Captain Disaster Episode 10 - Do Androids Dream of Electronic Beeps?
Apr 10 '04 (Updated Jan 06 '05)
The Bottom Line Episode 10 of my now nearly legendary Captain Disaster series. (Legendarily bad, anyway...)
Captain Disaster
Episode 10
Do Androids Dream of Electronic Beeps?
All was quiet on the Eastern front.
However, on the Western front, it was quite noisy. Bet you can’t guess which one Captain Disaster and his illustrious, illuminous and ill-equipped crew were on?
That’s right.
The Northern one.
It was quiet on the Northern front too, and it was cold. Not the sort of cold you get in London in late autumn, but the sort of cold you get in Siberia on a particularly chilly day in the depths of winter, or possibly in Pluto on any day of the year. The sort of day where wrapping up warm meant having 17,000 layers of clothes on, which often makes movement quite difficult. Fortunately, Captain Disaster’s ship, Disaster Area, was nicely heated, at least until the legal bill from being sued by Douglas Adams for stealing the ship’s name came in and they couldn’t afford the electricity anymore.
Flossy, the asexual robotic freak who would have had Isaac Asimov turning in his grave, was thankfully covered by at least one layer of clothing. Being as he/she was endowed with both male and sets of bodily attributes, it was a bit of a conundrum choosing clothes, so a rather large sack had been employed, which gave the effect of a moving sack of potatoes which sometimes seemed to group together into an amusing shape. Desiring nothing more than to quote Shakespeare at people, he/she/it was a valuable addition to the crew, if only for the reason that it added some class to this whole sloppy series.
“Are you bored, CD?”, it asked CD, putting on a CD at the same time. (Hard to believe but true, CDs were still popular in the 5th Century.) Captain D was sitting staring into space, with a slight glaze in his eyes.
He turned to the Floss-like one. “No, just pondering about the meaning of life, the universe, why we’re here, what does it all mean, that sort of thing”, he philosophised vaguely.
“Ah, you’re doing The Times crossword again, I see”, said Flossy.
“He kept asking me for the answers, but I just replied ‘beep’ to everything”, ventured Zero-Bit, the ship’s computer.
“Why?” asked the asexual one.
“Because I’d been dreaming about beeps.”
“Oh.”
Silence echoed for a little while, as the cogs in Flossy’s brain turned slowly and agonisingly to form the next question.
“Why?”
“Just thought it would tie in nicely with the title.” (At this point the author is looking for a way to name-drop Phillip K Dick, but as there is a restraining order on this, taken out as a pre-emptive strike, he settles for a sideswipe at Bladerunner instead.)
“If only you could see what I’ve seen, with your eyes”, said CD.
“What the hell are you talking about now?!? You really are a freak, did you know that?”, shouted ZB. (At least, he turned up the volume slightly, which is sort of like shouting).
There was a pregnant pause, which gave birth to a little baby version of Stephen Spielberg.
“Aha”, cried CD, striking the tiny director across the head with a teaspoon. “I’ve got some questions for you! Why was AI so boring? And why on earth did you inflict humankind with Ja Ja Binks, not just once, but twice???!?!? That was just remarkably cruel, indefensible in fact!”
Spielberg in miniature had no defence for this, and was promptly flushed down the toilet. He made a slight gurgling noise as he went.
This, thought Flossy, was really quite cruel, as he had actually been responsible for some rather good films as well, and perhaps even all-time classics. But then again, he had given us the Ewoks and ET, so he probably deserved to have something horrible happen to him.
“So, there’s nothing going on then?”
“Nope.”
“Nothing.”
“Not a sausage.”
“Who said that?”
“Dunno.”
“Fancy a game of ‘I Spy’?”
“No.”
“Definitely not.”
“Me neither.”
“Who said that?”
“The Voice of Negativity”.
“Who?”
“I think he means Ian Paisley.”
“No, I mean the mystic forces of the universe in their negative form.”
“Who invited you?”
“I need no invitation”, said the sinister voice menacingly, although there wasn’t really much of a trick to that as most disembodied voices tend to have a touch of the menacing and sinister in them.
“So, have you ever had an invitation?”, asked Zero-Bit.
“Er… well, not exactly. I mean, people invite me in, as such, by their own negative thoughts.” For an invisible presence, The Voice of Negativity was giving an incredible impression of being shuffling nervously. It was soon going to look extremely embarrassed indeed, after which it would disappear back into the nothingness of the void from whence it came.
“Well, we certainly never invited you in. What’s more, we don’t want you here at al. Begone, foul daemon!”
“Now look, you don’t know what it’s like for a disembodied entity like myself to feel appreciated these days. Things ain’t like they used to be, you know. Not like when the Druids were around, you could go into Stone Henge whenever they happened to be having one of their get-togethers, go “whoooooooooooooooooooooo”, and they’d all think a great spirit had visited them. Now they just think it’s… it’s…”
“It’s?” supplied CD.
There was a little sob. “Static electricity.”
There was a flash, a burst of static, and a “ha ha ha ha wheeeeeeeee” sound.
ZB broke the silence. “It had to go. Criticising static electricity. It’s just not on.”
CD and Flossy nodded solemnly. They knew from bitter experience the wrath of a computer scorned.
Nothing happened, and it happened for quite a long time. Then something happened, the most exciting thing ever in the whole history of time, the universe, and goldfish.
Sadly, the crew of Disaster Area completely missed it as they were looking in the other direction.
But then something did happen to them that was interesting in a sort of “oh look a brown dog” sort of way.
It was a ship. Looking intently at the scanner, CD could ascertain no clue to the purpose of the ship in this sector, other than the fact that it had “Rendezvousing with Rama” written across it in large, gold letters.
“I wonder what it’s doing here, or who it could be meeting”, whispered the man with the golden head.
“Why are you whispering?”, whispered Flossy.
“It builds up suspense, so I’ve been told. Apparently it makes people think something interesting is going to happen, in a ‘WOW, I wasn’t expecting THAT to happen!’ sort of way”, whispered the world’s weirdest wonky wandering wondering wonderful wildly whoopily whispering whisperer, whispily. (Who cares is some of those words don’t exist in any English dictionary? This is supposed to be the 25th century, after all).
“Hail the ship, Zero-B”, yelled the man who, if you put the letter “J” in between his initials, would be the human equivalent of mad cow disease, throwing caution to the wind, which deftly caught it and ate it.
“Ok fish-face”, said the subordinate silicon system seditiously.
“We have to do something about his attitude problem…”, muttered CD to Flossy.
“We sure do, monkey features”, replied his faithful, fearlessly frumpy friend Flossy.
“Hailing channel open.”
“We are the Bjork. You will be assimilated. We shall sing to you in Elfin tones. Resistance is Futile. Oh, and do you have a packet of sugar we can borrow?”
“OH NO, NOT THE BJORK!!!!”, screamed The Fearless Captain Disaster, The Brave Flossy and The Odorous Zero-Bit as one.
“Not The Bjork who assimilate you into on homogenous whole!”, cried Fearless.
“Not The Bjork who make such a hideous screeching noise that your spirit is destroyed!”, wailed Brave.
“Not The Bjork who borrow your sugar and never return it or even so much as say thank you!”, squealed Odorous.
“Oh come on now, we’re not all that bad, you know. It’s quite fun being part of a homogenous whole. Just ask a bottle of milk.”
While they considered this intriguing insight, they could observe in the viewer that the alien craft turning very slowly to face them, a sure sign that they were preparing to assimilate them. As Disaster Area was trapped in a tractor beam by now, the fact that it was turning very slowly was merely to add to the terror factor.
There was a smell of putrefying aborigine in the air. Captain Disaster mumbled an apology.
“There is no escape. Resistance is futile.”
“Yes, yes, thank you, you told us that already. Why are you determined to clutter up the dialogue with repetitious rubbish?”*, fumed Zero-Bit.#
Quoth Flossy, “wherefore doth thou afflict this good ship? Thou art a raven!”
Quoth The Bjork, “WOD?”
“Quack”, quoth the Raven. (It had personality issues).
“Hey, that’s my word, thou imbecile!”, shrieked an enraged Captain Disaster, foaming at the mouth and other places too, but we won’t go into that right now.
“What meaneth thee by thine aggressive nature, sluggard?”, questioned the inquisitive android.
“From whence started the downfall of Odysseus?”, offered the Bit of Zero. (Which is, effectively, exactly the same amount as Plenty of Nothing, though you might not think that.)
“Telemechus by damned!”
“Up with Troy!”
“Down with Helen!”
Having given this impressive display of their huge knowledge of classical Grecian literature, they glared at The Bjork, which was a bit pointless but made them feel better in the same sort of way you feel better after waving your fist and shouting, “you’ll be sorry!” at someone who’s just stolen your handbag and is currently disappearing over the horizon with it.
“Your petty arguments make no difference to us, earthling scum! Prepare to be assimilated!”
“So how exactly do we do that?”, asked CD, fiddling with the laser controls, finding they seemed to still work, and wondering why he hadn’t thought of this before.
“Well, er, you just sort of look anxious and scared. That’s what people normally do.”
“But is there a manual that shows us exactly how to look? I mean, the wrong facial expression could be disastrous for us all!” The laser-charging bar was nearly at full, and the Captain was desperately playing for time.
“ER… well, no-one else has ever asked for one before. We never thought to provide a manual.”
“Oh, isn’t that just typical of you people? You expect people to be assimilated properly into your homogenous whole, but do you even think of telling them how to do it? For all you know, they could all have done it wrong, and you’ve got millions of faulty components by now, just waiting to explode on you!” The laser was now at full power, and CD pressed the button. “Prepare to die!”
There were a lot of things that didn’t happen in the seconds that followed. The laser discharging into The Bjork was one of them.
“What the?…”
The Laser Discharging Wizard had popped up on the display. It said,
“IT LOOKS LIKE YOU’RE TRYING TO BLOW SOMEONE UP. WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO:
· AUTOMATICALLY AIM AND FIRE AT THE OPPOSING VESSEL UNTIL IT’S BLOWN INTO LITTLE TEENSY WEENSY PIECES
· ADD SPECIAL EFFECTS, FOR EXAMPLE FIREWORKS OR LIGHT ARRAYS, AND MOOD MUSIC
· BURN YOUR SHIP’S SERIAL NUMBER INTO THE SIGNATURE OF YOUR LASER BEAM. THUS INCREASING YOUR FAME AND ELITE RATING
· JUST GO AWAY AND DIE, AND NEVER BOTHER YOU AGAIN
Captain Disaster cursed Bill Gates, and pressed the fourth option.
Still nothing happened, and The Bjork ship menacingly flashed a sign, which read:
“PREPARE TO BE ASSIMILATED. RESISTANCE IS FUTILE. PLEASE MIND THE GAP AS YOUR MIND ENTERS STASIS.”
An alert box came up on the screen.
“IS THAT YOUR FINAL ANSWER?”
Cursing Chris Tarrant, CD answered “YES!”
There was a sizzling bolt of pure energy from the laser cannon at the front of Disaster Area. It screeched across the distance between the two ships like a demented cat with a rocket up a part of its anatomy, and in an enormously impressive burst of energy release, completely failed to penetrate The Bjork’s ship’s defensive shield.
CD felt a surge of panic. At least if he’d selected the “ADD SPECIAL EFFECTS” option it could have given The Bjork a pain in the eyes.
There was a message from the aliens. “What took you so long? And did you really think that your puny laser would affect our technology, which is far superior to yours? Who do you think you are, Captain Pilchard? Your Shakespearean speech didn’t fool us for a second.”
There was a collective groan from the (soon to be) newest members of The Bjork Collective.
“You see, it can be FUN to be part of The Bjork! We even have a sense of humour, as we have just demonstrated! See? See???!?!??!?!?!?!??!?!?!??”
There were more groans to be heard in Disaster Area.
Being assimilated was, mused the now homogenous Captain, rather like being on a roundabout and eventually realising that, while you are still spinning around, you don’t feel the motion anymore. You also don’t feel that your head is still attached to your neck even though it is. In short, it’s a dizzy / unreality / slightly sicky without actually vomiting sort of way.
For Zero-Bit it felt more like having a system overload. Like all your systems have been running at full capacity for hours, and have finally given up, but somehow you’re still switched on an working, at least to some extent.
For Flossy it was the realisation that if he tried to be a good android, one day he could become a real boy.
It came as a shock to Flossy that he now thought of himself in the masculine sense only. It came as even more of a shock that the female aspects of his personality had also disappeared. He never had an explanation for this happening, he just knew with irrevocable certainty that it was true.**
Captain Disaster could feel the presence of thousands, or perhaps millions, of brains in his head. This was certainly unusually, especially as he’d never felt the presence of even one there before.
There was a swirl of voices in his head, but funnily enough they were all saying exactly the same thing. Well, actually it was more like one huge, multi-faceted voice, which nevertheless seemed to be made up of many. Perhaps like a single ray of light that has been split into a spectrum by a prism, but is somehow still a homogenous whole. In fact, it was really almost impossible to describe, so I won’t bother trying anymore.
Captain Disaster could feel his ability to think individually seeping away. Zero-Bit was experiencing much the same thing, although as he was so stroppy, the other amalgamated personalities didn’t much like the prospect of his personality merging with them. Duty was duty however, and universal domination was not a prospect for the weak-hearted, albeit they hadn’t actually decided themselves to be universal conquerors as such. Now that they were in the position, they thought they may as well make a go of it. So ZB was slowly but surely becoming part of the collective.
For Flossy, however, the process wasn’t so simple. He had a split, or perhaps dual, personality to begin with, being as he was (had been) both male and female. At the first sign of trouble, the female part of his personality had fled, being caught up in a vortex between Disaster Area and The Bjork ship, which was starting up the Assimilation MachineTM. The machine had caught hold of the female personality as it tried to find somewhere to hide.
What confused the machine was that it had assimilated a personality with no body attached to it. This was something it hadn’t experienced before, in all the ten thousand and more galaxies that The Bjork had already been through. And, quite frankly, it didn’t know how to deal with this.
Especially as the female part of Flossy kept asking it questions about Soap Operas.
Icelandic Maiden (Ice Maiden for short), queen of The Bjork, was getting worried. She was now familiar with the plotlines of Coronation Street, Eastenders and Neighbours and Brookside (such as they were).
The Ice Maiden was getting very depressed.
She was also confused. There was not only the fact that there was a female ego aboard that had no body attached to it, but also the dilemma that had puzzled Ice Baby for countless millennia – why was she an individual and yet head of a collective full of non-individuals. It could be a bit lonely, she had to admit. Not much fun, in truth. Soap Operas sounded like they could be fun.
As head of the collective, her thoughts permeated to everyone. Captain Disaster, along with everyone else, found himself wondering if Grant would ever be brought back from cryogenic suspension and re-united with the robotic form of ,… Angie, was it?
Flossy thought to himself: “Hang on a minute, this sounds familiar…”
Then he realised that, by now, he really shouldn’t be capable of individual thought. Somehow the process was being slowed down, perhaps even reversed?
“So, you actually read what’s going to happen in Eastenders in the Radio Times, weeks or even months before it happens?”, asked The Voice of The Bjork.
“Yes, it’s really exciting!”, replied The Voice of Female Flossy.
“So, how is it exciting? What’s the point of watching it if you already know what’s gong to happen?”
“Erm… I can’t explain it, it just is.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense.”
“I’m a woman, why on earth should I make sense?” ##
“But… but… I make sense!”
“Oh. Well, you’re obviously not a woman then.”
“Of course I’m a woman! What do you think these two lumps in my chest are?!?”
Insofar as a disembodied entity can shrug, Female Flossy shrugged. “Well, with surgical techniques these days, much can be made out of nothing.”
“Oh, being catty, are we? Well, you can talk, you disembodied witch! You don’t even have a body! Who do you think you’re ever going to pull? The Voice of Negativity, perhaps? What a catch that will be! You’ll have sooooooooooo much fun!”
After a small silence, a small voice said, “Well, who exactly do you think you would ever be able to pull? You meet a nice man, then you say, “We are the Bjork. You will be assimilated. We shall sing to you in Elfin tones. Resistance is Futile. Oh, and do you have a packet of sugar we can borrow?”! Nice chat-up line!”
“Well, for your information, I have a husband! So there!” Queeny looked smug, and perhaps slightly constipated.
“Yeah, right. Like I’m going to believe that.”
“Don’t you read that fine comedy science fiction series called Captain Disaster, by that amazingly good author who never uses his own stories for self-glorification, Dave Seaman? Didn’t you read in episode 5 that there was a character called, ‘The Dark Maiden”? And didn’t you notice that my surname is also Maiden? Don’t you think there is a reason behind this striking coincidence?!? Don’t you see how nicely this all ties together?”
“Er… riiiiight. Actually, didn’t something rather horrible happen to the Dark Maiden in that episode? Wasn’t he destroyed?” Then, Female Flossy delivered the killer blow. “And wasn’t HE actually a SHE?!?!?”
“Um… well, yeeeeees… technically, anyway. Not in principle.”
“Whatever. Didn’t you realise that this is the very same Captain Disaster which you are now trying to assimilate?”
Back on Disaster area, CD, ZB and Flossy shifted nervously in their seats (or circuitry, as the case may be). All of the collective, including these three semi-assimilated (and, let’s face it, semi-literate) semi-individuals, could hear, or rather feel in their brains, the whole conversation.
Captain Disaster could also feel the heat of the Ice One’s wrath.
A great eye engulfed in flame appeared, searching the universe for the One Ring. This set off the automatic fire extinguishers, which doused it with water and drenched it before it could say, “Nothing can stop the Dark Lord from Mordor”, and realise it was in the wrong story.
And thus it came to be that, in the Age of the Noble Kings, Sauron the Dark Lord was defeated by Hobbit Fire Extinguishers Inc.
All of which has absolutely nothing to do with the ludicrous nonsense that passes for a plot in this series. ****
Ice Ice Baby was losing her cool, and Vanilla Ice was losing his Vanilla. She was struggling to maintain the Collective while pursuing CD. The collective was crumbling, and individuals were starting to emerge. The new recruits were practically back to normal, or normal for them, anyway. CD saw this as a great chance for decisive action.
“Let’s get the hell out of here!”
However, the tractor beam was not affected by all of this commotion, and held them firmly in place.
Could It Be The End?
Will Captain Disaster and the crew escape the jaws of death, or will they be pulverised?
Will The Bjork conquer the universe and make all living creatures part of their hideous collective?
We will find out in the next exciting episode of “How to cook an omlette in only 12 seconds”.
To Be Continued…
* (In fact, the reason for the repetitious rubbish in the dialogue was down to an unusually low level of inspiration, even for this author. There is no excuse for this other than that he really should have been working at the time, but, having nothing to do at work, decided that it was about time that the CD series was resurrected, especially after the stunning success of The Captain Disaster Collection Volume I, which sold literally tens of copies. Blatant plug number 3,214 – Still available at just £2.99 per copy, email poetofthecentury@aol.com for address. “Bargain of the century!”, “Best science fiction comedy ever written!”, “Buy it or regret it for the rest of your life!” – actual quotes (from the author. And his mum). (NB - this is all codswallop - you can't get it any longer for love nor money, though money would be nicer.)
# It is a well-known fact that fumes and electrical appliances don’t mix well. But Zero-Bit was not like other computers, and thus he could fume without harm to his circuits. So there.
** In fact, it is a well-known fact that this author will do anything to make his life easier, and there’s only so much you can do with an asexual android in a skiffy series. So he contrived a way of turning Flossy male. In a manner of speaking. The Shakespearean angle could still yield some faintly amusing moments, however, so that will be kept.
## It is a well-known fact that women don’t make sense. Even if half the population of the universe doesn’t accept this as a well-known fact, it doesn’t stop it from being so. So there. ***
*** It is a well-known fact that statements like these are going to be very unpopular with a certain section of the population. In the interests of equality and not getting myself lynched (though it is very probably too late for that anyway), I would also like to point out that men done make sense either. So there. ###
### It is another well-known fact that any life-forms that don’t fall into either the male or female categories make even less sense.
**** Interestingly, The Encyclopaedia Galactica defines nonsense as being, not just the absence of sense, but the complete diametric opposite to it. Thus, it has been scientifically proven that reading Captain Disaster stories can completely invert your mental processes.
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The Captain Disaster Series
Episode 1 - "The Planet-Eater of Acturus"
Episode 2 - "A Beta Burger"
Episode 3 - "Wormhole"
Episode 4 - "Mecenaries"
Episode 5 - "A Newish Hope"
Episode 6 - "Timedrive"
Episode 7 - "Correctness, Politically Speaking"
Episode 8 - "Virgin on the Ridiculous"
Episode 9 - "Lighter Than Fast"
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Read my review of
Red Dwarf Series 1-4
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