Punishment

by Guerin Zand

  “Yes.”

  “And you just let the Trogans slip a couple of agents onto Earth. Not only that, but you helped them to conceal this fact from the Collective and me.”

  “We’ve stopped all travel through Earth for now while we assess the situation. If we can install safeguards to prevent this in the future we would like to reopen this station, with your permission of course.”

  “The fact that you shut down operations probably didn’t go unnoticed and I’m sure the agents are now aware that we know about them. That gives them another advantage and I’m sure they are well hidden by now.”

  “What will you decide, Guerin?” Froshjen was worried and I don’t blame him. I had more than my share of aliens and their secrets.

  I looked at Katie and Steve. They had been listening, but they had nothing to offer me but shrugs. Jim and Sally looked like they wanted to say something.

  “What do Jim and Sally know about this operation of yours?”

  “They only act as caretakers and operators of this station. They are informed of travelers coming through but have no idea of the politics behind any of this. They were not aware of the restrictions or that what we had asked of them was a violation of any rules. Please do not blame them for our actions. They have been good friends to us and we don’t want them to suffer for our mistakes.”

  “Since you have stopped operations I don’t see a reason for us to have the Collective remove this facility. I’m only doing that because this is Jim and Sally’s home. Before you’re ready to start back up, you will need to contact the Collective. Then we’ll decide if you will be allowed to use this station again. If we do, every traveler will have to be cleared by the Collective. That means you’ll have to ask the Collective for their help. I will not act as the liaison between you and the Collective. Understood?”

  “Yes, and thank you. You have been very fair.”

  “I won’t be if this happens again, and don’t thank me. One day I may come to you for a favor. For now, you need to get all the information you have on these missing travelers to the Collective and any thoughts on where they might be.”

  Jim and Sally asked us to stay for dinner and we agreed. They broke out some alien liquor that was quite special. I sat and picked Froshjen’s brain a bit about the independent worlds, the Collective, and alien politics. Katie helped Sally in the kitchen. Actually, she just talked while Sally cooked. Jim gave Steve a tour of the lodge.

  It turned out Jim had fought in the Pacific during World War II. After he returned home he had a small cabin here when he met Froshjen and agreed to run the station. Sally was an abused child with a drunken father that was the cause of her limp. Her life in foster homes was not much better and she ran away several times. She had happened upon Jim one of those times and he befriended her and hid her in his home. As Sally aged, and Jim did not, they eventually became more than friends and married. The aliens had provided them both with life extensions, not quite Bree quality, but still, they would live for several hundred years at least.

  I told Steve and Katie to head back home after dinner and I would find my own way back. I was going to the shuttle to have it out with Sammy and the lack of information we were given. I offered to take Jim, Sally, and Froshjen with me. I told Jim they could probably take care of Sally’s limp and Froshjen should be there when I had my talk with Sammy. They accepted and after my team left I had Cindy open a portal.

  Sammy was not pleased with the unannounced visit, and he was even less pleased when I was done chewing him out. I made it quite clear that the team might have responded quicker if we knew what was actually happening. The time we lost could have made the difference in finding the missing travelers who were now probably long gone. Stella fixed up Sally’s injured hip without any issues and Jim and Sally both thanked me. I left my guns and gear at the lodge and told Jim that they were a gift from me. He seemed to appreciate that as well. Over the years I would stay in contact with the two of them. Like they say, misery loves company.

  In the following years, the team responded to many other alien incursions. Some of them were aliens who had permission to be there for research purposes. Occasionally we ran into the ones who thought fucking with humans was a fun past time. You know the type. Abducting humans and giving them a good probing. Using their ships to make crop circles or cause cars to die mysteriously, and then flash the humans, scaring them half to death. These assholes would find their ships and themselves years away from home, or the maximum distance we could send them based on their ships supplies. After booting them out of the system, Cindy would open a portal in front them and off they went. The word got out that I had lost my sense of humor and these types of assholes got the message.

  Then there were others, like Froshjen, who didn’t care for the Collective or their rules. They meant no harm and after some talking, I would walk away with a few alien goodies. Yes, I made them pay a fine, if they wanted to get home anytime soon, and sent them on their way. I made friends with many of them and they learned quickly what sort of bribes could buy them a free pass. I soon had a great collection of alien hooch that I would break out when the team would have a get-together. Believe it or not, none of these alien civilizations had a decent selection of blasters or other ray guns. Most of them just had stunners and the rest were shit compared to a .45. What the fuck? Anyways, I did grab a few stunners to play with at parties.

  Chapter 12

  Anna

  I don’t really know where to start. Anna was a surprise. It was a Saturday, March 16, 2019. I was just looking to get away from the rest of the team after less than two years of working closely together.

  Roger had gotten us to take an all-expense paid vacation to the Army Ranger’s mountain course the previous month. We were treated special there I must say. Usually, the instructors had a large class to train but there were just three of us, so we got individual attention from the instructors, 24/7. As any Ranger candidate will tell you, this is not a good thing. Being an asshole was also not the best attitude for one to have, something I discovered in a very short time. At the end of our vacation, I wished I had the strength left to kill them all, instructors and the rest of my team. I don’t think this was the desired result.

  Our company, New Future Technologies, had been formed. I had completed my initial work recruiting talent for the new company and setting up the engineering, science, and R&D departments. The building at the Exploration Park had just been recently completed so I was done with the constant walkthroughs and reviews to make sure we had set everything up correctly. Some of our employees were working from home while others were working from their universities under grants we had funded. Many would soon be moving into the new building and others would continue to telecommute as long as security was not an issue. Working with his government contacts, Roger had arranged for the NSA to open a new special projects branch that would be the liaison between NFT and the U.S. government. Sammy and crew had just left after their most recent visit. I really didn’t have much to do and was getting a bit bored when an opportunity came my way.

  In one of the staff meetings, a few of our physicists had mentioned that some work being conducted at the University of Tokyo was looking at similar approaches to those I had suggested. We had only planned to expand to foreign lands once NFT had become well established in the U.S., but the physics staff was insistent we consider bringing in UTokyo staff. I discussed this with Roger and he believed that the alliance between Japan and the U.S. was so strong that this might work to our benefit. Our ultimate goal was to make this an international company and to get the countries of the world to work together to advance human technology. Bringing Japan in at this point would present very little risk compared to the potential benefits. I needed a change of scenery so I volunteered to take up residence in Tokyo to make this all happen. Roger would work with our government to bring Japan in on what was really happening, and I would interview and evaluate potential recruits.

  Now I don’t kn
ow how many of you have ever worked or lived in Japan, but it was just about as foreign to an American as living on a Bree ship. In other words, I was as clueless to the basic customs and behavior in Japan as I was on the Bree main ship. Even though I could speak fluent Japanese, I stood out like a sore thumb and speaking the language, and understanding the Japanese, were two different things. I had worked in Japan several times in my past life as an engineer so I sort of expected this. To make it a bit more tolerable I had rented a very western style home with a garage and everything else an American would want. It was close to the university so I could simply walk to my meetings. It was expensive, but we had the money and I saw no reason not to spend it freely. I insisted they also purchase a BMW motorcycle so I would have something to do in my spare time.

  I had noted in my past visits that the Japanese people were extremely polite, but they weren’t friendly to strangers. Once you got to know them as individuals this would change but I always saw this as sort of a contradiction. I had spent time in other Asian countries and the people there were typically friendly and would often go out of their way to help a confused American. In America, being friendly was polite, and to be polite meant being friendly as well.

  What I observed during my morning commutes, when I worked at a Mitsubishi factory outside of Gifu, is a good example of this. I would ride the train to and from work and in the morning the train could be crowded, not sardine crowded like the Tokyo subways, but crowded enough that sometimes you would only have standing room available. I don’t know how many times I would see an elderly man or woman board the train and have to stand because no one, not even the younger students on the train, would offer their seat to the elders. My coworkers and I would always offer our seat. We would even insist they take our seat when they would initially decline our offer. I had always heard how the Japanese respected their elders, so this made no sense to me. I figured this was just the result of living in such a crowded society.

  Americans were not typically referred to as American, no, we were Gaijin which roughly translates to foreigner. It could be seen as an insult although this was not normally how it was meant. I took no offense at this term, it was a cultural thing again. Their view of foreigners was different then what was typical in America. We are a country of foreigners, so most Americans are very accepting of foreign visitors. I know, the media paints all of us, those of us not living in the metrosexual urban districts where the media types live, as dumb backwoods rednecks who find insulting foreigners as natural as breathing. That isn’t true and if they compared our behavior to that of the Japanese they might actually be surprised at what they found. Ok, in Florida we simply hate all tourists, but that’s different. We hate tourists from New York just as much as tourists from France!

  I mention all of this to hopefully explain how strange living in Japan can be for an American. The reason I insisted on the motorcycle was that it was something I could enjoy on my own and I was alone most of the time. I would spend hours late at night just driving anywhere, deciding where to turn randomly, so I could see Japan. I’d stop at any restaurant or café that would catch my eye and this way I got to see the parts of Japan no one ever talked about. I would get lost but the bikes GPS would normally guide me back home without much issue. Walking was another thing altogether. In the city, you were surrounded by hi-rise buildings. Trying to find a landmark to guide you as a pedestrian was always a challenge since you couldn’t see past the buildings around you. It was truly like being in a maze, and here is something the smartphone and GPS makers won’t tell you, GPS signals and tall buildings don’t work together! This meant I was always getting lost and I was typically late for all of my meetings.

  After a few days of total confusion, I had figured out the shortest route to the university and I also found a little coffee shop around the corner from where I was staying. They had good coffee, snacks I could recognize, and free Wi-Fi, so I could sit back and review material for the next meeting. Of course, in all the planning for my trip, the company we used for our travel had not thought an internet connection would be useful in the place we rented! After pointing this out to them I found it would be a month before I could get hooked up. This made the coffee shop a life saver. Being a hip little Japanese coffee shop, the music they typically played in the background made me think of doing bad things to farm animals. I never could figure out exactly how music could give me such sick thoughts and I tried to ignore it to the best of my ability while losing myself in my work. I still have these bad thoughts permanently etched into my alien enhanced brain. Just another thing to thank the Bree for!

  So that’s where I met Anna, sorry it took me so long to get to the point. The coffee shop itself was really a wannabe Starbucks but it was cute in that Japanese way. See the Japanese, just like the people in many other foreign countries, try to imitate what they think of as American. It’s not really American, it’s the media’s portrayal of America most foreigners see watching American TV and movies. Now before you think to yourself, as I once did, “What kind of idiot would think America is like that?” remember WE ARE that kind of idiot. That’s why we have all the clothing styles, foods and other goods we buy in America. The companies just push on us what they show us on TV and in movies as “cool”. American culture is defined by the media and not any real “American” cultural identity. This little mistake by the Japanese people was probably the reason for the music that made me want to do bad things to farm animals. It could possibly be a form of revenge and this music only affected Americans in this way. I was hoping that was true because the staff that worked there all seemed very happy. If they were thinking what I was thinking and smiling about it? Well, I just hoped that wasn’t the case.

  The first morning in Tokyo, that Saturday morning in May, I found this coffee shop. I guess I should call it a café since that sounds more cosmopolitan, but I won’t for that exact reason. The same idiots who had arranged for my residence had also thought it not necessary to include at least an emergency ration of coffee. The cupboards were bare. There was a coffee pot, just sitting out there on the kitchen counter taunting me, and there were cooking utensils, silverware, china, glasses, mugs, pots and pans. Just no groceries of any sort. I’ve explained before the basics required for a successful morning, so I won’t repeat them all here, but coffee is one of those basics. It was so basic I ventured out into the streets of Tokyo without any, which meant I was handicapped to start with. Luckily this coffee shop was a block away at the most, down a small side street, and with a sign any moron could recognize. There was a sign hanging in front with some Japanese writing and a simple image of a coffee cup.

  I entered the café, ok, it’s actually simpler to type café than coffee shop, and there was no crowd, so I stepped right up. As I mentioned before, the Bree had dumped all the foreign languages into my mutant brain so I could easily read the Japanese writing on the menu board. I was proud of that fact until I noticed the English translation was written underneath. That just made me wonder why I had bothered to read the Japanese. I ordered the biggest café latte I could with a quadruple shot of espresso. I thought that the crisis had passed, and I was pretty happy, but I’ve been wrong before.

  “What is your name?”

  Ok, I’ve never mentioned this before, but places like this, where they want your name to call out your order, drove me absolutely crazy. My name is Guerin, and even in America, well actually everywhere I’ve ever been, people just don’t know the name so, “Houston we have a problem!”.

  “Guerin,” I said, rolling my eyes and shaking my head. I needed my fucking coffee! I tried promising God something. I wasn’t sure exactly what. I promised to get back to Him on that if He would just screw with time a little bit so I could drink my future coffee and then come back and deal with this bullshit. Unfortunately, I think God heard me and laughed.

  “Kirin?”

  “No, not the beer. Guerin with a ‘G’.” Of course, I knew this wasn’t going to change anything.
I wondered if maybe I was a bit more specific about my promise perhaps God might reconsider. If not, we were going to take more time here than it would take to actually spell it all out for her, that is of course if she spoke English well enough to understand our alphabet.

  “Goolin?”

  Maybe a different approach might work I thought. “Excuse me, what is your name?”

  “Anna.”

  “An-Na, as in the English name Anna or An-Ha? Is it different in Japanese or is that just your nickname?”

  “Anna, Just like the English name Anna.”

  “And that’s your real name?”

  “Yes.”

  I kind of thought it was cool that this girl in front of me, who looked 100% Japanese, had an English name, sort of like my dog being named Kat.

  “Well, Anna. I don’t really care what name you call me. I haven’t had my coffee this morning, and please excuse me if I am being at all rude here, but I just really need that coffee. Could you please not ask me any more questions until after the coffee and I get to spend a little time together?”

  Anna looked me in the eye, and I think I looked her in the eyes as well, which is why I noticed it, and smiled. “Yes, Guerin.”

  And that was all she wrote. Now I didn’t know it then, I mean there was something and I did notice it, like how you barely see something on the edge of your vision, but I was done for. She may as well just have shackled on the ball and chain and moved on to the rest of her life. Mission accomplished.

  I never really described what I find attractive in women and like most guys I like the basic nice rack and tight ass, a good figure in other words. That all makes for fun sex and everything but it’s not why I fell for Milly or why I found Cindy so hard to resist. Anna was your typical build for a Japanese woman in her late 20’s. She was a little taller than average with a slim figure, but she was no sex bomb. No, what all three of these women had, and the thing that really grabbed me, was their eyes. I can’t explain what it is that I see in the eyes of some women that sets them apart from others. I know it when I see it. It’s like I can see what their feeling or thinking. I don’t have to talk to these women because the conversation occurs through our eyes. Now there are women with eyes that just scream “PSYCHO BITCH!”, and I’ve fallen for a few of those as well, but not in a serious way.