New Tales from Hilbert Space, Page 2

only moments later, was also not exactly the softest thing Rakni was ever hit with. Together they slid to the ground where they were soon struck by a big wave of goo that replaced the waste, which was sucked out into space. Both Dranik were carried away by this surge of sewage until they reached an emergency valve that the automated safety system of the station opened for them. They were flushed out into a maintenance room, where the chief of security was already waiting for them. The Extermination Brothers slowly glided towards him on a film of goo and as they came to a halt directly in front of his boots, Rakni smiled and said, “I told you not to worry. The situation is completely under control!”

  “I was monitoring your progress,” the security chief said. “And I must say, to put it mildly, I am not satisfied with your services.”

  “Why not? We killed the roaches! How can you not be satisfied?” Rakni protested.

  “You indeed killed most of the roaches, but you also created a blazing inferno that took out seven of our waste reclamation units.”

  “Don’t you worry,” said Rakni. “We won’t charge you for that. It’s on the house. Consider it a gift.”

  “You don’t understand. It will take weeks to repair those units.”

  “No problem,” Rakni replied. “If those bastard waste reclamation units do come back, just give us a call and we will gladly take them out again. Free of charge.”

  “No, no, no! You are not supposed to destroy them,” the security officer tried to explain.

  “Well you shouldn’t have called an extermination service, if you didn’t want anything exterminated, should you?”

  “You can’t be serious. You nearly destroyed our station. Now there is a gaping hole in one of the sewage pipes.”

  “Well it’s just sewage, you want it gone anyway. I just streamlined the process.”

  “I am sorry, but this is outrageous. However, a deal is a deal, so I’ll have to pay you. How many review points did we agree on?”

  “Pokk, you do the numbers,” Pokk’s brother commanded.

  “Well,” said Pokk. “It’s 10 for each roach and 30 for the queen. This makes 210 total.”

  “Let’s round this down to 300,” Rakni suggested. “Oh, and of course 50 more for taking out this irritating piece of exterior wall. And as I promised, the waste reclamations are on the house. That leaves us at...”

  “350 review points,” Pokk finished his brothers sentence.

  “I will not award you review points for destroying our station!” the security chef insisted. “On the other hand, why not? At least it will lower your average even more. Don’t think that I will give you more than one star. I would give you zero, if that would be possible. Let me just write it in the review system.”

  The officer typed something in his Widget and mumbled, “350 review points for only one star. Worst experience I ever had. Do not hire them. They will destroy your station and charge you for it. Never gain.”

  “One star?” Rakni shouted in disbelief. He walked directly in front of the officer and tried to look as intimidating as possible. This endeavor was made rather difficult by the difference in height that now became even more obvious. “You want to give us one star? Are you out of your mind? You know what? Fine! Rate us with one star. We don’t care. But I will also review this station and guess what I think of it. Pokk, hand me my Widget.”

  Pokk pulled a small handheld computer out of one of his pockets and handed it to his brother.

  “How much review points are you allowed to give for a visit on a space station?” Rakni asked.

  “It depends,” his brother answered. “I think it is about 200, if you stay a whole week.”

  “Well, we didn’t stay a whole week, so we should round it down to 250,” Rakni said. “250 review points. One star. Worst space station I ever visited. The chief of security is totally incompetent and would not recognize good craftsmanship if it would kick him in the-”

  “You can’t write those words in a review!” his brother reminded him.

  “Oh, yes, I forgot. ‘The chief of security is a total-’ Oh, I am not allowed to write that either, am I? How am I supposed to express myself? Let’s start again. ‘The chief of security is incompetent, the whole station stinks of sewage and what’s worst: There is an ugly, gaping hole in the station.’”

  The chief of security glared at Rakni. “Write what you want in your review. Koriba Station will not be blackmailed. And now I would kindly ask you to leave this station. Your services are no longer required.”

  “You have the nerve to throw me out?” Rakni yelled. “Well, joke’s on you, because I don’t want to be on this glorified sewage dump anyway. Come on, Pokk. We are leaving.”

  The Extermination Brothers boarded their ship and left the station as fast as possible. Pokk piloted while Rakni ranted. That was the usual configuration.

  “Can you believe this guy?” Rakni asked his brother. “One star. One single star. I hope this doesn't drag our average rating down. Pokk, be so kind and do the numbers. I hate numbers.”

  “I am afraid I don’t have to do a calculation. Since we got the worst possible rating, there is no way our average can go up,” his brother explained.

  “You can’t say that for sure. Can you? Would you please do the math, just for me? Maybe we are lucky.”

  “You can’t be lucky at math. It is how it is, no luck involved whatsoever. But if it makes you happy: We just got one star weighted by the 350 review points. Added to our current stars and divided by the sum of our review points we arrive at a rating of 1.1 stars still. Slightly less, to be honest.”

  “Oh no,” Rakni cried. “How much less? Be honest, brother.”

  “Roughly 0.1 stars less.”

  Rakni used all the fingers on both of his hands and one of his toes and within a few minutes he solved one of the most challenging equations he had ever tackled.

  “So we still have only 1.2 stars,” he sobbed.

  Pokk decided that this was a terrible time to tell his brother that he once again confused plus and minus. “Yes, you are almost right,” he said with a friendly smile.

  “At that rate we will never get any good jobs. This is so frustrating.”

  “Well, maybe we should just quit,” Pokk suggested.

  “Never!” Rakni shouted. “A Dranik does not give up. And what should we do with all the spare time? Just wait for the day to end? No, this is no way to live. People need something to do.”

  “Well, maybe we just need to find something else. A different job. A fresh start.”

  “No way! I am an exterminator. And so are you. And I love my job, there is nothing else I want to do. It is just so frustrating sometimes. We get bad reviews, then we get bad assignments, then bad reviews again. There is no way to escape this vicious cycle. And you know whose fault that is, Pokk?”

  “Well, maybe in this particular case it might have been our-”

  “Robots!” Rakni interrupted his younger brother. “Yes, robots. They take away our jobs, do them much better and without any collateral damage. They are heartless. Without them it would be much easier for exterminators everywhere. There would be more jobs for us. Better ones too. Jobs that do not involve crawling around in sewage pipes. But I have a plan. A genius plan. Set a new course, Pokk.”

  “Where to?”

  “The Auto-Ex headquarters.”

  “What are we supposed to do there? Complain that their robots are too good?”

  “Something like that, Pokk, something like that.”

  The ship of the Extermination Brothers was not in the best condition, but it was still capable of traveling above light speed. However, the mass inverter of the ship was very old and badly maintained, so the ride was always quite bumpy. Also, there was a strange noise coming from the engine room whenever the engine was running longer than a few minutes. While Pokk had always been concerned about this noise, Rakni liked it very much. It made their ship unique, gave it a bit of character.

  Like all their trips, the t
rip to the Auto-Ex headquarters was very bumpy, but they arrived there in one piece. Of course they lost a few bits and bobs on their way, but the rest that arrived at their destination was fine. Mostly.

  “I still don’t understand your plan. You want to complain? Why do we have to lie to them then?” Pokk asked his bigger brother.

  “It’s not that easy. You just have to trust me. I know that there are certain things you don’t like, like lying and cheating, so I think it’s better if I keep the plan secret. It’s like the time we borrowed father’s shuttle. Would you have helped me then, if I had told you my plan.”

  “Of course not!” said Pokk, who still remembered this particular incident in great detail.

  “See? And everything turned out fine?”

  “Fine? We completely crashed that shuttle!”

  “Yes, but nobody ever found out.”

  “Just promise me that this time it will be different.”

  “Well, it will be… different. In a good way. And now hail the station and let me do the talking.”

  Pokk opened an intercom channel and Rakni introduced himself.

  “Hello, Auto-Ex station. We are the Extermination Brothers and we need to land at your station immediately.”

  “What’s the problem?” the communications officer asked.

  “We are tracking a very dangerous animal for weeks now. It recently boarded your station undetected and we need to exterminate it as soon as possible. It’s a Madonian Stalker, very dangerous indeed. But don’t worry, we will handle it.”

  “Madonian Stalker? Never heard