Fanfic: The Last Kidnapping Part 13
Title: The Last Kidnapping, Part 13
Author: Joan
Length: 2890 words
Summary: Harolup watches KMCP Channel 8 News. It isn't pretty.
Warnings: Social nudity, one actual English four-letter word and some implied Tseri[gulp]uu ones.
Links to previous chapters under the cut
Links: Part 1; Part 2;: Part 3; Part 4; Part 5; Part 6; Part 7; Part 8; Part 9; Part 10; Part 11; Part 12
One of the more amusing oddities of life aboard Harolup High Orbit (at least from Roxanne's point of view) was that ten-year-old broadcasts of KMCP News were a popular entertainment. Because the habitat kept to the arbitrary "day" and "night" that had been standard in Me Weä [Squish]iyey space, which was totally out of sync with Earth time, the evening news arrived in the morning and the morning news in the evening. After spending most of the afternoon studying the history, customs and social structure of Harolup society, followed by a dinner that involved not a single land species, watching Earth TV sounded like a pleasant evening activity.
Most of the Tseri[gulp]uu viewers watched it on thirty-second delay with computer-translated subtitles, but she, Megamind and Minion joined the English language subgroup of the Earth Study Group for the raw live version. ("Raw" was the state of the group as well as the broadcast: it was a leisure activity, so everyone was naked.) The room it was shown in was below and to one side of the big pool room and had one glass wall that looked into the pool, so that the Opuulu members of the audience could watch without their suits. About half the people in the room were Tsveö's and Naüÿng's immediate family: their four parents, ten-year-old sisters and four-year-old brothers. (The introductions were an occasion for Roxanne to learn the Tseri[gulp]uu naming system: sons got their family names from their fathers, daughters from their mothers.) There were also a pregnant Yi[gulp]vi, her Opuulu and the Opuulu's six-month-old daughter, a little creature that could have fit comfortably in a twelve-ounce coffee mug. Roxanne found the littlest three, the Yi[gulp]vi already speaking with an adult-sounding vocabulary even though he had a typical preschooler's lisp, the Opuulu all big eyes and sharp teeth, the cutest things she'd ever seen. The show was projected on the wall opposite the pool. The Yi[gulp]vi and Roxanne sat with their backs against the clear glasslike wall, with the Opuulu floating high enough to see over their heads.
When the opening sequence first came on, Roxanne felt a rush of warmth for her former employer like she hadn't felt since she was newly hired, while at the same time feeling a certain freedom in the knowledge that she'd never have to meet that particular deadline again. She got her notebook and pencil out to write down people's reactions, hoping to learn more of the subtleties of Tseri[gulp]uu psychology, but it was they who ended up learning something about human psychology from her reaction to the first story.
"At the top of the news, we have a new development in the latest kidnapping of Roxanne Ritchi, this time into space, by Megamind in the early hours of yesterday morning. As we reported yesterday, Metro Man was on the job, leaving the following voice mail message for the mayor even as he went forth into battle." The face of the anchorman, Jack Grey, was replaced by a view of the lake at night, as seen from one of the piers. The water rippled as the illusory nosecone broke the surface. The lake appeared to churn, glowing from below as the hologram projector simulated the fire of an underwater launch.
"Mayor, this is Metro Man." The long cigar shape seemed to rise from the water; as its tail fins cleared, the whole surface was briefly illuminated by what what Roxanne knew was the thermite on the barge going off. "Megamind is aboard that rocket and it looks like he's got Roxie. I've only got a few minutes to catch up with it and bring her back safely." She stood up suddenly.
"That liar!" she shouted, flinging her notebook at the wall. As though she'd hit a hidden button, the image of Jack Grey returned.
"KMCP's research team has just received GPS data from the hero's cell phone service provider, showing that Metro Man was already in orbit when he made that phone call, waiting to intercept the villain and foil his plan. But what's disturbing here is the record from after the phone call. There's another thirteen minutes when the signal appears to stand still and then it moves out of Earth orbit on a trajectory that looks like it's headed, not for the Moon or any planet, but out of the plane of the ecliptic, the flat area of space around the sun that contains the orbits of all the planets and most of the asteroids." An artist's rendition appeared, showing an area of space with the Earth's surface at the bottom, the Sun in the background, and a trail of bright spots curving out of orbit toward the upper right corner of the screen. "This is all we have before the signal goes out of range." There was another rendition, this time with the Earth as background. "It may indicate a planned rendezvous with a comet, a deliberately deceptive maneuver on Megamind's part or the unplanned result of a struggle for the controls." A third view appeared, with the Sun on the far right edge of the screen. "Whichever it is, the fact that there has been no communication from either Megamind or Metro Man in the twenty-nine hours since that phone call is very worrying."
"[He's endangered us all,]" said a child's voice to her right. Grey continued, asking the city's astronomers, amateur and professional, to train their telescopes on that region of the sky, but Tsveö's mother talked over it.
"[Wrist unit, contact the Commander.]"
###
Wayne wasn't ready. He had spend most of his six hours reading as much about the Glau as he could take in, along with what little was known about the Star Eater people. Only in the last forty minutes had he remembered to do some research into his present situation. He learned that, while normal Tseri#uu government was a confusing system based on something the translation software called "optimal decision theory," Harolup High Orbit was, like Earth ships at sea and in space, a dictatorship, although it was customary for the Commander to consult widely before major non-emergency decisions. Then he started reading his case file. It started with the report of a doctor who had examined him while he was unconscious. It reported that he suffered from, not just suppression of reproductive function and premature aging due to overuse of superspeed, both of which he'd already figured out, but also deficiencies of a couple of chemicals with long names. He'd never before been examined by a doctor who had experience with Glau patients. He hoped he would get to talk to this doctor at some point.
Next came a report by Ilu Menang, captain of the Adventure. Minion, in other words. He expected it to start with the discovery of the oxygen problem, but he found that it started at the Li'l Gifted School. In Wayne's memory, Megamind (or Johnny Smith, as he was called then) was a troubled individual from the beginning, one whom Wayne cared about and thought of in a friendly way even though he had to take action to keep the blue guy in line every so often. From Minion's point of view, Wayne had been a bully that the teacher had allowed to run wild. Had he really given Johnny a concussion in dodge ball? He supposed he could check the school records - no, wait, there were no Earth records to check. It was Minion's word against his, and among Minion's people, Minion's word could be expected to count for more.
He went into superspeed to read the rest. Minion had a good memory, and was honest enough to point out that the rough treatment Wayne had handed out as Metro Boy had disappeared as the years went by, as he had gained enough experience to apprehend without injury. There were even a couple of incidents in there in which he had rescued Megamind from his own malfunctioning inventions. The fish also mentioned the opportunities for Minion to escape that Wayne always provided, including one occasion when Wayne had secretly interfered with the efforts of the police. The account concluded with this note: "On Earth, people who don't have a humanoid body shape or human DNA are legally animals, no matter how intelligent they are. If I had been apprehended even once, I would have been confiscated and sold at auction if I was lucky, executed without trial if I wasn't. I owe Wayne Scott my life and my freedom many times over. Please take that into account."
Wayne was touched. He'd half expected Minion to hang him out to dry, but the fish (Opuulu, he reminded himself) had been scrupulous in his testimony.
He looked for Megamind's report, but didn't find one. There was one on the costs his presence imposed on the habitat, from the rebuilding of Minion's spare suits, which he had crushed to make room for himself in the cargo hold, to his basic physical needs to the estimated time spent by various people dealing with him. All the numbers were expressed both as simple amounts and as a percentage of the total resources of the habitat, which drove home the point that he was in a limited environment where every individual imposed a significant burden.
He was almost done with that one when the page of text disappeared, replaced by a video image of two Opuulu, one about twice the size of the other. The big one immediately began to chew him out in Tseri#uu while the little one floated silently with an anxious expression. Getting chewed out by someone with fangs was impressive, even though Wayne didn't understand a word. The bigger fish's feelings were clear enough; he (she?) was furious. When the tirade was finished, the smaller one spoke in English.
"What the Commander is upset about is this." (The Commander, as in the guy whose got my life in his hands? Oh, shit.) The two faces were replaced by about the last thing in the world he expected: the KMCP Channel 8 News logo. "It arrived only a few minutes ago."
Wayne watched the report. His cell phone? He had turned it off after the call to the Mayor, but the GPS tracking feature, which he'd gotten so that news crews could follow him more easily in the heat of battle, never shut off unless the battery died. He could have thrown it out to fall into the atmosphere and burn up, but between the excitement of going and the worry about getting caught, he hadn't thought about it. And why was it such a big deal? It wasn't as if anyone on Earth had the technology to follow them.
Then, about the time the news report ended and the two fish came back, the penny dropped.
"I might as well have left a sign out for the Star Eater people saying 'We went that-a-way.'"
The smaller Opuulu translated for the Commander, then remarked in English, "People of all intelligent species get attached to things they always have with them, so I suppose it isn't strange that you kept it, but why didn't you turn off the tracking? You know it wouldn't have been any use to you once you left Earth."
'I don't know how."
The smaller Opuulu (whom he was tempted to dub Babel Fish) gaped at him with astonishment tinged with amusement. He (she?) turned to the Commander and translated again. The bigger Opuulu roared with laughter. In the background, Wayne could hear other laughter. Sound doesn't carry in vacuum, but the pole that connected him to the rest of the habitat must have had some capability to conduct sound, not enough for normal hearing to detect, but enough to get Wayne's attention. He looked across empty space into the habitat and saw at least a dozen holograms of himself with blue people and fish looking at them and laughing as if he'd just told the best joke ever.
The screen went blank. Wayne curled up in a semi-fetal position, holding his head. He didn't often get headaches, but it felt like the one coming on right then was going to be a doozy.
###
"Wow. Sir, I think we just learned all the cuss words."
"No, you didn't," replied the four-year-old Opuulu. "He didn't say eÿ[click]ong."
"Manners, Æünik," said his mother. The hologram of Wayne disappeared, replaced by one of Sa[squish]ikwuë Nawa.
"Ilu Amnang and Roxanne Ritchi," said the Commander. "[While I understand your wanting to take more time to get adjusted, I want to settle the fate of Wayne Scott before my temper gets the better of me. So I want each of you to dictate a report, like the one Menang has already given, as soon as possible. He can explain the form and the rules. Do you understand?]" He didn't ask if they would do it. It was clearly an order.
While the Tseri[gulp]uu didn't have any use for privacy, they were generous with peace and quiet. Not only was each room soundproofed, each bedroom (hammock room?) could be divided into smaller compartments and the dividers were also soundproofed. Megamind and Roxanne each sat in their own, dictating their reports to their wrist units (and thereby the whole population of Harolup), hearing not a sound from the other. By unspoken agreement, she was covering Wayne's background, his family and its longtime role in the city, his private school education and the public acts of heroism that first established his reputation when Roxanne was in middle school. Only then did she start on her personal experience of him, starting from her first work covering his battles and rescues, then the early interviews, then the day he asked her to accompany him to a charity dinner. She was the first woman who was not his mother that he'd ever been seen with at a public social function. He was direct about the reason. "Most women I meet get that look in their eye when they first meet me, that fortune hunter look, even some of the ones who were born to money themselves. You don't have it, and that means I won't have to spend the whole evening worrying about what I'm getting into with you." It was her first glimpse of the real Wayne, so she put it in the report as the beginning of the friendship that eventually developed between them.
Back on Earth, Roxanne had occasionally been approached by some sleazeball literary agent who wanted her to write a tell-all book about Wayne. She had always refused. But now she realized that she was writing it after all, not for money but as a kind of character reference, to show, not just the Commander, but all the Tseri[gulp]uu who he was and why they should accept him and give him a chance to redeem himself.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the barrier, Megamind was struggling. Part of him wanted to use this report as an excuse to boast, to shade the truth, to play up the glory of his own career and the contemptible spoilsport side of his longtime rival. The other part sensed that that sort of thing wasn't done here and that he'd be better off sticking to the truth. The fact that expressions like "Goody Two-Shoes" didn't translate very well into Tseri[gulp]uu was only making it worse. He had been gradually realizing that, while the part of him that was Ilu Amnang was home at last and very glad of it, the part that was Megamind might not fit in very well here, and the realization had made him uncharacteristically quiet all afternoon. Now he wanted to consult Minion. Actually, he wanted to whine to Minion about how hard it was, and get some sympathy and encouragement and coaxing and maybe a snack. But the rules had been made very clear to him. He was to discuss this with no one until he had finished, and the snack he had in mind, coffee with two creams and five sugars and a half-dozen assorted donuts, would definitely be forbidden by his doctor. He held his head in his hands, miserable for a moment, and then it occurred to him that his head wasn't enormous anymore. It was a perfectly normal, bald, blue head, and no one would ever make fun of it again. It was Wayne who was funny-looking now. That thought made him smile, and that smile gave him the focus to get started. "[My first encounter with the person I was to know as Wayne Scott happened as we were entering the asteroid belt on our approach to Earth...]"
Author: Joan
Length: 2890 words
Summary: Harolup watches KMCP Channel 8 News. It isn't pretty.
Warnings: Social nudity, one actual English four-letter word and some implied Tseri[gulp]uu ones.
Links to previous chapters under the cut
Links: Part 1; Part 2;: Part 3; Part 4; Part 5; Part 6; Part 7; Part 8; Part 9; Part 10; Part 11; Part 12
One of the more amusing oddities of life aboard Harolup High Orbit (at least from Roxanne's point of view) was that ten-year-old broadcasts of KMCP News were a popular entertainment. Because the habitat kept to the arbitrary "day" and "night" that had been standard in Me Weä [Squish]iyey space, which was totally out of sync with Earth time, the evening news arrived in the morning and the morning news in the evening. After spending most of the afternoon studying the history, customs and social structure of Harolup society, followed by a dinner that involved not a single land species, watching Earth TV sounded like a pleasant evening activity.
Most of the Tseri[gulp]uu viewers watched it on thirty-second delay with computer-translated subtitles, but she, Megamind and Minion joined the English language subgroup of the Earth Study Group for the raw live version. ("Raw" was the state of the group as well as the broadcast: it was a leisure activity, so everyone was naked.) The room it was shown in was below and to one side of the big pool room and had one glass wall that looked into the pool, so that the Opuulu members of the audience could watch without their suits. About half the people in the room were Tsveö's and Naüÿng's immediate family: their four parents, ten-year-old sisters and four-year-old brothers. (The introductions were an occasion for Roxanne to learn the Tseri[gulp]uu naming system: sons got their family names from their fathers, daughters from their mothers.) There were also a pregnant Yi[gulp]vi, her Opuulu and the Opuulu's six-month-old daughter, a little creature that could have fit comfortably in a twelve-ounce coffee mug. Roxanne found the littlest three, the Yi[gulp]vi already speaking with an adult-sounding vocabulary even though he had a typical preschooler's lisp, the Opuulu all big eyes and sharp teeth, the cutest things she'd ever seen. The show was projected on the wall opposite the pool. The Yi[gulp]vi and Roxanne sat with their backs against the clear glasslike wall, with the Opuulu floating high enough to see over their heads.
When the opening sequence first came on, Roxanne felt a rush of warmth for her former employer like she hadn't felt since she was newly hired, while at the same time feeling a certain freedom in the knowledge that she'd never have to meet that particular deadline again. She got her notebook and pencil out to write down people's reactions, hoping to learn more of the subtleties of Tseri[gulp]uu psychology, but it was they who ended up learning something about human psychology from her reaction to the first story.
"At the top of the news, we have a new development in the latest kidnapping of Roxanne Ritchi, this time into space, by Megamind in the early hours of yesterday morning. As we reported yesterday, Metro Man was on the job, leaving the following voice mail message for the mayor even as he went forth into battle." The face of the anchorman, Jack Grey, was replaced by a view of the lake at night, as seen from one of the piers. The water rippled as the illusory nosecone broke the surface. The lake appeared to churn, glowing from below as the hologram projector simulated the fire of an underwater launch.
"Mayor, this is Metro Man." The long cigar shape seemed to rise from the water; as its tail fins cleared, the whole surface was briefly illuminated by what what Roxanne knew was the thermite on the barge going off. "Megamind is aboard that rocket and it looks like he's got Roxie. I've only got a few minutes to catch up with it and bring her back safely." She stood up suddenly.
"That liar!" she shouted, flinging her notebook at the wall. As though she'd hit a hidden button, the image of Jack Grey returned.
"KMCP's research team has just received GPS data from the hero's cell phone service provider, showing that Metro Man was already in orbit when he made that phone call, waiting to intercept the villain and foil his plan. But what's disturbing here is the record from after the phone call. There's another thirteen minutes when the signal appears to stand still and then it moves out of Earth orbit on a trajectory that looks like it's headed, not for the Moon or any planet, but out of the plane of the ecliptic, the flat area of space around the sun that contains the orbits of all the planets and most of the asteroids." An artist's rendition appeared, showing an area of space with the Earth's surface at the bottom, the Sun in the background, and a trail of bright spots curving out of orbit toward the upper right corner of the screen. "This is all we have before the signal goes out of range." There was another rendition, this time with the Earth as background. "It may indicate a planned rendezvous with a comet, a deliberately deceptive maneuver on Megamind's part or the unplanned result of a struggle for the controls." A third view appeared, with the Sun on the far right edge of the screen. "Whichever it is, the fact that there has been no communication from either Megamind or Metro Man in the twenty-nine hours since that phone call is very worrying."
"[He's endangered us all,]" said a child's voice to her right. Grey continued, asking the city's astronomers, amateur and professional, to train their telescopes on that region of the sky, but Tsveö's mother talked over it.
"[Wrist unit, contact the Commander.]"
###
Wayne wasn't ready. He had spend most of his six hours reading as much about the Glau as he could take in, along with what little was known about the Star Eater people. Only in the last forty minutes had he remembered to do some research into his present situation. He learned that, while normal Tseri#uu government was a confusing system based on something the translation software called "optimal decision theory," Harolup High Orbit was, like Earth ships at sea and in space, a dictatorship, although it was customary for the Commander to consult widely before major non-emergency decisions. Then he started reading his case file. It started with the report of a doctor who had examined him while he was unconscious. It reported that he suffered from, not just suppression of reproductive function and premature aging due to overuse of superspeed, both of which he'd already figured out, but also deficiencies of a couple of chemicals with long names. He'd never before been examined by a doctor who had experience with Glau patients. He hoped he would get to talk to this doctor at some point.
Next came a report by Ilu Menang, captain of the Adventure. Minion, in other words. He expected it to start with the discovery of the oxygen problem, but he found that it started at the Li'l Gifted School. In Wayne's memory, Megamind (or Johnny Smith, as he was called then) was a troubled individual from the beginning, one whom Wayne cared about and thought of in a friendly way even though he had to take action to keep the blue guy in line every so often. From Minion's point of view, Wayne had been a bully that the teacher had allowed to run wild. Had he really given Johnny a concussion in dodge ball? He supposed he could check the school records - no, wait, there were no Earth records to check. It was Minion's word against his, and among Minion's people, Minion's word could be expected to count for more.
He went into superspeed to read the rest. Minion had a good memory, and was honest enough to point out that the rough treatment Wayne had handed out as Metro Boy had disappeared as the years went by, as he had gained enough experience to apprehend without injury. There were even a couple of incidents in there in which he had rescued Megamind from his own malfunctioning inventions. The fish also mentioned the opportunities for Minion to escape that Wayne always provided, including one occasion when Wayne had secretly interfered with the efforts of the police. The account concluded with this note: "On Earth, people who don't have a humanoid body shape or human DNA are legally animals, no matter how intelligent they are. If I had been apprehended even once, I would have been confiscated and sold at auction if I was lucky, executed without trial if I wasn't. I owe Wayne Scott my life and my freedom many times over. Please take that into account."
Wayne was touched. He'd half expected Minion to hang him out to dry, but the fish (Opuulu, he reminded himself) had been scrupulous in his testimony.
He looked for Megamind's report, but didn't find one. There was one on the costs his presence imposed on the habitat, from the rebuilding of Minion's spare suits, which he had crushed to make room for himself in the cargo hold, to his basic physical needs to the estimated time spent by various people dealing with him. All the numbers were expressed both as simple amounts and as a percentage of the total resources of the habitat, which drove home the point that he was in a limited environment where every individual imposed a significant burden.
He was almost done with that one when the page of text disappeared, replaced by a video image of two Opuulu, one about twice the size of the other. The big one immediately began to chew him out in Tseri#uu while the little one floated silently with an anxious expression. Getting chewed out by someone with fangs was impressive, even though Wayne didn't understand a word. The bigger fish's feelings were clear enough; he (she?) was furious. When the tirade was finished, the smaller one spoke in English.
"What the Commander is upset about is this." (The Commander, as in the guy whose got my life in his hands? Oh, shit.) The two faces were replaced by about the last thing in the world he expected: the KMCP Channel 8 News logo. "It arrived only a few minutes ago."
Wayne watched the report. His cell phone? He had turned it off after the call to the Mayor, but the GPS tracking feature, which he'd gotten so that news crews could follow him more easily in the heat of battle, never shut off unless the battery died. He could have thrown it out to fall into the atmosphere and burn up, but between the excitement of going and the worry about getting caught, he hadn't thought about it. And why was it such a big deal? It wasn't as if anyone on Earth had the technology to follow them.
Then, about the time the news report ended and the two fish came back, the penny dropped.
"I might as well have left a sign out for the Star Eater people saying 'We went that-a-way.'"
The smaller Opuulu translated for the Commander, then remarked in English, "People of all intelligent species get attached to things they always have with them, so I suppose it isn't strange that you kept it, but why didn't you turn off the tracking? You know it wouldn't have been any use to you once you left Earth."
'I don't know how."
The smaller Opuulu (whom he was tempted to dub Babel Fish) gaped at him with astonishment tinged with amusement. He (she?) turned to the Commander and translated again. The bigger Opuulu roared with laughter. In the background, Wayne could hear other laughter. Sound doesn't carry in vacuum, but the pole that connected him to the rest of the habitat must have had some capability to conduct sound, not enough for normal hearing to detect, but enough to get Wayne's attention. He looked across empty space into the habitat and saw at least a dozen holograms of himself with blue people and fish looking at them and laughing as if he'd just told the best joke ever.
The screen went blank. Wayne curled up in a semi-fetal position, holding his head. He didn't often get headaches, but it felt like the one coming on right then was going to be a doozy.
###
"Wow. Sir, I think we just learned all the cuss words."
"No, you didn't," replied the four-year-old Opuulu. "He didn't say eÿ[click]ong."
"Manners, Æünik," said his mother. The hologram of Wayne disappeared, replaced by one of Sa[squish]ikwuë Nawa.
"Ilu Amnang and Roxanne Ritchi," said the Commander. "[While I understand your wanting to take more time to get adjusted, I want to settle the fate of Wayne Scott before my temper gets the better of me. So I want each of you to dictate a report, like the one Menang has already given, as soon as possible. He can explain the form and the rules. Do you understand?]" He didn't ask if they would do it. It was clearly an order.
While the Tseri[gulp]uu didn't have any use for privacy, they were generous with peace and quiet. Not only was each room soundproofed, each bedroom (hammock room?) could be divided into smaller compartments and the dividers were also soundproofed. Megamind and Roxanne each sat in their own, dictating their reports to their wrist units (and thereby the whole population of Harolup), hearing not a sound from the other. By unspoken agreement, she was covering Wayne's background, his family and its longtime role in the city, his private school education and the public acts of heroism that first established his reputation when Roxanne was in middle school. Only then did she start on her personal experience of him, starting from her first work covering his battles and rescues, then the early interviews, then the day he asked her to accompany him to a charity dinner. She was the first woman who was not his mother that he'd ever been seen with at a public social function. He was direct about the reason. "Most women I meet get that look in their eye when they first meet me, that fortune hunter look, even some of the ones who were born to money themselves. You don't have it, and that means I won't have to spend the whole evening worrying about what I'm getting into with you." It was her first glimpse of the real Wayne, so she put it in the report as the beginning of the friendship that eventually developed between them.
Back on Earth, Roxanne had occasionally been approached by some sleazeball literary agent who wanted her to write a tell-all book about Wayne. She had always refused. But now she realized that she was writing it after all, not for money but as a kind of character reference, to show, not just the Commander, but all the Tseri[gulp]uu who he was and why they should accept him and give him a chance to redeem himself.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the barrier, Megamind was struggling. Part of him wanted to use this report as an excuse to boast, to shade the truth, to play up the glory of his own career and the contemptible spoilsport side of his longtime rival. The other part sensed that that sort of thing wasn't done here and that he'd be better off sticking to the truth. The fact that expressions like "Goody Two-Shoes" didn't translate very well into Tseri[gulp]uu was only making it worse. He had been gradually realizing that, while the part of him that was Ilu Amnang was home at last and very glad of it, the part that was Megamind might not fit in very well here, and the realization had made him uncharacteristically quiet all afternoon. Now he wanted to consult Minion. Actually, he wanted to whine to Minion about how hard it was, and get some sympathy and encouragement and coaxing and maybe a snack. But the rules had been made very clear to him. He was to discuss this with no one until he had finished, and the snack he had in mind, coffee with two creams and five sugars and a half-dozen assorted donuts, would definitely be forbidden by his doctor. He held his head in his hands, miserable for a moment, and then it occurred to him that his head wasn't enormous anymore. It was a perfectly normal, bald, blue head, and no one would ever make fun of it again. It was Wayne who was funny-looking now. That thought made him smile, and that smile gave him the focus to get started. "[My first encounter with the person I was to know as Wayne Scott happened as we were entering the asteroid belt on our approach to Earth...]"