Tom in Space Part 1: Space Colonies Blow

(CW: Inflation, Space, Threat of Popping)

Commission for CynicalGage

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Tom delicately entered the coordinates for the warp-jump into his ship’s computer. The console lit up with a Seasons Greetings message, wishing him a happy holiday. Which would have been nice, had it been anywhere near December in the Earth-Centric calendar. They were in July. He gave the machine a gentle tap, and when that didn’t work, a full-on whack with his fist. It whirred angrily, like a scolded animal that still intended to cause further problems, and begrudgingly began to process the data it had been fed by its master. Tom gave a languid sigh and reclined in his chair. He remembered the cat-faced ship dealer who sold him the damned thing had claimed it was in perfect condition, and that it would – he quoted – make his spacefaring necessities as painless and easy as putting on a pair of underwear. He had neglected to mention that said pair of underwear was riddle with holes and would only allow itself to be worn whenever it felt like it, but at least the ship itself flew, and kept Tom relatively safe from the hard vacuum outside.

A monitor displayed the warning light for a warp-jump above the pilot’s console. Various metal protrusions extended from the hull of the ship and blasted out a thick transparent film, which knitted together on contact, covering all segments of the ship like a layer of plastic wrap. As a distortion in time and space opened to convey the ship to its destination, the clear material would protect the pilot and vessel from the extradimensional energies found in the warp-tunnels. The entire procedure was automated to the point of tedium. Tom watched, bored stiff, from the bridge window as his modestly sized ship.

He passed into the warp, a spectacle if it’s your first-time journeying into the unknown, but not for a thirty-something human explorer who used to routinely deliver packages between colonies for the better part of two decades. The prismatic walls of the tunnel undulated like a disturbed stretch of ocean water, threatening to tear asunder anything or anyone unlucky enough to be caught in its temporal waters. Tom’s ship passed through a straight tunnel devoid of the shimmering maelstrom, the warp-tunnel, a hole in the fabric of this inhospitable alter-dimension which connected two points of normal space. The exact conversion of normal-space to warp-space was not something Tom particularly knew off by heart, he entrusted that to the ship’s computer. Which might not be terribly smart, given its temper.

The same monitor displaying the warning light went dim, and the ship passed through the warp-tunnel’s exit back into the abyss of normal space. Tom manually disengaged the manual film dispensers, jettisoning the clear material from the ship’s hull with the ease of discarding an umbrella.

“Pilot Tom,” a deep male-presenting voice spoke from the ship’s speakers. It was tinny and fret with white noise, but it was audible. Tom meant to replace the audio module when he could. But finding parts for an old Cobalt-Class Personal-Ship was both difficult, and more expensive than it needed to be.

“What is it?” Tom answered back, pushing up from his chair and gliding towards the bridge door with the aid of the lowered gravity.

“You are entering the legally recognised territory of the Bichrome Company Residential Colony, they have detected your sudden exit from warp-space and are requesting a transmission of your Identification Codes.”

Tom groaned. “Personal or Professional?”

“They would like both, along with a signed declaration at the Registration Desk that you are harbouring no ill intent towards the Bichrome Company or the Colony Residents.”

“Fine, give them what they want.”

Tom glided through the bridge doorway and through the ship’s small communal area. Cozy, the ship-dealer called it. He kicked himself off the sofa’s back to redirect his float, finding his way into his private quarters. Previously the largest room on the ship, it was now a hastily but comfortably decorated weapons storage bay. Tom had no need for large ship mounted weaponry, if he got into a dogfight with a superior model he would be dead in seconds, so the only dangerous article he kept on board was a small civilian issue taser.

“Codes transmitted. Beginning docking procedures with the Bichrome Company Residential Colony, please consult the nearest console to read the Mandatory Guidebook Summary before exiting the ship.”

Tom stripped out of his pilot jumpsuit, and fished about the cloud of loose clothes in his room until he found a clean and somewhat decent outfit. He checked himself, upside down, in a wall mounted mirror. His short brown hair could probably use an extra wash, but he didn’t want to wait the extra two-hours for the water recycling unit to purify and heat up. His slim features would have meant he was unfit for space travel a few centuries ago, but the convenience of modernity meant that jumping from galaxy to galaxy was as easy as driving to the next state over in old-America.

“Again. Pilot Tom. The Bichrome Company urges you to read the abridged Mandatory Guidebook, now downloaded to the ship’s consoles.”

“If driving without a ship AI wasn’t illegal, I swear I’d keep your core next to the toilet plunger.” Tom grumbled to himself. He idly floated from his room, over the common area, to the side-bay where the exit doors to the ship were located. To pacify the ship’s repetitive voice, he thumb-activated a console while the doors were being properly pressurized from the other side and skimmed the Guidebook.

Every Company Owned Colony had its own version of this. A long scrawl of legal jargon and common sense, with a dose of corporate capitalist malice hidden away in the clauses. It wasn’t that different from the Terms of Service you agreed to before signing up to social media, or an online videogame. Outdated as those were now.

Tom pretended to give it his full attention to please the AI, and then closed it down. The bay doors finally opened with a woosh.

A shiny chromatic droid with a large rotating orb for its lower half greeted him on the other side of the doors. “Welcome to Bichrome Company Residential Colony, Epsilon Sector, Adjacent to Planet B9-221. Is your visit motivated by business, or pleasure?”

“Shopping.” Tom replied, curtly. He wasn’t fond of droids, or repetitive AI.

“We will mark you down for pleasure, with the possibility of commerce, for your stay. How long do you intend to stay with us,” the machine searched its data banks, “Pilot Tom, Private-Yacht Class Ship, Cobalt Model?”

Tom scoffed at the idea his rundown grey blob of a ship could be called a yacht.

“I’m only looking to buy replacement parts for this clunker, do you have any recommendations for a good parts supplier?”

The droid’s chest mounted console displayed a rectangular sequence of symbols, indicating for Tom to scan it.

Tom waved his wrist mounted utility console over the sequence and found a list of licenced part dealers… all under the Bichrome Company. He withheld his disappointment, but in hindsight knew to expect a company droid would recommend exclusively company-run stores. There wasn’t a chance in this universe or the next they would stock what he needed to buy, and even if they offered delivery options, that would mean exorbitant charges for hotel accommodation or warp-enabled postage. He would have to search a little deeper into the colony and risk the unpleasantness which came with that sort of exploration.

“Thanks,” Tom feigned enthusiasm and glided along the moving handrail to his right. He quickly came to a gravitationally aligned zone in reception and felt his feet clunk against the metal floor. He presented his identification to the Registration Clerk, an animal-anthromorph which resembled an Earth-species Capybara and received the Visitor’s Visa downloaded directly into his arm-mounted utility console.

The colony began to look much less sterile as he exited registration and moved into the main cylinder. It was programmed to be night-time right now; the colony ran on Earth GMT+0 according to the visitor’s guide. High above him, beyond the artificial cloud layer, he could see the lights of city streets and premises hundreds of thousands of miles on the other side of the slowly rotating cylindrical colony. Seeing another land mass so far above you tended to give most people vertigo the first time they set foot on a colony, but Tom was used to it by now.

Tom raised his right arm to get a better look at the 3D projection it created. He found a bench to sit at while he searched the Colony through his 3D map for an unregistered parts shop. It took a few scans, and a few illegal inputs to override the official map’s security protocols, but he located a trifecta of second-hand stores deep in the residential area. It was a square of suspiciously pristine looking buildings in the middle of an otherwise un-maintained block of housing units, meaning it was probably a bazaar hidden from the scanners. Tom resolved to make his way there as quickly as he could; and leave with the same expediency.

He rose from the bench without looking, and smacked into a bright purple humanoid with bouncy, rubbery skin. The impact knocked him back down on to his buttocks, and he let out a sudden sneeze.

“Watch where you’re going Earth-walker!” A common term for people from Earth, the purple individual didn’t look very happy (as far as he could tell) about Tom’s sudden face-forward dive into his globular body. He said something in, presumably, his native language and waddled off. As the purple alien walked away with his wide-legged gait, Tom couldn’t help but think he looked like a balloon with arms and legs.

Tom continued. He came across dead ends galore, which lengthened his travel time. Every so often he would have to stop and let out another sneeze. A feeling of congestion built in his head. He wasn’t sick when he left the ship, and he hadn’t been in proximity to any humans for months so there wasn’t any chance he could have caught the common cold or a flu virus. If he had to shell out money for an insta-vaccine shot at a company owned colony pharmacy, he felt like he would cry.

Wait… vaccine.

A piece of tertiary information, shoved to the back of his mind, suddenly flared up in his mind’s eye with bold flashing lettering. VACCINATION.

Tom frantically loaded the visitor’s data and began looking for information regarding human physiology and vaccination. He came across a chapter marked in bold, which he should NOT have skimmed, and read with regretful intensity.

Dear Esteemed <Human> Guest, welcome to the Bichrome Company Residential Colony in the Epsilon Sector. We would like to take this time to inform you that due to an influx of denizens from planets housing Non-Human-Compatible-Life, all <Human> visitors who have not received Inoculation Epsilon-89 are at risk of contracting a number of <Non-Fatal> illnesses from the following <Species>.

Tom scanned the list <Species> and then found it…

Pneumian, Distinguished by latex like skin, large girth, and hostile disposition. Avoid contact. If you do find yourself having experienced physical contact with a Pneumian, ensure you are in an area with an obstruction above you and avoid open air locations because—

The congested feeling suddenly disappeared, replaced by a violent and completely disorienting rise of pressure. Tom’s field of vision elevated without warning, and in the reflection of a nearby window saw his head inflated thrice its original size like a weather balloons with cartoonish features. He struggled to maintain his balance on both feet, but his altered centre of gravity made that impossible. He teetered on his X axis like a spinning top losing its centrifugal force, before he predictably fell forward towards the hard concrete of the colony pavement below.

His chest fwoomped out, like twin airbags, and then his stomach followed suit. His upper torso seemed to swell larger than his bulbous facial features, which deflated slightly to give him a passing resemblance as a human as pressure settled into the larger cavity, and then settled again as his stomach billowed in all directions with reckless abandon. Oh god. He thoughts to himself, not a religious man, just panicked. I’m really turning into a balloon.

Tom tried in vain to raise his right arm high enough to glimpse at the screen of his utility console, but he felt the pressure coming back for a resurgence. His right arm and leg puffed up, destroying his balance for a second time. He fell but didn’t hit the ground. Whatever he was filling with must have been lighter than air or had gravitationally nullifying properties. He floated inches from the ground, right side up, and watched in horror as his violently inflating limbs fought the space-tested polymers of his clothes. An explosive tearing sound made Tom flinch, when he had the gall to look, his outfit had burst away from him, a clothing balloon popped and drifting away from the point of detonation like a second skin.

“Someoneph… helph!” Tom called out, but his cheeks had grown too rounded to grant him coherence. He tried to blow the air out, but it just produced a lewd sound as his lips were plumped and several times their original thickness with gaseous pressure.

A crowd had begun gathering. Tom was in a side street when he began inflating, but now he had cleared the lowest buildings of the colony street and the throngs of late-night shoppers were gathering to watch him. Some raised their utility consoles and began recording him, while others just talked to their neighbour in the crowd trying to deduce if this was a publicity stunt by Bichrome Corp. Tom whined, he didn’t see anyone calling for help, and as his left side pumped itself up to match his right, he began floating face-first into the central sky of the colony. Unable to see below him.

Is this how I go out? Tom’s thoughts were interrupted by a deep note of stretched rubber. It rang like thunder in his ears. He paused for a moment, and then knew it was his body. He had become a living balloon, and if he continued to inflate, he would likely reach the same conclusion all balloons eventually come to when they’re overfilled. I’m going to pop…!

Tom felt the metal and plastic that made up his Utility Console’s wrist bracer snap and fall away. He felt the coolness of the artificial oxygen on his now bare patch of arm and heard the hissing of gas as his arm inflated into a properly turgid, immovable mockery of its former image. His feet experienced the same sudden rush of wind, his shoes must have exploded. Save the hyper-tensile boxers pinching against his crotch on the lower hemisphere of the spherical parody of a human he had become, he was completely bare. He wondered if nudity laws were still strictly enforced if you broke them by over-inflating, or if they would still punish scraps of human rubber as they fluttered to the colony above and below.

He was just coming to terms with his fate when he felt his body hit a snag. The waistband of his boxers became caught against a metal protrusion from a towering colony structure, and he gently bobbed, thankful it had only snagged his underwear and not skewered his pressure sensitive body. Strangely, if he had to explode, he would want to go out from an overabundance of pressure. Being skewered like a cheap balloon after the party it was blown up for felt… weirdly indignant.

“There he is!” he heard a masculine voice from underneath him but couldn’t turn his head.

“Hit him with the suction cup, before he floats off.” A feminine voice called out.

Tom felt something cold press into his back and take hold. By the strange schlorping sound, he presumed it was the suction cup the voices had been talking about. There was a tugging motion, and Tom felt himself descending.

“Careful not to jostle him too much or he might—”

“Too late, he’s surging!”

“Mmph!” Tom cried out as his lips and cheeks completely robbed him of his ability to talk. His hands and feel felt tingly, and they blew up into spherical air-filled cavities that only had the barest resemblance to human extremities. His forearms and upper arms blew up, growing wider, and less protruding until it looked like Tom was merely a great, impossibly large balloon, with four rolls of insanely pressurized tyres where his arms and legs should be and a pair of large basketball orbs where his face was cradled. He felt like he was going to explode, burst, pop, kaboom. The slightest influx of pressure would set him off. If he was going to burst, he at least wished it would come in the form of a kiss or something more intimate that just popping in a strange colony far from home.

All his fears crystallized into a single moment. He felt his body heat up, sweat dripped from his taxed circumference to glisten him like a real, freshly made latex balloon. He scrunched his eyes shut and vibrated madly. The pressure rose, and rose, and rose. Hot steam jettisoned from his nostrils, ears, nipples, and belly button. Teeth gritted, he tried to hold on… and in a moment he…

FWWWWWWOOOOOOOOMPH!

He exploded… in size, doubling it, his bouncy gas-filled body hit the roof bellow with its expansion so hard it knocked the two security officers trying to wrangle him on to their backs. It was so dizzying, he rotated in the air like orb space monster in a video game and saw the officers below. They looked up at him, got to their feet, and made sure to impact his belly with another pair of suction devices.

The male officer laughed and said. “Humans never learn, guess they were right when they said your species was full of hot air. Let’s get you deflated big guy, and read the visitors notes next time!”