fiction

The Day the Sexbomb Dancers Invaded Our Brains
by Carl Javier

Sometimes it got to be a real drag for Jeremy being on a generation starship.

But then when you think about it, wouldn’t it be a drag if you were on one, too?
There’d be nowhere for you to go, except around the starship. There aren’t many places for stopovers, since a planet with a hospitable atmosphere rarely comes along. The only friends you could have would be on the ship, and they’d get pretty boring too. Your parents would have been born there, you’d have been born there, your kids would be born there, and you’d probably die there.

What made things even worse was that Jeremy was weird. It’s not that he was a freak or anything like that. It just so happened that Jeremy didn’t like big groups, or loud people, or speaking in public, which was pretty much speaking anywhere on a generation starship.

He liked to brood.

And on a generation starship, brooding was extremely weird. He liked sitting around and thinking, talking to himself, figuring things out like why they were there or what his purpose was; deep things that didn’t really have any answers.

When he was a little kid he’d be brooding when the other kids would run by and slap him on the back of the head. As teenagers it was found that they were the first generation to develop telepathic powers. So when the other kids weren’t making out with each other in their minds, they’d swing by and interrupt Jeremy’s thoughts, just to annoy him. To stop them from invading his mind, he developed a neural band which he wore around his head to block out any external forces.

Jeremy had to admit that it wasn’t always a drag on the ship. The ship was almost as big as the country it had come from, with different simulated ecosystems, a holodeck that could transport him to any time or place, and a humongous library where he could read all the knowledge of the Earth, at least up to the day that the ship left; they couldn’t have any idea how things were going on Earth because it would take years for any communication to reach them, so the people on Earth didn’t bother to send messages and the people on the ship didn’t expect any.

His liking to read in the library made him even weirder. Everybody else preferred the holodeck, since the virtual world was created there for you. It was the main instructional tool. He was the only kid who liked going to the library. He was so weird that he was the only kid who understood the Dewey decimal system. These days you’re weird enough if you understand the Dewey decimal system, so what more on a generation starship that had been in space for, well, generations?

But then who else on the generation starship should this story be about? What fun would it be if we just talked about one of the normal kids? All we’d have is a fairly typical story of an ordinary youth growing up on a generation starship. And most of the other people on the ship wouldn’t have any recollection of what really happened on the crazy days that started when they began receiving TV transmissions that traveled all around the universe and back and into the generation starship’s receptors. This is a story about scantily-clad women and zombies and a weird boy named Jeremy.

On that day Jeremy was brooding in a corner near his family’s apartment. He was thinking about something philosophical, probably something existential. After all, didn’t the meaning of things become more complicated on a generation starship where the designated purpose of your life was to survive and reproduce so that there would be one generation or other still alive when the ship reached its destination?

Then his brother and sister ran in, back from their sessions at the holodeck. By this time Jeremy was exempted from going to the holodeck, since he had read about most of the things being shown. But the teachers didn’t exempt him because he’d read a lot, rather it was because they found him weird and irritating since he knew what they were teaching even before they taught it, and that embarrassed them for some reason. They didn’t want him around when they were teaching class. Who needs a know-it-all in class anyway? Especially if the know-it-all apparently doesn’t need class either. They told him to keep up his reading, go home, and keep out of the classroom.

Jeremy thought that this would impress people. Make him more interesting and maybe even a bit cool since he was so smart that he didn’t have to go to the holodeck for class. Instead, it made him even weirder.

Now you’d think that there would be some weird scientist on this ship that Jeremy could turn to as a mentor. Someone a bit weird too, someone interested in science and literature and philosophy, things like that. But Jeremy missed the last smart guys on the generation starship by a few generations.

When the ship left for the far off planet that was its destination, there were scientists, scholars, and specialists on board to ensure that things went right on the ship. They would study the way that people reacted to living on a ship and in space. They would record the ship’s progress, passing on the responsibility to the next generation by educating them.

There were also a lot of families that there so that they could leave the Philippines. The smart guys thought it would be alright to bring in people who weren’t experts so that there would be people that they could study. And so that they could educate these people’s kids, providing education that the kids probably wouldn’t have been able to receive on Earth. This sounded like an idea that could work, but the smart guys didn’t count on politicians sneaking on board the ship.

The first few generations weren’t susceptible to the temptations the politicians offered. But the other families were. As Earth became a memory and the integrity of the first generation was lost or corrupted, competition and factionalism developed. The great ideals of the first generation had gone out the exhaust pipes along with the consumed space gases. Only remnants of it, like scattered space dust on the airlock floor, remained.

For generations there was feuding among the politicians and scientists-turned-politicians. Massive debates would be held and factions would be exiled, left on the next hospitable planet. Unless they could pull off some coup and overturn things, thus leaving the other faction on the planet.

Then the smart guys that Jeremy missed by a few generations came along. These were just a few guys who tried to bring back the ways of the first generation, tried to get focus back on the development of their knowledge, and tried to turn people away from politicking. Tried, of course is the operative word. They wound up climbing into an escape pod together and making their way to the nearest hospitable planet where they hoped to establish a colony without politicians.

So here Jeremy was, without anybody as weird as him to turn to, brooding about existentialism on a generation starship, when his brother and sister come running in. His brother and sister were too young to realize that he was brooding, and they thought he was just bored. So they decided to entertain him.

“Kuya Je-my, look what we learned in holodeck,” his sister Janine uttered; it was something between speech and a giggle. “Watch, hehehe,” she began to dance in front of him.

“Wait, ate, you have to do this,” Jeremy’s brother Jon-Jon said. He pulled his shirt up halfway so that his baby-fat belly showed, then pulled the slack part of his shirt taut.

“Oo nga no,” then she tied the front of her shirt into a bunch, revealing her belly.
Jeremy’s eyes widened in shock as Janine continued her dance. She began by putting her hands up and making Ls with her index fingers and thumbs. Her hips gyrated in a way that Jeremy had never seen before in real life. He may have been a weird boy, but that doesn’t mean that he didn’t look up certain things when he was in the library video archives alone.

“Where did you learn that? You’re just a kid, you shouldn’t be dancing that way! They’re teaching you that in holodeck? When I went to holodeck we didn’t have anything like that!”

Janine kept dancing, then screamed in as high a voice that she could make, “Ow!” This surprised Jeremy, so he jumped back away from her.

Jon-Jon laughed at him. “Kuya, you’re weird.”

“Laban-laban,” Janine and Jon-Jon sang together as Janine made Ls with her fingers and Jon-Jon clapped the beat, “o bawi-bawi.”

“Stop that! It’s disgusting. How can your teacher let you do something like that? You’re a kid and you’re dancing like a—” Jeremy bit his lip. He didn’t know any word that he could use that he could allow into his little sister’s vocabulary.

“But Kuya, it’s fun! And everyone else is doing it, too. Look,” she said and she stopped dancing so that she could use her chubby little fingers to point outside.

Out in the front yard, in the simulated park, outside apartments and in the hall he could see children dancing showing their parents what they learned in the primary level classes. Instead of looking appalled, as Jeremy expected, the parents were laughing and clapping along. Some of the mothers were even learning the steps and dancing along.

“What’s going on here,” Jeremy said to himself. He whipped off his neural band and rubbed his eyes, for dramatic effect, since in the movies he’d watched people would take off their glasses to make a point. He didn’t have glasses, but he thought the neural band could provide the same effect.

It’s the newest craze, he heard in his head. It was Lena. Wow, Jeremy thought, a girl actually went into my head for a conversation. She was so pretty and he thought she didn’t notice him, or maybe she did notice him but only because he was weird and he didn’t know which one was worse—

No, I won’t make out with you, she said next.

Oops, sorry, didn’t mean to think that, Jeremy said.

Would you stop thinking that! She said.

Sorry, I’m really sorry. Can you meet me out front? I want to ask you what you know about this. Jeremy thought it would have been fine if it were a mental conversation, but he was having a hard time getting the image of Lena dancing the dance in a skimpy dress out of his head. He had to get the neural band back on.

Okay, meet me there in three minutes. And will you stop thinking that!

“So what’s going on?”

“Let’s talk over here,” Lena said. She brought him to one of the storage rooms outside the park. She may have wanted to be nice, but she also had to take care of her reputation. Being seen with the freak was sure to send her cool points with the boys plummeting.

Jeremy, of course thought that she wanted to be somewhere private for other reasons, and he ventured to take off his neural band.

No. Put that thing back on. No wonder all the other girls say you’re so weird.

“Sorry.”

“Okay, so what do you want to know?”

“Well, what’s going on?”

“It’s a new dance the kids learned. You know how rare it is for us to get something new, so naturally everybody wants a part of it.”

“What do you mean new?”

“It’s new. It’s not something in the archives.”

“Where’d it come from?”

“I don’t know. You’re the geek genius around here. I gotta go. Holodeck in five minutes.”

“Wait, you’re going to holodeck? Then that means you’ll be learning that too?”

“Yeah. Well I really have to go now.”

“Oh, sorry. See you later,” Jeremy watched Lena as she walked away. He was torn between wanting to find out where this weird dance was coming from and wanting to talk to her. He got to talk to girls so rarely; most of them were busy with other boys or busy avoiding him. And it was so rare for him to talk to such a pretty and popular girl like Lena. He called out with his mind, Wait Lena, don’t go yet, but his neural band sealed his mind off from the rest of the world.

“What are you doing here?” Mr. Santos asked as soon as he saw Jeremy peeking into the holodeck. Mr. Santos was one of the teachers who had petitioned to keep Jeremy out of the holodeck classes. Despite his dislike for Jeremy he was one of the few teachers who used the neural bands that Jeremy had made.

“I just wanted to know what this new dance is about. It’s kinda nasty, you know, I saw my sister dancing it and it was so—”

“Oh, so now you’re criticizing what’s being taught in here? Just because you read all those books in the library doesn’t mean your opinion is more important than anyone else’s. You think you’re so smart.” The class kept quiet. Normally, if this had been any other subject or any other teacher, the class would have jeered, made jokes, laughed, or called him weird while the teacher chewed him out. But when Mr. Santos locked onto a target, no matter who it was, you couldn’t help but feel sorry for the person.

“No, it’s not that, it’s just—”

“Oh, what now? You’re trying to show off here? Ooh, I’m so smart because I spend all my time in the library so I should have a say in what the teachers teach on this ship. I know so much more than them. Huh? Is that the attitude you bring when you come around here?”

“I don’t think that way. I just wanted to know where—”

“Oh, it’s like that. Talking back because I’m not your teacher anymore? Where’s the discipline? Where’s the respect? You spend all that time reading those books and you don’t have any time to learn manners. That’s why we had to ban you from the holodeck.”

Jeremy was tired of hearing these things every time he ran into Mr. Santos, he’d just come to ask a question, he thought to himself. Why did he have to get this? “Sorry to bother you, Mr. Santos.”

Jeremy left the holodeck and headed to the library. He logged onto the computer archives. Once in, he hacked through the security network and observed the class.
On the ship, there were cameras everywhere, and if someone were to break into the system, then he could be a Peeping Tom with a view to every single room. For that reason only the security force had access to the cameras. They had to have a reason that would be logged by the computer to activate cameras in private areas. But Jeremy, thanks to some old books on computer hacking, had learned how to work his way around the security systems. He could observe any room for five minutes, which was how long he had before the shield he set up lapsed.

From his terminal he watched as the class began.

“Class, you see what happens to people who want to be too smart? People who know too much for their own good?”

“Yes, Mr. Santos.”

“Good. Let that serve as a lesson to you.”

“Yes, Mr. Santos.”

“Okay, good. Now remember the homework I gave yesterday? Please submit it. We won’t discuss it for now, because we’ve just received something that the officials have decided should be shared by all. The ship received it this morning.”

Mr. Santos walked to the back of the holodeck and said, “Holodeck, activate Sexbomb video.”

The holodeck produced a two-dimensional image of a scene from Eat Bulaga. It was a shot of the Sexbomb dancers dancing behind contestants who were being quizzed.

Abruptly, the dancers yelped, “Ow,” and the music stopped as the contestants were asked a question. Jeremy not only recognized the “Ow,” but also the skimpy clothes and seductive moves. He shivered to think that his sister was trying to imitate those steps and those girls.

“Holodeck, jump to dance segment.” The holodeck displayed a different scene, where the dancers were doing their thing.

“Isolate humanoid figures, eliminate background.” The flat images of the Sexbomb dancers moved in the air.

“3-D enhance images. Repair pixilation. Repair and enhance sound.” In all their glory the Sexbomb dancers gyrated and swayed, called out to the boys with wicked seductive taunts of their hips and breasts. Eyelids opened up so wide that the boys could have stuck their tongues into them. Their tongues too, were hanging out. Most of them had made out with the girls on the ship, at least mentally. And a few of them had even been able to sneak their girls to secluded parts of the ship. But this, this was something else altogether. And this dance, these moves, this music—

The girls were shown something they too had never seen. The girls suddenly wanted to be this sexy, this seductive. They wanted to be icons, symbols of sexuality; they wanted to be Sexbomb dancers. They wanted it, this dance, these moves, this music—

The Sexbomb dancers displayed their moves, their universal appeal. They were pretty, but not as pretty as models. They were reachable. They were the every-woman for the every-man. They danced dances that imitated actions like washing clothes. They were seductive, yet sweet.

Jeremy too was mesmerized. So mesmerized he almost got caught. The computer buzzed at him, warning him that his shield would be down in fifteen seconds. He logged off the system with just three seconds left. He breathed a sigh of relief and put his tongue back in his mouth. Then he noticed that a pool of drool had dripped down his jaw and onto his shirt.

Where did they come from? Jeremy thought to himself. I’ve got to know, got to find out. He had watched the recording again, this time from the main server, so not only was he on an authorized channel, but he had a clearer view of the recording.

He was alone in the library, alone to see those 3-D images dance before him as if they were real. He could almost touch them. They were perfectly spaced, and Jeremy could weave his way between these images, get so close to them that he could almost believe that they were dancing for him. And he did a few other things in that library. Let’s just say that he enjoyed himself.

He slumped back against one of the library walls, exhausted. He was zipping himself up and he wiped his brow. He couldn’t get to the sweat beneath the neural band, so he took it off.

That’s when it hit him.

It wasn’t like a mental conversation. It was something more subtle, yet more powerful. It was the dance, the moves, the music, and he could feel them invading his brain. It wasn’t like a catchy tune that gave you Last Song Syndrome, it was like a computer virus that comes in as software, unsuspected yet filled with the potential for destruction, and begins to eat away at your hardware. It eats away at your hardware until your computer is nothing but a heap of metal that needs to be reformatted or replaced. But you can’t reformat or replace your brain. And it seemed that this virus didn’t destroy, rather, this dance, these moves, this music, they took control.

As it flowed through his brain, it felt like it was wrapping itself around Jeremy’s consciousness; he wanted nothing more than this dance, this music; he was content, he was happy, and that euphoria was sweet. It was almost like his brain was being dipped into a vat of caramel, his mind becoming sugar-coated and he could feel that sweetness seeping into the deeper recesses of his brain.

But suddenly, Jeremy’s brain resisted. It pushed back the sugary sweetness that was so tempting to succumb to, those figures, that music, the feelings that it all gave him. Jeremy’s brain, because of the way he’d developed it over the years in the library, and his inventing and wearing of the neural band, had become more sensitive to threats. Though his conscious mind had succumbed to the lure of the Sexbomb dancers, his subconscious had interrupted the flow of the message’s entry.

Snapped out of the trance, Jeremy rushed to put the neural band back on. He might be the only one who was aware of what was going on. He had to take action before the whole ship fell under the spell of the Sexbomb dancers.

He whipped the neural band back on his forehead, but in his rushed movement he’d forgotten he was holding his zipper in the other hand. He fell to the floor, the signals from the Sexbomb dancers shut out of his brain, writhing and trying to get himself unstuck from the zipper.

Anyone who’s been circumcised can tell you, there’s no worse time than those weeks of recovery. The actual act of circumcision can’t compare to the walking around holding everything away from your lower body, praying to God that nothing touches it. Even air blown by an electric fan at the lowest settings or a mild breeze pressing against the penis can bring tears of pain to the eyes.

The cruelest thing that you can do to someone who has just been circumcised is to give them an erection. Come up to them and flash, a lingerie calendar (preferably Victoria’s Secret), and the victim will scream out in pain; because they’d just been stitched up. Wounds will be stretched out and all that healing the victim had been trying to do will be for naught as the erection pushes the stitches out. Think of it this way: Imagine putting on a crown of thorns. Then, inflate your head to three times its size. Consider also that your skull is made of bone, so it wouldn’t hurt as much as something made of muscle and nerve.

Jeremy was somewhere near this kind of pain. He knew he had to get up, he had to warn people about the subliminal messages being sent off by the Sexbomb recordings. But each time that he tried to work, tried to think, the Sexbomb dancers would pop into his head and he’d pitch a tent. The wound he’d inflicted on himself from the quick zip would rub up against his jeans and shoot pain straight up to his brain, sending Jeremy to his knees.

He focused, tried to get them out of his head. What do I do? he kept asking himself. No one would believe him if he told people to turn it off. He had come to the conclusion that the reason why no one else was sensing the messages was that the older folks didn’t have mental powers developed enough to detect them, and that kids his age and younger didn’t have the sensitivity built up by wearing a neural band to detect the difference between mental conversations and subliminal messages. Or if they did, their minds weren’t developed enough to fight the messages back.

He wasn’t sure what effect it would have on people. For him it was just that euphoric trance that actually wasn’t all that bad. It was peace and surrender to the Sexbomb dancers, which on second thought, didn’t seem so bad, thought Jeremy. If it could keep people happy, then what could be so bad about it?

Maybe I’m just being paranoid, he thought. Jeremy decided to take a look outside and see how people were reacting to it. Maybe he was just resisting it because he was weird and it would be alright if people listened to it and danced it, dreamed of being with and being the Sexbomb dancers.

Jeremy moved to the library door and walked out to the hall outside the holodeck. He saw all the kids in a trance. The girls had ripped off parts of their shirts and pants, leaving them scantily-clad and dancing “Laban o Bawi” turned up full blast in the hallway. The boys stood with their mouths open, swaying to the music, drooling over the girls and groping occasionally. When the girls would be groped they’d leave formation and dance with the boy who’d groped them. Then, after a long dance, the girl would get back into formation.

The girls saw him, then began to move towards him, but still in rhythm with the song. They sang as a group, yelled “Ow” simultaneously, and their movements were in perfect coordination.

Jeremy’s eyes widened. He saw all these girls that he’d been lusting over, now stripped down and moving towards him. There didn’t have to be any subliminal messages floating around, just the sight put him into a trance.

Then he felt the shot of pain rising up from his pants. On any other day this would have been a dream come true, but he knew the way the messages worked, and now he’d seen the effects. They turned into Sexbomb zombies.

He tried to run, but then the wound rubbed against his zipper and he lost his balance. He took a few shaky steps more before going down on one knee. The girls, even though they were dancing to the rhythm, were steadily gaining on him.

He held his pants away from him with one hand and began to limp steadily down the hall, back to the library. There he had full control of the computer systems, which would keep him relatively safe.

He was limping, and the girls were gaining.

“Ow!”

Jeremy limped, sweat trickling down his forehead, popping up all over his body. Just a few more steps he thought.

Then he heard it, “Ow!” They were right behind him. Just a few more steps and one of the girls would have a hand on him. He wondered how bad it would be to succumb to these girls. He saw Lena, and she, like all the other girls, was reaching out to him, as if to accept him.

He felt a heavy hand on his shoulder and singing almost straight into his ear, “Laban-Laban, o Bawi-Bawi.”

He panicked. It was just a few steps away and he lunged into the library. He was at the foot of the door and though it hurt like Hell the adrenaline helped to deaden the pain and he rolled into the library.

What Jeremy didn’t notice was the hand and voice belonged to Lena, and that when he’d lunged for the library, he’d dragged her in with him.

Jeremy couldn’t see with the tears in his eyes. “Computer, seal doors.” He heard the doors close and for a second he felt safe. He tried to stand up, but the wound stung again and he fell to a knee.

Then he heard the footsteps on the library floor, footfalls coming in rhythm. Coming closer. “Ow!"

Jeremy wiped the tears from his eyes and saw it was Lena. She was above him now, and she made the Ls inches from his face. Then she grabbed the neural band.

Jeremy held onto it, tried to keep it on his head. It was a struggle, Jeremy holding the band with one hand and his other hand holding his pants away from the wound, and Lena’s body swaying to the music in her head and just her two arms yanking at the neural band.

And Jeremy’s most intimate friend betrayed him.

They say that when it’s a struggle between a man’s head on his shoulders and the head between his legs, it’s always the latter that gets its way. As he tried to keep the neural band on he couldn’t help but watch the way that Lena’s body moved, and though his thoughts were focused on keeping the band on, he got sprung. The wound scraped against his zipper and the pain shot up, making him lose his grip.

The sugary sounds began to fill his brain and then his subconscious kicked in. It gave him something he hadn’t thought of before. “Computer, room lockdown.”

After he uttered the words his brain surrendered, and he laid his head back, feeling no more pain.

The computer initiated the lockdown, and the blast doors came down. The blast doors were sturdy enough to block out all kinds of radioactive waves. In seconds the room was sealed off from the rest of the ship and the Sexbomb transmission. Jeremy regained consciousness, waking to the pain in his crotch.

Lena was standing there, the neural band in her hand.

You bastard! she screamed at Jeremy as soon as she saw the state she was in. What am I doing in here with you? What did you do to me? To my clothes? She jumped on Jeremy and began slapping his arms, which he’d used to cover his head. Jeremy started crying because her body was scraping against his and the zipper was scraping off even more skin near the open wound.

Please, stop. Please. Jeremy pleaded but Lena kept slapping and scraping. But she heard the repeated pleas and their sincerity in her head, so she felt sorry for him and stopped.

Jeremy wiped snot and tears from his face and tried to compose himself. He was still breathing heavily and being the weird kid that he was, he wasn’t used to such adrenaline-driven situations. He wanted to unzip his pants and check the damage he’d sustained.

Tell me why I’m in here and what happened, or I’m gonna kill you! Lena said to Jeremy, standing over him and planting her foot between his legs, just centimeters from his thread.

Please give me the neural band.

Tell me what’s going on.

I will, but please give me the neural band.

Why should I? What’s it going to do?

I’ll show you, but we have to wear the bands. Please, trust me.

Lena was scared. How could she trust him, she had just found herself alone in a room with him, her memory blank as to how she got there, her clothes tattered— everything was just too weird.

She sat down in front of him. She held the neural band with her left hand. She held it behind her, so that Jeremy could see it, but it was out of his reach. She planted her right hand on Jeremy’s thigh and he winced. Jeremy held back tears as he pitched another tent.

Here’s the deal, I’m going to hand this over to you, but if you make any quick movements, do anything funny, I’m grabbing your dick and I’m squeezing and bending it until it looks like a slinky. (She didn’t actually say slinky, though, she referred to one of the children’s toys they’d grown up with on the ship that resembles today’s slinky, but then letting her say slinky here makes things easier for us.)
Jeremy whimpered at the thought.

Lena handed him the neural band, then put her left hand on his other thigh. Jeremy thought that his hard-on couldn’t get any more painful, but it did as he shivered and scraped against his zipper. He put the neural band on.

“Okay, Lena, now I’m going to command the computer to open a box.”

“Okay.”

“Computer, open my storage box and bring it to me.”

The computer’s robotic arm brought a small metal box, about the size of a lunchbox, to Jeremy. Lena eyed the robotic arm warily, and as the arm approached she moved her hand down Jeremy’s thigh, as if to threaten.

“Lena, put on a neural band.” She looked into the box and saw all kinds of weird gadgets inside.

“You made all this stuff?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s pretty cool.”

“Thanks. Please put on the band.”

She put it on and suddenly she felt a kind of melancholy, a feeling of immense isolation. Neural bands were available for anyone who wanted to shut in their thoughts or shut out everyone else’s, but she never even thought about using one before. Her mind had always been so open, had always been the place of imagination and conversation, of interaction with others. Now she was all alone with her thoughts, and it felt terribly lonely.

She looked at Jeremy with pity as she realized the loneliness that he put himself through by wearing a neural band. But then she realized that if he knew what everyone thought about him then it might make things even harder. She remembered all the pranks they had played on him in his head before he’d made the neural band, all the times when everybody would get together to send him mean mental messages.

She wanted to take the band off. It was depressing. She couldn’t understand why he was making her go through this. She felt sorry for him, sorry for what they had done to him, but she also hated him now because he was making her realize these things.

“Lena,” Jeremy called to her, snapping her out of her daze, “here, look at this.”
He moved out of the way and let her sit in front of the computer terminal.

Lena’s eyes widened with shock as she saw the whole ship converted into a giant dancehall, everyone singing and dancing like the Sexbomb dancers.

“What’s going on, Jeremy?”

“Wait, could you turn around for a second. I kind of got scratched up in my family jewels (of course by that time they’d evolved some other euphemism for their private parts, probably something to do with space objects or stars or something or other, but again, family jewels helps make things clearer for us) and I want to see how bad it is.”

Lena turned around, disturbed by the idea that Jeremy was zipping down right behind her while all this weird stuff was happening. At the same time she was thinking that it might just be par for the course. “So, how bad is it?”

“Well, you did a pretty good job scratching it up, but it was messed up when you got started on it. I’ll live, but I’m having a hard time walking.”

“Sorry. So what do we do about this?”

“I don’t know, I can hardly think with all the pain I’m feeling down here. Besides, if we try to go outside everyone’s going to attack us and turn us into dancing and drooling zombies too.”

“We can’t just stay in here. I thought you had access to all the ship’s controls? Why not just shut it off? Did you ever find out where we got it from? And how’d you hurt yourself like that anyway?”

Jeremy zipped up and went over to the computer terminal. “Okay, let’s find out. Computer, review most recent data received from outside the ship.” The computer beeped and flashed out a display of the files.

By this time the starship was running into the transmissions sent centuries ago. It could be explained by the idea of the movement of waves around the universe, and that waves are also particles so when they travel they also disperse, and they bounce off other things but they can also be collected, and some other complicated stuff. If you’re really interested in it then you could probably read something by Stephen Hawking. But for our purposes, just think of sonar; say how a dolphin uses sonar.

So a dolphin is swimming and it emits a sound wave which, if it hits something, bounces off that thing and returns to the dolphin. That way, the dolphin knows if there’s something out there because the sound wave returned. Now remember the sound wave has been broken up and that the parts of the sound wave that hit something returned. But there may be parts of the wave which just kept going. So now think of a TV station, beaming out shows via satellite, and its waves are going to hit the satellite and shoot those shows down to your TV, but there are going to be some stray waves that are going to keep going, and going and going, until they bounce against something big enough to make it bounce back and not just divide it.

With these kinds of things coming in, the computer had a firewall to protect the ship against dangerous waves. And now Jeremy was checking if the firewall had gone up.

“I can’t believe it,” he said.

“What?”

“The computer firewalled it. It’s there, it’s right there, the computer firewalled that transmission and someone opened it up anyway. The computer has a self-protecting system that keeps any threats out, stops them even before they reach us, so this should have— but no that’s impossible, is there something wrong with the computer or—” and in those seconds of contemplation the opening theme of 2001: A Space Odyssey boomed in Jeremy’s head. Lena was lost around the time Jeremy said firewall. After that, for her Jeremy had just started mumbling on and on and now he was in some sort of daze. This guy’s really weird, she thought.

“Hey, what does that mean?” she said, pointing to one of the quarantined files that had an X on it. Lena leaned in to look at it and Jeremy started to feel uncomfortable. Her skin was touching his and there was another struggle between his two heads to stay focused. This time he won out.

“Accessed. Wait that means someone on this ship accessed the file! Someone let it in.” He kept typing, brought out the reasons for the quarantine. “It says here that there were slight subliminal messages laced into the program. Just some minor things, nothing that should do this much damage. I’m going to put some of the scanned images onscreen for us to see the nature of the program.”

On the monitor were shown some of the Calendar girls, which got Jeremy up again and he did his best not to show that he was in pain so that Lena wouldn’t notice. One shot showed Joey de Leon grabbing a girl’s ass. Another showed the hosts ridiculing contestants. They switched scenes to a song and dance performance where the good-looking singers were perfectly out of tune. They switched again to segments with the Sili King and the Ulo King. First the Sili King chomped down as many chili peppers he could in a minute. At the end of the segment he was crying. Then it was the Ulo King’s turn. An industrial electric fan was brought out and turned on to show the audience that it was in good working condition. Then its cover was screwed off and the Ulo King stepped up. He waited until the fan reached full speed, then he stuck his head in to stop the fan from spinning.

Then a scene from the Laban o Bawi segment where they were tempting the contestant with money while showing her the possible cash prize she could get. There was a line of stands and on each stand was mounted a placard with the number zero. But on each end, which was supposed to signify the first and last number of the possible amount, there were red cards covering the number. It meant that, depending on which stand held the number one, she could win either one million pesos, or one peso. The hosts tried to tempt her, taunted her by pulling the red cards up in small increments, then abruptly letting the cards go so that they would fall back down to their original spot. They did this over and over, prolonging the woman’s waiting until the she was almost in tears, confused by everything. And all the while dancing behind her were the Sexbomb dancers. One of the hosts fanned her with the money they were offering her to Bawi, but still she chose Laban. And when they pulled up the red cards it showed she had won one peso. She began crying and then the shot went back to the dancers.

Jeremy and Lena were shocked. They’d never been exposed to anything like this. The scientists of the first generation had made sure the ship was stocked with the finest art and literature and cinema and music and anything else that could enlighten those who would be born on the ship about the great cultural achievements of Earth. They even allowed a lot of pop art, which was one reason you could find Sandler and Schneider on the same row as Spielberg. But they’d never been exposed to anything as this and they didn’t know how to approach it.

Of course let anyone today see this stuff and it’s nothing. Especially when you’ve seen Jackass, or better yet Jackass: The Movie. But they’d never seen Jackass. And seeing this, they could only come to one conclusion:

“Oh my God, it’s some kind of torture show! Horrorshow that they use to entertain people.” Lena said.

“I’ve got it. In the morning, when my brother and sister came home, no one was affected by the subliminal messages. It was only when your class went that all this started happening. It’s because their telepathic powers weren’t developed yet. But with you guys, it’s like you amplified the message with your minds which got the whole ship like this.”

“So let’s just turn it off. Turn it off like you did when we were in here, when you got me free of it.”

“I can’t. The person who accessed it has higher authority than me. Even if I hacked it, that person could just turn it back on. We’ve got to get to the main server. If we get there I can delete the whole program and all the copies of it.”

“Okay, let’s go.”

“But I can barely walk.”

Jeremy knew some short cuts in the ship, through ventilation and maintenance shafts and service corridors, and that got them through most of the way. It was really tough for him though. Slow going because if he was in front he’d be crawling along gingerly until Lena would get impatient and start telling him to hurry up. Or they’d switch and Lena would be in front of him with her butt shimmying and he couldn’t help but pop a boner. Still they made it through. Down to the last hallway that led to the computer’s main server. They were in a shaft that would drop them into the middle of the hallway.

“You ready?” Lena asked Jeremy, who was fumbling through his pockets for the card he’d programmed. It would act like an anti-virus, deleting anything that had a similar code as the Sexbomb recordings. He didn’t know how much long-term damage it could do to the server or the other programs, but he had no choice.

Then they heard it, “Ow!” And the dancers began moving into the hall. It was only about a fifty-yard dash to the room doors, but in Jeremy’s state they could catch up with him easily.

“How long will it take you to hack through the doors?”

“A minute or two.”

“Okay, let’s do it!”

“Wait I still—” and then Lena pushed Jeremy out of the shaft and into the hallway. He fell on his belly and then he tried to stand but it was too hard with all the pain he was feeling. Lena landed on her feet beside him, and she pulled his arm onto her shoulder and began dragging him to the doors.

Jeremy stumbled and slipped, blinded by the pain from the fall. He could hear the footsteps and the singing coming closer.

“Move faster, Jeremy,” she said and she doubled her speed, pushing him and almost carrying him to the doors.

When they were finally at the door Jeremy opened up the latch and started hacking. Lena stood with her back to his, covering him. He didn’t dare break his focus to look behind him, but he knew that the dancers were nearly on them.

Then one of the dancers’ hands reached him.

Lena, who luckily was a kung fu movie fan, had spent a lot of her free time in the holodeck practicing the moves she saw. She grabbed and twisted the wrist, then delivered a foot sweep. The zombie-dancer fell and knocked her head on the floor.

The others kept coming. Lena did a roundhouse kick, clearing her front. “Jeremy, get in there!” she said as she kneed one in the stomach, then elbowed another’s sternum.
Jeremy almost had the door open. The dancers weren’t bothering him anymore. They were focused now on Lena. They were all grabbing for her neural band and for a time she was able to stay out of their grasps. She delivered double flying kicks, jumping into the air and planting her foot into one chest, then using that impact as momentum to kick with her other foot. She ran up walls, confusing the dancers as she landed behind them to push the dancers into each other. They fell like bowling pins, but still they got up, got into formation and rhythm, and kept coming.

Jeremy opened up the door, and when he looked back he saw Lena surrounded by the dancers. He moved to rush over and help her, but the quick movement pushed his zipper towards him and he stopped in pain again.

He knew there was only one way he could help her. He walked through the doors and commanded the computer to seal them.

The main server room was dark. The only light came from the blipping on the consoles and the stars that could be seen through the observation port. The port was the size of a hockey goal, made of glass, but reinforced from the inside by a metal panel and from outside by a protective shield. The shield consumed a lot of energy, so usually the metal panel was left closed to prevent any breach. If something were to break the glass then the vacuum of space would come rushing in and it would look a lot like the endings of the Alien movies.

The metal panel that covered the port had been disengaged, and the vacuum of space was only inches away. A figure stood, in a Darth Vader-esque fashion, with his hands behind his back, his back to the doors. He faced the stars outside, unsurprised by Jeremy’s arrival. The darkness in the room seemed to suit him and his slow, deliberate movements. Jeremy could feel a coldness emanating from him. Around his head he wore a neural band.

“Jeremy, you’re always too smart for your own good.”

Jeremy limped to the main server console, but Mr. Santos was on him. He felt a hand smack across his face and he fell down.

“Aren’t you going to ask me why I’m doing this? I’ve always wanted a chance to explain my motivations.” Mr. Santos said, then he chuckled. “Or perhaps I should try to convince you to join me, to turn your back on these people who’ve never helped you before, and give you a chance to help yourself.”

Jeremy shrank away, unsure of what to do. He looked up at Mr. Santos, and wiped his nose, which was bleeding.

Mr. Santos kicked him, not hard, but as if to get him to talk. “Well, you think you’re the only one who has read those books or seen those movies in the library? I know how this goes. I know you think I’m the bad guy and you’re the hero, here to save this ship from me

Jeremy could feel the blood flowing down to his shirt. He wiped again.

Mr. Santos slapped him again. “Say something dammit!”

Jeremy tried to hold back his tears, but they came anyway.

“Yes, you’re some hero. You found out what I had done, and now you’ve come here to stop me. Well, stop me now.” Then he kicked Jeremy, this time in the chest so Jeremy fell on his back. You think you’re so smart, but you’re weak. You are weak!” Mr. Santos said it not for Jeremy’s benefit, but his own. He had to let Jeremy know that he was weak. He’d been wanting to do this to Jeremy for so long that he was hoping that Jeremy would be wearing his neural band when he played the Sexbomb video for the class.

“You are a fool. You spend all your time in the library, or in some corner thinking. For what? Will anyone ever appreciate you? You are the only person on this ship who has ever invented something like this,” Santos pointed to the neural band, “and have they done anything to thank you?”

Jeremy was inching away. He didn’t want to hear anymore.

“You’re scared. You think that it’s your duty to help everyone on this ship. All these people who made fun of you when you were a child, all these people who ridicule you until now. Take things in your hands boy! They are all gone. It’s just the two of use here. We can change things right now.”

Santos picked Jeremy up by his collar, and Jeremy winced. “Here, sit down. Computer, chair.” A robotic arm came from one of the panels in the wall and set a chair beside Santos. Santos pushed him into the chair.

“Ever wonder why we’re here on this ship? Ever get tired of it?”

Jeremy didn’t respond to the question, but Santos knew anyway that Jeremy knew what he was talking about. Jeremy wasn’t shivering anymore, and since Santos had stopped striking him he’d calmed down enough to listen.

“I’m going to crash us into the nearest hospitable planet. It should be just a half a day away. We’ll move everyone to the side of the ship that will be away from the impact. We can do it from here. I say we because I want you to be a part of this. After all, without you,” Santos pointed to the neural band on his head, “I would never have been able to do this.”

Jeremy wanted to pounce on Santos, wanted to tear the neural band off Santos’s head, wanted to gouge Santos’s eyes and scrape out the sockets, wanted to ram a rod against the back of his neck. He knew he couldn’t do any of those things. Not with Santos watching him. Not in the state he was in.

“I want to leave this ship, Jeremy. Don’t you understand that?”

“Then get off at the next hospitable planet and leave us alone.”

Jeremy was surprised by his smart remark and expected another blow, but instead Santos just chuckled. “Ah, after taking a seat you’ve regained your bravery. So, ready for a chat then. I’ve always loved the part in movies where the villain reveals his plans to the hero, because he believes that the hero won’t escape. I wondered what I’d do all alone if no one else had a neural band on. But since you’re here I suppose I shall enjoy this.

“It’s not enough for me to get off. Then I’d just be on whatever planet alone. What would I do there? I want everyone on this ship freed. And the only way to free them is to control them like this. Trust me, I’m not the only one who has decided this. They just didn’t wear bands because I only told them my plans, not my method of getting us all of this ship.

“What are we on it for? Some journey that we and every generation after us must endure. Some journey our ancestors decided we should take, to finish on their behalf. Damn them! They control our lives even though they have been dead so long. No, when we crash, we will leave this ship, and we will start our own colony. We will abandon this ship and this way of life. On a planet, somewhere rich and fertile, we will find our happiness. Not this wretched ship.”

Jeremy could hear the sense in what Santos was saying. He could imagine living on a hospitable planet, just like the Earth that he had seen in so many movies. He could see the sunrise and sunset every day of his life. He could have a place to explore, maybe a place where he could find happiness, a happiness that he could never find on the ship.

Then he heard the thumping on the door. The scream of “Ow,” booming through the door. He imagined what everyone on the other side of the door must look like. Lena would be a Sexbomb-zombie again, his brother and sister and mother and father would be somewhere out there, just like her dancing and drooling, singing to the song.

Not this way, he thought. No, we have a duty. Things became so clear to him now. It was his burden. And it was their burden. He knew, he had read their histories, he knew what the first generation believed in. He knew what they were really traveling for. It wasn’t for any one of them on the ship; it was for some greater ideal. He could give up, succumb to the Sexbomb dancers or to Santos’s mad ideas, but then he would know that there was a reason that the ship was traveling.

The first generation of scientists believed in their destination, that planet that they would finally settle on. They believed that the journey would be long and hard, and that’s why they had built and stocked a generation starship. But they believed that this place that they would finally arrive at would be well worth all the sacrifice and hardship; that it was worth the journey, no matter how many generations long. And Jeremy believed this too.

Jeremy knew that if they crashed and settled on some planet then most of the people of the ship wouldn’t complain as long as they were able to live as comfortably as they had on the ship. But Jeremy knew that they all had a responsibility that they were entrusted with.

Santos relaxed. He humphed at Jeremy, who he thought was accepting his offer. It seemed to Santos that Jeremy had quit, had given in to the idea of crashing the ship. Santos felt confident in himself. That feeling of superiority he got whenever he attacked a student in class was surging through him. It was his euphoria, his drug, and with it he settled into his own chair, looking out at the stars, dreaming about the crash and the world they would settle on. He dreamed of how we would tell everyone, with their memories of the past day wiped out, how he saved them all from doom by maneuvering the starship out of an asteroid’s way and fighting a planet’s gravitational as it pulled them down. How when the ship crashed he evacuated the ship and saved the children from the fires. He would be the hero.

Then he heard the card snap into place.

Jeremy had gone from his chair and shoved the anti-virus card into one of the console slots. It was active and began to eliminate all the Sexbomb recordings from the ship.

Santos was furious. He jumped out of his seat and moved toward Jeremy. “Computer, cancel last command.” The computer continued working. The monitor just read out the amount of time until the delete would be complete, five minutes.

Santos punched Jeremy, then held him by the collar with one hand and punched Jeremy again with the other. “Stop the delete.” He gave Jeremy a backhand slap. “Stop the delete.”

“I can’t. It’s irreversible.” Jeremy said.

“Why you little bastard!” Santos threw Jeremy against the port. The glass cracked, but it was held in place by the energy shield. “You just have to ruin it, huh.” He kicked Jeremy, who was on his hands and knees, in the ribs.

Jeremy fell to the floor, his pants scraped against him and he could not stop the tears from coming, things becoming blurry. He had already figured out the next part of his plan, but he couldn’t give a command through the sobs that he was suppressing.
“You’re just too smart for your own good, aren’t you?” Santos said as he picked Jeremy up and threw him against one of the computer terminals.

Jeremy’s shoulder banged against it and he was down on one knee. He felt like all his body was throbbing in pain now, some unique ache within each part. He knew he had to act now if he wanted to get out of this alive.

He began crawling to the other side of the room, toward the energy shield regulator. Santos just thought that Jeremy was trying to crawl away from him, so he kept kicking Jeremy, just hard enough to hurt him, but not hard enough to stop him from crawling. “Where are you going? It’s just you and me here, no one’s gonna help you, boy. Stand up and fight and you may get out of this.”

Jeremy kept crawling, kept fighting back the pain, biting his lips until they bled just so that he could divert the pain in his crotch, even if it was only a little bit. He could taste the blood in his mouth, and with Santos kicking and taunting him he almost wanted to give up. The shield regulator seemed so far away. He kept going, inching his way on, enduring the kicks from Santos and all the pain that he could feel throughout his body, especially what felt like a kitana blade slicing the tip of his penis, then drawing back, then slicing again.

When Jeremy finally reached the shield regulator, he turned around to face Santos. Santos was still standing above him and Jeremy was on the floor. Then he bit Santos in the ankle.

His teeth drove through fabric until he bit down on a good chunk of flesh. The blood smeared his cheeks and when he pulled away he had to spit out the chunk of Santos’s ankle before he could say, “Computer, have robotic arms secure me at the shoulders and waist.” Two robotic arms came out of their panels, clamping on Jeremy so that he was stuck to the spot where he was. He took off the neural band and the sounds of the Sexbomb dancers began to enter his brain.

Santos lay on the floor, holding his bleeding ankle. He was limping, trying to stand up and thinking of all the things that he would do to Jeremy once he got his hands on him.

Jeremy used his subconscious to drive back the Sexbomb assault, and with those few seconds he rammed his neural band into the shield energy regulator, causing the shield to malfunction.

The shield went dead and the broken glass was the first thing to be sucked out by the vacuum of space. Next went all the small loose matter in the room. Santos tried to grab hold of something, but the pull of space was too much and he lost his grip.

Jeremy was held fast by the robotic arms, though his own arms flailed as everything rushed out of the main server room. He didn’t even feel the vacuum because by then he had already succumbed to the caramel-like sweetness of surrendering to the Sexbomb dancers.

Of course a few seconds after the shield failed the computer activated and closed the metal panel to the room. It was just enough time to get the main server room cleaned up for the end of the story.

Jeremy woke from a restful sleep in the main server room. The rest of the people became conscious sooner, and thanks to Lena they were able to understand, somewhat, what happened. They couldn’t really fathom what really happened, but they got the idea. And everyone agreed that it was better that way. Like a night of hard drinking when you’re not exactly sure what you did the night before, sometimes it’s just better if you know you were drunk but you don’t get the details. So you won’t really have to live with what you did.

Waking up, Jeremy found that everyone else looked a lot weirder than him. They looked hung over, drained. But then it seemed right that they look hung over, because when you think about it, hangovers are about being dehydrated and all these people had been dancing without regard for their personal well-being for a pretty long time. Jeremy wasn’t sure how long he’d been asleep, but it had to be a long time because all files and related files on the Sexbomb dancers were completely removed from the system. They were tattered and beat, and you could tell which of them got a taste of Lena’s Kung-fu moves.

That morning, the only weird thing about Jeremy was his limp.

When he unsealed the main server’s door people were outside waiting for him. And he thought this was extremely weird. He’d never seen people excited to see him. Lena rushed towards him and gave him a hug. This too, he thought, was weird, but rather enjoyable.

Then he popped a stiffy and had to push her away. Just give me a few days he told her.

So you’re thinking all this is weird?

Yeah.

And the generation starship continued its long journey. Things got back to the way they were.

But from then on it wasn’t as much as a drag for Jeremy anymore.

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