by Aaron Frale
“So why is your family in New York?” his father asked over dinner. Makiuarnek winced. He always thought his father never paid attention to anything he did. Not only did his father know he was gone many nights, but also that he was going to New York. “It seems a little far from Oregnus Epsilon.”
They had told Rasmus that her family business was far from Earth so as not to encourage conversation. His father hated aliens, and he thought humans from other worlds were less than himself. A rich human family from off-world would be just enough to cause disinterest, but not enough to set off alarm bells. The fact that he was attempting to engage her in conversation was unexpected.
“My father’s here to set up a lobbying firm. Exporting bio-compounds are an intergalactic regulation nightmare,” Cassie said without skipping a beat. She was good at deception, but Makiuarnek wasn’t surprised. She seemed good at anything she put her mind to. The bio-compound was also a good story. As an energy mogul, he couldn’t care less about health unless it was his own. However, if there was one thing his father hated, it was government intrusion into his business.
“He sounds like someone I’d like to meet one day,” his father said.
“We’ll have to arrange it,” Cassie said as she picked at her food. Makiuarnek wasn’t worried because he planned not to have a next day. They planned to get what they needed tonight.
They continued talking politics and business. After the course of one meal, his father was hanging on her every word. He was even more stricken by her than Makiuarnek had been. However, Makiuarnek knew the real her. He knew that it was all an act to get his father to let his guard down and get his DNA, which was no small task. The same DNA swipers that collected data from Rasmus’ guests also protected his DNA from getting stolen by incinerating the errant hairs and skin cells that shed from his body on a daily basis. Cassie didn’t seem deterred by them. When it came to technology, she knew there was a way to work around anything.
After the meal was over, the plates were long since cleared, and the servants had been standing for hours waiting to be dismissed, Rasmus and Cassie were still lost in conversation. Had Cassie not charmed Rasmus, the meal would have been over minutes after it started, and Makiuarnek wouldn’t see his father again until some other occasion where they were forced to be in the same room together. As it turned out, Cassie and Rasmus were deep in conversation and Makiuarnek had become sort of a third wheel.
Makiuarnek felt a twinge of jealousy at the way the meal had been going. If she had been a real girlfriend, he would have stormed out of the room ages ago. However, since he knew that it was a situation manufactured to put his father at ease, Makiuarnek controlled his emotions that felt like they were on the edge of boiling over.
“So you’re telling me that you have a spy in the Shusharian Ministry of Transportation and Energy?” Rasmus said.
“They can’t sue you for patent infringement if they aren’t members of the UPE. Plus, I don’t think anyone will mourn the loss of Shusharian entrepreneurship.”
“That’s brilliant! You never told me your dad was so crafty.”
Makiuarnek mumbled something in response.
“I’ve got the plans for a high-performance decrand converter. It will boost performance by at least five p-years,” his father said.
“Sounds sexy,” Cassie batted her eyes.
“Trust me. You’ll never have that much power between your legs.”
“Can I see it? The plans I mean.”
“Makiuarnek, could you fetch us some more wine?” his father said. “I think this is going to be a long night.”
“Why don’t you have the servants do it?” Makiuarnek said.
“Because I asked you. They’ve been standing here long enough.” His father waved his hand, and the servants dismissed themselves. “We’ll meet you in the library. Right after I show your lovely girlfriend the design specs.”
“But-”
“You don’t even care about engineering diagrams anyway. Now go.”
His father did have a point. As a rule, he avoided anything to do with the family business. Makiuarnek left the room in a huff. Cassie would just have to go on her own. At least in his office, there might be a way to disable the DNA Swipers. After Makiuarnek had stolen the drive, his father’s office had upgraded the security. The drawers on the desk were DNA locked. There were cameras installed. It was tighter, but nothing she couldn’t handle.
Makiuarnek was halfway down the stairs to the cellar when a thought crossed his mind. Maybe he could get his father to leave the office, give her a chance to be alone in there. He bolted back up the stairs. He ran through the halls and wove through the rooms until he got to the corridor of his father’s office.
He tiptoed forward and came to a halt in front of the office door. It was ajar. He peeked inside and was horrified by what he saw. His father and Cassie were naked. She was spread out on his desk. Rasmus was thrusting into her and grunting. She let out a soft moan and kissed him.
Makiuarnek couldn’t watch anymore. He backed away from the door. His head felt light, and his stomach sank. He stumbled backward into the hallway.
“What was that?” his father said.
“Nothing, keep going,” Cassie said.
Makiuarnek pushed his way outside. The cool night air and the gentle breeze did little to quell his anger. The groundskeeper was locking up his shed for the night. He saw Makiuarnek pacing and swearing and asked, “Is everything alright, sir?”
Makiuarnek didn’t think. He punched the man in the face. The man barely had time to look surprised. Makiuarnek jumped him and began pounding on his face until it was an unrecognizable pulp.
4
The Taurilian metal sapped the last of his senses. He was trapped within the darkness of his mind. He could not see, hear, or even touch. Devoid of any sensory input, he was lost in memories and emotions. Since most of his memories were painful, and things he’d rather forget, he was trapped in an endless torture. His father was always there, and he was with Cassie. Years later, the image was still burned into his brain. The anger seethed and twisted. Makiuarnek wanted to cry out in terror, but he couldn’t. His voice was gone, too. Death couldn’t come fast enough.
_______
Makiuarnek woke up half naked in a bramble. His stomach lurched, and he vomited up pure bile. The forest around him was quiet and serene. The tall megastructures that surrounded the estate poked through the trees. His father had installed noise dampening technology to drown out the air and city traffic noises.
Makiuarnek’s head pounded, and he vomited again. His memory was patchwork, like a kaleidoscope of some distant life. There was lots of wine. A man’s face was covered with blood, or was it wine? Makiuarnek couldn’t be sure. He only remembered a fraction of what happened. He wasn’t even sure where his clothes went. There was one memory that was strong. It etched in his mind, and he couldn’t banish it as hard as he tried: his father and Cassie, naked, on the desk.
He pushed himself to his feet and walked towards the estate. He checked his implant. It was 11 am. His dad would be at work. He didn’t want to deal with his father anyway. When he finally made it up to the estate, he walked up a set of stairs. He passed the gardener’s shed. It was locked which was odd because he usually kept it open during the day for the maintenance robots. Makiuarnek looked at the ground near the shed. There should be blood on the ground. But there was nothing. The concrete walkway was clean and clear.
Makiuarnek became woozy. He dry-heaved again, and his head pounded. He needed to get to his medicine cabinet. He entered the house, and no one was present. He made his way back to his wing of the house and miraculously avoided any servants. He stumbled into his bathroom and dry heaved into the toilet some more. There was nothing left in his stomach to evacuate.
The medicine cabinet would be his salvation. He opened the cabinet and pulled an eNeedle from the various beauty products. He flicked through the menu and was seconds away from sweet relief when the device s
aid: “Account expired.”
Makiuarnek cursed and typed a few commands on the computer implanted in his arm. He pulled up a payment method, and an error appeared on the screen. It said, “Account locked. Please contact customer service at…” He swore again and began pulling up all his various financial accounts. They were all locked.
He kicked the vanity, and his head flared with more pain than the toe could ever experience. He turned to the bathroom door and saw his father standing there. Rasmus waited in the threshold of the bathroom. An electronic pad was clutched under his arm, and he held a mug of coffee.
“What do you want?” Makiuarnek said, attempting to pretend that he wasn’t in pain.
“You could have been more discrete,” Rasmus said and sipped the coffee.
“I’m not the one who fucked my son’s girlfriend.”
“When are you going to get it through your head that they are all little whores after your money? I did you a favor.”
“Fuck you, Dad.”
Makiuarnek pushed his father out of the way. His father chased after him into his room and smashed the coffee mug against a poster of a floating concert. The shards of the cup landed among all the junk in the room. “You ungrateful little fuck. You don’t know how much I do for you. That groundskeeper you pummeled-”
“His name is Tyrice. You don’t even know the name of your servants.”
“You killed him.”
“I what…” The blood drained from Makiuarnek’s face. He was unable to stand up and slumped onto his bed.
“I cleaned up your mess.”
“What did you do?”
“You didn’t leave me any choice. A handmaiden saw you do it. I couldn’t just let her go to the IF Enforcers.”
Makiuarnek’s stomach lurched again. There was nothing left.
“Do you think I want this family blemished? This is more than a couple of lousy workers that can be replaced tomorrow. This is about our reputation. The entire universe runs on decrand. If the decrand stops flowing, people die. Interstellar shipping will shut down. Food can no longer be transported to worlds like ours. We keep stability in the galaxy, and I’m not about to let a little pisspod like you fuck that up.”
“I didn’t ask for any of this.”
“That’s true. Nor am I going to force any of it on you. You are leaving. Today. I’ll give you one hour to pack anything you can carry into that damn Atmo-Hopper you like so much. You’re lucky I’m letting you keep anything at all. I could have had you escorted off the premises last night. We’ll see how much that gold-digger of a girlfriend likes you after you have nothing.”
His father slammed the door on his way out. Makiuarnek wanted to yell at him, but he couldn’t think of anything to say. In a way, he was relieved. He didn’t even have to pretend that he liked his father. Hopefully, Cassie would have gotten what she needed from his office last night. Despite the fact that the image of her and his father was still fresh in his mind, he still loved her. Now more than ever, he wanted to bring his father’s empire crumbling to the ground. The hard drive was the key.
_______
For the next couple of weeks, Makiuarnek couldn’t bring himself to visit Cassie. When he was first booted from his father’s house, he sped his way to New York, the haze still blurring his mind. He landed his Atmo-Hopper in the alleyway like he was used to and made his way to the pawnshop. However, he couldn’t force himself to walk in the door.
The image of Cassie spread out on his father’s table burned in his mind. As much as he loved her, he knew that if he went inside the shop, he would want nothing more than to eviscerate her. He was afraid of what he would say to her, what he would do to her. The image of the groundskeeper was fresh in his mind. He had a darkness, just like his father. However, unlike his father, he was determined never to use it on the people who he loved. That’s why he never went through the door of her shop. The wound was too fresh. He needed time to heal.
His time to heal was spent mostly on friend’s couches and in a drug induced haze at Lars’ nightclub. Despite the fact that his father had cut him out of the family finances, he had some money stored away in the form of favors and bank accounts his father didn’t know about. The days and the nights blended as he was pumped so full of chemicals, he often didn’t know who he was or what planet he was on.
One night, he wasn’t sure if it was weeks or months after his father had kicked him out, he was on a triple dose of Rathlillian Wisp. The music and lights of the club wove into his soul. He lifted into the sky, and he saw an aerial view of Earth. Each building was dotted with pinpricks of light. There were as many lights on Earth as there were stars in the universe.
Each light connected to a window and inside each window were the people of Earth. They were living their lives unaware of the omnipotent being Makiuarnek had become. He was observing them and inhabiting them. He could read their thoughts and feel their desires. He stretched his consciousness out towards Ireland and then across the Atlantic.
He crossed over the human created islands and the floating cities adrift in the sea. He flew to North America and saw New York below him. It was at one point the biggest city in the world, and now there was no distinction between cityscapes and countryside. It was all one city, the entire planet, and he could see them all.
But he didn’t care about any of them. He only cared about one. He focused his consciousness downward, past the swarm of spaceships and drone traffic, down further between the towering buildings, down to the street level where vehicle pathways of the past became pedestrian walkways as transportation took to the sky and was buried beneath the Earth.
There was a pawnshop, and inside a room of swirling amps, Cassie played a musical instrument. She plucked at something he had never seen, yet it filled the room with crystal clear sounds of unyielding beauty. He felt the music bubble to his consciousness and fill him with joy. The bliss wasn’t eternal. He felt it slip away. Cassie seemed distant like she was at the end of an infinite tunnel. He cried out, but the noise was lost as it drifted away.
The music was torn from his soul and replaced with pain. It stabbed at every part of his body. Every muscle in his body tensed to the point they felt like they would explode. His head felt like it was being compressed, and his eyes were being hammered into his skull. There was a bright light that blinded him. He whimpered and mumbled.
“Wakey, wakey,” Lars said as he shook Makiuarnek’s consciousness back to reality.
Makiuarnek wiped away the drool and bile that had accumulated on his cheek and groaned. “Recovery. I need the recovery shot.”
“Those are for paying customers,” he said.
Makiuarnek fumbled for the implant on his arm. He was barely able to scroll through the menus.
Lars waved his hand through the popup screen and said, “I already had someone check while you were passed out. You are broke. In fact, your bill from last night was declined.”
“I swear I can…”
“No, you can’t. Now, you’re lucky I like you. Most customers who can’t pay the bill have much more than withdrawal to worry about. I, on the other hand, am a nice guy. I’ll let you repay what you owe with interest. A standard operating expense let me assure you when you get back on your feet. Now, are you going to leave, or are you going to require an escort?”
Makiuarnek had heard the rumors of what happened to people who didn’t pay their bill. The worst of which was a certain back-alley genital surgery, courtesy of Lars and his gang. He stumbled out into the bright light of the street. It was the unfortunate time of day when the Sun was able to shine through the cracks of the skyline.
Makiuarnek found that his Atmo-Hopper was still parked where he left it. However, it was marked with graffiti and scratches. He was lucky it was hard to steal a vehicle on Earth. People just couldn’t outrun the IF Enforcer squads. He hopped in the cockpit, and a screen with several parking violations popped up. According to the dates on the tickets, his most recent binge had been about
three weeks. Normally his account would autopay the ticket, and he considered tickets privileged parking fees. However, now that he was broke, he was lucky that they didn’t have it impounded.
_______
Later that day, after he showered at the flat of one of the few friends who still let him use their place, he set his autopilot for New York. He dimmed the lights and listened to soothing music while the slow acting recovery pills he had taken from his friend’s medicine cabinet did their trick. Science had cured all the physical symptoms of withdrawal. Any craving after the pills did their duty was all in his mind, and right now he craved Cassie.
He parked in the alley and made his way to the pawn shop door. Unlike the night after the confrontation with his father, he didn’t hesitate. He pushed opened the door with swagger and determination.
Vigo flapped over to Makiuarnek and said, “You cannot go in there.”
“I don’t care what you think,” Makiuarnek said and pushed passed him.
“She is not there! I haven’t seen her in weeks.”
Makiuarnek pushed open the door to the back, and what Vigo said was true. The room was cluttered as usual, but there was no Cassie. Something was different about the stalactite of monitors that hung from the ceiling with the mesh of wires snaking between the hardware. The monitors, they were not on. She always had code, galactic news, and even some weird alien soap operas playing on them. They were always displaying data twenty-four seven since he had known her. Now they were blank.
Makiuarnek didn’t have time to process the information when he felt the warm tip of a plasma pistol up against his head.
“Don’t move,” a voice commanded. It sounded familiar.
“Cassie?” Makiuarnek said.