Sorry Please Thank You by Charles Yu Page A

oozing, it makes a kind of groaning sound, and overall the whole planet smells like sulfur and even though it’s hard, I try to remember that each and every place in the cosmos is an opportunity for discovery and that each and every life-form is atreasure and a marvel and a wonder, and I take out my Life-Form Analyzer so that we can catalog this wondrous, marvelous, slimy goop.

    On the surface, we look to the captain for his plan.
    “Meet back here in an hour?” he says, shrugging.
    Everyone mumbles agreement and wanders off. The medic heads for the lip of a nearby crater formation, pretending to look at readings on his handheld. Security chief says he’s going for a run. The XO is working on her résumé. She should have her own ship and everyone knows it. Instead, she’s stuck as number two for the drunkest captain in the fleet.
    The captain strolls off, practicing a new monologue he thought up in the shower this morning.
    That leaves the new ethnographer and me. She doesn’t look thrilled, but out of protocol introduces herself.
    “Lieutenant Issa,” she says, a little stiff. She holds her hand out like she’s hoping I won’t actually shake it so she doesn’t have to touch me. She says she’s going to head over to a nearby cave and see if she can learn anything about the mating process. “You can follow me if you want,” she says.
    I watch Issa collect slime samples for a while, with a very serious look on her face, but that gets boring so I wander over toward a nearby rock formation. There are weird noises coming from behind it. I look back at Issa tosee if she hears it, too, but she’s focused on her work, so I keep going toward the noise, edging around to behind the rock.
    I hear what sounds like the captain, groaning. He’s in trouble.
    My muscle memory kicks in. I find a foothold in the boulder and hoist myself up onto the rock, just like we did in training. I land, ready to strike. I see the captain. He’s down on the ground, shirtless, wrapped in some kind of slime, covering his face and mouth like a mask.
    I jump down on top of him and with both hands and all my strength manage to wrench the slime off his face.
    The captain jumps up. Actually, he sort of jumps up and back and off whatever he was crouching over, and now he’s standing, flushed, with a wild look in his eyes and a fistful of goop in each hand.
    “What the hell?” he screams at me.
    I wasn’t expecting thanks from the captain, no, but certainly not this.
    That’s when I notice that next to him is what appears to be a little sculpture that the captain has formed with his hands, out of goo. A little goo-person.
    Oh.
    The captain recovers his composure a bit, straightening out his uniform. “You didn’t see anything, yeoman,” he says, but not in a menacing, abuse-of-rank way. Even now, getting caught doing whatever it was he was doing, he’s a little charming. Pervy, but still charming.I guess that’s why he’s captain. “Let’s keep this between us dudes,” he says, and winks at me.
    I say yes sir.
    “It’s just,” he says, looking off into space. “It’s not as easy as it looks. Wearing this uniform.”
    “Doesn’t look easy at all, sir.”
    “Gets a little lonely out here,” he says, and for a second I think he might be moving in to hug me. Instead, he reaches down and picks up a handful of goo and sort of fondles it in his palm. “You married, yeoman?”
    “I am.”
    “Is she hot?”
    “Sir?” I’m searching for an appropriate response, but he says never mind, so I turn and leave him alone with his goo-woman. Or maybe not alone. Who am I to judge? Maybe she brings him some comfort out here, out at the edge of this tired rerun of a galaxy.
Wednesday:
    Another mission today. Another chance for random death. I don’t think it’ll happen just yet, still a little early in the week, but who knows? Yeomen have died on Wednesdays. Hell, yeomen have died on Mondays. We die. It’s the job. It’s actually in the