by M. D. Cooper
Ben collapsed on the old couch and kicked his feet up onto the bucket that doubled as a trash receptacle. Everything on the Shistain was old and used more than it should have been, but the boat was his now and he was going to fly it the hell off Earth as soon as he scheduled the manifest. “Shit, I need to schedule that tomorrow,” he said, grabbing a half-dried marker and jotting it down on a notepad next to him. He tossed the chicken-scratch note back onto the couch and turned on the computer system. “Access Net. Download digital files purchased recently. Close application when download completes. Turn off monitor.” Ben continued to sit in relative darkness, and the air recyclers blew cool air in the small cabin. “I’ve got nothing better to do,” he said as he tossed the mess from the couch onto the deck of the ship and lay down. “I may as well take advantage of the peace and quiet . . . and sleep.”
Sleep was an elusive thing for him, though. In the darkness of sleep was where the horrors of the world played out. Doctors once prescribed medication to try and fight the effects of his night terrors, but that only made things worse. For Ben, the worst part wasn’t having the terrors, but waking up and not knowing what was real and was his dream because they both felt the same within the first few moments he came to. To the best of his knowledge, the dreams began after he was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder. The quack who gave him the prescription gave him a narcotic that created hallucinations. It was those hallucinations that still haunted him and resulted in the accident in the Army, an accident he relived in his dreams many times. The truth was he joined the Army fraudulently by not declaring that he had used prescription medication for his diagnosis. That fraud would have resulted in a steeper punishment than he would have received had the Army thought the accident was planned. The stupidity of it all only made things worse.
Ben startled awake. This time it was the Black Paint dream. He was in the shower on the Shistain when black paint came from the shower head. It fell to the deck, but instead of oozing down the drain, it began to crawl up his legs, tightening its bond to his skin so that he could not move. In his dream, Ben looked down as it crept closer to his face, wrapping his entire body before enveloping his head and suffocating him. It was the moment in the dream where he could not breathe that he usually woke up, his face red and bloated from holding his breath in the real world.
He stood up, panicked and ready to fight off whatever was after him, but nothing was there except the dark cabin on his crummy ship. “Holy farking shit,” he said through an out-of-breath exhale. He collapsed back onto the couch, warm and damp from his hot sweat seeping into the cushions. He sat there, panting as his heart beat like a drum playing 1/32nd notes in his heaving chest. He looked at the cabin, seeking all the ways the black paint could evade his privacy, but he knew it was an irrational reaction to the subconscious terror his mind was going through. Knowing that did little to make him feel better though.
Ben rose from the couch and went to the small refrigerator next to his slightly taller stove. The refrigerator was mostly bare, just a few beers left behind from the previous owners that Ben had been meaning to toss out for seven months, and a six-pack of flavored waters. Unfortunately, they’re the shitty berry flavored ones, he thought as he pulled one from the plastic container. He scrapped his tongue against the back of his teeth after taking the first sip. Why do I even buy these? Without answering his own question, Ben chugged the rest of the bottle and tossed it into the trashcan in front of the couch. I guess I successfully replaced the parched feeling in my throat with the taste of artificially flavored nasty, he thought, leaning back into the soft cushions of his couch. Well done, Ben.
He closed his eyes, but did not wish to sleep. He wanted only to quiet the thoughts running through his brain until the sun rose and he could get back to work. In a few days he hoped he could leave all of these thoughts and memories behind.
chap+er +hree
“Fark-Me-Friday.” It had a certain ring to it, yet the connotations of it implied some harsh hardship that even the most promiscuous person might find daunting. It was a moniker born from the depraved sense of feeling insignificant; as the day people looked forward to most was twisted and perverted into a disastrous workday. Enough of those kinds of Fridays had a way of tainting the most happy-go-lucky of souls. In short, it was shitty as fark. Even with a few years out of the Army under his belt, Ben couldn’t help crawling from beneath the sheets on a Friday morning and muttering the same three words that seemed so prophetic while he served. While most of the civilized worlds used Friday as an excuse to cut out of work early, or at least on time, the Army always had a fresh brand of bullshit to torpedo your day straight into what his friends used to call “shit-blivion.” The old-timers had a different name for it, but Shit-blivion stuck in his platoon, and the members used it as a way of laughingly lamenting over the lack of morale permeating through the ranks.
Ben didn’t have to worry about any of that now, but the lingering memory of it still tainted his outlook on the day. Luckily for him, this Friday was going to be his last on Earth. His launch window was scheduled for early Saturday morning, and today was delivery day for the supplies he ordered earlier in the week. Sure, he had a long day ahead of him, but it was his choosing, not some power-hungry sergeant who got his kicks from sucking the morale out of his troops. This day had all the emotional highs of the last day of at a crap job when you knew you were moving on to bigger and better things. He was stoked to finally be within the last twenty-four hours before his life was going to change and he could put the past behind him, and everything on Earth left from his past.
Ben rose from the couch with a spring in his step that was perhaps a little too springy. The top of his head met the business end of a chill water pipe mount. Any other day of the week, he would have remembered it was there. But today, as if it was taunting him for being in such a good mood, he smacked his head hard enough to have a metallic taste in his mouth that oddly mixed well with the bloody mixture of saliva squishing around in there from biting his tongue. “Fark!” He wanted to punch the bulkhead to distract from the pain that tingled on his tongue, but that would have been a broken hand waiting to happen. Instead, he just seethed as he stormed off, rubbing the top of his head and pulling his fingers away every few seconds checking to see if there was any blood. Fortunately, the only blood shed was from the tip of his tongue.
Despite the sore mouth, he was famished and needed to eat something to dull the ache in his stomach. “That’s what I get for skipping dinner,” he said as he stepped into the kitchen. Of course, where the cabin ended and the kitchen began was anyone’s guess, considering the entire area was one wide open space with no walls separating the different habitable areas. The only “rooms” on the Shistain being a humorously tiny bathroom and the cockpit, comprising two seats and enough switches and controls to give an engineer a headache. Luckily, most of those switches were originally used for the ship’s previous life as a transport ship. When it came to running it as a personal carrier, there was a minimal number of controls Ben was required to know how to use. It was idiot proof for anyone smart enough to know how to fly.
He grabbed a protein bar from an open box on the counter and pulled away the crinkling wrapper. The noise of it opening was one of the most obnoxious sounds to ever dance around his ears. Thin semi-metallic wrappers that could not be opened without making a racket should be banned, he thought. There’s no way to open them quietly. He knew it was a marketing ploy. Manufacturers used the loud wrappers to draw attention to people using their product. Just because I hate it doesn’t mean it’s not effective, Ben thought as he tossed the wrapper away and shoved half the bar in his mouth to take a bite too large to chew comfortably.
In Ben’s mind, he was always in a hurry, but that was rarely ever the case these days. It was a habit he learned in the Army when he had small windows of opportunity to eat. They were training for the perpetual war that never ceased. For ninety-seven years, World War IV loomed on the horizon, a
stalemate as world leaders refused to take the first aggressive step towards dominance. Russia conquered the United States during World War III, but times were different and the value of human life increased as the children of mankind flourished while they spread out to the stars. The machine of war was an outdated tool of humanity’s stupidity, yet it was the only tool they knew how to sharpen and make use of their points. While he chewed, Gli+ch whirred in a delicate hum. He looked down to see what the problem was, but it was negligible, just the pinky and thumb tapping together lightly. He knew from his life before the accident that it was a nervous action, not an actual flaw in the hardware, so he ignored it as he shoved the rest of the bar into his mouth.
Lost in the thoughts of the world he hoped to sever his ties to, he moved to the aft portion of the Shistain, towards the cargo hold so he could get started on the launch preparation. He thought about his first few months of indoctrination into the Army’s mindset. They prepare you for war by teaching you that it was necessary, he thought. By time his training was coming to an end, he was panicked that he would go to war, but excited about the prospect just the same. It did not matter that hundreds of thousands of men and women had been waiting for the call for more years than were comprehensible. The artificially induced urgency of the situation seemed to dictate that the real threat was imminent, and that terrified the shit out of him. It still did.
Ben shook his head of the thoughts running through it. “It’s about time I get over these old ghosts,” he whispered, pushing the broom from one end of the cargo hold to the other. The cargo hold of the Shistain was twice the size of the cabin area, and he’d cleaned it weekly since purchasing the ship. It wasn’t the fact that the ship was dirty that prompted the weekly cleaning, but the fact that he finally owned something of his own and wanted to take pride in it, so long as it didn’t take too much work. Regardless of the age and disrepair of the ship, he loved it, warts and all. There was a problem with electrical issues, though, that he had a hard time getting ahead of. They weren’t the kinds of problems that would endanger his life, but could affect his quality of life while onboard. The lights were always shorting out due to bad ballasts, and he’d spent the last week or more replacing them all. “I never thought owning a ship would be so much work,” he said as he shoved another light-housing into place and screwed the lens cover back on. It was already noon and he grew curious about when his shipment was going to arrive. Ben stalked down the cargo door and into the warm sunlight beating down onto the tarmac. In the distance, he saw a large cart being pulled by a heavy-set woman in a brown uniform. “Oh shit, this must be it,” he said excitedly, rubbing his hands together greedily.
The woman stopped at his ship and stared up at him. “I’m looking for the Shit Stain,” she said.
Ben grinned and stepped down to greet her. “It’s the Shistain. It’s less offensive that way,” he crooned, rubbing his hand along the hull as if he was consoling the ship.
“You can call your girlfriend whatever you want. It’s none of my business, but if you ask me, I don’t think the girls will coming running to see you on a boat called the Shit Stain.” The laugh that followed was hoarse and throaty, almost sounding as if it was being forced.
“Shistain,” Ben corrected, barely hiding the irritation in his voice.
“Yeah? I don’t really care. I’m just here to drop off your order and inventory to make sure you received everything. The sooner we do this the sooner I can move on with my life.”
This woman has the negative attitude that could take on an Army platoon, he thought, eying her warily. “All right,” he said, reaching for one of the boxes.
“Don’t touch it yet, I have to go in a certain order,” she barked rudely.
Ben held fast, the woman’s attitude grating on his nerves. He stood there for a moment as she thumbed through the chart and pulled out a scanner. She waved the wand-shaped tool over one of the barcodes and a chirp sounded. “Nine cases of baked beans, holy shit, this is going to leave a shit stain isn’t it?” Her laughter barked loudly, hissing through her sagging neck-flesh and reverberating from her jowls.
Her inability to let her previous joke go was infuriating. Ben grabbed the case and loaded it into the cargo hold, coming back to see her still snickering. She scanned another box. “Six cases of toiletries, assorted.” Ben reached down and grabbed the case, largely ignoring the woman, or trying to as he repeated the process for each crate, carrying it up into the cargo hold and coming back down to see the big woman leaning on the cart lazily. Her hair jutted out in wild directions from under her cap, and he was sure her shirt should have been tucked into her pants instead of half-hanging out and making her look like a slob, but that could have easily been his OCD transfixed on dressing down other people based on the haunted memories of his life in the Army. He did take note of her nametag, though. It said, “Trish”.
She knelt down and scanned the next case; the chirp of the scanner sounded sharply, and she immediately chuckled again. “A sex-bot huh? You’re a kinky boy. I wonder how the ladies like that about you, or maybe that’s why you need the bot,” she said, every few words cut short by her snorting laughter.
Embarrassed, Ben snatched up the case and carried it inside, dropping the heavy box onto the deck and shoving it with his foot under one of the work stations. Before walking off the ship, he extended two middle fingers in the woman’s direction, mouthing a series of expletives that he only wished he was ballsy enough to say to the woman’s face, but knew she would probably beat the shit out of him for doing so. Hell, she’s twice my size; she’ll probably crush me and laugh about it while she does it. Ben composed himself and slowly exited the ship.
“Wow, took you long enough. Had to get a quickie in, did you?”
Ben glared at her. “No, Trish.” He said her name as indignantly as he could, but his answer only elicited a hearty laugh at his expense.
“Whatever, Kinky Boy.” She looked down at the form for his name. “Benjamin Dale. See, I can read too, so why don’t you grab your shit and quit being such a baby.” Trish scanned the last box. “Nine cases of toilet paper. How appropriate.”
Ben grabbed the case and started to walk away from the woman, but he couldn’t hold in the rage he was feeling anymore. “You know, you’re the most disrespectful, unprofessional person I think I’ve ever encountered.”
She looked at him, shock on her face. “Really?”
“Yeah. You really should be ashamed of yourself.”
“Wow, I had no idea,” she said, her voice softer now. Her eyes looked moist as if tears were forming in the corners of her eyes. She looked sad in a way that Ben did not think she was capable of, based on her hard exterior. His own anger softened.
“No idea of what?” Ben asked, the need to repair the damage his words might have caused weighed heavily on his heart.
A smirk grew on her face where a pout had barely formed before. “I had no idea you could be such a bitch. Enjoy your sex-bot. I’m sure it looks forward to being disappointed by your lack of sexual prowess.” She pulled the cart along with her, laughing hysterically as her thick body disappeared behind the frame of the motorized cart.
Ben cursed under his breath. There were so many words he wanted to say, but none of them would make the situation any better. Some people just like getting a rise out of others.
“I hate people,” he said, turning to walk back into his ship.
Before him, the real work was about to begin. He had boxes and crates stacked up to the overhead in some places, but he would not be able to take off without securing everything. He began taking down the boxes and situating them in a way that would evenly distribute the weight. As he worked, he decided to make things easier by opening the larger boxes and crates and storing the goods while tossing out the trash and unneeded boxes. “No need to take a bunch of clutter with me,” he said to no one in particular. He just liked to hear the sound of a voice while he worked. It was a side effect of being alone most of th
e time, he supposed.
Once Ben had most of the boxes broken down, he came across the one containing the sex-bot. he looked at it, embarrassment still clutching on him with sharp fingernails. “Fark it,” he said. “I’m not opening that shit. I may as well return it if I come back or sell it on Europa.” He stared at the box for a moment and then turned around to see that everything else was stacked as it needed to be. All that was left was taking out the trash and he would be ready to launch in the morning. “I may as well enjoy my last night on Earth with a few cold beers and some Chinese food.” He said, grabbing a box of trash and hauling it off the Shistain to dispose of it, leaving the sex-bot and the rest of his supplies in the dark void of the cargo hold.
chap+er four
Launch day. Twenty-two years, three months, seventeen days, and six hours in the making, and Ben was finally poised for his destiny; at least the destiny he chose to seek for himself. Any other day he would say “fark fate,” but this felt different, surreal even, as he sat in the cockpit, strapped into the pilot’s chair. He remembered the moment when everything felt so clear to him. He was reading a magazine, his eyes falling over the loosely clung words as his ADD fought to bring everything together, but it was an image that drew his attention to this life-changing moment. It was a picture of Europa as seen from space, but below that image was one depicting a mining technician, his gray coveralls clean and pressed, the name of the company Syna-Corp emblazoned down one sleeve. Ben remembered looking at the man’s coveralls and the smile on his face and realizing that was what he wanted for his life: to live off Earth and to work in an industry not tainted by the rigors of city life. Of course, the article explained how much money was to be made, and that the people who arrived to mine Europa would go down in history as the second set of off-world inhabitants in the history of humanity, but it was the idea of starting over somewhere else that initially drove Ben to act. The fact that Mars seemed more and more of a lost cause every year did much to unsettle his mind. All he needed was a ship to get there, and he found her.