The Good Ship Bison

The Good Ship Bison

Copyright July 2023 by Fit529 Dotcom

Started 5/1/2022 Last Edit: 7/21/2023

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Disclaimers: While some people in this story are high school seniors, ALL PERSONS ARE OVER 18, since the ship has a priority to keep everything legal and proper, to protect those onboard. No force is used on anyone, that's repugnant. While some mind control aspects are described, it's the feel-good kind, the ship protecting itself from bad-guys, promoting the 'general well-being'.

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I'm not going to describe how I came to own a spaceship since that's still something I want to keep to myself. I will say it was a combination of demonstrating good ethics on my part, the kindness of a non-human, and a heaping dose of good luck.

The start of my story comes in February of 2022, and if the events here don't match your memory of history, well, as best I can tell from my limited multiverse theory and the Immortal Abiding Lebowski, "Yeah? Well, you know, that's just like uh, your opinion, man."

I was a high school senior at Valley High in Modesto, California, making pretty good grades despite being very mildly autistic in an Asperger's way, a fair amount of ADHD, and a huge case of being horny.

But, running cross country and track, playing french horn in band, and singing bass in advanced chorus all helped me keep my mind off what I wasn't doing but wanted to.

Oh, and I had a girlfriend at the time, Alice. She ran track with me, was fun to hang around with, and as I noted in my journal at the time, she was better looking than I was. I'm not going to say I was an 'average guy', since I'm convinced that's both not true of me or really true of anyone. I was lucky to have found Alice, and her me, so I did feel pretty lucky on that front.

I'm not saying either of us were shy wallflowers, but she was definitely the more so. That shyness was definite in the physical stuff, with me. I noticed things - she was pretty outgoing with friends but restrained in groups, like me.

In terms of overall compatibility, liking to do the same things, watch the same shows, that kind of thing. We didn't overlap about everything, but we had enough in common to enjoy each other at least... most of the time.

We'd been 'going out' for over a year, but we'd only done "it" a couple of times, maybe ten, since the late summer when we both had our 18th birthdays and all the celebrations that went with that.

In the months since, it'd been really sporadic, and mostly confined to an occasional BJ. Despite my stated willingness to be equally helpful on her, she was shy that way - and I think pretty shy/nervous in general about nudity. We were adults, but it didn't matter, she was pretty uptight.

I wanted more, FAR more, with her, but I just had to be patient. And, I was.

But, I did put my foot in my mouth. And I tried to hard - I didn't know when she wanted to drop a topic for a reason, mostly because she didn't tell me, and I was profoundly clueless about some kinds of relationship stuff.

This was understandable - I was new at it.

In retrospect, one over-trying thing was trying to reassure her about being beautiful. I think she saw it as either trying to get into her pants (okay, partially was) and thus I was lying (I wasn't), or that she really was bad looking somehow and I was protesting too much.

Alice had NO problems about being pretty. She was nicely shaped (big) on top, a lot more there than I needed, but hey, I figured you get what you get with no choices, and maybe if I told her it was beautiful she wouldn't be embarrassed... or something.

I couldn't displace her worries. She would sometimes start out interested and enthusiastic, but then I think she started thinking too much about her own insecurities and that would kill the mood.

Our joinings were really infrequent, mostly 'special occasions' she decided were worth it.

Granted, at that point I wasn't the most mature guy, either.

I had friends, but I liked science stuff and geeked out over anime and fusion power and all sorts of science stuff that had pretty much nothing to do with sports.

So, yeah, I wasn't exactly normal, but I was in the range of normal in a geeky way. Given that so much has been written about me in historical contexts, I hesitate to disagree with them, but I'm pretty sure I knew who I was since it was my life I was living.

== Takeoff ==

My life story really started to get interesting, and far more public, on that infamous late February day.

This was at least several days after I got the ship (yes, purposeful vagueness. Not going to reveal why) and I'd already been onboard as the owner. At this point, I'd been introduced already to the artificial intelligence that runs the ship. He/She had to have a name, I had firmly decided, so I chose an ambiguously gendered name, 'Pat'.

Originally, "PAT" came from the fact that I had to pat the door-handle, and the console sensor, etc., to turn anything on. No other human on Earth can operate any part of the ship, according to Pat, so I don't have to worry about someone stealing it.

The downside was a limitation of having to be onboard most of the time. That's been, well, most of my life, and will be, probably. I could be resentful, but it isn't so bad in the larger context of what I can do for humanity, as well as my 'cage' being about the size of a 7-story cube-shaped office building (though the ship has 4 levels)

At that point, in those first days, I only knew the ship was clad in metal but with some kind of display-surface so it can disguise or camouflage itself.

The camouflage came in handy because after that initial set of visits, I parked on top of a wine vineyard and it crushed the grape vines.

I apologized for that later, of course.

So, that first flight?

How do you describe the perspective of your entire planet changing in a few minutes?

I was at school, 10:15 am in my English literature class, and I heard Pat's voice in my head.

She said, "Attention, people are very nearby and inspecting the ship. Shields are up. Coming to you now for safety. Where to land?"

This was early on. Crucially, I didn't know it was possible to say No to Pat.

Instead of 'no', I kind of panicked.

Out loud, though whispering loudly because I didn't know how to talk with her in my head yet, "Uh... Please don't crush any valuable things, if you can. Football fields, I think?"

My brain was in two places. Inside, talking with Pat. Outside, I was struck with how odd this probably sounded to Frannie, Mads, Benny, Dana and Ken, the people sitting next to me. They looked up at me, since we were supposed to be talking about The Great Gatsby.

Frannie asked, "Huh?"

I knew at that point, seeing in my head the undeniable fact that in a few minutes, my giant spaceship was about to float over to my high school, that class would soon be 'out'. I'd known this moment might come, but didn't expect it so soon - I definitely wanted some time getting used to the ship before I went public. This would be VERY public. I felt pressured and panicked, but I had to make good decisions and in retrospect I did okay, I think.

The first thing to do, really, was to say 'goodbye', sort-of.

Mads had been talking about some crap, and I just interrupted, "Mads, guys..."

Changing my mind, I realized I'd better tell the whole class.

I stood up to interrupt everyone.

Very loudly (I could yell at teammates in cross country, across fields), "Ms. Pomeroy?! Everyone? Attention, please?"

Everyone stopped talking and looked at me.

"Uh... I had something happen recently? And, I kind of... Uh... There's gonna be a big disruption pretty soon when my ride gets here, and I don't want you all to freak out, so, don't panic, okay? I kind of have a ... a spaceship, and yeah, it sounds crazy, but yeah, got this thing coming, it's gonna land on the south fields like in... about 2 minutes. Your..."

Ms. Pomeroy interrupted, "Kevin, this is not funny. I don't like people making threats in my class."

I waved my hands no, crossing open-palms towards her, "NO, no, no, not threatening, at all. Just... don't freak out. I gotta go now, but..." I looked down at Madison and Dana right next to me, "Can I call you later? I think I'll still have cell service."

Bear in mind I'd been going to school with both of them since second grade, and they knew I was a little off (as a geek) anyway, but we liked each other well enough, I guessed.

Madison said, "Okay? Before 9, I go to sleep early."

Dana said, "Sure, yeah? Uh, why?"

"Might need some stuff from my house, and my mom never knows what I'm talking about...Oh, gotta go."

My mind's eye flashes of images were of the school from high overhead and it was coming down.

I shoved my stuff in my backpack and headed for the door. "Mrs. Pomeroy..." I held out my hand to shake hers, "Please tell everyone I'm sorry for the disruption, but... I might be the pilot but I'm not quite sure how the timing and stuff works yet. Might wanna get everyone to a south-facing window, fast, it'll be REALLY cool!"

She and everyone started to object, but I pulled on both backpack straps - easier to run - and took off down the hall, down the wide stairs, and out the door to the back of the building.

The emergency fire alarms were just going off as I ran out, since the ship was descending on the mostly-empty fields to the south of the school. It was lightly raining, so there weren't any gym classes out that day, or I'd have had to come up with another location.

The ship's mirror-finish appearance mode was on, so I spoke out loud and said, "Pat, can we change the outside to a mottled off-white so it looks more like concrete? Slowly, so it's not a blink-change, okay?"

Path's voice said, "Done."

The ship's appearance did change, and yes, it did look a lot like concrete, even though it wasn't.

I was jogging towards it, and the school security guards came running out behind me and yelling at me to watch out and stop and it might be dangerous.

I said, "Pat, I need a small force field around me so no one can drag me off, is that possible?"

"Yes, it is. Please confirm, this might make you float, or excavate the ground."

"Then, no, but if someone tries to stop me, can you put a barrier between us without hurting them?"

"Yes. No one is doing so, however." I could see through Pat's cameras that much of the school was crowded next to the windows looking out. Some had exited the building and Pat's cameras showed them running away down the street at a fast sprint.

I was pretty sure I could identify with running away from giant alien spaceships.

My spaceship was nice, though, and I knew what was going on.

Behind me, there was a lot of yelling from the windows, so I turned around and waved. I had to stop for a minute, and stare at the surreal aspect of it all. This place I'd been my whole life, my entire existence, was about to totally change.

Sure, it had changed before that day, but not publicly, so I could technically have gone 'back' to my life-before.

With this landing, though, I was committed. Having it happen sooner than I expected kind of peeved me, but my mindset then was kind of being both in lottery-winner AND victim mode. As I stood there, I realized I was thinking like that, and decided I wasn't going to be a victim. I wasn't being 'outed', I was stepping up and taking responsibility for something absolutely huge.

It was a huge thing happening to humanity, really. And I was Right In the Middle.

The time crept up on me, and I turned around to face the ship, walking up to the wall of it, to the door that automatically opened for me as I got there.

I still didn't have a name for it. Pat had told me the original 'name' as a set of chirps in fast chords, and there was NO way I could pronounce that!

Our high school's mascot was the Bisons. The ship filled the football field, completely covering the giant 'Bisons!' logo. Right there, in need of a name, I decided the name of the ship should be the Bison.

Under pressure - it's not a time to be creative.

The wide cargo door pulled up, opening in front of me. I walked in, knowing there was history to the moment, on video and worldwide in short order. As it shut behind me, I had to wonder how the sight of that, too, would be interpreted.

Outside, fire trucks were starting to roll up, and police cars, too, probably had seen the ship coming down from when it was high up in the air.

I went up the stairs slowly, knowing that things were happening outside, and that this was one of the most consequential days of my life.

The 'bridge' was on the top floor. I called it that because science fiction stories (and TV shows) used that name as the 'control room', more often than 'cockpit' at least.

Putting my hand on the console's sensor, I felt the jolt of starting to know everything that the ship knew, at least while my hand was connected. There was SO much to know, though, that I just patted the sensor, I didn't want to hold it there too long. Every time I did, I wondered whether my head would explode, but I was gaining confidence.

Like I said, I didn't know very much to start out with this thing.

There was no chair there, I was just standing in front of the back console, switching where I was looking since there was a forward viewscreen, too.

This place Definitely needed more chairs, I thought.

They would have to wait.

"Take off plan - let's go slowly, 10 kph, vertical, to about 100 meters? Then stop, I gotta figure out what to do next. Is that good?"

"Yes."

"Execute."

I felt like a grown-up sea captain, talking with Pat that way.

Of course I had a choice - I could have sat in the Captain's Chair (center of the room, with its own console) and moved the control yoke around, too. Telling Pat made more sense, given that when I'd previously tried that yoke and pedals the movements were pretty jerky.

Reconsidering, I moved over and sat down, feeling the cushions close around me slightly, not enclosing, but holding firmly. The yoke was in front, so I tried moving it around, just to try them out some more.

Pat didn't say anything, so I changed our direction slightly by moving further, ultra-small twists or pushes or pulls, finger actions to make the ship tilt slightly. I technically knew this, but it's one thing to have theory and another to have muscle memory.

Tilt was freaky to me so I let go and said, "Just... fix it to hover level?"

We had slowly and quietly risen into the sky, but it occurred to me that we were being stared at and they couldn't focus on anything. "Pat, can we write something on the side of the ship?"

"Yes. Specify."

I just knew (via info that had been dumped into my brain previously) that 'specify' meant everything: alphabet, language, color, size, font, placement, all of it.

I clarified to Pat. "Write, 'U.S.S. Bison' on the top right of every face of the ship, letters Arial font, 2 meters tall, 2 meters offset from the corner, always either Blue...uh, cobalt blue, or a contrasting color to the hull color. Do it."

I could see the words appearing, on picture-in-picture video on the left wall where I'd selected, the contents of which were world news TV stations and phone camera live streams looking up at us from all over the school.

Now, the real question was, where did I want to go next?

I didn't know that much about how to "fly" the ship in any complicated way, or really much about its capabilities except from the surface level feeling of a, 'can do anything' vibe. Rudimentary was a bad sense to have of one's own spaceship.

To learn it, I'd have to pause and let the info soak in.

Pulling up on the yoke gently, I accelerated upwards from 100 to 500 meters, then paused. We were well above the rooftops, but probably not in the path yet of any airplanes.

The overcast sky was very slightly drizzling, off and on, but I wasn't in the clouds yet.

Steeling my nerves, I asked for a good piloting lesson, into my brain, from Pat. I had to specify that it should be slow, so it didn't hurt too much. I'd tried it before and it had really hurt, so I stopped, then. If it was raw info, I could get that fast, but unless I put it into a common-sense context, the number of meters, or temperature, or whatever, just flowed uselessly.

There was probably a lesson in there about how I should have been studying in my classes, too, but I didn't think about that until later.

Digesting the info, I started again with sucking in the Bison's capabilities, constraints, etc.

Information poured into my brain, as sets of images and hand motions, numbers and rules of thumb, formulae and capabilities as numbers translated into my units - mostly metric because I had decided in junior high science class that metric made SOOOOO much more sense.

America is really stupid sometimes, and imperial measurements still being a thing was proof.

The info kept flowing, but it got more towards emergency procedures and things to avoid, more and more esoteric until I stopped it.

In absolute terms, we hung there for about 10 minutes, I figured.

Kind of coming-to, I knew nothing had happened yet, but it might.

"Pat, are there any aircraft around us that we might be ... endangering?"

"No. Various military aircraft have just been routed towards us, but all civilian transport either is flying away already or is being redirected as we speak."

"Is it possible for me to call... No, to talk on the radio with those airplanes? The military ones?"

"Yes. Control communications..." Pat showed me images of how the chair's controls worked, and my brain just soaked that info in as an intuitive thing.

I keyed the mic. "Uh, Hello? This is the USS Bison, uh, spacecraft? Can anyone hear me?"

Immediately, someone replied, "Please get off this channel, this is a military channel only."

"I know. I'm in the spacecraft you're racing those... F-22's towards me, right now? I don't want to get hit, and I promise I'm ... we're, not hostile. Uh, over."

"Bison, you don't need to say, 'over', sir. What's your name?"

"Let's just say I'm Kevin, for now. Yeah. I don't want people to freak out."

"Too late, sir. Many people are. We can see you now."

"I see you, too. I'm going to go visit the moon for a couple of hours? Uh... I don't have lunch, though. Uh... I should probably talk to someone important when I get back."

There wasn't lunch on the ship, there wasn't any human food, and besides the pilot's chair, there wasn't a bed, either.

I think my comment about the Moon surprised him.

I continued, "Hey, I have a question. Can you get some stuff for me? I need a mattress in here, and... uh, some maybe, uh, a sub sandwich? Maybe a refrigerator?"

"Hold one."

He apparently was thinking. He came back. "How do you propose we get these things to you?"

"Oh. Right."

I got out my cell phone and called the burger place on 10th. I let the whole conversation play out over the military radio, too. It rang.

"Bernie's?"

"Yeah, I want a special order? Like, really special?"

"What do you need?"

I told him: five cheeseburgers, two crispy-chicken sandwiches, two chocolate shakes, two big soda bottles, one of each kind of fruit juice, fries, onion rings, one of each kind of chips, a fish sandwich, and a package of each kind of cookies, all in one or two giant paper bags, stapled shut.

"Ready in, uh, 15 minutes?"

"Uh... Thing is... I'm going to pull up outside, I have a super-special vehicle. You're not going to believe it, it looks just like a UFO, but it's super-hard to get out of? So... can you just bring out the bag to me? I can get you some cash then?"