PERSPECTIVE: KYLE
I sat in the passenger seat as Inez started the vehicle. I buckled in and looked through my bag again as we headed out and pulled out the calculator - Skwakpad, Marbles had told us. I fiddled with it for a few minutes, finding out as much as I could about how it worked, and found a text-to-speech program. I fiddled with it, typing in random sentences and phrases, movie quotes, and song lyrics, and the device repeated it all back in an almost metallic voice, one that sounded like it was going to echo but never did.
"You know," Inez said, "you can do more with that thing than just make it say things. Did Dr. Marbles not tell you what it is?"
"He did," I typed. "It's a S - K - W - A - K - P - A - D. Calculator, encyclopedia, and more."
"So why are you just using the text to speech program? In fact, why not just talk to me?" God, Inez's voice was starting to get annoying. She sounded like she was nine.
"I already looked at the other programs, and… well, I'm mute."
"Oh… I'm so sorry. How did it happen? If you don't mind me asking, of course."
"Birth defect."
"... that's it?"
"Tree."
She avoided it cleanly, but she wouldn't let up discussion-wise. "You can't just leave me hanging like that!"
"Watch me." I sat in silence, staring out the window, thinking about when the programming might come into play, and how a scrawny high-school freshman and a mute guy could possibly manage to police the entire universe by ourselves. Hell, I didn't have a clue about anything here, rendering me dead weight. In the silence, a hill of questions were finally able to start buzzing through my head. How big is this universe? What's it made out of? Are the laws of nature the same as the real world? Are all these floating chunks of rock supposed to be planets? If so, how come they aren't round? If they're not round, there's gotta be a change in how gravity works. Hell, maybe it's fuckin' magic, God knows.
"You hungry? I know a pretty good place to eat five minutes from where we are, if you want," Inez offered.
"Sure," I typed into the Skwak. At the same moment, an orange light started blinking on Inez's screen, and a pop-up of a video call came on. It was the Irish-looking kid, Matt, and the young woman named Marie.
The boy started speaking. "Inez, uh… Kyle, right? We're out of fuel, stuck on Sensible Flats. You mind coming over and giving us a hand?"
"We were just about to head over for lunch anyway, Mattie," Inez said.
"Mattie?" I typed. I got a light punch to the shoulder in response.
~~~]~~~
Our lunch destination turned out to be the most stereotypical "saloon" in the most stereotypical 70s-Western-television-show set to ever be a planet.
"So, icebreakers for Kyle and Marie," Matt said in response to the silence, "what's your guys's favorite time period in history?"
I hurriedly got out my Skwak and typed out a response while Marie answered - ancient Rome, I think, was her answer. "Prehistory -- nobody knows much, what we do know is fascinating! Secondary answer, ancient Mesopotamia. So full of culture we probably don't even know the half of. Third, when Rome ruled the known world." I went on a bit of a tangent - alright, a pretty big tangent - about various minute aspects, which in a roundabout way led to a heated debate (coinciding with the arrival of our food) between Matt and me about whether Greece or Rome was better - I sided with Rome, he with Greece.
At some point, Marie looked around the establishment idly, and something caught her eye. "There's a guy over there that looks… seriously different from everyone else here. No hat, kind of bulges in the chest region, chin's huge. Skin is green, somehow. Is he the guy we're looking for?"
"Sure is," Matt replied, standing up.
Inez interrupted. "Matt, wait! Just think about it for a minute. We don't have any clue of what he's planning, and without that, we have no idea how to respond to the situation!"
He sighed, sitting back down. "Nez is right. For all we know, the slimy bastard could just be ordering a drink."
"Exactly what I was thinking," Marie said. "The thinking being that if he's not out scheming, he's out drinking to escape the reality of having been disowned by his parents."
"What?" asked Matt, Inez, and I.
"Armchair psychologist. Anyway, what I was thinking we might do is that Kyle or I would go over to him to see what he's up to. He may feel a little less… condescended-to, than if a teenager with no outwardly-obvious familiarity with programming were to come up to him and try to pry the information out of him, you know? Plus, he wouldn't have any idea who we are until we tell."
"Well, you're sitting with us. Don't think it'd be too difficult to pick up on which team you're playing for," Matt returned.
"Well, it's all we've got right now," Marie said, yawning. "I'll be back… whose idea was it to not give this place a global air conditioner?"
