THE SKETCHER
Tom Kidd
The artist turns writer here with a rollicking story by Tom Kidd explicating his own terrific cover for this book.
The hapless hero of the story might be thinking, frame artwork, not artists. This artist’s services were much in demand, particularly among the aliens, who considered taking a photograph to be heinous and illegal. So he strictly stuck to sketching to earn a living on their planet. Surely it was all a misunderstanding and he could prove his innocence. But it didn’t help that the aliens also regarded trial by jury as a ridiculous human custom, certainly nothing that they would bother with…
—
My greatest desire was to get the hell out of Dodge. In my case Dodge is a small town in Missouri named Knob Noster. This passion would ultimately lead me to be among the first of my kind to travel to the other side of the galaxy. Perhaps you imagine something rather fantastic, yet it happened in a rather mundane and unintended manner. But please, first of all, and more than anything, dispense with my given name, Laudent Fridolupe Granger, and call me Scribbler. I got that nickname because I like to draw; it’s meant to be derogatory—to demean my efforts to be an artist—but long ago I willfully made that name mine. It now defines me.
At eighteen, I seemed destined for failure; I had no prospects, no future whatsoever. All I had was my art, and it was getting me nowhere. My dream was to go to some distant art college, and become an illustrator. The farther I traveled, the better—maybe even to other worlds. I wanted to escape to someplace the opposite of this one.
And not come back.
Youthful aspirations are like that. They cannot be denied. Their influence is all powerful, all consuming, an unstoppable passion. They make you desperate, drive you to do the silliest and most unlikely of things…
“DRAW BLONKY,” the ad said, “AND WIN AN ART SCHOLARSHIP!” You saw the advertisements everywhere. All you had to do was make a copy of a goofy face in profile and send it off to the experts to judge your talent. When my older brother, Bill, found out I’d indeed done a drawing and sent it in, actually put it in an envelope and mailed it, he called me a fool. Then he came into my room to show everyone we knew how foolish I was.
“Look at my little brother, Scribbler,” he said turning his ring-camera towards me—the feed going directly to his vlog—as I lay on my bed reading. “His head is filled with crazy fantasies about being an artist. He’s so desperate to do so, he answered that stupid ad and did a drawing of Blonky. Look,” said Bill who scanned the camera across my small library of books, “Oz books; children read those.”
I didn’t bother to explain that the books were beautifully illustrated, and that’s what attracted me to them, but I’d certainly read them all. The idea of escaping to somewhere exotic appealed to me. And I’d watched the original Wizard of Oz movie a few times too. Perhaps he was right; maybe I should grow up.
Even my parents worked in turns to expertly belittle me:
“High school is behind you,” said Dad.
“It’s time you start thinking about a real job,” added Mom.
“The world no longer needs artists.”
“Never really did.”
“We won’t support you while you chase this illusion.”
“Your brother has the right idea.”
“His vlog makes real money.”
“Bill pays us rent.”
“Maybe it’s time you started doing that.”
This went on for some time. My parent’s perceptions were intransigent, so it would be a waste of time to argue, if it were even allowed. How is it they were proud of my brother, whose vlog is dedicated to humiliating people? Doesn’t it matter how someone makes their money?
A week later, a very long week later, a faux-gilded envelope arrived from the Super Art School (SAS). It announced that I was one of the finalists in its scholarship program and that an instructor would come to the house to give me further tests. I was excited until Bill, well-trained in the art of disparagement, informed me that the company told everyone they had “great talent” and gave out “scholarships” that were only partial, mere discounts, enticements to coax you to sign on for their expensive by-mail training. The art school refused to use the internet, they had to see the real art, to make sure it was done by hand. Bill went on to tell me it wouldn’t be an instructor who would come by but merely a salesman. That was my brother’s mission in life: dashing any small hope I had.
The slick salesman, Jerry Sam, arrived on the appointed day. He gushed with praise for my art, but due to Bill’s disenchanting words, his compliments fell on deafened ears. Then Mr. Sam gave me his “Comprehensive Test.” He timed this with an old-fashioned stopwatch, something I recognized only from time-worn black & white movies. First, he set several objects on a table in front of me, removed them, and asked me to draw each one from memory. My favorite part of the test was when he told me to use my imagination to create a storyboarded sequence of first alien contact. When he looked at the art I’d done, he exclaimed, “Holy shit!” This didn’t seem like a professional reaction to me, nor did it come across as a good sign. Before I could work up the gumption to question this, he’d gathered up all the art I’d done, stuffed it into a portfolio, and said, “I need to take this back to the office.” Then he immediately left as if he had an unexpected and pressing appointment. He never offered me a dubious scholarship, nor did he quote me a price for the SAS program. I didn’t know what to think.
Things then happened fast. I received a notice from SAS that I’d been accepted for extensive instruction on a full art scholarship. They gave me a day to pack my bags, and to my family’s amazement, a Homer hovered outside our house, its massive, lighter-than-air, doughnut-shaped envelope covering the lawn and a portion of the street. It had been dispatched from MacDill Air Force Base to pick me up and fly me off for my training at Ellsworth Rocket Base in South Dakota. The I-Cixx Corporation, a military contractor, had underwritten my education. They needed people like me. The following week I was a bona fide space artist trainee, and I was about to board a spacecraft that would fly me off into the cosmos. My further art education would take place during my long trip across the galaxy. I would soon be free of Missouri misery. My head spun, my heart pounded with excitement while my stomach churned in anticipation of my future. None of my family members were there to see me off, not even via holo.
No one.
Some small part of me had hoped for a polite familial sendoff, a final group picture, a hug goodbye, an expression that they might miss me in some small manner. Of all people, Jerry Sam was there to say goodbye, and he bid me farewell with a face that seemed sorrowful. In retrospect, what I saw was some regret, some sense of complicity in deceiving me.
Other conscripts would tell me that the I-Cixx Corporation’s search for artists had three requirements for their art contractors: excellent imaginative drawing skills, a desperation to get away, and a substantial amount of youthful gullibility. Check—check—check.
If I’d had someone to write home to, someone who cared, I’d have told them about the intense whirlwind of activity that followed. Once in space, I was transferred to a space station–sized transport ship of alien design. I quickly realized I must be the only human aboard. Indeed, none of my I-Cixx instructors were human, nor was anyone I met. Each day a tornado of information about the universe spun about me. My young mind took it all in and adapted to my otherworldly surroundings. As I learned, we rocketed on beyond the reach of human civilization—and kept going. No one had told me I was taking the local into space with multiple stops that slowed our travel so much it took over a year for me to reach my destination. Then, after all that time, it came to me, the small print in my contract, the harsh reality of line #62. It stated I’d be “embedded” in this part of the universe: I had only a one-way ticket. Goodbye Earth.
Forever.
* * *
Gone now is the starry-eyed kid thrilled to have the opportunity to experience the multifaceted wonders of what lay beyond our solar system. Fifteen years of traveling in space has taken away its sparkle. Mainly, I work with interpreters in our attempts to communicate with the various self-aware species, to understand their cultures, and establish better communication with them. If you were to ask me now, I’d say there are far too many sentient creatures around these days. Wait, that’s unfair of me. My thoughts smack of human bigotry, xenophobia. The world is an intricate mosaic of fascinating creatures we should all be honored to be a part of—“blah, blah, blah,” I said aloud to myself after having remembered the introduction of my work primer. My present, angry thoughts on alien life are more a reflection of my profound frustration with these knuckleheads.
And one insufferable robot.
In ancient times we humans felt all alone in the universe, and we went around forlornly seeking other peoples as highfalutin’ as we saw ourselves. Through organizations like SETI we scoured the skies for extraterrestrial intelligence to no avail. What was it my grandmother used to say? Be careful of what you wish for. Our wishes were answered a hundred thousandfold. It’s like a child eating so many of his favorite candy bars, his gluttony is transformed into a period of profound revulsion for them.
In this part of the universe, it’s wall-to-wall alien civilizations. I know it’s something of a misnomer to call creatures in their own systems aliens, but they come in such mightily weird forms—distinctly alien shapes to my eyes—out here in the Cygnus arm of our galaxy. After all my time here I’ve only been able to categorize a small fraction of the varieties of perambulating, floating, swimming, digging, flying, sailing; then talking, singing, cogitating, philosophizing, hypothesizing—breathing and non-breathing folk in the universe. And they come in so many disgusting forms. Hold on, I take that back, no, not disgusting, heaven forbid, instead, beautiful varieties of life in wonderful and myriad forms. That’s another phrase that comes right from my training brochure. Isn’t that nice?
One important thing the I-Cixx Corporation doesn’t tell its contractors is that interpreting work isn’t enough money to live on; you have to accept many side gigs, extra art assignments, the lesser endeavors to satisfy people’s curiosity about the universe, little things to pad out your income. More importantly, I’ve been saving up the money from those jobs, little bit by little bit, over all the years I’ve been here, for my ticket home. In a reverse of my prior need to escape, my overriding desire is now to go home; well, maybe not home, not back to Knob Noster, Missouri, but Earth. My feeling of goodbye and good riddance has faded with time.
Full disclosure: I’m in a bad mood today, and I’ve been drinking a little. Strike that, a lot. Seriously, what would you do if you were facing your imminent execution? As is tradition, I was offered my last meal, and I chose potables—whiskey…and bourbon, and vodka, and the lovely green fairy, absinthe. As you can tell by my wavering words, they complied with my final wish. At an insane pace, I’ve been guzzling cheap liquor from tiny plastic decanters, now strewn about my cell, and it has fueled my need to draw into a state of furious cathartic expression, disgorging my bile into the pages of my sketchbook. Such is my pitiful and mighty power, the imagination to make fun of the people who frustrate me, who make my life miserable, and portray them as pitiful jesters dancing a humiliating jig that amuses the all-powerful god with His little pencil. I thank the Fates—the bouncing autonetic bubble-guards—who left me my tools for drawing when I explained their importance to my well-being, my very short-term well-being.
I turned to a blank page and, as always, it seemed to ask: what will you draw next? I no longer want to be a white reflection of all, yet nothing; will you make me into something? It was an old-fashioned thing, this paper, yet without it, I’d be barred from doing my work.
There’s a weird quirk among virtually all the alien races, call it a ramped-up sensitivity of privacy, a robust proprietary sense of self, and all of that is backed up by laws with terrible penalties. It came down to one overriding rule—NO PHOTOGRAPHY ALLOWED! If you were caught making vids or using any mechanical device for direct image capture of any creature, anyone or anyplace not your own, you’d lose more than your equipment, perhaps even a limb.
However, drawing and painting is not only encouraged, it is always an honor among aliens to have yourself or your possessions portrayed this way. By holding my sketchbook high as an all-access charm, I could virtually say open sesame and pass through any barrier, like some great nobleman, into the most exclusive and intimate settings. In short, aliens love artists. Just not this one, not now. Murder is frowned on even out here in the hinterlands of space. It doesn’t help me that the attempted assassination was on a beloved stateswoman. Now I am despised. My plummet from favor was steep indeed.
My head drooped, and my eyes fell on my flannel prison uniform. It was humiliating to be forced to wear what amounted to pajamas, with damnably cute black spots, like a child in his new Dalmatian onesie. The cursed clothes even had a flap in the back. All it lacked was a hood with ears and a tail. I picked up my pencil and began to draw myself as a pitiful spotted puppy. Next to the puppy I placed a grinning executioner holding a massive and bloody ax. She was there to decapitate me and make my fur into a dog schmatta. This was the frightening memory I’d dredged up from my childhood, a cartoon about an evil lady who killed people’s pets. To strengthen the composition I added some recently headless dog corpses placed artfully about. Gallows humor.
The door to my cell whooshed open and ended with a loud clank that sent echoes back to me from the catacomb of tightly packed jail cells outside my door. In sauntered my naked-faced mechanical lawyer, Perri. It was spooky how much he resembled the miniature robot drone my older brother, Bill, used to torment me.
“Mr. Laudent Fridolupe Granger.” He always irritatingly called me by my full given name. “I am Perri Bricklayer, Esquire,” trumpeted my robo-lawyer.
“Yeah, yeah, I know, please speak more quietly.”
“I’ve made a deal for you, no execution; you’ll be set free in no time at all.” said Perri, in a self-congratulatory and supercilious manner.
“This is fantastic news. I don’t know how to thank you.” All the tension in my body flowed away. I nearly wept. Perri puffed with pride in his accomplishment.
“Working it out in earthly terms, I believe that I can offer you hard labor for one hundred and twenty-five years. All you need to do is sign this admission of guilt and then I can go on to matters of more significance.”
This evil twist devastated then enraged me. “So, I’m insignificant, a trivial detail to you?”
“It’s like this, based on what I have, odds are I’ll win two or three of my easiest cases today. Yours, I have no chance of winning. You’re a lost cause. Why waste time on you?”
“Listen, you clockwork crook; you expect me to sign this thing that guarantees me years of anguish and pain?” He looked back at me blankly, and gestured for me to sign the document by tapping it with his finger impatiently. I took a swing at him. Unfortunately for me, I connected. THWANG!
“You broke my fucking hand, you metallic monstrosity.” Although I wasn’t proud of it, insults came naturally, spontaneously, sometimes explosively, often alliteratively out of me, primarily when I was drunk, hurt or angry. My foul mouth was very much a legacy handed down to me from my parents. Today my mouth was full of venom. Tomorrow I expected to feel embarrassed by my abusive language. Perhaps not for long though—certainly not if Perri lost this case. I’d heard the death penalty was instantaneous here, at the very drop of the gavel. Any regrets would end there. I sat down hard. Defeated.
“Sir, there’s hardly a metal part to me. Please don’t make preposterous statements,” responded Perri as he waved his hands over his goofy body as if to show me what he was made of.
“Sorry, Perri, you can see I’m having a bad day. You may not take my life seriously, but for some reason, I do,” I said as I shook my aching fingers. He didn’t seem to notice I’d struck him. Although it only hurt me, I felt shame for my act of violence. “Look, Perri, I didn’t do anything wrong. I’m innocent. Get out there and get them to see I’m not guilty of these trumped-up charges. Don’t I get one more appeal? I know they found me guilty, but in this system there’s one more go-around, right?”
“Who’s the attorney here? It’s me, right? Let me handle the law part of this, okay?”
“But I do get another go with the judge?”
“Yes, but I don’t advise it. Take the deal. You’ll be out before you know it and with all that work you’ll do in the labor camp, you’ll be in fine physical shape when you’re set free.”
“I’m thirty-three now. Once I’m ready to be released…hold on, let me add it up…” I pretended to do the math. “I’LL BE LONG DEAD!”
“Such a pitifully short life-span you humans have. Why even bother living if it’s so brief?”
“It’s more than enough time for me to rip your innards out and make a half-dozen actually useful household appliances out of you.” I calmed myself with some deep breaths. “Sorry, Perri, I don’t know if it’s because you’re a robot or a lawyer but the things you say, are, well, terribly insensitive. You will cause me to run out of invectives in response,” I added with a sad smile, knowing my attempt at making light of the situation was undoubtedly lost on Perri.
“Sorry sir,” apologized Perri, “I’ll try to be more…tactful. Maybe we should go over your story again. Perhaps I can find some extenuating circumstance to get you a better deal with the DA, cut fifty or so years off of your prison time—maybe even get you moderately heavy labor.”
“Can I get some coffee? Strong, a bucketful,” I pleaded. “Whatever you’ve got that’ll help clear my spinning, befuddled head.”
“No worries, I brought some with me,” said Perri. “Despite the verbal abuse that is often directed at us…” he paused for emphasis there, “robo-lawyers, we always think well ahead of our client’s needs. Do you have a cup for it?”
I was impressed. But I didn’t see Perri carrying a thermos or anything like that with him. Still, I brought him the single foam cup I had in my prison cell. He then proceeded to (how do I put this?) piss out a bubbling stream of steaming hot coffee for me from an outgrowth that had extended from between his legs.
“Care for some cream?”
“No—No, definitely not. I’ll drink it black.” At that, two small (I guessed one for milk and one for cream?) nozzles in Perri’s chest area retracted.
The bitter substance that had bubbled out from inside Perri’s body tasted like engine oil. “What grade is this, 5W40?” I quipped and waited vainly for a response.
After a moment I asked, “Very well, where should I begin with my story?”
“Tell me everything that happened to you the day before you were arrested, all over again, like I’ve forgotten it all,” said Perri, sitting cross-legged on the floor and putting his head in his hands like an eager child waiting for story time.
“You have forgotten it all, haven’t you?”
“No, not exactly, what I did was erase it all. I figured I’d have no need to remember this failure and I was sure you’d take the deal. Everyone takes the plea deal.”
“That you…remember?”
“I can honestly say that, to my memory, no one ever refused a plea deal.”
“Could you have just erased all the cases that didn’t take the plea deal?”
“I don’t remember.”
Before me was an engine of ineptitude, a wretched entity I could only feel hate for—my only hope. The thought of committing another violent act came to me—but that’s not who I am—I like to think. Also, I lacked a lethal weapon. Instead, I merely began my story through gritted teeth: “Here it is, the story of my life all over again for you to hear one more time and then, I presume, delete. It all began…”
“Wait, stop; I didn’t get a chance to start recording.”
I gave Perri my most I hate you look of disgust, waited a moment, and growled a sarcastic, “Ready?”
“Yes, yes, please, go on,” he said as he waved a circle with his hand in a dismissive manner. “And tell me about your job; you draw pictures, right?”
“Close enough. I’m a universal translator with my art.”
“Why not use existing photographs or art as a form of flashcards to communicate instead of art?” asked Perri.
“Don’t be ridiculous—how could you do that, how could you have the exact right photographs or art ready to illustrate every idea, every point of view, in real time? Not to mention create scenes of the very aliens before you doing things they’ve never done before? Cameras don’t have the creative minds to accomplish that. They can only make what’s already there and nothing that isn’t. Only an imaginative illustrator can do that in the fullness of manners.”
“Ah, I see,” he said, then sat for a moment as if thinking through my explanation. “Now I understand the value to your work,” he added, as if being convinced of this for the first time. That my point of view was accepted so easily by Perri left me feeling deflated. What was I to do with all my examples of professional success I wanted to tell him?
“Right, thanks,” I said, and then added out of suspicion an, “I guess,” along with a mistrustful sideways look, waiting for Perri to add something demeaning.
Instead, he said, “My understanding is that you’re trained not to think in symbols, rather to perceive the world literally. That must be difficult.”
“It’s a gift and a curse. Symbolic thinking is far more efficient but with it you miss out on so much and it’s impossible to build most structural objects from symbolic imagery.”
Perri nodded in an almost human way that he understood. “Yes, of course,” he went on to explain, “centuries ago the court used to use in-house illustrators to make holographic recreations of crime scenes that the juries and judges could walk through. Once the court got rid of the juries, we no longer needed illustrators. Then we got rid of the persuasive, more poetic type, attorneys by replacing them with plain-speaking lawbots like me. With those simple changes, we fast-tracked justice.”
“I have an opposite point of view; you fast-track injustice.”
“Tomato, tomato,” said Perri, pronouncing the word the same way both times. Did he have no understanding of the meaning? Perhaps he’d suffered some blow to his central processor, knocking his electronic brain out of kilter.
“I think you may have some form of mental damage, Perri. Did someone hit you upside your fragile plastic noggin?” He started to answer, but I waved him off. “Never mind, let me ask you this, define justice, and define injustice, please?”
“They both mean the same thing,” he said blithely as if he knew better than I. “It’s like flammable and inflammable, both those words mean the same thing, that something can very easily catch fire, so ergo, justice and injustice must also mean the same thing, right?”
“Right, No. Not right. Very, very wrong.” Consumed with frustration, I turned from Perri, held my aching head and squeezed my eyes shut in an attempt to push Perri’s image from my mind. “Why did I hire this inept robot defender? What did I do in a past life to deserve this?” I said to no one as I paced a circle around the small prison cell while I gesticulated wildly.
“Flammable and inflammable have different meanings?” asked Perri incredulously.
I turned on him. “No, dammit, those two words do mean the same thing, but justice and injustice have opposite meanings. How is it you don’t know this?” I snapped angrily.
“I beg your pardon,” said Perri a bit disgruntled. “The problem isn’t with me; it’s with language. You have to admit it’s a subtle distinction.” How could he see this as only a negligible misunderstanding? So much did I despise this robot. “I have three hundred and thirteen languages in my immediate memory banks. It can be hard to keep them all straight if they’re going to have such arbitrary rules. I say we put aside these semantic arguments for another day.” Like I had another day, I thought. “Please continue; I need more information if I’m to sway the judge.”
My head began throbbing again, and I held it in my hands. I mumbled, “I’m matched up with a lawyer who might get me executed because he says the opposite word for what he means. I’m most certainly doomed. Doomed, doomed, doomed.”
“You’re not making sense. Didn’t you hear me?” complained Perri, “Please, stop mumbling to yourself and tell me more about your silly job. It might help us with your case.”
I was shaken from my deep despair by this outrageous description of my profession. “‘Silly?’ Listen, given all the subtlety of spoken language and all its nuances—to wit, your recent shortcomings with English. We need artists to help communicate. Without us, words will be misconstrued, wars will be fought; species will be made extinct.” At this point, my explanation had become a passionate and strident lecture. “I could become extinct because of a misunderstanding.” As I said that I realized that my anger had brought me to the point of apoplexy. Out of breath, like a fatigued runner at the end of a race, I bent over with my hands on my knees. “Give me a moment, Perri, so I can breathe.” Then I sat down, feeling thoroughly emptied.
“Give me my sketchbook,” I demanded of Perri, and he handed it to me. “Perhaps this will express how I feel at the moment,” I said as I drew. A moment later I handed the sketchbook back to Perri to show him my drawing.
“Ahh,” said Perri, “I believe you wish to kill me. You’ve drawn yourself lunging and piercing me through my middle with a rapier. At the end of the blade is a fanciful gear-driven heart. I believe the correct response here is touché.”
“Ha! Well done, Perri, touché back at ya. If you can be half that clever in the courtroom, I’ll soon be a free man.”
“As per your request, I’ll do my best to use only fifty percent of my brainpower when arguing your case.”
“That’d be more than you used the last time. So deal.”
“May I ask why you use ancient materials like paper and pencil to draw with when there are a variety of drawing and painting devices, using all the dimensions of sight, sound and movement, readily available to communicate with?”
“I use them because they always work. Pencil and paper work in places you wouldn’t work. Also, paranoia is fairly common with my clients so when I meet with these otherworldly creatures, they may even forbid any electronic device that might be used against them. As a robot of the law, you know that the universe has innumerable privacy rules against photography but drawing by hand is legal everywhere. It’s the same reason that no photography is allowed in the courtroom; the two devices I have with the ability to record, my ring and watch, were quickly confiscated when I was arrested. They don’t want the world to see how evil and incompetent you folk are here.”
Rather than argue with me Perri made a small confession. “Things were far better before the system was privatized. Once certain predatory businesses took over, cases were expedited, but primarily, I think, for the sake of more prisoners who then become slave labor. I believe this to be both derogatory yet true. A human I defended once called us a ‘kangaroo court.’”
It seemed to me that my Tin Man lawyer might actually have a heart, but he was still an idiot.
“What are you doodling now?” asked Perri who had just noticed I was drawing.
“Drawing is not just my job but my therapy. It helps me deal with the hard realities of life. You mentioned a kangaroo court and…” I handed my drawing to Perri.
He looked at it, dropped the sketchbook to the floor and did something that startled me. It was the most bizarre thing I’ve seen even with all my experiences out here in the vast cosmos. At first I didn’t quite know what it was. He shook the room in a raucous, gut-busting, robot laugh. He rocked back and forth holding his robot belly. “That baby kangaroo popping out of its mom’s pouch and banging the gavel really tickled my funny circuits.”
“I’ve never seen a robot laugh before. You scared me. I didn’t know it was possible. Aren’t all of you completely humorless? I mean, clearly not, but how not?”
“It was probably some programmer’s sense of humor or lack of it. At some point the cockamamie code was written, and now they can’t get it out of the system. It has been buried in a bunch of dampening code, so it rarely comes out, unless, as I say, stress brings it forward.”
Ah, I thought to myself, stress explains the laugh. That thought made me do something I didn’t want to do, feel sorry for Perri. Poor Perri must have had some serious built-up tension to laugh at my mildly humorous drawing.
“Should I get back to my story?” I suggested to avoid talking about feelings with, of all things, a cyber-man—no, worse—a lawyer.
“Yes, please continue,” said Perri robotically. Back to his old self now. “Tell me about the Sketcher Convention.”
“Ah, my itty-bitty bytes-for-brains bot, it seems you do remember some of what I told you, however vaguely. I attend the Sketcher symposiums you speak of every so often. Their purpose is to bring together drawing-communicators of various species so that we can sharpen our skills. The conventions are quite useful and rather educational, truly a way to see through another sentient’s eyes. And they are also one big alien on alien, eldritch as hell, fu—I mean, love-fest. At such things you can truly have a wild time in Weird Town.” I stopped to brush my hair back and take a swig of coffee. “Or so I’ve heard,” I said with a dishonest shrug, but Perri angled his head doubtfully. “Okay, you’re my lawyer, I’ll be straight with you. The truth is that out here in the infinite height, width and girth of space, a place teaming with all varieties of consenting adults, and my having an open mind, it’s still hard for me to…to…”
“Have sexual relations with someone?”
“Uh, yes.”
“I’d love to hear about some of your, even if rare, sexual interludes,” said Perri. Then he leaned forward in a creepy manner, as if I could whisper the stories to him and it would be our dirty little secret.
“No. Don’t have any to talk about.”
“Please.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Pretty please!”
“Okay, just one. Do you know what Skinners are? They’re hairy or feathered creatures who wear humanlike skin, the opposite of what we have on earth, Furries, who wear animal costumes to—”
“That’s nasty.”
“Oh, now you’re judging me? Who made you a judge? The I-Cixx Corporation tossed me into the universe under their dubious contract, all by myself with little support, with only a brief period of training and zero human contact, effectively leaving me lost in space. Dude, it gets lonely. And, AND, where do I find a femalelike body around here? After a while without any human contact what was once out of the question starts to look pretty good. I’m thirty-three years old, in my prime, among societies of people with only monstrous forms and a billion light-years away from humanity. If I can find among the multitudes of creeping, crawling, climbing, slinking, sliding, sliming folk, one single consenting adult, or a dozen at once, of any sex or even multiple genders, I don’t care; I’m hitting it.”
“Ah, that explains the blow I received earlier from you. That must’ve been a precursor to sex. I could turn myself into a sexbot if you like. You could romance me if you think it’ll calm you down a bit.”
“Yuck! No. Certainly not. Anything but lowering myself into the uncanny valley of soulless, cybernetic sex. That’s sick. You disgust me.” Perri’s blank face looked back at me or looked at something above me. Who can tell? How is it that he can look hurt? Dammit, now I was feeling sorry for him again. Soulless, I called him soulless. What did I know? Maybe robots had souls. Surely there’s a programmer somewhere who has written that application.
I jumped when the door to my cell flew open. When I snapped my head in the direction of the door, I saw a furry thing come lumbering towards us. It was about the size and demeanor of a golden retriever, with a classic set of four legs, yet low to the ground and waddling like a lizard. Its thick tail moved back and forth in a controlled prehensile manner. The striped dog-thing nuzzled itself against Perri, and it growled in my direction. It showed me a mouth of incisors that looked disturbingly human. I’d rather have seen sharp canines. “What’s that?” I asked Perri, pointing at it with open distrust.
“She’s Dr. Susan Calvin, my emotional support animal. Whenever I get upset and start to feel down she comes out to make me feel a little better about life,” explained Perri.
The idea that a robot needs emotional support was a new one for me; that it came in the form of a living, warm-blooded animal was somehow endearing; and that Perri insisted on using the animal’s full name—that it had a full name—was, I had to admit, kind of cute, one hundred percent all Perri too. But doctor? Medical or Ph.D., I wondered.
I decided to make friends with her, “Hi there Susan, you’re a good girl aren’t you, aren’t you?” I said reaching my hand out for her to smell. She snapped at me, and I yanked back quickly.
“See,” said Perri, “she’s making me feel better already.”
Great, now it’s two against one. No, it’s the whole universe against me—the case of Everyone versus Scribbler. I watched Perri pet Susan. He rubbed her behind her ears and, with those affectionate strokes of his hand he made the dog-thing purr. Then I saw Susan extend her tail around Perri’s leg and hug it gently. She was green and gold striped: part dog, part cat, part lizard, and part new world monkey—four pets in one—with what looked like awful human dentures stolen from some nineteenth-century codger lodged in her slobbery mouth.
“Okay, I think it’s time we get back to your story. Tell me what happened to you at the symposium shortly before you were arrested,” suggested Perri.
“Okay,” I began as I eyed Susan who looked as sweet as can be at the moment, yet somehow also appeared as if she’d eat me if given a chance. “Here may be the thing that got me into trouble,” I explained. “At first all seemed quite well, then suddenly it wasn’t. Maybe I insulted someone.
“At night, after all the panels, slideshows and demonstrations, we Sketchers often gather in the bar for what amounts to a mixer, a meet and greet, if you will. To get to know one another, we have a tradition of drawing each other. I’d had a few drinks by the time I met a real beauty. She was a delightful specimen by any standard; she had large opal eyes, long lashes on a perfectly symmetrical face and luscious lips that begged to be kissed. Do you know how rare it is to find an alien with lips? Sure, her ‘hair’ moved about her head like a jar full of earthworms but that only made her more exotic. Okay, I’m calling her ‘she,’ but who knows for sure. Whatever gender this creature was, she/it was stunning. We went to a booth to be alone.
“Out came her charcoal stick and she did a most flattering drawing of me, using the back of her tentacle fingers to blend the dark medium in perfect nuanced gradations for the shadows of my face. The only weird thing about it was that after she did my portrait, she reached forward to touch my face and gingerly push my mouth open to look inside. Then she added a drawing of my skull that featured my small chin and prominent cheekbones next to the picture. Even though I was a bit bemused by the skull, I smiled when I looked at the drawing, and she smiled back. My heart skipped a happy beat or two. She was my first smiling alien. I didn’t know it was possible. I opened my sketchpad and drew her, pouring all of my passion for her onto the page, and I did one of the best portraits I’ve ever done. She took my hand and had me touch her face and look in her mouth. I got the message to copy her example, and I drew my best guess of the bone structure of her face. When I showed it to her, I saw her eyes widened, and she gave me another even broader smile. This looked like it’d be my lucky night. In return, she handed me what she’d drawn in her sketchbook. It was herself and me together in an embrace. I put my name on that drawing and my room number.
“The next step in our courtship was critical. I had to draw myself naked, showing all my bits and pieces with exact anatomical precision at full sexual arousal. The way we draw each other may seem crude but, take it from me, it’s best to be one hundred percent up front (and behind too, if you know what I mean) before you engage in any alien copulation. My hand shook with anticipation as I gave my potential lover the drawing. It was well received with a sly smile and a flutter of her long lashes. Now she’d have to draw herself in the nude. That’s just how we Sketchers do it. I waited as she drew not one page, but two, then three, then, after a pause, a fourth. Leaning forward I could see from my oblique viewing angle that each page held four panels. Was she drawing a complete graphic novel? How much did I need to know about her body? I was beginning to get mighty nervous by the time she finished the sixth page of her storyboard when she handed it to me, with the beginning page out.
“What I saw as I looked through the pages was an elegant and very personal—very graphic—comic of us making love. She wanted it all, and her body was beautifully curved and looked like it would be soft against my own. Although she didn’t have a true mammalian configuration, she was extremely feminine. Then I turned to the fifth page and saw her magnificent forked tail in action. I was clearly about to bed a red-hot sex devil. On the next page it was just one panel showing a moment of mutual orgasm in a most dramatic manner, a close-up of our contorted faces, her long purple tongue curled around my neck. I almost stopped there but then turned to the sixth page where I expected to see a postcoital cuddle. Instead, I saw my head being ripped off and my beauteous lover devouring my brain.
“I looked up at her face, at her giant, perfect alien eyes, now filled with what was sexual craving and she widened her mouth well beyond any human width into a cannibalistic grin. My stomach churned, and I shook my head. She didn’t understand the gesture, so I drew myself with all my clothes on, one hand covering my crotch and my arm holding onto my head. She got the message. A hard pass.”
“Did anything else happen at that gathering that you think stood out? Perhaps there’s a detail you didn’t tell me before that might help you?” asked Perri.
“Nothing that I recall. I drank and drew until my head swam and my hand cramped. It was all the regular kind of visual ‘conversation’ between Sketchers. Then I went to bed. Oh wait, I forgot, earlier I had to go back to my room to get a new sketchbook, mine went missing. All was okay though, someone found it and returned to me before the end of the evening. They could tell the drawings inside belonged to a human, and I was the only one there. There’s a homing signal in the sketchpad too, in case I lose it, but I guess it didn’t work in that room. A lot of those places have signal dampeners.”
“Hmm,” hummed Perri rubbing his chin area thoughtfully. “I need to take a look at those drawings. Do I have your permission to bring in some outside help?”
“Yes, anything.”
“It could be costly.”
“Anything. Do you think my art can save me? I used it once before to exonerate myself when I was accused of drinking the last of my dad’s favorite beer. Once I showed my dad the drawing I’d done of him drinking it himself, with the five empties beside him, he laughed, and said something dismissive like, well, I’ll be damned—nothing approaching an apology. Funny how something like that can still bother you years later.”
I handed him the three sketchpads I had there. “When the authorities came to my room to arrest me they confiscated my other sketchbooks, ‘took them into evidence’ they said. I know you erased your memory, but do you have any idea why you didn’t ask me about this before?”
“No, I don’t know. I’m going over to the evidence room to take a look at what the guards have of yours. Susan can’t go there with me. You don’t mind if she hangs out with you for a while, do you?” he asked, but he was already out my cell door before I could protest. I looked over to Susan who seemed to smirk at me menacingly.
I decided to talk to her, “What kind of lawyer leaves a dangerous wild animal alone with his client? Seems irresponsible, doesn’t it?” I said as I glanced around the cell for anything to defend myself. I pulled on my chair to see if I could get it loose, and use it to keep the vicious animal away from me, but it wouldn’t come free.
Susan just sat perfectly still and watched my unproductive efforts. She followed my hand suspiciously as I reached for my sketchbook but settled down once I started drawing. As I drew her, I noticed Susan’s back paws seemed to be partly webbed. What seemed to be a soft nose was a beak-like snout. You always learn more by drawing something than just looking at it. The finished picture pleased me. On a lark, I said, “Hey, Susan, what do you think?” Then I held the drawing out for her to see.
Instantly she was up on all fours and headed for me. I had nowhere to run. But her eyes, thank the gods, weren’t on me. She went right towards the drawing I held out. I felt a little like a matador waving a small red cape out for an enraged bull. Of course, Susan wasn’t a bull, yet she did have horns, and I wished to avoid them. She stopped right at the drawing, looked at it for a full nerve-racking minute, then turned to me and quacked. Yes, quacked. Susan was part dog, part cat, part lizard, part monkey, and part duck, or so it seemed to me. The only animal I knew that had half those characteristics was a platypus, and they were long extinct. After this encounter we became friends. I got her to do other poses for me, and she loved the results of her portraits—finally, a favorable art critic.
Perri returned carrying a purple spacesuit. He was dressed for court, wearing a white wig and goggles. Since there were no eyes behind those glasses, this was the height of superfluousness, some court affectation, like his headgear. “It’s time for you to appear before the judge—put this on. It will adjust to fit your frame perfectly.” He extended the suit to me.
“Why? Are we going out into the vacuum of space?”
“It’s required apparel, like my powdered wig. Tradition, what are you going to do? You can’t go against a custom many thousands of years old.” When I first saw Perri in the wig, I thought he was mocking Earthly barristers of well before my time, but he’d claimed that we humans had stolen the idea from the galactic court, not the other way around. Despite my doubts, I didn’t know enough about the issue to argue.
I followed Perri’s instructions, removed my Dalmatian pajamas and pulled on the spacesuit. It felt more like a flimsy child’s costume, clearly unsuitable for actual space. Perri helped me put on the ridiculous fishbowl helmet. When he twisted it on, it made the schtook sound of an airtight closing seal. “This feels weird, I don’t think I want the helmet,” I said as I tried to remove it.
“No, you can’t take it off,” said Perri sternly.
“Why not?”
“I meant it won’t come off. You can’t get it off unless the judge decrees it.”
I felt panic rise in me. “Why, the fuck, is that?”
“Remember when I said we fast-track injustice, pardon me, I mean justice, here. When you’re found guilty…I mean if you’re found guilty, you’ll be instantly gassed inside that suit.”
“Gassed to death?”
“Of course. Carbon monoxide or an inert gas, I believe,” said Perri matter-of-factly as if this was simply an issue of discussing the method used. “Then your body will be liquified, dehydrated and absorbed into that nice set of tanks on the back of the Obliteration Suit. It’s all very efficient. Impressive, right?”
“Impressively deplorable. You’ve had me effectively dig my own grave, dress myself in a murder-me suit. By your instructions, I’ve sealed myself into a nightmarish garb of my instantaneous demise. You goddamn, guileful gearbox; I won’t let you kill me. No, strike that, I’m happy to die as long as I kill you first.” I screamed as I lunged at Perri.
* * *
I felt a breeze pushing against my clothes, and I sensed I was moving. When I looked around me it seemed I lay on a plate like an entree about to be served. Standing above me was Perri, the captain of this mini-flying saucer.
“Sorry, Mr. Laudent Fridolupe Granger, I had to quiet you for a little while. You became unreasonably emotional. Come on, get up now, we’re about to appear before the judge,” said Perri.
“Perri, is there any chance you could refer to me as Scribbler?” I asked.
“Certainly not, that’s not your real name.”
“Okay, whatever, let’s get this over with,” I said in defeat. Perri helped me up on my unsteady legs. We were on a kind of dais that moved through the hangar-sized courtroom well above the ground floor. The last time I rode on one of these I tried to jump off, but the dais just grabbed me none too gently by one of its extruding metal tentacles and yanked me back on. There was no escape, my doom awaited, the fast reflexes of this sinister technology assured it.
Another saucer came up alongside us with Dr. Susan eagerly riding on it, her fur fluttering in the wind. As the edge of it touched ours, she ambled over to us. I was happy to see my striped friend, and I bent down to pet her, the way Perri had. With that her inner kitten came out and she purred for me. Having Dr. Susan with me was comforting. She was very much indeed an emotional support animal.
As we flew along through the towering open courtroom, I noticed that the structure most resembled an intergalactic hub, as busy as a beehive. Daily trains, planes, airships and spaceships ferried defendants from all over the universe here for trial and then loaded them back on transport to prison or off to freedom, or dust into space—my likely fate. I saw a frenetic chaos of daises that zipped about with defendants that traveled to levitating benches with judges seated at them in what I’d call court cubicles, and there, people of all alien kinds were then mercilessly judged. Guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, rang out gavel after gavel and it echoed through the cavernous concourse.
Perri reached down and one of my sketchbooks popped up from inside the dais. He handed it to me after opening it to a page. “That’s the portrait you did, right?” he asked. I nodded as I looked at it. “That red dot, that wasn’t part of your drawing, was it?”
“No,” I said and reached forward to touch the red area.
“I didn’t think so,” said Perri, “it’s a deadly poison and meant to kill you on contact with your skin.” I jerked my hand back—who knew what protection my suit offered me? “That’s our defense. That poison is not easily attained and humans can’t handle it without dying in horrible pain, so why would you have it? Obviously, you were targeted too.”
I closed the book and handed it back to Perri, happy to have it out of my hand. Perri seemed confident here, but he had been wrong all too often, I couldn’t get my hopes up.
It became foggy as we entered an area meant for creatures needing extra moisture in the air around them. Then, there before me, was the same judge I’d had before, the bloated, slimy invertebrate who’d previously found me guilty. He was an angry mollusk-man whose people had slid out of the swamp, eating scum along the way, yet somehow the species had become sentient. Despair and dread consumed me. All I could think to do was hug Dr. Susan to me.
“Stand up,” demanded Perri. I stood and faced the judge. He looked ridiculous in his headdress, a woven wool periwig. In a less series situation I might laugh at his odd attire.
“Back again?” the judge asked theatrically. Having fun with a condemned man was his idea of entertainment. The rest of what he said had to be interpreted by Perri. “Jokes aside, why didn’t you take the deal?” Perri repeated in English for me. Then Perri explained my reasons for not taking the deal to the judge and later revealed his explanation to me.
“Sorry,” said Perri, turning to me, “it seems the charge of conspiracy to commit murder has been upgraded to first-degree murder. The person you allegedly put a contract on to be assassinated has been murdered.”
“I don’t see how that matters, I’m already about to be executed,” I countered.
“Slight difference,” explained Perri, “for planning a murder you are executed. If the murder is carried out they add on twenty-five years of physical torture, then they kill you. The suit you have on will immediately start shocking you with jolts of electricity if we lose. That might sound like, uh, overkill, but our society has a preponderance of sadists, and we need to offer them employment commensurate with their talents. They’ll take over your torture once you’re delivered to prison.”
My frail body surely would likely withstand only a minute of shock torture before it, so to speak, gave up the ghost, so I said, “Whatever.” For a second there I thought I saw an ounce of sympathy on Perri’s glossy face.
“If the judge will allow, I’d like to enter into evidence the defendant’s sketchbook. It will illustrate his innocence without a shadow of a doubt.”
Having heard this repeated to me in English, I perked up. Maybe he could save me. My heart now pounded so hard it rattled the ribs of my narrow chest.
Perri pulled out the sketchbook I’d been drawing in while I was in my cell, not the one he’d shown me. What did he have in mind? He flipped it open to the page I’d put all my frustrated feelings into about the judge. Perri was about to show the judge all the awful loathing I felt towards the slug of a man who’d found me guilty. My art depicted horrible, disgraceful, caricatures of the judge, the person I most faulted with my most dire circumstance.
“No, Perri, NO! Don’t show him that.” I grabbed at Perri and begged, to no avail. At first, the judge just stared at the open pages Perri held out. Then the judge snatched the sketchbook out of Perri’s hands and flipped through the sketchbook. I knew my drawings started with me holding a giant saltshaker over the judge and showering him with the mollusk killing crystals. Next, my art showed the judge melting into sludge. In the final scene you saw me peeing on his partially melted form with only his awful periwig and black robe left behind, the peruke now stained more yellow than before. God help me, I’d had a few colored pencils with me, and I used them to add an ochre accent to what would lead to my inevitable extermination.
I watched as the judge swelled, and swelled more. His face went purple. Then he squealed out an ear-piercing screech that made his fellow judges floating around the concourse snap their heads in our direction. His head then rocked up and down while he exclaimed something unintelligible. I cowered behind Perri, nearly peeing in my already clammy Costume de la Muerte.
Perri turned to me, “He thinks that your drawings are funny. He’s laughing. Now that I’ve gotten him on our side, I’ll show him the main evidence that will exonerate you.”
Everything was all going far too fast for me. I couldn’t believe it. Perri showed the judge drawing after drawing from my sketchbooks while they exchanged what to me was clickity-clackity gibberish.
Then Perri turned towards me and removed the helmet from my head. It was just in time for me to see the gavel fall and to hear the judge say in perfect English, albeit a bit viscously “I FIND YOU INNOCENT OF ALL CHARGES.” Then, all of the pressure of the day drained from me, along with the blood from my head, and I fainted.
I woke myself up by speaking aloud, “There’s no place like home; there’s no place like home.” Then when I recognized her, I said, “Oh, Auntie Em, it’s you.” I looked around the room and saw the farmhands and others next to my bed, and I said, “You and you…and you were all there. But you’re no longer Tin-man Robot, Judge Oz and Susan the Sea Lion, you’re all regular human people now.”
The judge, Judge Oz in my dazed mind, looked bemused. “Auntie Em, Judge Oz?” he parroted.
“I guess I’m her,” said a feminine voice. “I’m certainly not one of the other three he named. Oh, I’ll be right back,” she said, “I need to take care of a misunderstanding urgently.”
I opened my eyes to catch sight of the lady but all I saw was a whoosh and a blur as the dais holding her retreated into the fog. The scene before me was my real nightmare rather than my dream of a long-ago place in a black and white world named Kansas. I wanted to go back to my dream, so I closed my eyes again.
“Wake up,” demanded Perri shaking me. “The judge has a dozen more cases to expedite. Get up; let him know you’re okay so he can move on.”
I stood up, and the judge now looked upon me in a way I found kindly, but with mollusk people, you never know. He moved his soft mouth around making his flutter-language. Perri interpreted: “The judge would like to have a meeting with you later. It’s about future work; he has become a fan of your art. Here’s his card.” Perri touched the chip-tattoo on my wrist and contact information was exchanged between me and the judge. Then off we flew on our magic carpet ride for further processing.
“Before I woke up fully I thought I heard what sounded like a woman back there. Was that just part of my dream?” I asked Perri.
“We’ll be meeting up with her soon. She goes by the name of Queen Catherine. As per your okaying it, I hired her team to do some investigating for me. Your sketchbooks, the record of your activities, are what saved you, though. She did the footwork, so to speak, getting further evidence needed to guarantee our not guilty verdict. She’s a determined, hard-working creature with a tremendous brain. I think it’s best that she explain it all to you. We’ll meet her in my office.”
Having heard Perri’s description, my mind saw Queen Catherine quite literally as an alien with a bulging and clear domed skull that you could see a veiny, pulsing brain through. No doubt she was almost all head and traveled about on some sort of contraption with eight metal legs. And, in my mind, she wears an ostentatious crown befitting a monarch.
Perri left Dr. Susan and me in his office. I went to change my clothes and freshen up in an adjoining room. Removing my killing suit made me feel like a human larvae pulling loose of its cocoon. Once free, I could continue my existence transformed, metamorphosed into a better me, with a genuinely transcendent outlook. This time, I promised myself, I’d live my life in a fuller, less shallow, way. As I put back on my regular clothes, I thought, right, I bet everyone tells themselves that after a near-death experience. While I was still shirtless, a squat robot rolled out of the wall. It extended to me a warm, wet hand towel. I rubbed my face and torso with it and then I took a proffered fluffy towel to dry off. Perri was indeed one to think of the little creature comforts his clients might need. Maybe he isn’t such a bad fellow after all.
Waiting for me in the greeting room of Perri’s office was Queen Catherine or what had to be her. I’d describe her as a brain in a custard bowl with six, not eight, insectlike legs to carry her around. She even had the crown atop her brain’s dome, but it was less garish than I’d imagined. I looked around for Perri and didn’t see him. Dr. Susan seemed comfortable with this strange being’s presence, so I was too. “It’s nice to meet you, Queen Catherine. Sorry to have mistaken you for Auntie Em earlier,” I said as a joke, my way of setting a friendly tone. She sat there in silence like she was dead. I looked for the slightest bit of pulsation, some sense of blood flow, in her very nicely displayed brain and saw none.
Then the door to Perri’s office slid open with a swish and a woman walked in. “Sorry, sorry, I had to go to the bathroom. Did I miss anything?”
All I could do was stare.
You know the kind of actress in a movie who walks into a room and all eyes are instantly on her: she’s vivacious, captivating, alluring and devastatingly enchanting? Well, this lady before me is the actress they hired to stand next to the leading lady to make her look even more gorgeous.
This woman was the plainest creature I’d ever seen. She wore the drabbest of suits, her vanilla hair hung flat, the curves of her body were exceedingly pedestrian, on her bland face were round-rimmed spectacles, and she stood all of what was the average height of a human female. HUMAN. I was, in an instant, head-over-heels in love with her, with her stunning, run-of-the-mill normalcy. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, “I must have startled you; my name is Jane Lane. I’m Queen Catherine’s assistant and interpreter.” At that, she touched the side of her head where there was a slim piece of metal that facilitated direct mental communication between her and the queen. “I see that you two have met.” Ah, I now knew that voice. She was the Auntie Em in my dream.
Weakly I said, “It’s nice to meet you too Plain Jane, uh, I mean Lame Dame, no, no, sorry, Jane Lane. You can call me Scribbler, that’s my nickname. I’m sure you know my full real name. It’s likely on the intelli-slate that you’re holding…in your hand there, the one holding the intelli-slate,” I babbled on, and to stop myself, I blurted out, “You’re human!”
“Oh, you poor man, you’ve had a terrible day, haven’t you? Come, sit down so we can go over everything.” She took my hand—I’d not had actual, genuine, authentic human contact in more than a decade and it was thrilling, exhilarating, electric—and led me to a chair. Her skin was so, so soft, so pleasant to touch; she was my angel of ordinary, flamboyancy’s antithesis, the very kind of everyday being I most desperately needed in my far too outlandish life.
Dr. Susan liked her too. She rubbed against Jane’s calf. I felt a tinge of jealousy when Jane stroked the multi-creature’s head in response. I far more needed Jane’s touch than Dr. Susan did, but I buried that rash desire.
As I sat, I noticed my sketchbooks on top of Perri’s desk. My face went red when I saw one opened to the page of the drawing I’d done of the exotic/erotic head-eating monster I’d been in lust with only the night before. Would Jane be envious? Even as I thought that, I knew how ridiculous the idea was.
“Queen Catherine has asked me to explain to you how you were, uh, seduced by this charlatan,” said Jane. My face now glowed a full-on crimson. “Pardon the following ‘joke,’ my boss considers herself something of a humorist: How do you know when you can make a fool of a human male? Answer: When he has a dick.”
I stood and took a bow, accepting this known weakness of my gender. Belying her drab exterior, Jane smiled with such a warming brilliance that it sparked a nova in my chest. Everything I’d been through today was worth it only for the chance of meeting this everyday Aphrodite.
“Yes, ahem,” Jane pulled at her collar. She was clearly feeling a bit uncomfortable with what she was about to interpret, “this alien, with her titillating drawings, engaged you in sensual fantasies, and then she guided you to draw out an execution order for her planet’s prime minister. Because all Sketchers are registered and identified by their art, she couldn’t do the art herself; she had to trick you into it. Note the red star above the face…”
“Wait, don’t touch that—it’s deadly!” I reached out to grab her hand but I was too late, her finger ran right across the poison red mark. Now that Jane would die, I felt like touching the red and taking my own life as well. We’d die together like Romeo and Juliet.
“No,” said Jane with a guffaw, “not deadly anymore, we neutralized it.” Upon seeing the horror on my face, she looked on me with concern. “Oh, my, you were really worried about me, weren’t you? That’s quite, uh, endearing.”
Jane gestured for me to sit back down and her voice returned to business. “Moving on: that red star is the emblem attached to the acting prime minister to denote her office. The woman you drew became her exact double with some physical manipulation. They could’ve easily put out an execution order on the prime minister on their own, it didn’t even have to be a drawing, but they needed a scapegoat, and the schemers considered someone of our human species—being one of the smaller minorities in this part of the galaxy—an excellent choice for a fall guy. You draw extraordinarily accurately, so that made you the absolute perfect choice.”
“Why did she have me draw the skull next to her head, though?” I asked.
“What you just asked is what made Perri’s case for your defense so convincing. You don’t see symbols. In your mind, everything is what it is. Your profession prides itself on this. Sketchers are literal thinkers; you’re trained to be that way. You see a skull as the bones of a head, not as a metaphor for death. For the Garbos’ culture, it’s a clear message to kill the person depicted next to the skull. It helped that they broadcasted the death reward in hundreds of languages as well. Perri argued that, based on the other drawings in your sketchbooks, on how decidedly literal they are, you’d never use such a symbol or, for that matter, anything allegorical as all Sketchers are trained not to do for better communication between species.”
“Now that you mention it, I remember that pirates supposedly used a skull and crossbones as their symbol on their flags. I never understood that. Weren’t they in search of treasure, not partial skeletons?” I said a bit perplexed by this.
“Exactly,” said Jane smiling back at me but not explaining. Then she went on to say in a kindly way, with what seemed like admiration, “You’re such a natural at thinking with only precise pictures, it’s surprising that you ever learned to talk, read and write.”
“Funny you should say that. According to my parents, I didn’t speak a word before I was six, despite a special language coach and several psychologists hired to assess me. Then one day at the dinner table I said, ‘My soup is far too salty.’ My parents dropped their spoons and stared at me in amazement. Then they asked me why it was today that I chose to speak, and I said, ‘Everything has been fine up until now.’”
“You are indeed a strange fellow, and you’re most certainly full of crap.”
Jane cleared her throat, then continued with her explanation of the con job that had nearly put me to death: “The conspirators expected you’d die of the poison, but instead you were arrested, charged with conspiracy to commit murder and incarcerated. While you were jailed they’d emptied your bank account and exhausted your credit to pay the assassins. They were then satisfied that you’d certainly be found guilty and die for their crimes one way or another. Pretty neat trick, eh?”
“The word diabolical comes to mind. How did they, the conspirators, get access to all of my accounts?”
“That’s a rather lurid tale. Let’s just say that one of your, uh, unconventional paramours helped them get what they needed to do it. Let me remind you that I’m interpreting for Queen Catherine when I add, with all your (she insisted I put it this way) sex-ventures that perhaps we should put you in quarantine for a dozen years to see what grows on you.” Jane leaned in to whisper, “She thinks that’s funny.”
“I’ll have myself dipped in iodine and swim through a pool of antibiotics. That should do it,” I suggested. Again, Queen Catherine’s brain sparkled with color at my quip. Jane showed no similar reaction. She only looked worried for me.
“A couple of other things: we helped the authorities catch several of the people involved in this plot, and that came with a rather substantial reward, so we’re waiving our fee. Finally, the Garbos, the alien type you encountered at the Sketcher symposium, the females don’t eat the male’s heads after sex. She just drew that to quiet your rampant coital yearning. Just so you know,” said Jane raising an eyebrow with wry meaning that she then explained, “Sexually speaking though, she’d most certainly have eaten you alive.”
I had a few more questions for Jane, but Perri came in. “Perri,” I said, “I don’t know how to thank you. You saved my life. I’m entirely in your debt.” I walked over to shake his hard, mechanical hand vigorously.
“Very good, Mr. Laudent Fridolupe Granger, it was my pleasure. I understand your accounts are presently locked due to them being compromised, so you have my permission to take your time in paying me.” He then handed me my bill printed out on an elegant sheet of what looked like parchment. It was weirdly anachronistic, but robots are known for their love for archaic and grandiose displays.
Perri had carefully itemized out the bill, noting his hours spent on each task. His memory of all he’d done on my behalf not only seemed thorough but rather…exaggerated. One item line caught my interest. “You charged me a hundred and fifty-two solar-reigns for the warm wet towel?”
“I believe you used two towels,” corrected Perri. “Also, note the laundry fee below that.”
“Coffee at sixty solar-reigns a cup? For that dubious swill? You charged me over two thousand to rent the goddamn execution suit, I get charged for my own obliteration inside a portable disintegration chamber?”
“Well, I have to make up for all the times I rented it when the client couldn’t pay due to them being gassed and vaporized before I was able to present my bill. That should make that fee far more understandable. Also, the dry-cleaning cost for the sweat-inundated thing you wore was substantial,” countered Perri. “I just noticed I forgot to charge you the extra fee to print your bill on faux-parchment.” With that my robot lawyer made all the good feelings I had for him dissolve away.
Barely containing my displeasure, I scanned to the bottom of the bill and saw the shocking astronomical total. “PERRI!,” I yelled, “You batshit bag of bolts, I’m not paying this outrageous sum!”
“Quack, quack, quack,” barked Dr. Susan Calvin, who was aroused by the commotion.
“Hold on,” said Jane who walked over to Perri. “Scribbler works for us now.” As she waved her hand towards me and turned to give me a wink. “As such he should get a twenty-five percent discount on your fee. Furthermore, as Queen Catherine has just reminded me, we’ve withdrawn our fee for the investigation. Can I see the bill?” she asked extending her hand towards me, so I gave it to her. “Ah, I see it here under “Special Services.” Let me draw a line right through that.” She did so with a pen. “Also, this doesn’t apply, nor these other three items now.” Jane drew lines through them as well. “Please add up the new total for us,” she asked as she handed Perri the bill.
Jane’s defense of me made me love her even more. She is the girl for me; I decided this now without any reservation.
“Mmm,” grumbled Perri. “Okay, how’s this look?” he asked in a perturbed yet resigned manner.
“If you take another ten percent off, Queen Catherine would be happy to pay the bill in its entirety now.” Jane then held her intelli-slate to me and said, “Sign this contract, as we’ve already agreed,” and she gave me another wink, “to become our illustrator-communicator, and art investigator, so you can work off your debt to us.” I happily made the deal because I knew I would now work beside Jane. That would be heaven.
Throughout all of this, Jane had been leafing through my recently returned sketchbooks. It pleased me to see her smile, laugh, grimace and look thoughtfully at my work. More than anything, that’s what an artist wants, a reaction, no matter what, even bringing someone to tears, but she saw something more in my work than that. “Perri, look at this, please,” asked Jane as she turned the page toward him, “what do you see?”
“I see three Gordons on vacation, sitting on the beach. They seem to be enjoying tropical drinks. Am I missing something?” the robot asked.
Jane responded with an order: “Activate protocol, retrieve data: #Y1013130.” Perri made a ding sound in response and stiffened. “Do you recognize any of these Gordons? Access all court databases.”
“Searching—searching,” said Perri more robotically than usual. “Yes, all three were convicted of slave trading and sentenced to fifty to seventy-five years hard labor. They should presently be serving that time. The sketch must’ve been done before they were convicted. Let’s see, that was twenty years ago…”
“Perri, exit search,” ordered Jane. Perri returned to full awareness with that. “Based on the date on this drawing,” Jane pointed to it. “it seems these Gordons have escaped, or they were never imprisoned at all. Scribbler’s work for us is already paying off. These three were part of our investigation, but because they were supposedly in prison, we discounted them. This mystery has grown considerably.”
“That’s an exclusive club where I drew them. I was only let in because I’m an artist, and a card-carrying, professional Sketcher, and, as you know aliens love artists, they can’t say no to us. Isn’t this great,” I said, to point out my added value to the team.
“Queen Catherine is concerned that if we don’t all get to work on hunting down these criminals right away that there may be more murders,” said Jane. “You’re likely still on the hit list of the conspirators, Scribbler, so you have a vested interest here.”
I sat down hard when a shiver went through me; I felt as if was wearing the awful Obliteration Suit again. Then the feeling passed, and I looked up to plain Jane and smiled. With her there I’d happily walk through the valley of the shadow of death, all would be well—I will fear no evil.
Yes, Death, Perri had saved me from his scythe. I decided to be the better man, swallowed my pride and, before leaving his office, I made sure to apologize for my earlier outburst and respectfully thank Perri one more time. He seemed genuinely appreciative of this. Despite that, it was good to know I’d not have to see this annoying robot again.
* * *
The next day I received a message from someone I’d nearly forgotten, someone who’d been in my life for the briefest of times—yet, he’d changed my life in the most profound manner. For a minute I stared at the name—Jerry Sam. His note requested that we meet at the Franklin Center Hotel. Seeing his name completely out of context, I thought, who is Jerry Sam? Then it came to me—the salesman who tested me after I’d submitted my art to the Super Art School all those many years ago. My mind flashed back to his sad face on the day I’d rocketed away from earth. This invitation had me more than intrigued. Why would he contact me now? I, of course, accepted his invite. What reasonably curious person wouldn’t?
We met in the lobby of his hotel and he greeted me in a warm avuncular manner, as if I were truly an old friend or relative. He suggested we take a walk through the hotel’s garden where he would explain the reason for this meeting. As we walked along he named the flowers and plants on display and said he’d chosen them himself. Was he the hotel’s gardener? Would I insult him if I asked him that? More than likely he was the hotel’s manager. I decided to give him a curious look and hope for an answer. It didn’t work so I decided to just go ahead and make a fool of myself. “Are you a gardener now? That seems a drastic change of profession.”
“Ha, sorry,” he said chuckling. “My company owns the Franklin Hotel chain.”
“Impressive!”
“Thank you. Please, let’s get down to business. For many years I’ve carried a heavy weight of guilt regarding my involvement in sending you to space,” he explained, “and I wish to make amends. I made considerable money recruiting artists to travel into space. Each young person I persuaded to sign the company’s damnable contract brought me a bonus and residuals. That money and some lucky investments have made me a wealthy man. As such I bought back all of the contracts that I had my artists sign and I’m releasing them from them. You were the first artist I recruited, and you’re the last of the artists whom I sent into space. I’ve come to you last because you were sent out far—farther into space than anyone else was. Today, the greater burden of my guilt will be lifted if you’ll accept this amount as recompense for my transgression.” He handed me an envelope with a notecard in it; a very large number was written on it. It amounted to many times my lifetime earnings. I was flabbergasted and it showed so much on my face that Jerry laughed aloud.
“I accept,” I exclaimed once my shock subsided. And with a shake of his hand to seal the deal the money was in my account.
“That will be enough for you to return home, and to live a fine life of some luxury, but take this as well.” He handed me another envelope. I opened it and removed a fanciful ticket for a luxury room on Lenoria Rocket Lines. “That company issues paper tickets merely as a keepsake. It’s pretty, isn’t it? Your flight home is already arranged for you whenever you’re ready to leave. Giving that ticket home to you helps me feel as if I’ve returned your life to you.”
After that we talked a little about my adventures as a Sketcher. Then he told me of our homeworld, how much it had changed during my absence. It sounded wonderful. He showed me videos of what seemed to be a virtual utopia. I knew that things were better, but this was an astonishing change, and the first I’d seen of it.
We parted, and we both promised to stay in touch from time to time. I returned to my small and dingy apartment, a new man, a wealthy man—a man now with the means to be fully in charge of his future. My fairy godmother, a man named Jerry Sam, had released me from my life of hardship. I set the rocket ticket on my dresser and looked at it for a while. Jerry was not so much a fairy godmother as a Glinda the Good Witch; that ticket was my Ruby Slippers. It offered me a return to humanity and the good life. I pressed my thumb on the ticket to call up the spaceline, and pressed my finger down on my wrist-tat to have it cashed in. Checking to make sure that the money had been transferred to my account, I tore up the metaphorical—and most defunct—ticket in half and threw it into the trash.
I went out onto my balcony to look at the stars. They gleamed down at me, and I gleamed up at them while I pondered my now bright future. The viz-con in my pocket vibrated so I set it on my patio table and answered.
Before me glowed Jane’s face. “Hi,” she said, “I want to bring you up to date, have a face-to-face, post-hiring talk and discuss our plans for how to proceed on this new case.”
“Okay, but first, let me tell you what just happened. I very much need to tell someone; it’s too incredible to keep to myself.” I began to tell her about my meeting with Jerry Sam. Once I got to the part about my new wealth, and receiving the ticket, she interrupted, “So, you’re leaving us? I’m sure Queen Catherine will let you out of your contract without…”
I then interrupted her, “No, I don’t want out of the contract. I’m staying. I cashed in my ticket home.”
Surprise showed on Jane’s face. “I’m happy to hear that,” she said with a pleased look on her face.
“I’m happy to hear that you’re happy to hear that,” I said with a broad smile.
“Then we can be happy together,” Jane smiled back. Yes, very much together, I hoped.
“Oh, then we need to get down to business now, don’t we? To start, I thought I’d let you know that Perri will be working on the new case with us.”
I suppressed a groan.
—
Tom Kidd is best known as an illustrator. The story he’s written for this book is his first sold piece of fiction. He has written four nonfiction books on art: The Tom Kidd Sketchbook (1990—Tundra) and Kiddography: The Art & Life of Tom Kidd (2006—Paper Tiger), OtherWorlds (2010—Impact) and How to Draw and Paint Dragons (2010—Quarto). His art has won him a World Fantasy Award (Best Artist 2004) and eight Chesley Awards. As a concept designer, he has worked for Walt Disney, Rhythm & Hues, and Universal Studios. He has illustrated two classic works of literature: The Three Musketeers (1998—William Morrow) and The War of the Worlds (2001—Harper Collins). Tom is the official artist for the “1632” series of alternate history books by Eric Flint and others, published by Baen Books, for which he has done over thirty covers—and counting. Highlights of his other projects include a deluxe illustrated version of The Dying Earth and the Book of Babel series by Josiah Bancroft, both for Subterranean Press. For Centipede Press he has illustrated Swords and Deviltry by Fritz Leiber, Dark Crusade by Karl Edward Wagner and a deluxe illustrated edition of Elric: Fortress of the Pearl by Michael Moorcock. One final credit for Tom—he painted the cover for this collection.
You can see an alliterative selection of his art here: https://tomkidd.myportfolio.com.