Prologue

"Okay, Barry, I’m calling it. Heads he’s dead, tails he’s alive."

"Derek," I said, "that won’t work."

Two weeks after we blew the hell out of Fugly, unless we didn’t, CONUNDRUM was flying through Weinberg Space on its way to the Pegasus star system, still stuck in radio silence because we just didn’t have the computer power to manage Comm systems from within this weird extra-dimensional space. That’s okay, apparently, because we’ve got a coin to toss.

Lieutenant Derek Nietzsche might have been the youngest guy on the ship, but he managed to look even younger than he was. He flipped the coin with his thumb, caught it with the same hand, and slapped it dramatically onto his forearm. He tried to catch my eye, but I wouldn’t throw it to him, so he exposed the coin instead.

"Heads," he stated. "Fugly’s dead."

"You’ve got a two-headed coin there."

"Afraid not." He showed me. "I’ll do it again. Heads he’s dead, tails he’s alive."

It was very difficult to have a serious conversation in a room with road signs on all the walls. Well, the conversation was bullshit anyway, but never mind. Signs, signs, everywhere signs, blocking out the scenery, breaking my mind.

Stop

Yield

Children Crossing

Deer Crossing

Beer Crossing

Please keep off the grass

No parking on even days

No Passing Zone

Do Not Enter

Slippery When Wet

Double Left Turn

Emergency Parking Only

Do not feed the bears

"What is all this shit?" I asked.

"Just a reminder."

"Of what?"

"All we gave up by coming out here. I’m flipping the coin a second time. Heads, Fugly’s dead. Tails, Fugly’s alive. Got it? Here we go."

"This is ridiculous."

Derek flipped the coin, then showed it to me.

"Heads again," he said. "Fugly’s dead."

"Now that is freaky, but it doesn’t prove anything. Do you know why?"

"Because you’re a shmendrick?"

"No, because we haven’t seen the body. My brother’s funeral was closed casket. Well, it had to be. Bicycle versus truck. For years I kept thinking he’d just pop on my SpaceBook page one day. April Fool or some shit. Same thing with Fugly."

"What, Fugly uses SpaceBook?" Derek asked.

"Don’t make me frap you upside the head, boy."

"Barry, that’s redundant. The only place you can frap somebody is upside the head. It’s part of the definition of the word."

"I’ll remember that when I frap you, son."

I guess I hung out with Derek because he was so damn young. I’m 160, but I slept 101 of those years, making me about the same age as most crewmen. I always refer to the under-50 crowd as kids, but Derek is that rare animal known as an under-40 crewman. Back on Earth, I’d probably card him for beer. He worked back in the Second Wheel, growing muscle tissue on scaffolding. Make friends with the Foodies and you’ve got an unlimited source of meat.

I learned the same trick centuries ago, by the way, working in restaurants where employees were allowed to eat the cook’s mistakes. Make friends with the cook and you can tell him what mistake you’d like for him to make and when you’d like for him to make it.

"Third time’s the charm," he said, holding up his coin. "Heads means Fugly is dead, and tails means... shit. I’m not doing this anymore. Fugly is dead."

"You think?"

"I don’t know. Catch."

I wasn’t catching the damn thing. It landed on the floor of his cabin.

Heads.

Shit.

***

We had no sunlight. That made the solariums a great place to get away from people. One of the unfortunate side effects of Weinberg Space was that we had to "close all the windows" or else we’d just be blinded by all the streaming light of a few thousand suns.

On the bright side, no pun intended, we’d travel over 50 light years in roughly 10 months. Plus, well, the solariums were a great place to get away from people.

Colonel Cram, Chief Engineer aboard CONUNDRUM, was apparently feeling as antisocial as I was, because there we were.

"It’s a common misperception," he said, "a misunderstanding of the nature of probability, that any coin toss affects the next one."

"Terrence Lawrence Cram, you are full of shit."

"Barry, my middle name isn’t Lawrence."

"Oh. I just had you figured for a TLC kind of guy."

The sigh. I live for it.

"Barry, while quantum physics isn’t my specialty, I know enough to accept that we’re getting some weird effects from Fugly’s death."

"Like a coin coming up heads three times in a row?"

He shrugged.

"Seriously? You know that, or you’re making shit up?"

"It’s a possibility, and my fingers are crossed."

"Great."

***

I was walking my rounds, yet again, like a good loyal Enforcement grunt, when Fuji caught up with me. Enforcement is a more honest name than Security, don’t you think? I’m still waiting for the Department of Defense to change its name back to the War Department.

We met in the little Aeroponics area outside the big Rec Deck on the Second Wheel, nicknamed "The Rain Forest." It was no secret that my rounds got a little slower when I hit that area. Same as all the Enforcement grunts.

Fuji caught up with me outside The Rain Forest. Major George Fuji Fujmeister Fujiwara, the little Japanese-American man with the physique of someone half my age. He’s over 70. My partner in crime. My brother from another mother. Except in videogame tournaments. Then he’s the Antichrist.

"Barry," he greeted me. "Just the person I was looking for. Would you like to know why I’m better than you at Space Zap? At all video games, actually?"

"Not all video games," I insisted.

"Here’s why."

Fuji handed me a coin. I stifled a groan. Then I looked at the coin.

"Fuji."

"I’ve explained to you before that you can’t call me Fuji because I outrank you. As a sign of respect, you must call me Fujmeister."

"Fuji. This is a quarter. Old U.S. money, 1964."

"Of course. That’s when you were born."

A hundred and sixty years ago.

"Where the hell did you get this? It can’t be real."

"It’s identical to the money you spent in your time in every single detail... except that it’s not made of metal."

"Even the weight seems right."

"Your memory’s that good?"

"Well... I think it’s right."

Fuji grinned. "It is. Mong asked me for a challenge, as a way to calibrate some new machinery he’s bringing on-line."

"He’s old enough to remember money," I realized. Mong’s from my time, but he’d gotten here the hard way, by not dying.

"He had fun. If he hadn’t gone into science he could’ve been one hell of a counterfeiter."

"So what’s this quarter made of?" Damn, it’s convincing. Should I bite it?

"A new metamaterial his team’s invented back on the Third Wheel. It can only be made in near-zero gravity. And with this quarter, I will show you why I’m better than you at all video games."

"Not all video games, just that stupid Space Zap. Hey, has Mong rigged this to always land on heads?"

Realization had finally dawned. Damn that Derek and his coin. He cheated.

"We won’t even be flipping it, young man," Fuji told me. "Hold out your right hand, palm up, coin in the center of it. I can take that quarter from your hand before you close it."

"Is there a betting pool on this?"

"On three."

"If you were Chinese instead of Japanese, would you take the pebble from my hand?"

"I don’t even want to know what that means. On three."

I knew he couldn’t win this. All I had to do was close my hand.

"You call it," he added.

Too easy.

"One. Two. Three."

Fuji was fast, which is why he was our best pilot, but there was no way. I felt a slight brushing against my palm, but of course I closed my hand around the quarter.

"And that, young man, is why you can’t beat me at video games," Fuji stated.

"Why?"

"Open your hand."

I did. I was holding two dimes and a quarter.

"Son of a bitch!"

"Grasshopper."

***

Two weeks later, Mong had figured out how to communicate in Weinberg Space.

We’d soon hear a verdict regarding whether or not Weinberg would be punished for bringing me back from the dead. Arbitration from a higher authority to determine who was in command of CONUNDRUM, Commander Adam Weinberg or Major Ethan Val Zureck. Orders regarding our next assignment, whether it was to continue on to Pegasus as originally planned or return to Earth.

No more "rogue starship" bullshit for us. The chain of command was gonna pull us tight, like a dog leashed in the yard and just barely missing the mailman’s leg.

In fact, Air Force Space Command could probably tell us whether or not Fugly was dead. If Earth and its colonies aren’t under attack right now, that’s a good sign. Even better is if they can "show us the body."