“Hey, Boiler… what’s my first name?”
Boiler opened his mouth to reply, hesitated, closed it.
“So anyway,” Pinback went on as if they had been entranced by his reminiscences all along, “after they discovered the bits and pieces of this…”
Doolittle got up and dropped the remnants of plastic and metal into the proper disposal slot.
“I’m going to the music room.”
“So anyway,” Pinback began again, shifting to face Boiler.
Boiler didn’t even look at him, didn’t even say anything. He simply rose and tossed his used utensils into the same slot and left the eating area.
And Pinback—Pinback was mad. Here he’d just saved the whole damn ship and no one was the least bit interested in how he had come to be aboard to do it. But if that were the case, then he hadn’t been talking about saving the ship, had he? He’d been talking about saving someone else. An astronaut, yeah, like himself. Or was it? He wasn’t sure.
Getting up, he properly disposed of his own garbage and thoughtfully pressed the recycle button—something Doolittle and Boiler, typically, had neglected to do.
There was a hum from the disposal as he left the room, thinking hard. Saved. Astronaut. Himself, Pinback. Alien. Tranquilizer. Beachball.
He was definitely confused and worried, and at times when he was confused and worried there was only one way he could find solace.
Each of them had their own place. Boiler could do it anywhere, with occasional bursts of barely controlled violence. Doolittle did it in the music room. Talby did it… Boiler’s last words came back to him and he suddenly wondered what the hell Talby’s first name was, anyway.
As usual, the recording alcove in the library was unoccupied, but he took the precaution of checking the corridor before he closed the door and sat down. Privacy was essential here. It wouldn’t do for Boiler, or even Doolittle, to see what he was up to.
He removed the precious, unmarked tape from his shirt. The legend My Diary was scrawled across the otherwise blank label. Gently he slipped it into the machine and turned his attention to the screen in front of the compact console.
A muted hum indicated that the audio was activated, and then the words FOR OFFICIAL PURPOSES, THIS RECORDING INSTRUMENT AUTOMATICALLY DELETES ALL OFFENSIVE LANGUAGE AND/OR GESTURES appeared on the screen.
There was a last pop, indicating that the visual was focused and in synch with the sound, and then the words disappeared. They were replaced by a portrait of a young man, staring back at him. A stranger.
The stranger looked very much like himself. The differences were quite superficial. The stranger was neatly clad in a finely pressed uniform. His hair was closely trimmed on top and sides and the burgeoning beard carefully shaped. He wore a silly smile and a generally immature expression.
Beep. “This statement’s for posterity,” the stranger declaimed vigorously. Pinback sat perfectly motionless, watching him.
“I just wanna say that I am not Sergeant Pinback. My real name is Bill Frug. Frug. F-R-U-G. I’m a field maintenance technician. Specifically, I work with the KG liquid fuel tanks for the starship launch pad chemical boosters.
“I’ve been on this mission now for about fourteen years, Earth time. Or about…” he paused a moment to figure, “… two years shiptime.
“That’s a long time, two years shiptime, Fourteen years I’ve been on this mission and I just wanna tell you that Pinback’s uniforms do not fit me, and the underwear is too loose, and I’ve been trying to make up my own nametag to replace Sergeant Pinback’s, but I can’t seem to get his nametags off any of these jumpsuits without ripping the suit and besides, the sewing machine in the recreation room doesn’t work anymore, and I only know how to do hemstitching anyway.
“I do not belong on this mission, though so far I have been… an exemplary member of the crew and have tried to fulfill Sergeant Pinback’s duties to the best of my ability and… and… I want to go home.”
The picture changed. The stranger still looked like Pinback, only now his hair and beard were longer, much longer, and so was his expression.
“Ah, Commander Powell died today,” the stranger intoned solemnly. “We were coming out of hyperdrive after a successful bomb run and, well, he sits right next to me and, well, something went wrong with the force-field mechanism when we came out into normal space and it triggered a defective circuit in his seat and it blew up and—”
The figure on the screen gave a half-shrug, “—and he was dead, just like that. Doolittle said his brain was still functioning, sort of, so instead of giving him a burial in space we put him into the freezer in the hopes that when we get back to Earth, the bio boys can reconstruct a body for him.
“Personally, I think Doolittle is unduly optimistic, but then he always was kind of close to the commander and so I understand his actions.”
Yet again the video metamorphosis, and an even more disheveled Pinback-type stared forlornly out at Pinback.
“Doolittle says that he’s assuming formal command of the ship,” the figure said, “and I, I say…” The word DELETED momentarily replaced the figure on the screen, and the audio went silent.
“… that he’s exceeding his authority because I’m the only one with any objectivity left on this ship and therefore I should be the one to assume command. Doolittle says that I’m not really Sergeant Pinback, which shows how far gone he is, and so I couldn’t possibly assume command.
“Then he said that if I wanted to take over he would be perfectly happy to let me. And he asked what my first order was and that stupid ape Boiler just stood there and snickered at me and I didn’t think it was very funny. Or fair. I mean, I should have some time to prepare for something like taking command.
“Now, I’m filing an official report on this to Earth Base headquarters ’cause I think this is a lot of…” and the word DELETED appeared again—several times, in fact.
The view changed again. Now it was a smiling, happy Pinback-type who appeared, with slightly trimmed beard and hair. A Pinback who looked very much, if not exactly, like the Pinback sitting in the recorder chair, staring at his mirror image on the screen.
This time the audio came only in uneven bursts, with the now familiar slogan DELETED appearing almost constantly on the screen. Very few real sounds escaped the recorder’s inbuilt censors, and these were mostly snickers and nervous half-giggles instead of words.
“I went up to Doolittle in the hall today,” the image giggled, “and I DELETED Doolittle.” Snicker. “He said DELETED"… grin, chuckle, snort… “and he didn’t…” This time the words GESTURE DELETED appeared. “Then he,"… laugh, DELETED, chuckle… “and I said, well, and he still didn’t get it, and…”
The beep changed the screen yet again, to reveal now a nervous, irritated Pinback who in addition to looking very unhappy also revealed a slight twitch at the corner of the right eye.
“This mission has fallen apart since Commander Powell died. Doolittle treats me like an idiot. Talby, he thinks he’s so smart, up in his dome, and Boiler punches me in the arm when no one is looking.
“I’m tired of being treated like an old washrag. I’m tired of being treated like I’m an intruder and don’t belong. I’m tired of not being given due credit for the job I’m doing. I’m tired of… of not being treated like I should be treated.
“After all, I outrank both Talby and Boiler, and I’ve reported their disrespect back to headquarters. But for some reason headquarters hasn’t responded. I wonder what’s wrong with those people down there. Don’t they realize the importance of maintaining discipline up here? If rank means nothing anymore then we might as well give up on the whole mission. It’s enough to make someone resign his commission.