The True Meaning of Smekday (Smek 1)

Boov ships passed overhead and shone through the trees like flashlights through cobwebs. I ducked without thinking, then watched them race toward the fire and noisy sky.

“Let’s go,” I said. “I want to find out what’s going on.”

“I already do know what it is going on,” said J.Lo.

“Tell me.”

“So the Boov ships always shoot off toward the booth,” I said.

“And destruct it beforeto it reaches ground,” said J.Lo. “Or shortly afterthen. And the Gorg ship destructs the Boov ship. Is all very efficient. Except, eventually the Gorg make success in setting up a telecloner, and then it is all over. Gorg spill out over planets like ants onto gum balls. With their angriness and barking guns they force the Boov to evacuate—then the Gorg ship eats the world.”

“Well,” I said, climbing into Slushious, “let’s just have a look. Maybe we can learn something.”

“Is not safe.”

“Because of the Gorg?”

“Becaused by the faulty Snark’s Manifold.”

“We won’t need brakes if I’m careful,” I said. “It’s not like there’ll be traffic. Get in.”

“Is not only the brakes—”

“Grab Pig, too,” I said. “C’mon.”

“We could explore!” said J.Lo with panicky eyes.

I looked at him for a moment, trying to read his face.

“Right,” I said. “We’ll just have a look around.”

A second passed, then J.Lo and Pig got in. J.Lo buckled himself and gripped the safety belt with tight blue fingers.

“I will stick on you,” he sighed.

As we drove, the sky grew lighter and brighter, and smelled like fried hair. The boom of galactic war was deafening. Up ahead, a bright but damaged Boov ship staggered through the air, keeping low as the Gorg ship drew hundred-mile lines of fire in the sky.

“Slushious is handling a little weird,” I said. The car shuddered and listed right and left like there was ice on the road, putting aside for the moment that it was summer, and we weren’t near a road, and we wouldn’t have been touching it if we were.

“Yes,” J.Lo said through clenched teeth. “That is the danger of exploring.”

“I guess,” I said. I thought he was being awfully philosophical all of a sudden.

We crested a hill and looked down into a wide pit where once there had been some kind of mining operation. On the ground were the remains of a second Boov ship and, near that, the Gorg teleclone booth. And the scene around the booth was, frankly, just awfully gross. Gorg were streaming out of the booth and, just as quickly, being shot to pieces by the struggling Boov ship. It was my first look at the Gorg, but I wasn’t able to form much of an impression. They had the booth backed up against a steep cliff wall, and hordes of them clung to it in an attempt to protect it from the Boov’s weapon. In the darkness and sickening swaying light, they just looked like a knot of bodies, and parts of bodies, and I’m already thinking about it a lot harder than I ever wanted to. Meanwhile, from somewhere in Mexico, the Gorg’s huge, fiery blasts took aim at the glowing Boov ship, which used the ravine for cover and bobbed around in a way that must have been making a couple dozen Boov crewmen airsick.

“What is that glowing gas, anyway?” I said. “The stuff inside the Boov ships.”

“Is the brains,” said J.Lo. “The main computer.”

“The computer is gas?”

“It is tiny molecules. Human computers are electric switches—off on, off on. Many switches. How these turn off and on tells the computer whats to do. Boov computers are the same, but are electric gas. Each tiny molecule is the switch. Billionses of switches. Trillionses.”

Suddenly the Gorg ship lowered its aim and began punching huge holes in the landscape, opening a line of fire toward the Boov. Slushious, which was already shaking enough, rocked from waves of force and sprays of rock and earth. Pig let out a deep whine like a slow fire engine.

“Um, I think we’d better move,” I said, and coasted down the hill to a safer distance.

A string of Gorg suddenly appeared above the lip of the pit like huge lightning bugs, with their green jetpacks. They shot at the Boov, and the Gorg ship shot at the Boov, but the Boov dove toward the booth down below.

“Brave Boovish boys,” said J.Lo in hushed tones. “And girls and boygirls and girlboys and boyboys and boyboygirls and boyboyboyboys. They are soon to lose, but they will make one last try.”

Just then the Boov ship rocketed out of the gorge, followed by cannon fire, and ten or twelve Gorg jetpackers in hot pursuit.

It was almost quiet, except for the rumbling of the car.

“I am wondering,” said J.Lo. “Did we do it? Did the Boov steal away the teleclone booth?”

“Steal?” I asked. “Not destroy?”

“We shouldto go look. Hurry! There would not be much time!”

I urged Slushious forward, toward the ravine, though the shuddering and knocking of the engine only grew worse.

“The greatest hope of the Boov has been to one day capture a Gorg telecloner,” said J.Lo. “This way the Boov could discover howfor they made teleporting and cloning work on persons and complexicated things. The Boov could have then their own endless armies.”

“Why do you think your guys captured one this time?”

“I do not think, not really, but there was no loud noise from the ground hole. Usuallies, when the Gorg realize they cannot set up their booth, they explore it into a millions pieces!”

“They…explode it?” I asked.

“Ah yes. Explode. I am always doing that.”

We pulled up to the ravine.

“Waitaminute. Have you meant ‘explode’every time you said ‘explore’ tonight?”

“Lookit!” said J.Lo. “Down in the hole!”

“Slushious might explode?”

“At any moments, yes. But look!”

Despite myself, I looked where J.Lo was pointing. First I saw the piles of Gorg parts all around. But then I realized what wasn’t there—the booth.

“The Boov got the booth,” I said.

“No,” said J.Lo. “Up there!”

Driving up the steep road on the other side of the mine was the turquoise truck. And in the truck bed was the booth.

“Hey. Hey!” I shouted. “He doesn’t get that; we get that!”

“I am not thinking he can hear—”