Scum of the Universe Page 12

  The mess took hours to clean up.

  Once Tuesday had stripped the parasite for steak, ribs and shanks, he proudly mounted its head over his bed, horns, jaws and all. The victorious hunter stowed all that fresh meat in his deep freeze and had a well-needed shower.

  His underpants, however, would never be the same again.

  *

  Life on The Mistress was a simple one. In the beginning, this simplicity was comfortable, and even welcome. Tuesday's tent was soft and warm, his cupboards were full of as much food as he could scoff and as many smokes as he could suck down, and horrific things only tried to eat him twice a week, max. It was also reassuring to know that his distant bank account was growing by the day. Sure, it would take four years – fifty-four bloody months – to be able to access that money, let alone to be somewhere it could be used, but it was still nice to have something clicking up, even if he couldn't enjoy it yet.

  Although Tuesday worked with very little oversight (none, actually), he'd still dedicate an hour or so of each day to mining pimples to keep his far-distant bosses at PusCo happy. He was paid by the haul as well as by the day, so totally slacking off wasn't an option. This wasn't Cell Block Preschool: either the pus flowed, or he didn't get the cheddar. A hundred billion fat, ugly rich women needed their facial-improvement creams, and they needed them now.

  Tuesday's biggest disappointment so far came on the day that his jars of mucus were due to be picked up by a courier from the PusCo cosmetics company. After thirty straight days alone he was definitely up for the company of the trucker, no matter how vile the courier may be. Tuesday had shaved, put on some smelly stuff and even brushed his teeth for a change. Unfortunately, Tuesday found out the hard way that the pick-up was completely automated by a wriggling snake-like ship that didn't even need to touch down on the Slug to do its job. Either that, or the pilot had simply ducked out of sight and ignored him.

  Tuesday spent the rest of the day in bed, glaring at the ceiling.

  By the three month mark Tuesday had personally encountered almost every single life-or-death risk in the manual, and some of them had occurred five or six times. Germs were by far the biggest drama, as The Mistress was far from hygienic to say the least. A single unwise barefoot walk across the slugscape meant that Tuesday’s feet were now infected by a permanent layer of damp moss from his ankles to his yellow toenails. But the biggest ongoing germ-related issue was his water supply. A series of ceramic hoses pumped naturally-heated hot water from The Mistress' main armpit to Tuesday's tent, but the pipes had to be shifted every now and again to avoid what was known in the medical databases as “Screaming Squirts.” Tuesday discovered that the reality of the Squirts was far worse than the manual could have ever warned, and was very sure to keep the plumbing up to code from then on.

  After a while, Tuesday ceased being merely lonely and began to long for intelligent company like slow-cooked pork ribs longed for barbecue sauce. Although he'd always been an independent guy from a very young age, knowing that he didn’t have a friend in the entire galaxy at the age of seventeen was a little much to bear. Tuesday developed an ever-worsening habit of muttering his thoughts out loud, and generally tried his best not to go clinically insane from isolation.

  By the six month mark, Tuesday had forgotten what it was like to hear another human voice. Sure, Tuesday's Nintendo Beyond console was more than advanced enough to artificially create characters that were totally indistinguishable from real humans, but for some sadistic reason all the games in his collection were about mayhem and slaughter. Unless the computer-generated characters could be lit on fire and scream hysterically while running in a circle, it wasn't a part of his set.

  Although he still worked enough to keep the distant overlords happy and kept himself fed and hydrated, by the tenth month Tuesday had gone so insane from isolation that all of his muttered words were now total gibberish. During the worst times, Tuesday would rock back and forth in the corner for hours, laughing at nothing.

  Some people can handle being alone. Most can't. It soon became pretty clear what category Tuesday fell into.

  *

  Tuesday awakened a bit after 14am to the usual sight of twenty decapitated parasite heads looming down from his bedroom walls. They were always the first thing he saw when waking up, but they had ceased to scare him ages ago. Occasionally, they whispered to him, but he never listened to the heads, because they always lied. Tuesday couldn't trust them, couldn’t trust any of them, because the rotten parasites were less honest than an apricot-flavoured koala colony filled with stainless steel Christmas trees made out of raccoon-operated dishwashers...

  Finding solace in his snowballing insanity, Tuesday was just about to curl up and go back to sleep when he realised a fact like a baseball to the face: today was the day his contract ended! Four entire years had hobbled by, and it was finally time to leave the World Slug for good.

  Tuesday had started by ticking off the months, then the weeks, and finally the days, but before finally hitting the sack last night he'd been reduced to pathetically accounting for every minute. Tuesday looked at the digital calendar for the very last time: only nine minutes to go!

  As expected, the company courier arrived on time. Just to be sure there were no misunderstandings, Tuesday was standing directly on top of the final pyramid of gunk-filled glass jars. Tuesday was wearing his only set of civilian clothes beneath his spacesuit, though by this point the pressurised outfit had been damaged so many times by the local wildlife that it was mostly composed of duct tape and polyfiller. He started to jump up and down as soon as the tell-tale dot appeared in the sky, waving his arms in a very unsubtle way of making his presence known.

  For the very first time, the snake-like ship wriggled out of the sky and landed on the surface of the World Slug. It touched down gently with the soft hum of antigrav wafers, barely making a sound. After all, not doing anything to annoy The Mistress was rule number one, two and three. The PusCo company courier turned out to be an old oriental man in an infuriatingly nice spacesuit and steel-capped boots, but it was as though Tuesday wasn't even there. The guy simply opened a ramp, pushed out a stack of floating crates, and didn't bother making eye contact before stepping back onto the ramp. The courier didn't say a single word, and offered nothing more than a brief, uninterested wave of dismissal as he turned away. However, the courier definitely noticed Tuesday's presence when a pickaxe whipped through the air at a top speed and sank into the hull of the ship, missing the courier's faceplate by inches. The old guy gaped, looking between the mining tool and the insane miner who'd thrown it.

  “What the...why did you do that?!”

  “Forgetting...something?” Tuesday managed, growling his words. He couldn't seem to shape the syllables properly. It was like trying to remember a complex phrase in Japanese after hearing it once in your childhood. Come to think of it, Tuesday couldn't quite remember what a syllable actually was...

  The courier sighed and inspected the stack of floating crates. He moved his lips a little bit as he did so, keeping track under his breath, and within fifteen seconds his task was completed. The courier shook his head.

  “Nope. Your scheduled resupply is all here. Didn't forget a thing.”

  Now Tuesday was the one who gaped.

  “Re...resupply?” Tuesday eventually managed. His eye twitched. “No, no...my contract is...is finished! I'm meant to...meant to...to finish...and…and...finish...”

  The courier sighed loudly, his patience now totally spent, and tapped the knuckles of his left hand with his opposite index finger. A series of holographic screens flared to life from the back of his hand, and the courier showed one of the large, intangible squares to Tuesday. It was a perfect match for the contract he'd signed fifty-two months ago.

  “See here?” the courier snapped. “It says that you, Mr Robert Tuesday, hereby agree to a standard class-seven solo mining operation on The Mistress for a period of no less than twelve standard years. It's the resupply th
at happens every four ye-”

  Tuesday lunged for the courier, but he missed and sprawled pathetically in the slick, grey surface of The Mistress.

  He hadn't meant to do that. His brain was going more haywire by the minute.

  “I need...” Tuesday sobbed, curling up. “I need...can't...alone...anymore...” He looked up, pleadingly. “Maybe...someone else?”

  The courier may have felt more pity for Tuesday if he hadn't just tried to attack him on two separate occasions, but the courier's next words were delivered gently.

  “Standard policy is you can't have more than one permanent miner on a World Slug, or you run the risk of waking Her up. Of all the official regulations, that's the most concrete. Solo mission only, sorry.”

  “But...it's splitting off into little baby Slugs.” Tuesday argued. He seemed to be getting the hang of talking again, but it was still difficult. “I seen them just the other day over the ridge, all suckling on those huge nipples. Boobs as big as suburbs, they are! Wouldn't it be...be possible to just...to just pass on the message...”

  The courier was out of patience for this topic.

  “I've already told you: this is a one-man drilling job, always has been, always will be. You don't know what these things are capable of when they’re conscious. It’s not happening, right?”

  Tuesday was silent as the courier stomped back up the ramp without another word. He did stop to pry out the pickaxe and throw it over his shoulder, though.

  On his knees, Tuesday silently watched as the courier's ship efficiently hoovered up the jars of green filth with an automated loading device. Tuesday’s eyes followed the ship’s arc as it left him all alone, and then he continued to watch the sky until there wasn't even a dot.

  Once he managed to finally stand up again an hour later, Tuesday silently stormed back to his tent and lay in bed. Glaring at the ceiling like it had slept with his Mum without protection, he tried to think happy thoughts.

  As always, Tuesday failed.

  *

  Tuesday's descent into depression and psychosis continued to spiral with the passing of each and every day. Knowing that he was only a third of the way through his isolation was an unbearable thought, and so he did all that he could to block out reality by distracting himself. By now Tuesday had explored the entire World Slug from tail to nostrils, clocked every video game in his library sixty times over, and had watched all four of the compulsory Occupational Health & Safety vids at least a hundred and fifty times. He may have trouble spelling his own name, but Tuesday knew a heck of a lot about World Slugs by now.

  Two months after being told the cruel truth by the courier, Tuesday was stomping across the slugscape towards a distant, bright yellow pustule that was just asking to be mined. Tuesday was arguing with himself at top volume about whether he was going insane, and swung his pickaxe in complex, threatening swoops the whole time. As usual, he was losing the disagreement.

  Although he was wearing an (almost) airtight spacesuit, Tuesday clearly heard a low rumble from off to his left. Looking towards the horizon through a perspex visor half-covered in duct tape, Tuesday groaned as he watched a distant phlegm volcano erupt in a seemingly endless geyser of brown sludge and roiling black clouds.

  “Great. Flatulence eruption,” Tuesday muttered to himself. “Rotten thing'll take hours to clear...”

  Tuesday had lived through more than one flatulence eruption during his time on The Mistress, and learned the hard way that what these events lacked in lethality they definitely made up for in sheer putridness. Thanks to those OH&S vids, Tuesday knew that flatulence eruptions were a result of the World Slug's bizarre digestive system actively converting the radiation She was absorbing from the two nearby stars into a biological form, and like all digestive systems, this process resulted in waste products. Although the “output” of Her churning guts could be compared to what you'd find in a human digestive system, it was on another level entirely.

  “Better get back,” Tuesday mumbled, his sight fixed on the horizon. “Better get back, better get back.” He sighed in frustration. “Could this crap get any wo-”

  The Slug's skin suddenly tore apart like wet one-ply toilet paper beneath Tuesday's boot, and he fell into an open black chasm. Bouncing from moist cliff to moist cliff, Tuesday spun and tumbled through the darkness for almost five agonising seconds before coming to rest on what felt like a water bed. While this may sound like a good outcome, anything within the Slug that resembled a water bed was very likely to be disgusting beyond comprehension.

  Tuesday groaned. It may have been profanity of some kind, but he was far too concussed to know.

  “Spugging trapdoor,” Tuesday managed, rolling onto his back. “How'd I miss that? Never missed a trapdoor before...”

  Tuesday knew full well that massive pits like this one weren't natural, and were always the direct result of some sort of parasite creating a snare to catch any unwary prey that may stumble into it. The darkness didn't last very long, thankfully, as the tiny spotlights that ringed Tuesday's sealed helmet picked this moment to automatically flicker on. Looking up, Tuesday could see that he had a fifty-metre climb ahead of him to reach the surface. While the cliffs didn't look all that difficult to scramble up, this wasn't the big issue: while Tuesday was no xenobiologist, he knew that if something was big enough and strong enough to burrow a tunnel of such a massive size into the flesh of The Mistress, it was probably bad news. Seeing as though Tuesday was only armed with harsh language at this point, if the owner of the tunnel decided to come and check its little pit, well...

  There was a low rumble beneath Tuesday's feet, and he was pretty sure it wasn't from the far-off flatulence eruption. It felt like something else altogether...and it was growing...

  It was pretty obvious that Tuesday needed to hurry, but scrambling like an idiot would only make things worse. Passing his helmet spotlights back and forth across the oozing surfaces that made up the rough cliffs, Tuesday gripped a few potential handholds as he searched for the most stable point to begin his climb. Thankfully, the roughness of the hole meant he had quite a few to choose from. So, he reached up for the first ledge of many, and prepared to kick off the ground.

  However, something enormous chose that moment to try and murder him. Tuesday's animal instincts kicked in before conscious thought could pull its boots on, and he let go of the cliff and rolled to the side in pure reflex. An adult tapeworm the size of a intercity train slammed through the exact spot where Tuesday had just been standing, and it burrowed face-first into the wall of flesh like a Densite-tipped drill bit. The deafening collision sent shock-waves through the tunnel, literally knocking Tuesday off his feet and nearly bursting his poor eardrums.

  But the assault was far from over. Twisting violently, the tapeworm flopped as it tried to free itself from the fleshy wall. Mental as he'd become over the months, Tuesday knew that he was about to die if he didn't do something more useful.

  And then he saw it: his trusty pickaxe.

  Tuesday sprinted five rapid steps before sliding on the side of his boots through a slough of pus. Skidding along, Tuesday collected his pickaxe with one hand, turned, ducked and aimed just as the tapeworm finally erupted out of its fleshy prison. Opening a mouth big enough to consume a buffalo without chewing, the tapeworm dived for the tasty morsel known as Bob Tuesday.

  Tuesday drew the pickaxe back, focussed on the tapeworm's single red eye, and threw the tool as hard as he could. Tumbling for its target end over end, the pickaxe missed by inches and thudded harmlessly into Slug meat.

  Diving aside, Tuesday only had time to curse as the tapeworm uncoiled like the biggest Slinky in the known Universe, and felt a horrible pain from hip to toes as the beast slammed into his left leg. Doing his best impersonation of a spinning throwing star, Tuesday crashed into a pile of meat with far too much force, and passed out for a couple of seconds from shock. Once again, the tapeworm had buried itself a dozen metres into the flesh of the World Slug, but this time Tuesd
ay was out of the fight.

  It was over.

  Although he knew on a certain level that he had to get up now, Tuesday was too stunned to do anything about it. He'd just been clipped by a freaking freight train, and it was a miracle his entire body hadn't shattered on impact. Looking up through blurred, triple vision, Tuesday passively watched as the tapeworm extracted itself from the wall, turned to face him with its gaping maw, and went to lunge one final time before dinner commenced...

  But then everything began to shake like never before. Tuesday had felt quakes of fifty different types while on The Mistress, but this was something else altogether, as it seemed the entire World Slug was flexing and relaxing rhythmically like a heartbeat. To his amazement, Tuesday watched as the tapeworm whined like an enormous puppy, shook and flicked its horrible insectoid head back and forth in a highly agitated way, and fled back into where it had originally emerged with its metaphorical tail between its legs. As the beast left at top speed, Tuesday could clearly see into the second crater that the tapeworm had torn. Something the size of a house was glowing like fire within the pit, and although he'd never seen one in real life, Tuesday knew what it was: one of the World Slug's enormous nerve endings.