“Yes. Shining Smith, I thank you for your attention and your time.” Today Gomez sounded like a snooty prewar New Yorker. He was still trying on accents. I was waiting on him to try Texan. That would be perfect with Jolene’s Southern belle drawl.
“Okay,” I said. I opened a bottle of water and drank, waiting.
“This refers to the being previously known as Garrouling PopPop,” he said, as the air filters shot the scent of peppermint into the room. Bug aliens used scent as part of speech, and the speech part wasn’t anything a human mouth could make. Garrouling PopPop, no peppermint scent, was the best I could do.
“Okay,” I said again and put the glass bottle in the rack for cleaning and refilling.
“Garrouling PopPop is no longer in a state of maximum inactivity.”
“Uhhh. Okaaay. What does that mean?” I asked.
“Garrouling PopPop,” Gomez said, with a fresh spray of peppermint.
The scent was so strong, I started sneezing.
Between my sneezes Gomez finished, “—is no more.”
“He’s dead?” I asked. I grabbed a handkerchief and shoved it against my face.
“He is not a he and never was. Garrouling PopPop is not dead. I have told you repeatedly that Garrouling PopPop has been in a state of maximum inactivity. Now, Garrouling PopPop is no more.”
“Which sounds like dead. Please stop saying his name. I’m dying here.”
“No. Your poor ability to scent emotions, your limited neural capacity, lack of neural computing capability, and deficient problem solving skills are insufficient to understand my captain’s biology.”
“I think you just called me stupid,” I said. “If he’s not dead, what is he?”
“The closest analogy in your nonspecific language is, ‘active, timorous, saturated, multilarval sponge state’.”
I pressed the spot on the command center that flushed the smells out of HQ. “So, he’s not dead.” I blew my nose vigorously.
Gomez sighed. The AI actually sighed. He had been around Jolene way too long. Tuffs, who had clearly been listening, jumped and slipped through the flap opening in the office, taking the slide to the lower levels of the Bug ship. “They have no equivalent pronoun in your language. However—they are not dead.”
From Junkyard Riders, novella 5 in the series.
