In A Universe Without Stars 1: Skyeater

by J Alex McCarthy

  There is a proud glimmer in his eyes.

  “So I set out to create the greatest non-medicated stimulating experience that any species can experience. Of course, being on the Caelacis greatly inhibits my operations but I make do with what I have.”

  He pushes them out of reach of the light show.

  Bermea presses himself into the cage to get a better look. His junk sticks out of the cage, unlike the others, he’s never been uncomfortable naked, in fact when he still had a home he would walk around naked all the time.

  There’s something overhead, with the metal cage blocking his view he couldn’t tell that this place was powered by natural light. The ceiling is made out of a glass like material, a dull blue light shines through it.

  The Skyeater’s star.

  Thousands of shadows move through it, painting the ground with muted black shapes.

  It’s an aquarium, filled with thousands of water breathing beasts and fish from all over the galaxy. A giant white whale-like creature swims overhead, casting a shadow over the entire foyer. It snakes over four hundred feet long. Bermea stares in awe at the beast. How in the hell did they capture that?

  “Ah, the great leviathan, the Omecatar. It’s one of our newest additions. We were lucky to capture it as a child, to watch it grow to its true size.” Sherif finally goes into the bestial area. “Sorry I don’t have time to show you that area today, but I can still show you this area.”

  He takes a left down a giant corridor.

  The hallways is filled with different creatures in open air cages. They all come in different shapes, sizes and colors, they all look very intelligent to an extent. They all stop what they’re doing and watch as the humans are pushed down the hallway.

  “This is just one of the many areas of my palace.”

  Bermea looks back at the eyes of the creatures who watch them. They don’t seem scared nor do they have any fear in their eyes. They just seem content and some even look happy.

  What the hell is going on here? Maybe Sherif is right. Maybe they are safe here.

  Sherif continues to show them around. He goes down each and every hallway and corridor in the bestiary. Showing off and naming every single species they have.

  Every species cage is different, some have the normal dirt and vegetation like trees and bushes. But they vary in color and design. Some cages are arid and dry like the desert planets its inhabitants came from and some have pools of water and mist conferring planets to keep a humid and wet environment for its occupants.

  Bermea is the only one who converses with Sherif, while the others just stand back. Bermea knows he’s a good judge of character and of all the Serephins he’s met so far, Sherif seems to be the one who is who he claims to be.

  “Your race is one of the more intelligent ones we’ve gotten lately. Not to say that you are anything special since we do have some far more advance than your culture but we don’t have many and you’re in the top few.”

  “Thanks, I guess. Since we are so intelligent you should let us go, so we can preserve ourselves since we are so intelligent and can inspire to be much much more,” Bermea says. Sherif just laughs.

  “Nice try, but no.”

  They finally come up to a giant empty open air glass cage. It’s filled with greenery and shrubs.

  It has five main open areas, a large pool area with lounge chairs and smaller ponds for washing, a waste disposal area with ten large urinal like machines in the open, a eating area that has floor level tables and bean bag like seats for sitting and a food compositor, an area with plush mats built into the ground for sleeping, and an giant grassy knoll with a small lead up to a hill that watches over the entire cage. The back of the hill against the white walls of the enclosure.

  It’s scattered with plush seats and exercise equipment. The top of the hill is flat enough for four people to lay on top of it. The only thing separating the areas is a thicket of trees in between them.

  “Welcome to your new home.”

  A human-sized hole opens in the glass. The bars disappear in their cage.

  “Well go on, there is work to be done.” Sherif says. Bermea looks behind him, this would be his perfect chance to escape, but going into the enclosure feels right, and he doubts he can escape from the Serephins. His instincts has never been wrong before.

  He walks out the cage and toward his new home. His toes curl on the freezing marble-like floors and stop when his feet lands on grass. He wiggles his toes on the grass, it feels like his parents front lawn when he was younger.

  He sniffs. He can smell the air, it smells just like Earth, he looks at a tree. A mechanical bird looks back and flies into another tree.

  His goosebumps disappear, the air and temperature is perfect, not too humid, not too cold, not too dry. Whoever made this place has it down to a tee. The other nine make it in before the glass melds close.

  Sherif taps on the glass.

  “I don’t have time to update you on everything in your new home because we are opening soon, but please be on your best behavior and your stay with us will be that much more marvelous and it will benefit the both of us. We open in thirty minutes and you do whatever you want in your new home, since it is your new home. And that means anything,” Sherif says with a wink.

  They all just stare at him.

  He sighs.

  “You can breed, eat whatever you want, play around, sleep all day, as long as you don’t do anything too awful.”

  He looks behind him.

  “This will be goodbye for now. Have a nice time.” And then he was gone, leaving the humans to themselves.

  They are alone now, Bermea can see the other enclosures around them. But he could look at them later, for now he should explore his new crib.

  Everyone splits apart and go their separate ways to explore. He saw something he was interested in since he was first abducted. He walks through the trees and comes into the eating area. He eyes a food compactor. It’s a large metal rectangular box, with ten small doors on it with small displays next to each door.

  He walks up to one of the door and taps the display. ‘Chose your food’ shows up on it. First, it asks him what variety of food. It has everything from crab to beef to vegan central dishes. He wants to keep it simple so he chooses beef, it then shows a map of Earth, grouped by country. He chooses the US. Then every single somewhat major popular beef dish shows up on the menu. It has everything from just a plain burger to steak with a side of butter and potato wedges.

  “Wow,” he mutters, this just might be the best place in the universe.

  He’s going to get so fat.

  He clicks on a normal burger. He chooses medium rare with a side of double fried fries and hits ‘Start’.

  He stares into the window.

  “Oh my god…”

  In the window, a cup of what looks like simple dirt is placed in the middle of the compartment on a plate by metal tongs. The dirt lights up and stretches and molds into his burger.

  How is such a thing even possible?

  Energy cannot be created or destroyed but it can be converted. And that’s what this machine is doing, creating an edible meal from what he thinks is dirt.

  “Bermea!” Someone yells behind him. Bermea snaps out of his stupor. A woman runs up to him.

  “Kelly? Kelly Molino?”

  “Yes Bermea Redding.” She hurtles against his chest and hugs the life out of him.

  “But I didn’t see you in the cage!?!”

  She presses herself closer to him.

  “I was hiding behind some people. I didn’t want to be seen, just in case you weren’t who I thought you were,” she says. She starts to cry. “Oh god, I’m so glad that you are here,” She says as she steps back. Kelly grabs his hands.

  Kelly was his college sweet-heart for a little while before he transferred to another school. He never really gotten that far with her. When he had the courage to ask her out she mentioned she liked him as well. But they only gotten as far as one da
te before she got accepted into an Ivy league school.

  He hasn’t seen her since.

  And she remembered him.

  What are the odds that they would be put together?

  She blushes slightly. She looks… Very good. With her strawberry red hair coming down to the middle of her back, just skirting the tips of her aureoles, and the thousands of little freckles painting her face and chest. Bermea can’t help but stare. She glances down and notices his member, but she doesn’t react.

  “I thought I was going to be alone. In this scary place,” Kelly says. Bermea is still stumped at her, how lucky he is to be with somebody he knows. Somebody as beautiful as her, and he’s her only companion.

  Hopefully.

  She notices he’s hesitation.

  “Oh.” She pulls her hands away. “Are you taken?” She looks down, trying but failing to hide her disappointment.

  “No, No!” He grabs her hands again and tries to think of something to not make himself look like an idiot. “No, this place isn’t a scary as you think.” He brings himself closer to her.

  He’s a glass half full kind of guy. He wipes the tears away from her face, noticing how sweaty his palms are, but she doesn’t move away.

  “You got to think positive. We could’ve been with the rest, dead and left behind. But we’re here, in this menagerie, in a comfortable home and the safest place on this ship.”

  “You really don't believe him do you?”

  “I’d like to think that I have a very good judge of character. It’s one of my inept skills I have from growing up in a bad neighborhood.”

  “And exactly how did you grow up?” She smiles.

  “How about I tell you over dinner?”

  “Over dinner?”

  Bermea lets go of her hand and turns toward the food compiler. He opens one of the windows and pulls out a steaming hot burger and fries platter.

  “Or lunch?”

  She jumps in glee and runs to the compiler and looks at the display.

  Bermea and Kelly walk up the grassy hill in their habitat. It’s abandoned so far, only one human lies on the grass down below. The others are still scattered about.

  They make it to the top and sit with their backs on the white walls of the enclosure. Kelly inches closer to Bermea, their thighs touching. This almost feels too easy to Bermea. She rests her shoulder against his. Their food platters lying on their laps.

  “Oh, wow, you can see the whole place from here,” Kelly says. Bermea pries his eyes off of her for long enough to see what she’s talking about. He can see everything from here, every single area and movements of his fellow humans.

  Most of them are down at the eating area, trying out every food their mind could think of. In the waste area, two people stand around awkwardly. Both waiting for the other to go, too nervous to use it in front of the other.

  They’ve must have not been in jail before. Because the jokes are on them because even if one of them did leave he can see everything. Not that he would want to see what he’s guessing they are about to do.

  In the pool area, a large black man just sits in the water, alone. Is that the guy who yelled back in the cage? Bermea wonders but his mind is too focused on the woman next to him.

  “You can see everything. Our little hill over the prairie,” he says.

  “One minute until open,” a feminine voice says overhead. The sound vibrates over the enclosure. Outside their glass walls, workers run from place to place getting ready for a day of work.

  “I’m nervous, I’m not sure I’m going to like being stared at like some freaking animal all day long. Why did this happen to us? What did I do to deserve this? I thought I lead a good life. All the work I did, everything I was working toward is gone,” Kelly says rambling on. Her head slumps and she starts to cry.

  “I don’t know if I can do this.” Her tears drips on her Steak tartare. Bermea puts his arm around her.

  “None of us deserved this. But you can do this. You’ve made it this far, haven’t you? If you weren’t meant to be here, you wouldn’t be.” He puts his arm around here.

  A little Serephin school boy presses his face up on the glass staring in. His school group passes behind him. He stares directly at Bermea and Kelly.

  He points and laugh. Kelly presses against the wall as hard as she can, trying to become unseen.

  Bermea waves, the boy waves back. Bermea sticks his fingers in his mouth and pulls his cheeks back and makes a funny face. The boy screams and runs off.

  Kelly laughs, her pretty smile breaking through her tears.

  “See they are more afraid of us than we are of them. Well at least the kids.”

  Kelly starts to cheer up.

  “How can that be? Usually the smaller things are the ones who should be more afraid.”

  Bermea looks at his left hand.

  “You ever wonder why we set traps when we want to kill a bug or animal? Why exactly we use a trap?” Bermea asks. Kelly shakes her head.

  “It’s because bugs are nasty and disgusting and it’s easier to trap something.”

  Bermea laughs.

  “Okay that’s one point for them but what are the other reasons?”

  Kelly shrugs.

  “It’s because we have a mutual fear of death, seeing something die or killing a living being with your own hands is a harrowing experience for most sane people. When we set a trap there’s a disconnect, we would rather have them kill themselves and just clean up the remains. It’s easier to forget that they were living beings too”

  Kelly looks at him.

  “Who have just as much as a right to live as us.”

  “So you don’t kill any living creature?”

  “It really matters in the moment," he says staring at his platter. "I didn’t used to be such a pacifists. It all started when I was coming home from school when I was younger, there was a crowd around my front fence. My dog was trying to dig its way out and it got stuck in the fence.” Bermea relaxes a little bit, as more Serephins pour in.

  “The metal from the fence was sticking into his flesh and an officer had to shoot him. But he wasn’t dead. I pushed my way through the crowd and sat down with him. He looked up at me and he stopped whimpering. He was so happy I was there. He had experienced so much pain, and yet I was there, so he was that much better. I stared into his eyes and snapped his neck.”

  “Oh…” Kelly puts her hand over her mouth.

  “When they asked why I did it, I told them that... I didn’t know, I just wanted to end his suffering, I would want someone to do the same for me. After that day I always looked at the world differently. Us humans have no reason to kill those who don’t want death. Killing a being with emotion and intellect changed that in me.”

  Bermea moves his burger platter off his lap, it’s getting cold and he’s not that hungry anymore. “That’s why we scare them. We are far more intelligent than some canine. We are way past that. We are just like them, when they kill us it reminds them of their own mortality. Unless they have already conquered their fear of death.”

  Kelly sits next to him speechless.

  “I…” she pauses. “I guess that does make me feel better.” She stares out the cage as well, watching kids and adults walk by. Most of them pause to take a gander at the new arrivals. Kelly moves closer to Bermea.

  “I’m glad that it was you who was put in here with me,” she said.

  “You say that now. But I’m actually pretty unbearable,”

  “I know, I’m the one who picked you.”

  “And what if I don’t want to be picked by you,” he says. “I don’t know much about you except of what you told me in college. Which I won’t lie I kind of don’t remember.”

  “Well we can fix that.” She straightens up and kisses him on the lips.

  And with that, they relax against the wall and lay in the grass. Kelly cuddling on top of him.

  She tells him of her past and what she did before and after college. She grew up
well, had a great father and mother and they didn’t support her career choice but they never stopped giving her their love. After she graduated from Brown she went to work for a major news agency, getting a regular job as a writer.

  And then everything went to hell, she lost her job in a scandal controversy, she pushed away her ex-boyfriend, her parents died, and she was living month to month before Earth got invaded. In reality, as long as she lives, it’s seems like a blessing.

  Bermea tells his tale. He grew up in a rough neighborhood with only his father and three brothers. After one of his brothers died after a gang related stabbing when he was ten, he had always worked hard to become something better than what everyone expected of him. Over the years till college, he lost all his brothers except one. And after college, he decided to try something steady for once and joined to military. He was only in there for two years before LA was attacked, and he was one of the first ones abducted.

  They continue to talk for what seems like hours. Just about random things, but despite Bermea’s constant chatter, Kelly seems to love it.

  “Oh how long has it been?” Kelly asks.

  Bermea sits up.

  He looks at the small reflection of the Skyeaters sun through the water above. It’s been a few hours.

  “A few hours I’m guessing. It’s hard to tell without any clocks, and they could be on a different planetary cycle than ours.”

  The menagerie isn’t as busy as before but they are still people carousing through. Down the hill a big black guy waves at him. Axe. Most of the people in the habitat are hovering around him.

  Axe looks up and waves at them to come over to him. “Should we go? I was having such a nice time,” Kelly asks.

  “Yeah, of course, we got to get to know everybody in this place. We are living together after all.” Bermea jumps to his feet.