by Ashanti Luke
“I just finished the calisthenics class with the other scientists. I’m thinking of inviting Dr. Toutopolus to our kung fu sessions. He seems more motivated than the others.” Tanner pulled the chair from the desk and sat facing Cyrus.
“By motivated you mean insane I assume,” Cyrus smiled.
“Well, it takes all kinds.” Tanner laughed a bit himself.
Cyrus sat back on his bed, but seemed to slip on something as he rested his weight on his elbow. “Stupid card,” he uttered to himself as he picked up something flat from beneath his elbow and turned it around in his hand. It was similar to the cards that maintenance crews would leave in hotels when they still used humans to service rooms. It informed him that his room had been cleaned and it wished him a nice day.
“What’s the deal with these cards? I don’t remember them from the briefing,” Cyrus said, continuing to flip it around in his hand.
“Dr. Fordham told us about them at, I think, the second dinner.”
“What the heck was I doing? I remember being at that dinner.”
“I think you were off cleaning your own bodily fluids off yourself. You adjusted better than anyone else to the Hyposoma, but that doesn’t mean you adjusted well.”
“Yeah, I think I selectively chose to forget that. Thanks for reminding me,” Cyrus tossed the card back on the bed.
Tanner gave a histrionic bow, “At your service.” He leaned over to pick up the card. “You’re supposed to put it face down on your desk if you want your room cleaned. The Shipmate will come in and clean your room automatically every three week cycles even if you don’t, but if the pseudo-meat doesn’t sit well one day or something, you can have him clean in here sooner.”
“I thought we weren’t supposed to have paper on this old tanker anyway. To help avoid the mess.”
“There are stores of paper in the cargo hold that we can use if the Shipmate system fails when we’re planet-side, but we should avoid the potential for litter at all costs. As far as the room service goes, the Shipmate also scans for anything out of the ordinary and picks up hair, skin, and nail shedding to reclaim for the hydroponic beds. We waste no part of the animal here,” Tanner laughed.
Cyrus allowed the fact that the food chain on the ship was greatly truncated to settle in his brain. He had learned this information in the year-long briefing that had preceded their departure, but the idea that there were much fewer degrees of separation between their waste products and their food on this vessel created a slightly more visceral response now that they had been on the ship for a few month cycles. But he quickly reminded himself of Dr. Villichez’s admonishment when Winberg had grumbled about the lack of variety, “You knew what you were getting into when you signed up, and if it was going to kill you, you would no longer be here to whine about it.” Cyrus smiled to himself. That sounded more like something he would say than Villichez.
“I have something I’ve had on my mind recently,” Cyrus shifted his weight forward on the bed, allowing his lungs to expand so it was not as hard to talk and be heard.
“Go on.”
“You talk to Villichez quite a bit, right?”
“Yeah, I like him.”
“I kinda like him too in an odd, personality-clash kind of way. Thing is, I don’t think he likes me very much.”
“According to him, he likes you just fine. You probably stand out in his mind more than anyone else though,” Tanner clasped his hands together and rested the weight of his upper body on his knees with his elbows. “He likes the fact that you have heart, and that you are honest, and the fact you don’t seem like a quitter.”
“You’re just saying that to make me believe he likes me,” Cyrus lay back again, but not completely.
“Why would I do that? I personally think you’re an angry clown.” For a moment Cyrus looked as if he took the comment seriously, but Tanner smiled and he smiled himself. “I think Villichez is just straight keel. He likes the fact that you are too, but doesn’t necessarily openly approve of all the flotsam you bring to the dinner table sometimes. That’s what fatherly types are supposed to do. I appreciate it because I never really got much of that growing up.”
“Your father wasn’t around much?”
“My father wasn’t around at all.” Tanner looked down at his knees and lifted his hands to the sides of his face.
“I’m sorry,” Cyrus said. “You don’t have to talk about it.”
“It’s okay, I’m not ashamed.”
“It’s not that, I...”
Tanner just simply continued, as if he hadn’t heard the beginning of the qualification, “My mother said she loved my father very much, and he her, but even though they were hard workers, they didn’t have much money in the economy before the Unification.” Tanner sat up a little and looked at Cyrus, who was riveted and still. “They didn’t have money for contraceptive treatment and eventually she became pregnant. They needed more soldiers for the Unification War, and they took draftees from the lower classes before anywhere else. My mother said my father was one of the first to go. He didn’t regret it, but because health care was not easy to come by in those times, she didn’t realize she was pregnant until after he had gone. My father died in the war, somewhere in the occupied Middle East. I was born in an old abandoned schoolhouse. A place where church volunteers helped administer freebirths. My mother was a cheerful woman, even after all that, but she never met another man. She said that I was enough. When I got older, I felt sorry for her.”
Tanner sat up straight for a moment and inhaled a great breath. He held it there, savored it as if it contained the very scent of his memory, and then he let it out slowly and as he leaned forward again. “She said I shouldn’t waste any pity on her, that she had made her choice, and that she was content to have a son that could take care of himself and would not let the world bring him down. After that, I was tapped for the Spencefield Laureate, and I began taking martial arts.” Tanner hadn’t realized he had been looking at the laces on his shoes. He leaned forward and he looked up to meet Cyrus’s eyes, which were now wide with either sympathy, or understanding, or both. “I was determined to turn the sorrow I was sure she felt inside into my strength—mentally, physically, and spiritually. Her health had been failing since I was a Novitiate. She always kept it to herself though, spending every penny she made to keep me in matriculation, never on medicine or health care for herself—and making damn sure I never knew about it. For a while, I resented it, rebelled, and without a dad there as a male example, or just to simply snatch my houndwash out of orbit, I ran wild for a while—even did some things I’m far from proud of. Eventually, I got my butt back on kilter when it began to look like I wasn’t going to be tapped, and I began to care that my mother’s life work was going to be lost to my own monkeyshine. Finally, a month after I was accepted into the Arcology of Ontario, she passed, but not before making sure I could matriculate completely. There is nothing on Earth, this ship, or Asha I wouldn’t give just to thank her.”
Tanner rubbed his hands together and sat up again, “So, Villichez sort of gives me a way to honor my parents in a way I was never really afforded. If that makes any sense.”
Cyrus stood and set his hand on Tanner’s shoulder. “Makes plenty sense,” he nodded. He didn’t know if he felt more sympathy for Tanner, for himself, or for Darius. He felt selfish for just being here on this ship to hear the story. Here he was, supposedly on some selfless, noble mission to help solve the growing overpopulation on Earth. But he was hundreds of light-years from his own son, who was either matriculating or not; but Cyrus no longer had any say in it. He trusted his best friend to look out for his family as if it were his own. And yet, Cyrus couldn’t help feel like a deserter, a coward to be shot summarily on the common grounds at daybreak. But in Cyrus’s case, the dividing line between the condemned and the executioner was blurred, hazy, and as the full weight of choice hung pitilessly on his heart, it took everything he could muster to pat Dr. Tanner on the back, excuse hims
elf to the lav, and exit the room before the tears began to form.
• • • • •
Cyrus walked into the dining hall, ephemeris in hand, expecting the Common Hall to be empty. As the door slid open, Dr. Jang looked up from his own ephemeris, and then went back to work at the table. Dr. Jang was sitting three seats away from Cyrus’s usual dinner seat, but Cyrus moved to the opposite side of the table to lend him some space. Cyrus sat down and began working on some figures for gravity drive recalibration to the specs on Asha. They were already programmed into the Shipmate, but Cyrus felt data collected from six hundred light years away was inherently dubious, and he wanted to make sure he could recalibrate them quickly if something was off.
Dr. Jang continued to work on his own for another few minutes, and then spoke, startling Cyrus who was mulling over figures deep in his own head. “You don’t have to sit so far away,” Dr. Jang said, twirling his stylus between his index and middle finger, “I mean, it’s okay if you want to sit in your regular seat.”
Cyrus entered one last figure then looked up from his work, “It’s okay. Dinner’s not for another thirty minutes. I just got tired of sitting in my room.”
“I know what you mean. I usually work out here or in the codex. The rooms here are a little too, sterile I guess, for my tastes.”
“Well, the whole ship is sterile. Makes me wonder what Asha will smell like when we open the doors. I wonder if our sterilized renal cavities will be able to take it.”
“Can’t imagine it would smell like anything except dust and open air. Maybe salt from the ocean, or other mineral deposits. Perhaps some sulfur in some places.”
“All of which have been systematically removed from the air on this ship,” Cyrus smirked a little, but not enough to clearly indicate to Dr. Jang if he was joking or serious. “I have to say, I actually miss the smell of air that has to be reclaimed or it will kill you in five years. Something homey about recycled L.A. smog.”
“Yeah, I always thought the air in Seoul tasted like warm bread crust. Nothing on this boat tastes like that,” Dr. Jang smiled and then rolled his eyes back a little, remembering something from the past. “You know what smell I miss the most?” Cyrus shook his head. “The smell of a woman who wants you to notice her. It’s more like a class of smells I guess. The smell that perfume makes when it rests on a particular neck. The scent of herbal shampoo on hair,” he shivered. “Just thinking about it gives me the chills. But then the chills go away just as fast as they came when I realize I’ll probably never smell anything like that again.”
“There’s no one coming to meet you on the Damocles?”
“Nah, not me. I never really managed to stay in one place long enough—well one place mentally—for anyone to give up life in Seoul or Busan, or any other place for that matter, for me.”
“You seem pretty young. What about your parents—I mean, if you don’t find the question too imposing.”
“Imposing? Not at all. I don’t know. I guess my relationship with my parents was nominal. They squeezed me through matriculation, throwing every extramatricular activity they could at me whether I enjoyed it or not, and they rolled out credits like time code for it. It always seemed to me like the only thing I was to them was bragging rights. There’s no one to rightfully brag to on a giant, deserted gumball. They’re still in Busan living out their lives; probably telling anyone they can their son is saving the human race while they collect the pay for this expedition because they were the only place I knew to send it. Can’t use it here. Guess they are getting what they paid for all those years. And now their income has gone up a quintile or two.”
Cyrus looked at the man as he spoke, understanding the words and their meaning, but having difficulty with what was underneath. “That’s a kind of morose position to be in.”
“It is what it is. Strangely, I still miss them. And I don’t miss the lady friends nearly as much as I expected.”
“Lady friends?” Cyrus could not hold back another smirk.
Dr. Jang leaned forward a little bit, the lapel of his lab coat draping from his shoulders as he inclined, “What, I don’t seem like a ladies’ man to you?”
“Honestly,” Cyrus laughed clearly this time and with more levity, “no. But then again, I wouldn’t know what a ladies’ man was if I had a shop manual and a holodeck tutorial.”
“You do seem a bit of the man’s man type,” Dr. Jang reflected on his words for a moment then qualified as Cyrus’s brow began to furrow, “I mean, like action hero man’s man, not boy’s boy man’s man—not that there’s anything wrong with either of those, if you are one.”
“It’s okay. I know what you mean, even though I don’t see it sometimes.”
“You don’t?”
“Nah, I’m usually just as scared, nervous, and distraught as everyone else. I just tend to be belligerent about it. Besides, most of the bite in me came from my mother.”
Dr. Jang looked past Cyrus’s head for a moment. It seemed like he was looking past the wall as he twirled the stylus faster in search of some elusive thought. “A little hard for me to see I guess. My mother never said much until I either defied or embarrassed her, the latter of which wasn’t very hard to do. Then it was like you had turned on a nag faucet and had broken the knob. Only thing I learned from her was how to whine, gossip, and throw tantrums.”
Cyrus was a little uncomfortable listening to someone speak of his parents in that way. Dr. Jang’s tone was more matter-of-fact than disrespectful, but it was unnerving nonetheless. “What patience I do have I learned from my father,” Cyrus continued. “My mother was a juggernaut. She was the one who got in enough people’s faces to make sure I was tapped when they sent me to Freeschool, and even though Laureateship was unheard of in my district, my father made sure I stayed on top of my game so no one could find an excuse to kick me out. My parents didn’t really push me, but my father taught me how to keep people from pushing me back. And my mother taught by example how to push people out of the way of what I deserved.”
“She sounds like a good person to have in your corner.”
“Well it wasn’t always apples and sweetbars. Once, when I was about eight or nine, I was playing in the lev-run—back when people still had lev-runs in front of their houses. I was playing with some other Novitiates. We were playing with those Planetwars robots that turned into spaceships. I had just bought a Tiberius Vauxhall, it had working lasers on its arms, and it had little action figures that were supposed to be pilots and engineers. Plus it was always my favorite because of my middle name. I was so proud because I had saved creds from my allowance and doing odd jobs for relatives to buy it. It was the first thing I ever bought with my own creds.”
“I remember that toy. It had the little button on the side that shot missiles out of its chest,” Dr. Jang seemed excited by the memory as he lost control of the spinning stylus, but quickly regained it.
“That’s it exactly. Well, a kid named Fenton Thorougood was playing with us. He was maybe three years older than the rest of us and still a Novitiate. He was long overdue for Freeschool at the very least, and evidently he was self-conscious about it because he was an absolute son of an uberhound. Anyway, he said that my Tiberius wasn’t nearly as cool as his Dreadnaught. And I said if he had Dreadnaught, he should bring it so we could have a battle, knowing full-well they hadn’t released Dreadnaught and probably never would because the cel-shade had already been cancelled. He said he couldn’t bring it out because his mom wouldn’t let him. I said his mom wouldn’t let him bring it out because it didn’t exist.”
Dr. Jang laughed, “You were a little snap-monkey even when you were a Novitiate.”
“My sharp tongue seems to have developed with the onset of speech.” Cyrus tapped his stylus on the side of his ephemeris and then continued, “So this got him riled up and he started stomping around the lev-run with my Tiberius. At the height of his tantrum, he held it over his head, screamed some obscenity at me, and slammed it into th
e ground. It shattered into about seven or eight pieces. I remember it like it was in slow motion. One of the lasers came on and stuck, and a green dot danced across the lev-run as half of the arm flipped onto the house. Tears welled up, and I ran into the house bawling. My mother, who was as omniscient as she was fear-inducing, had seen the whole thing, but she went through the motions anyway. She asked me what was wrong and I told her through a hail of tears that Fenton broke my Tiberius.”
“What did she do?” excitement had caused Dr. Jang to stop spinning the stylus now, and he was literally sitting on the edge of his seat.
“She told me to go back out there and beat his ass.”
“So did you?”
“Did I? I was scared out of my mind. I was small for my age and he was big for his, so the three years difference was just an added bonus. I told my mom that he was bigger than me, and that I was scared of him.”
“And…”
“She looked me right in the eye—I can still remember her face clearly—and said calmly, ‘Then get a stick.’”
“Wow, how do you respond to that?” Dr. Jang was sincerely bewildered.
“Well, the tears stopped in mid bawl, and I cycled through all the places where I could remember seeing anything that could be classified as a stick. Then, when it hit me, I turned, went to my room, and came back with a vid runner from a broken gram my dad had thrown away. Y’know, back when they used to project the gram from the three plastic bars? I would pretend I was the Laser Knight with the blue light staff from Planetwars. So I grab this thing, and it’s almost as long as I was tall, and I take it outside. Can you believe this freebirth was still outside in the lev-run?”
“So what happened?”
“I walked up to him dragging the vid runner behind me. This kennel waste just stood there looking at me, like the idea of me standing up to him was unheard of. That’s what finally set me off. I grabbed the runner with both hands and swung it like I was trying to knock his head from his shoulders. The thing caught him right in his temple so hard he spun on his heels. And it must have knocked some sense into him because he broke into a run like that’s why he had turned in the first place.”