ELECTRIC ICARUS PUBLISHING PRESENTS · NEON THEATER · NEON STAGE · ORIGINAL SERIAL FICTION
BINGO SPACE JUMPER #5
One Ticket. Infinite Destinations. Absolutely No Refunds.
Episode 002: The Wrong Side of Somewhere
Sci-Fi · Adventure · Absurdist Comedy
Previously on Bingo Space Jumper #5 — Read Episode 001: Three Symbols and a Bad Idea
There were certain circumstances in which knocking on a door was considered polite.
When visiting a neighbor, for example.
Or when entering a room that might contain someone whose privacy ought to be respected.
Knocking on the outside of a spacecraft suspended in an impossible region beyond conventional space was not generally considered one of those circumstances.
Especially when the thing doing the knocking appeared to be larger than the spacecraft itself.
Lucky Fenway stared through the windshield.
“Did it knock again?”
“No,” Klink replied.
“Good.”
“It is waiting.”
“Less good.”
The Bingo Pod drifted through the darkness without any visible indication of movement. Its engines were offline, its navigation instruments had begun displaying mathematical expressions that Klink described as personally offensive, and every attempt to establish their location returned the same answer.
UNDEFINED.
Lucky tapped the display.
“Undefined where?”
“That is the entire answer.”
“Undefined in which direction?”
“Lucky.”
“What?”
“You’re asking for directions to a place that does not exist.”
“Then how the hell are we here?”
“A fascinating question.”
“Not looking for fascinating. Looking for useful.”
The dashboard flickered.
A message appeared.
BINGO POD · TRANSIT STATUS JUMP SEQUENCE: 002 DESTINATION: MISPLACED SPATIAL COORDINATES: UNAVAILABLE RETURN ROUTE: REJECTED UNAUTHORIZED PRESENCE DETECTED
Lucky read the last line twice.
“Unauthorized presence?”
“Yes.”
“Inside or outside?”
Klink hesitated.
“That distinction is proving surprisingly difficult to establish.”
Something scraped along the hull.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
From somewhere behind Lucky’s seat came a metallic click.
He turned.
The emergency airlock was unlocking itself.
“Oh, absolutely not.”
Lucky lunged across the cockpit and slapped the manual override.
The lock snapped shut.
A moment later, it opened again.
“Klink!”
“I am not doing that.”
“Then who is?”
A faint yellow light appeared beyond the windshield.
At first it resembled a distant star.
Then it grew larger.
Rectangular.
Framed in polished brass.
It was a window.
A single illuminated window hanging in an otherwise infinite darkness.
Behind it sat a woman wearing spectacles, a faded blue uniform, and an expression suggesting that the universe had been disappointing her for several centuries.
She was writing something in a ledger.
Lucky leaned forward.
“Is that a person?”
“Apparently.”
“Out here?”
“Yes.”
“Working at a desk?”
“That appears to be the case.”
Lucky waited.
The woman looked up.
She saw the Bingo Pod.
She sighed.
Then she reached beneath her desk and pressed a button.
A bell rang inside the cockpit.
DING!
A cheerful mechanical voice announced:
“NOW SERVING NUMBER FIVE.”
Lucky closed his eyes.
“Klink.”
“Yes?”
“I hate this thing.”
“I am developing a similar sentiment.”
The window expanded.
Walls unfolded around it, followed by a ceiling, a floor, two potted plants, and an upholstered bench that had clearly endured more suffering than its manufacturer intended.
In less than thirty seconds, an entire railway waiting room materialized outside the Bingo Pod.
An illuminated sign hung above the entrance.
THE WRONG SIDE OF SOMEWHERE
Department of Undelivered Destinations
Below it, a smaller sign read:
Please Have Your Ticket Ready.
Lucky stared.
“Are we at a train station?”
“Not precisely.”
“Then what is it?”
“A transit administration facility.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Train stations generally exist somewhere.”
The woman behind the window tapped her spectacles.
Her voice came through the cockpit speakers.
“Passenger Fenway?”
Lucky froze.
“Who wants to know?”
“Transit Administration.”
“Never heard of it.”
“That’s normal.”
“Look, lady, I don’t know where I am, I didn’t mean to come here, and something very large has been knocking on my spaceship.”
“Yes,” she replied. “We know.”
“You know?”
“It’s holding up the queue.”
Lucky glanced at the empty darkness.
“What queue?”
The woman checked her ledger.
“Yours.”
A moment passed.
“I’m sorry?”
“Your unauthorized arrival is preventing the next departure from occupying its scheduled probability.”
“Occupying its what?”
She removed her spectacles.
“Mr. Fenway, I have processed seventeen thousand misdirected travelers this century. I have dealt with paradoxes, temporal refugees, three different versions of the same emperor, and a fellow who arrived insisting he was his own grandfather.”
Lucky nodded slowly.
“Sounds rough.”
“He was.”
She leaned toward the window.
“I do not intend to spend the remainder of my shift explaining the mathematics of your incompetence.”
Klink spoke.
“Madam, for clarification, our arrival resulted from an emergency activation of an unstable probability drive.”
The woman’s expression changed.
“Probability drive?”
“Yes.”
“Experimental?”
“Yes.”
“Mechanical reels?”
“Yes.”
“Chrome lever?”
Lucky looked suspiciously at the speaker.
“How does she know that?”
The woman dropped her pen.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.”
She opened another ledger.
A much larger one.
“Which model?”
Lucky looked at the brass plate beneath his console.
“Bingo Space Jumper Number Five.”
The woman became very still.
Then she reached beneath the desk and turned the sign above her window from OPEN to CLOSED.
“Office is closed,” she announced.
Lucky blinked.
“What?”
“Closed.”
“You can’t close!”
“Observe.”
The window began sliding shut.
“WAIT!”
Lucky activated the external communications system.
“Lady! There’s something outside my ship!”
“I strongly advise against opening the door.”
“WHY?”
“Because then it will be inside.”
The window slammed shut.
For several seconds, Lucky sat in stunned silence.
“Well,” he said.
“An informative exchange,” Klink observed.
Lucky looked toward the waiting room.
“Can we dock?”
“Docking mechanisms are unavailable.”
“Can we walk over?”
“There is no atmosphere between us and the station.”
“Then how is the station sitting out there?”
“Again, you appear to be assuming that the surrounding environment is obligated to obey familiar physical principles.”
Lucky rubbed his eyes.
“I miss NovaCore.”
The airlock clicked.
Once.
Twice.
Then opened.
A narrow metal walkway extended from the Pod toward the station entrance.
A light above the airlock changed from red to green.
A new message appeared.
PASSENGER TRANSFER AUTHORIZED.
Klink paused.
“That is unusual.”
Lucky got up.
“Define unusual.”
“The walkway appears to have been installed without passing through any intervening space.”
“So?”
“So we should not be able to walk across it.”
“Can we?”
“Possibly.”
Lucky collected his jacket, checked that his boots were fastened, and looked toward the airlock.
“Fine.”
“Lucky?”
“Yeah?”
“Perhaps I should remind you that leaving the only functioning pressure vessel in an undefined spatial environment is not generally recommended.”
Lucky opened the airlock.
Beyond it, the walkway stretched toward a perfectly ordinary set of double doors.
A small sign had been placed beside the entrance.
Mind the Gap.
Lucky looked down.
There was no gap.
There was no anything.
“That’s reassuring.”
He stepped outside.
The walkway held.
Gravity worked.
Air filled his lungs.
Somewhere below him, beyond the narrow railing, an infinite blackness stretched in every direction.
He reached the doors.
Behind him, the Bingo Pod began to move.
Not forward.
Not backward.
It was turning.
Slowly.
As though something enormous had taken hold of it.
“Klink?”
“Yes?”
“Is the ship doing that on purpose?”
“No.”
Lucky ran.
The waiting room smelled of old paper, machine oil, and coffee that had been sitting in the same pot since the invention of disappointment.
A clock hung above the counter.
Its hands moved in opposite directions.
A vending machine offered six varieties of refreshment.
Five were labeled UNKNOWN.
The sixth was labeled WATER.
Beneath WATER, someone had scratched:
Probably.
Lucky approached the service window.
It remained closed.
He knocked.
Nothing.
He knocked again.
A voice came from somewhere behind the partition.
“I told you we were closed.”
“Yeah, well, I’m having a bit of an emergency.”
“So is everyone.”
“My spaceship is being stolen by something I can’t see.”
“That is not theft, Mr. Fenway.”
“Then what is it?”
“Reclamation.”
Lucky hesitated.
“Reclamation of what?”
The shutter lifted an inch.
“Space.”
“Space?”
“Yes.”
“As in outer space?”
“As in the space your vehicle is currently occupying.”
Lucky stared.
The woman sighed.
“You have entered an area of reality that has already been allocated. The Conductor is reclaiming that allocation.”
“Conductor?”
“Yes.”
“The thing outside?”
“Yes.”
“Does it conduct trains?”
“No.”
“Then why call it the Conductor?”
“Because nobody argued with it long enough to establish a better name.”
Klink crackled through Lucky’s wrist communicator.
“That explanation is unexpectedly reasonable.”
“Thank you,” the woman replied.
Lucky looked between the communicator and the window.
“Can you two stop getting along and help me?”
The woman slid a form beneath the partition.
“Fill this out.”
Lucky looked at it.
APPLICATION FOR EMERGENCY REASSIGNMENT OF UNDELIVERED DESTINATION
There were forty-three pages.
He flipped through them.
One section requested his species.
Another requested his date of birth, death, and anticipated reappearance.
A third asked whether he had ever been convicted of a crime in a jurisdiction that had not yet been invented.
“Are you serious?”
“Very.”
“I don’t have time for this!”
“Then you may request an expedited assessment.”
“Great!”
“That requires a separate application.”
Lucky stared at her.
Then he smiled.
It was the smile of a man who had just discovered the outer limits of his capacity for civilized behavior.
“Ma’am.”
“Yes?”
“I’m going to ask you a question.”
“Go ahead.”
“Has anybody ever told you that your department is a complete and total nightmare?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“We issued them a complaint form.”
Klink made a faint clicking noise.
Lucky looked at his wrist.
“Are you laughing?”
“Certainly not.”
“You’re laughing.”
“I may have experienced a minor processing irregularity.”
The waiting room shuddered.
Dust fell from the ceiling.
The woman looked up.
“Oh dear.”
Lucky pointed.
“See? Oh dear! That’s what Klink said right before everything went sideways!”
The lights flickered.
From somewhere beyond the walls came a long metallic groan.
The woman opened her ledger.
“Mr. Fenway, how many jumps have you completed?”
“One. Maybe two.”
“Maybe?”
“The second one’s having difficulties.”
She examined the page.
“Ah.”
“What?”
“Your destination has been intercepted.”
Lucky leaned closer.
“By what?”
“Not what. Whom.”
She turned the ledger around.
Across the top of the page was a familiar symbol.
A golden buck with antlers forming a perfect circle.
Beneath it:
KARNOK SYNDICATE — CLAIM REGISTERED
Lucky felt his stomach tighten.
“Those bastards.”
“Do you owe them money?”
“No!”
“Property?”
“No!”
“Services?”
“Not that I’m aware of!”
The woman tapped the ledger.
“Then this is unusual.”
Klink interrupted.
“Could the claim relate to a prior family account?”
Lucky shot the communicator an irritated look.
The woman’s eyes shifted toward him.
“Fenway.”
“Yeah.”
“Any relation to Arthur Fenway?”
Lucky stopped moving.
The room seemed to shrink around him.
“Arthur was my father.”
The woman studied him.
Then she closed the ledger.
Very carefully.
“Oh.”
Lucky waited.
“What does that mean?”
She didn’t answer.
“Lady.”
She looked toward the doors.
“Mr. Fenway, I believe we should expedite your departure.”
Outside, the Conductor moved.
The waiting room groaned beneath the pressure of something that had no business possessing weight.
Lucky looked through the window.
The Bingo Pod was still there.
Barely.
Its hull was surrounded by a pale distortion that resembled the surface of water stretched over an invisible hand.
The ship twisted.
A metallic shriek echoed through the station.
“Klink!”
“Structural integrity declining.”
“By how much?”
“Enough.”
Lucky turned back to the counter.
“Listen. I need my ship, and I need to get out of here.”
The woman was already searching through drawers.
“Your father came through this station once.”
Lucky forgot about the noise outside.
“What?”
“Years ago. Or yesterday. That distinction tends to become academic here.”
“You knew him?”
“I processed his transfer.”
“Where did he go?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who does?”
She stopped searching.
“Mr. Fenway, your father arrived with something that did not belong to him.”
Lucky felt a chill.
“What?”
“A ticket.”
“A ticket to where?”
The woman shook her head.
“It wasn’t a ticket to a destination.”
“Then what was it?”
She withdrew a small brass object from beneath the counter.
It resembled an old-fashioned punch card.
Five circular holes had been cut along its edge.
Four were empty.
The fifth contained a tiny black disc.
“Your father left instructions,” she said.
Lucky reached for the card.
She held it back.
“He said it was to be delivered when the fifth jumper arrived.”
Lucky stared.
“My father knew I’d come here?”
“No,” she replied.
“He knew something would.”
The lights went out.
An enormous impact struck the exterior wall.
The waiting room tilted.
Lucky grabbed the counter.
Somewhere behind him, the entrance doors began to buckle inward.
The woman slammed the brass card onto the desk.
“Take it!”
Lucky snatched it.
“What does it do?”
“I don’t know!”
“You don’t know?”
“Your father was extremely unhelpful!”
Klink interrupted.
“Lucky. The card is transmitting.”
Lucky looked down.
Tiny lines of light moved across the metal.
A familiar voice came through the communicator.
Not Klink’s.
Not the woman behind the counter.
A man’s voice.
Older.
Tired.
And unmistakably familiar.
“Ira.”
Lucky stopped breathing.
The recording crackled.
“If you’re hearing this, then Valis found you.”
Lucky closed his eyes.
“Dad?”
The voice continued.
“Listen carefully. Whatever he told you about the Bingo Pod, whatever he promised you, there’s something you need to understand.”
Outside, the Conductor struck again.
The recording distorted.
Then one final sentence came through.
“The machine doesn’t choose where you go. It chooses who gets to find you.”
The card went dark.
Lucky stood motionless.
For the first time since entering the Pod, he had nothing to say.
Klink spoke quietly.
“Lucky?”
He swallowed.
“Yeah?”
“I think we should leave.”
The woman was already running toward an emergency cabinet.
She pulled out a thick red manual.
DISASTER PROCEDURES
She opened it.
Read one paragraph.
Then threw it across the room.
“Oh, that’s completely useless.”
Lucky looked toward the buckling doors.
“Any other ideas?”
She hesitated.
Then pointed at the brass card.
“Insert it into your probability engine.”
“What happens?”
“If your father was correct, it should override the claim.”
“And if he wasn’t?”
The woman looked at the doors.
“Then this conversation will end rather abruptly.”
Lucky ran toward the exit.
The station shook around him.
The narrow walkway outside had begun folding inward, sections of it vanishing and reappearing in different positions.
Beyond the railing, the Conductor’s presence moved through the darkness.
Lucky could not see its body.
Only the shape of the absence it made.
The stars that weren’t there disappeared around it.
The impossible shadows grew darker.
And something immense turned toward him.
Lucky ran faster.
“Klink! Open the airlock!”
“Opening!”
He leaped across the final section of walkway and crashed through the hatch.
The airlock slammed behind him.
The cockpit lights flashed red.
Lucky stumbled into the pilot’s chair.
“Klink, where does this thing go?”
A small panel opened beside the mechanical reels.
Behind it was a slot exactly the size of the brass card.
Lucky stared.
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“I am beginning to think that sentence is an essential component of our navigation process.”
He inserted the card.
The cockpit went silent.
The reels stopped moving.
All three symbols disappeared.
Then the screens illuminated.
BINGO POD · OVERRIDE ACCEPTED PASSENGER: IRA FENWAY LEGACY AUTHORIZATION: VERIFIED KARNOK CLAIM: CONTESTED ROUTE: REASSIGNING WELCOME BACK, NUMBER FIVE.
Lucky stared at the last line.
“That’s new.”
Outside, the Conductor struck the hull.
A tremendous crack ran across the windshield.
Pressure alarms screamed.
“Klink!”
“Jump engine available!”
“Where are we going?”
“Destination unknown!”
“Again?”
“Would you prefer to stay?”
Lucky reached for the lever.
Then stopped.
His father’s words echoed in his head.
The machine doesn’t choose where you go.
It chooses who gets to find you.
Lucky looked at the controls.
For the first time, he wondered whether the Bingo Pod had ever truly been random.
He placed his hand on the lever.
“Okay.”
Outside, something enormous pressed against the glass.
“Whoever’s waiting for us…”
Lucky smiled.
“Hope they’re friendly.”
He pulled.
The reels spun.
The entire ship lurched forward.
And the Wrong Side of Somewhere vanished behind them.
For several seconds, there was nothing.
Then the engine stabilized.
The cockpit lights returned.
Klink began running diagnostics.
“Life support operational. Hull integrity restored. Probability engine responding.”
Lucky exhaled.
“We made it?”
“Apparently.”
“Somewhere real?”
“Relatively.”
Lucky opened his eyes.
A blue-green planet hung ahead of them.
Clouds swirled over enormous continents.
A small moon drifted across its equator.
In the distance, a vast collection of ships moved through orderly orbital lanes.
For the first time since he’d pulled the lever, the universe looked almost normal.
Lucky smiled.
“Finally.”
Klink hesitated.
“Lucky?”
“What?”
“I have received our destination information.”
“Great. Where are we?”
The display illuminated.
WELCOME TO NEW HAVEN Population: 6.8 Billion Primary Industry: Interstellar Commerce Territorial Authority: Independent
Lucky grinned.
“Independent! See? That’s what I’m talking about!”
Klink said nothing.
“Nice ordinary planet. Nice ordinary people. Maybe a bar, maybe a hotel, maybe a mechanic who doesn’t charge in human organs.”
The communicator crackled.
“Lucky.”
“What?”
“There is an additional message.”
“From who?”
“Unknown.”
A small audio file appeared on the screen.
Its creation date was tomorrow.
Its sender was listed as:
IRA FENWAY
Lucky stared.
“That’s impossible.”
“Agreed.”
He opened the file.
His own voice filled the cockpit.
Breathless.
Terrified.
“Lucky, listen to me. Whatever you do, don’t land on New Haven.”
The recording paused.
In the background, something exploded.
Then his voice returned.
“And for the love of God, stop pulling the damn lever!”
The transmission ended.
Lucky sat perfectly still.
Klink considered the situation.
“Well,” he said.
Lucky slowly turned toward the speaker.
“Don’t.”
“I was merely going to observe—”
“Don’t you dare.”
“—that our arrival appears to have generated another unfortunate complication.”
Lucky stared at the planet.
Then at the lever.
Then back at the planet.
Somewhere below, a massive planetary defense cannon began rotating toward the Bingo Pod.
Its targeting systems activated.
A pleasant automated voice filled the cockpit.
“Unregistered vessel detected. Welcome to New Haven. Please remain stationary while we determine whether your arrival constitutes an act of war.”
Lucky sighed.
“Klink?”
“Yes?”
“I’m starting to think the first jump was the good one.”
“Statistically,” Klink replied, “that would be difficult to dispute.”
END OF EPISODE 002
NEXT TUESDAY ON BINGO SPACE JUMPER #5
003 — A Very Unfortunate Welcome
Neon Theater · Neon Stage · Electric Icarus Publishing
Start the series — Episode 001: Three Symbols and a Bad Idea
