"How hard can it really be, Jed? Lot of people fly to the moon these days, much farther too."
Jed was shaking his head as he stepped over impressions of tires and pipes in an unmowed lawn. Those impressions couldn't have been more than a couple of days fresh, he thought. The last time he'd been to the Catfish's house it had been buried in junk. Most of that was gone now.
Catfish was what everyone called him, or what he called himself, no one was sure or really cared where the name came from. There was no doubt why it had stuck. The man was a mongrel, who through some freak of breeding looked like his namesake. No one dared question his ancestry, for the few who had the stomach to contemplate it were usually too far into their bottles to tell the difference between the man and the fish. For years he had ran a highly questionable auto business out of his house, turning his immediate surroundings into a junkyard and oddity store.
Jed was a neighbor and a friend of Catfish, even before he became a valued member of society. They both got a good laugh whenever they thought of it. Sure, Catfish had managed to eke a living off of a few odd jobs, but he didn't ask for much and seemed content with being a bottom feeder of society. Now of course, being a competent mechanic, everyone for miles around was asking him for odd jobs in exchange for dental work (hopeless), novelties (hideous), or housework (horrifying). Or anything else they could convince him to trade for, often enough just for his own amusement.
One such payment greeted Jed as he rounded the corner to Catfish's back yard. A pit bull puppy, taller than Jed's waist and with a face remarkably like its master, bounded alongside a another dog of much more dubious ancestry, which Jed later identified as a particularly hairy pig. As Jed was warding off the disgusting duo his attention caught on the reason for his visit. Almost as big as the house it rested behind was hunk of metal that looked like a grumpy submarine. In the same sense that a car could be said to have an expression, this thing gave Jed a surly glare that seemed frozen between boredom and resentment. Still, it's sleek metal hull had the sheen of a new car, or maybe the sweat of an angry one. There was no doubt that Catfish was the creator - everything he worked on for long took on a magic aura of sorts. At least the polite folks called it magic.
"Now that's something beautiful. I never thought I'd make myself a spaceship," said Catfish in reverent tones.
"Does it work?" asked Jed.
"She flies and swims," said Catfish. "I figured I'd take her to the moon before I sold her."
"Swims?" asked Jed. "You didn't take that thing into the Ferguson's lake, did you?"
Catfish grinned. "In the dead of night. No one saw me but a stoned couple, making out in a canoe. Though everyone here near by knows I'm working on it. It took me a few weeks to make it. You'd have known sooner if you hadn't gone off with that gal to Vegas." When he saw that Jed was not going to defend himself against any implied accusations Catfish continued. "But it's like I was saying, a spaceship is easy nowadays. I got all the instructions online, how to assemble all the parts, and how to get all the parts out of a board."
Jed looked back toward the house to see four construction boards lying on the ground, surrounded by what he assumed were spare parts. There was probably at least one more board inside. Jed only had two boards, but everyone had at least one.
"So you said you wanted to sell it?" asked Jed.
"Or maybe keep it," said Catfish. "I just wanted to see if I could make a working one. So far, it seems alright. No fast drives though, Mr. Newton is my friend. You could take this girl here to anywhere in the world, or probably anywhere in the solar system if you don't mind living in her for a month or so."
"Come on, Catfish," Jed joked, "people these days are in a hurry to go places, see the stars. Little ships like this don't go to Alpha Centauri. Much less Celiat."
"Heh, well no one wants to go the the Suprecium now. No one who wants to live, at least, but there's a whole galaxy out there to explore. I'll let those crazy physics folks from the other side of the sky try making those crazy fast ships. Little gals like this one are safer. They won't send your eyeballs to India every time the computer hiccups."
Jed sighed. It was true, the fast ships were supposedly a lot harder to make, or at least make safely, but none of that was his business. They were all safe enough and it seemed that everybody these days had their own space ship. First the boards, then this, what next?
"So what do you plan to do now?" asked Jed.
"Take it to the moon, of course," said Catfish. "And you're coming with me"
"I'm not that tired of this world," said Jed. "Too easy to fly out and not come back. And besides, what could we do on the moon? Have you contacted the colonies there? Always a good idea these days to let people know you're coming."
Catfish shrugged. "She has more than one kind of communicator. We can let them know once we get close by, pick any one of them, it happens all the time."
"As fun as that sounds I'd rather let someone know before I show up on their doorstep. Actually, I'd rather just keep my feet on the ground. And besides, what would you sell it for? Craigslist might find you something, but what do you want, anyway?"
Catfish laughed. "Dunno until I find it. There's a lot out there... hey, I know. If you don't come with me to the moon then can you stay here and take care of my place? I probably won't be gone more than a couple of days. Whatcha say, Jed?'
Jed sighed again. "Sure, why not. I'd just keep your 'dogs' fed after all."
"And it's not too far from your place. Just a couple of miles south of here, right?
"Yeah," said Jed, "but I'll just stay here anyway. I'll have Google put a death-watch on for you."
"Be careful trusting those things, I hear they say there are people walking around out there that ain't dead or alive," Catfish laughed. "See ya in a day or two." With that he ran over to his ship and stepped into the entrance at the rear end. Several minutes passed and Jed amused himself by watching the 'dogs' chase frogs in the grass. A sudden gust of wind told him the ship was taking off. It was utterly silent, except for the sound of the breeze in his ears. The wind burst stronger as it lifted higher off the ground, then softer as its distance grew. Slowly it vanished upward, disappearing like a balloon from a parade.
Jed let himself inside Catfish's hut. This, at least, had not changed. The place was less of a landfill, a natural result of living off the boards, and more of a moldering dungeon with oddities strewn about. Jed identified a reclining chair he wouldn't mind sleeping in, certainly not considering the bed. He was considering covering it with a tarp, to hide both its sight and smell.
The computer recognized him, this was not the first time he'd been here. It was a hybrid of superial and old-Earth tech. Like so many things here, the Catfish had made it himself, or at least put together the main parts. Jed didn't think to hard about how it worked, but was simply satisfied that it did. He entered Catfish's information on the death-watch and put on the local news while looking to see what kind of food the fish used on his board.
As the sounds of the Blast-Fast festival came across the news feed, Jed was dismayed to find that the board had no sections in English. Hadn't the Fish added anything himself? Or maybe he didn't bother giving it an English font... in any case Jed was forced to search the food sections in Superial, hoping to find something that didn't involve alien bugs. After a few failed attempts Jed found something that smelled good and didn't look like the feature of a foreign horror film. Some of the previous attempts did, however, give him inspiration for what he could do for the rest of the night.
There were hundreds of thousands of movies on the boards, though none of them in English. Supposedly there were translations available, but Jed didn't know how to find them. He didn't care. They all had the charm of old films with the flare of the new CGI stuff Hollywood had been putting out before the Splitting, along with the strangeness of foreign films. They couldn't be more foreign. Jed started with something that felt like a documentary, though not understanding the words he couldn't be sure. He got up and wandered from time to time, throwing bits of trash into the board to make the occasional snack. He longed for a cheeseburger, but since Catfish was content to eat alien slime or at least give his cheeseburgers captions that even Google couldn't translate, Jed was left to board surf.
That wasn't so bad. If he ever got really lost he could always try to translate whatever he was looking at, which usually only made things worse. Board surfing was a popular hobby these days, especially among people who wanted to find unique and horrific ways to die, second only to the wormers. Each board held the equivalent of a warehouse of alien technology, a warehouse the size of Manhattan. And not all of it was technology; food, movies, artwork, and things that didn't even have names in English populated the depths of what the boards could conjure, and there was room for more to be recorded. On Catfish's board Jed tried to keep himself content with the movies and sludge that he could find. Of course, there were also delicately arranged Superial meals, often as delicious as they were terrifying. Not all were meant for human consumption.
Occasionally he would amuse himself by throwing things into the board as raw material, where the board would just eat whatever was placed there, and then giving the undo command and watching whatever it was take form again. There was something magical in watching the little towers rise and fall, and the objects between them take shape or vanish. This was how Catfish got most of his parts for things like the ship or any of the cars he worked on. Jed didn't doubt he has the equivalent of a fully stocked auto-supply warehouse. It was all far more than Jed ever wanted to learn. Living off the boards was as easy as using a microwave, but each had a complexity even most Superials didn't even understand.
When Jed woke up the next morning he checked several news channels and the death-watch. According to the latter Catfish was still alive and had made it to the moon. Jed was almost envious, but didn't regret his decision. On the news there was more speculation on how various communities across the world were handling Superial refugees. The latest fad in music was multi-species bands. There were protests by religious nuts on the construction of some new crazy thing called a soul tower. Most of it Jed simply couldn't care less about. The only problems anyone had these days were ones they made for themselves, either getting into other people's business, signing up for bloodsport, or stepping on the few remaining eggshells. Occasionally someone became enough of a nuisance to bring down the wrath of they mighty. Still, the powers that be kept some degree of order. No more wars or poverty, just idiots throwing rocks at lounging dragons. Not literally though, at least, not yet.
Why, it hadn't been more than a week ago that some scumball had abducted a couple of children from a nearby community. The Angel Corp got wind of it and stormed his place, burnt his arms to stubs when he threatened them. Yeah, threatening women who could kill you with a thought... people hadn't gotten any smarter, just a lot of the dumbest ones were dead now.
Jed wandered into town in search of real food, and to check on his place. Or at least what passed for his place. Life here was like a dorm room, with random people living wherever they choose and having things balance into an equilibrium of sorts. Folks who liked it stayed and those who didn't left. It was another lazy day with a variety of music echoing across a variety of dwellings. There had to be a cookout or something going on somewhere, there always was. Usually they had a catch though, trying to recruit for religious groups, colony groups, experiments, or stranger things. Still, good food and conversation had a value of its own. Some folks went camping and just never bothered to come back.
Jed socialized where he could, dropped into his place to get something to eat, and then headed back to Catfish's place by late afternoon to see if he'd returned yet. The watch Jed had placed on him said that he was already back on Earth, a few miles away from here. He'd be back soon, since he doubtless had some story or oddity to show him. Jed took a walk to the nearby lake, not thinking of anything in particular. It felt nice to clear his mind. This was bliss - a better retirement than he could have hoped for, living on blue collar wages. His friends dabbled in enough strangeness to keep him entertained and life was live and let live for everyone. After all these year of working odd jobs and scraping his living off of meeting frayed ends... heaven had descended to Earth.
A sudden movement caught his eye. It came around the bend in the road and his brain wanted to think it was a car. His eyes told him it was a snake. His gut told him it was trouble. His ears told him Catfish was laughing somewhere. What he could only describe as a forty foot snake, as big around as an industrial propane tank and about as shiny, pulled up next to him where a panel slid away to show Catfish's grinning face. One eye wandered off at a crazy angle as it often did while the other was shut tight with laughter.
"You should see your face! Come on in, this thing seats five, ten if you like it cozy. I'll drive you back to your place." Segments of scales shifted and popped out, leaving a clear door for Jed to enter. He sighed and stooped inside, immediately regretting it. He could see from the light of some strange bulbous boils scattered the interior. The smell was a cross that of a new car and freshly mowed grass. Not a bad smell, but certainly a strange one. The inside felt nice, like natural leather, but didn't mesh with its appearance.
"You're back already?" Jed asked.
"Yep," said Catfish, "I traded my ship for this snake and some other things. The folks on the moon dropped me off in one of their fancy-fast-go-anywhere ships."
"Does this thing have a seatbelt, or even a seat?" asked Jed as he tried to figure out if he should sit or lie prone.
"Nope, but it'll cushion you from bumps and things," Catfish's voice came from up ahead the snake's shaft. "Watch this!" The snake lurched forward and Jed felt himself caught by waves in the interior walls. It moved forward sideways motions that made Jed slightly ill. Inner scales illuminated with a view of the outside, though Jed wasn't sure how. His first thought, beyond the swaying nausea, was that this was the ultimate low-rider.
Then Jed encountered the next major surprise of the afternoon. There was something else in there with him. He could feel little hands picking at his back pockets and shirt. He swatted at it and it scurried back into the darkness of the rear snake. Two dark unblinking eyes gleamed back at him. Jed found it remarkably easy to maneuver, despite the movements of the snake and his own restricted position.
"Fish!" he called "There's something back here with me."
"Ah that's Kipper. Say hi to Jed, Kipper." The thing waved at him, revealing a four fingered scaled hand.
"What is it?"
"He's a darc, just a kid though. They like to give away their kids, they have so many. This one followed me so they told me to keep him."
What madness had possessed the Catfish to trade his ship for this monstrosity and an alien child? Only his mind would know, and Jed knew from experience that asking the Catfish to explain his actions would just leave him more confused than before.
There was no accounting for taste, thought Jed as he stepped toward his home. He turned for a moment and watched the monster snake double back on itself and return up the road. Then again, there was little accounting for value either. These days you started with what you wanted and worked from there. Jed didn't want a thing, certainly not a giant snake, so he passed the time amusing himself with whatever new thing life threw at him.
With neighbors like Catfish, he never had to wait long.
