I Hate It When That Happens by cmsix

Chapter 4

I guess the larger entrance made sense, since the whole damned thing was large. Calling it a storage area was kind of an understatement. It was more like a warehouse in cave form. It was Huge, and I meant to use a capital H. The ceiling was probably thirty feet up in the lowest spot.

The whole thing looked like what you might think of as a cave, if you'd never paid any attention to what caves looked like. The walls were obviously rock and the floor was dirt, but like the part I'd arrived in, that's where the resemblance to a real cave stopped.

The walls were regular and fairly smooth and the floor was basically level. These are things that don't happen in nature. The place also had a more or less rectangular shape, about a hundred feet wide and two hundred feet long. It was a large warehouse-type area who's appearance had been given a pseudo cave look.

The entrance from or exit to the outside, depending on your point of reference, looked almost like a garage door opening without the door. If I had my pickup here I could drive in and out with no trouble. Hell, maybe I should have asked for it too.

Against the wall that adjoined my home, in the far corner, my former workshop things were set up just as I'd left them, except for the missing walls that would have enclosed them. All my tools and equipment seemed to be there. My tack, which had been in an even smaller outbuilding on earth, was arranged just past my workshop. It looked like practically everything I had on earth was here now.

Suspicious thoughts started creeping in to mix with my giddy excitement. What was the fucking story on this new plan? Nothing I'd heard out of them, since the time they'd snagged me out of thin air, could have made me think something like this was going to happen.

Hell, after looking the place over I saw that it was almost exactly like my home on the range in Texas, so to speak. Everything that had been in my house or outbuildings was here with me now, except newer and better.

Back inside, trying on some of my clothes had even let me know that they had been altered perfectly to match my new sizes. Even all my shoes and boots were exactly like they had been, except for looking brand new and fitting my new feet.

It was obvious to me that something they hadn't planned on had happened, and I wondered what the hell it could have been. I was nearly positive that to begin with they hadn't intended for me to have this kind of luxury down here. I wasn't bitching about it, but I did wonder.

The next thing that happened was a real shocker. Greenie paged me. He asked if everything was suitable now and if they needed to do anything else for me. Hell, I couldn't think of a thing, and I said so.

"We have had a change in plans and have to return to our base. We will be here two more days before leaving, but we will be away for over a year after we go," he said.

"Taking the offender back for trial?" I asked, mostly as a joke.

"Oh no. He has already been dealt with. We estimate that his current orbit will decay and he will enter the atmosphere in probably eighteen months, two days and seven hours."

"I see. Well, it isn't really any of my concern. I'm sure I'll be fine here. Have a nice trip," I said.

He wished me well and buzzed off, but now I was even more concerned. What had the cock sucker done that they hadn't told me about? If they tossed him out the airlock for just pulling a little gag they definitely didn't have much of a sense of humor. Fuckitall. It was somebody else's problem.

That wouldn't wash completely though, cause if he had fucked something down here up beyond recognition I was the one to get the full benefit so to speak. It was little old me down on the ground that would be dealing with the fallout, figuratively speaking of course. What the hell, all I could do was hope it wasn't fatal.

In my examination of my new/old digs I'd seen that the clocks all seemed to be set and they were probably close enough to right for government work. It was three-thirty PM now, and I had missed lunch. In the kitchen I found the refrigerator stocked with all my favorites and it made me even more suspicious, but I made a couple of ham and cheese sandwiches anyway and had some lunch.

After that I went to see about my archery target and to do some practicing. The target was fine, about three feet in diameter and with a stand to hold it up. There was plenty of room in my new storage area for me to practice and after stringing the bow, I gave it a try.

The bow turned out to be fairly normal but made with a similar philosophy as the storage area/cave. It looked like what you might expect an ancient bow to look like if you didn't know a damned thing about them.

The bow resembled a sapling that had been whittled on, hell, it even looked like the bark was still on it in a few places, but it shot better than any English Longbow ever could have. I don't know what material it was made of but it damned sure wasn't wood. It was powerful and consistent, but basically pointless.

No normal bow, even made of space age materials, can ever give the type of performance a mediocre compound bow can. A compound bow gives the archer mechanical advantage that isn't possible by just bending a stick with a string, which is all a normal bow really does. I decided that I was going to have another little talk with greenie over this before he left.

I spent a couple of hours practicing with the bow and it did an excellent job for what it was. In fact I was able to do much better than I'd have thought. Still, it just meant that I'd be able to do a lot better with a decent compound bow.

Sunset was creeping up on me though. It wouldn't bother my practicing, since I'd had plenty of room to do that inside, it did signal me that suppertime was getting close, so I put things away and went back into the house.

Sandwiches and a glass of milk were on the evening's menu and I settled down in front of my TV to watch some DVD Star Trek, The Next Generation while I ate. After I finished and the episode I was watching finished, I went to bed for the night, and felt right at home again, mostly, for the first time in months.

Maybe it was because I woke up in my own bed again, for the first time in a long time the next morning, or maybe something else, but I was out of bed at six AM, in the shower, and thinking about what I was going to wear to work before it hit me that I wasn't going to work. I was going to fuck off, all day long. Can that shit, I had to do something or I'd watch every Star Trek DVD I had in only a few days.

I fried a couple of eggs, some bacon, and toasted four pieces of bread, then made it all disappear while I drank three cups of coffee. Luckily the spacemen seemed to have done some shopping for me too. The three loaves of bread were nice, but the four three pound plastic cans of Folgers were prized possessions. I was already dreading the time they would run out.

With breakfast gone I decided that I might as well have a word with greenie before he got away. I punched the button on the pager they'd left me.

"Yes Frank," he said, answering.

"What's the point of the bow you left me? It's a good normal bow, but do you really think it would be a shock for me to have a compound bow? I know it will look different, but from my guess of the situation it won't be any more shocking than the normal bow, and neither one of them make loud noises," I said.

"Well, it was in the original planning but that is moot now and you are correct in your assessment of the current situation. We will send you a high quality compound bow," he said.

"Why don't you make that two, and a few thousand carbon fiber arrows?" I asked.

"We can do that also, but why do you need two bows?" he asked.

"You said that there are other humans near me didn't you?" I asked.

"Yes, they are currently more than five miles from you, but they are what you might think of as nomadic. They move often," he said.

"Don't you think I might be seeking some female companionship sooner or later? The women here may be ugly as sin, but if they're all that's left in the bar at closing time I'll have to adapt," I said.

"Left in the bar? Closing time? I don't understand."

"Plainly speaking, no matter what they look like, if they are female humans, sooner or later I'm going to want to fuck one of them," I said.

"Oh. I understand that. We'd hoped you would, sooner or later, as you say. I don't think they are less attractive than the females you are accustomed to," he said.

"Maybe so, but you didn't think using a bow looked very hard either. You'll pardon me if I don't take your advice as gospel," I said.

"I see. It is possible that we don't appreciate all the selection criteria," he said.

"It's good that we can communicate so productively. If I take up with a female here don't you think it would be better if she had a bow of her own?"

"That is something we never considered, but now that you mention it, I can see that it would be appropriate for her to be able to help you defend yourselves. I think we should send you several extra bows in fact, and plenty of the arrows you have requested.

"Please remember that you should not hesitate to use your firearms if you think your life is in danger. One of the distressing things about our unexpected return to our base is the fact that you will be alone here, so to speak, and we won't be able to provide any additional support," greenie said.

"Believe me, that thought has crossed my mind. Have a little faith though. I'm pretty sure I can take care of myself unless there is something coming up that I don't know about," I said.

"That is one of the reasons we are leaving. It seems that the mistake that was made in your placement was not a joke. The individual we dealt with might not have been alone in his attempt to do you harm, and the switch was intended to do you harm, or let harm come to you.

"We are returning so that careful investigation can be preformed on all of the members of our crew. I will see that you are provided with many bows and arrows before we go," he said, and then we disconnected.

Isn't that just a lovely turn of events? They were leaving because they couldn't even trust their own crewmembers. I hoped none of the doctors that had been so willing to cut me up and change my insides around were involved in the fun and games they had going on. It would be a pain in the ass if my new legs or feet started giving me trouble.

This was something I needed to think about. Not because I believed I'd come up with any real answers, but because I was in a real bad mood over these developments. There wasn't shit I could do about it, never had been anything really, but at least I could sit down and try to get calm. I hit the couch and watched Star Trek some more, and brooded. Mostly I brooded.

Two episodes had me over my pouting and I got up and went out into my warehouse again. I'd decided that was all I could reasonably call it, mostly because it was so fucking big. It was odd in a way, because I also had the cave I'd been dropped into in the first place and it was pretty much the same size. Of course the cave was mostly of the round persuasion and the warehouse was more nearly rectangular.

No matter what shape it was in, the warehouse made for a good place to get familiar with my bow and that's what I had on my mind again, so we were off.

I'll be fucked if the new archery equipment wasn't in place already. That was some fast service if you asked me. There was a nice cabinet and rack type arrangement now and I had thirty or so bows. Just on the other side of it were boxes of fletched shafts. Lots of boxes of fletched shafts. What the hell? Here and now, more was better.

It only took a few seconds for me to know that all the practice with the other oddball bow had been wasted time. The compound bow they sent was a perfect fit, and the draw weight was right on the money too, giving me a powerful weapon. Much more powerful than the one I'd tried just yesterday.

All that was wonderful, but learning to hit anything with it was the same old same old of learning to use a new bow. I ended up starting from twenty-five feet and working my way back, again.

At least the new bow gave much more consistent results. I chalked that up to the obvious quality with which it was made, that and the inherent superiority of the compound bow's mechanism.

When a standard bow releases the arrow, it begins by delivering its maximum force, and then slacks off as it goes. A compound bow does exactly the opposite, delivering more energy as it finishes the shot, getting stronger as it nears release.

Even though things were different with the compound bow, I was still doing much better after about an hour of practice. This made me want to keep on working with it, but I knew that wouldn't be the best way to do things. I'd done a lot of shooting yesterday and today, and it was all muscle powered. I needed to take a day off to let my muscles acclimate to the new situation.

Back in the house I decided another talk with greenie would be a good idea, so I paged him.

"Yes, Frank. It is good that you contacted me. Our schedule has changed again and we will be leaving within three hours."

"Tell me about the people I'll run into here. Do they even talk yet?" I asked.

"Yes, they have language and even numbers, to a degree. None of it is written though, they don't have anything to write with yet."

"How in the hell am I going to learn to communicate then?" I asked.

"You are already well versed in their language; probably better than any of them are in fact."

"Mind telling me how that little miracle was preformed?" I asked.

"You were taught during the time you were unconscious after your major surgery. When you hear them speak it will seem nearly like your native language and your brain knows how to respond in their language. It will seem perfectly natural to you, as if you'd known the language all your life. It will be triggered by the first thing you hear the others saying."

"Presto changeo, huh?"

"I don't understand that, Frank," greenie said.

"Just shows that you aren't completely on top of Earth slang. That particular phrase is over fifty years old."

"I see. That isn't really part of my sphere of expertise," he said, sounding a little defensive.

"I hope not, and I hope you don't consider your knowledge of Earth's language as perfect as you claimed my knowledge of the language here to be. No matter, there's no help for it now, I'll have to make do.

"What about medical considerations? Are there diseases here that I should be careful about?"

"No, we have made sure you are not susceptible to any diseases. You never will be again," he said.

"That's a pretty damned good trick. Does that mean I don't have to worry about infection if I cut myself?"

"You don't have to worry about anything that is health related. You can still die from injury, of course, but not any type of infection or any disease is possible now," greenie said.

"What exactly do you mean by any? Do you mean I can't even get cancer or heart disease? You aren't talking about that state of any are you?"

"Yes, I am. You will not suffer any disease. In fact, you won't even get any older. Your body now knows how to keep itself in perfect shape. If you break a bone, it will eventually heal to the same state it was before it was broken. You won't even need to set the break, though you will need to immobilize it somewhat, and it will heal faster if you can manage to put it back near its original position."

"It sounds like you've thought of everything. What about for the others here?" I asked.

"What about them?"

"If I acquire a companion she might end up needing medical care of some sort. Have you left me any medicine or supplies for that possibility?" I asked.

"No. That is something we never considered. I realize that it is an oversight. We will take care of it before we leave, even though the schedule is tight," he said.

"Don't forget to provide me with instructions. I know a few things, but my knowledge isn't extensive," I said.

"You should check in your home computer as I think it is called. We have made significant improvements to its hardware and software and have also included most of your planet's knowledge."

I wondered what in the hell that meant, but it usually made me a little antsy to talk to greenie for very long, and it was doing it in spades again now. I managed to bring our conversation to a halt by telling him I needed to eat. It was lunchtime after all.