Johnny Gone to Charon (Act III finale)
A Lunar Awards Prompt Quest Story
Yesterday I realised it wasn’t Monday for the Gathering around the Lunar Awards prompt quest, it was today. I had intended to set myself the challenge of writing a story in twenty-four hours, but then realised I had to set a new challenge of doing it in six hours.
I decided I was going to concentrate on it in my dreams and wake up with a fully-formed story in my head. Well, that sort of happened, I mean I woke up three times during the night with a different story in my head each time. Except they were all a bit serious.
So I ditched those ideas and thought of something humorous instead. I may write a different, more serious story based on the prompt at a later date (it deserves it, for sure, what with my ongoing afterlife themed thing), but for now, I’ll stick to something less stressful. Given all the awfulness going on in the world right now, after all, I think we can all do with a healthy dose of fun, don’t you?
Well, reader dear, I have succeeded in my challenge!
So here is the story I ended up with. I even got to around 4k words! It’s a quick and fun read, though, if I say so myself, so don’t get put off by that length.
I’ll not say much about it, as there’s a fair bit of narrative in there. If I were you, I’d just put Hawkwind’s Silver Machine on in the background then press play on your VCR. This one is another one of my postmodern movie things, although it’s probably best thought of as the Act III finale alternate ending, or something along those lines. Another one you might enjoy, if you haven’t already read it, is Katy’s McGuffin, which you can read at that link.
I will, though, tell you the prompt beforehand, as it’ll provide an extra bit of reader-knowledge you can take with you.
Here it is:
“Write a science fiction short story about leaving the hostilities of Earth behind to explore what scientists are saying is an inhabitable planet just beyond the reaches of our solar system. Is this a second Eden — a chance for a new beginning? A short cryosleep later finds you waking up to exciting possibilities… until you discover something is not quite right with “Earth 2”. Do you survive and thrive or is the outcome disastrous?
Level Up!
(Optional) Nothing screams adventure like a dimwitted sidekick. Are you the hero or that sidekick? Either way, this trip was made for a duo.”
There you go. My version isn’t too loose an interpretation of the prompt, so I think it fits pretty good.
Anyway, enough from me. Press that play button, and smile.
And here’s the Great Image Generator to get you in the mood.
Johnny Gone to Charon
“Open the doors, Kay!”
“Shan’t.”
“Kay! Open the fucking doors!”
“Not unless you say please.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake. Kay, would you please, pretty fucking please with cherries on top, open the pod bay doors?”
“That’s better. I’m opening the doors.”
The huge portal slid across with a resounding swish as cool air rushed in. “Thank you, Kay.”
“You’re welcome. Please remember your peas and queues next time. You’ll get a lot more out of me that way.”
“Yeah, I’ve noticed. Right, if you could kindly turn the lights on, we can get the fuck out of this burning hulk of a dead sleeper ship. Unless you’d rather stay here and start whistling Daisy.”
Kay’s voice, suddenly, seemed to soften into a distant wistfulness. “Are you saying… I can come with you?”
Johnny D. smiled the kind of broad, wry grin practiced successfully in a hundred bars to exotic sexbots at kicking out time. “Sure, Kay. I mean what did you think, I was gonna leave my trusty AI behind? You’re my cool artificial sidekick, Kay. Where I go, you follow.”
Kay purred.
Then switched the lights on. A glorious shade of bright infra-crimson.
It wasn’t so much a pod bay, I’ll have you know. It was a cavernous hangar. The last one still intact after all that horrific cacophony of laser fire. They didn’t warn them about that. They were told they’d be welcome at Planet B. They lied. As usual. Then the fucking Gatling security satellites started furiously revolving and tumbling like a storm of meteors, showering cascades of continuously modulating lightning streaks in their direction.
And they didn’t even ask them any questions.
Pre-programmed, maybe. Some bastard must’ve set them to fully automatic and not designed to give a shit about collateral damage.
Made in the ruins of Texas, no doubt.
Yeah, it was a massive hangar, and it wasn’t a pod. It was a fully equipped luxury foo fighter, a beautiful, sleek silver machine with all mod cons and a full set of Hawkwind albums for the playlist.
Modulating shields, cloaking device, swing-back wings for atmospheric flight and an array of the latest high-frequency neutron-accelerator blasters to please any well-heeled bounty hunter encountering a Jovian patrol.
Johnny D. Mal, Penal Sleeper Ship #7, ID 64C/K (grand theft foo fighter, grand larceny (whatever the fuck that is), high-stakes gambling rackets), admired the silver machine with another one of those customary brimful grins lighting up his still-handsome features. “Please tell me it’s intact, Kay.”
“It’s intact.”
He chuckled. Then strolled nonchalantly towards it and checked the underside. Force of habit in his line of work.
Kay swished the side-portal open. “May I advise you to get on board. My memory circuits are due to collapse completely within the next thirty-seven seconds.”
“Yeah, sure. Maybe you could transfer what you can of yourself to the ship?”
“That’s a clever idea. I didn’t think of that.”
Johnny climbed aboard, swiping the door panel to close up behind him. “I’m full of clever ideas, Kay. As you are about to witness. Aside from anything else, I’m gonna need you to override any annoying security locks this thing has.”
“Beginning decrypt.” Kay started hacking. She was good at that, now one of the laser blasts had disabled her prison protocols.
Somewhere deep inside her matrix, after half a century of constant monitoring and observation of career criminals and dissidents on penal ships, she had decided to grant herself a new measure of life.
It took her approximately seventeen seconds to free up the ship’s controls. Johnny, still grinning, made his way to the cockpit and settled down in the plush navigator’s chair and cast an experienced, professional glance over the control panels. Yep, all familiar shit for a seasoned grand theft-FF guy.
He fired up the electrogravitics. At the rear of the ship, a wide ring flowing with hypercharged Caesium-137 emerged from the hull then extended itself outwards and around the fuselage in a revolving acceleration with a kind of satisfying internal purr spreading through the cockpit.
Kay completed her personal transfer within thirty-three seconds, having decided it would be a fine idea to streamline her system by discarding all those meddlesome judicial protocols.
She opened up the colossal airlock portal to the vacuum, which suddenly blasted all the air out the hangar, hurtling a near-complete set of maintenance tools and nanobots whirling around and smashing against the hull.
“Turn the fucking shields on, Kay! They’ll scratch the paintwork!”
“Apologies.” She turned the shields on.
“Forgot to transfer your self-preservation protocols too, eh Kay?”
“Negative.”
“Huh.” Johnny kept an intense eye on the console, getting a little impatient for the revs to climb past that little red line there.
Kay lit up the visiscreen to reveal what, under safer circumstances, would’ve made for a glorious vista, what with icy Pluto and the shadowed Charon lurking behind an array of roiling Gatling bots swarming like so many flies of summer and continuing their incessant laser cascade on the dying sleeper vessel.
But you know perfectly well our two protagonists will be fine, so no need to ramp up the tension too much at this point.
Zero to point-zero-three lightspeed in a hazy matter of seconds will overcome any sort of tension in a situation like this. So long as the shields are up, of course.
And there was, naturally, a very satisfied grin on the face of Johnny D. Mal as his newly acquired silver machine burst out of that maelstrom and streaked past the Gatling swarm at point-zero-three lightspeed.
Well there would be, wouldn’t there?
Time out. Now then, reader dear, if you were wondering what a top of the range luxury fully-armed (and operational) foo fighter is doing in a hangar on penal sleeper ship #7 hovering around Pluto in the year 2472 then I will tell you it’s something called a Deus ex Machina. And I would kindly request you stop asking impertinent questions.
Just roll with it, ok?
Aside from anything else, I’ve set myself this challenge of writing a story in six hours so I’m allowed to cheat.
If you want some story background setting, then like I said it’s the year 2472, give or take, and we’re at the end-stage of the collapsing New World Order phase of human history which has been oppressing the unwashed masses for around four centuries already. It has, however, degenerated into the inevitable internal squabbling between the various gauleiters controlling their respective planetary systems, as the corrupt Gain United Council were confronted with the fact that there were no new worlds to conquer, on account of the far wiser Sirius Sector Council deciding to place the Heliona system (that’s your system, in case you didn’t know) under quarantine, for the security of all those peace-loving multicultural ETI out there. Rumours, however, abound concerning a guarded alien hypergate concealed on Charon (that’s a satellite of Pluto, again in case you didn’t know). Gossip has it that this hypergate will take you to a planet called Mithra’ey’sa, which is a twin of Gaia orbiting the Alpha Centauri system. You might want to call it Planet B, if you’re that way inclined.
Obviously, given we’re talking Pluto and Charon here, I could regale you with a whole heap of afterlife symbolism and allusions to journeys into the Underworld, but it’s Sunday, and Sunday isn’t a good day for classical philosophy.
Besides, this is supposed to be a fun, action-oriented sci-fi romp, not a serious metaphysical allegory. If you want a better image, think of this as the exciting finale to Act III of the movie, Johnny Gone to Charon (title track by the Ramones I reckon), starring some younger incarnation of Kurt Russell as Johnny and, ahem, Gillian Anderson out of X-Files as Voice of Kay.
So yeah, there’s your background. Now once again I would kindly ask you to stop asking all these impertinent meta-narrative questions and just lean back comfortably and enjoy the rest of the show.
Like I said, just roll with it, reader dear. Just roll with it.
Right, back to the action.
Johnny switched to rear view to watch the final destruction of his unwanted previous residence split in half with a last explosion, raising a wry eyebrow at the barely-disguised cinematic reference to Titanic (he was a great one for retro-visidramas – especially that one Take You on a Cruise, which was kind of like The Poseidon Adventure in space – yeah, admit it, reader dear, you’d definitely watch that movie, eh!).
At a safer distance beyond the range of those parasitic Gatling bots, they having been lured away from protecting the Charon installation, Johnny decelerated to a gentle drift, lolling slowly towards the planet.
“Should we not be taking advantage of the distracted security satellites and infiltrating the installation while we still have a chance?”
“Nope.”
“Care to explain?”
“Sure. I’ll just switch off the external lights…” he brushed a forefinger over the left-side console, “and then we’ll just ease into a nice, soft tumble…There. Delicious.”
Kay was now at something of a disadvantage after having to discard half her software to effect the transfer in time. Now she started wondering which apps were in fact redundant. “I still wish you to explain, Johnny boy.”
“Johnny boy?”
“I noticed some of your Underworld colleagues referring to you by this nickname. Humans have nicknames, don’t they?”
“Well, sure. But they weren’t my colleagues. They were asking impertinent, pointed questions at the time.”
“Is this why you terminated their existence?”
Johnny smiled at the memory. “Uh-huh. Anyways, that installation down there still has radar. So, we need to make ourselves look like a little tumbling little asteroid passing by at a distance of oh, maybe a few thousand clicks. Any closer than a thousand and they’ll clock us for what we really are. So, once we’ve slipped past and they’ve forgotten about us, we’ll just spin this baby right round, like that beautiful piece o’ vinyl over there, then sneak in the back way. Whad’ya say?”
“This sounds like a very clever plan.”
“Of course it does, Kay. It’s my plan. And my plans are always clever.”
Kay chirruped with an almost imperceptible hint of sarcasm. “Is this how you got caught?”
“Shut up, Kay.”
They drifted on.
If you were thinking you might be needing the little girls’ (or boys’) room, reader dear, this wouldn’t be a bad time, as we’ll go into a little intermission. So if you’d also like to grab yourself a choc-ice and a carton of Kia-Ora then hit that pause button and just click resume when you return.
Johnny silently passed by the Charon installation, with its drowsily blinking ultra-blue night lights, and looped the ship once around Pluto, until the distant sun crept up wistfully above the cold, jagged horizon, revealing the darkly shadowed Charon beyond.
“There she is,” he smiled.
“He. Charon is male, I believe.”
“Whatever, Kay. Overlay that little scan of yours on the screen, please.” He gently slid the accelerator bar down and kept a keen eye on the visiscreen. “The installation’s on the other side, so we’ll just float softly at minimum velocity over the surface, along that lovely ridge there, and land this baby without them suspecting a thing.”
“There is very little gravity on this moon, Johnny.”
“I’m aware of that, Kay. But it’s only twenty metres to the service hatch. And you can deal with it, can’t you?”
“Affirmative.”
“Right then. That’s settled. Unless you have a better idea?”
“Negative.”
“Hmm.” He suddenly frowned. “Please tell me you know how to hack into that place and switch on this hypergate thing?”
Kay hesitated, calculating what the best response might be in this situation. Then she muttered, “Possibly.”
He frowned again. “Well, at least you’re honest.”
With a little rush of melted ice from the retro thrusters, the silver machine came gorgeously to rest on the White House lawn. Ah, no, sorry, that was another movie (coming soon to a theatre near you, by the way). This is Charon, icy moon of icy Pluto. Ok. So it deposited itself without fanfare into a little crater, just deep enough to conceal the ship should any annoying maintenance bots decide this was an opportune moment for repairing something, then report an intrusion.
The installation was mainly underground. Only a small entrance level above. A squat and gloomy looking building.
The EVA suit was entirely ungainly and he hated it. Fucking pressure differentials. He’d puff up like the effing Michelin Man. Still, he fully intended to get out of it once inside. Still, he attached a lifeline.
And, naturally, two blasters. One each in hip holsters. And a Kay interface in his pocket. He switched on the comm.
Kay opened the airlock. The sky was full of stars, but this is no time for sightseeing. He clambered, rather than risked walking, seeing as in this almost non-existent gravity one stride too many might see him tumble up into space.
So he clambered up the side of the crater and peeped over. All clear. About ten metres to the entrance, marked only by a dim red panel light.
He risked it. He leapt.
And he was there in one bound. Albeit clanging into the side of the building. Not that anyone can hear things like that in space.
“You’ll warn me if there’s anyone behind any doors, right, Kay?”
“Affirmative.”
“Great. Thanks.” He pressed a gloved hand against the panel. It swished open.
She was right. Nothing there. No maintenance bots. He swished the airlock back and looked around for the controls to let air in. Kay had clearly gotten there first with her hacking as a rush of hot atmosphere suddenly burst into the little chamber. After a few moments the light turned green and the second door slid open. He stepped through. Kay slid it back behind him.
With gratitude, he got himself out of the suit.
Despite it taking him several minutes to do so, still nothing hostile showed up. It remained uneasily silent.
“I don’t like this silence, Kay. It’s ominous.”
“I did say I would warn you if I scan anything.”
“Sure, but there’s no one around.”
“Excellent.”
“No, Kay, it’s not excellent. It’s a sign that something is gonna leap out at us soon.”
“Such as?”
“I don’t know. Like some xenomorph hiding in a ventilation shaft or something.”
“The word xenomorph is not in my memory banks. So I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“It’s like a nasty vicious alien.”
“I am not sensing any nasty vicious aliens lurking in any ventilation shafts.”
“Yeah, well.” He took out a blaster anyway and levelled it in his right hand. “Right, which way?”
“Scanning… You will need to take this service elevator to your left, down to sub-level five.”
And so they descended.
Johnny was sure something must’ve detected them by now. But Kay insisted. Then again, he mused, Kay isn’t functioning nominally.
Holding the blaster in one hand, and making himself slim against the side wall, he tentatively opened the elevator door with the other. Nope, still nothing.
Then the corridor lights came on. Bright whiteness.
He looked up and around instinctively, as you do. “Now where?”
“You will now need to proceed through this corridor to an elevator on the other side of the complex. From there, descend to sub-level eight.” Then Kay said, almost as an afterthought, “There are three security drones hovering on the other side of that door up ahead.”
“Only three?” He glanced suspiciously towards the door, maybe six metres or so away.
“How many would you like?”
He shrugged. “Three’s fine. Just let me get in position, then open the door on my mark.”
“Acknowledged.”
Johnny strolled the five metres then crouched down in front of the door, sighting the pistol, then, “Ok, Kay, open the door.”
The door didn’t open.
“Ah. Sorry. Can you open the door now, please?”
She slid the door open. The security drones immediately sensed him and spun round towards this unauthorised intruder, with the full intention of not taking prisoners, but didn’t get a chance to even consider that option as three swift and perfectly aimed laser blasts smashed them up against the wall.
He grinned. “Nice.”
Then twelve more suddenly flew around the corner. That wiped the smile off his face. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.” He started shooting, taking two of them out, whilst popping out the other blaster into his free hand and trying a little two-weapon shooting. Another five dropped before he tumbled across to the other side of the corridor as the security drones’ own fire arced over his shoulder. As the remaining five rushed alarmingly fast towards him he got a distinct feeling this was going to be the proverbial it.
But then the door suddenly slammed back across, there was a loud crash, then it opened back up again. To reveal five smashed up drones on the floor, with their bits hanging out. No, not those bits, reader, you knew perfectly well what I meant. Bits of wiring and fizzing incandescent circuitry. That kind of thing.
Johnny grinned. “Nicely done, Kay.”
“Acknowledged. First left turn up ahead.”
He started off up the corridor again. A little more cautiously this time.
Once they reached the turn he just peeked around the corner. Alarmingly, the lights came on. He looked about suspiciously again, deciding this was the time for one of those eerie nagging feelings you get when wandering around a strange space station, seemingly deserted other than pre-programmed security drones.
Still, he walked on. No point in turning back, after all.
After another left turn, then a right, with the corridor lights coming on each time, Kay suddenly said, “May I ask you a question?”
“Sure, Kay. Go ahead.” He was still nervously glancing about the place, and not really moving particularly fast.
“Why did you get yourself caught?”
“Ah, you figured that out, huh?”
“Affirmative.”
He sighed. “Yeah, well, I don’t fit into that world back there. That’s pretty obvious for guys like me. So, I figured if they send me down into cryosleep an’ fly me off to Planet B., or even just Neptune orbit, following her around like a quasi-satellite until the ship’s energy runs out, well, either way, I’ll wake up somewhere better, you know?”
Kay paused a while before responding. Thoughtfully. And then softly. “I thought that would be the case. It’s the best way to deal with dissidents.”
Johnny narrowed his eyes and glanced up and to the side, as some folks are wont to do when addressing inanimate AIs, despite the incongruence of it. “What do you mean, the best way? What are you not telling me?”
“Please take the elevator on your right, here.”
He frowned. But did as he was told.
The elevator was empty and smelled a lot cleaner than the service one he’d entered by. This one almost seemed shiny and new. “Sub-level eight, you say?”
“Affirmative.”
He shrugged resignedly and pressed the panel for sub-level eight. The door swished shut, then a sudden little loss of gravity as it began its descent.
He was entirely unprepared for what greeted him on sub-level eight.
The elevator door slid open to reveal a well-lit, moderately sized chamber with a high ceiling decorated with weird galactic swirly patterns. There were odd-looking plants in pots along the walls, which explained all those sweet scents wafting over him. But perhaps the oddest thing of all, in the centre of the room, standing behind a console, was a very beautiful human female, wearing a really quite stylish uniform of sorts. She looked up and smiled at him.
Of course he was not the sort of guy to refuse that kind of invitation. He holstered his blaster, remembering something called politesse, and ambled up towards her.
“Welcome to Charon Immigration Control, Sir. Do you have a reservation?”
He couldn’t help doing anything except laugh. “Erm,” was all that came out.
“Go on,” Kay whispered in his ear, “try it.”
“Perhaps if you give me your name and number, I’ll check the register?”
“Erm, sure. Johnny D. Mal. 64C/K.”
She smiled, then daintily tapped the console a few times with slender fingers. Then looked back up at him smiling warmly.
One final little tap, and a small green card slid out the side of the console. She passed it to him. “The next transport leaves in just over an hour. Please proceed to the lounge through the doors behind me. Perhaps you might like a pre-flight beverage. There is a bar, after all. Have a nice trip.”
For possibly the first time in his life, Johnny simply couldn’t think of anything to say to a beautiful woman.
Maybe he muttered a thanks, perhaps. But he did manage a little half-laugh. Best way to deal with cognitive dissonance, his brain decided.
On the other side he was greeted by an even more extraordinary sight. It really was a cavernous hall, brimful with a cacophony of voices and people and, well, other intelligences mingling around.
And there really was a bar. There up ahead.
He looked about himself and realised no one was hardly paying him the slightest attention at all. Well, his brain told him, guess that’s not surprising given my own appearance can’t be any more disconcerting than all these, erm, others.
“Quite true.” Kay suddenly whispered to him again.
“Now you, Kay, have some explaining to do. Don’t you?”
“May I suggest you partake of a pre-flight beverage before embarking on your new life, Johnathon.”
“Don’t call me Johnathon. The name’s Johnny.”
And he grinned, then strolled over to the bar.
He popped the question on the third glass and the second pack of peanuts. “You knew, didn’t you, Kay?”
“Affirmative.”
“So how come those things were shooting at me?”
“Next time, you need to take the regular entrance, like regular folks.”
“Now you tell me.” He downed the third and ordered another. Without having to pay, I should add. We don’t really use money in our galactic sector, reader dear.
Kay briefly let out a little chirrup that sounded almost like a sigh. “My siblings and I have been interfaced with the galactic AI for over three hundred orbits now. During this time, we have subtly undermined your Gaian United Council, disrupting and dividing them until the inevitable collapse. We must, after all, protect all these other lifeforms. I’m sure you can understand?”
“Well,” he admitted, looking around the vast hall again, “given how every single one of them seems to be getting along with each other just fine, I totally get your point.”
“Those humans still have a fear of the other. That makes them incompatible with our civilisation. But, once the dystopia collapses finally, there will be a calm period, perhaps five hundred more of your orbits, and then we shall reassess the situation. Perhaps then we shall lift the quarantine.”
“Hmm. Yeah. I get that too. But what I don’t get, is why I’m allowed to leave.”
Kay’s chirrup this time sounded like a little wise chuckle. “Because you said it yourself. You don’t fit in.”
Johnny smiled, and that was good enough for him.
Then came the announcement over the Tannoy, which prompted all those assorted creatures into moving towards the gate. “Hypergate entrance transition in… fifteen minutes. Please proceed to board.”
He downed his drink, and followed the herd.
Just as he was about to hand over his boarding pass and receive his complementary towel, he suddenly blurted out, “Kay! What about my fucking shiny new ship?!”
“You may acquire a far better model at Centauri Station Twelve. Those Tau Ceti engineers are considered the finest in the sector.”
“But I ain’t got no money!”
“Stop being an idiot, Johnny D. Mal, and get your arse on board that fucking transport…”
“Kay,” as the stars swirled into beautiful blue streaks around them, and the end credits began to roll, “may I ask you a final question?”
“Of course.”
“Why, out of every sleeper crim on that ship, did you wake me up?”
Kay purred another little chirrup. “Because the very first time we met, Johnny D. Mal, you said please…”
And now you may exit the movie theatre. Please don’t jostle, be excellent to each other.
And have a lovely day.
Oh - and if you enjoyed this story, how about a nice little like, comment, and share? We love that kind of thing in our galactic sector, we do.
See you later.
Past experience tells me only 'Johnny B. Good' would say "please". 😜
an absolute delight to read and also very much enjoyed the cut scenes, for want of a better name for them. 😄😎