S.P.E. 03 - Dude Gets Updated!: Space Post Express, #3

By Pier Maria Colombo

Tod and Phil, the reckless and adventurous Space Post Express couriers, have faced terrible dangers and survived to tell the tale. But in every space courier's career, there comes a time when they'll need to face their inner demons, the darkness they carry within. Or at least that's what Phil would try to tell his girlfriend, to describe this adventure in a way that would make him the hero.

For their next trick, Tod disappears and Phil has to find him following the trail his crazed cyborg friend has left. Tod first displays a variety of cyborg issues—that could be related to Tod's hardware or his software, Phil has no way to know—which include freezes and hallucinations, before finally vanishing into thin air, leaving behind cryptic notes he obtained through illegal means. But Phil sees that there's more to Tod's disappearance than just his characteristic lack of sanity.

Will Phil get to the bottom of his only friend's disappearance, or is there no bottom to this mystery? And who are these men in black suits following Tod's trail?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Seagull Editions
• Release date: Jul 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223814115

Book preview

It's not a bug, it's a feature!

Can boredom kill? Phil wondered. He guessed it could. He had known people who had died of boredom. Well, not directly died of it, but they ended up doing silly stuff to fill their time, and died of them.

He laid back in his chair, looking at the ceiling of his spaceship’s cockpit. Or was it a canopy? It was made of metal, not glass like in a shuttle, though. Phil guessed that as a self-taught engineer and professional pilot, he probably should know what the ceiling of his cockpit was called.

Phil sighed loudly. He was alone in the cockpit, in warp, piloting a space truck full of deliveries. Tod was in a similarly packed space truck, in warp, next to him. They shared the warp bubble, since they had the same destination. The client had a huge delivery, and was quite far away, so they had both been tasked with delivering it. Phil had no idea why their company, Space Post Express, hadn’t sent a larger ship instead of two small trucks, but it would probably be to save credits.

At least, the end of the trip’s first part was coming soon. They were minutes away from dropping out of warp near the station. The return trip would be equally boring, of course, but at least they wouldn’t be on a deadline.

He didn’t want to admit it out loud, but without Tod, he was feeling deeply, extremely, exceptionally bored. He fired up a thesaurus, looking for more synonyms for much when his communicator pinged.

It was a video call from Tod. Phil instantly accepted it. Hey dude, he said over the line just as it connected.

Tod’s face popped up on his screen, filling up most of it. The cyborg had seen better days, though Phil knew that he was probably looking a bit disheveled himself. This was day four of a four-day delivery, and every single day had been spent in warp.

H-hey, Tod said. W-what’s u-up?

Phil stared at the screen for a moment. He double-checked their position. Tod’s ship was indeed in the same warp bubble as his own. Their communication was supposed to be instantaneous and perfect. Was it a software error, in one of the decoder units, or was it a hardware error? Had he misaligned one of the antennas?

You’re breaking up a bit, Phil said thoughtfully. Can you see if it’s from your side? He pulled down a diagnostics screen in a swiveling arm attached to the ceiling of the cockpit—or the canopy, or whatever it was called, on the top of it anyway. It had to be ceiling, he decided.

Y-you’re c-coming in c-clear, Tod stammered. Phil eyes were drawn to the video feed, away from the diagnostics, which read alright anyway. It didn’t really look like the connection had an issue. It was more like Tod himself was stammering. Phil fixed his eyes on the image of his friend.

Are you sure? he asked as a test.

Y-yeah d-dude, Tod said. Phil saw Tod’s lips sputter. As his cyborg friend blinked, Phil saw his eyes also move in a lurching motion. Was his friend experiencing some sort of malfunction?

I think you’re— Phil started to say, but Tod cut him off.

D-doesn’t m-matter, d-dude. L-look, I’m b-bored, he stammered. W-wanna r-race?

Race? Phil asked. Well, Tod would certainly run a diagnostics program when he was back home later, right? Or when they would embark on their return trip, or that very night, or at any moment that he usually ran those diagnostics. So, there was no reason to worry. Tod certainly knew more about being a cyborg than Phil did. Right?

Besides, if Tod had an idea about how to deal with their boredom, Phil was all ears.

Y-yeah, r-race. W-what, h-haven’t you h-heard the w-word before? Tod said. He eyed Phil with a sarcastic look, though his eyelids fluttered and his lips shivered for half a second. R-race. F-first to the s-station wins. W-we s-start when the w-warp bubble b-breaks.

Should you be driving? Phil asked, eyeing his friend. He fought to keep the concern off his tone, and instead tried to spin it into a joke. Seems like you haven’t run a systems check in a while.

Tod’s face turned inquisitive. D-did you s-sabotage my s-ship? he stammered.

I don’t mean your ship, dude, Phil said, exasperated. I mean yourself. What’s your brain like? Have you checked it recently? Seems like you might be missing some oil, or a chip is fried or something.

The blank look on Tod’s face was either a great act, or a worrying sign.

M-my b-brain’s f-fine, he stammered. And w-what’s t-that about o-oil and c-chips? He shook his head, then his left eye twitched. Then his right eye twitched, and then they both twitched.

Dude, I think something’s wrong with— Phil started to say, but an alarm blared in his cockpit. A similar one started coming from Tod’s ship. Phil saw a huge warning message that they were about to exit warp, being in the vicinity of the space station.

G-get r-ready, Tod shouted through their video link. Phil fought to prepare his ship for the race, but he also kept an eye on his friend. The ship’s warp bubble wavered.

S-set, Tod stammered. The nauseating motion of the warp faltered, real space bleeding through. Phil made sure that all readings were within acceptable parameters—for both ships, as he didn’t really trust Tod’s judgment on that moment.

Wait a moment, Phil thought. If Tod’s malfunctioning, maybe racing with him, carrying valuable cargo, towards a populated space station isn’t the best idea.

Tod, maybe— Phil started to say.

G-go, screamed Tod just as the warp bubble collapsed and dropped them off in real space.

Phil saw Tod’s ship blast off with incredible speed. While it did seem dangerous to race against his possibly malfunctioning cyborg best friend, it could also be a ploy to make Phil lose. If that were true, then Tod would never let Phil live it down. So, he did the best thing he could think to do.

First, he momentarily turned off the ship’s flight log. He didn’t want SPE to know what he was about to do. Then, he diverted power away from most subsystems and put it in the engines. With the sudden burst of power, the engines pushed the poor little delivery truck towards the space station.

At the same time, he was keeping an eye on Tod’s reactions. He watched him on the little screen, watching how he reacted. Tod’s eyes twitched seemingly randomly, the corners of his mouth also shuddered, and he could see the muscles on his neck trembling every so often. But he was shouting at the top of his voice, having fun accelerating towards the space station.

Judging from the readings Phil was getting from Tod’s ship, he had done nothing to the power delivery system. He was just pushing the ship to its limits. He careened towards the space station, the ship spinning and its engines burning bright, all the while screaming in the video link about how he was going to beat Phil and leave him behind.

Phil had gotten the heavier part of the delivery, he realized. It took him longer to accelerate—but it would also take him longer to decelerate. So, that meant he had two options in front of him: either die a hero, beating Tod in the race but squashing the ship against the station—which would also hurt SPE’s bottom line, which was more important than Phil losing his life—or decelerate, divert power back to the other subsystems, and lose. Like an idiot.

Phil groaned. He didn’t want to lose like an idiot. But while he was just ahead of Tod, he could see that