“Nineteen eighties? That’s like a billion years ago! Didn’t they play Rip Rop back then?”
“That was later. What do you do?” He asked.
“My job? I’m in retail.”
“That’s not what I meant. What do you do with your life, Amber? What’s your place in the Universe?”
“Ah, you want to see my place already? I see how it is…” She laughed.
He ordered them each a drink. It cost him nine bugs. He put the wet brown napkins down on the bar. He was as dry as he was going to get.
“Anyway, I’m tearing down the government,” she said.
“Why?”
“Government’s evil, Charlie. Its goals are all evil. It only exists to destroy humanity.”
“You don’t like pollution control? Health inspectors? Roads? Education?”
“It’s all a scam, now the same as it was a thousand years ago. They do the minimum they can to make life better, just to justify their existence. Anyway, that’s how I see it.”
“But… it doesn’t have to be that way. There’s nothing about government which means it has to hurt people,” Charlie protested.
“That’s what power does. I think if you took- look I just met you, but let’s assume you’re a good guy – are you a good guy?”
“Nope,” Charlie said with a smile.
“Okay.” She laughed. “Let’s say you’re a good guy. If you became a senator or a manager or something you’d forget who you used to be. You’d only care about money and power. You’d turn evil. You wouldn’t be able to sing like that anymore. All that evil would choke out your soul.”
“There have been good politicians.”
“Who?” she challenged.
“Um…. King Arthur? Kennedy? Peter Garret?”
“That’s three, and one of them is a myth.”
“Does that mean he isn’t real?”
She smiled and took a sip of her drink.
“I like your songs. Did you write them?”
“Yeah, that’s my place in the Universe.”
“And you sell your body,” she asked flatly.
He was embarrassed. “Um…”
She pointed at her own neck, at the spot where he had the extra nose on his.
He looked down on the ground.
“Hey, it’s okay. Look here.”
She pulled her shirt down a few more inches, flashing her cleavage, but also showing off two horizontal scars above her breasts.
He turned to the bar and drank his drink down. He was horrified to think that she had had to sell herself the same way he had.
“Hey – it’s okay. I get it. There are no jobs.” She put her hand on his arm.
“What did you have?” he asked.
“Breasts,” she said with a smirk. “An extra set of boobs. Giant ones! I almost wanted to keep them.”
He laughed with her.
She said that some friends of hers were playing at a bar across town and she asked him to come with her. Charlie took a moment to tell his drummer that he was leaving and he left with Amber.
It was incredibly cold that night. Charlie was shocked. It had been at least 20 degrees warmer when he got to the club. She smiled shyly and pressed herself against him as they walked. It was 22 blocks, but it was understood that neither of them could afford a cab.
Many of the street lights were out. There was a wind that night which waved them back and forth violently. There weren’t any trees. There weren’t any leaves for the wind to blow, just the old and dead electronics hanging from the sky, violated by the elements.
A bird lay dead in a pool of salt water. Charlie turned her, as they walked, to keep Amber from seeing it.
They came to a corner. The traffic was thick and they had to wait to cross the street. Three men walked up. One of them was big. The other two were unusually skinny. They were laughing.
“Hey, where are you guys going?” one of the little ones asked.
Charlie answered without looking at him. “We’re gonna go see a band.”
The man laughed. Charlie suddenly felt self-conscious about his blue lips.
“Is that a gay event?” The big one asked.
“Well, I’m sure there’ll be gay people there, but I’m not. It’s just music,” Charlie answered awkwardly as he held Amber. He didn’t understand yet that he was in danger.
“Yeah, but you’re a faggot, right?”
Charlie turned and glared at the stranger. “Guys, leave us alone. Please.”
He tried to sound tough, but they laughed.
“I’ll give you twenty bugs,” The big one replied.
“Um. No.” Charlie began to walk out into the street, still holding onto Amber.
The big one grabbed him. He had one hand on his coat and the other grabbed a lock of his hair.
Charlie pushed him. It didn’t move the man much, and it pulled out some of Charlie’s hair. Then the big man punched Charlie.
A second one kicked him from behind. Charlie lost his hold on the girl and fell down onto the plazcrete ground. The big man stepped on Charlie’s fingers.
He heard Amber call out. The two skinny men backed away from her, and then Charlie was able to get up.
She had a knife.
But they took the knife away from her.
One of the attackers pushed Amber out into traffic and she was almost hit by a car. She had to turn back to the sidewalk.
Charlie punched the big one twice. One of them was a good punch. But that just made the big man angry. He lifted the musician up into the air and then threw Charlie down against the ground. He kicked him two, three, four times. Then he took Charlie’s stardust leather coat.
They left. Charlie sat up. Amber was leaning against a brick building and sobbing. He was freezing without the coat. He reached up and felt the noses on his shoulder. One of them was bleeding and he was pretty sure it was broken.
He thought about his stardust leather coat. He shouldn’t have bought it. He never could afford it. He should have saved that money for rent and food for a couple months. He had no idea where he was going to get the bugs now.
He looked down and saw his broken Ankh necklace. He didn’t pick it up. He took a moment to wipe the blue make-up off of his face and then went over to the girl.
“I’m so sorry,” he mumbled, full of shame.
But she turned around and latched onto him again. She cried into his shoulder. And he stood there and let her cry into him for at least ten minutes before suggesting they should leave.
“They think it’s their world,” Amber said. “They think the world is designed for people like them. They see how hard it is for people to live and eat and…think. And they want to be like the crooked laws and banks and the bad air. They imitate everything inhuman. They try to be crueler than the people who hurt them.”
“There’s nothing we can do,” Charlie whispered.
She glared up at him with wet eyes. “Don’t say that. I hope you don’t believe that. It’s not what you say in your songs. Tear yourself apart and start again.”
“You could understand what I was singing?” He smirked.
“I have good ears.”
She kissed him.
2
PRESENT DAY
With some difficulty, Charlie and Kalligeneia took Wu Gwei and Avraam down to Doctor Aelfwyrd for medical treatment. The doctor was silent as Kalligeneia explained their issues. He then attached anti-gravity devices to each of his new patients and nudged them away into individual hospital rooms, as if he were pushing balloons down the hallway.
“Wait here. I’ll tell you when I know,” he instructed Kalligeneia, not even looking at the Captain.
“What about Mew Tse?” Charlie asked as the doctor took the two wounded men away. The doctor didn’t reply and the captain didn’t immediately ask a second time. There was a lot of work to do.
Kalligeneia lay back on a day-bed in the waiting area, her feet up on the cushions. Her right hand tried to absent-mindedly played at unta
ngling a knot in her jet black hair.
“So, who have you had?” she asked.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You must have been with Mew Tse down on the planet surface? What about Sally? I’m not sure if you’ve ever had her before?
“Kala-” Charlie was trying to remember her name.
“Kalligeneia Athanas, but you can call me Kalli, if you want.”
“We were on a planet of monsters. It wasn’t a date.”
“That sounds like my kind of date,” she laughed. “Please tell me not Gloryannanabanannana?”
Charlie sighed. “I hear you used to create monsters?”
“I created art.” Kalligeneia corrected him, a sharp annoyance in her voice.
“I’m not judging. I’m not personally familiar with your work. 21st century, remember?”
Neither of them spoke for a while. She calmed down and then spoke again. “Did you know that humans were originally considered monsters?”
He raised an eyebrow.
“It’s true. 80,000 years ago or so we were the bald and naked ones, the violent ones, the sickly and ugly… the orcs and trolls. I could show you what homo erectus really looked like. They were beautiful, angels. A little - a little like Umbra. You’ve met Umbra. I like to think she’s a cured human, like the mutation which twisted us all those years ago has left her.”
“That doesn’t make much sense to me.”
“There’s never been an animal so poorly suited to life on Earth. We freeze. We burn. We need to put on clothes and build houses. Humans are a mess compared to what came before us.”
“Why did we survive then, instead of the Neanderthals?” Charlie asked.
“We were the violent ones. We survived by killing everything, not by being better than the other species. Were we better than the mammoth? Better than the tiger? Better than the – aw, you get it.”
“So, you created new…angels?” Charlie asked.
“I created new everything. I brought back the Whale. I did. And this time, I made sure she could defend herself against any Japanese fishermen who got too close. Just because you don’t let them eat you, doesn’t mean you’re a monster, does it?”
“If you kill people?”
“People? Why’s it always people?” She was growing more animated, more passionate. “In a world with tens of billions of humans, isn’t there a limit? Do we want to pave over the whole cosmos and take every molecule and make it human? Where’s the diversity? Where’s the variety? It’s not just for us.”
“Who’s the cosmos for?”
She laughed. “It’s not a meal. It’s not food to be devoured. Wolves aren’t for protecting your home from intruders. Cows aren’t born to be hamburgers. Every life form has its own dreams and desires which you and I could never conceive of. If you make everything understandable to humans, you flatten the universe. You shrink it. Why not let it go off on its own and do whatever all the different beings want?”
“But to what point?” He asked, playing the devil’s advocate.
“Its own,” she said in deeper voice.
Charlie changed the subject. “What do you think about our mission?”
“What mission?”
“The spaceship? The briefing? The planetoid they made for us to go and explore with?”
She laughed again. “Charlie, how long does it take for a Waydio signal to travel an infinite times infinite distance?”
He shook his head. “No idea.”
“No, me either. But it’s not instantaneous, or they wouldn’t need to send us. I think they probably sent out that wave millions and millions of years ago. Why should we worry about them? They’re just a metaphor.”
“A metaphor?”
“They’re not real. If you do what they say, you’re just doing it because of unresolved issues you have with your parents. We don’t have superiors, or bosses. We don’t need a captain, either, you know. My point is: we’re free. What do you want to do with eternity? We could spend it repeatedly trying to solve the mystery of what we did last week, or we could party. Or we could make art. Or we could make love… Or explore the secrets of the universe. But there’s no mission. There’s no moral or logical reason why we should care about the ancient and unknowable forces which created us.”
“And what do you think we should do?” Charlie asked.
“Play God. Let’s make a planet and design all the animals. Let’s do a better job. Let’s skip labor pains and war this time. Let’s make sure no single species can screw up the equilibrium the way Homo-Ares, as I call our ancestors, did.”
“Avraam thought it was all a simulation. What if he’s right?”
The door opened and Aelfwyrd walked out. He was wearing a long plastic apron, plastic gloves, and holding a surgical mask. The apron was stained with red and black fluids.
“I’m recommending that they both survive.”
“Recommending?” Charlie asked.
“Even Gwei?” Kalligeneia sounded surprised.
“I have a supply of Gwei’s upgrades in stock. He’s replacing a large portion of his face, including the eye Avi took out. Avi just needed a minor resuscitation of tissue. He’ll be walking again by dinner. He’s sleeping now.”
“What about Mew?” Charlie asked.
Aelfwyrd looked down at the floor for about five second and then finally, for the first time, looked Charlie in the face. “I put her down. You can go and collect a new one in the Genesis Chamber. If that one gets dinged up, we can just replace her again until you find one that pleases you.”
“You bastard.” Charlie was boiling with rage. He stepped forward and reached for the doctor.
But Kalligeneia put herself in between the two men and stopped Charlie. “He’s lying. He wouldn’t do that. Tell him, David!”
The doctor sneered at the captain and then admitted, “She sleeping. If we’re lucky she’ll recover from what you did in a few days. Also, I removed the parasites.”
“You’re angry with me?” Charlie asked incredulously.
The doctor pulled his gloves off. “I have a job to do. I’m doing my job. If you want to kill me, do it. If you want me to work, I’ll do it. But I need to know where I stand. Everything I did, I did to help you recover your lost memories.”
“I could see where not knowing if I’m going to kill you would make things uncomfortable for you.”
“Well?”
“Well, I just can’t make up my mind. How about you give me a reason?”
Kalligeneia interrupted. “Okay, Charlie, enough.”
“Doctor, I want a full staff meeting tonight after dinner. Will your duties allow you to attend?”
“I think so. Avraam should be able to make it. I doubt Wu can.”
Charlie nodded. “Tell everyone you see. Tell them to tell everyone else. This is important.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Everything’s wrong, Kalli. Our mission might not make sense, but the way we’ve all been living makes even less. It’s time we straightened everything out.”
Charlie turned and walked away, Kalligeneia followed him.
“What is it with you two?”
“He killed me twenty-four times.”
“You got better.”
“Twenty-four!”
3
When the crew began arriving, they saw that a large round meeting table had been installed on the bridge level. Kalligeneia was the first one there, and she had prepared food and drinks for everyone.
The captain waited until most of the crew was assembled before he joined them.
Doctor David Aelfwyrd, Queen Gloryannana Mellifluous, Sally Brightly, Avraam Fock, Umbra Farrah, and Allambree Alawa all arrived roughly on time. Veronica Zavada was also there. She came with Sally. Charlie hadn’t met her yet, but he remembered Umbra’s warning that he would find her very attractive. She was right.
Veronica was of Czech descent, from the mid-26th century. She looked like she was human, but even in that room o
f idealized people, Charlie thought she was the most beautiful and sexiest. He nodded and smiled at her, but she barely acknowledged the greeting. He got the impression that she didn’t like him.
As Charlie sat down, Wu Gwei walked stiffly into the room. The side of his face was covered with a metal plate. One of his eyes was missing and it didn’t appear to have been replaced with anything yet. Wu Gwei moved more slowly and carefully than normally. He looked woozy and slow. He sat down next to the doctor, who immediately examined the metal plating to make sure everything was as it should be. The doctor seemed pleased. Wu didn’t smile.
Charlie poured himself a glass from the pitcher and scooped in some ice. It tasted to him like some kind of fruit drink with vodka. He put it back down.
“I appreciate your all joining me here tonight. I don’t know how many meetings like this there have been. Maybe I do this every time. Or maybe tonight is different from all the others.
“Mr. Wu, I’m very happy to see you here. Avi, your legs seem to be completely healed already? Amazing. Veronika, we haven’t met yet. It’s a pleasure.”
She smirked skeptically.
“Well, look. This has been – the last week has been a fantasy. Here I am on a spaceship, a planet, with all of these beautiful women, and artists, and scientists, and great thinkers. It’s Valhalla in space! I don’t know how long we’ve been here. I don’t know how many times we’ve been repeating ourselves over and over. I just know one thing: We’re obviously the wrong people for the job.”
Everyone looked surprised. Queen Gloryannana pursed her lips into a shocked “o” shape.
“What do you reckon?” Allambree asked, sounding insulted.
“It seems to me like we’ve been up on this ship for years now acting like a bunch of eighteen-year-olds just sent away to college. We’re all so excited that we don’t have our parents to tell us what to do. But none of us are kids. Even Avi, you were a military leader. You saved the universe from our good friend Wu Gwei and his army of Lowmen.”
Avraam smiled like a proud little boy. “I did.” He looked at Wu Gwei to see if there was a reaction.
Wu Gwei nodded gravely, but didn’t say anything.
“Kalligeneia, you said that the people who created us, who gave us our mission might have died millions of years ago. Maybe they did. But maybe we were their last hope. Does anyone know what perils humanity faced in the 32nd century? They may have sacrificed a great deal to give us the tools that we have.
The Secrets of the Universe (Farther Than We Dreamed Book 1) Page 20