BigBug
Chapter XXXI

Bigbug the boy worked the controls to open the lock gate and let them into the Ij. No response. They were stuck. The first of the M&M demolition charges exploded. The shock wave rocked the Turtle.

“Don’t worry,” explained Bigbug the boy, “the Turtle can withstand this but they are trying to blow open the lower lock gate. If they succeed the water will drop and we will be trapped.” A shock wave, not from a demolition charge, but from the DATA facility itself, rocked the lock. “Ah,” said Bigbug the boy, “this is good, preliminary disintegration pressure.”

“Go blow the gates before they can open the top lock gate.” The two M&Ms ran across and planted their charges by the lock gate. “Stand by,” ordered the sergeant, “we rescue DATA and take back our treats.” The M&Ms began a frantic dance of death and all the time howling and screaming fuelled by bloodlust and depravity. Bigbug the boy knew the M&Ms were trying to blast open the lock gate. He brought the Turtle down to the bottom lock gate and waited, on time calculated, for the next shock wave came. The M&M pressed the switch and the second set of explosive charges went off. As the shock wave came Bigbug the boy gave Turtle 1 full power and rammed the gates. The gates held. The Turtle bounced off them. “Come on,” urged Bigbug the boy. Moon was praying. Seamus had his eyes closed. Bigbug the boy reversed the Turtleback as far as it would go. There was another shock wave. The bottom lock gate was blasted open and the Turtle fell down, nose up, into the bottom of the lock. They were now trapped the lock gate above them inoperable. The M&Ms were crawling all over the Turtle 1.

“I have no choice,” shouted Bigbug the boy, “but to engage planetary spin space drive.” He turned to the terrified Seamus. “Never been done before. Awesome power.” The M&Ms were placing explosive charges all over the Turtle and firing their weapons at the Turtle. The bullets bounced harmlessly off. The monsters disappeared and Bigbug the boy knew they would set off the charges very soon. “Brace brace,” shouted Bigbug the boy and engaged the space drive. As the demolition charges exploded the Turtle smashed through the top lock gate at enormous speed and power. It went from zero to thirty six thousand five hundred kilometres an hour in five seconds. They were out and rapidly accelerating, the Turtle rotating, the kids, Moon and Seamus thrown about this way and that. The blasts had shaken the computers and this induced automatic shutdown. The massive power surge and collision when they engaged space drive and smashed through the lock gate shocked the operating protocols and programmes. Amsterdam disappeared below them. The Turtle was spinning away up and out of control.

Down below the M&Ms cheered when their explosive charges detonated. They ran over to attack the Turtle but it was too late. They were instruments of their own doom. The river Ij rushed down on top of the monsters. “Retreat,” ordered the M&M sergeant. The M&Ms packed onto the Turtle train and they sped off into the tunnel trying to get back to the DATA facility to regroup. The train ran out of power halfway between Metro Ship and Metro Shell. The M&Ms jumped from the train and ran for their diabolical lives. The enormous relentless gushing water came rushing after them. The M&Ms, as DATA’s power declined, turned on each other. They ripped each other to pieces with an indescribable barbarity and fury. Such was the destiny planned for mankind.

Bigbug the boy wrestled with the controls of Turtle 1 and managed to level it out. “Hold hands,” he shouted, “until I can make atmosphere and gravity. I have to reboot.” Turtle 1 was not responding. Seamus, Moon and the kids were now floating in outer space and heading, at incredible speed by terrestrial standards, out into the solar system. The hull of the Turtle afforded them some protection but it was cold, very cold, and getting colder. The Turtle sped on gathering speed. Bigbug the boy worked frantically at the onboard computers. The computers were taking their time rebooting. They were meticulously checking systems out and trying to analyse, to make sense, what had just taken place. This was time the humans did not have. Bigbug the boy was ok and would survive until they rebooted and he brought the space drive back under control and life support systems on line but they would soon run out of oxygen. Bigbug the boy did not know which would come first to the humans, suffocation, or hyperthermia. In desperation Bigbug the boy pushed DATA by the controls. It ran a tendril into DATA and another into the Turtle main computer forming a connection. Nothing happened. Seamus and Moon floated there and held hands with the kids. They were all so cold.

“Well,” gasped Moon, “at least we got them out.”

“Yes, we did. Thank you, Moon.” Seamus closed his eyes.

It was time, at long last, to go and see his da. His heart slowed and his head fell onto his chest. It was time to die. Moon let go Seamus’s hand and floated over to DATA. He placed his frozen hands on the monster.

“Nothing is happening,” said Bigbug the boy, “we have total systems analysis. Shutdown until it is finished.” The monitors flashed DO NOT TURN OFF YOUR COMPUTERS.

“No,” replied Moon, “it’s getting warm. My hands are heating up.”

Bigbug the boy’s tendrils sparkled and crackled. Data moved then went still again. The lights came on and they all fell to the floor. Warm and welcome air rushed into the cabin. The Turtle 1 slowed down and Bigbug the boy turned the space shuttle back towards the blue and white spinning earth. Home sweet home. Bigbug the boy was a deathly dark granite colour. It, he, too was turning to rock. He brought the Turtle swiftly but gently through the atmosphere without any heat friction. Seamus hugged Moon.

“We made it. We are going home.”

“First we must check the facility is destroyed,” cautioned Bigbug the boy, “to make sure that none of the M&Ms have survived.”

The Turtle hovered off to one side, about five kilometres to the right, above the DATA facility in the North Sea. Bigbug the boy raised a black stony thumb. As it did so, on cue, the sea exploded sending up a geyser a couple of kilometres into the air. The sea water fell back down and ran into a massive whirl pool that gurgled back into the DATA facility. Everything in that hell hole was completely destroyed.

“It is done.” said Bigbug the boy, addressing DATA, “The application of pure logic without consideration of life form emotion is scientifically unsound. It is a fundamental folly which you will not live to regret. We are finished.”

“What’s wrong with the kids,” asked Moon.

“They are just sleeping,” explained Bigbug the boy. “in the rest of innocence. I manufactured an anti-trauma gas and mixed it in the atmosphere. They will never forget but they will be able to live with the ordeal.”

“Wouldn’t mind an anti-trauma tab,” says Moon.

“I am too tired and fucked up to be traumatized,” replied Seamus.

“You will both be fine. Trust me.” Bigbug the boy turned the Turtle towards Amsterdam. “Where to, guv?” asked Bigbug the boy, now a London cabby. It was smiling.

“Put us down in the skate board park on the Marnixstraat. It’s a big enough space to land and just across the road from my house,” said Seamus. “I want to go home.”

“You got it guv.” Bigbug the boy took them on a canal tour of Amsterdam to calm them down, to resettle their nerves, and to acclimatize their senses to human norm. They floated above the Herengracht, the Prinsengracht, and the Keizersgracht. It was an odd canal tour. The canals were empty of water. The citizens of Amsterdam were all out in the streets, peering into their canals, and wondering where the hell their water had gone. Bigbug the boy didn’t seem to mind and carried on with its canal tour pointing out various landmarks and places of interest. As it passed the Anne Frank museum it advised Seamus and Moon to take the children there on a therapy group trip. It brought the Turtle to a stop and hovered above the Van Gogh museum. “I shall miss this place,” it sighed. Bigbug the boy brought them back to the Schip Museum. They hovered above the old galleon. It was lying on its side its main masts smashed when the Ij retreated and it crashed into the dock. “I will not miss this place,” said Bigbug the boy. It turned the Turtle and came in, back along the Ij, looking with some amusement at the beached ferries, and rose up above the crooked tilting Amsterdam houses. They flew the short distance to the skate board park. Bigbug the boy landed the Turtle. There was no one in the park but the resident dossers drinking cans of rot gut alcohol. The children were awake. Moon, Seamus, and the twenty-five children walked down the ramp and stood there looking up at Bigbug the boy.

“Look,” pointed Bigbug the boy at the DATA ball. It was black as sin. “It has reverted back to rock. It hopes to re- emerge.” Bigbug the boy saw the alarm on their faces. “Fear not earthlings. I will not let that happen.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I am going to bury my father. I am going to cremate him.”

“What here? In Amsterdam?” asked Seamus.

“No. In the sun.”

“What about that fucking monster?” shouted Seamus.

“DATA is coming along with us to the wake. Should be a hot party.”

“You are going to crash the Turtle into the sun?” said Moon. It wasn’t a question.

Big bug the boy nodded.

“Is there no other way?”

“No Moon. I have to go with DATA. Your sun is the only place in this solar system powerful enough to contain DATA and me.” Bigbug the boy pointed at its head. There were black veins and cracks spreading up along Bigbug the boy’s head and neck. It was also metamorphosing into the black rock. “My father and I have enough time to do the job.” Bigbug the boy saw the confusion in Moon’s face. It elucidated. “My father has always been with me.” It tapped its temple. “In here is his soul and spirit. My father never gave up hope that one day we would escape. He believed, as I do, that God will always do the right thing. We must go. The Turtle 1 is locked on a collision course with the sun and our power source is now independent of the facility. The course we have to take is as irreversible as spent time. We have plenty of power to get there. We will impact the sun next Saturday evening, in five days’ time at 19.33 hours your time. Now,” he addressed Moon, “don’t you have something we should take with us?” Bigbug the boy held out its hand. The bulging veins were dark brown and its fingernails turned to ebony rock. Moon pretended not to understand. “The meteorite Moon. The Albatross? Your rock.”

“Give it to him,” gasped Seamus, “get rid of the damned thing.”

Moon took the Amsterdam meteorite out from his Foreign Legion small pack and handed it over. Seamus exhaled an audible sigh of relief.

Bigbug the boy gave Moon and Seamus each a thin envelope. “A small token of my appreciation.”

“A present?” asked Moon.

“Yes,” agreed Bigbug the boy, “don’t open it until I am gone.” It spoke to Seamus. “And your father has always been with you.” Bigbug the boy waved. “Goodbye kind friends.” The ramp closed. The Turtle 1 rose up. There was a humming a mild bright light no brighter than a camera flash and Bigbug was gone.

The resident dossers, the park people, rushed across to them.

“Did you get that on video, Moon?”

“No.”

“Are the aliens friends of yours?”

“It all depends on who they are at the time.”

“I have it on camera,” exclaimed a dosser, the phone in his hand and he shaking so much he was spilling beer out from the can, “I did. I have it all and I have it now. I am going to post it up on You-Tube.”

“Have you got a couple of euros to spare Moon?”

Moon fished in his pocket and pulled out a ten euro note. He gave it to the park person. “That was all the money I had in this world.” The park person took the note and checked it to make sure it wasn’t a dud. Someone was shouting, “The aliens have landed and stolen our water. The canals are empty. We are dry! We are dry!”

“No, we are not. The night shop is open.”

“It will all level out,” said Moon staring up at the sky. There were tears in his eyes.

Seamus and Moon and the twenty-five children walked across the road. Seamus opened the door to his house. They all filed inside, no one speaking, and all in a state of shock. Seamus closed the door. Stuck on the mirror in the front room written in large red capital letters was a note. It read

- RING TONY ABOUT HIS VAN. HE SAYS THE COPS ARE GOING CRAZY. HE IS GOING CRAZY. BELL ME. VIKKI -

Murphy the cat came into the room. He took a look around and left.

“How am I going to explain what happened to the Margarita to Tony?” said Seamus.

“Never mind that,” replied Moon opening up his envelope, “that’s nothing.” He pointed at the Korean kids, “How the fuck am I going to explain these kids to the social services?”