The Ill-mannered Door (humorous sci-fi)

37.1: Trouble in Little China

We passed through the wormhole over my house and then eventually through the other wormhole above Derek's kingdom flat to arrive back on Earth over his flat in Canada.

Derek hadn't been joking about the ethnicity of his neighborhood. A cursory look around revealed that we seemed to be the only people in the area that were from somewhere other than the Far East.

An older gentleman came out of one of the nearby flats to observe the flying ship that had just touched down in the road. Derek waved to him from the deck of the Bounty and called out, "Hello, Mr. Ling, just stopping by for a few minutes to take care of some things."

Mr. Ling stared at Derek and gave no real indication that he had understood. Oddly enough, he didn't seem terribly impressed by the sight of a flying sailing ship as Derek and I dropped down to the street.

We then jogged up the steps to Derek's flat, which turned out to be next door to Mr. Ling's.  An older woman came out of the door behind Mr. Ling and began to give him an earful. What she said to him I'll never know, but she pointed frequently at us and the ship, to which her husband replied with a shrug.

"So you do talk to your neighbors then?" I said to Derek after he'd unlocked his front door and we went inside.

"Talk to is about right. It's not like Mr. Ling understands a thing I'm saying, or maybe he does, but he doesn't let on."

"Then why do you bother speaking English to him?"

"I don't know, basic desire to connect with people running into my lack of desire to learn and maintain yet another language to do it for real, I guess."

"Yes, but there are billions of Chinese, and if your whole neighborhood is Chinese, then one would think it might be worth learning?"

"Look, I've forgotten more languages from backwater worlds than you even know exist. Nothing against Chinese, it just doesn't get me anything I need right now. Anyway, I'm gonna grab a shower. Make yourself comfortable. There might even be some food in the fridge, so help yourself."

I looked around the front room of Derek's flat, and spartan was the watchword. Actually, that was to understate things a bit. The Spartans likely would have suggested that he needed to look into acquiring a few things. So, given that I was a bit peckish, I decided to have a look in the kitchen.

Now, being a bachelor myself, I understand one's dependence on things like pizza. However, Derek appeared to have kept every pizza box that had ever crossed the threshold. There were piles of them strewn about on the counters and stacked precariously in one corner that I was sure would bury me if I strayed too near. After checking the contents of a few and finding nothing, I decided to try the refrigerator.

Inside the fridge I found a bottle of yellow mustard, some milk, and a lone pizza box. Close inspection revealed that the milk was nearly eight months past its pull date, so I moved on to peek inside the pizza box. And then quickly gave up and closed the door again.

It wasn't so much that the pizza remains I'd found within had a bit of fuzz on it, it was more accurate to say that the fuzz had a bit of what I believe used to be pizza on it. In any case, I was no longer hungry.

As I wandered back toward the living area, I could hear Derek's voice in the bedroom. His door was closed, and I couldn't make out the words, but it sounded as if he were speaking with someone on the phone.

I figured that he might be on the phone for a bit, and headed back to the other room. There was a large picture window looking out to the street below, and smashed upon the glass was a large, oddly colored fly. On the window underneath the squished carcass, someone had scrawled with a red marker, "How's that secret now?"

I made a mental note to not keep secrets from Derek, then turned my gaze back to the room in an effort to find somewhere to sit. There wasn't any furniture in evidence in the living room other than a four legged stool that currently only had three, so I decided to wander back outside rather than press my luck.

Mr. and Mrs. Ling were still having a conversation. Well, at least she was. Mr. Ling seemed to be mostly watching the ship and doing a bit more shrugging from time to time in response to whatever she was saying.

I figured I would at least attempt to be friendly, so approaching them I said, "Nimen hao!"

Both of their faces lit up and they began to chatter away at me simultaneously in Mandarin. I did a decent job of smiling and nodding for a bit before they finally realized I had no idea what they were saying. Not the foggiest.

You see, while I know and can also quite convincingly pronounce the greetings of several different languages, that is about the extent of my knowledge. Actually, that isn't quite true, as I can count to four in Russian and even as high as nine in a few others. Impressive, I know. So, while I can get people to start speaking to me in their language, which is a bit of a minor triumph for the language learner, it does tend to get awkward after that.

Thankfully, that was the precise moment when Derek came back out of his flat and joined us. He looked off though, and obviously lost in thought.

"Everything all right?" I asked him.

"What?" He said, snapping out of it. "Oh, yeah, fine."

I wasn't sure fine was the right word, but then he turned to the Chinese couple and said, "Okay, Mr. Ling, I'm leaving for California. Not really sure how long I'll be gone, but I'll see you when I get back, eh?"

Mr. Ling smiled and nodded, then we headed back toward the ship floating just over the middle of the street where a somewhat portly police officer stood with fists on ample hips, looking up at the Bounty disapprovingly.

When we approached the ship and made ready to climb aboard, she said, "You can't park this here."

Taking matters into my own hands, I replied, "Yes, quite right, we were just about to move it."

"Is this your boat?" She asked.

"Oh, no, it's--"

Derek quickly said, "Yes, it's his boat, officer. I keep telling him he can't park it here, but does he listen to me?"

She looked at Derek, then back at me and said, "Because if it is, I might have to write you a parking ticket. It's blocking the street. You can't park your boat in the middle of the street, eh?"

I began to say, "No, certainly n--"

When Derek smacked me on the arm and said, "See, I told you that you can't just park it anywhere you feel like!"

The officer nodded approvingly at Derek, then narrowed her eyes as she turned to me and said, "Take your friend's advice from now on, and get this thing out of my street, eh?"

"Yes, officer. Sorry, we'll move it right away," I nodded profusely and quickly climbed aboard after Derek who was busy shouting, "Barry, get us out of here!"

Once the officer had sped off in her three-wheeled parking enforcement vehicle, I asked Derek, "We're going to California? What's in California?"

"Lots of things."

"Yes, but specifically?"

"We need to go to the I.R.O. there," Derek said. When I looked confused, he continued with, "The Intragalactic Resources Office. They've got information we'll need to figure out where to find the queen."

"Oh, right then," I said, as if it all made perfect sense, figuring that things had to start making sense eventually. Didn't they?

After that, I tried to ask him about his apparent phone conversation and if he had received bad news of some sort, but he brushed it off as nothing and refused to talk about it further.

Perhaps a family member had taken ill or something, and if that were the case, I couldn't blame him for not wanting to talk about such things with me. We had only known each other for a short time, after all.

So, with my appetite starting to return after the terrible shock it had received from the sight of the fuzzy pizza, I left Derek to his thoughts and went below decks in search of food.