The True Meaning of Smekday (6 page)

Anyway.

In a ridiculously short amount of time, the Boov determined that humans were unwilling to mix peacefully into their culture. They pointed out all the people who fled instead of welcoming their new neighbors, even those whose homes had been taken outright.

Captain Smek himself appeared on television for an official speech to humankind. (He didn’t call us humankind, of course. He called us the Noble Savages of Earth. Apparently we were all still living on Earth at this point.)

“Noble Savages of Earth,” he said. “Long time have we tried to live together in peace.” (It had been five months.) “Long time have the Boov suffered under the hostileness and intolerableness of you people. With sad hearts I now concede that Boov and humans will never to exist as one.”

I remember being really excited at this point. Could I possibly be hearing right? Were the Boov about to leave? I was so stupid.

“And so now I generously grant you Human Preserves—gifts of land that will be for humans forever, never to be taken away again, now.”

I stared at the TV, mouth agape. “But we were here first,” I said pathetically.

Pig purred.

The ceremony went on for some time. The Boov were signing a treaty with the different nations of the world. It all looked strange, and for more than the obvious reasons. Usually big political events are full of men in suits, but the Boov were joined now by totally ordinary-looking people. The woman who signed on behalf of the Czech Republic was carrying a baby. The man who signed for Morocco wore a Pepsi T-shirt. When it came time to sign with the United States, our country was represented by some white guy I’d never seen before. It certainly wasn’t the president. Or the vice president. It wasn’t the Speaker of the House or anybody else I’d ever noticed on television or elsewhere. It was just some sad, nervous-looking guy in jeans and a denim shirt. He stooped. He had a thick mustache and glasses. He was wearing a
tool belt
, for God’s sake, pardon my language. We learned later it was just some random plumber. I think his name was Jeff. It didn’t matter to the Boov.

So that’s when we Americans were given Florida. One state for three hundred million people. There were going to be some serious lines for the bathrooms.

After this announcement, Moving Day was scheduled and rocketpods were sent. I decided to drive instead, and got shot at, and later went over an embankment because the highways had been destroyed. Pig and I hung out in a convenience store, and I hid from a Boov named J.Lo, but then I trapped him, and let him go when he promised to fix my car. Which now hovers instead of rolls. And has big hoses and fins.

Everybody on the same page? Great.

We packed up the hovercar, which I was now calling “Slushious,” and settled into our seats. Somehow J.Lo had talked me into giving him a ride to Florida. His scooter, it seemed, was not for long trips, and he’d already gutted it to rebuild the car. He also argued, pretty persuasively, that I was a lot less likely to get shot by any more Boov if I had one of their own for an escort.

I almost balked when J.Lo sat up front, next to me. It was too friendly. But if he sat in the back it would have been like I was his driver, and anyway it was easier to keep an eye on him. Pig lay down on the Boov’s headrest. I imagine she would have preferred his lap, but he kind of didn’t have one.

“So,” said the Boov, wiggling his legs, “what have I to call you?”

I thought a moment. He wasn’t calling me Tip. Only friends called me Tip.

“Gratuity,” I answered.

J.Lo stared. After exactly too long a pause he said, “Pretty,” and looked away.

Whatever, I thought. I turned the key in the ignition, and the car growled to life like a sleepy polar bear. All those new hoses and things began shaking and flapping around. I was about to learn that, after J.Lo’s modifications, the ignition switch was about the only thing that still did what it was supposed to do.

The gas pedal was now the brake pedal. The brake pedal opened the trunk. The steering wheel made the car float up and down. To go left or right you tuned the radio. That was just as well, we weren’t going to be able to pick up any music anyway, but then I made the mistake of popping in a tape and our seats flipped backward.

We lay there for a minute, staring at the roof.

“I could hum,” said J.Lo.

“Shut up,” I suggested.

The parking brake shot the wiper fluid. The wiper knob opened the glove box. Pulling the air freshener honked the horn, and pressing the horn made the hood catch fire.

“Hold on! Hold on!” shouted J.Lo, running out the door. The hood yawned open and belched a fireball into the sky. J.Lo dove into his toolbox, threw what looked like an aspirin into the flames, and suddenly the car was covered in two feet of foam.

It took about a half hour to clean off the foam. It was cold and smelled like dessert topping.

“You know,” I said as we prepared once again to leave, “I don’t know if this is going to work anyway. There isn’t much gas left, and I don’t know where we could still buy some. Come to think of it, I’m not sure my money is even
worth
anything anymore.”

J.Lo smiled. “Ah. I to show something.”

He crouched by the gas tank and snaked a length of hose inside it. Then he sucked on the end, which was gross, and soon a trickle of gasoline dripped out. He caught a few drops of it in this weird machine. It looked like a balance, with small glass vials on both sides and some kind of computery thing in the middle. Then he let the hose fall, and gas spilled out onto the chewed pavement.

“Hey! You’re wasting it!”

“It does not to matter,” said the Boov. “Look.”

He fiddled with the computer, and the whole thing hummed. Then, as though its plug had been pulled, the little vial was emptied of its gasoline. I couldn’t tell where it went.

“Nice trick,” I said. “Now it’s
all
gone.”

J.Lo ignored me, and a second later the bottom of the other vial filled with gas from I didn’t know where.

“Wait. What just happened?”

The Boov grinned. “I did to teleport the fuel fromto one place and the other.”

“Teleport?
Teleport?
That’s amazing! You guys can teleport things?”

J.Lo’s smile fell a little. “Some things,” he said.

“But…” I said, missing the point. “How does that help us? We still need more gas.”

J.Lo’s smile widened.

“Feedback loop,” he said.

“Feedback loop?”

“Feedback loop.”

We just stood there, looking at each other. A crow cawed in the distance.

“Are you gonna make me ask, or—”

“The computer, it changes up the gasoline into computer datas. A long code. We to transmit the code, the gasoline, but only a little bit. Not all.”

“Not all,” I repeated.

“But…herenow is the trick. The trick is, we are to
fooling the computer
into thinking we have to teleported it all.”

“Uh-huh.”

“But we have not.”

“Sooooo…”

“So we are keeping most the gasoline on the one side, and to fooling that it is all on the other side, so the stupids computer duplicates the gasoline for to fill the cup. Like copying a file. Thento we are sending it back the others way, thens back another time, and back and back. Like so.”

J.Lo fiddled again, and again there was the hum. What happened next looked like one of those time-lapse films where you watch a flower grow. Both of the vials buzzed and filled quickly with liquid. There was a hundred times more gas than when he’d started.

For a moment my brain wouldn’t let me believe what I’d seen. But then, I was getting pretty used to seeing unbelievable things by this point, and I snapped out of it.

“You made gasoline,” I said.

“Yes.”

“You just…like…
cloned
some gasoline!”

“As you say.”

“This is incredible!” I shouted. “You guys can teleport! You can clone things! You could, like, teleport to France and leave a clone of yourself behind to do your homework!”

The Boov frowned. “Everybodies always is wanting to make a clone for to doing their work. If
you
are not wanting to do your work, why would a clone of you want to do your work?”

“Okay, fine,” I said. “But you can teleport. You can go anywhere! Why are we driving?”

J.Lo really scowled now. This seemed to be a touchy subject for him.

“Boov cannot to teleport. Humans and Boov cannot be teleported, can not to be cloned.”

“But you just—”

“Impossible. Gasoline can to be teleported and cloned because it is all the sames, all mixed up. Complex creature like the Boov is not all the sames. Even simple creature likes the human is not alls the same.”

“Hey—”

“The teleporter computer does not to have to know what order whichto arrange the new gasoline. Does not matter. But for Boov and humans, matters.”

I was finally getting it. “You mean—”

“If Gratuity teleports, the computer cannot to keep track of all the molecules. Gratuity comes out a mixed-up puddle of Gratuity.”

“Oh.”

“Like a Gratuity milk shake, fromto the blender—”

“Okay, all right,” I said, raising my hands. “I get it.”

Again we fell into an uncomfortable silence. Then J.Lo sat down to make more gasoline, with Pig purring around his feet.

“Hey…did I…are you mad?” I asked, wondering immediately why I did. “What’s wrong with you?”

J.Lo sighed. It made a crackly sound.

“The Boov have tried to fix this problem for long time. For…” He raised his eyes like he was doing math. “For an hundred of your years,” he said finally.

“Jeez.”

“As you say.”

After a while we were on our way. The new controls for Slushious were hard to get used to, but I’m a quick study. J.Lo only gritted his teeth and clutched the door handle for about the first fifteen miles, so afterward I had to throw in an occasional dip or wild turn to keep him guessing.

“I’m a really good driver,” I said after a particularly daring and unnecessary dive. J.Lo bleated something in Boovish that I hoped was a prayer. Or a curse.

Later a stray dog crossed our path, and I hit the brake, or rather the gas, a little too hard. J.Lo sailed forward and hit his head on the dash with a wet slap.

“Seat belts,” I said.

“Perhaps I could also to drive from time to time,” said the Boov.

“Nope. Sorry. Not your car.”

J.Lo rubbed his head. A bruise had already formed, swirling and changing color beneath his skin like a mood ring.

“I rebuilded it,” he said. “Is like half mine.”

I thought about this.

“Sure,” I said, trying to sound reasonable, “but it wouldn’t be legal, you driving it. You don’t have a license.”

“Ah,” he said, nodding. “Of course.”

A long silence fell between us. It was like a whole extra person in the car, this silence, watching me expectantly. I started to imagine the silence was Billy Milsap, this kid from my grade who always sat near me in every class. He never said a word, never answered a question, and every time I glanced at him he was already staring at me. No smile, not even the good sense to look away when I caught him. The silence in the car was an invisible Billy Milsap, hunched like a goblin in the backseat. Like any silence, it wasn’t really silent at all, but had the same thick drone of Billy’s mouth breathing. And the more time passed, the bigger it got. Also, incidentally, like Billy Milsap.

When the silence hung around through the whole state of Delaware, and Billy Milsap had grown so large he was spilling out the open windows, I couldn’t take it anymore.

“I wish there was music,” I said a little pointedly.

“I am sorry,” said J.Lo.

I didn’t really like it when he apologized.

“At least you guys didn’t blow up
all
the roads,” I said. There had been a long stretch of broken asphalt, but now the highway was smooth again.

“The Destruction Crews, they only are exploring roads—”

“Exploding
roads. Not exploring.”

“Yes. They only are
exploding
roads around the big humanscity. I did not understand whyfor they explode roads, on account I was not knowing about the humanscar that
roll.
”

He said “roll” like it was something cute.

“What were you doing out there by the MoPo anyway?” I said. “All by yourself.”

“There was there an antenna farm.”

“An antenna farm? There’s no such thing.”

“A…” He searched for the right words. “A big field filled with the tall antenna towers. For to your radios. I was to sent to modify the towers, for Boov use.”

We were passing through an abandoned city, past empty buildings like mausoleums.

“The job…” J.Lo continued, “it took too long. I missed my ride. So Gratuity nicely gives me the ride.”

I didn’t really like him complimenting me. And I got the impression he wasn’t telling me everything about his work. But then I wasn’t exactly sharing either.

“Maybe we could play some car games,” I said.

“Car games?”

I tried to think of a game he might understand. I said, “I spy, with my little eye, something that starts with…
G.
”

“Sausages,” guessed J.Lo.

So we didn’t play any car games.

Strange as it sounds, we actually started talking about old TV shows.

“What was the one,” said J.Lo, “the one onto where the man wears a dress?”

I frowned. “You’re going to have to give me more to go on,” I said. “There’s kind of a long tradition of men wearing dresses on television.”

“Milton Berle!” J.Lo shouted, remembering. He laughed—I think it was laughing—for two whole minutes. I had no idea who he was talking about.

“Or the shows where to the men wear helmets and run at each other?”

“Sounds like football,” I said. Or war footage, I thought.

“Yes. Also very funny.”

“Have you watched all this TV since the Boov came here?” I asked.

“Oh, no. The Boov have to been getting the Smekland shows for long time. Many years. The signals travel through the space and we catch them on Boovworld. Do you know
Gunsmoked
? Or
I
Am Loving Lucy
?”