-SALOON AT THE EDGE OF EVERYWHERE-
Chapter Four
Rufus paused on his stroll through the saloon. One of the empathic Qualm drifted in front of him, looking like nothing so much as bluish-green gossamer veils draped over a floating helium balloon. Once again the seething face that reminded Rufus of a writhing plate of spaghetti sent a slight shudder of revulsion through his body.
“You are upset, Rufus,” the Qualm said in a slithery voice, “is there anything we can do?”
“No thank you, Qualm,” Rufus replied hastily. The Qualm did not have individual names or identities. What you said to one, they all shared.
“I really have quite a lot to do,” lied Rufus, continuing on his way. Lying to the Qualm was always problematic, but that was ever the way with human interaction.
Rufus, as he continued through the bar, caught glimpses of more evidence of Earth- culture mania on all sides. Here a bible being studied rapturously by a being that had no concept of religion. Well, he thought, that happens with people also. There, a peace sign being sported by a member of a race that had never known war. A trucker’s hat with a familiar tractor company logo perched on top of a being who was either mostly head or had no head, depending on how you looked at it. The hat just sat on top like the stem on a tomato.
With a last dismal shake of his own head, Rufus brutally thrust the swinging wooden doors apart and strode through, out into the main central corridor of the Hub.
The Hub was vast and it was old. A great spinning amalgam of space station and hollowed out asteroid. A titanic ring of composite material attached to the asteroid at its center by bracing struts, it floated grandly in space like a science fair model of Saturn and its rings. It remained in position a safe distance from the Nexus Point, one of the thousands of Hubs near one of the thousands of Nexus Points that allowed travel through space to be virtually instantaneous.
Rufus considered the wide corridor, which curved upwards in the distance in either direction. The Hubs, one near each Nexus Point, were built eons before by a race of scientific beings that cared only for technological advancement, but were completely unburdened by any moral or ethical dilemmas. They only cared whether a thing could be created, and never wasted a thought on whether it should be created or not. These characters would build planet-busters or bio-weapons at the drop of a hat. If you paid for the research and costs, they would build it for you. There was very little record of these extraordinary technicians, but they seem to have run afoul of either a disgruntled client or one of their own creations which got out of hand.
Amongst the projects which they had undertaken were occasional works of fantastically beneficial usefulness. The Hubs were one such wonder, paid for by a consortium of races in the long ago. So well built were these handcrafted space stations that they still ran more or less smoothly all these ages later. Designed for use by all sorts of life forms, every room had repositionable walls and floors. Even the built in furniture had gas filled bladders and moveable panels and parts that would reform automatically to fit most shapes and sizes. Each race had its own environment and climate in its area of the Hub, or portable life sustaining units could be used to allow visiting the open areas. Since any race that achieved light speed travel, or who stumbled upon one of the Hubs was allowed to use the Nexus Points and the Hub itself, this usually presented no problem. A space-faring race had most likely designed portable enviro-units by that stage of their development. Yet another sign of human popularity was demonstrated by the fact that the atmosphere in many parts of the main corridor and most of the common areas was now an Earth-friendly oxygen mixture, and the artificial gravity was set at Earth standard. All in all, the Hubs were a technological marvel, but they were beginning to show their age here and there.
Now, only five years after the Bats had found Earth, the humans had already been accepted into polite intergalactic society and given free access to all the Hubs. Not only that, but an Earth conglomerate was busy cranking out star liners and cruise ships which were being fitted with nexus drive engines by the civilizations who built them. Between the aliens flocking to see humans and the humans rushing off to experience the joys of star travel, there had never been such a mass movement of species anywhen.
Rufus watched various…things…walk and creep and crawl and float and undulate along the central corridor, or Mainstreet, as it was coming to be called. The saloon was definitely in the bad part of town, if you catch my meaning, but this sort of added to its allure. Tourists liked to take in the seedy side of things, as long as it was reasonably safe and clean. It gave them a fine sense of adventure. No doubt slumming was another uniquely human endeavor, and no doubt it would be copied endlessly, Rufus mused.
Rufus pulled a rag from his back pocket and began wiping grime from the window sill. This grime, which slowly rained down from the ventilation vents, was one way in which the Hub was proving to be past its prime. Some of the small service bots responsible for duct cleaning were no longer responding to orders. Above him the name of his place of employment was proudly proclaimed on the glass in old-fashiony red letters.
The Professor brushed through the swinging doors and stopped a little too soon. The swinging doors fulfilled their design function and slapped him on the fanny on their return follow-through. The Professor was unperturbed. He rushed up to Rufus, slightly out of breath, and with no preamble whatsoever began talking rapidly in an excited undertone.
“I touched it again, Rufus, and you won’t believe this. The stone shows other whens, other realities. Oh, the things I have seen. Adolph Hitler was a famous painter and architect. There was no war at all! And so many Earths where only one thing was different. An Earth where we still all had tails. Or one where printing was never developed, or where we never recovered from the Dark Ages. Hot Earths and ice-world Earths. Even some where the women had always been in charge. Imagine a world with no Leonardo da Vinci, or a world with two of him. There was one timeline where the Irish had conquered the entire globe.”
Rufus burst out laughing. He was remembering an old joke; Why did God invent whiskey? So the Irish would not rule the world.
“Oh,” the Professor continued, unfazed, “ and our universe is only one of countless billions, all growing and swelling and then bursting to start all over again, as if they were suds in a giant bath tub.”
Rufus sighed.
“That stone sounds pretty wild, Professor,” he said with a snicker. “I may have to try getting stoned myself.”
The Professor excused himself to work on his notes, and he left Rufus to his thoughts.
As was usual for Rufus, most of his thoughts revolved around himself. He found himself daydreaming about his past, and let his mind slip back in fond reminiscence.
Rufus was born in 1975 and raised in the hills just north of Berkeley, California. He had always been fond of saying that every place is the center of the universe, but Berkeley was the center of many universes. His parents had been hippies in their youths, but like many of the flower-child movement, had settled down into the comfortable lifestyles that they had once protested against. But Howard, Rufus’s father, had still liked tie dye shirts on weekends, and had still listened to the Grateful Dead on vinyl records well after the invention of the CD.
Rufus had been raised in the lower end of luxury, but seemed to enjoy spending most of his time on the wrong side of the tracks, so to speak. He had dropped out of high school because he considered himself too smart for such nonsense. He had hitchhiked around the country by the time he was 16. By age 17 he had gotten himself into a wide variety of trouble before a judge gave him a choice between six years in the Navy or six years in prison. As Rufus told it, he never got busted doing anything that hurt other people, and even during his most lawless phase he still opened doors for ladies and said please and thank you. He had been raised well. He just had a problem with authority. This was born out by the fact that he was politely asked to leave the Navy after less than two years with a discharge that read; ‘For the convenience of the government’ on the bottom line. He had been forced to get himself in more trouble to get out of the Navy than he had to get in.
He had held a wide variety of jobs during his travels, and had even learned how to cut and hang tobacco in Bourbon County, Kentucky while AWOL. He was vastly proud of his interesting life experiences, including time spent behind bars (not just the kind that served alcoholic beverages), because he thought of himself mostly as a writer, and cherished having a life worth writing about. He was also an artist and musician, though he seldom made much money doing any of these things. He was all art-side and no logic-side in his brain, and the art-side was not the side that was good at marketing. He tended to start art projects much more often than he finished them, and he had recently started carving tikis in his spare time when he could get his hands on any wood from anywhere. His friends all thought the tikis were wonderful, but he could not bring himself to go out and sell them. He just wasn’t wired that way.
So now, here he was, at the age of 50, continuing his habit of random travel punctuated by odd jobs, only on a much larger stage.
Pouring My Art Out 
They do say that most authors write their first novel loosely about themselves…so when did you get out to space last?
I never left it…
‘for the convenience of the government’…i do hope you have that framed
I shouild scan it and post it, but I won’t…
it’s your discharge paper, you may do with it as you wish 🙂
Trying to preserve my good reputation here…
i think you’re in the wrong place….
Wouldn’t be the first time.
nor the last
undoubtedly.
I recognized Rufus when you first introduced him.
Ha! Jessica made me change the name. Said it was too obvious.
I saw that she’s reading too, very nice!
I have been trying to gdet her to read it for a long time… like since I started writing it.
So what was his name originally then?
Arthur…
HaHaHaHaHa! Should have known…and Rufus rhymes with doofus…
Well, that hurts a little… sigh.
ah…I think there is a perspective problem here…from my perspective a doofus is NOT what Websters online is telling me it is…I went and looked it up after you said that hurt your feelings. Way, way, way back in the long ago 50’s and 60’s it was not uncommon (at least in the crowd I used to run with) to tell someone that they were being such a doofus at times. It was never said to belittle someone, nor was it mean to say it to them. It was basically what you said when they were being a bit silly. And you were usually grinning to beat the band at them as you were saying it because you actually enjoyed whatever it was they had just done to cause you to call them that. And then they would grin back at you and you’d shake you head and throw your arm over their shoulder and off you’d go on to another new adventure. That was why I thought it was so appropriate for your character to be Rufus which rhymed with doofus…it simply fit perfectly…as far as I was concerned. Please accept my abject apology. I guess you had to be there.
I don’t think it has come to mean anything too much worse than that, has it? Someone who is doing something just dumb enough to be be funny in a sort of cute way. right? I wasn’t over reacting so much as over acting, if you see what I mean. I am not in the least upset. I can tell by the tone you were just joshing me. And all your comments have meant a great deal to me. Maybe instead of ouch I should have said touche, (which I hope is what they say in fencing when your opponent scores a point, unless my bad spelling has done me in again)…
Webster is saying it is “a stupid, incompetent, or foolish person.” That’s pretty strong and derogatory as far as I’m concerned and way far over the line of what we used to use it for. That’s why I thought you were “hurt.” And I completely understood after reading that definition. Glad that you were playing to your audience instead. LOL. We’re good then.
Oh, we are so good.
Oh and where the hell is Chapter 5?
Coming on Monday. I am trying to set a steady pace. 4 or 5 a week.
Sigh….no soup for you…until Monday. TWO WHOLE DAYS WITHOUT????? Well, alright I guess….unicorn thing was sorta entertaining…kinda like a sorbet between courses to cleanse the palate…damn…I’ve never looked forward to a Monday before…you are messing with my usual standards here.
And you are making me feel very important and very good about myself… What’s up with that?
Do Bats have to wear the space helmets or can they breath just fine without them?
They can breathe air… they need space helmets in space. The next two chapters will introduce us to a few of the aliens.
Paragraph 9. 4th line up from the bottom…spell check alert…I think anyway…pats of the main corridor….should that have been parts of the main corridor?
Paragraph 12…unless you did this on purpose…it is da Vinci not one word Davinci…
Paragraph 16…again, unless you did this on purpose…it is unfazed not unphased…
I am fixing them now… you are awesome. Nobody else caught them. The da Vinci one might have slipped by me, but I have read the chapters a lot of times. Thank you so much.
old-fashiony…in Paragraph 12…don’t believe there really is such a word…old-fashioned, yes, but that doesn’t sound as nice…what about old-timey maybe? There is such a word as that. I personally like old-fashiony myself but…
The story teller later makes jokes about his English skills, and plays with the language. It does give me just a little leeway.
Oooohhh… thanks… I will check it out…
Ok, now that I’m done with the fyi crap…that’s just something that always happens to me. Can’t avoid it. Things like that just literally LEAP out at me and slap me in the face. Quite annoying to be honest. Anywho….
‘For the convenience of the government’ ROTFLMFAO!!! You dog you! VBG. You come from good stock if Papa was a Deadhead. LOL.
There were parts of this chapter that I enjoyed very very much. But there were parts of it that were choppy as all get out and I nearly got seasick for a bit. Watch your transitions. As a reader it isn’t very fun to get your bum slammed every few bits like riding in a small outboard motorboat speeding across the choppy waves. And don’t go getting all defensive on me…you DID ask us to tell you what we thought as we read didn’t you? You do remember saying that right? Please keep in mind that I am truly enjoying reading this and that I do truly like it. xox
I need the fyi crap. I am a bad speller.
The convenience of the government thing… totally true. But my parents never went to a dead show. That was me. I had to bump the birthday up 15 years so the story would take place in the near future.
I will not get defensive. I know it starts choppy because I am covering so much ground. Bear in mind that it is an alien narrator with less than perfect mastery of the English language. I admit the first chapters are crammed, and I feel they lack action. I try to make up for it with humor. The advantage of the quick, choppy start is that I don’t have to stop and explain any of this later, when the action heats up. But I love the advice and the help. I may need an editor.
PMAO, I am not going to read this. Right now. 😉 I just knew that you have probably been sitting around all day wishing that I would read and comment on it, but I’m not playing hard to get, I am just…I don’t know anymore. Nevermind, I’ll go read it after I turn the kids light out. I’ll shut up now.
Actually, I don’t really feel like shutting up. Weird. Unfortunately for you, I am talking too much on your blog instead of my own, or someone elses. I have become a comment slacker lately. I need to start commenting on people’s stuff huh.. That is probably why I am having a hard time shutting up. Anyway, I’ll read this and talk some more.
Yeah, still me…okay, I want a Hub. Also, I love that you are your star, in a round about way. It is still scene setting, but I can feel the adventure heating up. Well done PMAO. I am looking forward to reading more.
I might take a break tomorrow… with a twist.
…
That was another excellent post today. Thanks so much for sharing. Keep up the fantastic job.
Enjoy writing?
Feel free to join our writing group – It’s worth getting into. They pay very well also.
Join Today – Writers Wanted
I would have to know way more about it before I commited to anything.
Just go to their page and sign up. You’re not committed to anything. I just was a very good decision that I made and I wanted to share it.
Trust me, PMAO, run, don’t walk, from that site. Their ultimate goal is to get you to sign up for a service where you pay to be on a list of people that MIGHT get hired to write crappy articles that don’t interest you, for not much money – but once they have you paying something like $45 a month to be on this list, where’s their incentive to get you a job? Nowhere, that’s where.
Scam, scam, scam. That’s why the only comments I’ve ever deleted or edited have been from this crapfest assbag of a site.
I sort of figured as much.
Dear pmao and Edward,
HA HA HA HA HA.
Go and see my latest post. 🙂
Love Dotty xxx
Let me do a post first. I was busy all morning.
Rufus sounds hot. Is he single? Chapter 5.
He is. But he might just be based on someone you know… and that makes it sick and wrong.
Is it Kim Kardashian?
Not even close.
Kim Icalbrothers?
Getting warmer.
I’m really starting to become fond of Rufus. As a child of the 70s, I think I can understand him in many earthly ways…although to be honest, I thought Ned would be the main character. I’m quite pleased he’s not though, I’m just surprised. My favorite phrase so far was: “fantastically beneficial usefulness.”
Here is one more dark secret… the saloon isn’t important at all. It just happens to be where some of the characters work at the start. Oh, I am sneaky that way. Lots of false leads and dead end paths. You think you know what is coming, but you don’t. Nothing is what it seems. Except Rufus.
But how do I know you are telling the truth about Rufus? Now you’re just being mean…(and I love it.) (hit me again.)
I can’t lie about Rufus because I are we and he is me and we are we and we are all together… coo coo ca choo.
Got it.
Wink wink, nudge, nudge…