King's County

by James Carrick

  The party wore on, slower than normal, but our steady drinking paid off. Soon we were all best friends.

  One of the Greeks disappeared for a minute, coming back with a bottle of Ouzo. The three of them made a big deal about us having some so I helped pour shots into the glasses and cups laying around and we all took one together.

  They insisted we have another. This round required a toast with the three of them shouting over each other. I didn't understand it.

  That was it for the Ouzo. I think they were pissed that it went so quickly but they always seemed pissed. They should have brought more.

  The good feelings didn't last long after the toast. The Greeks got upset with each other, taking the party unstoppably downhill. They argued like maniacs in their language - fuck, fuck, fuck - that's the only word I understood. We just watched and tried not to laugh too hard but they knew we were laughing at them and that made them angrier.

  One of the Greeks took his belt off and shook it in the other's faces. I've never seen anything like it. The three of them really started raging, facing each other, alternating their energy back and forth, each one equally furious at the other two. Then, maybe seeing no point in further argument, they went outside and beat the living shit out of each other.

  That was our first and last night hanging out with them. After the fight, the Greeks were bloodied up pretty good. They all wore rings and there had been a few solid buckle hits, too. But they went back to their travel trailer peacefully and together. The squadron thought it all a good show and went back inside to keep drinking.

  Waking up the next day and walking to the rec room, I saw the Greek's trailer was gone. When I asked the Major, he said didn't know anything about it.

  *

  AK 2092

  On the flight back from maneuvers, as one of the first ten to arrive at the assembly zone, our squad was rewarded with a night off. At the announcement over the radio, the men all hooted in unison and barked out the division battle cries.

  "Hey, El-Tee! Not too bad, huh?" One of the sergeants whacked me on the back. I didn't like it.

  "Sorry, sir." He said adding, "...thank you."

  I started to feel like kind of a dick.

  "Got any big plans for the break, soldier?"

  "Oh, yeah. Well, probably hit the game room with the guys. You know."

  "What’s your first name, Sgt?"

  "Geake!" That's how he spelled it, not Jake.

  "Geake, I have to tell you, that sounds fucking horrible. When you get finished doing whatever it is you have to do before you start having all that fun I want you to come by my quarters. OK?"

  "OK...what?" Geake was having some trouble with the idea.

  "Just come by my quarters, my room, later on tonight - not too late. That's an order." I smiled so he'd know I meant well, but not too big of a smile. I didn't want him to get the wrong idea.

  *

  WY 2065

  The old routine came back easily to the squadron after the Greeks had left. The war resumed as normal. We flew our raids together, did solo search and destroy missions, and every few weeks or so we did a mass attack with sometimes dozens of other squadrons on an enemy strong point. It wasn't too bad, better than college.

  On a cool October morning while wrapping up a flight, I got a tap on the shoulder. This was unusual. Nobody would mess with a pilot while he's strapped in to the equipment with a craft in the air. I turned around to see Major standing there, looking oddly happy. It was unsettling to see him like this. Off to his office we went.

  "Lt. Waller." That unpleasant smile came out again. "You've flown 189 missions with our detachment. Does that sound about right?"

  "I suppose. I haven't kept track."

  "You don't check your statistics?" He frowned and looked down at his tablet screen. Pilots all pretended to not give a shit about the statistics. "I find that highly unusual, Lt. Waller."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Well, other people have kept track. Did you know that in those 189 missions you have not lost a single drone GAF?"

  I did know. It was a point of pride with me. I think we all kept at least a loose mental record of our statistics and, to be honest, I did peek at the official stats more than once.

  "We’re a little late...unfortunately. At achieving 175 clean flights, pilots are now being selected for special consideration - special training. Congratulations, Lt."

  This is how I wound up going to space.

  *

  AK 2092

  We sat around a thickly chromed bar built into the side of the cliff-like wall. The club was circular and deeply set into the earth. The part above ground was mostly buried in snow. The ceiling was rounded, dark, sparsely lit with thousands of brilliant pinprick white lights, and it came to a point at the top like an onion. The place was incredibly vast. At the farthest point across, through a considerable haze of smoke, the people looked like tiny spastic wax figures. When the smoke in the air got too thick, from far below, a burp of clean air rushed upward and flushed the smoke out of a little aperture at the onion tip.

  The music was of an ambient sort, seemingly typical nightclub garbage, but actually densely complex. The closer you'd listen, the more layers of detail you'd hear. Sitting around talking and drinking, I could only hear the throbbing bass and synth beat. After Geake went to the head, without the distraction, I heard women singing, drums and guitars then, even deeper, a swirling, ecstatic orchestra.

  We weren't supposed to be here. It's not that the Army explicitly forbid it. There was no code that said soldiers on leave couldn't go to nightclubs in wild frontier boom towns. Just that virtually anything we might do there was, you might say, frowned upon. We were free to drink, take drugs, whore around, or whatever - but it was considered bad form, at best inappropriate, and so few did.

  I picked up on this quickly. I wasn't a stupid kid anymore. It was a narrow road the Army was walking to hold everything together. They had no real mission. This could never be made obvious. There had to be strict control of the men. As there were no natural incentives for serving, no real enemy, Army policy had to provide for a balance of comfort and belonging along with a subtle underlying fearfulness of nonconformity. And they always offered something, sometime in the future, for those who played along to look forward to. And if you didn't fit in, you had to go. They didn’t mess around with that. I knew I wouldn't last long.

  Our bartender’s hair was in a long rope-like braid over her left shoulder. When she leaned in to give us our drinks the braid came alive. A snake’s head emerged from the end and hissed and snapped at us.

  "Ha!" She clearly had done this before and enjoyed it. "Don't worry, he’s harmless. Really freaks out the day trippers. You guys military?"

  "How'd you know - Listen, the kid here wants to get laid. Are we in the right spot for that?"

  "Wait, El-Tee, I didn't come here for that."

  "Geake, what's the matter? I know you're not...whatever."

  Truth be told, I wasn't surprised he'd balk at getting a girl but that was the main reason I'd brought him here. I wouldn't give up easily.

  We’d hitched a ride on a military supply craft. Ruth was a mining town, the mining town for North America is what the obnoxious warrant officer sitting next to us called it. We ditched him at the hotel when he went into the bathroom and hopped into a cab. The cab was self driving, the guy up front was more of a manager or concierge and he told us about this place.

  "Lt. Waller, I have a girl back home. We all do, all the men in the Territorial." Geake said.

  I had heard this before but didn't really believe it. I certainly didn't have a girl back home.

  "Geake, Sergeant, we’re not going to be marrying these broads. It's just a good time. When was the last time you saw your girl, anyway?"

  "It's been almost ten years." Geake said.

  "How about another?" Snake lady said clinking together our empty heavy crystal glasses.

  "Another round. Hold on, what are you a
bout 22, 23?"

  "Yeah, 22. Or 28. Good guess, LT."

  "Well... Jesus Christ, Geake." Strange guy, this kid. "Let’s just see where the night takes us, OK?"

  *

  WY/MT 2065

  I left the squadron and didn't look back. After the meeting with the Major, I felt almost nothing for the place. We had a little party for me, no big deal, a minor dent in the beer wall. The squadron slept in their bunks while I dressed to leave. Greater prospects awaited.

  The training facility was in Montana: a single plain white and windowless box-like building surrounded by tall double fences on an endless prairie. The helicopter landed on the roof. I was the only passenger and a group was there waiting to receive me. It felt pretty good, to be honest. I felt important.

  There was about ten minutes of paperwork and I was shown to my quarters by a young airman. I shoved the one small bag I had under the bed nearest the wall and went to sleep still in my uniform.

  After dozing about an hour, I awoke to find a man asleep on the other bed. He also still wore his uniform. I saw that he was a Captain.

  *

  Ruth 2092

  The bar had gotten stale so I left to explore the place. Geake had gone off with a couple of Colombian girls. They dragged him off his seat at the bar. He'd played his dumb and innocent routine but went eagerly nonetheless.

  I settled on a lounge at a lower level. There were more people here. I got a drink from one of the machines lining the wall.

  A cute blonde chick, a little too short with closely bobbed hair, came out of the dark to help me operate the drink machine. It was kind of complicated to get exactly what you wanted - I didn't really know what I wanted. I ended up making something in a big thermos type thing with vodka and salty tamarind and what she said was a mild nor-epinephrine and dopamine activator, a mild stimulant in other words. I don't think she knew what she was talking about but the end result wasn't too bad.

  Drink in hand, I wandered around and lucked upon a nice heavy easy chair that was out of the way of the main action in the lounge, perfect for me.

  From this new vantage, about midway down the club, I watched the light show come on in the open center. It was almost palpable. Below the distant ceiling star lights, holograms came and went in a shifting scheme of colors. I watched dark purple African elephants on a pale yellow savanna lazily strip tree branches with their trunks and chew the bark. The sliver of a cobalt blue stream weaving through the stand of trees slowly began to widen and expand to eventually cover everything. The savanna became a lake. As the water rose, the elephants moved their legs to keep their heads and trunks above the clear, dark blue water.

  The elephants rose with the water to be replaced by a universe of marine life. The cobalt blue shifted to a deeper navy. A bright, brick red octopus jerked through a gracefully fluid mass of silver and orange fish. A school of twitchy bone-white sea horses poked around the railing and entered the lounge. They seemed nervous and didn't stick around very long.

  *

  MT 2065

  Captain Edward Hart was my roommate. We were selected to train together and then go into space as a two man crew for the Artemis project.

  Ed was a better man than I and it doesn't bother me to say that. He was certainly smarter. His test scores were all higher than mine (mine were not bad, either) but there was more to it than that. He was smooth, easy going but intense. Confident, I guess is the word, and not without good reason to be. He just seemed to always know what he needed to know. Having him for a partner gave me confidence.

  As a pilot, I have to say I was probably a little better than Ed. We were both among the best in the Air Force, everybody picked for Artemis was. But when put head to head in the simulator, I won almost every match-up. Maybe he was letting me win.

  It was obvious they were trying to figure us out, to find out why we were better. A lot of the tests and things we did at the Montana facility seemed to have no other purpose. The truth is, beside whatever talent or ability we may have had, the real difference was in that, on a certain level, none of us really cared at all about the Air Force or the mission or the war and the lies and phony secrets.

  We flew because we loved to. There was honesty in it and that's a strength of its own. We wanted to do well purely for its own sake. There was no greater calling or sense of duty that motivated us - and anyone who claims otherwise, I would bet you, is not a good pilot.

  *

  Ruth 2092

  "Yo, man. I knew I knew you. What the fuck, huh?"

  Already I regretted getting up to talk to him. The last time I saw him he was a lot quieter. Many years ago it was,

  "Alberto, you look exactly the same. Do you realize that? You haven't gotten fatter or anything."

  "Yeah, I guess, you know... But I've changed! I ain't in the military no more, man. I fuckin' work now, man. Workin' hard."

  "No, yeah, you're different. I see that but, you look the same."

  "So do you, maricon!" Alberto said. He pounded on the bar for service and he and I and his thankfully so far silent friend took a shot of the poison that he insisted on ordering for us.

  "So when did they approve the anti-aging treatment for civilians?"

  "Yeah, formula, like twenty years?" Alberto was starting to brood. He hunched over the bar like he was annoyed or frustrated. Maybe he resented me. It was time to bail out.

  "Hey, look, my friend took off with these chicks and I think I need to go check on him. I think it's been long enough, you know? Do you have any idea where they might have gone?"

  "Maybe, yeah, maybe. Alright, cool. Let’s head up there. We were just goin' to anyway."

  *

  MT 2065

  Month one in the big white box was mostly aptitude testing: written exams, repeated and cross referenced exams by psychiatrists, and various medical stuff including physical stress assessments.

  The next month they put the chip in our backs and did calibrations. Endless calibrations, it was a new technology and they were learning as they went.

  All of the stress tests from before we redid with the chip in place. Instead of just watching and recording, the scientists made little adjustments to our blood chemistry, hormones and things using the chip. They were programming it to work on its own.

  The effect was subtle at first but when they had it fine-tuned the difference was amazing. Everything came together. Ed and I went from what they said were average scores to near perfect scores on the physical tests. We now had perfect overall medicals and scored nine and ten percentile points higher on the intelligence tests. It was good; we felt strong, like waking up from the best sleep of your life, all the time.

  We were getting close they said. The testing and flight training were ahead of schedule. Launch specifics were already being evaluated. Our focus shifted to classroom sessions studying mission details while they figured out what to do next.

  *

  Ruth 2092

  "So my friend, he's all like, what the fuck, right? Right? I mean, I don't know."

  Something in Alberto’s drink must have kicked in on the way to the Sky Level. He was animated now and no longer surly. He wouldn't shut up.

  "Yeah, I know. It's..."

  "Oh fuck! I remember now! Yeah, that was some shit, I'll tell you."

  He kept interrupting me like this so I stopped responding to him. I kind of wanted to smash his face but I needed to find Geake first.

  We entered a low archway to get on a moving sidewalk. The sidewalk carried us through a dark tunnel leading to the sole elevator to the Sky Level.

  It was densely black inside the tunnel with only the irregular, softly glowing aquamarine lights on the belt to orient ourselves. The ceiling stretched out above us, its dimensions obscure.

  I blocked out Alberto. The music was in here. It was softer than outside but still perfectly discernible. I heard a million notes underneath the beat. Flamenco guitars, violins, snare drums, organs, all fitted together and layered.


  "Hey man, you listening to me?" Alberto asked and went on without waiting for an answer.

  The ceiling erupted into a brilliant tropical blue sky. We were on a white sand beach with palms and scurrying crabs. A wet, salty breeze hit my back. The tunnel was taking us into a clear, pale lagoon.

  "So then I was like, they all gonna give it up, so what the fuck? Whatever. I hit that shit hard, bro."

  Into the water the sidewalk took us. Within the music I could hear bubbles rushing past my ears and then a low rumbling and minute sounds of cracking shrimp.