*   *   *

“He’s there,” the tech said. “His mind has gone. Brainwave patterns have completely altered. He’s no longer perceiving the hallucinations as hallucinations. He believes that they’re real.”

“All right, test subject has officially succumbed after thirty-seven days, fourteen hours, twelve minutes,” said another tech. “I’ve alerted the doctor.”

The first tech shook his head. “What an experiment to volunteer for.”

“We have to know how long our soldiers can hold out against the Rigellians,” the other said. “Their psychological torture is like nothing we’ve seen on any world.”

“Well, a salute to this guy, then. Because once we get his brain all straightened out, he’ll be one of the first to deploy to Rigel.”

The tech shuddered. “I think I’d rather stay here and hallucinate.”

“More Than Words” (in honor of Merriam Webster)
Science fiction
By David M. Fitzpatrick

“We have no relationship with the V’d’narians, Captain,” said Elena Moray, the ship’s civilian PR person. At least, that’s how she thought the captain saw her. He was a staunch military type, and she was anything but.

“And here we sit, about to meet them,” Captain Jefferson Mayfair replied.

The pair stood on the surface of the alien world. In the distance, the spires of a great city coiled skyward like a thousand distant springs. Behind them was their lander; above them, in orbit about the blue-green world, was their ship.

“And we’re out this far... why?” the captain asked.

“The V’d’narians demanded it, Captain,” she said. “They’re somewhat xenophobic. And very proud of their culture. Our first contact with them was with the computer translator, of course, but... well, it offended them.”

“Offended by being able to communicate,” the captain mused, brow furrowed in thought. “How bizarre.”

He was old and sagely, his face weathered by decades of space travel to a thousand worlds. He reminded Elena of her father, down to the square jaw and whitening hair, so there was that. Not just in how he looked, but in his gruff demeanor—like someone who wasn’t interested in anything but himself. Just like her father: military, uninspired, by the book, rigid hierarchy, nothing more. No room for personal connections. It made her a bit sick to her stomach to be around him.

Mayfair turned to regard the attractive young woman. “So how do we communicate with them?”

“Well... the translator, of course. I mean... we have no other way.”

“Our only way to talk to them is a way that offends them, but we have no choice,” he echoed, as if trying the facts on for size. “And they’re very proud of their culture.”

“That’s correct.” He was bugging her. He was very like her father—repeating information she’d already relayed, and soon he’d slip back into not giving a crap. Military men were all the same. If it didn’t matter to her father, he didn’t care beyond doing his job and saluting the next superior up the chain of command.

“You seem like an intelligent young woman,” Mayfair suddenly said, turning and locking his dark eyes onto her wide blue ones.

She felt herself redden with embarrassment—that he was looking right at her, but also because she’d been caught stereotyping him in her mind. “I... I hope so, Captain.”

“You specialize in linguistics?”

“It’s my secondary specialty. My primary is in first contacts. But this is different. We have to respect them, respect their culture, respect their language... and, to be honest, I don’t quite know how to do that.”

“Well, let’s think about it,” he said, and he began pacing before her. “Go back in time a thousand years—before computers, before widespread understanding of our world’s languages. If two travelers who had no language in common met on the road, how would they have communicated?”

“I suppose they’d have used common gestures and maybe come up with common words they’d agree to—perhaps a word from the language of one, and a word from the other. But that won’t work here. The V’d’narians place such esteem on their culture and language, and they’re so interested in honesty and integrity, that I doubt they’d go for that.”

Mayfair bit his lip. “All right, how about later on in our history? What came between no universal communication and computers doing real-time translating?”

Elena shrugged. “I guess that would be dictionaries. A typical translation dictionary let you look up a word in either of two languages and find out the word in the other language. But that’s essentially what we’re doing with the computers.”

“No, we’re not,” Mayfair said with a grin. “We’re letting machines do it for us. No effort on our part, no respect for their language and their culture—communication becomes just something we do, with no glory, no cleverness, no true meeting of the minds.”

Elena’s mind raced. “You might be on to something, sir. If we could have an old-style dictionary, we could turn this into a meeting of mutual respect and discovery about each other.”

Mayfair nodded. “We have a while before our V’d’narian friends arrive. Can you make that happen?”

Elena’s heart beat with excitement. “I can have the dictionary sent to our portable computers.”

He frowned. “I think we need to go older school, Ms. Moray.”

She grinned. “I think you’re right, sir.”

It took some wrangling, but soon another lander arrived with hundreds of printed pages: an actual Terran-V’d’narian dictionary. The entourage from the distant city was flying in as Mayfair and Elena set up the meeting table and prepared to make the summit one for the ages.

“Not bad, Ms. Moray,” Mayfair said.

Now that was something her father never would have said. In the same way that she’d honor the V’d’narians and not take them for granted, Elena knew she’d thereafter treat Mayfair with the same respect.

She had already looked up the greeting, and when the delegates stepped out of their small craft—purple skin, giant eyes studying the humans, rugged black horns on their heads—she flipped a few pages for dramatic effect, and then faced them.

“Sen eg bothan’ani,” she said. “Alkeeom’lar.”

Their big eyes widened in a clearly impressed fashion.

Elena smiled to herself. So far, so good. Time to teach the V’d’narians how to use the dictionary.

“Winning by Losing” (in honor of Milton Bradley)
Science fiction
By David M. Fitzpatrick

It was always fun to play with Mektar. He was an android serving on board our starship, and he was a hell of a guy. And there wasn’t much he couldn’t do. Walking computer, crackerjack star pilot, expert in a zillion styles of armed and unarmed combat from all over the galaxy, and possessed of the widest range of artistic and musical talents anyone had ever seen.

We were always trying to come up with ways to mess with him, but they always failed. Unlike in science fiction, he wasn’t an emotionless machine—but then he wasn’t over the top with his emotions either. He was never mean and he was usually happy, but he had the strangest desire: to not win all the time when he played games with us.

I was always trying to come up with something—anything—that he wasn’t perfect at, but never did. We’d played card games like poker and athletic games like basketball with him, and he was always unbeatable. And he always felt bad about walloping us in whatever game we’d play. Of course, he never let us win, either.

Then one day it hit me: old-school games. I wondered if we could get him with something that relied on a little less skill and a little more luck, so I taught him Yahtzee! I figured that, with dice and specific things to roll, he’d get boxed in. Yeah, not quite. He still worked the numbers and cleaned everyone out every time. He became quite a Yahtzee! champion, and he never lost.

Next came Battleship, but once he scored a hit, he’d quickly sink everything in sight. So soon I had the replicator spitting out classic games left and right. Don’t Break the Ice, Jenga, Operation, Connect Four, Hungry Hungry Hippos, Perfection, Stratego—he aced them all.

You’d think anyone who won all the time would be a bit smug—arrogant, even—but Mektar wasn’t like that. I think it truly bothered him that he never lost. Losing, he’d once told me, was part of the human condition, and he couldn’t experience it because he was so darn good at everything. It seems strange to want to lose, but imagine how boring it would be if you never did.

And then I found a game I remembered from my childhood—a centuries-old classic. Right away, I knew it was the one. I replicated it and set up the game.

“Mektar,” I said, “I think you’ve met your match. Come play this new game with me.”

“I’d love to,” he replied, all polite and proper as he usually was. “But I fear you’ll only feel frustration at losing—and I will feel equal frustration in winning.”

“We’ll see,” I told him.

As usual, a crowd gathered, and it didn’t take long for everyone to be cheering me on. With every card I drew, I advanced that many spaces of that color. He did the same, but the deck was working in my favor. I raced steadily ahead of him through the Peppermint Forest and the Licorice Castle, through the Molasses Swamp and the Gumdrop Mountains, and beyond the Lollipop Woods and Gingerbread Plum Trees to finally reach Candy Castle and win the game. The gathered crowd cheered, and Mektar looked bewildered.

“Congratulations on your victory,” he said, “but I must object to the game play. Candy Land requires no skill. It is entirely based on the random drawing of the cards, with no strategy on the part of the player. It appears to be designed to teach colors to very young children.”

“All true,” I said, “but how does it feel to have lost a game?”

He thought about it. “It’s... exhilarating. Do you have more?”

I replicated The Game of Life and we got a group of people together. Mektar came in last, bankrupt and a tiny plastic car full of kids. But judging from the ear-to-ear grin on his face, I could tell he was having the time of his life.

David M. Fitzpatrick is a fiction writer in Maine, USA. His many short stories have appeared in print magazines and anthologies around the world. He writes for a newspaper, writes fiction, edits anthologies, and teaches creative writing. Visit him at www.fitz42.net/writer to learn more.