Story, continued
“So, I guess you’re kind of burned.” Seth later said to Reflex, upon finding him skulking around the lower decks near the casino.
“Yeah, thanks for that. Nothing like making a vacation more interesting.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well, you know, not only am I stowing away on some elite luxury star-liner headed who-knows-where, but now I get the added excitement of burly men chasing me so they can throw a net on me and toss me in prison.”
Seth’s demonic intellect was capable of processing a great many things, but human sarcasm had never been one of them. He said “You’re welcome.”
The fact that Seth was a demon, and more or less looked the part, didn’t actually pose much difficulty in the vastness of the cosmos. Since interplanetary commerce began it was pretty common to see beings that didn’t look like you, and even occasionally beings that didn’t look like beings. Once you got used to seeing a few common variations on a theme (bipedal humanoids, for instance) there was always someone new and different waiting for you. Seth was a little over five feet tall, had green, scaly skin and if he smiled in just the right way the sight of his teeth could make you wet yourself, but out here in the racial stew of the universe, he just looked like another alien.
Though he was a demon, he hadn’t really been cut out for Hell. Torturing souls wasn’t his strong suit (although he often delighted in making things more “interesting” for Reflex) and he had been ridiculed often for his singing which lacked the torturous qualities of being violent and off-key, and for his sense of humor which, though demonic wasn’t considered mean-spirited enough. He left Hell, looking for a place where he might lounge about, grab a light snack and heavy drink perhaps have a spot of fun.
Reflex looked up at him for a moment in a kind of wonder. He reflected that his life had been considerably weirder than he had ever thought possible, or at least the bits he could remember. His own memory had gone walkabout after he had been hit by the blast of an experimental time machine that suffered a terminal malfunction on his home planet, Earth.
The machine in question had been built by a “mad scientist” who was really just a failed inventor who had gotten in a little over his head trying to get some of the less-than-legal materials needed to complete his time machine. The failure and subsequent destruction of the machine was due to his short-sighted use of the wrong part in the wrong place, and a slipped digit in a critical algorithm. The machine blew up, wrecking Reflex’s memory and throwing the poor inventor backward in time approximately ten-thousand years.
The upside of the accident was that it drew the attention of the Temporal Police Force, who work to regulate time travel and the people who seek undeserved profits from its use. The TPF, alerted by the temporal anomaly, found the amnesiac Reflex and offered him a job. By this point, Seth had already been conscripted by the TPF and the two became teammates, fighting time-crime throughout the cosmos until recently going AWOL, mostly due to boredom.
Reflex never questioned the fact that he hadn’t been driven insane by the things he had seen and done, he just sort of went with it, but from time to time, he found the odd nuances of the universe remarkable. Seth’s inability to comprehend sarcasm always left him at a loss.
“When I said ‘Thanks’ what I was really saying was: ‘It’s your fault I’m in this mess and you’re going to help me get out of it.’”
“Oh.” Seth looked around for a moment, drumming his fingers on his considerable belly, then looked back at Reflex. “I brought you some of those little fried fish-cakes that you seemed to like. Would that help?"
"Well, it's a start anyway."
“Yeah, thanks for that. Nothing like making a vacation more interesting.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well, you know, not only am I stowing away on some elite luxury star-liner headed who-knows-where, but now I get the added excitement of burly men chasing me so they can throw a net on me and toss me in prison.”
Seth’s demonic intellect was capable of processing a great many things, but human sarcasm had never been one of them. He said “You’re welcome.”
The fact that Seth was a demon, and more or less looked the part, didn’t actually pose much difficulty in the vastness of the cosmos. Since interplanetary commerce began it was pretty common to see beings that didn’t look like you, and even occasionally beings that didn’t look like beings. Once you got used to seeing a few common variations on a theme (bipedal humanoids, for instance) there was always someone new and different waiting for you. Seth was a little over five feet tall, had green, scaly skin and if he smiled in just the right way the sight of his teeth could make you wet yourself, but out here in the racial stew of the universe, he just looked like another alien.
Though he was a demon, he hadn’t really been cut out for Hell. Torturing souls wasn’t his strong suit (although he often delighted in making things more “interesting” for Reflex) and he had been ridiculed often for his singing which lacked the torturous qualities of being violent and off-key, and for his sense of humor which, though demonic wasn’t considered mean-spirited enough. He left Hell, looking for a place where he might lounge about, grab a light snack and heavy drink perhaps have a spot of fun.
Reflex looked up at him for a moment in a kind of wonder. He reflected that his life had been considerably weirder than he had ever thought possible, or at least the bits he could remember. His own memory had gone walkabout after he had been hit by the blast of an experimental time machine that suffered a terminal malfunction on his home planet, Earth.
The machine in question had been built by a “mad scientist” who was really just a failed inventor who had gotten in a little over his head trying to get some of the less-than-legal materials needed to complete his time machine. The failure and subsequent destruction of the machine was due to his short-sighted use of the wrong part in the wrong place, and a slipped digit in a critical algorithm. The machine blew up, wrecking Reflex’s memory and throwing the poor inventor backward in time approximately ten-thousand years.
The upside of the accident was that it drew the attention of the Temporal Police Force, who work to regulate time travel and the people who seek undeserved profits from its use. The TPF, alerted by the temporal anomaly, found the amnesiac Reflex and offered him a job. By this point, Seth had already been conscripted by the TPF and the two became teammates, fighting time-crime throughout the cosmos until recently going AWOL, mostly due to boredom.
Reflex never questioned the fact that he hadn’t been driven insane by the things he had seen and done, he just sort of went with it, but from time to time, he found the odd nuances of the universe remarkable. Seth’s inability to comprehend sarcasm always left him at a loss.
“When I said ‘Thanks’ what I was really saying was: ‘It’s your fault I’m in this mess and you’re going to help me get out of it.’”
“Oh.” Seth looked around for a moment, drumming his fingers on his considerable belly, then looked back at Reflex. “I brought you some of those little fried fish-cakes that you seemed to like. Would that help?"
"Well, it's a start anyway."