The Galactic Express

by Tobias Wade

  The painted man opened and closed his mouth several times in surprise without saying anything. The murmuring around them was growing louder though, and a number of arguments were breaking out all around them.

  “Are you trying to get yourself killed?” Elden asked in disbelief. “How could this possibly be your fault?”

  The shaman cocked his head to the side, apparently listening for something that no one else could hear. “If we’re going to sacrifice anyone, then it should be you,” he said, pointing accusingly at Elden. “The Quasi Crystal wills it so.”

  “No, no, it has to be me, I insist,” Tareesh implored. “Look how thin my neck is. My head is going to pop right off, no trouble at all.”

  “If you want to be a martyr, then this is a damn funny way of going about it,” Sali mumbled in disbelief.

  “Enough!” the Grand Shaman roared. “The Quasi Crystal knows the star traveler speaks the truth. Wickedness must be purged with righteousness. Blood for blood, death for death, we demand a sacrifice!”

  Whooping and hollering descended on them like an avalanche from all sides, utterly drowning out all attempts at protest from the others. Was there any logic or justice in allowing Tarreesh to die for them? Elden and Sali were the only ones in the pod that actually killed the Habanon, but surely it was no more their fault than anyone else. It was nothing but chance that the bugger landed on their pod, and chance again which caught the animal in their wild descent. As for bringing the monsters here in the first place, what distorted form of righteousness would blame anyone for fleeing for their lives?

  “Get me the axe!” the shaman howled, turning back toward his waiting brethren.

  “You’re a damned fool, you know that, right?” Sali had to shout to be heard over the tumultuous den of the cheering onlookers.

  “Leave the boy be, he’s taking one for the team,” Harris asserted. “That’s right, it’s happening, everybody get on board. We demand a sacrifice!”

  “What have I got to lose?” Tareesh asked with a sly grin.

  “Don’t you have anything waiting for you on Pria?” Elden asked.

  “More than you could ever guess,” the boy replied cryptically.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Elden asked, swiftly drowned out by the tumultuous din.

  The local inhabitants were already descending upon them from every side. Rough hands seized Tareesh, and sharp rocks ripped through his bonds. The boy grinned madly as he was hoisted over the heads of the jeering crowd. They carried him toward where the painted man was waiting with an axe beneath the tremendous trees.

  “Wait, at least tell us why you called them Draiths!” Sali shouted after him, straining uselessly against her bonds.

  “It’s their name, endowed by their creator,” he called back, waving farewell.

  The others watched in horror as the boy offered a peace sign, apparently immensely pleased with himself as he was bent to kneel over an enormous stump. The men were singing songs now: a rhythmic, joyous affair that was difficult to reconcile with the disturbing sight. Sali closed her eyes and turned away, willing herself to focus on their song and not listen for the inevitable discordant chop that was sure to break through the harmony.

  “Order! Order!” bellowed Senator Nullenbur, a man so old that his skin looked like translucent wax paper. How many of his last breaths would be wasted on shouting? Hallum folded his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair, trying to find the balancing point just before it tipped backward.

  “This is an outrage!” Senator Malberry asserted. “I declare all bets thus far null and void, with their principle sums to be repaid in full on account of the virus!”

  “Oh you declare, do you?” rasped the first. “And that’s supposed to carry more weight than if you’d just shouted like you normally do?”

  “I declare it! Let the record show it has been declared!”

  “I declare his declaration void on grounds of bias!” Senator Wilmanhall announced. “Everyone knows Senator Malberry would never say such a thing if he made money in the first round.”

  Hallum noted that Wilmanhall was currently wearing her tightly curled blonde wig, the one she used when trying to appear in command. She must have a busy schedule, because it was the third wig he’d seen her in today.

  Malberry glared daggers from across the aisle. Hallum shrugged helplessly in response, mouthing the words ‘I tried’.

  The hearing room was hopelessly extravagant with every possible surface either gilded in gold leaf, carved with intricate interlocking patterns, or crowded with the tiny disapproving figurines of politicians past. Hallum wondered whether the original founders of Pria had undergone similarly frivolous proceedings, or whether the current stock of well-preserved corpses had at least one original thing to their name.

  “Order in my council! Order!” the ancient Nullenbur pronounced. “The next senator to interrupt will have to sign every page of the seven volume budget proposal in no less than three colors. Alright—that’s better. This hearing was called to address the unexpected development in the criminal rehabilitation simulation, code name Galactic Express. It would appear that the system has been infected by some sort of… computer disease… which has resulted in the death of a certain Eisen Germi. Senator Hallum has come prepared to tell you more about it.”

  “Thank you, honorable Nullenbur,” Hallum said, channeling his inner used-pod salesman as he forced his mouth into an unnatural upward curve. “It’s a small matter really, hardly worth the time of such busy and important... well, you know all that. There is a temporary problem with these intrusive Digital Wraiths, or Draiths for short. Not only do they disturb the betting of our esteemed colleagues, these Draiths pose the threat of killing avatars who have not yet earned their freedom from the simulation. Yesterday, one avatar was killed by them: a woman named Eisen Germi. Despite her avatar being taken offline, as was actually justified by her heroic attempt to save the other prisoners, we were unable to salvage her physical body.”

  “How do you mean, ‘salvage’?” Nullenbur rasped. “Can’t you just unplug her?”

  “Did you try turning the machine off and back on again?” Wilmanhall asked.

  “Or hitting it,” Nullenbur suggested, leaning forward and extending his neck like a particularly immodest turtle. “The machine, not the person. Although actually, if hitting the machine doesn’t work…”

  Hallum coughed and waited for silence, his icy smile frozen on his lips. “All excellent suggestions, but I’m afraid to no avail. I did attempt to reset the Galactic Express and unplug Eisen, but the moment I cut power to the system, an electrical charge was propagated through the wiring that discharged violently in her brain.”

  “How violently?” Malberry asked uneasily. “Like a sort of a bzzz… or more of a zzzzap?”

  “More like a kaboom, actually. It looked a bit like a watermelon experiencing a catastrophic space launch, although it wouldn’t have taken the janitor four hours to clean watermelon from the walls.”

  “This sounds pretty serious,” Senator Malberry said emphatically. “Life and death hang in the balance, and it is a disgrace that anyone is even talking about collecting on childish wagers now. Will we have to shut the whole program down?”

  “It is my recommendation that no one else be unplugged until the virus has been removed. I will issue a warning to the remaining nineteen prisoners within the simulation. I have all the relevant experts working on the problem, and should have an update within the next few days. No more involvement is necessary from any of you. Leave it to me, I know what I’m doing.”

  “Please fix this quickly, Senator Hallum,” Nullenbur replied, nodding sagely. “One death can be covered up, twenty cannot. We’ve already depleted our supply of gift baskets on the grieving families of that mining expedition.”

  “How was I supposed to know removing the ore would cause the asteroid to spiral into the sun?” Malberry objected. “And you know, the families didn’t even thank
me for saving them on funeral expenses. Don’t give me that face, Nullbenbur, what’s done is done.”

  “If he had another face, do you really think he’d still be wearing that old bag?” Senator Wilmanhall chuckled, adjusting her slipping wig surreptitiously.

  “For your information, Mrs. ‘let’s fund the astrologists in the defense bill’ Wilmanhall, my other face is at the cleaner having the wrinkles ironed out.”

  “You take that back! They weren’t astrologists, they were astropsychologists! How can you sleep peacefully at night without knowing what the Universe is up to?”

  “Is that what astropsychologists are up to?” Malberry said with surprise. “Then why did you tell me they were studying what the stars were thinking? You knew I would be asked about it in my interview this morning, and there I went going on and on about how dangerous the local celebrities were. I told the reporter it was only a matter of time before they started sneaking into people’s bedrooms. That’s downright malpractice, selling a bill like that.”

  “It’s your own fault you never read the damn things,” Wilmahall scolded. “You should have learned your lesson when you voted to pass the cannibalism amendment. You got lucky the bill didn’t pass. It was only a few votes short though, and I think it could have gone the other way if the meeting had been called before lunch.”

  “Ha, jokes on you, I actually did read that one. You know how rough it is going against the religious freedom crowd though, better just let them have their ways.”

  “Enough,” Nullenbur demanded, or rather, continued to demand, as he had been demanding it for a while and only now did anyone else listen. “As head of this oversight panel, I now move to allow the Galactic Express to continue running while the antivirus task force completes their work, on the condition that no more people are taken offline while the virus is still active. In the meantime, I’m also moving to put 50,000 marks on Elden being the sucker who gets it next.”

  “Bets are off! I’m not paying you!” Malberry exclaimed in panic. “I didn’t even want to bet on Elden last round! Senator Hallum was the one who suggested him!”

  “Aha! So you’ve been sneaking back to Hallum all along. That’s insider trading, that’s what that is,” Wilmanhall’s shrill voice rang.

  Senator Hallum leaned back further in his chair to casually avoid one of Wilmanhall’s flying shoes. Spending any amount of time in the Senate halls always made Hallum miss his prison block. At least his criminals had the decency to show remorse for their behavior. If you didn’t have clearly defined good and evil, then all you’d end up with is bad people on opposite sides.

  Senator Hallum had spent all morning watching Draith develop new programming languages as it systematically disabled every antivirus program he could find. As frustrating as it was, there was something magnificent about watching its alien intelligence navigate through exceptions that his whole team of coders hadn’t anticipated. Would it really be such a bad thing if such a nimble intellect was optimized for proper governing instead? If only the virus hadn’t been infecting his precious simulation, Hallum might have trusted any number of tasks to it over the reckless pawing of greedy humans. The threat of artificially intelligent Draiths were no match for natural stupidity.

  A small click went unnoticed by the shouting combatants. The man listening outside the door shuffled the bustling keychain back into the pocket of his overalls. He didn’t know how long it would take for the senators to agree on the issue, but now that they were locked inside together, they were sure to figure it out eventually. It’s really the least they deserve after making him clean brain off the walls all day. Buddy the janitor proceeded to turn out the lights in the hallway, as he always did before he left for the evening.

  The Quasi Crystal

  Ramnus Orwell stood nearly seven feet tall with arms like a gorilla. Sali thought he looked like the sort of man who might go shirtless into a snowstorm to save a polar bear from the cold. But it was impossible to respect a man who cries like a snuffling pig, full of snorts, and squeals, with long dangling strings of snot weaving deeper into his beard every time he tried to wipe them away.

  “It’s just not fair,” Ramnus blubbered. “First Eisen, then poor little Treesha. Somebody must have made a mistake to send those angels here. I’ll always remember them.”

  “His name was Tareesh, actually,” Sali offered, sympathetically. “If it’s any consolation, the painted man said he’s going to use his skull to keep their whole village safe once we arrive.”

  “Do not call him painted man,” spoke one of the locals walking alongside them. It was hard to tell in the dark, but Sali was pretty sure he had vocally supported the sacrifice. The short balding fellow didn’t seem the least ashamed about it either. Someone like him wouldn’t have been out of place in any of the great grey office towers on Pria, assuming he was given a shower and all the flies orbiting his head found a new place to live. In other words, he looked like someone who smelled like someone who looked like him. It was amazing that someone as sticky as that could have ever been swept from the gutter in the first place.

  “My name is Guala, and you must call him the Grand Shaman Ang,” he continued. “The Grand Shaman teaches us that there is no such thing as death in a conscious universe. While you are alive, the Universe is thinking through you, just like you are thinking through your living neurons. You destroy more of your own mind by sneezing than the universe loses when one of us dies, so it is no great loss. I didn’t believe we could hear the universe thinking through the Quasi Crystal when I first landed either, but the Grand Shaman has kept us safe from many trials. You would do well to pay him the same respect.”

  “Was he the first prisoner the Humanists sent or something?” Elden asked.

  “Not the first, but the longest. For the last ten years the Grand Shaman has endured one trial after the next. May the spirits of the fallen orbit the Quasi Crystal and not be drawn into the black hole of infinite squishiness. There were many dangers here long before you brought your monsters. Many secrets in the jungle, and wild storms that will rip even these mighty trees from their roots and throw them through the sky like the javelins of the Gods. Sometimes it seems like the best and bravest of us have all died over the years, and only the fearful are spared. Keep your head down and do what you’re told, and may the Quasi Crystal protect you as well.”

  “He’s right, you know,” Ramnus groaned. “Eisen and Treesha were the bravest of us all. Maybe the Quasi Crystal really is trying to teach us a lesson; being brave or good only gets you killed.”

  “Brave isn’t the word I’d use though,” Sali said thoughtfully. “He was freaking out more than anyone when he first woke up. He didn’t calm down until he got a closer look at the bugger. And why do you think he called it a Draith, and talked about them devouring planets?”

  “Beats bugger for a name anyway,” Elden said, wincing as he picked his way through some particularly thorny bushes which seemed to go out of their way to get into his. None of the other locals marching alongside them in the shadows seemed to be having this much trouble navigating through the jungle. And why did the draping vines seem like they kept casually coiling around his neck?

  “If the Draiths didn’t come from here, then where do you think they’re from?” Ramnus asked.

  “The Quasi Crystal will heal our ignorance,” Guala replied enigmatically. “Only the Crystal knows the secrets of the Outerverse.”

  The Quasi Crystal turned out to be less metaphorical than they had supposed. There was indeed a massive blue-tinged stone nearly twenty feet high growing out of a rocky outcropping at the edge of the village. The base was decorated with fruits, and flowers, and red and white swirling patterns, while the lower portion of the crystal was smeared with dark red handprints that looked like blood. The top was clear and beautiful however, ending in a sharp prism which captured the torch light and scattered its spectral hues across the village.

  The houses here were carved directly from the bulk of
the massive trees, with little wooden shutters in the windows and warm light glowing inside. One of the trees was open to reveal a collection of metal tools fashioned from the debris of the escape pods, although without a power source, there was nothing more complex than might be found in the historically stupid ages. A small clearing in the jungle sprouted fruiting bushes in rows, and the aroma of freshly cooked stew permeated the heavy atmosphere. Everything was so quaint it would almost be charming. Not to live in, Sali thought, but certainly to visit in a museum, or perhaps a zoo. There was definitely something missing that made it not feel much like a village at all.

  “There aren’t any children here,” Sali mused in disappointment. “Don’t tell me they all get sacrificed too.”

  “No, no, and please do not speak of that sorrow again,” Guala said. “Some say there’s something in the water, some say something in the air, but no child has ever entered this land. Hush now, the Grand Shaman is speaking. Let us pray the Quasi Crystal will listen.”

  “Oh Great Crystal, how shiny and pointy you’re looking tonight,” the Shaman intoned solemnly, prostrating himself before the mysterious stone. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re the prettiest crystal in the whole world? Oh how your sharp, well defined edges cut the light into such sparkling colors. It’s enough to make my heart weep joyous spurts of blood.”

  “This is what he usually does, is it?” Sali inquired.

  Guala’s face was that of a child watching the ice cream piling ever higher in his cone, and he sighed in contentment. Sali turned back to the Grand Shaman Ang, who was now massaging the base of the crystal with a dark sticky substance from a basket. Sali did her best to convince herself it was berry juice, but that was difficult considering the top of Tareesh’s head was clearly visible sticking over the basket’s rim.