-SALOON AT THE EDGE OF EVERYWHERE-

Chapter Two

“I only found out by accident, you see,” said the professor. He continued, still in a rush, but at least in a hushed whisper, “I was cleaning out a storage closet in the rear of the area I am going to use as my office, and I found this triangular stone. Well, it looks like stone anyway. It was only a foot or so tall, and it didn’t look that heavy, so I attempted to move it myself. But when my hand came in contact with the surface, my mind was flooded with images and information. It seems to be a memory stone of some sort. I believe that one of the multi-dimensional races uses them as an emergency knowledge archive, a back up memory, as it were. You know, in case everything everywhere does somehow cease to exist, and they need to start over from scratch, so to speak. I perceived that they leave these devices scattered about the universe, and this particular unit was picked up by someone and brought here as a mere curiosity. I got the feeling that this object was not meant to be accessed by any of the short term races, but for some reason it was confused by my, ummm, humanness, and it allowed me to utilize it. Then it just, well, provides answers for what you are most interested in. Since I am by nature an historian, it flooded my brain with so much history I thought my head would explode. It is obviously designed by and for an alien intelligence much vaster and far different from our own.”

The professor looked to be gathering oxygen for an even longer speech. Rufus again glanced at his two fellow employees. “Maybe we should keep this quiet until we figure out what it all means,” was all he could think of to say.

But the little fellow was not to be dissuaded so easily. “I couldn’t form my thoughts quickly enough to keep up, and my memory could not contain the huge amount of data, but I have learned many interesting things, and parts of many others. For one thing, I am quite certain that we, the human race that is, have developed at a much faster pace than any that have existed previously, and all that exist now. It is entirely without precedent. And of course they had help and a head start. But our last few decades of scientific and cultural advancement is just off the scale. We have a creativity and drive that propel us forward and that is entirely lacking in any other species. In fact it seems that some of our research into bending light waves and particle physics were on the right track towards eventual faster than light travel in another 100 years or so. That is orders of magnitude faster than any race anywhere or anywhen has managed to stumble upon it.

“All right people, I don’t pay you to stand around jawin’, so get back to work.” This new voice belonged to a tall thin fellow with a bristly gray beard, and a bristly gray mustache, and a bristly gray personality to match. His long iron gray hair was tied in a pony tail behind his head, and he had one eye that cocked off to the side just a little. Taken all together, he was another interesting example of the human male.

This human was named Ned Perkins, and he was the owner and proprietor of the Saloon at the Edge of Everywhere. He was very fond of the name of his establishment, because, as he never tired of telling anyone who would listen, he came from the middle of nowhere, and this was a distinct improvement any way you looked at it.

“We got two freighters tied up at the Hub, and there is a cruise ship full o’ tourists docking in a few hours who may be hankerin’ for some homemade earth-grub,” Ned grumbled in his bristly gray voice.

Rufus winced within himself. Between the down-home lingo, and the fact that Ned had taken to dressing like a prospector from an old western vid, and had swinging wooden saloon doors and a stuffed buffalo head brought from Earth to complete the old west theme of his bar, it was all getting to be a bit much. Just don’t make us all start wearing the hats, he prayed silently.

The professor did not work for Ned, so he gave Rufus a halfhearted wave and a wink that promised that he was by no means done discussing these new developments, and ambled off in the direction of his cluttered office.

Candybar slid off the table she had been using as a chair, gave a little sigh and one last look at the Warlord, and headed back in the direction of the main saloon. Rufus watched her appreciatively. True, she was wearing cowboy boots, but they went well with the short black skirt and her long brown legs. So far Ned had not established an actual western dress code for the cocktail waitresses or his other employees, and Rufus wondered briefly where the Warlord would put a cowboy hat if asked to wear one, let alone the boots. The Warlord was still actively involved in washing dishes, and therefore had no need to return to work. He was already working.

Rufus gave Ned a smile that may have had more than a trace of smirk in it, and also strolled off towards the bar. He figured he could look busy just about anywhere. And yet, despite a certain laziness inherent in his personality, he felt a strange fondness for this castoff remnant of Earth’s historical drinking establishments. He liked his job as custodian to this misplaced location, though from his constant grumbling you would scarcely know it. He liked being able to show up when he wanted or leaving early if he felt like it. He had few real responsibilities, and no one looking over his shoulder as he worked. Rufus also liked being allowed to eat all the bar food he wanted, although now that he was trying to loose a few pounds, he found the constant temptation sorely trying. In his own way Rufus felt a little protective towards this place where he spent so much of his time. And towards the people he worked with as well, if he were to admit it to himself. As he was fond of saying, “Custodian comes from the ancient Latin word custodiae, which means, ‘he who watches,’ so I sort of keep an eye on the place.”

Rufus passed out of the kitchen and through an automatic set of doors, and into the main lounge and dining area of the saloon. Once again the overall effect of the place hit him in the face. The swinging doors and the buffalo head over the bar were just the finishing touches in Ned’s purposeful design aimed at capturing the authentic tackiness of a cheap knock-off of old western culture. If you opened this place in Texas, he thought peevishly, they might still hang you or at least shoot you. But culture didn’t need to be good to be popular. Aliens just seemed to love everything humans ever thought of. The dim haze of tobacco smoke drifting in vent currents gave clear evidence of that, as members of quite a few races sampled yet another of Earth’s vices. Rufus had the unkind notion that the smoke was the most authentic aspect of Ned’s historical ambitions at realism.

Again Rufus felt the weight of what could only be called embarrassment for the planet of his birth. “We are guilty of importing disco music, line dancing and the Big Mac to the stars,” he mumbled under his breath.

Now tourism was another singularly human invention that was becoming popular. Oh, other races traveled for trade or to exploit resources, to explore and or conquer. But the notion of going places to have experiences and record memories, let alone the buying of souvenirs, had never occurred to any of them. Between star faring races flocking to earth in various stages of rapture, and the humans flooding outwards to see the marvels of the universe, the Saloon at the Edge of Everywhere was doing a brisk business.  Somehow this oasis of the Wild West in tawdry miniature drew alien human-watchers and homesick humans. Rufus spotted a Dick-head wearing a tie dye shirt seated at the bar.

“Ah, sheesh.” He let this out as half sigh, half bemused curse. He reminded himself not to refer to them as Dick-heads, even in his thoughts. We might as well export political correctness along with all the rest, was his considered opinion.

This intergalactic contagion of human ideas had begun just over a decade before, and it all started with the Flying Pickle. In the year 2012 A. D., as reckoned by some earth calendars of the time and much to the delight of doomsday prophets and Mayan calendar followers, the Earth had at last received its first extraterrestrial visitor. It is noted here that many earthlings now are supporting the idea that Earth as a whole commence with a new calendar, with 2012 becoming the year 1, and dates either before the arrival of the Pickle, or coming after it, should henceforth be referred to as either B. F. P., for Before the Flying Pickle, or A. F. P., for After the Flying Pickle.

Much to the dismay of science fiction buffs, this first contact did not go according to the most popular scenarios envisioned by any of the luminaries of either science or fiction. It was, in just about every sense, hugely anti-climactic.

On a sunny summer day, the arrival of a 48 foot long Flying Pickle shocked the world into, well, nothing much more really than mass speculation and a great deal of chattering. Ironically, the only aspect of this visitation that coincided with our notions of how a visitor might be expected to behave was that it did drop into a hover over a small farm in rural Kansas. Needless to say the crop circle aficionados were thrilled.

In actual fact, to say that the giants of writing and thinking were wrong about how your first alien encounter would go may be overstating the case just a little. Their insights into how the human race would react were in many cases startlingly accurate.

The Government of the United States of America, on being told of the arrival of an alien ship, leaped into action with, for them, remarkable speed and even some tact. True, the military was mobilized and every weapons system ever devised by man was immediately if surreptitiously slewed around to point at Kansas. The owner of the farm, one Farmer McGregor, (hey, you can’t make this stuff up), happily had no idea that his wheat field was now ground zero for everything from rifle bullets to thermonuclear devices that could, if need be, turn most of Kansas into a molten crater the size of most of Kansas.

With remarkable and commendable restraint, tanks were not the first vehicles to approach the visitor, but rather a convoy of limos containing a deputation of ambassadors of good will, as well as representatives, officials, and bureaucrats. The fact that the tanks were held back a good dozen miles or so in an attempt at good manners turned out to be necessary, as this extra space soon began to fill with crowds of scientists, specialists, linguists, medical professionals, and government representatives, along with their thousands of tons of monitoring equipment and other gear thought essential to the situation. These now formed a huge pulsating bubble around the space craft. Much to their dismay, the members of the world press were kept back behind the ring of tanks along with the sightseers, gawkers, alien lovers, false prophets, and those who sold hot dogs and ‘hug an alien’ t-shirts.

A truly vast array of scientific instruments and military hardware, (and software), as well as multitudinous long distance camera lenses were all focused on this hovering vessel. It did not take long for the geniuses with all this technology on hand to discover one startling fact. The UFO did indeed look a heck of a lot like a pickle, right down to the bumpy and slightly shiny green color of its exterior. If a pickle ever did reach the astounding (for a pickle) length of 48 feet, and attained the even more unusual (particularly for a pickle) ability to fly, this is exactly what it would look like.

Now here is where we get to the anticlimactic part. The Flying Pickle just sat there…well, floated three feet above the ground really, for three whole years. With never so much as a peep. Oh, you probed the hell out of that thing. You x-rayed it and used many other waves upon it. You scanned it and measured it, fondled it and pleaded with it. You even used a stethoscope on it. People began to get bored and wander off.

Eventually, after two and a half years, some think-tank decided that the crew was trapped inside, perhaps in some deep sleep or maybe even injured or sick or dead. Then you tried to open it. And I mean you tried everything. Laser cutters, diamond drills and saws, shaped explosive charges, you name it. Not even a scratch.

At long last, after just a few weeks over three years of seeming to do absolutely nothing, the Pickle also got bored and wandered off. It just began to rise into the sky slowly gathering speed, continued on through the stratosphere, and still accelerating, departed your galaxy in just a few hours.

It wasn’t until later that you learned that the UFO, while indeed unidentified, and obviously an object that could fly, was not a vehicle at all. It was in fact a very young and very curious member of an ancient multi-dimensional race.

Fortunately, you were hardly the first species to try to cut one open before finding out what it was, but still you must admit, it was a trifle embarrassing.