What If? a Collection of Short Fiction by J. Paul Cooper Read online

  The Professor now had all three eyes focused on Erlok, a sure sign that she suspected Erlok had left out an important piece of information. “Perhaps you transported one particle, and you’re theorizing that you could send an entire object. I mean, even if you’ve managed the energy transport of just one particle that would be a major scientific breakthrough by itself. The energy transport of an entire object, that’s the kind of achievement that can change the course of your destiny.”

  Erlok took a rock out of his pocket with the three digits on his left hand and placed in on the Professor’s desk. “This is one of the rocks I used. I painted stripes on it, so I wouldn’t get it confused with any other rocks nearby.”

  Professor Furlaq held the small rock in her hand. “You’re going to need solid evidence. The fact you’re a student doesn’t mean it’s impossible, but older scientists will be very sceptical. Many scientists have made the same claim, but were unable to repeat the experiment when others were watching. I could claim an old drinking cup I found at the bottom of a river once belonged to an ancient king, but until I can prove it’s true, it’s just an old drinking cup.”

  Erlok took a small disk out of one of his pockets and handed it to the Professor. She placed it in a device that projected a record of his experiment on a nearby wall. Professor Furlaq watched a small rock disappearing from one metal pad and then reappearing a short distance away on another metal pad.

  The Professor stood. The orange skin on her face was stretched by a huge smile. “One of the greatest scientific achievements of all time, and it’s one of my students. She put her arms around Erlok. “I’m so proud of you!”

  Erlok wondered if he should call the medical service and report a heart attack.

  “When you told me what you were planning to do for your term assignment I thought, why not? Part of the learning process is failing and learning from your mistakes, so as long as you recorded the process, and used your imagination, you were bound to learn something. Have you any idea what you’ve achieved Erlok?”

  Small green pimples were beginning to appear on Erlok’s orange skin, a sign of uncomfortable emotions.

  “I don’t blame you for feeling uneasy,” the Professor continued, “you’re going to be the center of attention and it’s something you’re not used to. You’ll do fine; just make sure the equipment you used is locked up, so you’ll be able to reproduce the experiment.”

  Erloks’s lack of excitement was beginning to worry the Professor. She stepped away from him and returned to her seat. “Don’t tell me you damaged the equipment you used. You have no idea how much paperwork is involved.”

  Erlok lowered his voice. “I didn’t damage any equipment; it’s just that something I transported is missing.”

  The Professor smiled. “So, we need to go look for some painted rocks. I’ll get some students and we’ll search the area near the experiment until we find them.”

  Erlok shrugged his shoulders. “It’s not that easy. It’s possible, at least in theory, that the particles could have been affected by gravitational forces from other planets, or perhaps the energy released by a solar flare.”

  “So,” replied the Professor, “the particles of the object could have been moved slightly off course.”

  “More that slightly off course Professor.”

  “Well Erlok, where could the particles be?”

  Erlok shrugged his shoulders again. “Anywhere.”

  The Professor leaned back in her chair. “So what if a rock you used in the experiment ended up somewhere else? I don’t think a small rock is anything to worry about.”

  Erlok hesitated for a moment. “Actually, I have all the small rocks I used in my experiments. It’s something else. I wanted to see if my device could be used to transport something more complex. Wouldn’t it be more practical to transport medical equipment to remote locations? Medical equipment save lives, not rocks.”

  “I hope,” replied the Professor, “that you didn’t take any of the school’s medical supplies without permission. Those are for emergencies, not science experiments.”

  “I didn’t use any medical supplies,” Erlok replied. “You know that sonic mining device used to carve out pieces of rock with sound waves, the one the mining company guy was showing us on career day?”

  Professor Furlaq focused all three eyes on Erlok. He was no longer wondering which of her eyes was the most beautiful, he was wondering which one she’d use to aim whatever deadly object she was going to throw at him. The Professor leaned forward. “You’re talking about the equipment being used to demonstrate modern mining techniques to students. You’re talking about a very dangerous piece of equipment that can only be used under strict supervision. Have you any idea how expensive that piece of equipment is? The school will have to replace it. And since I’m responsible for all the equipment used by Science students, they’ll probably replace me as well!”

  “I can keep trying to bring it back.” ‘

  The Professor leaned forward, glaring at Erlok with all three eyes. “You do that.”

  It was a warm summer evening in Calgary. In a house across the street from a soccer field, Angela stood in front of her bedroom mirror, holding the electric guitar she had just received for her fourteenth birthday. Her best friend Brittany sat on the bed, smiling.

  “Awesome. You’ve got the look, now all you need is a song to perform. You know, if you want to impress the judges and win that talent contest, you have to write something original.”

  Angela brushed her dark brown hair out of her eyes. “How about that song I’ve been working on with my acoustic? Do you think it has potential?”

  Brittany held up a hand to let Angela know she had to wait until she took another piece of pizza from the box on the floor. “Sure it has potential, but it’s more of a dance number. The electric guitar on rhythm will help, but what would really sound fantastic, would be a synthesizer.”

  “Angela.”

  Hearing Angela’s mother’s voice, Brittany pointed a finger at her best friend. “Watch your mouth, you know how your temper gets you in trouble.”

  Angela made a motion as if she was zippering her lips closed and opened the door. “Please Mom, can’t the cat’s litter box wait? I’ll scoop it tomorrow, promise. It’s my my birthday.”

  Angela’s mother held out an electronic device. It was blue, about the size of a hardcover novel, with a series of yellow buttons around the edges. “That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about. Do you know who gave you this? It wasn’t wrapped”

  Angela put the guitar on the bed and took the box from her mother. “I have no idea. I’m not even sure what it is.”

  “I don’t know how we missed it. Anyway, your father found it in the backyard and it’s your birthday, so it must be yours.”

  Angela slowly closed the door and grinned at Brittany. “Is it possible?”

  Brittany took another piece off pizza out of the box. “There’s only one way to find out. You never know, this could be one of those things that change the course of your destiny.”

  Angela pushed one of the buttons. It produced an unusual sound. There were twenty small buttons, five on each side of the square box. The screen in the middle was surrounded by symbols Angela had never seen before.

  Brittany stood next to Angela. “Why would somebody buy you a kid’s toy from Sweden?”

  Angela looked at her friend. “Sweden. What gives you that idea?”

  Brittany pointed a finger at the box. “It’s blue and yellow.”

  Angela smiled. “Oh yeah. Well, if a toy from Sweden helps me make the perfect dance song and I win the contest, that’s fine with me.”

  Angela and Brittany spent the next couple of hours working on Angela’s song, Angela playing her new electric guitar while Brittany pushed the buttons on the strange box in different sequences, trying to find just the right sound.

  Later in the evening, Angela’s mother knocked on the bedroom door again. “I don’t care how late y
ou stay up; just keep the volume down so the rest of the house can sleep. If you want to watch movies, just take a couple of sleeping bags and use the television in the basement.”

  Brittany laid the box on Angela’s bed. “How about finishing the song tomorrow?”

  Angela agreed and pulled two sleeping bags out of her closet.

  The next morning, Angela’s younger brother Fred walked across street to the soccer field carrying the blue and yellow toy from Sweden. He wanted to play with Angela’s present, and if he pushed the buttons in the house, she’d hear him for sure. Brittany and Angela were sleeping in the basement, and since they were teenagers, they wouldn’t get up until noon. He’d even fed the cat, so she wouldn’t wake Angela with her meowing. As far as he was concerned, he could play with Angela’s weird new toy until the first soccer teams showed up.

  Pushing the buttons held Fred’s attention for a few minutes, until he remembered that his favourite cartoon was just about to start. He ran back across the street, leaving the box in the middle of the soccer field. As Fred disappeared inside the house, the unusual markings on the box began to flash and the box started emitting a constant, beeping sound.

  Erlok was losing hope of ever bringing back the mining equipment when the transport pads began to glow. He looked up at his instructor. “It’s working Professor. It’s going to transport something.”

  She put her hands on her hips. “Something?”

  Erlok attempted a smile. “It’s probably the sonic mining equipment.”

  “Probably? You’re scaring me Erlok.”

  “Sorry.”

  Moments later the Professor stared in disbelief as the mining equipment appeared on the energy transport pad. It appeared to be fine, it just needed to be cleaned. Professor Furlaq was so relieved that she ran over to Erlok and hugged him again. Erlok decided that anyone who thought science was boring - just didn’t understand.

  A couple of days after the explosion people in the surrounding neighbourhood were allowed to return home. Angela and her family stood behind yellow police tape, staring at the giant crater where there had once been a soccer field.

  The police were baffled. To the best of their knowledge, there had been no natural gas leaks in the area, and no trace of explosive material had been discovered. Streets, houses and cars were covered in mud. Some windows had been smashed by flying rocks, but fortunately there were only a few minor injuries.

  Later that day when Angela went up to her bedroom, she couldn’t find the toy she had been using as a synthesizer, Fred confessed that he had left it on the soccer field, so it must have been destroyed in the explosion. Knowing that her younger brother could have been killed, Angela didn’t care about losing some kid’s toy from Sweden.

  The Cold Climate Tourism Assignment

  When George the hotel clerk checked in Mr. Johnson the previous night, there had been nothing unusual about the process; his credit card had worked properly and he had been polite. The guest wasn’t exceptionally tall or short, he wasn’t particularly fat or slim. Yet, there was something that bothered George. Something wasn’t quite right. Now, as he glanced up from the counter and noticed Mr. Johnson walking through the lobby, he decided it was probably because he couldn’t guess his accent. George had been in the hotel business for ten years, and was surprised to hear an accent he wasn’t familiar with. Mr. Johnson was probably a business executive who had lived in so many countries, that his accent became an indistinguishable blend.

  George wasn’t completely wrong; the guest signed in as Mr. Johnson travelled extensively on business, but the reason his accent was so unusual was because he wasn’t from Earth. His real name was Zorlok and he was born on the planet Lexkal. He had learned enough English through computer simulations to have conversations, but it wasn’t the same as practicing the language with natural speakers. He wished he’d had more time, but once he was given an assignment, he was on a schedule and couldn’t wait until a human accent was perfected.

  Zorlok slipped on the ice near the hotel entrance and cursed the three moons of Korzlar. It was a good thing he was in Calgary, because the zealous Korzlarians consider their moons to be deities, and anyone heard cursing them would die a very slow, painful death for heresy.

  Perhaps the Director of the Inter-Galactic Tourist Association wanted him to die a slow, painful death; she knew Zorlok hated the cold, and he’d been assigned to evaluate Canada as a cold climate tourist destination. Elzak, the Director’s favourite, had been sent to Australia to complete the warm climate evaluation.

  Fortunately, it had been Zorlok’s left elbow and not his head that hit the ice. If he had been knocked unconscious and taken to a medical facility, the physicians might notice that he had three heart chambers, that the ears were fake, because his auditory organs were inside his skull, and that he was wearing contact lenses to hide dual orange pupils.

  Tomorrow he would travel to British Columbia to visit ski resorts, but today he wanted to make observations about Calgary. He decided to take a look at options for tourists with plenty of credits to spend, so he had a taxi waiting to take him to a popular shopping destination.

  The taxi driver helped Zorlok to his feet. “Are you all right? I saw you fall. I can drive you to a medical clinic if you want.”

  “No,” replied Zorlok, “I’m fine; just take me to the shopping centre.”

  “So, you’re just going to shake it off?” the taxi driver asked.

  Zorlok hesitated. He didn’t want to look stupid. “What are you referring to?”

  “Your arm, of course.”

  Zorlok made a note on his computer. “If for some reason a human experiences extreme pain in a limb, they can shake it off. I don’t know if they can grow limbs back.”

  A few minutes later the taxi was travelling on the Deerfoot Trail. Zorlok noted that the signs stated the speed limit was 100 kms/hr. The display on the vehicle’s control panel showed they were travelling at 120 kms/hr. He cleared his throat to get the driver’s attention. “I’m assuming we should be travelling at 100 km/hr.”

  The taxi driver glanced in the rear-view mirror. “Well, that’s the posted speed limit. That’s the speed the government thinks is safe to travel when the roads are clear.”

  “When are the roads clear?” asked Zorlok.

  “During the summer the roads are clear, but this time of year there are patches of ice on the roads, so you never know when you’ll hit a slippery section and lose control.”

  The driver slowed down as they passed a collision on the side of the road. “That’s probably what happened to them.”

  Zorlok watched as the numbers on the control panel quickly returned to 120 kms/hr. They were being passed by vehicles that were obviously travelling much faster. He made a note on his computer, “Humans have a death wish.”

  The problem was obvious; humans were allowed to control their own vehicles. If the vehicles were controlled by a government computer grid, it would be impossible to travel faster than a safe limit set by the state. Human transportation systems would need a massive computer upgrade, so their systems could communicate with both ground based vehicles and flying vehicles. That was the first benefit of inter-galactic tourism; the immediate introduction of advanced technologies. Humans would need to take reservations from across the galaxy, and whether they were ready or not, the humans would finally get the flying cars they’d dreamed about for so long.

  After arriving at the shopping centre, relieved that he had survived the journey, Zorlok spent a couple of hours inspecting stores, noting that most of them were clean. Since many of the inter-galactic tourists would be quite wealthy, prices weren’t a concern.

  As he ate a meal in the food court, Zorlok saw more humans wearing long red shirts with a ball of fire on the front. He decided to talk to a man sitting at a nearby tale. “Excuse me, may I ask you a question.”

  The man looked up from his smart phone. “I suppose that depends on the question.”

  “The long shirts,
the red ones with the ball of fire, what are they called?”

  The man pointed at his shirt. “This is a hockey jersey. You know, you’ve got to support the local team.”

  “So, the shirt is called a jersey. What’s hockey?”

  The man shook his head in disbelief. “You don’t know what hockey is? You’re definitely not from around here. Hockey is the state religion in Canada.”

  Returning to his table in the food court, Zorlok made some quick notes about human religions. It appeared that the different symbols depicted on the front of Hockey jerseys were for the various Hockey denominations and the names printed on the back were the names of famous prophets. Houses of worship for other religions included, churches, synagogues, mosques and temples. The largest Hockey house of worship in Calgary was in the shape of a saddle, something used to ride horses. Symbols depicting horses seemed to be everywhere in Calgary; so apparently horses were considered sacred, at least in this city. What was the connection between Hockey and horses? That would require more research. One thing was certain from what he’d learned about the Canadian religion called Hockey - the prophets did not take a vow of poverty.

  From brochures he’d read, there seemed to be a lot of tourist attractions in the city centre, so Zorlok decided to go to the nearest Light Rail Train station and travel downtown. Since some inter-galactic tourists would want to travel in luxury; while others would want to take public transit, it made sense to use the light rail train or buses at least once. Zorlok quickly regretted walking to the train station as the wind was growing stronger and the temperature was dropping. By the time he reached the station, Zorlok was shivering and glad to get out of the cold.