by Paul Navarrete

 

Our star. Blue skullcap and an arctic parka. Mocha leather, wooly insides, and a cloudy collar. Intelligibly sad, deep blue eyes and a furrowed and weathered forehead hints at years of whaling or piracy, a maritime lifestyle. His stubbly undernose and black-bearded facial perimeter give the impression of an adolescence when Abraham Lincoln-style chin curtains were in vogue.

He is a pirate. A pillager of the deep. But in the depths where he reigns and plunders, there are no ravaging waves or torrential storms.
There is no weather in space.

            Henrietta is a sturdy vessel. She is not without her eccentricities: a faulty airlock here, a sticky button there, and certainly no shortage of dents on the mainframe. Her owners have ranged from ambitious deep-space pioneers to wealthy, bored families to Star Trek enthusiasts. Her motor wields a deafening drone, which only true veterans of space travel would dare describe as a halcyon hum. Her paint scheme is more dated than the newer, flashier displays found on more contemporary models — a solemn silver-gray with one thick red stripe running around the perimeter of her oval shape. Often has this shape been ridiculed by distributors of the latest space ship models, scorned as a space blimp or a flying egg. Her current proprietor will have none of these slurs. He has confidence in his Henrietta; loves her olive shape, her drab design, and her resonant whirr. A halcyon hum indeed.

            The space dock was flooded with frantic people, all preparing for the landing of the “sailing ovum,” as it was commonly referred to by the ship’s crew. Guinness, the galleon’s captain and our libretto’s protagonist, did not condone this kind of mockery among the crew, although he too, on occasion, saw the humor of the galaxy’s greatest space-plunderer conquering solar systems in a Roma tomato. But Guinness took to heart the old saying, “nobody hits my little brother but me,” and he once zapped a man from Neptor who called his vessel an ovary.
           The ship rattled to a halt. Women swooned, children gaped, and grown men hid. The glow-in-the-dark gangplank with which Guinness’ first wife Etta had outfitted the spacecraft extended toward the black-lit quay. The captain stepped out, bowing his head to clear the door, and each metallic stride of his space-boots resounded throughout the wharf, unchallenged by any other sound.
          Guinness was not in the mood to be worshipped. He acknowledged the crowd with a majestic nod and thumbs-up, and made his way briskly to the teleporter. He gave a final wave to the onlookers, and shouted hysterically, “TAKE ME TO PLEPTICON!”
A shocking blast of harmless green embers pummeled Guinness, and in a matter of seconds he was at his doorstep on Plepticon, one of Saturn’s less-inhabited moons, which he had pilfered and dragged into his own solar system by means of his intergalactic tow-truck.
          As much as Guinness loved space travel, the comforts offered by his castle on Plepticon always brought an easy grin to his aging face. He had spent nearly half of his collected booty on the fortress, a towering Medieval-style estate complete with a fake moat, a drawbridge, and turrets in a feudal fashion Guinness had known on Earth. His manor, of course, was hardly the stuff of stone and brick after which it was modeled; it was constructed entirely of solidified plasma.

Guinness, nearly alone on his moon, rarely needed the impenetrable protection his castle afforded. It was more of a showpiece, as he would be the first to admit: a purchase made on a whim, inspired by his trademark grandeur. His bedroom was on the highest floor of the southwestern turret, looking out on the vast and beautiful emptiness of a star choked by the sparkling grip of various bioluminescent space-dusts.

Guinness found nothing but solace in the isolation of his star of choice. The fact that he was one of the sole residents fed his insatiable ego. He sat now on his recliner in a deep state of reverie, reflecting on the conquests that had paid for his lovely residence. Guinness seemed to have it all. He was famous, rich, robustly attractive, honored as a folk hero by most residents of space, his spoils coveted by every other space pirate from Lentax Lorenzo to Plempto V. IV.

Something, however, was missing. Guinness needed a change. He was a man of passing fancy, and his celebrity lifestyle on Plepticon was starting to bore him. No sooner had Guinness begun to search his vast index of interstellar space treasure than a pleasant synthesized riff of music filled the house. Somebody was at his front gate! Guinness tightened his bathrobe and teleported to the entry hall.

The door swung open, revealing a blond, mustachioed man in a velvet sombrero. He stood, arms akimbo in what seemed like the most regal fashion he could manage. His sky blue pants, collared white shirt, and tortoise-shell glasses made him look like somebody’s uncle in a Polaroid. He had a dusty tan face and a grizzly moustache. And eyebrows! Did he ever have eyebrows! His deep blue eyes corrugated into a grin at the sight of Guinness at the door.

Without saying a word, the two men embraced, wrapping clumsy fingers around each other’s broad, mariners’ shoulders.

“What have you got, Goofball?”

“Step into my office, and I’ll let you in on the best kept secret of the Plutar Galaxy!”

After the usual formalities, offers of refreshments, and queries into the lives of each other’s mutual friends, Guinness and Goofball stepped into the office. The office was filled from wall to ceiling with records of this treasure and that pirate, of stars, moons, vessels, and legends. One sizable portion of Guinness’ collection was devoted entirely to accounts about Guinness himself; both those which lauded him and those which criticized him. The room was kept very neatly, the only stray documents being those through which Guinness had been thumbing upon Goofball’s arrival. They sat on the floor now, cross-legged, as Guinness’ recliner was the only chair in the room.

“I think you’ll find what I’ve got to say to be very interesting, Guinness,” Goofball started.
“Spill it, droido.”

Droido. Goofball suddenly remembered how biting Guinness’ wit could be. The two were best of friends, of course. Guinness meant no harm, and Goofball knew it, but he knew that Guinness was just warming up, that “droido” would soon be discarded in favor of “boat-bottom” or “doily.”

“What I’ve got here is no cake-walk. It’s far away, in the fourth-dimensional reaches of Plutar. It’s virtually unknown, so financial support from Daquan and Rosenthal will be in the range of seventeen to twenty trillion Crels.”

“They don’t call me ‘the next weirdbeard’ for nothing, Goofball.”

“They haven’t called you ‘the next weirdbeard’ in six hundred years, Guinness.”

“What. The.”

 Calvin Coolidge, Guinness’ Spazbot 5000 vacuum/robotic-companion, hovered in, offering, as he usually did, a soberingly normal standpoint on the conversation.

“Hello my darling,” said Guinness. “Goofball, Calvin Coolidge is right. I’m lost. Did you follow the last part of that conversation?”

“No. I’m just spitting gibberish.”

Guinness and Goofball were reputed among those who knew them to go off on cryptic tangents. Psychiatrists thought that the tangents were caused by some kind of deep-seeded familial bond that had been instilled in the two men. In fact, these verbal serpentines were why Goofball’s first wife left him.

GUINNESS: So what about financial aid from Daquan and Rosenthal?

GOOFBALL: Oh right. We’ll need it for the expedition.

GUINNESS: I’m still in the dark. What expedition?

GOOFBALL: To steal the third emperor’s treasure from the archives of Plutar.

CALVIN COOLIDGE: Tigers.

GUINNESS: What?

CALVIN COOLIDGE: They. have. some. tigers.

GOOFBALL: The treasure. It’s guarded by tigers and monkeys. Clever, cagy animals with teeth like iron.

GUINNESS: I think I read about this. The Plutarian minister injected them with maternal instincts toward the treasure. All the animals feel like they have to protect it at any cost.

GOOFBALL: That’s right. To get in I think we’ll need zap guns, blow darts, a capable crew, and a bucket of good attitude.

“Fantastic!” Guinness furrowed his brow, lit up a joint, and escorted his two best friends into the Brainstorm Room.

The Interstellar Loan Firm of Daquan and Rosenthal is located on a spacestation which orbits The Orange Orb, a supernova in the Thertho galaxy. As Henrietta was pulled in by the spacestation’s tractor beams, Guinness, Goofball, and Calvin Coolidge discussed exactly what they would and wouldn’t divulge about their scheme. Guinness was confident, as usual, Goofball was excited but not without lingering doubts, and Calvin Coolidge was reviewing his manual. He was considering rewiring himself for what he called “optimal efficiency.”

Jonas Rosenthal was a short, dark, human being, which was why Guinness trusted him. Daquan D00quan was a very weird creature. He communicated using a series of vibrations, which were run through an all purpose prism, which displayed a series of flashing colored lights, which were interpreted by Jonas, who wore special light-configured eyeglasses. Daquan rarely spoke.

“Guinness. I haven’t seen you in one thousand years, old friend.”

“It’s been a while since I’ve needed you.”

“What, exactly, are you proposing?”

“The recovery of the third emperor’s treasure from the Plutar galaxy. That’s exactly what we’re proposing.”

“And how much do you need?”

“Somewhere around 30 trillion Crels, give or take a few billion.”

“And how soon would we profit from this expedition?”

“Eat. Shit. Tigers.”

“Who’s the fucking spazzbot?”

“Watch it, Jonas, you fucking queer. He’s Calvin Coolidge, and he’s a Spazbot 5000, and he’s right.”

At this point, Daquan’s prism began to light up. Rosenthal stared at it until it stopped.

“What did he say?”

“He said ‘I’m the prince of Qubar.”

“What does that mean?”

“Fuck if I know.”

“Ok, so you give us the money, we’ll mention you in our report, we’ll pay you interest, you’ll end up with 33 trillion Crels. You’ll be doing me a favor, you’ll be supporting a universal superstar, and you’ll be giving some old boys a little bit of fun.”

“Do you have a crew?”

“Yes, they’re magnificent.”

“Magnificent?”

“Excellent.”

The three amigos, as they were sometimes known, climbed aboard Henrietta in the loading dock. She was still having her flame throwers lubricated.

“We need a crew, Guinness”

“Golden. Gophers.”

“You’re getting a signal, Calving Coolidge?”

"We need a crew, Guinness."

 

And then I woke up. What a crazy dream!!!!