Tags:
Fiction,
General,
Humorous fiction,
Science-Fiction,
Science Fiction - General,
Fiction - Science Fiction,
Science Fiction & Fantasy,
Zombies,
Science Fiction And Fantasy,
Black humor,
Science fiction fans,
Congresses and conventions
looked him up and down.
“Because you could be more than this,” she said, gesturing at his hotel uniform. “It really doesn’t become you.”
Jim felt a keen desire to change the subject, so he knelt and gathered up his newspaper—that morning’s edition of the
Houston Chronicle
. He surveyed the front-page headline before placing it neatly on the chair’s side table: Johnson Spaceflight Center Locked Down.
“A gas leak caused an explosion,” Janice explained. “It’s been cordoned off for the recovery crews. They’re going over the whole place with tweezers.”
“Sounds like you’re following the story pretty closely.”
“Current events are important, Jim. Especially current events happening fifteen miles away. Now, please go fetch that phaser kid.”
Janice turned abruptly and walked back toward the front desk.
Jim stood up and ran his hands through his close-cropped chestnut hair. He kept it only slightly longer than the buzz cut he’d worn in the army. But his hotel uniform was radically different. Instead of desert camouflage, a helmet, and body armor, he wore black boots, black khakis, and a white mock turtleneck under a red double-breasted jacket. It wasn’t exactly the best choice for Houston in August, but inside the hermetically sealed Botany Bay, where the hyperactive climate-control system chilled everything to a crisp sixty-eight degrees, it was tolerable.
Certainly, it was more tolerable than the place he’d just come from.
He walked quickly through the hotel’s sunlit seventeen-story atrium. The side and rear walls were lined with hotel room windows. The north-facing wall held the main entrance—a battery of glass doors. Across from it was the front desk—a long, black marble check-in counter.
Just past the front desk sat a bank of four glass-enclosed elevators. Jim pressed the call button and then fished a walkie-talkie from his jacket’s interior vest pocket. Someone had written “Property of BBH&CC” on its back with a Sharpie.
“Hey, Dexter, are you there?” he said.
“I’m in my office,” came the reply.” Administering first aid.”
“To who?”
“To myself. That clowny son of a bitch sank his teeth into my arm.”
“You’re serious? You were bitten by a mime?”
“It’s not funny, Pike. I’m bleeding. I just poured a gallon of hydrogen peroxide on this thing.”
Jim was tempted to reply that he’d seen worse wounds in his lifetime, but there was no point in trying to explain it to a civilian. “I’m going to pick up this phaser kid,” he said. “You want me to bring him down to your office?”
“Hell, no, just bring me his toy,” Dexter said. “I don’t want to call the cops again. It took forever for them to pick up Marcel Marceau.”
The elevator on the far right of the bank dinged. Its doors opened and Jim stepped inside. “I’m on my way,” he said as the doors closed. “See you in a few minutes.”
Jim slid the walkie-talkie into his jacket, stepped aboard the elevator, and pushed the button for the second floor. Playing on the hotel audio system was a scratchy recording of William Shatner singing “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. “The GulfCon organizers had prepared an entire playlist that was tailored exclusively to Trekkie conventioneers; there were pop songs covered by Leonard Nimoy, film scores by Jerry Goldsmith, and the occasional warbling song of a humpback whale. Jim guessed this last bit was a nod to
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
, but really it was anybody’s guess.
A moment later, the elevator doors opened, revealing a wild-eyed teen wearing a T-shirt that read “There Can Be Only One Kirk.” He pointed a plastic phaser at Jim and squeezed the trigger. The toy emitted a blast of bright red light.
“Toh-pah!” the kid shouted.
Jim’s hand darted out and grabbed Mr. Phaser by the wrist—then yanked him into the elevator and pressed him up against the wall. The move was all reflex. He didn’t even need to