Bill Clinton's Amazing Adventures Through Space
by Jay M. Allbritton

Free Excerpt (Part I)

   Lance sat staring at the floor. The Vvolan stumbling around behind the counter couldn’t have been more than sixteen years old. Sixteen-year-old Vvolans, like sixteen-year old Earthlings, were not a pretty site. The acne on this kid was incredible.
   “It’s not acne, sir.”
   So, the kid is a telepath, Lance thought. Shame to waste such talent working at the mall.
   “I’m only a partial telepath. My name is not kid, it’s Kiddo. .. And this is just a part time job until I finish my Worm Hole Engineering program. Do you know how many pills I have to take for that? No, I know that you don’t know, okay? I know that you don’t know!”
    Lance held up his hands and took a step back. “I’m sorry, there, buddy... er, Kiddo. Listen, I’ve had a pretty bad week myself, okay? I’m pretty close to going AWOL here. Believe me, I didn’t mean to take it out on you.”
   “It’s okay. Just please be careful what you’re thinking around telepaths because we have feelings too, man. This isn’t my day either and I’m telling you this skin condition is a bitch-”
    Kiddo was interrupted by a loud beeping sound from the back.
   “Hold on!” Kiddo barked in frustration before disappearing behind a flimsy partition.
    Humming, Lance flopped back into a seat. This was the nearest cloning plant in the galaxy, but he should have taken the order somewhere else. Quickly Lance tried to think about baseball so Kiddo wouldn’t get mad again. But he couldn’t help it. This place was a shithole and it was all Lance could think about. Kip’s Cloning was the best and largest cloning chain in the Vvolan Empire. But the nearest Kip’s was in the Crab Nebula. No matter how bad Klone King was, it beat schlepping all the way to the Crab Nebula. The aliens there were some of the biggest assholes in the galaxy.
   “My mother is from the Crab Nebula!” Kiddo yelled from the back.
   “Sorry!”
    Sensitivity among telepaths was a bad mix.
   “I’m not sensitive, now stop thinking so loud!”
    Lance lowered the volume of his thoughts. A couple of humanoids passed in the flow of species shopping at the mall. They were probably from Hunan, an earthlike planet in the Alpha Centauri B system. Humanoids were rare in the galaxy, even rare on Hunan, where they once flourished but because of the intergalactic draw of their mall madness--the entire planet was basically one big mall--humanoids receded into the minority hundreds of years ago.
    Kiddo was back at the counter, breathing a bit heavy. He shrugged and slumped forward a bit, before sighing. “Man, I hate this job.”
    Lance nodded. “Is there a problem with the order?”
   “Tell me, human, what was the point of the sugar cushion?”
   Sugar Cushion? “What? Oh, the cheesecake? It’s a gratuity. It’s for you.”
   “Oh, it’s edible? Oh.” Kiddo furrowed his brow in thought. Then shrugged. “Well, some of the um, cheesecake, got into the cloning works.”
   How...
   “The... what do you call it... dog?”
    Lance nodded. “Yes, dog.”
   “The dog kinda knocked a piece of it into the cloning machine when I was making your human. It threw off the specs.”
   “So make another one.”
   “No, I can’t. I’m out of variable DNA.”
   “When will you get more?”
   “Tomorrow or the next day.”
    Lance banged his hand on the counter. “I need this clone tonight, man.”
    Kiddo nodded. “Okay, tell you what I’m gonna do, I’ll give you the messed up clone free of charge and you just pay for the modifications on the dog.”
   “I can’t do that. This clone has to be to specs.”
    Kiddo punched up a series of buttons and a screen lit up in front of him. The characters on the screen looked like hieroglyphics to Lance. “Okay, well, look, all that got messed up were a few ethical imperatives and a slightly heightened libido. You can probably pass it off.”
   “Pass it off! I’m a professional galactic bounty hunter, man. I can’t bring back a half-assed clone!”
   “Sir, I assure you, this clone’s ass is identical to the original.”
    Lance sighed. “I hate space.” After a moment of thought, Lance nodded. “Okay, I’ll take it. Wrap it up.”
    Kiddo rang up the order. “I knew you would see it my way.”
   “Yeah, yeah,” Lance said. As an afterthought he asked, “Hey, are you gonna eat that cheesecake?”
    Kiddo shook his head. “I can’t eat sugar with this skin condition.”
   “Cool, wrap that up too.”
   “That’ll be eighty-two credits.”
    Lance passed his credit bank to Kiddo who scanned off the credits. “Pleasure doing business with you there, Kiddo.”

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