherAnderson suggested a funny parody and so I had to write up the scene!

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Nodimius lit a discarded candle, illuminating his cluttered study with a flickering glow. He dipped a brush he’d made of old fiber optic cable into a jar of thermal shielding compound that substituted for ink and began to write on the back of a label that served as his parchment. His cursive was beautiful and flowing, an artistic expression not normally seen from kerrati.

“Juttar was killed today. He was helping with the plan,” started the journal entry, then he paused to wipe the tears from his eyes. “It’s been four years since our departure from RBII, and our world is changing. Oh, poor Juttar. His mate knows nothing of us or the plan. Perhaps that is for the best.”

Nodimius rolled the brush back and forth between his wrinkled old fingers while he contemplated how to close the entry. Then he dipped the brush once more. “Juttar was a dear friend, and he will be missed by all. We owe such a debt to him, and now that can never be repaid.”

# # #

Britta scampered straight up the side of the old dozer that sat abandoned on the deck of Recycler Bay II. The thing had broken down for the final time and the geroo that worked the bay had long since given up on fixing it. So they let it sit, the years rusting it away until the distant day when one of the gigantic creatures decided that pushing it into the recycler would really be worth the hassle it would take to accomplish just that.

Agin didn’t mind. The grumpy old kerrati loved the contraption and each passing day that they didn’t recycle the beast meant one more day he got to fiddle with it, disassemble and reassemble it, see if he could get it running once more.

“Agin!” echoed Britta’s sweet voice inside the machine’s aluminum shell. “Agin? Is anybody home?” she called again and again.

“What? What? What?” Agin shouted as he tumbled from a control panel. He grabbed a thick cable with his prehensile tail and hoisted himself upright. “Can’t you see that I’m busy? Now, go away.”

“Oh, thank goodness! I’m so glad you’re home. I need your help, sir,” Britta begged. “This is an emergency.”

The dozer coughed and wheezed. A thin wisp of grey smoke rose from a crack in the housing beneath his paws and he sniffed the air, ignoring the stench of rotting garbage that always surrounded them. “Bah! Electrical, I suspect. This is an emergency.”

“I don’t suppose you would remember me,” she said.

“Yes, you’re Britta,” the old kerrati coughed. He removed his spectacles and wiped them on his grey chest fur. “I am very sorry about your mate’s death, but now if you could excuse me—” He turned and disappeared back into the panel he’d rolled out of.

“Agin!” she called again.

He stuck his head back out. “Jumping geroo, Britta! What the devil do you want?”

“Please sir. I know you don’t like visitors, but this is an emergency!”

“What? What? What?” he grumped, scrambling back out once more.

“Agin, please. My son Tinojji is so sick,” she explained.

“Tin? The one with the spider bite?” he asked. “Oh, just give him some pepcysorin—”

“No!” she shouted, grabbing him with two dexterous paws. “He’s sick with a fever.”

Agin sighed and threw up his paws in frustration. “Oh, very well. I suppose I could fix up something.” His lips drooped in a frown. “Follow me, but for the ship’s sake, don’t touch anything. Understand?” Then he grumbled and mumbled to himself.

“Yes, of course,” she said, following him down a nearly vertical pneumatic hose. “I do appreci—”

“Just how high is his fever?”

“He’s burning hot to the touch,” explained Britta. “He’s soaking wet with perspiration! And he’s making a raspy sound when he breathes.”

“A raspy sound when he breathes…” muttered Agin as he crawled through the dozer’s innards. “Does he have a chill?”

“Yes! He does.”

“And have you wrapped him in a blanket?” he asked with clear doubt in his voice that she was capable of caring for her pups.

“Oh, yes.”

The pair stopped outside the shell of a computer. Black print along the top read “Taskmaster” but the glass display screen was missing. “Follow me inside,” he said, then turning to face her once more, he added. “And keep your paws to yourself!”

Inside the computer, all manner of things were happening—little LEDs blinked on and off, tubes and beakers bubbled with mysterious concoctions. “I’m working … on some very important stuff,” he said in lieu of an explanation.

“Oh yes, I see,” she acceded.

“Oh, do you?” he asked with an odd tone, somewhere between snide and genuinely curious. The old grey kerrati crawled to an aluminum shelf, pausing to shoo away a couple insects that loitered on his workspace. When a larger cotrin beetle wouldn’t go, he lifted in his paws. “Oh, go on. Go on,” he said with the friendliest tone she’d heard from him, as if he were talking to his pups.

Finally, he turned. “Your son has pneumonia,” he declared, pointing upward with one finger.

“Pneumonia?” she asked.

“It’s not uncommon,” he said dismissively, “but you can die from it.”

That was the last thing a nervous young widow like Britta needed to hear. Her eyes opened wide. She looked horrified at the prospect of losing not only her mate, but now her son! “Oh please, the geroo over us, no,” she whispered in prayer.

Agin, largely unaware of how he was traumatizing her, began grinding some herbs with a mortar and pestle. “Your son must stay in bed. Wrap him up in a blanket,” he said. “He is not to go outside.”

“But for how long?” she asked.

“Three weeks.” He thought about it some more and then nodded. “Yes, he cannot be moved for at least three weeks.”

“But moving day is nearly here,” she explained.

All the kerrati—beside grumpy old Agin—lived among the piled trash in the recycler bay. The gigantic geroo were always busy, toiling away with their dozers and trash piles. Moving garbage from here to there, stacking it, unstacking it, and eventually … feeding it into the violet glow of the recycler.

No one wanted to be fed into the recycler! Anything that went in there, never came out again. So, the kerrati kept a careful schedule of rotating their homes every month so that they would be out of the way before the dozers came and cleared their old homes away.

It was a nuisance, certainly, but the vast bay was filled with infinite possibilities—things to see and do, places to live, discarded food to eat. In truth, it was such an easy life that the inconvenience of moving regularly had become more of a social ritual than a burden. The kerrati never cleaned their homes because they knew that no home was ever permanent. Each would be recycled one day.

In fact, they considered their lives one great conveyor belt. Food and shelter rained down from chutes in the ceiling, the geroo organized it, and eventually they cleared it away to make room for more. Over and over, around and around, the cycle continued: birth, life, and death.

But if Tinojji could not be moved, what would they do? How would they transition to a new home and continue to stay one step ahead of the geroo and their dozers?

“You asked my advice, and I gave it to you!” shouted a frustrated-sounding Agin.

“I’m sorry,” Britta apologized just as sweetly as she was able.

“Just make sure he stays in bed,” said Agin. He dumped out the herbs into a slip of folded paper. “Pour this powder into a broth and make sure he drinks it. He’ll recover just fine.”

“Oh, bless you, sir,” she said.

“Oh, bless yourself,” he replied dismissively. “You’ll need it.”

He handed her the packet and shooed her out of his office.

“Thank you. Thank you,” she kept repeating, but he seemed to only want her to leave.

“Yes, yes, yes, you know the way out,” he said, pulling a broken screen down behind her and leaving her alone inside the darkened dozer.

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Reviewer’s link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1B7XV3uBUuKV4lJ3FaW2ViGCUCQ-MbQpnKU9aFF_GS00/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?