“And if we’re not on a planet?”
“We ain’t got an escape pod, but we do have an escape pod hatch.”
“Got it.”
3
There is just enough room in the center of his room for Jason to do push-ups, and so he does as many push-ups as he can, day after day. Any free moment, he’s getting a workout in. Tribold is an expert on the body, and has Jason on a very strict diet that leaves his body in “a happy place.” It works, in part, Jason thinks, because of his body and mind’s desire to find addictions; he’s just replaced the unhealthy addictions of cocaine and sex with the healthy addictions of diet and exercise.
There is a knock on his open door, and Jason looks up from the ground to see the large man dressed in a white lab coat looking down at him. “I’ve been going through your medicals,” Tribold says, tossing Jason a computer tablet once the human has moved from the prone position to his knees.
Jason looks at the chart on the tablet’s screen and sees a bunch of lines going up and down. “I don’t understand any of this.”
“It means you’re doing fine,” Tribold explains with a chuckle, “but your body is still detoxing from the abuse it took a decade ago. I can see where the Big Brains ran into trouble with you. The original Peak solution that Rapscallion injected you with to elevate your physical abilities functions as an accumulative depressant. Was Rapscallion taking this drug?”
“He was.”
“For how long?”
“For almost twenty years,” Jason explains, handing the tablet back. “He went the first few years just as a normal dude in tights, but as the ‘80s rolled on and the superhuman game turned darker, he began taking Peak, tweaking the formula over the years. Well, his scientists tweaked the formula, not him. He was just the money man and the guinea pig.”
“That could go a long way in explaining his depression,” Tribold says, scratching his gray beard. “Did he spend long periods of time on his own?”
Jason nods. “Yeah, he did, come right down to it,” he says, rising to his feet. “When I was first adopted, I don’t even think the guy knew my name for the first year I was living there. He was always down in his basement, working on secret projects.”
“What about after Sandra died?” Tribold asks, tucking the computer tablet under his arm.
“That’s when he first injected me with Peak,” Jason says. “Soon after, he started training me, but even then the sessions were … well, they weren’t on schedule, that’s for sure. He might want to work out at 6 in the morning one day and 6 at night, the next. When Sandra was alive, I was home-schooled by about 20 or 30 tutors, but Francis had no patience for that, so he sent me to public school.”
“Sounds like he was an obsessive-depressive,” Tribold says, frowning. “Must have been tough on both of you.”
Jason shrugs. “That was a long time ago.”
Tribold shakes his head. “With addicts, Kid, a long time ago is never a long time ago.”
4
“There is no love lost in the universe for the Loshow K,” Zen says as the crew of four gather around him in the cargo hold, suited up and ready for action. “After the Revolutionaries stopped them out by Mars back in 2001, the home world descended into chaos. The warrior class that had pushed for the invasion was thrown out of power, but neither the religious, labor, or financial classes have firmly seized power.”
“You’re saying the Lowshonga is ripe for the picking,” Lavinia smiles.
Zen smiles.
5
Jason wears his Kid Rapscallion uniform but the other three pirates on the Temperance call him either Jason or Kid.
“Rapscallion’s a pretty stupid name for a hero,” Livinia teased him upon hearing it, “and adding ‘Kid’ to the front of it doesn’t make it better.”
“Pssh,” Jason had laughed, “you try finding a codename on Earth that hasn’t been used or hasn’t been trademarked. If an actual cape didn’t grab it, those damn comic book companies did. I knew a guy who called himself ‘Cancha’ because even though it roughy translated into English as ‘corn nut,’ he thought it sounded cool.”
6
They hit a religious outpost on a small island on Lowshonga’s second biggest ocean. Jason is not religious, but feels slightly bad about hitting a church until Zen shows him evidence that this particular caste tortures the island’s indigenous population if they don’t convert.
Their haul does not include much in the way of currency, but it does include a collection of orange berries that Lavinia likes in her fruit water.
These are very weird pirates, Jason thinks, and wouldn’t change his time with them for anything.
7
The Temperance lands on Gratify, a planet, Jason learns, that looks as if it is built on the principles of Las Vegas.
“Anything you could ever want is here,” Zen says, clasping Jason on the back.
“I don’t get it,” the human says, shaking his head. “If we’re all addicts of something or other, why take us to a planet where we can indulge in whatever we want?”
“It’s a test,” the captain says. “It ensures everyone on board my ship has their addictions in control.”
“Harsh.”
“It’s also a release,” Livinia adds as the Temperance’s rear ramp descends. “Zen doesn’t allow alcohol on board the ship because I’m an alcoholic, but your addiction is with powder, so if you want to get loaded up on drink, now’s your chance to do it.”
Jason blinks. “Really?”
“We’re not choir boys, Kid,” Zen laughs.
“Erm, my addictions …” he says, turning to Tribold.
“Ha! Relax, Kid,” the large man laughs, slapping Jason on the back. “Wet your whistle all you want. Just keep your nose clean and you can get back on the ship. Zen doesn’t consider sex addiction to be an actual addiction. Probably because of all the holes he fills.”
8
There is the urge, of course, to indulge in his vices, but Jason knows every step he takes away from where he is now is a step closer to making a bad decision. He’s 31 now, a far cry from the kid he was back in Vegas, which seems several lifetimes ago now.
If there’s a name for the city they landed in, he doesn’t know it. The whole planet actually seems to operate like a giant city, so he wonders if they’ve even bothered to give them names. The wide streets are crowded with festive visitors and the skyscrapers are high; from the ground, it reminds Jason of Tokyo, or at least the dystopian Tokyo seen in sci-fi movies. It’s raining, but no one seems to care, and so he doesn’t care, either.
He glances down every alleyway he passes, keeping score in his head of how many sex acts he witnesses versus people vomiting up whatever they had overloaded their stomachs with. Down one alley, he sees a man slapping a woman around, and the old hero part of him kicks in (or is it just plain decency rising to the surface?) and he moves towards them to stop the assault.
“No,” a woman’s voice from above him says, and Jason looks up into the machine guns of six security guards. “You want to rape a robot, go get your own inside.” The guard tosses him a plastic card that reads:
“Taboo Fuxx: Do To a Robot What You Can’t Do To a Living Being.”
“Ten percent off with that card,” the guard says, making a show of turning on the laser pointer and sticking it in Jason’s eye. “Have a nice night. Move along.”
Jason gives one last look down the alley and wants to see more proof that what he’s witnessing is a man assaulting a robot, and wants to argue that even if it is, he’s known a good number of robots over the years who would not appreciate being sexually assaulted in an alleyway, but the victim starts yelling how much she likes it, how she needed to be raped, and he walks away, wanting to vomit.
Images of Duplication Girl come into his mind and he wonders again how responsible he is for her murder. He was an ass to her, of course, and he has long recognized this, but does pushing someone sexually make him culpable of what happe
ned to the original DG? Aren’t people in relationships all over the world trying to get their lovers to do this or that? Where’s the line between acceptable and unacceptable?
It’s not like any of the duplicates every said no to him.
But that’s a rationalization of his treatment towards Deege and he knows it.
9
He wants to go back to the ship and sleep but one of Zen’s rules is that they all have to spend two full days on Gratify. “You must prove that you can resist temptation,” he had said, “not that you can simply avoid it.”
There are no clocks on Gratify that he can see, but there is an ebb and flow to the intensity of the crowds. The streets grow more crowded, the hedonism more intense. Jason starts to feel increasingly claustrophobic, and part of him thinks that if 20-year old Kid Rapscallion had come here, he might never have left.
An intersection ahead of him, there is a mountain of blue powder from which anyone can walk up and snort away. Jason feels his mouth run dry and his muscles tighten. He craves the rush cocaine brings him, even though he doesn’t know what this powder actually does.
It doesn’t really matter what it does, he realizes. He wants it. A woman stumbles over to the powder mountain that towers over her and takes a big scoop into her hand and sticks her nose in it, snorting loudly. When her head comes up, it’s covered in powder and the look on her face is so euphoric that Jason can feel his dick start to stir.
His tongue licks his lips repeatedly. The woman pulls off her shirt and opens her arms, begging, “Who wants to fuck me in this pile of pixie dust?”
Jason turns away, cold sweat beading up all over his body.
10
“Our boy resisted,” Livinia says over a com link back to Zen from the window of a nearby building.
“A pity,” the captain says. “Once he gets back on the blow, he’ll want to tell us where that stash of coke he stole from Joey Vamps is.”
“We should just force him back on the powder train,” Livinia suggests.
“If we do, he’ll be less likely to give up the location,” Zen reminds her. “Stay on him. We need him to crash on his own so he can offer the location of the coke in exchange for letting him stay”
“He’s headed Tribold’s way,” she tells him. “He can babysit for a while.”
“If it wasn’t for me,” Tribold cuts in, “we wouldn’t even know he stashed that coke in the Blood Zone where no one else can get it.”
Livinia scoffs. “Well, it’s good to know your obsession with reading superhero autobiographies is finally paying off.”
“I almost feel bad for him,” Tribold says philosophically. “The Good We Did presents a much better picture of Earth’s superheroes than Sex, Drugs, and Capes ever did. Too bad nobody bought it.”
“Save your book review for the spinsters,” Zen snaps. “Keep me updated.”
11
“Kid Rapscallion!” a friendly, if mischievous voice, calls to Jason from a doorway.
“No!” Jason shouts, shaking his head. “Whatever you’ve got for me, I don’t want it!”
“Your words wound me,” the man says without losing his smile as he saunters over to Jason through the bustling crowd around them. “Do you have no love for the Coincidence Man?”
Jason can’t help but look at a man he once described as “that cosmic Robin Hood-looking motherfucker,” which is a crude, if not incorrect, description of the smiling man dressed in green and brown leathers, that was now kissing him on each cheek.
“Stop, stop, stop,” Jason says, smiling despite himself as he pushes Coincidence away from him. “Jesus,” he says, looking the man up and down, “you would think a Primal Narrative God would dress better than that.”
“Ah,” Coincidence smiles, snapping his fingers and transforming his Robin Hood-inspired garb into a bright green business suit with a white shirt and brown tie and shoes. “Is this better?”
“You going away would be better,” Jason grumbles. “Just tell me, are you here to connect me with a good coincidence or a bad coincidence?”
Coincidence Man looked shocked. “I am but a humble servant of the universe, my old friend, not a manipulator of all living things.”
“From my experience, those are the same things.”
“Life would be boring for you without the PNG.”
“Is that what you’re calling yourself now? The PNG?”
Coincidence Man shrugs through a laugh. “What do you say you buy me a drink?”
“You were formed into existence by the eruption of the Big Bang,” Jason reminds him. “Why do you need me to buy you a drink?”
“Alas,” he smiles, touching his chest with both hands, “while it is true I am as old as the universe itself, I am terrible at saving currency. Buy me a drink at …” he looks around at the various neon signs lining the street before settling on a flashing red and purple horseshoe sign two blocks away, “… yes, at the Pony Show.”
Jason shakes his head. “Given what I’ve seen tonight, I am not going to the Pony Show.”
“Oh, posh,” Coincidence Man smiles, putting an arm around Jason’s shoulder and leading him in that direction, “it’s not what you think.”
12
It wasn’t.
The bar that Coincidence Man leads Jason into would have looked right at home anywhere in the American south: cowboys, cheap beer, pool tables, a dance floor, a mechanical bull, and live country-pop being played by a man in tight jeans and a baseball hat and singing about how awesome it was in high school drinking beer under the bleachers or some shit that Jason immediately tunes out.
“One good thing about my parents being creeps,” Jason mumbles, “is that I didn’t have to grow up listening to this like everyone else did.”
“Why did everyone else listen to it?”
“I was born in Mississippi.”
Coincidence Man blinks, not caring, and says, “I’ll get a table, you get the beer.”
“What kind?”
“Wet,” he smiles, heading off to find a table.
Jason shakes his head but admits to himself that he’s glad he ran into someone he knows; it makes it easier to resist temptation, though he cautions himself to not go overboard on the beer. Pushing himself to the bar, Baseball Hat finishes, thanks the crowd, and announcers, “Stay tuned for our next performer, Beautiful Rose!”
Above the bar is a wide array of cheap American beers: Pabst, Schlitz, Bud Light, Miller High Life, Natural Light, Coors, and Stag. It makes him homesick for Earth, even though he was never much of a beer drinker.
“Can I help you, pardoner?” a beautiful blonde with her shirt tied up to reveal her stomach asks.
“Two bottles of Coors,” Jason smiles back.
“It’s the Banquet Beer,” cowgirl says cheerfully.
“That’s what the commercials say,” Jason says, trying to remember what it was like to flirt.
“We’ve got it on tap,” the bartender informs him.
“Bottles are fine,” he says. Behind him on the stage, Beautiful Rose starts singing, “Raindrops are Falling on My Head.”
“Eight credits,” the bartender says, bringing his bottles, and Jason gives her his credit card, telling her to charge him 15.
“Thanks, kindly,” she smiles. “Love the outfit, too,” she adds as she runs his credit card through her machine. “I’ve got a weak spot for superhero cosplayers.” She hands the card back and leans in, whispering, “Or I should say, a ‘wet spot,’ stud.” She points across the bar, past the stage where Beautiful Rose is singing, and to the mechanical bull. “When you see me riding that beast, you’ll know my shift is over. Don't be a stranger.”
Jason doesn’t hear her.
He is staring at Beautiful Rose.
Her knows her by another name.
Belle Flower.
13
The Coincidence Man is, of course, nowhere to be found now that his work is finished, and so Jason sits at a booth in the back and watches Belle s
ing and drinks his beer and tries to keep his heartbeat from acting like it’s snorted all the blue powder in that mountain back down the street.
14
Beautiful Rose sings three songs after “Raindrops”: “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before,” “Walkin’ After Midnight,” and “Islands in the Steam.”
Jason barely hears them because his heart is beating too loudly inside of his chest. All he really processes is that she looks tired and beautiful and her red dress and cowboy boots make him yearn for something he was never good enough to have.
15
Belle finishes, thanks the audience, tells them live music will be back in thirty minutes, suggests they try the new chicken and jalapeño poppers, and exits the stage.
Jason does not know what to do. There is what he wants to do, but that stands in direct opposition to what he knows he should do, which is to stay right here and leave Belle the hell alone.
He looks back across the bar to the bartender, who’s busy giving her spiel to a new customer, and doesn’t see Belle until his first crush is sitting across from him.
16
“I saw Coincidence Man,” she says in a harsh whisper, “which is the only reason I’m not having a bouncer throw you out. Not that I couldn’t do it, myself. No, not a word, Jason. Not a word.”
“Belle —”
“It’s Beautiful Rose,” she says, slapping his face and rising to her feet. “The name is Beautiful Rose!” she shouts, drawing the attention of nearby customers. “Security!” she yells, apparently changing her mind. “I want this man removed from my sight!”
A large, dark-haired man, dressed like a viking warrior and carrying a massive long axe appears by Belle’s side. “Want me to rough him up?”
Used to Be: The Kid Rapscallion Story Page 18