Stringers Read online

  PRAISE FOR CHRIS PANATIER

  “Many writers try to play it safe with the dreaded second novel. Many writers, but not all, as Chris Panatier took chances and delivered with his second book... Reminiscent of the well-loved Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, Stringers delivers the laughs, with the jokes drawing on the author’s clear love affair with the grotesque, with poignant moments peppered throughout. A highly enjoyable read with moments of real emotional honesty that deserves to reach a wide audience.”

  – Gabriela Houston, author of The Second Bell

  “Stringers is f*cking ridiculous in all the best ways. I haven’t laughed this hard at anything EVER. In fact, to have this many laugh-out-loud moments should be illegal - there are nuggets of gold to be found on every page. Throw in a fun plot, characters who are rich and lively and incredibly funny in their own distinct ways, and a unique and engaging format (you’ll see), and you’ve got yourself a joyous and exciting read. None of you are ready for this.”

  – Dan Hanks, author of Swashbucklers and Captain Moxley and the Embers of the Empire

  “Panatier finds the sweet spot between the social satire of The Coming of the Great White Handkerchief and the pathos of the farting, tap dancing aliens of the planet Margo. A tour de ridicule!”

  – R.W.W. Greene, author of Twenty-Five to Life and The Light Years

  “Wholly original. Ridiculously brilliant. Panatier’s Stringers is filled with genuine characters, mind-boggling humor, and the raw and hysterical emotions of beings plucked from obscurity, sold to the highest bidders, and used to serve Universe altering purposes. Panatier’s unconventional storytelling, combined with poetic sentences and a plethora of bug facts you never knew you needed, will keep you entertained until the very end. I can’t recommend enough.”

  – Noelle Salazar, author of The Flight Girls

  “In a universe of sci-fi novels, Chris Panatier’s Stringers inhabits a galaxy all its own. Equal parts hilarious, inventive, and action-packed, this absolute gem of a book delivers a riveting, poignant plot full of flawed, lovable characters. Come for the bug sex, stay for the jar of pickles.”

  – Ron Walters author of Deep Dive

  “Panatier’s latest book is a riotous, interdimensional adventure with heart. Zany and erudite, Stringers reads like an SMBC comic that swallowed a whole series of Red Dwarf, veering from the unabashedly puerile to the profound by way of esoterica and galactic hijinks. With bug facts galore and a truly memorable jar of pickles, it has all the makings of a cult favourite. Panatier is one to watch.”

  – Calder Szewczak, author of The Offset

  STRINGERS1

  1 By Chris Panatier

  ANGRY ROBOT

  An imprint of Watkins Media Ltd

  Unit 11, Shepperton House

  89 Shepperton Road

  London N1 3DF

  UK

  angryrobotbooks.com

  twitter.com/angryrobotbooks

  The Universe takes you back

  An Angry Robot paperback original, 2022

  Copyright © Chris Panatier 2022

  Cover by Kieryn Tyler

  Edited by Gemma Creffield and Andrew Hook

  Set in Meridien

  All rights reserved. Chris Panatier asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Sales of this book without a front cover may be unauthorized. If this book is coverless, it may have been reported to the publisher as “unsold and destroyed” and neither the author nor the publisher may have received payment for it.

  Angry Robot and the Angry Robot icon are registered trademarks of Watkins Media Ltd.

  ISBN 978 0 85766 962 9

  Ebook ISBN 978 0 85766 963 6

  Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by TJ Books Ltd.

  9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For all the kids in the school principal’s office.

  Here lies Ben Sullivan. Died in space. Couldn’t open the pickles.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  Jim’s in the store again. Jim doesn’t buy shit.

  “Morning Ben,” said Jim.

  I’d always liked Jim, but he’d never so much as flirted with a spool of 5x tippet.

  “You going out today?” I asked, flipping the magnifier up from the brim of my cap.

  “Yep,” he answered, fingering some light-wire hooks on a rack.

  “You know those are for sale, right? You can buy them with money and they become yours forever.”

  Jim didn’t respond, ambling instead to another rack of flyfishing goods he also wouldn’t end up purchasing.

  I knocked the magnifier back down and returned to wrapping a yellow midge.

  “Hey,” said Jim, just as I’d regained my focus. “What do you call that fly you made for Winston Hollymead? He won’t shut up about it. He’s throwing all these numbers at me that sound ludicrous. A twenty-five-pound, post-spawn striper? In the Pawnee?” He blew a raspberry. “Makes no sense.”

  I chuckled pretentiously at Jim’s underestimation of my work. It made a lot of sense if you knew how to get unhorny fish to bite like I did. “The Alpha-Boom-Train isn’t just for striper,” I said with a shrug. “It’ll work on any post-spawn perciform. They like bloodworms.”

  “I don’t get you, kid.”

  “I’m twenty-nine.”

  “Alpha-Boom-Train? Flies ain’t supposed to have names like that.”

  “Customers are supposed to buy things. What a parado
x.”

  He directed a finger lazily in the direction of my fly-tying vise. “Need you to make me oneuh them boom trains then,” he said, issuing an edict as if I were his personal river Sherpa.

  “Sure thing, Jim,” I answered. “Will you be paying for it or just putting it on layaway until the rapture?”

  “I’ll pay if it looks right,” he said, heading out. He pushed the door open, then stopped, half-in, half-out, sending the electronic chime into a recursive death spiral. “How you know so much about spawning river fish, anyway? You ever even been out of Kansas?”

  Now I could tell him the truth. I could explain the things I know – that my knowledge goes way beyond fish sex. I could tell him, for instance, that the flatworm Macrostomum hystrix reproduces by fucking itself in the head. It’s called hermaphroditic traumatic insemination. I could tell him that the practice isn’t isolated solely to hermaphrodite worms either. Sea slugs,2 also hermaphrodites, fuck each other in the head. They do it with a two-pronged dong, one of which is called a ‘penile stylet’. I could shock his system with the revelation that earwigs have two dicks.3 Or take him on a tour of class Mammalia and into the dens of prairie voles, who are affectionate and monogamous with each other unless the male is drunk, in which case he pursues anonymous hookups. That dolphins will fuck literally anything. That porcupines flirt via golden shower. I could tell him these things I know, but then I might have to explain why I know them. And that I am unable to do. So, I answered his question with the simple truth. “I just know, Jim.”

  “That internet, then,” he said, answering the question for himself. “See ya in a few days, kid.”

  I flipped down the magnifier. “Jim.”

  The truth is I was jealous of Jim. Of his obliviousness, his ability to step into the world from the shop and move on with his life, while mine never changed. Wherever I went, my brain came with, bringing along its innumerable tidbits of faunal knowledge which infected my every thought. There was no explanation and no apparent source. And it would have been completely useless if I didn’t work in a fishing shop trying to figure out new ways to get post-coitus fish to bite at fake bug larvae.

  I’m no fly-fishing fanatic. I’m just too distractable for any other job.

  Every waking moment is a constant barrage of intrusive thoughts with even the most innocuous stimuli churning up commentary from deep within the folds of my brain.4 See? I’ve tried training myself to think of it as background noise, but it’s tough to tune out when your overactive brain is also an asshole.5

  The door chimed again as if it were being strangled. Through the magnifier came a giant yellow blob that I immediately recognized as Patton, my never-employed stoner friend. He wasn’t a stoner by choice – well, it was by choice, but it wasn’t just for getting high. Weed legitimately helped him function. Patton was the only person I’d ever met who got paranoid as a consequence of not being high. Also, weed is generally pollinated by wind, not by bees.

  He struck a pose and pointed at me, suggesting a pop quiz. “In which Order will we find D. sylvestris?”

  “I’m not doing this, dude.”

  “Hymenoptera,” he said, proudly answering his own question.

  “How long did you have to train your eight neurons to remember that?”

  “A while,” he said breezily, removing a blunt from within his hair somewhere.

  “You can’t smoke that in here.”

  “I know that.” He sniffed it and returned it to his haybale.

  In one of his many attempts to push me to broaden my horizons, Patton had tried to get me to audition for Jeopardy (R.I.P. Alex Trebeck), convinced I’d make a bazillion dollars. What he failed to appreciate was that the only way for me to win would be if every single category was natural science. I don’t know jack about much else.

  Okay, I also know a lot about clocks. Mainly watches. Ugh. This is so embarrassing.

  If areas of knowledge were like college specializations, then entomology, with a focus on bug-sex, would have been my major, with a minor in time pieces.6 Antiques, for the most part – anything older than about three decades. Imagine seeing a watch and having your head suddenly flooded with facts about said watch, while at the same time not giving two shits about the watch or the facts. A six-thousand-dollar Rolex that gains five seconds per day is said to be within tolerances. That’s over a thousand dollars for every second it steals from the Universe. The NASA astronauts who landed on the moon were wearing Omega Speedmasters, all except Neil Armstrong, who left his inside the lunar lander as a backup clock. Watches on display are almost always set at ten past ten or ten till two because the hands form a smiley-face, a subtle form of suggestion for the prospective buyer. Do I come from a family of watchmakers or antique dealers? Nope. I just know. And it’s exhausting.

  “Well if you won’t do it, then at least train me, man,” said Patton. “Be like my game-show sensei. Just put all your knowledge up here.” He popped the side of his head with his palm.

  “Plenty of room.”

  “I know, right? So, there’s no excuse. Please dude? Winning gameshows is the only way for me to get enough cash to start my own Formula One racing team.”

  “No.”

  “When you off?”

  “Seven.”

  “Want to get wings?” he asked.

  “No, busy.”

  “Not research again. Come on, dude. Every night?”

  “You know the drill,” I said.

  “It’s Friday though. Friiiiiiiiday.”

  I gave him serious-guy face.

  “Alright,” he relented. “Roll over to my place in the morning. Aunt Lisa will make us chorizo empanadas and refried beans and we can play Simon.”7

  “Your Aunt Lisa microwaving frozen breakfast empanadas is not making breakfast. And I’ll pass on the beans. But Simon is awesome. I’ll be there.”

  “Yeah!” He reached around the counter and patted the underside of that bit of my belly that hangs over my belt buckle. I fired a palm into his sternum and he crashed satisfyingly into a rack of indicators. “Duuuuuuude,” he wheezed, accepting my justice.

  “No more fat slapping. Jesus Christ, man. Grow up.”

  He staggered away from the rack and smiled passively at the door. “Okay bro, whatever you say. Hasta mañana.”8

  “Bye.”

  “See you tomorrow. Empanadas.”

  “Yeah, bye.”

  I needed to get to the library, but I also wanted to finish off a fly I’d been tying – a Hutch’s Penell – for one of the area’s best anglers, and possible future wife of me, Agatha Jensen. It’s used in the UK for catching coastal sea trout but it also closely resembles the sedge-flies that the local bluegills, Lepomis macrochirus, love to eat. When I started tying them a year ago, the locals couldn’t get enough and it kept the shop owner, also named Jim – I call him “Owner Jim” – pretty happy. I could do them in my sleep: size 4 hook, black 8/0 thread, a red tippet, Peacock herl, zebra hackle and silver wire for the rib. Fly fishermen were always looking for an angle (anglers, right?) and this Penell had them shelving their Silver Sedges – the traditional go-to when throwing loops for fish that go for the caddis fly.

  I tied in a white hackle feather, wrapped it with thread, thickened the front of the hook to form the fly’s “head” and tapped a bead of glue at the top of the shank just under the eye.

  After locking up the shop, I had thirty minutes until the library closed, which was fine, because I already knew the book I’d reserved was waiting for me. I jumped into the used Subaru that I’d bought after graduating high school. At the time I’d let Patton talk me into souping it up so we could race it on weekends – an actuality that always seemed to get sidelined by our full schedule of being stoned. Now I just had a car that sounded like a weed-eater in a port-a-potty. But it was fast and I got to the library in sixteen minutes, per my twenty-five dollar Timex brand digital wristwatch, which does not gain five seconds per day unlike a certain unnamed luxury brand perfo
rming “within tolerances.”9

  “Ben!”

  “Ludlow the Librarian!” I said, miming the solo sword dance of Conan the Barbarian as played by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Ludlow was similar to a barbarian, if you replaced the muscles with nougat and the leather armor with black nail polish.

  “I got your book right here. Reserved for Ben,” he said, tapping a lacquered finger on a stickie note reading same.

  “Oh, great. Thanks,” I said, rolling up to the circulation desk.

  Ludlow prepared to scan in the book, pausing first to consider the cover. He pulled his long, warlock-black hair behind an ear. I could see a question forming. Oh, here it comes. “You studying to become a psychiatrist, Ben?”

  “Ah, no, Ludlow.” I didn’t have much more of an answer for him that I cared to give, though he was well aware of my borrowing history.

  “Just a hobby, then? Remote viewing? Claircognizance?”

  “Not so different from your weekly séances,” I quipped. “You get up in all your customers’ business?”

  “Only if I think they might be performing witchcraft.”

  “Afraid you won’t be invited?”

  “I’m talking about,” he lowered his voice, “the occult.”

  I stared at him incredulously. “Have you seen yourself, man?”

  He recoiled with offense. “I’m a goth, Ben, not a Wiccan.” He slid the book across the counter with a corpse-pale hand.

  “I’ll remember that for next time,” I said, taking the book and tapping the side of my head.

  * * *

  The car rumbled into the gravel drive at the house where I rented an above-garage apartment. I opened the driver’s door to a thundering chorus of Neotibiden linnei10 booming away like nature’s own heavy metal string symphony. Although that’s a bad analogy, because while crickets utilize stridulation for their song – the rubbing of one body part against another, a crude version of pulling a bow across strings – cicadas are percussionists, vibrating a membrane in their exoskeleton called a tymbal.

  Yeah, so anyway, it was noisy outside.

  I tossed the new book, Harnessing Your Psychic Powers Part IV: Remote Viewing & Claircognizance, onto a larger pile of similarly themed texts beside my desk and quietly hated on myself for possessing any of them. Taking in the collection, I began to appreciate the merit of Ludlow’s witchcraft accusation. I even had a stack of religiously-themed candles on a nearby end table, though those had come with the apartment. Sure, I lit them from time to time, but for ambiance, not any ceremonial purposes.