Fatal Boarding Read Online Free PDF Page B

disconcertedly and took a
drink. The irreverent smirk abruptly returned to his face. "Well,
I've always said you were losing your mind."
    "Oh right, that, coming from someone who had
to marry a psychologist."
    R.J. slumped back further and drolled, "Yep,
she called it justifiable matrimony. She got to know me better than
I knew myself, so I figured I'd better marry her and find out what
the hell I was gonna do next."
    I choked a little on my drink. "R.J. if
anyone around here is losing their mind it's you. You come in here
with an ancient pair of polished lenses hanging around your neck
when you know perfectly well any reputable eye surgeon would gladly
replace the lenses in your eyes."
    "What? Do you think I want to be pasted and
glued together like you, oh scarred one? I bet if you ran naked
through the commissary someone would yell, “It's alive!"
    "And not only that, you have an electronic
reader there that can display a thousand crossword puzzles that can
be done simply by touch, and yet you insist on going to the trouble
of printing one out and pasting it to the back of the thing. You
then proceed to solve it by wearing out erasers and pencils and
when it’s done, you unceremoniously throw it away. Why do you do
these things, R.J.?"
    He was not swayed. He finished his drink,
stared righteously off into the distance. "Ah yes... there are some
things, my friend, that will never lend themselves to the compiled,
synthetic, emulated, compressed world of artificiality. This
featherweight electronic clipboard you refer to cannot display all
the clues at once and still show the puzzle. You cannot scribble
words in the margins and spaces very well. You cannot write your
uncertainties in the spaces lightly for consideration with the
alternate rows. I insist on tradition. I refuse to be digitized. It
is my own personal testament to human idiosyncrasy. We must not
forget our struggle from the primordial soup from which we
slithered. What if we suddenly no longer had access to the
monuments of progress we so worship? What if we no longer had
cyberspace, or computers, or automation, or farmbots or even the
omnipotent god, electricity itself? Could you survive, my
presumptuous friend? Have you ever read Burke? Could you operate
the simplest of life sustaining tools, the plow? Do you know
anything of soil, or grain, or planting, oh misguided
spaceman?"
    "For Pete’s sake, R.J., I was raised on a
horse ranch. I spent my share of hours shoveling manure. I never
expected that when I got 20,000 light years away from the ranch I'd
have to listen to it."
    "Horse ranch? A horse ranch, you say. I'd
forgotten that. Perhaps I've chosen the wrong discourse here. By
the way, do you have a ten letter word for givers of pain and
pleasure"?
    "Commanders."
    His eyes lit up. "It fits. I thought it was
prostitutes, but it can't be. You'd think it had to be something to
do with women."
    "And if you were a woman, you would be
insisting no doubt that it must be something to do with men."
    He smirked. "You are grumpy. I will take my
leave of you. In the morning things will look better to you.
Hopefully you will look better yourself."
    R.J. jerked up out of his seat, plunked his
empty cup down on the desk and nearly walked into the sliding doors
before they could open. He turned in the open door, became
momentarily solemn, and said, "Good job out there, by the way," and
disappeared behind the automatic doors.
    The bourbon was beginning to have a mildly
pleasant effect. I sank deeper into the pillows and considered the
glaring little blank spot inside my head, a minor gap in the
perpetual recording of my life. It was a constant nag, like the old
friend's name you can't quite remember, or the 'where you were
when' nemesis. There was one particular aspect of it that bothered
me the most. No matter how many times you venture outside a
spacecraft there is a certain, common, unforgettable moment that
takes place when you take that first step. For me it’s