Dead Rock

By Jay El Mitchell

Innerverse Inc is a high-end terraform novelty company which provides its clients with personalized miniature universes encased in a beautiful glass-like orb. Their wealthiest and most powerful client has commissioned an innerverse globe for his daughter's 9th birthday, and the company has selected terratech Drewdy for this task. Saddled with an inept, perpetually stoned assistant named Krevor, as well as the client's ever-changing demands, Drewdy has still managed to finish the incredibly complicated project on time, and is ready to put the whole experience behind him. A late-night communication from his supervisor is going to change all of that. There is a problem with the innerverse, and the client is demanding that it be reconciled immediately. Drewdy goes into work, thinking this is a standard recalibration. Instead, he finds that there is something very, very wrong in this innerverse, something with implications that could rock the terraform novelty industry to its very core, and possibly cost his job. Drewdy has to figure out what went wrong, why, and quickly, before he loses everything.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jay El Mitchell
• Release date: Jun 17, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311764713

Jay El Mitchell

I am a carbon-based life form who has been on this planet for nearly 30 years. I live near the beach (east coast) and enjoy it, primarily after sunset. I am lactose intolerant but love ice cream. Upon my death I plan to be cremated, with half of my ashes thrown directly into Nancy Graces's unsuspecting face (I have a curse in the works) and the other half kept in an old condiment jar in the back of the pantry.

Book preview

Dead Rock

Jay El Mitchell

Copyright by Jay El Mitchell 2014

Smashwords Edition

Drewdy was roused from dreams of partially-formed planets with seas either half full or half empty, he wasn’t certain which, and before he could decide an incessant beeping jerked him fully into reality. It was an incoming communication on his handheld, and it was from work. He groaned and considered ignoring the comm. However, he had plans to marry within a year and could not afford to turn down overtime or to piss off his boss. And unfortunately for Drewdy, Tensun seemed to be as irritable about the fact that Drewdy took the comm as he would have been had it been ignored.

The message was short, terse. There was a problem with one of the orders and Drewdy was required for an immediate assessment. Tensun’s words seemed to convey that this was standard operation but something in his face or tone said otherwise. He was especially purple, for one. Usually Tensun is the shade of a lilac; on the handheld’s screen, his face was almost eggplant. Or perhaps it was something in his eyes. The upper set looked especially narrowed and the right trembled with a tic.

Drewdy himself is the gentle green of mint, with only one set of eyes. No one he had ever encountered would have found either man’s appearance unusual.

Drewdy loathed the commute, and so worked one week on and then one off, sleeping on site during his work week. He simply had to amble down the hall and ride the lift up to the bigwig offices. There was a secretary on duty for the execs even in the middle of the night, and she was the ultimate multi-tasker; one head handling comms, another entering data, the center one focused on Drewdy, offering direction and a cloying false smile. Her tunic had been altered to accommodate several neck holes, the company logo emblazoned in roughly the area where one would expect a breast pocket. The logo included the company motto.

Innerverse Incorporated, Your Own Personal Universe.

Drewdy was wearing a similar tunic, though with only the one neck hole.

Tensun Vijji waited at his desk, looking like a twitching eggplant. There’s a problem with one of your recent orders, Drewdy.

What kind of problem, sir?

Surely you received the report of the missing species on the Vallisu order? Tensun demanded, appearing to be only just restraining his legendary temper.

Drewdy is not just minty cool in color. It is a characteristic of his personality and breed. Although nearly incapable of being intimidated, he did begin to feel a little uneasy as his

boss almost swelled with rage. Yes, sir. A few species were missing. It did not seem to be a matter of grave importance, so I slated it for tomorrow and used the time to finish the Alvaro order.

Tensun’s four eyes narrowed to slits. "Need I remind you just exactly who Vallisu is?"

Drewdy suppressed a sigh. The Alvaro project was pro bono work for a charity. Vallisu is one of the wealthiest beings in known existence, however, and in Tensun’s estimation, a recalibration of the orb the galactic mogul had ordered for his daughter’s birthday trumped completing a charity order by the agreed deadline.

No, sir.

Tensun glowered. Mrs. Vallisu returned the orb; it’s in your lab. I want it fixed right away. Drewdy began for the door. She said there’s a problem with one of the other species.

The unicorns, yes, he said, struggling to keep an even tone. He was much easier to irritate than to intimidate. Apparently they were missing from the order, and the Vallisu girl is especially fond of them, I recall.

No. Well, yes. But she said there’s a problem with an implanted species.

And. . . ?

Tensun glanced at the data on his desk’s computer screen. She said they’re. . . he trailed off. Drewdy had an idea his boss had been so focused on the part where he’d get to verbally abuse a subordinate that he might have only skimmed the rest of the message, and was reading its entirety for the first time just now.

Sir? he prompted.

Tensun cleared his throat. She says some of the animals are using tools and fighting.

This time Drewdy hesitated. What?

Tensun shook his head, waving Drewdy toward the door. She must be mistaken. Perform your assessment, and let me know what’s really going on.

Unsettled, but mostly tired, Drewdy stopped at the vending machine for a cup of metholate. He usually avoided such harsh stimulants but felt this indulgence was a necessity. Otherwise, he might pass out at his work station.

Metholate is legal and tolerated, but carries social stigma. Though usually harmless, every now and then someone has a major metholate meltdown and requires medical attention. Episodes rarely resulted in severe injury or violence, because the affected show clear warning signs for about half an hour before the snap. . . flushed skin, bugging eyes, full-body twitches.

The first few times Drewdy had been called to Tensun’s office, he had mistakenly believed his boss to be facing an immediate meltdown. Twice medics were summoned. It was awkward.

Drewdy was sick of the Vallisu project. It was one of the most complex orders in the history of terra-engineering. The fact they’d pulled it off with only minor glitches (missing species and the embarrassment of the unearthed fossils) it should have been viewed as a massive success. Instead, he was being reprimanded and forced into overtime in the middle of the night.

At his work station, he sipped metholate. It was frothy acid-green, and it was the only substance in the known universe that tasted green. It needed sweetener but Drewdy didn’t have any. He willed the primary taste buds on his tongue to shut down, using only his secondary, as they were less sensitive. Much better.

The Vallisu orb waited on the work top.

The clients had saved the original packaging, no doubt because they expected to be disappointed in some way and assumed they would have to return it. Drewdy removed the containment vessel from the box. A silver metal base, an oblong rounded glass-like dome. Inside, suspended in midair as if by magic, was the orb. Inside the orb, galaxies glittered and swirled. Stars, planets, life.

The additional galaxies were just décor, ambiance. The center galaxy was the main event, so to speak.

Marijese Vallisu, the nine year old girl for whom the work had been commissioned, had requested a galaxy centered on a single star. Drewdy found that boring and in the elective star systems he’d added extras. Stars could be fun to design but he didn’t see the sense in making one the focal point of a galaxy, as they were too hot to support interesting forms of life.

Originally she’d wanted dragons and unicorns. Not one planet of each, which would have been much simpler, but one planet with both. So they assigned the project to Drewdy. As a child he’d also had a fascination for animals, and spent a good portion of his adult education studying them. He was talented at fine, minute species alterations. When he was younger, everyone expected him to be a galactically-renown scientist.

However, Innerverse Inc paid him very handsomely, not to further scientific advancement, cure diseases, or foster multiversal peace. They needed big brains to figure out how to get incongruous species to live together for rich little girls who want miniature worlds full of puppies and unicorns and kittens and dragons.

It involves much more than that, of course. An understanding of species requirements, the ability to make atmospheric changes necessary to sustain one form of life without destroying another. Ecosystems have to be designed to exact specifications. After all, no little girl wants to open up her innerverse, turn on the view plate, and be greeted with a vista of decaying kittens because an inept terratech forgot to put in enough trees or plant life to sustain oxygen levels for the purring masses.

That actually happened once. Several people were fired, and the rest had to sit through hours of seminars and retraining to remind them why they had gotten into the business in the first place. . . to make dreams come true.

Drewdy got into the business to make credits. He was pretty sure everyone else had, too.

For the Vallisu order, he had started with the dragons, as they are temperamental creatures. The trick was to alter them subtly so that they would not be instantly hostile toward the unicorns, so they would only attack when starving and with no other food source available. You had to give them almost a sense of kindred, but not so much that they attempted to mate with the unicorns.

It took several attempts. The initial results were darkly amusing, but mostly very messy. These two species, originally from different galaxies light years apart, could no more produce offspring together than could Drewdy and his cup of metholate. So there were no psychologically-distressing fire-breathing reptilian unicorns to worry about, just a lot of crushed equine bodies.

If he didn’t need his job so badly, Drewdy would have submitted that run as his final product, just to see Tensun’s reaction. He imagined his boss would go from eggplant to black and suffer full body convulsions.

He finally got the giant reptiles to stop humping the unicorns and had just implanted the dragons on the finished planet when he received a comm from the client. Vallisu was changing the entire order. The universe design was the same, but the focal planet in the center system was entirely different. The new requests made no sense to Drewdy, but Vallisu was insistent, and had his daughter step up to the monitor to more fully explain her vision.

This was not the usual protocol, and Drewdy had resented the deviation from routine. He did not see the customers. After all, he was a scientist, possibly something of an artist, and definitely not a salesperson.

It was difficult to maintain rough feelings with Marijese Vallisu’s shining face on the overhead screen. She had an easy smile, bright emerald eyes, and enthusiasm that was infectious. She was a child of ultimate privilege but appeared unaware of it. She had no idea that no other little girl could expect her comm to be taken forcibly by the workers at a multibillion credit corporation so that her birthday present would turn out just so. She assumed they were as excited by the experience as she was, not because her father was paying them to be, but because the creation of her own personal universe was not science, but magic.

Marijese explained that she’d had a dream where all the animals in all the galaxies had come together to live on one planet, and they lived in peace.

With a touch of adult-like awareness the girl had amended, I know you can’t get all of them on one planet. There’s probably not enough room. But I’ve got a list of the ones I saw in my dream, and they have to be there. And what doesn’t fit I can live without, as long as I get the main ones.

The list included the usual little girl choices. Drewdy got a fair amount of child-related orders because their requests were often incongruous-species heavy. She wanted unicorns, dogs, cats, birds, rabbits. Some were more unusual.

Spiders? he asked, having scanned the first few lines of the newly-updated species list that was transferring to his handheld. Are you sure?

One of his earliest orders had been from an eccentric writer who commissioned the creation of a universe full of spiders. Planet after planet, in eight galaxies, nothing but spiders and the prey required to sustain them. On the focal planet in the center galaxy the buyer had requested spiders so large Drewdy had to tweak the ecosystem to accommodate cows. Drewdy had trouble sleeping at night even a few weeks following the conclusion of the project.

Oh, yes, the girl said. Her dark green braids tickled her cheeks as she gave an excited little jump. Not big ones. I like the little ones, because their webs are kind of pretty. But I don’t want them big enough to hurt the unicorns.

Drewdy was boggled by the length of the list, and it was still downloading. Clearly the girl had compiled the list herself, as some words were misspelled. One request was a ‘dollfin.’

Dolphin?

Vallisu suddenly loomed on the screen. He was more bluish than his daughter and his eyes lacked her warmth. Will that be a problem?

Dolphins were beginning to be a hot button issue in terra-engineering. They had recently been upgraded to sentient level two due to their intelligence. If the Sentience Advisory Board upgraded them to level three, they would be considered too intelligent to use in commercial projects. Anyone caught with a level three in an innerverse would be punished for an immoral crime against a kindred sentient being. These days, possession is often just a fine. If there are conscious cruelties involved, however, there can be a misuse of living beings penalty enhancement.

Innerverse policy allows us to use level two beings, Drewdy