Whiskey Romeo

by James Welsh

  During the ritual of the handshakes, Nash noticed something: while he was greeting the men – and even Pere was joining in – Stratos didn’t shake a single hand. If anything, Stratos had kept his hands in his pocket the entire time. Stratos had a look on his face as if he had just stepped in something.

  “In a way, we’ve already met, Mr. Dart,” Stratos said finally.

  Dart looked confused. “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve read your file – you’re the one who almost broke one of the drills a few years back, by spinning one of its levels out of control. I’ll be watching you.”

  Dart’s face turned to chalk as he suddenly realized just who Stratos was. If the old miners weren’t reluctant before around the new recruits, they certainly were then. There was an auditor among them now, taking names and giving warnings. The younger colonists didn’t remember it, but Wales was at the colony when the last auditor arrived. He remembered a few of the miners being let go then – they were herded onto a waiting frigate and sent back to the hell on Earth. They didn’t have much at the colony, but at least they were insulated from the horrors of home.

  “Well, now that we’re all introduced,” Joyce said, “Let’s get you gentlemen over to the Connections. We’ll need to speak with the vicar and sign you in.”

  They left the miners at the dock and followed Joyce along the winding path. Nash couldn’t help but be impressed at how smooth the path felt under his feet. On either side of the walkway was rough and spiky stone. But the paving equipment brought in with the colony’s christening had sanded the paths down until Nash swore he could see his reflection in the stone. It was the only way that Nash could keep himself occupied. Stratos and Joyce had lapsed into a conversation just for them – Stratos was asking why the miners weren’t working, and Joyce was explaining how they rotated their shifts. And Pere – being Pere – was walking behind the group at a distance just outside of talking.

  They say that when a person speaks, their hands talk more than their mouth does. A clenched fist shouts while open palms are giving while cracking knuckles are nervous. And hands are honest, having never learned the lies that a tongue knows. They are puppets in the play of life, acting out the scenes as fast as they are written. And since Nash had no actors to look at, he had nowhere to look but down.

  ***

  After Nash had sat through the drag of paperwork at the temple of human resources, he was surprised to find that they had finished just in time for lunch. At the rate he was going through the bundle of papers in the office, Nash thought that he had already grown old and died.

  But suddenly he was free to roam the prison that was the colony. As he left the Connections, Nash suddenly realized that this was the first time he was alone since arriving at Volans. Stratos had gone to conduct an inspection of the waterworks, and Pere was doing whatever it was Pere did. He thought of how low he had fallen in just a few years, from a family man living in the city to a lonely who was exiled to a little colony. He couldn’t imagine falling any deeper, although it was possible. His stomach turned over like an engine, bringing him back to reality.

  Nash spotted a colonist walking nearby and asked, “Do you know where I can find some food?”

  The colonist laughed. “Don’t worry – you’ll find it.”

  As the colonist walked off, Nash tried to decipher the needlessly puzzling answer. It wasn’t until Nash walked along one of the three canals in the colony that he understood. There were steady streams of colonists, trickling from all corners of Volans, towards the heart of the colony. All of their faces were the same, hardened by hammers of pain. They were countless miles away from their old world, but their pasts still haunted them. An image floated through Nash’s head of iron soldiers marching towards their magnetic deaths.

  He figured that the lines had to be for food, the one thing that everyone is a slave to. He guessed right when he asked someone in line and they simply nodded. As Nash took his place, jingling his credits in his pocket, he looked down the line and realized that he had a long way to go until he was fed. But also up ahead, he saw Dart and Coil, two of the miners that he had met earlier in the day. Seeing a chance to become friends and maybe skip ahead in the line, Nash took a chance and walked down the line to where they stood.

  “Hey there,” Nash announced from just a few feet away. “Alaois, is it?”

  Dart, who was in deep talk with Coil, turned his head. When he saw that it was Nash, Dart paled and turned back to Coil. Coil shot Nash with a quick look of venom before listening once more to his friend.

  Nash stood rooted in the rocky ground, not sure how to process the fact that they were ignoring him. The line next to him rippling forward woke up Nash. Feeling embarrassed and defeated, Nash walked to the back of the line. Sine Nash had left his spot, a number of people had joined the line. Nash was now further back than when he started. To Nash, this was a perfect metaphor for the way his life had turned out.

  As the line slowly shuffled, Nash tried to distract his self by looking out across the colony. In all of his years, he had never felt anything on his eyes quite like Volans. Everywhere he looked, there were grates carved into the ground. He learned from human resources what the grates meant. While the colony was responsible for mining its star and delivering the sunshine to Earth, it could not enjoy the spoils of work. The charter back home denied them this, saying that every drop of sunshine mattered, and that Earth was the priority. While it seemed cruel, the colonists easily adapted. While the planet Janus looked dead from the outside, it was rich deep at its seed. The vast hydrogen reserve within the planet provided enough geothermal energy to last the colonists for thousands of years, and they certainly took advantage of it. As Nash stepped over one of the grates, he could feel the warmth that so many mistaken for love.

  The rock foundation that the colony was built on looked stubborn – it should have been impossible to dig out the grates and the piping and the canals and the well and the longhouse and so many other things the colony had. But sometimes the impossible is simply inconvenient, as the people then tested a new invention, the worming drill. The drill was built from the thesis written by Dr. Wesley Chroma, one of the most brilliant minds in history. The drill bit itself wasn’t sharp, but it didn’t need to be. Instead, it used magnets to dissolve the covalent bonds between the rock’s atoms, causing the stone to crumble apart. With that drill alone, the colonists dug out their home in just a few days’ time.

  But even as he stood in that art gallery dedicated to science, Nash could feel his heart almost murmur nervously. The claustrophobia of living in a cave was still very real. But at the same time, the cave was vast, as the bubble of walls around them yawned out at the same time. And with the walls painted with darkness, it gave the illusion of standing at the heart of the universe and looking out, trying to find an end. The claustrophobia was paired with living on an infinite plain – a paradox that no one had an answer for.

  Nash suddenly understood: his new home was nothing more than a room of mirrors, open but closed, with many people but one, an escape and a trap.

  INTERMISSION A

  2196 AD

  “Mr. Nash? Mr. Storia is ready.”

  Nash, who was sitting on the most comfortable sofa he had ever felt, stood up reluctantly. As he picked up his jacket, which was folded on the cushion next to him, the butler said impatiently, “Please hurry – Mr. Storia does not like to be kept waiting.”

  Nash thought that this was rich of him to say, considering that he had been waiting close to forty minutes to talk with the old man. What he had to tell Storia terrified him, so much so that it both stretched out and squeezed in those forty minutes, but he had to be brave.

  As he followed the butler down the hallway, the servant frowned at the coat in Nash’s arms. “Are you sure, sir, that you do not want me to take that coat?”

  Before Nash had a chance to say anything, the butler continued, “It’s just that Mr. Storia would not want a coat like that on his fur
niture.”

  As insulted that Nash felt, he knew that he had to do right in Storia’s eyes. This was in spite of the fact that he had worn that coat for years – at one point, that coat was the only thing he had left in the world. As he handed the coat over with a sigh, he felt like a ghost, and not just because a draft in the hallway was trickling over his bare arms.

  When they reached the final door at the end of the hallway, the servant opened the door and ushered him in. As Nash entered the room, the first thing he noticed was that he had stepped into color. All of the shades of rainbow arched over his head like a ceiling of arrows, and for a moment Nash thought that he was trapped in a room of diamond. The room wasn’t diamond, but it was close. Instead, it was drenched in glass walls that looked out over the tall city of Dauphin. The twists of colors were from the advertising that shone like suns from the buildings and billboards. Even in the apocalypse that was the future, there was still room for marketing.

  Nash was so overwhelmed by the invading colors, he didn’t see there was an inkblot splattered against the light. As his eyes adjusted, though, Nash saw that the inkblot was a person, and he knew who it was.

  “Sir – Mr. Nash is here to see you, as requested,” the butler said.

  “Good, thank you. You may leave us now.”

  The butler bowed and stepped out of the room, closing the door behind him, leaving Nash caged with the beast.

  As Drake Storia stepped out of the shadows of the light, Nash finally met the man that few had ever seen. Drake Storia had the look of an ash forest in winter. He had a face that was hard and gray in the light of the city, and he had a thick snowcap of white hair on top of his head. There are some men who are ashamed of the gray hair and the old age it brings, but Storia wore it like a crown, proud. Storia had a sick confidence in his soupy hazel eyes, as if he knew all of the answers to life, even the answers he didn’t deserve to know.

  “You know, I’ve had that servant for a few years now, and I still don’t know his name,” Storia said with a laugh, as if he thought it was funny. “And do you know why?”

  “Why?”

  “You were told all of your life to be afraid of strangers when it’s your friends who destroy you. When I was young, my father went into business with his best friend, and what did he get? His friend stabbed him in the eye. That’s why you keep everyone a handshake away in life.”

  The uneasiness was apparent on Nash’s face, but Storia misinterpreted why. The old man chuckled. “You must be wondering how self-centered I am, how I don’t even know a servant’s name. Come over here, Mr. Nash, and I’ll show you why.”

  Pulled by an unseen hand, Nash walked across the room and stood alongside Storia. Together, the two men looked out the glass window and into the cloud forest of skyscrapers. Storia pointed down at the street and ordered, “Look at the people, and tell me how small they are from up here. You really understand how worthless someone is when they’re small enough to dance on your thumb.”

  Nash had to lean against the glass wall in order to look straight down. But he didn’t see the street – all he saw were visions of a hand pushing him, of the glass wall breaking, of him tumbling down to hug the concrete. Whether it was from the vision or from the vertigo, Nash felt a splash of nausea on his face. As Nash took a step back, shaking the sickness out of his head, Storia laughed.

  “That sick feeling must be new to you. You’ve probably never been as tall as you are now, standing in this building. You know where that feeling of vertigo comes from? It’s your body fighting the urge to jump.”

  The smile suddenly washed away from Storia’s face, and the old man snarled. “Tell me, did you have the same feeling just before you slept with me daughter?”

  It took Nash a moment to respond. Finally, he said with a shaky voice, “I love Ava, and she loves me.”

  Storia scoffed. “Love – I don’t believe in things I can’t see. But since I can see my Ava’s stomach bulging more and more every day, I’m starting to believe it. Now, what are we going to do about that?”

  Nash couldn’t begin to imagine what Storia had in mind. The old man was a former charter official and now one of the richest men in all of Dauphin, perhaps the wealthiest one. Not only could Storia have Nash killed, but he could order the city’s security guards to do the deed. But Storia was as unpredictable as he was powerful. “I can’t hide my daughter from the world forever – I’m too proud of her to do that. But I can’t have her walk around with a swollen belly and no husband by her side. What would people think of her? How would they treat her? If it’s not with respect, then they’re doing it wrong. I’ve thought about this for a few nights now, and I keep coming up with one answer: you’re going to marry my daughter.”

  Nash was startled by this, and he didn’t know what to say. Storia continued, talking more to his self than he was to Nash. “But we’re solving a problem with another problem. People will wonder how a lady from money met someone so common. We’ll need a cover story.” He thought for a few moments before snapping his fingers. “I know! We’ll tell them that you’re one of my new business partners, and that you met her during a dinner. I’ll have you fitted for a new suit – I would never go into business with someone dressed as poorly as you. Besides, you’ll need something sharp for the wedding.”

  If this isn’t true love, I don’t know what is, Nash thought dryly. He started to speak up, but Storia cut him off. “So, what kind of business venture are you interested in? People are going to ask, you know. Are you looking to go into chemicals? Agriculture? Perhaps trade, like your new father-in-law does? Don’t be shy, Mr. Nash – I guarantee that your imagination won’t run any deeper than my wallet.”

  Finally, Nash knew what to say: “To do good.”

  This caught Storia off guard. “What do you mean by that?”

  “I mean just that. I want to open art galleries, soup kitchens, bookstores, and everything in between.”

  “And why would you waste your time and my money doing that?”

  “I want people to remember how decent we can be,” Nash said, knowing that he was going to be mocked for this. Running a humanitarian empire would go against the charter and its virtue of profit.

  “Don’t be so naïve, kid. Didn’t your father teach you any better?”

  “My father died before I was born, and my mother died when I was young.”

  Storia shook his head. “An orphan, a damn orphan is marrying my daughter. How are you going to raise my grandchild if you were never raised?”

  “I’ll learn, like any other parent,” Nash said.

  “I guess that’ll have to do. You can start being responsible for your new family starting tonight. You have to start planning, after all. I want your business to be up and running exactly one week from now, because that is when the wedding is going to be. Any questions?”

  “No.”

  “Excellent – now let’s shake on it.”

  Storia extended his hand and Nash unfurled his own, slowly but surely. And man shook hands with the snake.

  CHAPTER 3

  2201 AD

  After Nash had gotten his food ration – the vegetarian meal that was rich with colors but tasted gray – he paid a visit to the colony’s medical clinic. He didn’t go by choice – like everything else in life, it had already been scheduled for him, and the clock pulled him along with its hour hand.

  He was there to feel the pinprick joy of immunizations. The next rotation was going to occur in a few days, as a launch would bring home a number of miners from Harbor, and Nash and the others would take their place at the controls. He needed his shots before he left – he had been repeatedly told that the shots were the difference between life and death. Most people wouldn’t see a choice in that line of thinking, but Nash certainly did.

  Reluctantly, he entered the clinic, the automatic doors sliding close behind him like a guillotine. He didn’t realize it until then, but this was only the second time he had ever set foot in a clinic. For a
s long as he could remember, he owed his life to traveling doctors and cheap home remedies. And here he was, surrounded by the cutting edge of tomorrow, where diseases could be cured, wounds can be healed, and death can be cracked open to find the milk of life inside. And Nash never felt less deserving of something.

  The secretary – a square of woman, who matched the shape of her desk – looked up and saw Nash. “Hello there, and you are…?”

  “Nash – David Nash.”

  The secretary pulled up the daily schedule. “Dr. Bends is already with a patient. He’ll be with you shortly.” She gestured towards one of the many empty chairs in the lobby. “Please, sit.”

  Nash began to sit down in one of the chairs, but he immediately sprang up. Until the day he died, he wasn’t sure why the chair felt so wrong. He had thrown a net of definition on top of it, and all he realized was that the spot was sacred. He didn’t know that he was sitting in the same seat that Jules Khunrath had sat in just a few years before, when the dying Anzhela had entered the room.

  Nash twisted around, expecting to see the secretary judging him. But she wasn’t there, having disappeared like a magic trick. He heard the sound of a door closing just around the corner, and he reasoned that she was filing paperwork, or whatever it was secretaries did. For the first time, he was entirely by himself at the colony. The gravity of loneliness made his feet drag. The silence around him was heavy, and it was tiring to swim through the murk.

  And that was when he heard it – a heartbeat against a wall, somewhere. Some people don’t see how sound can transform into light, but for Nash, that tapping sound was a sunbeam in the darkness. A sound like that had to be made – it was too perfect.

  And so, drawn to the fire, Nash left the lobby and walked down one of the hallways. As he walked, the sound became louder and somehow even faster. It reminded him of the times when he was younger and exploring the abandoned subway lines beneath the city of Dauphin. At the end of the day, when he climbed up the ladder to the manhole, he could hear the traffic on the streets getting closer and closer. In the dark tunnels, that sound was the only compass that he needed. And now was no different.