Starship Armstrong - Season 3

Part 15 - Mitzner's Card Game (II) (McAfree's Story)

McAfree sat way far down in her chair such that she could balance the bowl of colorful vitapuffs on her belly. She was methodically eating them, inspecting each puff carefully before popping it into her mouth. This was consuming the totality of her attention.

Mitzner shuffled a deck of playing cards. Wagner looked around nervously. Without even trying, and she wasn't above trying, McAfree had sucked the fun from the room.

Solarin and Gul arrived together by mistake, both showing up at exactly 20:00 ship's time. Neither recognized McAfree at first with her hair up and computer glasses off. Chen wasn't far behind them. He didn't even recognize Mitzner.

Takahashi was the last to arrive, wearing civilian clothes instead of her uniform. She and Mitzner were the only ones.

"That's seven," said McAfree, sitting up a little. "Let's play cards."

"First I should explain my sinister ulterior motive for calling you all here," said Mitzner, still holding the well-shuffled cards. "There is more than one buy in for this poker game. In addition to buying chips you need to purchase your presence at this table with a story. Something interesting from your life that will entertain everyone here. Tonight we're all going to get to know each other a little better."

"Why?" asked McAfree, mouth full of vitapuff.

"Because we're all stuck together in a metal tube so far from home that the human mind can't meaningfully conceive the distance," said Mitzner. "Because there's been too much tension around here recently. Too much factionalism among the crew. I'm taking it upon myself to see to the ship's esprit de corps. If you don't like my rules you can find another table."

McAfree rolled her eyes, but she didn't go anywhere.

"I feel very put on the spot," said Solarin. "What if I don't have any stories?"

"You were serving on the Armstrong before me," said Mitzner. "I'm sure you can think of something."

"Does the story have to be about us?" asked McAfree. "What are the rules?"

"Yeah what are the rules?" asked Takahashi. "I don't want to have to tell two stories."

"I have all kinds of stories of the times Doc got shot," said McAfree. "I think everyone would enjoy hearing that."

"It has to be about you," said Mitzner. "There are no other rules. And there's a special exemption for anything that involves Dr. Kang getting hurt."

"We're going to do all this while we play cards right?" asked McAfree. "I don't want to sit here all night listening to stories and then play poker."

"McAfree, would you just shut up for three seconds? I was about to deal the first hand."

Mitzner began to deal the cards.

"Who wants to be the first to regale the group with a story?" asked Mitzner. "Any volunteers?"

"I will," said McAfree. "Might as well rip off the band-aid. Do you guys want to hear about the first time Dr. Kang got shot, the funniest time he got shot, or the time he came closest to death?"

"Funniest!" said almost everyone at once.

"Good choice," said McAfree, with a smile.

-McAfree's Story-

This was back when we were at Mars Academy. Doc was ostensibly teaching but I don't think he ever actually taught a class. I wasn't really attending classes either, though, so...

Anyway Doc was using a lot of dead human bodies for experiments. A whole lot. Like it was a constant issue at the time trying to find enough bodies to meet the demand. So he was buying bodies from basically anyone who could get them. I'm sure you can see where this is going.

We had this big walk-in freezer in the back of the lab full of dead people, and I was always having to cart people in and out and in and out as they got dropped off and then used up.

So there was this one group of people who always used to bring bodies and sell them. We were always having to turn bodies brought in by this group of people away for having been obvious victims of violence. Not for any moral reasons but Doc was really particular about his dead bodies. It was pretty obvious they were some kind of organized criminal outfit using Doc to dispose of murder victims. But like I said Doc would buy any body that met his specifications from any person, no questions asked.

Then one day some people from what was probably a gang showed up with two dead guys who had obviously had their heads just pulverized by a particle weapon. And the brain is like 80% of what Doc was looking for with these bodies so that was an obvious no. Well they didn't like that answer so I went and got Doc and he told them the same thing. And they told him that he was going to dispose of the body and did he know who they were and so on and so forth and Doc was having none of it and just generally being arrogant and insufferable. I'm sure I don't really have to paint that picture.

So basically the guys said that they were leaving the body and that it was our problem now, and Doc said he'd just call the cops and tell them what happened, and the guys pulled out guns and tried to threaten him, but Doc just kept telling them logical reasons why they couldn't shoot him.

I guess this was an affront to their honor or something, or they just didn't want some jerk telling them what to do, but the one guy just suddenly up and shoots Doc.

This wasn't the first time Doc got shot. It used to happen a lot. So he has a synthetic armor weave in his skin, right?. So he can take a direct hit from a particle weapon naked and it will just go right through him. If it doesn't hit anything vital he can survive.

This gun the guy shot Doc with, though, it wasn't a normal gun it was like a chemical slug thrower? Do you know what I mean? Like it used a chemical reaction to propel a little metal slug like if a monkey tried to make a pistol. So it hits Doc, bam ricochets off his armored skin, he gets knocked on his ass, bam the slug goes into the wall, then bam into the guy's leg who fired the shot. He goes down, there's blood everywhere. Other guy slips in the blood, hits his head on the corner of the counter of the way down, dead. Second guy bleeds out.

We were already in trouble with the University vis-a-vis people getting murdered in the lab, so we just moved the bodies to the freezer and cleaned up the blood. Doc was like hey, free bodies.

The gang, or whatever they were, never gave us trouble again. They only ever brought bodies that met our specifications.

"That's not a funny story," said Gul.

"That's not funny at all!" agreed Takahashi.

"Humour is subjective," pointed out McAfree. "And I didn't say it was a laugh riot I said that of the times Doc got shot, it was the funniest. I need two cards."

She handed over two cards and was dealt two more by Mitzner.