A/N: So sorry for the long wait, guys. This September I moved into my dorm room at college. And then this October I poured Coke all over the keyboard of my laptop. After that I was just plain lazy for a while. Anyways, aren't you happy it's here now? Enjoy!
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It was nearly noon, and Bookwang and Otto were fighting. Bookwang was adamant that Otto go for his planetary citizenship wearing his trenchcoat, hat, and sunglasses. This was tripping Otto's now highly sensitive conscience. "You're implying that I attempt to pass myself off as that celebrity fellow, aren't you?" he accused, even over the actuators' evaluations of the idea's undeniable if unsavory merit.
Bookwang did some kind of whole-body shrug, which was impressive when his tentacles got involved, and returned to the large bag he was filling with food, small games, and some electronic items. "You know," he said, "if it gets you in and out of the Vogsphere any faster, you'll thank me for the idea. Trust me."
"What exactly is so bad about this place? You act as if we were talking about the seventh level of Hell here." Bookwang gave him a blank look. "A very bad place," Otto explained briefly.
"Well maybe I talk about it like it's a very bad place because it is a very bad place."
Otto took a breath, "Very bad place or not, I won't go in there presenting myself as something I'm not. However, those clothes are the only ones I have, so I don't suppose I have a choice anyway." The scientist was starting to think the voice of his conscience was even worse than that of the actuators. At least they couldn't make him physically feel the strength of their collective will. The thought of using this unwitting actor's identity to further his own goals felt like chains on Otto's shoulders.
"I think you'll change your tune when we get there," was all Bookwang said, and handed Otto the filled to bursting bag.
Some time after Otto had gone to bed, Bookwang had sent a message to the flying saucer parked at the launch/land building to come home. When the pair left the house, it was sitting on the lawn in front of them. Bookwang opened the saucer's hood as he walked and the minute it had slid entirely into the craft something flew over Otto and Bookwang's heads and landed inside the saucer with a loud thump. Otto tensed, the actuators immediately arching up and scanning the surroundings. A heat scan of the saucer revealed a small Santraginian-shaped body crouched on the craft's floor. "I think your sister wants to come along," Otto remarked to Bookwang, who was still looking around the area in surprise.
"Hasta?" Bookwang inquired.
The girl's head popped up, "What?"
"What're you doing?"
"Coming along, like the man says," she tilted her head at Otto.
"Did you lock the front door?" Bookwang asked.
"Yeah."
Bookwang considered the situation, Otto waited for the brotherly burst of overprotection. "Okay," the young alien said, and climbed into the saucer.
"Thanks," Hasta replied and settled into the seat behind the pilot's chair. Otto shrugged and climbed in as well.
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Curiosity got the better of Otto's perennial fear of girls. "You know we're going to the Vogsphere, correct?" he asked Hasta.
"Mm hm," she affirmed.
"Then why do you want to come? Bookwang made it sound like quite an undesirable place for anyone, let alone a child."
The social temperature of the saucer dropped several degrees. Hasta leaned forward to speak to her brother, "What did you bring, Bookwang?" Otto got the sudden intense feeling that he was being let off the hook, for now.
"Check the bag underneath the console," he replied.
Hasta hooked a tentacle underneath the bag's strap and ferried it to her lap. She delved into its contents, making small sounds of approval as she took stock of the snacks and games Bookwang had brought. She paused in her explorations momentarily and pulled out a machine that looked like a laptop computer whose keyboard was cut in half and had all its buttons removed except six. Hasta put the machine aside and dug around in the bag until she came up with a smaller bag filled with thin rectangular brightly-colored boxes. She pulled one of the boxes out and Otto identified the bold primary colors of the infamous poster. "Did you mean to bring this?" she asked her brother.
Bookwang cast an eye back at her, taking in the chosen box and the machine, "Oh, um, no?"
Hasta gave him a look of dull annoyance, "Well I guess you could have chosen a worse time to spring it on him. Why not while we wait for his citizenship to come through?"
"What is it?" Otto asked.
Hasta handed him the box and Otto again found himself staring at his exact image done in bright primaries. He slid out what was inside the box; it appeared to be a plate of complex circuitry encased in clear plastic. "It's a recording of the movie you're- I mean Trego is in," Hasta said. Her eyes were darting from the box's image to Otto, obviously still not used to the uncanny resemblance.
"Trego, so that's his name. Hunh." Otto flipped over the case for the recording. He looked over at the laptop-like device, "I suppose you play these things on that."
Hasta picked up the machine, "Yeah. Do you wanna...?"
Otto thought about it for several moments. Bookwang half-turned in his chair to monitor the proceedings. "I think you should, Otto," he said, "Just so you know what all the fuss is about."
Otto nodded, "I agree. Hook it up, Hasta."
Hasta gave a small smile and tapped a section of the floor of the saucer with her foot. A pillar rose up from that section, stopping when it reached the height of Otto and Hasta's chairs. The Santraginian girl put the player on the top of the pillar, where it stuck as if magnetized. The screen lit up, suggesting Hasta insert the recording. She did so in a slot on the right side of the player. Then, she and Otto settled in to watch the movie.
Otto tried like hell to be objective about it. He noted the fine cinematography, the heartfelt acting, the engaging plot. He tried to banish all emotion while he watched the actor Trego build his robotic tentacles, struggling to deal with his underdeveloped hands. He tried not to imagine how the horde of women he had just barely evaded at the L and L building had felt while watching the movie. He tried not to feel the least bit vindicated at the heroics of Trego. He failed miserably. Really he had no chance; the resemblance was truly startling, even the actuators were having difficulty with what Otto was seeing.
That is not how we were created, Father, they remarked during the building process, as if the scientist had forgotten.
That's correct. Don't worry about it.
But these images do not match our memory banks. Sometimes it was tricky for the actuators to distinguish what Otto was currently seeing from his memories.
I said don't worry. Remind me to never go to the movies with you.
The actuators were silent for a blessed beat, Otto dared to dream he had quieted them. How would you go to the movies without us, Father?
Otto tried to tune out the actuators' voices for most of the recording.
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There is nothing attractive about the Vogsphere, except perhaps the jeweled crabs, which have been hunted to near extinction by the Vogons. The planet's thick dry atmosphere invaded the saucer's interior as soon as the dome receded, smelling of swamp gas and vast quantities of rotting paper. Bookwang landed the saucer in a city, for lack of a better word. Otto and the actuators' gaze roved around the space as the trio walked along the bare streets. They wandered more or less at random, Bookwang saying this was their best hope at finding the office for planetary citizenships. The actuators commented that the gargantuan slabs of brown gray rock that served as buildings would be extremely difficult to climb. Otto dearly hoped the circumstances that would requite such extreme measures wouldn't arise.
Hasta had switched from walking to allowing her tentacles to ferry her over the ground. Otto watched her out of the corner of his eye, debating whether he should do the same. However accustomed to the actuators' weight he may have become, after the length of time they had been walking, they were starting to pull at his spine. But it had been such a long time since he'd used the actuators to carry himself- not since... The scientist dragged his thoughts off their dark path in favor of watching Hasta put her upper tentacles on the ground before her and idly turned a midair somersault.
"Now, I enjoy aimless wandering as much as the next person," the girl said as the trio turned yet another random corner, "But, should we actually find the planetary citizenships office and get Otto taken care of within any our lifetimes, how are we going to find the saucer again? I was just wondering."
"I've been keeping track of our progress, Hasta," Otto replied, for some reason feeling a little embarrassed. He continued, "But I think it couldn't hurt too badly to get some directions."
"All right," Bookwang conceded, "But let me do the talking." Hasta rolled her eyes and her brother commenced searching the surrounding area for another living soul. There had been eerily few so far, while Otto had been continually telling himself he hadn't heard faint moans of anguish in the distance. More than once the phrase "ghost town" had drifted across his mind.
Several minutes passed before Bookwang finally spotted a Vogon waddling down the street. "Hello?" he hailed the blobby creature.
The Vogon spun around, "Resistance is use-"
"Yeah, so I've heard," Bookwang swiftly interrupted, "Look, do you have any clue where we might be able to get my friend here a planetary citizenship for Santraginus V?"
The Vogon blinked, and seemed to have frozen up.
Bookwang tried again, "Planetary citizenship. Santraginus V. Damn, all the important words are polysyllabic. Let's see- immigration? No. Papers? No, too vague. Umm..."
While Bookwang attempted to translate his request, Otto watched the Vogon meander away and into the center of the intersection of four nameless streets. The Vogon lifted a skinny arm and pointed down one. Otto walked down the road, guiding the struggling Bookwang with a hand on his back. "Wait," the young alien shouted as the Vogon lumbered away, "I got it! I got it! Home! How does he get home! Wait, that doesn't work."
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"This must be it."
"How do you know?"
"This is the only door on this street."
"Yes, the street the Vogon pointed us down. Who knows if he even knew what we were talking about?" Bookwang was still upset about what he considered his failure to communicate with their departed guide. "And besides, where's the sign? This could be anything really."
"Well, let's stand here and speculate some more, maybe we'll find out," Hasta's voice rang with sarcasm as she pushed past Otto and her brother.
The door slid into the wall as she entered a corridor just as blank as the street. It was well lit, in a florescent, soul-sucking kind of way, and clean as a morgue. Otto felt he should be expecting armed robots to zoom down the corridor and capture them all at any moment, and so kept the actuators tense and ready. The trio turned a corner into a dead end. No other doors, nothing but a high wall with something written far up on it.
Bookwang, on his lower tentacles, stretched up to read the writing. "Oh that's rich," he growled.
"What's it say?" Otto asked.
Bookwang looked down at his companions, "Planetary citizenship offices are the next street over."
Otto's mind boggled, "But then why did-? Why would that Vogon-? Why the corridor-? Why the sign up there-?"
Hasta patted the scientist's shoulder, "Better get used to it, Otto. It's gonna be a long day."
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They finally found a sign reading "Planetary Citizenship Offices" inside a crack in the wall a block away from the actual door to the waiting area. An actuator leaned the tarnished, nearly unreadable sign against the wall as Otto followed Bookwang and Hasta. Inside, the scientist tried not to be surprised upon seeing the longest line of people he'd ever seen before. People of all shapes and sizes stared at their feet, or what passed for feet, in that zombie-like trance seen across the galaxy wherever lines may form. Someone stepped in front of the Santraginian siblings and Otto just before they got to the end of the line, taking up the last space inside the designated line and forcing the trio to stand in that vague place outside the actual line where you get asked constantly if you are in line no matter how obvious you make the honest fact that you are in the line.
"Bookwang, pass the flave-o-fives," Hasta said grimly. (1)
"Not yet, we have to make this stuff last."
"I wish I brought a book," Otto remarked. He thought for a moment, "I wish I had a book."
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(1): Flave-o-fives- popular snack food item consumed in the perfectly dreadful made-for-TV movie, Overdrawn at the Memory Bank, starring Raul Julia and Wanda Cannon and duly roasted on Mystery Science Theater 3000.
A/N: Will the gang get through the Vogons' dastardly line of doom? Will Otto have to pose as a celebrity to get his planetary citizenship? Will Hasta ever get her flave-o-fives? Find out next chapter!
Also, if anyone has any ideas about what the name of the infamous movie should be, please don't hesitate to share. I can only hold out for so long before somebody asks what it's called.