2: Med-Bots and Melinda

Previously on We’re Not in Edison City Anymore, Samuel Superlative the Third has arrived in Edison City! As the Wombat and his friends introduce themselves and try to determine what to do, we go back to Sam Superlative Jr. and his own adventures, where he has just arrived on a distant world with three moons in the sky. But first, a commercial word!

Sam Superlative, Jr., had hardly finished throwing up when a cluster of white-uniformed figures swept around him. They said various things Sam didn’t understand in what sounded like in consoling tones. One of them offered him something to drink. It tasted warm and different; beyond that he couldn’t place it. As he handed the cup back, he got a glimpse of the hand that took it back from him.

It was metal.

“Wha!” Sam said, incoherent in his astonishment.

“You’re okay, you’re all right, you are among friends!” someone yelled. A tall lavender-shaded squid-like being hurried in, waving its tentacles anxiously about. “I’m sorry about that, the xenocon filters should’ve kicked in by now but you haven’t said enough yet for them to do a proper adjustment! I’m only saying all this in Old Standard English because I got a bit of it from a telepathic scan and I am sorry about that but it’s standard procedure and anyway I hope you can understand me-”

“I can, yeah,” Sam said, struggling to his feet. “Who are they, who’re you, and where am I?

“Oh, oh dear,” the squid being said. “Er, well, normally I don’t do first contact but in an emergency there are protocols about that and, er, well, basically, they’re medical-assistant-bots, I’m Primary Field Retrieval Lead Melinda Lu Flirnalirxzaney (accent on the za please), and you’re just outside Verin City, capital of Verin Prime.”

“Oh,” Sam said, taking this in. His stomach felt uneasy again. “Where…that’s not near Edison City, is it.”

The squid being, Melinda Lu Flir-something (he hadn’t quite got all that), looked extremely sympathetic. “No,” she said. “I’m not familiar with that city, but based on my readings, I’m afraid we and wherever you just came from aren’t even in the same universe.”

Sam hadn’t expected that one. Another planet, he’d been prepared for, but another universe? To his complete embarrassment, he threw up again. The medical-assistant-bot sent out a ray (or beam, he wasn’t sure which) that vaporized the unpleasant remnants. “Please excuse,” the robot said.

“No problem,” Sam managed. “You got another cup of that whatever-it-was?”

“Of course,” the robot said, and produced one. As Sam gratefully drank the warm liquid down, he didn’t notice that Melinda had fallen back, just a little.

She had a dilemma. The Field Retrieval Protocols to which she’d referred also demanded that she report her contact immediately and take Sam in for inquiry and indefinite holding. She would likely never see him again after that. Verin Prime authorities had discussed taking action to close the interdimensional rift; he might be one of the last ones through. Even if he weren’t, she usually didn’t see retrieval subjects after contact. It was standard processing, nothing more.

But … but he read as human, and she knew of a humanoid colony on one of the three moons, and surely, since they were going to close the rift anyway, and he was so miserable he reminded her of the little blirdnog she’d had as a squidling…

Sam had just handed the cup back to the robot when Melinda Lu Flirnalirxzaney coughed at him. “All right,” she said, “Okay so you check out as medically clear, I think, so you should proceed on to the visitor processing area, okay?” She wrote neat directions on an electronic tablet and it materialized a paper in his hand. “Just follow those and you’ll be totally fine!”

Sam looked down. The paper said nothing about a visitor processing area. What it said was, “I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry but you have to go right now, you’re in danger, you’ve got to take my med-shuttle and get to safety. It’s that way.” This was followed by a helpful diagram complete with arrow. “Tell the computer override code zero zero squirbee four, then tell it to fly direct to Veronii One. It’ll do the rest. I wouldn’t run: the med-bots are equipped with laser blasters; I’m telepathically sending this to you as a projection, so just start walking, okay, because honestly this is starting to strain-”

Sam Superlative Jr. tried not to leap abruptly to his feet. “Well,” he said, “Thanks for the help and welcome and all that, I’ll head on to the, um, visitor processing, um, place now.” He started walking, and once he’d reached five or six steps in he tried a small hop. To Melinda it looked like he tripped, and she wondered if she’d let him go too soon. Then she saw the med-bots raise their blasters and she was about to warn Sam, and in that instant Sam felt himself leave the ground and he realized that his powers worked in this dimension as well, and he shot away at super-speed towards the medical shuttle.

To Melinda and the med-bots he disappeared in the blink of an eye. A second later, her shuttle rocketed off into the sky, without her on it. She gaped in pretended outrage, mixed with no little surprise and a tiny fragment of fear. Just who exactly had she let loose on her world?

Read the Next Episode.

Notes: I originally intended this scene to come further on, but

Scoot

‘s Flash Fiction Friday post inspired me to move it up and elaborate on the Melinda and Sam scene.