Summary: By Shaenon Garrity Read by Nathaniel Lee Discuss on our forums. For a list of all Escape Pod stories by this author or narrator, visit our sortable Wikipedia page Rated 13+ for rebellious vulgarity Punk Voyager By Shaenon K. Garrity Punk Voyager was built by punks. They made it from beer cans, razors, safety pins, and a surfboard some D-bag had left on the beach. Also plutonium. Where did they get plutonium? Around. f*** you. The punks who built Punk Voyager were Johnny Bonesaw, Johnny Razor, Mexican Johnny D-bag, Red Viscera, and some other guys. No, asshole, nobody remembers what other guys. They were f***ing wasted, these punks. They’d been drinking on the San Diego beach all day and night, talking about making a run to Tijuana and then forgetting and punching each other. They’d built a fire on the beach, and all night the fire went up and went down while the punks threw beer cans at the seagulls. Forget the s*** I just said, it wasn’t the punks who did it. They were f***ing punks. The hell they know about astro-engineering? Truth is that Punk Voyager was the strung-out masterpiece of Mexican Johnny D-bag’s girlfriend, Lacuna, who had a doctorate in structural engineering. Before she burned out and ran for the coast, Lacuna was named Alice McGuire and built secret nuclear submarines for a government contractor in Ohio. It sucked. But that was where she got the skills to construct an unmanned deep-space probe. Same principle, right? Keep the radiation in and the water out. Or the vacuum of space, whatever, it’s all the same s*** to an engineer. f*** that, it wasn’t really Lacuna’s baby. It wasn’t her idea. The idea was Red’s. “f***ing space,” he said that fateful night. He was lying on his back looking up at space, is why he said it. “Hell yeah,” said Johnny Bonesaw. “s*** ain’t nothing but rocks and UFOs.” “Ain’t no such thing as a UFO.” “Like hell there ain’t,” said Red. “CIA knows all about it. Them and the astronauts.” Red was always saying that s***, though. Everything was the CIA and the saucer people with that burnout. “That’s why they sent up that cigar-box spaceship with the porn in it,” said Red. “They know there’s life up there.” “What spaceship?” said Johnny. “There’s no f***ing spaceship.” “He means the Voyager space probe,” said Lacuna. “Which is real, asshole.” Lacuna was pissing off everyone but Mexican Johnny D-bag with her knowing-s*** routine. That and eating all the mushrooms and throwing them up in the ocean. “I want wine,” Johnny Razor yelled down the beach. “Mexican wine. Weren’t we going to Tijuana?” “We already went,” yelled Mexican Johnny D-bag. “We went without you. We’re not even here.” Then he laughed like a pinhead. He was on some s***. “Keep it down,” snapped Lacuna. “I’m telling these assholes about the space probe.” “f*** the space probe,” said Johnny Bonesaw. “The Voyager 1 space probe,” said Lacuna, “was launched into space to study the gas giants and then continue out beyond the solar system.” “No s***?” “Told you it was real,” said Red. “But the thing is, the important thing is the messages it’s got in it. For the space people. Tell him about the messages.” Down the beach, Johnny Razor and Mexican Johnny D-bag started punching each other, mostly for something to do. “Okay, yeah. Voyager carries a record of stuff from Earth for the aliens to find.” “And naked pictures. They put in naked pictures of people.” “Yeah, whatever, naked pictures. And photos, different languages, music, stuff like that.” “Music?” said Johnny Bonesaw. “What music?” said Red. “Um.” Lacuna chewed her lip, thinking. “Beethoven, maybe. Or Mozart. You know, classical music. And tribal stuff, like, from around the world. And ‘Johnny B. Goode.’” Johnny Bonesaw and Red stared at her. They stared up at space. They stared back at her. “Chuck Berry?” [...]
