The Pussycat Clang

"Fire photon torpedoes, NOW!" Jack roared.

Auntie Laura looked around the controlled chaos that was the ship's bridge. Most of the stations were manned (if you could call it that) with a competent efficiency that was comforting to someone who knew her life was dependent on everyone doing their job.

Everyone but Fluffy.

Fluffy was staring, entranced, at the destruction displayed on the fore view screen, completely ignoring the grey stalk semaphoring on her console.

Auntie Laura strode over. "Fluffy, you've got a fire in sector 7! You need to get that under control before we lose the entire starboard section."

Fluffy looked down, sufficiently flustered by her own inattention that she did not launch into her more normal, 'you can't tell me what to do' routine.

"Oh, you're right. Well, that's okay; I'll just vent the oxygen from that sector, and the fire'll go right out."

Jack looked over, his piercing grey eyes assessing the situation. Before he could nod his approval, Auntie Laura interjected, "you don't want to do that. That sector contains a large number of human servitors. If you vent the atmosphere, they'll all die."

"So?"

Auntie Laura reminded herself that she couldn't expect a member of the Clang to see things the same way she did. She groped for an answer to Fluffy's question that would make sense to the teen.

"We won't have time to pick up more humans before the ground assault. We'll need every one we have as part of the shock troops."

'Provide acceptable alternatives,' she reminded herself.

"Jack installed the new fire suppression system in that sector. This would be a good time to try it out - see if it works."

Fluffy pricked her ears up at the thought. Auntie Laura suspected that her enthusiasm was less for using the new tech and more for the hopes that Jack's newest invention would not work as expected. But, whatever her motivation, Fluffy tapped out the activation sequence with her beautifully manicured claws and, within a minute, sensors indicated that the fire was out.

Auntie Laura turned back towards the center of the bridge.

Jack flipped his wayward blond bangs out of his eyes. "Good thinking, Auntie Laura, I'd forgotten we'd need those troops later."

The woman ran her hand through her own short, dark hair, remembering that the human servitors quartered in sector 7 were mostly high school students the ship had scooped up when the Clang came to get Jack to assist in the rescue of Big Pussycat. Not exactly trained ground assault troops, or easy to get moving, for that matter. If it came to that, and she hoped it wouldn't, maybe she could spread the rumor that the Imperial forces were guarding a warehouse full of next generation X-Boxes. Of course, half the students were girls. . .. And, the Empire had also stolen all the copies (and the manuscript) of Twilight 27: Renesmee's Puppies. The Imperial Storm Troopers wouldn't know what hit 'em.

Despite the space battle going on around her, she smiled.

"Auntie Laura!" an impatient voice cried.

"What's the status, Commodore Jack?"

"You're not paying attention. If you don't want to play the game anymore, tell me. But, don't just sit there, not saying anything."

"I'm sorry. I did get distracted. We can pick up from when you fired the photon torpedoes."

Where had he gotten that trick of rolling his eyes? she asked herself guiltily.

"The Pussycats don't have photon torpedoes. Don't you remember? We went through the whole list of weapons when we started the game."

She did remember, but she was old enough that, for space battles, her memory tended to default back to photon torpedoes and lasers.

"Anyway," Jack continued, "I think you're gamed out for a while. We can play more, later."

They both stood up, the 10 year old knees making less work of getting off the floor than the 40 year old pair.

"Okay, do you still want to continue the Clang saga, or do you want to try another story?"

"I think we should stick to this. We still haven't even rescued Big Pussycat, yet. Anyway, it's 'Clan' not 'Clang,' you know."

"Really? Since when?"

"The real word is 'clan.' When I was little, I didn't know, and so I called them the 'clang' instead. But now I want to use the right word."

Auntie Laura wasn't sure that there was a right word to describe a family of giant, space-faring cats and their human friend, who sometimes fought the Empire (yes, that Empire) and other times had more domestic concerns, mostly involving Fluffy's desire to have her friends over for unauthorized teen parties.

She commented mildly, "I don't know; I kind of like 'clang.' It's like 'clan,' only noisier. I think it fits them. And authors are allowed to invent their own words, so you're good there."

"I'm not an author. I just like to make up stories."

"That's all an author is, plus writing them down."

"That's not so much fun."

"Tell me about it," Auntie Laura sighed, sotto voce.

"Anyway, why don't I show you the spaceship I'm designing?"

"I'd like to see that. Are you roughing it out in legos or on paper?"

Now it was Jack's turn to sigh. "You can't possibly get all the details on paper. I'm doing it on the computer, of course."

Jack settled himself at the kitchen computer and pulled up a program that looked like it had only recently been declassified by NASA.

The schematic rotated around axes Auntie Laura couldn't even plot with graph paper while Jack showed off the sublight engines, the hyperdrive reverse thrusters, the cool paint job. She perused the internal schematics, noting that Jack had complied with the most fundamental requirement of starship design by not including any bathrooms.

"What's this here - this jagged edge on the side? Is that a part you're still working on?"

"No, that's a part that can't be finished yet."

"Ah. I've had term papers like that. Mostly I just sand off the edges and call 'em done anyway."

"No, what I mean is, the rest of the starship exists in three dimensions, so you can see them, but the hyper-reality inverter exists in the fourth dimension, which is time, so you can't see it now."

"Oh, so it's more like a doctoral dissertation."

Jack was very good at suspicious sideways glances.

"It's a joke that's like your inverter. It's not funny now, but, when you're in your late twenties you'll remember. Oh, how you'll laugh."

"OOOkay. Are you done looking at this?"

"Yeah, if you've shown me all the highlights."

"Pretty much, I think the actual engine schematics would probably be too technical for you."

"Probably. So, what do you want to do?"

"Make blueberry muffins?"

"Sounds like a plan."

Jack settled himself on the kitchen counter to watch Auntie Laura take out the baking supplies. As she hunted in her sister's kitchen for the measuring cups, she wondered: how long did she have? His interest in science fiction might stave off any interest in (or, at the least, any success with) girls but eventually the spotty rider of the apocalypse (he doesn't actually herald the end of the world, everything just seems like it) would arrive to drag Jack into adolescence.

And there she was, without even an old-fashioned photon torpedo to fend it off.



Copyright Notice: The 'Pussycat Clang,' and its members: 'Big Pussycat,' 'Queen Alabaster,' 'King Felix,' 'Fluffy,' 'Sixsey' and 'Jack' are the exclusive property of JEH and are used by permission.