Gum of the Gods

In 2245, world wide domination had arrived in the form of a huge corporate buyout. The top 5 companies on the infamous 'Forbes 500' list were office supply chains, which banded together in an unprecedented merger and changed the company name to Office Globicon.

Then, very quietly, they bought out every nation on the planet.

Worldwide reaction was surprisingly muted, the few uprisings and attempts to take back control quickly thwarted. The stock market began to hum along with a healthy momentum not seen in since the days of fossil fuels and bribed politicians. In a stretch of Siberian wasteland a new warehouse was being constructed and people who had once been starving the desert were now working in the snow. Unemployment became a thing of the past - Office Globicon had enough work for everyone, whether they wanted it or not.

Small, nomadic tribes of dissidents began to form and came to settle along the Canadian seaboard. Office Globicon took little notice as they all agreed that no army, no matter how naively optimistic and driven, could threaten the stranglehold they had on the world.

For the next 20 years, the regime of Office Globicon grew unchecked. Resentment grew, along with Globicon's holdings, and soon the small nomadic tribes organized themselves into a small army of naively optimistic and driven revolutionaries.

The founding members were owners of office supply stores before they had been either bought or forced out of business. The rest of the army was comprised primarily of former environmental volunteers and young college students who still thought it was possible (or worthwhile, for that matter) to save the world.

There was much debate over what the revolutionaries should call themselves. A week long conference was held to come up with the perfect name to have emblazoned on tee-shirts, tote bags, and snow globes. Finally, the group agreed on a name that wouldn't paint them as crazy militants out to destroy the world, or luddites determined to deliver the world back to the stone age. They were to be knows as the Society of Upset Citizens Keeping Earth Real. It wasn't until they were staring at their freshly printed tee shirts that they realized it spelled SUCKER.

'Oh well,' one infuriatingly optimistic volunteer quipped, 'at least there'll be another member born every minute.'

The revolutionaries launched their attack on the world headquarters of Office Globicon in downtown Toner City. After a week of sporadic fighting, SUCKER pulled out their big card - a cold fusion bomb, which was aimed at the country-sized warehouse in Siberia.

A tense stand off ensued ... for about thirty seconds. Office Globicon executives sat uncomfortably around their mahogany table muttering under their breath and shifting their weight from one buttock to the other, unsure of what to do. They ultimately decided it was much easier to sit and do nothing since then they couldn't be blamed for doing the wrong thing.

The bomb was dropped and the warehouse obliterated, catapulting over a billion tons of office supplies into the stratosphere. It was blasted out with such force that it broke out of Earth's atmosphere. The cluster hadn't been strong or fast enough to escape Earth's gravitational pull and the billions of tons of office supplies settled into a clumsy ring of paperclips, staple removers, binder clips and push pins.

Meanwhile, Captain McDowell and the crew of the OG Odessa were orbiting in space after having been part of a huge effort launched ten years earlier to clean up Earth's cosmic back yard. Since the dawn of space travel, mankind had been launching ships that hurled parts into space. It had been a topic of much embarrassment that when aliens finally did make first contact with Earth it was only to demand the immediate 'tidying up' of Earth's celestial backyard as they were trying to sell their planet in a galaxy nearby and the mess was bringing down property values. At first, the leaders of Earth insisted that it wasn't space junk floating around, but antiques. 'A visual timeline of Earth Space Travel and Communication', they beamed. The aliens were not impressed and politely reminded the human race that they could have simply vaporized the entire area and been done with it. They suggested the floating museum be relocated somewhere terrestrial .... and quickly. They had potential buyers coming in from Omniarc Six.

The OG Odessa had just spent three tireless years on the mission and were eagerly awaiting instructions on re-entry as the bomb was deployed. The blast wave hurtled the surprised ship through space, where it came to a full stop about 6000 light years away. As the crew worked to determine their exact location, they were surprised to see the sloppy ring of metal bits now circling lazily around Earth. Captain McDowell launched a communication beacon towards Earth and embedded a message in it, letting Mission Control know their current situation. The Odessa had been equipped with a Communications Array that had been state of the art four years prior to the launch. Super sonic ion data encoding notwithstanding, it would still take time for them to find out what was going on back home.

While disappointed to be stuck on the ship for at least another two weeks, and that was assuming they could scrape together enough hydrogen to fire up the warp engines one more time, the crew was calm and relaxed. They were lucky enough to still be in the known galaxy and were even treated to a spectacular view of the Crab Nebula.

The Odessa was a relaxed ship, the crew small and close-knit. Because of this, ensigns were usually left in charge on night shifts when the ship was on a routine mission. On the night Ensign Raleigh had been assigned to oversee things, he was incredibly anxious to have a smooth flight. Unfortunately, the scans Ensign Nobel had come to him with threatened any hope smooth sailing.

'This can't be right,' Ensign Raleigh muttered under his breath.

'Oh, it is,' Ensign Nobel assured him, 'Should we wake Captain McDowell?'

Raleigh pondered the question. The relaxed attitude of the ship aside, Captain McDowell could be a formidable person - especially when the ship's immediate future was at stake. The choice seemed clear considering scans of the fast approaching horizon depicted one of the most dreaded pitfalls of space travel: The Periodic Table of Elements.

The Table had been discovered on one of the first deep space missions. It was, as its name implied, a vast table, spanning several million light years in each direction, with all the elements neatly organized, just as the table appeared on Earth. (Contrary to popular belief, the table had not been constructed by man, but merely duplicated.) The table itself served as a stockpile - spewing out bits of this and that into the universe, populating planets and galaxies. From the top of its shiny surface, great columns of concentrated solids, liquids and gasses churned out into space. The table periodically appeared in different places throughout space and a quick check of the regular time table of appearances proved that this was indeed the right time and place for it to appear.

There was no way the ship could fly above it - as soon as a ship passed over an element, the space around them would develop concentrations of the respective element so high the ship itself would be changed. Given its length and width a change of course seemed the only option.

Ensign Raleigh sighed and ran his hands over his face, lamenting the idea of waking the captain in the middle of the night to inform her that they had to make a huge course change in order to fly around something they could have known would be there had they only checked the appropriate journals.

'I suppose we have no choice,' Ensign Raleigh slumped back into his chair and looked miserably at the map on the wall monitor.

'We could fly ,' Ensign Nobel suggested cautiously, 'beneath it.'

'Could we?' Ensign Raleigh eyed Nobel with skeptical enthusiasm. The idea of having encountered this problem and then taken a course of action to correct it without sacrificing any extra time or resources would definitely reflect favorably on the two lowly ensigns.

'Yes,' Nobel offered enthusiastically and, hitting the pad next to him, brought up a visual scan of the table itself. 'This is from the archives,' Nobel said, 'While it's true that we could never survive flying above the table, scans of the space here,' he motioned towards the dark space beneath the table, 'don't show any sort of spatial distortion at all. There's no reason to think we couldn't simply fly beneath it.'

'Has it ever been done before?'

'Well, no,' Nobel admitted, 'But only because other missions have planned around this sort of thing.'

Ensign Raleigh ignored this last comment. He slowly reviewed the scans taken from beneath the table, which confirmed Ensign Nobel's initial assessment. Raleigh paused for a moment, appearing to be in deep thought, concealing the fact that he was imagining the captain's face once she'd woken up in the morning to find that disaster had been wisely averted. He gave Nobel the nod to go ahead with his plan and then recorded the details into the Captain's log. He was unable to hide the tone of pride and smugness from his voice, not that he tried very hard.

The next two hours slipped by deceptively easily. Ensign Vasey had joined Nobel and Raleigh on the Bridge and they had watched in awe as the Periodically Appearing Periodic Table of Elements filled the screen in front of them. They held their breath as the ship slowly lumbered beneath the table, suddenly plunged into darkness.

After a few moments of watching the navigation screen and scans which returned nothing but the sweet echoes of empty space, they entertained the idea of a celebratory drink in the officer's lounge, leaving the navigation on auto pilot and sensors to take care of the details. Vasey was the only one to linger at her post.

'Maybe one of us should stay behind, just to keep an eye on things?'

'Don't be ridiculous' Ensign Raleigh scoffed, 'Don't you trust Nobel's work? Or do you want to be the only one at the controls should the captain come in?' He eyed her suspiciously.

'No, of course not!' she was genuinely offended at the idea, and followed them without further argument.

They were in the middle of their toast when the ship came to a sudden and violent stop, sending Ensign Vasey hurtling head over heels into the wall. By the time she struggled back up to her feet, she could hear her fellow celebrators running towards the Bridge

The Captain was making her way towards the main deck as well. Immediately after the ship stopped, she picked herself up from the floor and stumbled over to the intercom on her wall, where her hails went unanswered before making her way to the Bridge.

Ensigns Raleigh, Nobel and Vasey were all on deck by the time she arrived. Captain McDowell started to demand an explanation for not responding to her hails until she noticed the view screen was entirely black.

'What's going on?' she asked, worried they had somehow managed to fly the ship into a black hole, an idea which normally, she would have dismissed as totally implausible. However, being tossed through space and landing 6000 light years from home only to find out that your home planet now has a new ring of tiny metal pieces floating around it has a way of broadening your perspective.

Her question was met with an awkward silence which Ensign Raleigh broke, quickly trying to explain about the Periodic Table and their decision to fly beneath it.

Captain McDowell stared at Ensign Raleigh for a moment before asking, 'So why have we stopped?'

Ensign Raleigh shifted his weight from one leg to the other under her steely gaze. Behind him, Ensign Nobel was quickly scanning their surrounding space and became increasingly astonished of the findings. 'Um, Captain,' he said in a small voice.

'Yes?' McDowell's eyes continuing to bore holes into the increasingly uncomfortable Ensign Raleigh.

'I think you should look at this.'

Whatever had impeded their progress seemed to have a complex molecular makeup. Strange looking chains of complex sugars were listed on the screen. The surface scan revealed pitted valleys and sharp peaks, along with rounded sides. The surface area seemed small according to long distance scans - perhaps only slightly larger than the ship itself.

'It looks like...' Captain McDowell paused, concentrating on the data scrolling quickly along the screen, 'gum.'

Captain McDowell looked Ensign Raleigh straight in the eye. 'I am going to go back to my quarters,' she said in a chillingly even tone, 'Be ready with a full report within the hour.'

Back at the monitors, both ensigns were going over the data and throwing puzzled sidelong glances at each other. Ensign Vasey came out from behind her own console, where she'd been watching the conversation between the other two and the Captain.

'Thanks for all your help Vasey,' Ensign Raleigh sneered.

'Thanks for all your help when I was thrown halfway across the officer's lounge,' she snapped back.

The two stared at each other until Nobel broke the seething silence. 'Look,' his voice sounded tired and thin, 'We have to come up with some answers for Captain McDowell pretty soon so do you think we could get to work?' His question was met with sheepish looks and the three crowded around Ensign Nobel's monitor.

An hour later, Captain McDowell and the rest of the crew were assembled on the Bridge and anxiously awaiting the report of the three young ensigns. Ensign Raleigh cleared his throat with an uncomfortable cough and sketched out the details for newly awoken crew members. He quickly outlined their current situation and provided the crew with a complete picture of the chemical makeup of the gum they were currently stuck in, all the way down to the flavor, which happened to be peppermint.

'Okay,' Captain McDowell stood up, leaning on the back of her chair and facing the crew and trying not to look at disheartened as she felt. 'So we know what we're stuck in, but do we know how to get out?'

Lieutenant Wu spoke first, 'When I was little, my mom got gum out of my sister's hair with peanut butter.'

For a moment no one said anything. All heads turned to look at the Captain who, in turn was staring at Lieutenant Wu. Lieutenant Wu was busy wishing he had stayed in his holographic pyjamas so he'd be able to literally disappear.

Ensign Raleigh broke the silence, snapping, 'This isn't gum in someone's hair, Wu!'

Captain McDowell's voice lashed out like a whip, 'Well, then what's YOUR idea? Listen,' McDowell let her eyes slowly wander over each crew member, 'We need every idea we can get.' She let her eyes fall softly on Lieutenant Wu, who was still shifting nervously, 'While it's true that this isn't exactly the same situation,' her eyes darted quickly to Raleigh, 'the principle still holds true. We know that peanut butter gets gum out of hair ... now we just need to figure out how to get it off our hull.'

'We could chip it off,' Officer Syndon offered.

McDowell shook her head, 'Too much of a chance of chipping the hull. We're better off trying to figure out how to extract ourselves as opposed to breaking free.'

'So you want to soften it somehow?' Sergeant Dunn asked.

'Well, then we're back to the peanut butter solution,' Lieutenant Wu said with a thoughtful sigh.

'I think we'll need something a bit stronger than peanut butter,' the captain tapped a finger against her lips thoughtfully, 'How much oil do we have on board? The stuff we use for the docking ports.'

'Not enough,' Sergeant Dunn, who knew about such things, informed her. 'What we do have we need for the landing gear once we get home.'

'We have a few thousand gallons of olive oil down in the mess hall, Captain,' Lieutenant Commander Collins offered.

McDowell nodded thoughtfully. She dismissed the crew and motioned her Science and First Officers into her Ready Room.

Once they were settled, Captain McDowell sighed loudly and stared up at her two most trusted crew members with a look of unashamed exasperation. 'What are we going to do?'

Officer Elliot, the Science Officer, responded first, 'Using an oil based product could work,' she said in a calm, even voice, 'But we would need to send a few crew members out to inject it into the mass itself if we want to completely dislodge it.'

First Officer Tennyson leaned forward in his chair, resting his elbows on his pointy knees, 'How doable is this?'

Officer Elliot tucked a wayward red curl behind her ear before answering, 'Based on the information I've seen, we'd stand a good chance of succeeding.'

'And if we don't?' McDowell implored.

'Then the mass would simply expand and attach itself to more of the ship.'

The three officers sat in an uncomfortable silence.

Tennyson finally looked up, 'But won't the oil prevent the gum from adhering?'

Officer Elliot shrugged, 'Assuming this really is just gum, I would say yes.' She paused a moment before continuing, 'But I think the one thing we can know for certain is that we can't take anything for granted. Regardless of what we ultimately decide to do, we should send a small team out to get a sample of what's out there.'

' With all the scans we have?' Captain McDowell was wary to have an away team strolling around on a substance they knew precious little about.

'The scans won't be enough,' Officer Elliot argued, 'When we get back home, which I think we will, people are going to want to know where this came from. If we can get a sample, and then a dental impression or print fragment or some other kind of evidence as to the identity of whatever it was that pushed it onto the bottom of the table ... well, can you imagine what kind of discovery that would be? '

After a long moment, Captain McDowell finally spoke, 'Tennyson, start gathering a team for the away mission and see how much oil we have.' She turned to Officer Elliot, 'You get to work on those scans. I don't want to send anyone out until we know exactly what we're dealing with.'

Once the two had left, Captain McDowell hit the small control panel on her desk. 'Captain's log'. she paused, searching for the right words before realizing there weren't any. 'Stuck in gum.'

Elsewhere on the ship, things were getting underway. Officer Elliot had holed up in her quarters reviewing the scans, the staff was scrambling to assemble every drum of oil they could get their hands on and Officer Tennyson was busy grabbing crew members for the mission. Members of the crew without assignments were trawling around the ship checking the hull and looking out their windows at the mass that surrounded the ship almost entirely on one side.

Later, Officer Elliot found herself back in the captain's small office. They stared at each other for a moment after Elliot had given her final recommendation to go ahead and send a crew out, get the sample and then inject the gum at every meter.

'There's one more thing,' Officer Elliot settled into her chair and gave the Captain a cautiously optimistic look.

'Tell me it's good news,' McDowell smiled ruefully.

'It is actually,' Officer Elliot's face lit up with a brief smile before returning to her normal stoicism, 'Ask me what element we're sitting under.'

Captain McDowell eyed her Science Officer a bit skeptically. 'What element are we sitting under?' she asked.

'Hydrogen,' Officer Elliot's smile came back with dazzling brilliance, 'As I'm sure you know, the closer an element is to the Table when you gather it, the more potent and concentrated it is.'

McDowell nodded.

'If we could just gather some of the hydrogen coming directly off the Table, then we'd have no problem firing up the warp core and making it home in half the time it would normally take it. And we wouldn't have to deplete any of our on board sources for it, either.'

Captain McDowell considered the idea for a moment and then asked, 'How do you propose we get the hydrogen? We can't send an away team, as soon as they hit the Hydrogen Column, they'll be vaporized. Anything we send into it will be.'

'Well, I've thought of that,' Officer Elliot brought out a schematic of the warp core and another from Maintenance. She spread the warp core schematic out first and pointed to a long rubber like hose stretching out of one side, 'This is our warp core. Notice the hose leading off the side,' she brought out the other diagram and spread it out, 'This is from Maintenance.'

'This is a vacuum cleaner,' Captain McDowell's voice was tired.

'Exactly! All we need to do is fit this onto the towing arm we use for the collecting debris...'

'Space Antiques,' Captain McDowell corrected.

'Yes, of course,' Officer Elliot bit the inside of her cheek, 'We can attach it to the towing arm and just vacuum what we need directly into the warp core.'

The captain smiled happily at the officer, 'So then how do we get alongside the column?'

'Well, I was thinking we could drill a hole -'

'I am not going to drill through The Periodic Table of Elements,' Captain McDowell cut her off.

Officer Elliot's face fell, 'Captain ...,' she began.

'I am NOT drilling a hole into the Period Table of Elements,' Captain McDowell exclaimed, slightly alarmed.

'But we could get home in half the time!'

'Listen,' she cast the officer a soothing glance and softened her voice, 'If we're sitting under Hydrogen, then that means we must be somewhere near the edge of the table. Once we're unstuck we can simply back up and get as close as we can to the edge and gather the hydrogen from there. '

Officer Elliot's smiled rather sheepishly, 'Yes, of course, Captain.'

'We all want to get home, Officer Elliot,' Captain McDowell stood up and walked to the door, 'But let's do try to keep our wits about us.'

Once the away team had been assembled and briefed, the Captain assembled the crew on the Bridge once again. Excited at the prospect of gathering some concentrated hydrogen in order to speed up the journey home, the Maintenance and Engineering staff ran to begin the needed modifications immediately. The away team was sent out, armed with modified pesticide equipment filled with a mixture of vegetable, canola and olive oils along with a small amount of creamed peanut butter for good measure. The hose attachments had been equipped with a long syringe at the end so they could easily inject the slick mixture into the gum.

Captain McDowell watched the scans and, on a smaller screen, checked for news from Earth. Their first message had been received and news that had been transmitted directly after the blast was beginning to filter in. From the sketchy details she was receiving, she knew that it was safe for them to return. The blast had indeed been localized and while Siberia was, for the most part, a thing of the past, the rest of the planet had been left wholly intact.

Outside the ship, Ensigns Vasey and Sanders were with Lieutenant Harris. As soon as the air lock opened and they were confronted with the distended and slightly grey horizon, they gasped.

'I can't believe this is actually gum,' Ensign Sanders said, amazed. 'Where could it have come from?'

'Can we please not think about that while we're walking around out here?' Lieutenant Harris had felt a bit queasy at the idea of their ship being stuck in something that had once been inside someone's mouth.

Vasey set foot on the plasticine surface first.

'It's sort of,' she searched for the right word, 'squishy.' She turned back to her, 'Who has the specimen jar?'

'I do,' Lieutenant Harris stepped forward and immediately lost his footing. The two ensigns hoisted him back up and set about collecting their sample. The surface was sticky with sporadic patches of slickness, the origins of which no one chose to think about in any great detail. Ensign Vasey bent down and began to cut away a section of the gum, shoving it quickly into the jar and sealing the lid tight. Although her hands were protected by the thick, bubble tipped gloves of her space suit, she couldn't help wishing she could wash her hands.

'Okay,' she stood and unhooked the nozzle from the oil tank strapped to her back, 'Let's start dislodging ourselves from this mess.'

Once the away team was done and back on board, the ship began to cautiously fire up its thrusters. The OG Odessa shook and strained against its sticky captor and, after a few tense moments, finally broke free. An audible sigh of relief swept through the crew and Captain McDowell made no attempts to hide her own relief. The ship quickly dove deeper and then began backing up to the edge of the table which, as it happened, was less than a light year away. If Ensigns Raleigh, Nobel and Vasey had only lingered at their work stations for a few more moments. they would have seen the gummy obstruction.

As the Odessa hovered near the huge column of hydrogen that stood without end in front of them, Engineering fired up the modified towing arm and, once again, the crew held its collective breath. The hydrogen particles slid reluctantly down the vacuum tube and settled into the warp core. Once inside the core, the higher concentrations of hydrogen began to react violently with the particles already swimming around. The entire core began to shake.

'Cut the hose!' the Chief Engineer yelled.

Three men immediately began to wrestle with the hose jutting out of the core and Officer Wright leapt for the vacuum canister they had soldered to the side and slapped the power switch.

The reaction inside the core was underway and showed no signs of stopping. The entire ship shook and convulsed, and the warp core itself began to moan and strain under the pressure. Chief Engineer Lee slammed his hand against the engage button as soon as he saw the seams on the core begin to shake.

The OG Odessa achieved warp speed within six milliseconds - the fastest recorded time ever.

Six days later they made their way through the same asteroid belt they had been cleaning up only a week before. As soon as Captain McDowell saw Pluto approaching she hailed Earth. She was surprised to see a bespectacled man in a dirty tee shirt answer the hail.

'This is Captain McDowell,' she eyed the man suspiciously.

'Captain McDowell!' The man grinned widely and nodded, 'We've been wondering when your crew would turn back up. I'm sure you've heard about what's been going on here ... and of course, noticed the new ring.'

'Of course', she said dryly.

'Yes, well,' he licked his lips nervously, 'You're probably wondering exactly who I am. My name is Duncan Bodden and I was with the revolutionary army that helped ... well, you see, while you were gone, we had a bit of an altercation down here...'

'I saw the news bulletins', she informed him.

'Oh, well, then you probably know there have been some changes, but nothing your crew won't be able to adapt to.' Duncan hedged for a moment, eyeing her desk with interest, ' More importantly, we've received your message and logs over the past few days and we're very interested in what you've brought back for us.'

Captain McDowell tapped her index finger on the specimen jar. 'We've brought back a sample. Hopefully, it will give you all the answers you need.'

'I just can't tell you how proud we are of you and your crew, Captain.'

'Well, we're just happy to get back home.'

'Of course you are!' Duncan's voice rose and he smiled broadly, filling her small screen with his pink, fleshy face. 'Were you able to finish your original mission, by the way? Cleaning up that asteroid belt?'

Captain McDowell nodded, 'No problem there. We just passed through it again on our way back and everything looks fine. I think the aliens will be quite pleased.'

'Okay then,' Duncan smiled again and leaned forward, giving Captain McDowell a close-up of his jaw and right ear. She noticed with some disgust that he had terrible ear wax. Duncan's face filled the screen again and he continued, 'I'm just sending over some information for you and the crew - just a synopsis of what's beenoesn't say in any of the reports and I'm just curious, why does your shirt say SUCKER?