current

Pooh in Meatspace

by Mel Bosworth

I.

I slid my drooping member from the pulsing inner walls of the glistening and sated Captain Sheera. As I rinsed my bits in the podwash, I watched as she curled her feet beneath her taut, crescent rump. Perched on the bed like an hourglass, bare breasts rising and falling with her even breath, she sparked a joint. The smoke lingered around her erect brown nipples as my lips had done mere moments before.

“What are you looking at, Billy?” she asked.

“You,” I said, smiling.

She blushed and swept ash from the smooth slope of her golden right breast.

Comprised of an interplanetary crew of philanthropists, I had moved up the ranks of the Pooh quickly and was now Sheera’s number two. And although I was beneath her in terms of rank, in her chamber I was often above her, sometimes behind her, playfully yanking on her long, dark hair.

I flexed the tattoo on my bicep, a double headed dragon eating its tail and testicles.

“What does it mean?” asked Sheera. “You’ve never told me.”

“I’ll tell you when the time is right.”

I toweled off. Sheera stretched out lazily atop the silk sheets. Having come from the planet Kristior, she possessed both incisive intellect and vibrant sensuality. I fought an urge to pounce on her.

“We should get dressed now,” I said. “We’ll be approaching the moon soon.”

A few hours earlier, we discovered that my estranged friend Drake had managed to fabricate the Santa Claus Machine on the moon of Moop.

Capable of creating anything, from anything, the mere thought of the Santa Claus Machine splashed waves of anxiety throughout meatspace like a bully in a public pool.

As the Pooh had drifted through a small cluster of stars, the crew enjoyed some well deserved R&R while I plucked space debris later to be used for fuel with the ramscoop. Amidst the bits of fragmented asteroids and space dust, I came across an anomaly: a crate of Rubik’s Cubes. I immediately radioed Captain Sheera.

“What is it, Billy?” she asked.

“Rubik’s Cubes.”

“What?”

“It’s a hand-puzzle from the 20^th Century,” I explained. “They don’t make them anymore and I’ve come across an entire crate.”

“That’s not so bizarre,” piffed Sheera.

“That would be true but there’s something more.”

“…”

“The crate has the stamp of Drake on it.”

“!!!”

Back at the control hatch, Nerflander flexed his quadruple-jointed fingers over the instrument panel.

“You see?” he asked. “It’s the gravitational balance of the moon of Moop. It’s off. The moon is slowly tilting out of orbit.”

“What could Drake be making?” I asked.

“We can’t be sure yet, Billy. Once we’re in better range, we’ll be able to see.”

The planet Moop was the birth planet I shared with Drake. Before joining the Pooh, I had fled Moop to escape an ancient dogma of my people, the Pavers. Drake, a Cornripper, fled for similar reasons. A knot of guilt I carried in my stomach suddenly tightened.

As the Pooh neared, we could see the Santa Claus Machine in greater detail.

Entrenched deep in the Blue Mountain Valley, the machine, a veritable mountain itself, churned and shook violently. Walls of iron, dark with hydraulic oil and grease, flexed in the pangs of birth as bastard spawns erupted onto the moon’s quivering lunar plains.

Captain Sheera entered the control hatch just as we received a communication from Drake.

“Leave me be, Pooh!” he said. “I mean you no harm. However, if you’ve come for my machine I will be forced to destroy you!”

Captain Sheera laced her fingers around the base of the microphone, her lips pursed just above the purple head. Her wetware was now covered in form fitting black neoprene, white zipper from chin to navel. I anxiously fingered my needler.

“Leave the needler be, Billy!” she said. “There’s no call for violence! Let us see what Drake wishes.” Keying the microphone, she asked, “Drake, what do you want?”

A garbled sound of laughter, like a radio drowning in a bathtub, crackled through the speaker.

“I wish for you to leave me with my machine. That is all I wish.”

“But the moon!” pleaded Sheera. “It’s rolling out of orbit! Think of what will happen to the people of Moop!”

“I don’t care!”

I gripped my needler and sprinted to an evacupod. I had heard enough. It was time to see my old friend, face to face.

“Billy! No!” wailed Sheera, the love in her voice breaking her cadence of command. Nerflander smiled slyly and gave me a quadruple-jointed thumbs up. I jerked the ripcord and the evacupod leapt from the lap of the Pooh.

I stood before Drake atop the highest peak on the moon of Moop. A small creature he was, like a badger with a child’s face. It was a face I had not seen since my youth, and it brought back hard memories.

“It’s been a long time, Drake. How have you been?”

“I’ve been better,” he offered. Then, hardening, “No need for pleasantries, Billy. I never thought we’d meet again.”

“I always knew we would.”

“Is that so? Your self-exile from Moop does not absolve you from your responsibility. What your people did to the Cornrippers was an atrocity. Don’t stand before me now and expect my forgiveness.”

Years before on Moop, the Cornrippers thrived for generations as an agricultural society. My people, the Pavers, bent on power and money, spread parasitically throughout the land, quickly covering the green fields with blackcoat, pushing the Cornrippers from their homes in the process. My father had ignored my emodrops and called it progress.

“What do you want, Drake?”

“I think you know, Billy.”

I nodded and slid my needler to the small of my back. I unzipped my wetware cover. Drake scratched behind his ear with his hind paw, never taking his glowing eyes off me.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

I roughly pulled the cover from my shoulder, exposing the tattoo on my bicep. Chin held high and chest heaving, I said, “You want this. You want to know my secret.”

“No, I don’t,” said Drake, flatly. “I just want to be left alone.”

Then his face dipped like a sinking comet. His furry shoulders shook with sadness.

“What is it?” I asked, red cheeked and quickly dressing.

He wiped his nose on his arm.

“Ever since Laura left me, I’ve been so lonely,” he said. “I thought if I built the Santa Claus Machine I could win her back.”

“The Rubik’s Cubes?”

“Ahh, yes,” he said, sniffling. “The cubes. I made those for her children. They always liked 20^th Century games. But she refused the gift, all of my gifts, and told me I was a selfish man. And so the crates drifted. And you found them. And then me.”

He nudged a moonstone with his paw and for a moment he reminded me of my old friend. We once spent an entire summer frolicking in the fields on Moop, hiding in the corn and daydreaming. But we were children then, naïve to the darker workings of meatspace. We were grown now, and still fumbling to find meaning.

“But you could fabricate anything you wish with the machine, Drake. Why not a new mate for yourself?”

His anger rose like the tides of Pillor beneath the electrical skies of Zigmundt.

“I’m not that desperate,” he said, his eyes knives. Then they dulled, and he fell once more to weeping.

I moved to embrace him. While I was distracted by his emotion, he snatched my needler.

“You’re a fool, Billy!” he yipped. “You and your damn Pavers!”

He scurried down the cliff face. I radioed the Pooh.

“We’ve got a problem, Captain Sheera. Drake has my needler. And he’s headed for the Santa Claus Machine.”

II.

I hot stepped down the cliff in pursuit of Drake, feeling very naked and inadequate in the absence of my needler.

He left an easy trail to follow. Overturned moonstones and claw marks, prints not unlike an Earth rabbit or a Zigmundt poon racer, led me through winding, jagged corridors, blue lit in the cool hue of meatspace. The dense thump and churn of the Santa Claus Machine grew louder. Then an organic, acrid scent rushed into my nose, and I slowed. The sound of strained whistling swirled into my ears. I flattened myself against the wall and peered around the corner.

Drake squatted awkwardly at the mouth of a low moonhole, turning my needler over in his paws as if studying an issue of Spacenews. Small, brown, pliable spheres dropped from his wasteworks. A passing comet lit my eyes.

“Dude!” he said. “What gives? I’ll melt you with your own needler! C’mon, man!”

I pulled back, shaking the image from my mind.

“I’m sorry, Drake. But can we please reason? Think of Moop. If this moon rolls out of orbit…”

“Not ready to talk yet,” he grumbled. “Still busy!”

“Well, you can listen then.”

I sat on my heels and looked to the stars, bright dots against the blackness. I could see the Pooh too, canary yellow and calm, her headlights full and firm, yet softly luminous.

“I’m sorry about what happened to the Cornrippers, Drake. I hate myself and I hate my people for it. And I know saying that now changes nothing and I don’t expect you to forgive me. But we were friends once. Don’t you remember?”

“I remember,” he said quietly.

A nostalgic smile slid from my lips as thoughts of my father gathered like dark clouds that stifled the sun. I remembered the scoldings, the beatings too. Shaking a fist-full of straw under my nose, his words like hammers, he said, “They’re not like us, Billy. They’re petty, poor farmers. They’ll just get in the way of progress. You keep out of those fields and away from those Cornrippers, boy.”

And clearest and most painful of all was the day the Pavers, having fought and won and covered the fields with blackcoat, pushed what was left of the Cornrippers into the ghetto. As I dutifully helped my father post Paver Production signs along the street, I watched as a shuttlecar filled with teary-eyed Cornrippers rumbled past. Pressed against the filthy glass, I recognized Drake’s face at the back of the car. His small paw waved to me. But my father warned me with a stare. And so I kept my hands at my sides. He flaunted a smirk that filled me with shame.

I shifted uncomfortably. Drake sighed.

“But that was a long time ago, Billy. Your people nearly wiped mine from the face of meatspace. They pushed us into ghettos on Moop and expected us to be thankful, offering us poor paying jobs at Bot-Marts that sprawled over our once mighty fields. Many of the Cornrippers fled. I fled. If Moop is destroyed, I will see it as justice. I only wish I had done it years ago.”

I wiped an emodrop from my eye. I had no words. I clutched the tattoo on my arm, thinking of my secret, my father, Drake, and Captain Sheera.

“Nothing more to say, Billy? So be it. I must now finish what I began.”

I sprung to my feet.

“Please wait, Drake!”

I rushed around the corner but he was gone, my needler resting on the ground beside a tidy pile of his wastespheres. I slung the needler over my shoulder and my feelings of inadequacy waned, but my shame lingered heavily.

“I’m so sorry, Drake,” I whispered.

Then came a sizzling sound, too close to be the Santa Claus Machine. I noticed a white light, like a tiny blazing star, speeding toward the center of Drake’s wastespheres.

“???”

Then,

“!!!”

I hesitated a nanosecond too long and the pile burst like a balloon filled with shaving cream. I radioed the Pooh.

“What’s happening, Billy?” asked Captain Sheera.

“I’m making progress.”

“What was that light? Was there an explosion? Is everything alright?”

I swept my eye with the tip of my finger and snapped off the poodoo.

“Yes, Captain. Everything is fine. An old friend has come to play.”

III.

Pressed flat on my stomach atop a narrow peak, I looked down upon the ginormous, chugging monstrosity that was the Santa Claus Machine.

A colossal box of iron that sweated dark, industrial lubricant was supported by four pillars of ancient redrock. At the base of the pillars, marble talons sunk deep into the moon’s surface like the unforgiving fingernails of a rambunctious lover. I stroked my neglected needler (I hadn’t fired it in some time) and thought of Captain Sheera.

The guts of the machine rolled and howled madly. On the far side, a gaping, mechanical mouth rooted hungrily for mother’s teat. Captain Sheera radioed me.

“We’ve zeroed in on Drake. He’s on a platform on the east side near the mouth of the Santa Claus Machine.”

“Thanks, Captain. I’ll get to him.”

“Please be careful, Billy.”

“I’ll see you soon. Put some Space Juice on ice.”

Keeping on my stomach, I slid headfirst down a smooth half pipe of moonrock. I dusted off and raced across the valley toward the Santa Claus Machine.

Some years before, I had blown out my left knee in a friendly game of Poohball, and the waldo connecting my thigh to my calf squealed like a young lover rhythmically pounded.

Waldo: “eeee!”

Me: “Uh!”

Waldo: “eee!”

Me, panting: “Oh!”

I rushed past the bastard spawns of the Santa Claus Machine and took them all in, blurred and convoluted.

Mountains of marshmallows jockeyed for position in my peripherals, shoulder to shoulder with tremendous works of bronzed modern art, oversized boxes of cereal and cowboy hats, assorted, disoriented livestock that bumped into moonrocks—

“MooBaaahCluckCluckCluckHeeHawHeeHawSnortSnortSnort!”

—and what looked to be the entire cast of the original Earth show Baywatch, replete with Hasselhoff and Yasmine Bleeth. She waved to me and jumped up and down, a tight wetware cover hugging her jiggles and curves. Hasselhoff, seemingly confused and intoxicated, attempted to swim in a vat of chocolate pudding.

The spawn became fresher as I neared the Santa Claus Machine, and Drake’s plan became clear.

Farm equipment:

Tillers.

Spreaders.

Tractors.

Structures:

Red barns.

Silver silos.

Brown sheds.

Motionmobiles:

Cars.

Buses.

Boats.

Food:

Piles of meat, frozen.

Pyramids of burlap seed sacks.

Vegetables- all shapes, colors, and varieties.

Plant life:

Ferns.

Daisies.

Cannabis Sativa, live and also in slabs stacked high.

I fought through the sumptuous sights and smells and pushed forward. I had to stop him.

As I moved alongside the machine, its deafening roar shaking me to the marrow, the moon suddenly lurched. I stumbled and steadied myself against some moonrock. I radioed the Pooh.

“What was that?” I asked.

“The moon is tilting, Billy! You must hurry!”

I gaspingly arrived at the base of the platform and scrambled up the ladder. Drake tossed moonrocks into the mouth of the Santa Claus Machine, raw material for some last minute spawns before his final offering.

“Drake!” I shouted.

“What do you want, Billy? I told you to leave me be!”

“But you don’t have to do this!”

“Do what? I’m not confused anymore! This may have started out as a cry for help, but I understand now! I know what I have to do!”

An isolated, electrical moonstorm suddenly broke out over the valley. Brazen winds ripped across the surface, kicking up moonrocks and livestock. I clutched the rail of the platform. A flash of Hasselhoff, covered in pudding and riding a cow, rushed past me. Drake clung to a rail opposite me. I screamed over the noise of everything.

“Drake! Please reason! You don’t have to do this!”

“There is no more time, Billy! I must do this before the Machine is destroyed!”

Lightning struck the tips of the cliffs, popping them like flash bulbs. The moon lurched again. Captain Sheera radioed me.

“Billy! The moon is going to roll out of orbit any moment! We must dismantle the Santa Claus Machine with the Pooh’s skyhooks and distribute the weight on the surface more evenly! It is our only chance!”

Fighting wind, fear, and noise, I clawed my way across the platform toward Drake. But he too fought toward something, his hard nails scratching and pulling his peltish frame; he fought toward the mouth of the Machine.

“Drake!”

“Leave me, Billy!”

“I will not!”

I hooked his paw and pulled him to my chest. He struggled in my arms like a frantic teddy bear. I held him hard and he settled. The storm lingered over the far end of the valley now, the lightning that scored the mountains illuminating Drake’s face, inches from mine. He looked at me with plaintive blue eyes.

“Please, Billy. This is what must be done.”

“But Laura?”

“This is for her too. This is about more than me.”

Captain Sheera bleated into my earphone, “Billy! Is Drake secured? We must launch the Pooh’s skyhooks!”

“Wait,” I told her.

Fixed in Drake’s childlike gaze, I melted. I saw the face of my old friend, the Cornripper.

“I never blamed you for what happened to the Cornrippers, Billy. I know it wasn’t your fault. You were always my friend. And sure, I thought you were an asshole sometimes but I was just unhappy with my own life. And Laura…Laura.” His eyes filled, two lunar pools. “I will always love her. But I’ve been angry for a long time. My anger drove her away. I hope it is all of you who can forgive me.”

A dying wind pulled lazily at my wetware cover. My emodrops fell onto his soft fur as I held him in my arms.

“I forgive you, old friend,” I said.

I kissed his cheek, baby smooth. I let my lips linger for a moment. Then I let him go.

He moved along the catwalk to the mouth of the Machine. He looked over his shoulder and waved to me, slowly and sadly. This time, I waved back. Then he dived off, tiny tail wagging nervously, excitedly, bravely.

“Goodbye, old friend,” I said.

I wiped my eyes and gathered myself. I radioed the Pooh.

"Captain Sheera? Launch the Pooh’s skyhooks.”

Drake disappeared into the maw of the Santa Claus Machine and the surrounding fabric of spacetime rippled like a sheet in the wind. The Pooh’s skyhooks spun around a pillar of redrock. I threw myself from the platform and crashed down onto a pile of moonrocks. I wincingly scurried to safety atop a modest peak.

The Pooh jerked.

The Santa Claus Machine toppled.

The storm dissipated, and the sky cleared.

I stared into the cosmos and wept.

A terrified and whiskey worn Hasselhoff curled into my side, the wind dried pudding covering his body cracking like the floor of a sun-scorched desert. I cradled him and pulled flakes of pudding from his forehead with my teeth. He was delicious.

I slapped his wandering fingers.

“Don’t touch the needler, Hoff.”

IV.

Drake’s final offering had birthed a Pocket Universe.

While the Santa Claus Machine had the power to create anything, from anything, in order to create a Pocket Universe, the Machine required something more: a sacrifice.

But a willing sacrifice. The offering had to leap into the mouth of the Machine of his own volition, with clear head and pure heart. Drake had understood this. And so had I.

The initial work of the Pooh and her skyhooks was enough to save the moon of Moop from rolling out of orbit. Once the four pillars of redrock were relocated, the moon settled back into its natural position. Shortly thereafter, help arrived.

I stood beside Nerflander as we watched the clumsy air fleet of Moop redistribute the weight on its moon. Small craft, like flying trashcans, dipped and struggled as their skyhooks transported the often awkward spawns that littered the Blue Mountain valley.

I bit down on a cigar, glass of sparkling Space Juice in one hand while the other squeezed Nerflander’s shoulder.

“You did it, old boy,” I said.

He patted my hand.

“We did it, Billy. We all did it.”

Hasselhoff stirred on a cot beneath the control panel.

“Where am I?” he asked groggily.

“You’re on the Pooh, David,” I said, thumping my chest.

Hoff hugged himself into a fetal ball, his face twisting. He cried soundlessly.

“Can you keep an eye on Hoff, Nerflander? I’ve got to check on something.”

He nodded. “Say, where’s Yasmine?” he asked.

“She’s playing strip poker with the crew on the lower deck.”

“Is she now?”

Earlier, my entrance back aboard the Pooh was denied when the crew saw me pulling in with Hasselhoff. They locked the bay door and refused to open it until I brought back Yasmine. And a slab of cannabis sativa.

I should have court marshaled the entire crew for insubordination, but I sympathized with their position. Nerflander and his quadruple-jointed fingers, while skilled, grew tiresome. Those late night visits to his chamber were long gone for me. I had Captain Sheera now.

I closed my eyes and thought of her splayed out on silk sheets, her long legs parted ever so slightly. The image brought a smile to my lips. When I opened my eyes, Nerflander was gone, the keychain in the ignition gently swaying in his hasty wake.

Hoff snored.

I tiptoed out.

The corridor leading to the Captain’s Chamber was deserted. Disappointed groans, along with the pungent stench of cannabis sativa, pushed up through the ventilation system from the lower deck. My guess was that Yasmine was still winning. And that the boys were well baked.

Leaning tiredly on the railing, I gazed out the window.

Captain Sheera’s soft voice behind me asked, “What do you see, Billy?”

“I see a new beginning for the Cornrippers. That’s what I see.”

She wrapped her arms around me and pressed herself into my back, chin resting on my shoulder. I could smell her hair, like sweet flowers. I shifted my needler into a more comfortable position.

Adjacent to Moop was the delicate mouth of a swirling, wrinkled wormhole. As the Pooh drifted past, I caught glimpses to the other side.

A blazing yellow sun and new blue worlds, untouched, waited for the Cornrippers. Someone had to gather them. Someone had to help them. That someone would be me.

“Will you miss him?” she asked.

“Yes. But he still lives. As meatspace within meatspace.”

Sheera sighed.

“What about the Pavers, Billy? What’s to stop them from exploiting the new worlds?”

I took her hand.

“I will speak to them, Sheera. It is time for me to speak with them. And with my father.”

I turned to face her. Her eyes, green and feline, tenderly held my own. I swept her into my arms.

“I missed you, Sheera,” I whispered.

“And I you, Billy.”

The clip clop of my spaceboots echoed pleasantly as we moved down the corridor. Sheera massaged the fabric of my wetware cover. Her fingers came to rest on my bicep.

“When will you tell me?” she asked, meaning my tattoo, my secret.

“Soon, my love. When you are ready. When we need it.”

She pouted. I kissed her. With the toe of my boot, I pushed the release button of her chamber door. I carried her across the threshold, savoring her kiss, her emerald eyes, her downy skin. The door whooshed closed behind us.

Then, through the ventilation system, the crew roared gleefully. I smiled.

“Why do they cheer?” asked Sheera.

“They are happy. Like me.”

And the last thing I heard before falling into an ocean of silky bliss was the low, frightened whimpering of Hoff as his bare feet padded up and down the deserted corridor.

He’d be ok.

Mel Bosworth lives and breathes in Massachusetts. He enjoys writing, eating, petting his cat, and sleeping. He can be reached at meljb77 at gmail dot com.