Andrew Smith - Rabbit and Robot

It kind of made my stomach turn. But vomiting in weightlessness was potentially worse than peeing, which is why they gave us all anti-nausea injections directly into our stomachs during the ordeal of our physical examinations.

Besides, all the actors in “How to Urinate and Defecate On Board Grosvenor Galactic Cruise Ships in Space” were v.4 cogs, so it wasn’t like we were watching actual humans taking dumps and pissing into weird vacuum hoses. But it was still repulsive to look at, even though my brain had been lulled by the subliminal coding effects of Rabbit & Robot .

I always tried to hold it to the point of pain whenever I went up into space. Any normal guy would, right?

I unhooked myself from the seat and swam past Lourdes, who opened her eyes as wide as twinned mineshafts and nodded proudly at the prospect of teaching me how to safely urinate as a male in space. Her smile seemed to split her face like an overripe tomato.

I groaned, then turned to Rowan and said, “Are we there yet?”

Meg Hatfield had to figure things out on her own.

There were no instructional videos played for the cogs in second class. It was unnecessary. Cogs knew everything they needed to know and never had to learn anything else.

They also never needed to pee.

It must be very nice.

In fact, after the first few hours of wailing and moaning— and cheering, dancing, and applauding—every one of the second-class cogs, on their way to report for duty aboard the Tennessee , the cruise ship to end all cruise ships, went into silent sleep mode while Meg Hatfield and Jeffrie Cutler discussed plans to feed themselves and take care of other corporeal needs.

It didn’t matter much, because Meg and Jeffrie could have done anything they wanted to do and they would have appeared to be invisible as far as the cogs and flight attendants on the Grosvenor Galactic transpod were concerned, due to the code Meg had uploaded from her thumbphone earlier that day.

“I could totally darf this thing and nobody would ever know,” Jeffrie said.

“Nobody would know because nobody is actually on this flight, except for us,” Meg pointed out. “We’re packed in with a bunch of machines.”

“I saw a boy up there.” Jeffrie nodded her chin toward the barrier that sealed in the privilege of first class. “He was really cute, but I think he was hacked up on Woz or something.”

Meg said, “ Cute? I’ve never heard you call a boy cute before. How old are you?”

“Fifteen. And shut up,” Jeffrie said. “He really is cute.”

“He’s most likely a cog.”

“No. I saw his eyes. I can tell.”

“That’s what you think,” Meg said.

Meg opened up her thumbphone.

“What are you going to do to us now? More code?” Jeffrie asked. “Why don’t you turn this thing around, and make them take us back home?”

“No. This time I really am going to call my dad.”

Jeffrie Cutler, like most of the burner kids from Antelope Acres, did not have a Hinsoft phone implanted inside her fingertips. “Ask him if he could let Lloyd know I’m with you.”

Nobody liked Lloyd Cutler, and Meg Hatfield’s father was no exception.

“Okay.”

But when Meg called, nothing happened.

“This sucks,” Meg said. “I guess there’s no phones up here in space.”

“Um, well, in that case, when are we going back?” Jeffrie asked.

“We’ll figure out something. Just enjoy the ride, Jeff.”

Jeffrie frowned. “I kind of feel weird, like maybe I’m going to puke or something.”

“Don’t think about it. You’re probably just hungry. I am. I’m going to figure out where the toilets are and look for something to eat. Okay?”

“All right.”

When Meg came back, she carried pouches of food: hamburgers and fries with bottles of water. It was the kind of food made at places Jeffrie and her brother Lloyd liked to set fire to.

“Food printers,” Meg said, waving the girls’ meal pouches in front of Jeffrie. “Really cool ones.”

“Thanks.”

Meg sat down beside Jeffrie and harnessed herself back into the recliner. “But the toilets are weird. It took me ten minutes to figure out how to use their female urinal , and by then I thought I was going to piss myself. It’s like hooking yourself up to a fucking electronic lamprey eel or something. And the pictures they have on the walls, with the characters from that kids’ show demonstrating how to use them, are really disturbing. If I was a guy, I’d be terrified of the male lamprey thing.”

Jeffrie tore at the opening of her food pouch. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.”

“Now I kind of have to go too.”

“Do you want me to show you how to do it?”

Jeffrie shook her head. “I’m not stupid. And I’m not scared, either.”

“Well, do me a favor. When you come back, see if you can print up some ketchup,” Meg said.

“No. I can’t do the reading and writing thing. Sorry.”

Meg said, “Well, then. I guess this pretty much means I can feed you whatever I want.”

Jeffrie unhooked her harness and got out of her seat.

“That doesn’t mean I’ll eat it, though.”

Jeffrie pulled herself away from the seat and drifted toward the toilets. She said, “Can you promise me one thing, Meg? Can you promise that you will get us back home before too long?”

“No worries, Jeff,” Meg said. “I promise.”

Billy Hinman, who hated to fly, and hated anything that moved fast, had never been to space.

I watched his face, as confused and out of it as I was. Even in my state I knew there was nothing like seeing, for the first time, the massive hulk of the Tennessee through the portholes of a tiny Grosvenor Galactic transpod.

The Tennessee was so big, it was almost scary.

As a matter of fact, it really was scary to Billy Hinman. The Tennessee looked like a gigantic eye, floating in a low orbit over the moon. An eye as big as Boise.

“I don’t really want to go on that thing,” he said.

Then Billy shook his head and said, “What the fuck did I do, Cager?”

He covered his head with his blanket and turned away from the window.

On the second day of our flight to the Tennessee , I began to sweat and shake. It was just a little at first, but my guts clenched up in protest at the lack of Woz. I could not eat, despite Rowan’s pleading with me, and Lourdes’s unending manic performances.

Lourdes tried everything to make me feel better. She danced and sang, wrapped me in blankets, swabbed my clammy skin with warm washcloths, and shaved me, which was unnecessary, to be honest.

Billy Hinman, my best friend in life, complained. “You know, he’s not the only human passenger in first class,” he told her.

So Lourdes put chilled cucumber slices on Billy Hinman’s eyelids, and she even asked him if he’d like a hand job, which made me kind of jealous—and horny, too—just thinking about Lourdes and her “Thursday” panties.

Rowan, arching an eyebrow, stared at me silently.

Maybe being in space for two days with a Wozhead in withdrawal was wearing on everyone’s sanity, even our nonhuman flight attendant’s. And Lourdes’s offer to Billy was just typical of my experience around people—and even cogs—who were all so hopelessly attracted to Billy Hinman.

And I wasn’t entirely surprised when Billy Hinman told her, “No,” and shut his eyes. Some people did like to do sexual things with cogs, but for his entire life Billy Hinman always told me how much he’d hated the things on which his father’s empire had been built.