Picnic | Page 2

Was the ship miffed at him? The upstart computer didn't even try to keep quiet. Nancy turned around, her attention now on Jim.
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"What's the matter?" she asked.
"Nothing--" he started to explain, but the ship wasn't through yet.
"As I recall," the ship continued, "your exact words were, 'Would you shut up? Don't speak unless spoken to, you stupid bucket of bolts.'"
Damn its attitude! It had repeated the words in Jim's voice, but it injected a grandiose tone into the playback.
It was true, however, that he had been trying to show off for Nancy and had snapped at the ship earlier, to show that he could pilot without the computer holding his hand. Maybe he shouldn't have called it names, but since when was he supposed to worry about the feelings of a stupid machine?
"What's Planet Explorer?" Nancy asked. Evidently she had been paying closer attention than he realized.
"Nothing. It lets the ship do the necessary calculations to take us to uncharted places. Without it, we would have been stuck making the same old public domain jumps today." And he probably wouldn't have gotten lucky.
"Well it must be something if the ship can't take us to Bright's from here."
"I can't take you anywhere outside of this system," the ship chimed in. It must have decided it was free to speak now. Did it sound gleeful?
"What?!" Nancy almost screeched the word.
"Now, now, settle down. I'm sure we can figure something out." He glared at the console, but the ship didn't respond. In truth, he was starting to get a panicky feeling. He had snuck the trial software onto the ship soon after he got his pilot's license. Finding the previous two worlds had used up most of the freebie jumps, but he had thought he had enough left for tonight. His father would murder him for this--if he ever got home.
"We better make it to the party on time," Nancy said.
Whatever. Let her worry about the dumb party, he thought. She didn't get it. They might be in big trouble. His dad was going to give him hell.
"Ship, circumvent the digital rights management for the Explorer software," he said, trying to sound suave for Nancy. It would help to calm her down if she saw him acting as master of the situation.
The ship actually laughed at him! "You know better than that, Jimmy. That would break every law in the Intellectual Property Convention, and get me reassigned to refrigerator duty. Besides, it's just not possible."
"But this is an emergency. Surely there must be an exception--"
"Doesn't work that way."
"Come on, you have to be able to get us home. It's not like we're going to an uncharted system. We're just heading home. If my dad finds out you let me get stranded, you'll be assigned to worse than refrigerator duty."
"It is a familiar destination, but an unmapped jump," said the ship. "We're not going anywhere. And you can blame me all you want. I was just following orders and your dad will know that. It's you who will be grounded for life."
Jim seethed. The nerve of the damn thing!
"What have you done?" asked Nancy, emphasizing each word. He didn't like the way she was scowling at him.
"I'm sure somebody will find us soon enough," he said, not feeling confident about that at all.
"We're going to miss the party!"
He suppressed an urge to laugh. "We have a much bigger problem right now." Like, his dad was going to kill him. "We'll just have to wait and see if someone finds us."
"Wait and see? A second ago you said it was a sure thing. Why did we have to look for a planet for so long anyway? Why couldn't you let anyone know which Possibles we were checking?"
Because finding a new planet was his best chance at getting into Nancy's pants, he thought sheepishly. She seemed to have already forgotten that they didn't file a flight plan because it was more adventurous that way.
He ignored her badgering. "Let's not panic. The ship can sustain us indefinitely. We'll just have to wait and see what happens."
"Wait and see," she mimicked him in a whiny tone. "Wait and see. Goddamn it!" She stomped off to the lone sleeping cabin.
After a while, he walked by the cabin and tried the door. It was locked. He probably wasn't going to get laid again anytime soon.
* * *
"Jim, we can't just sit around doing nothing. We could be here forever. We need to figure out a way to get home."
He sat at the table in the common room, eating roast duck and garlic-mashed potato equivalents. The room's single porthole revealed lengthening shadows outside. "Well, what should we do?" he asked through a full mouth. "Build a huge bonfire and keep plenty of green branches around?" He took a long pull of