Haul Asteroid Ore, Charlie Brown!
[Sometimes I have a really stupid idea in my skull that won't go away until I write it. This is one of those]
The ore hauler Little Red-Haired Girl drifted in silent formation beside asteroid 2007 OR10-KX441, a carbonaceous rock tumbling in the darkness beyond Neptune. Out here, the Sun wasn’t a blazing star. It was just another bright one. You couldn’t even see Earth without a powerful telescope.
Charlie Brown guided the mining lasers with the practiced motions of someone who’d spent twenty years cutting ancient stone apart one kilogram at a time.
The comm crackled. “Laser drifted three centimeters.” said Snoopy.
Charlie sighed. “I know.”
“You were thinking.”
“I was.” Charlie Brown said, wistfully.
“You always do that.”
Charlie’s single gray hair floated around his head inside the helmet.
“I guess I do.”
Snoopy looked surprisingly different than he had as a puppy. The white fur had gone silver around the muzzle, and a bio-nano latticeweave wrapped around his skull where the neural interface connected to his cerebral cortex. His left eye had been replaced with a glossy black optic. Tiny speakers mounted near his collar translated his thoughts into speech.
The uplift surgery had been expensive.
“Worth every credit!” Charlie always said. Snoopy claimed he had been brilliant all along. The cybernetics merely gave everyone else the opportunity to appreciate it.
Chunks of nickel-iron drifted into the collection nets. Charlie watched, thoughtful.
“You ever think we’d wind up out here?” he asked Snoopy.
“I was expecting to become a famous World War One flying ace.”
“...Right.”
“The asteroid miner thing was Plan B.”
Charlie laughed. It echoed strangely through the suit.
“Did you hear about Lucy?” Charlie asked.
“Oh yes.” Snoopy sounded almost cheerful.
“They finally caught her.”
Charlie nodded, smile permeating his voice.
“North American Trade Union Senate ethics committee. Four hundred seventeen counts. Bribery. Election manipulation. Corporate kickbacks.”
“She really committed to the bit.” Snoopy said.
“They sent her to the martian Penal colonies.”
Charlie shook his head inside the bulky helmet.
“I remember when stealing the football was the worst thing she’d ever done.”
They watched the mining drones crawl over the asteroid like metallic ants. Charlie Brown smiled faintly.
“I got a message from Schroder.”
“The pianist?”
“The pianist. He played for Alpha Centaurian royalty.” Charlie Brown said, wistfully
“I saw.”
“Apparently they’re enormous.” Snoopy said, slowly checking the ore concentration.
“The royalty?”
“No, The pianos!”
Charlie frowned. “I always thought he’d become some sort of philosopher.”
“He did.” Snoopy’s cybernetics buzzed.
“He did?”
“He philosophizes through music. It was the only thing he was remotely good at.”
“I guess that’s close.”
“He still carries that copy of Linus’s blanket after…
Snoopy said nothing, but Charlie Brown could hear the sadness.
“He does?”
“Designer grav-weave. Custom woven. Costs more than this ship.”
Charlie nodded thoughtfully.
“That... honestly sounds like Schroder.”
Something clanged against the hull. The airlock opened.
Pigpen floated inside. A cloud of brown dust surrounded him.
Charlie stared.
“...Pigpen.”
“What?”
“You’re in vacuum.”
“I know.” Pigpen said, annoyed
“The dust.”
“I know.”
“How?”
Pigpen shrugged. “No idea.”
Snoopy sniffed.
“I hate to say it...”
“You can smell him?”
“I shouldn’t be able to.” he sneezed.
“But?”
“I absolutely can.” Snoopy gagged slightly
Pigpen looked offended.
“I shower.”
Charlie and Snoopy looked at each other.
“With what? Mud?”
“...Rude.”
After Pigpen floated away toward engineering, Snoopy leaned closer.
“He somehow contaminates vacuum.”
“I don’t think physics allows that.”
“It surrendered.”
The mining laser shut down for its cooling cycle. The ship was quiet. Charlie watched the distant stars.
“You ever hear from Patty?”
“Peppermint Patty?”
Charlie nodded.
“Sometimes.”
“Still on Earth?”
“NAT.”
“Still teaching?”
“Community athletics.”
Snoopy chuckled.
“And Marcie?”
“They still live together.”
“They ever...”
Charlie interrupted. “No. They’re just roommates, but they lean into it.”
Charlie smiled.
“Says it’s fashionable.”
“NATU’s are weird.”
“Apparently its fashionable to have an ambiguously romantic roommate now.”
“I don’t understand humans.”
Charlie looked sideways.
“You’ve met us.”
“I’ve endured you.” Snoopy said, grinning.
Charlie grew quiet again.
“We tried, you know.”
“You and Patty?”
“We did. I remember when she came clean about her crush. I was flabbergasted.”
Snoopy nodded.
“Don’t feel bad. Most men are oblivious.”
“I still feel bad about how it ended up. She was stifling. I needed space.”
“You got it.” Snoopy said, gesturing vaguely outside with his paw.
Charlie laughed.
The silence stretched.
“You know who I don’t miss?”
Charlie looked quizzical.
“Woodstock.”
“I thought you two were inseparable.”
“Everyone did.”
“Weren’t you?”
“Yes. Never in a good way though.”
Charlie looked confused.
“He followed me. Everywhere. I’d wake up? There he’d be. I’d take a nap? There he’d be. I’d be pretending to fly a Sopwith Camel...”
“There he’d be.” Charlie Brown chimed in. He frowned. “I thought you liked him.”
“I tolerated him. He chirped constantly. I didn’t even know what he was saying.”
“I don’t think he knew what he was saying.” Charlie Brown replied, laughing
“You never said anything.”
“What was I supposed to say? You’d never have understood me anyway. Besides, I I had a reputation.”
Charlie laughed so hard he nearly bumped the control console.
“That’s terrible.”
“He once followed me for three thousand kilometers.”
“I thought that was friendship.”
“It was harassment.”
The mining computer chimed. ORE HOLD: 97% FULL
Charlie reached for the controls. “Time to head home.”
“Home?”
“The refinery.” Charlie Brown clarified.
“Oh. I suppose that’s home now.”
Charlie looked out through the forward window.
Beyond the asteroid field, the stars filled every direction. The Sun was just another point among billions. Funny. As a kid, he’d thought the world was impossibly large. Now he’d crossed half the Solar System for a living. The world had turned out to be very small.
Snoopy settled into the copilot’s couch.
“You know...”
“What?”
“I can tell you still miss being a kid.”
Charlie didn’t answer immediately.
“...Sometimes.”
Snoopy wagged his tail.
“I don’t.”
Charlie looked over.
“No?”
“No.”
“I can talk. I have a fusion-powered dog bed. I no longer have to eat dry kibble.”
He paused.
“And Woodstock can’t find me.”
Charlie laughed one more time as the ore hauler fired its engines and slowly entered a Hohmann transfer orbit toward the distant lights of the Kuiper Belt refinery, carrying two old friends farther into the future than either of them had ever imagined.
Yes, men are oblivious.
I was in my mid forties when I realized Patty had a crush on Chuck.
This is nostalgically entertaining.