by D. Tolmach
Finally she got close enough to him to tug on his heated thermal suit. “Osco!” She wasn’t much of an athlete and her breath was heavy, her own suit emitting an excessive amount of steam.
“Oh, hi, Vildana. Did you see that? We showed those plebes who’s boss!”
Vildana's head bobbed as she caught her breath. “Osco, Ion is home on leave!”
For a boy of draft age with chronic pneumonia and a bum leg like Osco Silvos, war seems like a blast when it’s on the other side of the galaxy and it’s other people’s families and houses being blown to smithereens. Stuck on his home planet, he could follow the exploits of all his favorite soldiers on their hlogs, tracking their kills and injuries for his Fantasy War brigade. Ion Armonde, a boy turned war hero from Osco’s own apartment building, was the star of his collection. Other than writing long sophomoric sonnets about battles he had only read about and pestering men at labor rallies, Fantasy War was his favorite hobby. Patriotism was the only way he knew to fill the emptiness and despair of his bleak life.
“Strange, he didn’t mention anything about coming home on his last holocast. We need to take him flowers and chocolate . . . and champagne! Do you have any money?”
* * *
Osco and Vildana were neighbors on the 783rd floor of one of the millions of identical thousand-story housing projects that made up the suburbs of Port City. Ion lived just above them. They took the long smelly ride up to his floor in awkward silence, Vildana staring at the penis someone had carved into the door to keep herself from stealing glances at Osco, who was reading the swearwords that had been tagged all over the lift for the millionth time. When the elevator finally opened, they walked into a dark hall. One of the many banes of living in Galactic Dynasty public housing was that it took forever to get someone from the Department of Habitation to change a lightbulb, and the residents found it easier to use the built-in flashlight on their thermal suits than find a stepladder and change it themselves. Their lights illuminated white walls that left powdery streaks on your clothes when you brushed up against them and which were also covered in profanity, alongside band names and heartfelt admissions of love and guilt. The pair made their way down the long hallway to Ion’s apartment. His doorbell was a dissonant buzz, and after a few seconds, the door opened.
“Vildana! Osco!” Ion reached out and hugged them both. “Come on in.”
The flat was small, and made even smaller by crates of what appeared to be some sort of soft drink stacked up against every wall. They hung their thermal suits on the coat rack and put on house slippers, and Ion led them into the kitchen, where a grandfatherly man with a long yellowish beard was loudly slurping a bowl of borscht.
“LOOK POPS, VILDANA AND OSCO STOPPED BY!” He had to yell because his father was almost completely deaf. The old man smiled at them politely without recognizing them or, for that matter, his own son. Ion filled a vase with tap water the color of brass and put the flowers in it before taking three glasses from the cupboard.
“What are all these cans?” Osco asked.
“That is Dark Fluid Energy Drink, and it’s going to make me very rich.” He pulled one from the refrigerator and filled half of each flute, then popped the champagne bottle and added it to the drink. The cocktail fizzed and a violet steam seemed to rise from it. Osco and Vildana looked at each other, but their host seemed so enthusiastic and it would be impolite to refuse.
“Let’s go to my room.”
* * *
Dark Fluid hits you right in the cerebellum, and mixing it with alcohol is not recommended by the manufacturers and seriously frowned upon by nine out of ten doctors. Sitting on his single bed and with her head feeling as fizzy and purple as the cocktail she was drinking, Vildana found herself asking, “What is it like there, on the front?”
Ion, who had drunk four full cans already that day and polished off a bottle of vodka with his old man, looked down uncomfortably at his glass. “Girl, you don’t want me to talk about that.”
“But on your hlog you said that you woke up every morning pumped and ready to go out and start kicking alien butt.” Osco was confused and disappointed. He had hoped to hear all about Ion’s adventures.
“My what? Oh, that thing, yeah, that wasn’t me.”
“What do you mean it wasn’t you?”
“When you get drafted, you have to sign away the rights to your personal appearance to the Department of Morale. They scanned my body and made a holographic representation of me they could use to say or do whatever they wanted. Trust me. What’s going on out there is way worse than anything you’ve heard. If real soldiers were telling the people what was really going on on the battlefield, well, that wouldn’t do much for morale back here at home. What you heard from that holobot was bullshit, every word. And that goes for everything you see on the news and everything the king says.”
“Are you calling the King of the Galaxy a liar?”
“He’s either a liar or he’s a fool being lied to by people who are getting rich off the war.”
This revelation made sense to Vildana, at least more sense than what she saw on the news, but it angered Osco. “But, but . . .”
“Sure, some guys like it. They get off on the adrenaline and violence, but it wasn’t for me. There’s no fucking way they’re getting me to go back out there.” He finished his drink in one gulp and mixed himself another.
“So what, you’re just going to go AWOL? Abandon all your comrades in their time of need?”
Ion smiled and looked at his friend. He was a year older than Osco and two years older than Vildana, but his time spent in battle had hardened him and bestowed an air of wisdom about him. He pulled out a flyer from his nightstand and handed it to Osco.
“I’m gonna be an entrepreneur.”
BE THE YOU YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO BE!
MARKETING DARK FLUID ENERGY DRINK© FOR A BETTER LIFE
It had a picture of a group of happy young people kitesurfing Uranus, and at the bottom it read Sponsored by the Church of the One Undeniable and Completely Accurate Truth.
“What is that, a cult?” A lot of kooky religions had popped up since shit started going south in the Galactic Dynasty, and whoever printed this must have had a lot of money because paper was rare and valuable.
“Of course it’s not a cult. It’s a new spiritual movement that offers a path to enlightenment and worldly success. All you have to do is put your trust in them and pay a percentage of your earnings. Osco, look, I know you’re a cripple, your old man is a lush, and you live here in this shithole surrounded by losers with nothing to give you any hope that life is going to get better, so you’ve latched on to the promises of the Dynasty to claim its victories as your own. But that’s no way to live. You have to fight your own fight and make yourself a man, because no matter how many planets your Dynasty conquers, no matter how many battles are won, trust me, the king ain’t looking out for you. Nobody is, except for Aris Centaurus.”
When Osco had said they should buy a bottle of champagne, he had imagined that Ion’s apartment would be bustling with relatives and friends visiting to congratulate a returning war hero. He had no idea the three of them would be drinking the whole bottle, and Osco’s body couldn’t really handle alcohol. At the same time, he couldn’t stop himself from drinking if it was available, even though it made his face hot and he would have to get up and pee about every ten minutes. Before it occurred to him to ask who Aris Centaurus was, he stood on weak knees and ran off to the bathroom.
* * *
Left alone with Vildana, Ion moved closer to her until his bare arm met hers. The touch of her skin felt like home, like the first normal thing he had felt since being sent to boot camp, and made his heart race while enveloping his whole body in an unfamiliar, comforting warmth.
“So, you got a boyfriend?”
* * *
As his urine flowed in a sparkling white arc into the toilet, Osco found it easier to think. Shell shock. He’d heard of that, men so traumatized b
y war that their entire personalities changed. Ion was delirious. After all he had sacrificed for the Dynasty, he couldn’t really think that the king was a liar. We’ll get him the help he needs, take him to a psychiatrist, get him medicated. Hope filled him with the prospects of a new project. Helping a veteran with psychological problems would be even better than harassing striking workers. When he returned to the bedroom, Vildana had her feet in Ion’s lap and was sketching his portrait on her tablet, and they were laughing at something one of them said. A feeing akin to anger, but not quite, rose inside of him. It took him a moment to realize that it was jealousy and that he loved Vildana and had always loved her. He marched over to the bed and took her by the arm.
“We have to go.”
“What? But Osco, I just started drawing. . . .”
“You can finish it later.”
* * *
As they were putting on their thermal suits, Ion handed Osco another piece of paper.
“You’re a smart kid. I’m getting started in this business, and we could use a partner like you. There’s going to be a marketing conference tomorrow—why don’t you come? Aris is always looking for bright young people to join the organization.” This flyer had happy young people waterskiing on Titan and read ARE YOU AS HAPPY AND SUCCESSFUL AS GOLDATH WANTS YOU TO BE? Join us at the Port City Convention Center Sunday, March 45th at 10:80 a.m. for a special brunch and meet-and-greet with Aris Centaurus.
“Who is Goldath?”
“Just show up tomorrow. You’ll learn everything you need to know. It was great seeing you guys, and it really meant a lot that you didn’t forget about me.”
* * *
“You know he was humoring you, right?”
“What?”
“You shouldn’t have bothered him with your girlish little hobbies. The man is a warrior. He doesn’t have time for things like that.”
“Why are you being so mean?”
Osco thought for a minute, because he didn’t know why he was being so mean. “I . . . I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“Nobody hurt me, Osco. Nobody but you.” Tears welled up in her eyes, and she ran off down the hall and into the stairwell.
Vildana wasn’t very fast, but she could outrun Osco. By the time he made it to the stairs and opened the door, he couldn’t tell if she had run up or down, so he paused for a moment in the light of his flashlight and tried to listen. The tenants had given up trying to get someone to change the lightbulbs in the stairwell long before Osco was born. It was a dark void in the heart of the building. A place, parents warned, of alien migrant squatters that abducted and tortured children when they misbehaved. There was a window in between each floor with drug paraphernalia and an ashtray made out of a tin can that had been cut in half on the windowsill or the rusty heater underneath it and a used condom or lost sock on the floor surrounded by an entire galaxy of discarded sunflower-seed hulls and tiny puddles of saliva. The sun was setting on the other side of the building, and the only light other than Osco’s flashlight came from the windows of the neighboring buildings, whose stairwells, he imagined, were equally frightening. At least he hoped his wasn’t the only building like this. That would be depressing. Water dripped somewhere in the distance, and after a few seconds, he thought he heard voices from what sounded like a few floors below. Straining to listen over the pounding of his heart, he could tell they were, in fact, male voices, and most likely Human. Osco Silvos was a weakling, but he wasn’t a coward, and dimming his light to its lowest setting and gripping the electroshock baton he carried in his suit, he slowly and as quietly as possible entered the abyss.
* * *
As he descended the stairs, the voices got louder until he accidentally slid his foot on the concrete, making an abrupt ssssht sound and kicking a few small loose stones farther down the steps. Then the voices stopped. He waited a while and they started again, with intermittent laughter. Finally, he made it down five floors to the landing where the sounds were coming from. Four ruffians were sitting on the windowsill or leaning against the wall, smoking. One of them was holding something in front of himself with both hands. When he noticed Osco, he deftly moved it behind his back. After they got a better look at him, they laughed.
“It’s just a kid.”
He brought his hands back out from behind himself, and Osco saw that he was holding a plastic twelve-ounce bottle in one hand. A hole had been burned into the side, and he was inserting the sharp end of a safety pin with something burning stuck on the tip, filling the bottle with smoke. “What are you doing down here?” he asked Osco good-naturedly.
“I’m . . . looking for a friend.”
“Well, you came to the right place. We’re always looking to make new friends.”
“No, I mean my friend got lost and ran down here.”
“How old are you? Shouldn’t you be out on the front, defending humanity from the alien hordes?”
“I got a medical deferral.”
“Yeah, he wouldn’t last five minutes,” another chimed in.
“Now wait, this little pup was brave enough to come down here and look for his friend. Maybe he’s tougher than he looks.” He held up the bottle, now opaque with milky smoke. “You want to see how real soldiers have fun?”
“What do you know about real soldiers?”
They laughed again. “Ever hear of the Battle of XR-5-17?”
“Of course, it was a turning point, the first planetary-wide victory for the Dynasty and—”
“Yeah, well, for a turning point it didn’t change a damn thing.”
“You were there?”
One of the guys started playing a slow, sad song on a small diatonic accordion.
“Hit this and I’ll tell you about it.”
It was sweet-smelling but harsh smoke, and Osco forced himself to keep from coughing and embarrassing himself. In a few seconds, all of the anger and frustration that were the building blocks of his personality melted away, and everything that had seemed so important a moment ago ceased to matter as he floated over the floor. Why can’t I always feel like this? Time stopped, except for the drip-drip-dripping of leaky pipes, each drop slowly counting off the nanoseconds. He felt warm and calm, like a million hugs from Vildana, and if you had told him at that moment he was destined to become the first president of the galaxy and a genocidal totalitarian maniac, he would have said you were higher than he was. His entire existence seemed ridiculous. Why was I such an asshole to Vildana? Am I wasting my time with all this political crap? Is there more to the Universe than this reality we perceive? The answer to the latter question seemed to be yes, because the stairwell had shifted at least forty degrees and dust particles hung in the beams of their flashlights, tiny universes of their own. The guys laughed again when they saw what had happened to his pupils.
“Yeah, kid, have a seat. We’ll teach you everything you need to know about the Great Fucking War.”
* * *
I bet you never seen a tree. XR was lousy with trees. It had fucking forests full of trees. It had fucking jungles full of trees. I swear, if I never see another fucking tree in my life, I’ll die happy. I know they’re supposed to be romantic or some shit, but seriously, fuck trees. Here, smoke a cigarette—it’ll ground you. The thing is, when you’re trying to fight a war, trees get in your way. Junkers hide in them and they’ll take out your whole fucking platoon in an ambush. It’s insane, right? You got people here that would literally probably sell an organ for their own tree. I don’t know what they’d do with it, climb it, I guess, but we’re over there spraying them with pesticides and bombing the shit out of them. So we’re at the foot of the BAFM—the Big-Ass Fucking Mountain—surrounded by kilometer after kilometer of dead trees, and our job is to get to the top. Fine, whatever. But first we gotta wait for the fucktards in the Navy to find someone who can hit the broad side of a barn and take out the BAFCan—that’s the Big-Ass Fucking Cannon at the top of the BAFM. They took their sweet time. Of course, they were in orbit an
d in the middle of their own battle. They finally hit it, liquidating a lot of the artillery guns and snipers too, so things cool off a bit, and we get the order to start moving up and take the BAFM. Piece of cake, right? That’s what we thought, until it started raining. I’m talking fucking sheets of water, and what happens when all the trees and roots have been poisoned and there’s nothing to hold the ground in place? It turns into mud, a fucking ocean of mud. But they don’t rescind the order, so we start climbing and it becomes pretty apparent that this is a BAFBI—Big-Ass Fucking Bad Idea—but we’re just grunts, what do we know? The ground is full of these sinkholes, and you can’t tell where they’re going to be. You step in one, you get sucked under, and ain’t nothing nobody can do to help you. I stopped counting how many guys I saw bite it like that. By far that’s gotta be one of the worst ways to die. It takes us five days to get to the top, still under fire, but the Junkers had been hit pretty bad and we still had the numbers, so after a night of close-quarters fighting, we raise the grand flag of the Galactic Dynasty. The sun comes out and we just have to sit there and wait around for supplies. In the meantime, there are these two big-ass puddles. We use the one farther from the base to shit in, and the other we purify with tablets and drink. We keep waiting and waiting while the Navy fights it out in space and it gets hotter and hotter. The water in the puddle we were drinking out of gets lower and lower, and soon there’s this fucking awful stench all over the entire mountaintop, and we see something sticking out of the water. It’s a damn Junker foot! There was a whole squad of ’em in there. We took their planet, but I guess they got their revenge.
But man, that rock is like three times the size of ours, and it was covered in trees. Birds too, and the fucking most pristine oceans. I mean, you could swim in them! Not after we were done with it, though.