Never Been Better

The old, palsied pilot careened his shuttle into the spaceport. The shuttle— doubtlessly as old and poorly taken care of as the pilot— groaned in agony.

Well, what the hell could be expected from a fucking bargain shuttle service?

And to think, just a few short weeks ago, Jerry had his own fleet of shuttles. A few short weeks ago, he wouldn't have had to rely on some dumbshit relic to fly him around.

Jerry sighed, undid his belt, andpulled his sore butt off of thehard metal passenger chair. The old pilot, shaking as though he was going to rattle himself apart, turned slowly in his chair.

"Well, boy, there's a few new hemmorhoids for the record! heh heh."

Jerry grimaced. No shit, you old bag of bones.

He made a noncommital soundjust to bepoliteand, feeling a million strange new agonies from the stinky, lumpy shuttle chair, moved towards the exit with the rest of the passengers. A scratchy mechanical voice sputtered out of the decaying sound system,

"Please stay away from the doors until the dock has been pressurized. Please stay away from the doors until the dock has been pressurized..."

Then, a brief hissing sound, as the dock repressurized and the hermetically sealed doors popped open. Carbon rich air, carrying the scents of oil and diesel, wafted into the stale air of the shuttle.

A tiny electric motor whined, extending a ramp. Jerry stepped out of the shuttle, absentmindedly picking his way around the clumsy little luggage-collection robots whirring around his feet. He suddenly stopped, scanning the crowd with the unmistakeable earnestness of a person looking for a familiar face.

"Jerry!"

Jerry whipped around, just in time to see something brown and frizzy attack his midriff. He bent his head, breathing in the scent of Amanda's trademark shampoo. He smiled for the first time in days. He suddenly felt that things were going to be okay.


************************


Amanda felt hopelessness seeping into her as she watched his nostrils flare like those of an ape.

His wide, rugged face reddened as he bellowed. His eyes shut, his nose collapsed in on itself, and his mouth yawned open. And for a second his headlooked like a tomato with a hole in it.And under different circumstances, it would have been funny.

"Are you CRAZY???" he bellowed.

Amanda tried to stay calm and reasonable "Listen to me. Just listen, It makes sense when you---"

"Makes sense? Makes SENSE?! What do you MEAN?"

Amanda finally felt herself let go (click) and she screamed back

"Jesus Christ, Jerry! Get with the fucking times! Do you think you can have your head up your ass all your life! This is the twenty-third century, you idiot!"

Jerry, taken aback for a short second by her vehemence, came back, his voice having dropped a few octaves,

"People that use teleportation are crazy! I hate it and, by God, so does over a third ofthe population! It's unsafe! How many accidents? How many mutations?"

They both stopped for a second, remembering theearly volunteers that hadmade Thalidamide babies look like supermodels.

Amanda started to say something else, then stopped. Despair hit her like a freight train. Their shuttle business, his dream, was ruined. Jerry knew it. She knew it. But Jerry would insist on taking their meagre savings— everything they had left— and pumping it into his stupid dream.

In the past five months, shuttles had been going out of business. When the government had finally been able to conclusively display the safety of teleportation, the population started to warm up to it. No more sitting on shuttles for weeks to travel between the planets. So, one by one, the big shuttle companies failed. And for the private companies, tough and persisent as they were, it was only a matter of time. Welcome to light-speed travel. Welcome to the new generation. Hoo-hah and thank you.

Amanda placed immediate faith in it. Jerry almost had a heart attack when he found out that she had gone through a teleporter. Her bullheaded husband being his usual bullheaded self.

And yet, Amanda knew that teleportation was the answer. She just KNEW. She could buy a small facility for only a few hundred thousand, and have enough left for a license. Then, she and him could get a piece of the action. It was still early enough in the game for them to have a shot at success. But they had to act NOW, and Amanda needed Jerry's help. Amanda felt tears squeezing out of her eyes, against her will.

"Just try it, honey. Just try it. Try it and see. Please?"

He crossed his big arms and started to say something, but she interrupted.

"It's out only hope, and you know it."

He shook his head and opened his mouth to argue, but abruptly stopped. It WAS their only chance, and he knew it. He threw up his hands.

"What the hell. What. The. Hell.I'll do it."

************************

Jerry was breathing hard. He didn't like the teleporter, even though he didn't know why. It felt like.... like,.....

like death. Just death. Nothing else. No reason for it. Just call it intuition. Jerry wouldn't admit it, wouldn't admit he possessed any measure of that disgrazeful, intangible stuff called "superstition," but he hated the looks of the teleporter just the same.

Amanda stepped onto the launch pad, turned and gave him the immortal thumbs up, and vanished in a flash of light brighter than her smile.

Ten seconds later, the robotic travel operator turned to him. "Travel is over. You get up there."

Jerry turned towards the mechanical face, with some malformed question, some strange negation, in his mind.

The operator cocked its head at him, "Get up there, or I call the next guy."

Jerry shook his head to clear it and obeyed.

The flash of light was warm. It caressed his body like a hand. In the last second or so before takeoff, he felt himself develop a very embarassing erection. His last coherent thought was that he hoped the robot didn't see his boner.


************************

Jerry was aware in the void between Mars and Earth. He was aware. And he felt himself being converted into energy. It was a strange, pleasant. And he was thinking something like, I could get used to this.

Then, things started to go wrong. He felt the molecules of his being, right down to the minisculeties of his DNA, being probed and seperated. He felt his soul being rended like a lump of chicken flesh in a hungry diner's mouth.

Then the agony started. One might say it is impossible to feel agony in a blank void, with no nerves to receive the sensation, but it was there nonetheless.

As clearly as a ball of thread unwinding, Jerry felt his soul, his mind, and great chunks of his sanity falling apart and sloughing off. He made a desperate effort to hold onto himself, a desperate effort to keep himself together, with a vague idea of getting a warning to his wife.

He screamed and fought, asthe essence of his soul fell apart He screamed an eternity of agony into the void.

It was there, with his soul impaled on a stream of photons, that Jerry died.


************************


Amanda stood tense, just outside the transporter docks, waiting for Jerry. She had a brief, tense, moment, when she thought he wasn't going to come through......

And then he materialized in a blinding glare of light, the same as always, with that same sandy, unruly cowlick between his eyes.

He stepped down, off the transporter pad.

Amanda flashed her million-dollar-baby smile. "So, how was it?"

He gave his awe-shucks grin. "It was cool. Didn't even feel a thing."

"So, how are you feeling? No....... sickness?"

"Nope. In fact, I've never been better. And you know what else? I think we should go for it."

Amanda felt grateful tears welling up in her eyes.