“Sir, it’s on a loop, it’ll be back in a minute, Good morning, ma’am,” he says, fighting back a yawn and addressing me for the last bit. he certainly looked like he’d been asleep.
“You don’t monitor them all the time?” Ebbel asks, frowning.
“No, sir, at most, it’s like a minute and a half before it’s back around,” Kip says, unconcernedly. “What could somebody possibly do in a minute and a half?”
“We’re all done!” Tim’s cheery voice calls through the vent. So my mischief is over. good. that shall be diverting tomorrow morning.
“Very good,” I say, stretching and rolling over since the camera is off of me now anyway I might as well look up at them. “Now, you can go on back to your barracks if you’d like.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“But you’re here.”
“Yes, yes I’m still here,” I say. then I remember what I’d meant to ask them. “Why did you come to get me out, to begin with?”
“Well, you were all alone in here.”
“And we didn’t think that was very nice.”
“Not after you got us out of trouble when you were only trying to teach us to march.”
But I wasn’t. I was trying to get into trouble then I got them out of the trouble I’d meant for me. but I don’t say that. Instead, I just say, “I see.”
“So we came to get you out.”
“Because it must be rotten to be locked up in here.”
“Especially when you didn’t do anything.”
“So we came to get you out.”
“Because you oughtn’t to be in here.”
No, no I should be. because I did do something and I will do something. and it is rotten in here but if anybody belongs in here I do. because it might not be Ebbel tonight it might be one of you. just as easily. So no, I shouldn’t be out.
“Except Tim and I didn’t think of the cameras.”
“I,” I correct automatically. I think he used the wrong ‘accept/except’ to but for a change of pace I might be wrong.
“What?”
“Something’s wrong with your eye?”
“No, no, it’s all right, go on back to the barracks before you’re caught,” I say, heavily. Yes truly alone here. truly and deeply alone. alone with my thoughts alone with my games because nobody else even knows we’re playing and if they did they wouldn’t want to play with me. I’m alone in the barracks too that’s what they don’t realize. I’m alone there because I’m the only one nobody, nobody knows what I’m thinking I am the unknown, to them. but that’s a good thing because if they did know I’d be locked up. Well, I am locked up. And here look at me, still playing just as well as ever. So I’m locked up, and I’m still alone in here.
well, not completely.
You’re still here, aren’t you?
Chapter 6
“W
hat’s he doing?” I ask, wanting to pace but I don’t want to betray my anxiety tonight.
“Looks like he’s just sitting there,” Kip says. He’s already dropped his customs and courtesies and looks like he wishes we’d just let him go back to sleep.
“He’s pressing his hands against his head, like some kind of mental patient,” Ebbel says, staring.
“Yeah, he’s been doing that the whole time, he does it in his barracks too, haven’t you noticed his forehead will be all red in the mornings?” Kip asks, lazily, “It’s just a thing.”
“What’s wrong with him? anything in his file?” Ebbel asks.
“He’s a kid, kids do stupid things, let’s just get him out and then we can go to bed ourselves?” I sigh. I don’t know why Ebbel is so interested. Or why he’s so energetic.
“Nope, nothin’ psychologically evaluated beyond the usual that they give us when we enlist,” Kip says, shrugging, “Which he answered all the right answers to, by the way.”
“Huh, there’s somethin’ weird about that kid,” Ebbel says, standing up, finally, “Don’t know what, though.”
“You’re the second person who’s said that,” I say, resisting the urge to roll my eyes. he’s a kid. A child. Children aren’t intrinsically evil.
Ebbel could come and get murdered already. I’m getting very pent up in here with nothing but my six equally fantastic murder plans to think about absolutely no way to enact them. first the Tims throw me off, now Ebbel is decidedly late. and I’m not going to sleep. I hate sleeping. My whole brain shuts down and I can’t think and I hate it. I do it as little as is possible, which usually amounts to once or twice week. That was when I was a boy. Now I try to average four hours every other night. my eyes get bloodshot though, and I don’t want them thinking there’s something wrong with me. I laugh. There is clearly something wrong with me but then they’d know it. they’d probably send me to an eye exam, when that’s the last part of me that needs to be examined. I need my head examined.
No, I don’t.
I like it the way it is. They’d want to examine it through. they will when they find out. if they find out. ever. I hope they will. I want them to. sometime. Somehow.
But not just yet.
I haven’t had enough fun yet.
“Card,” I say, opening the door, “You’re free to go.”
“Good morning, sir,” he says, sitting up and coming to attention immediately. He wasn’t sleeping. As Kip noted, his forehead is red from rubbing the heels of his hands on it. he wasn’t asleep. What kid doesn’t sleep after eighteen hours of marching?
“Come on, you’re to go back to your barracks,” I say, nodding for him to move.
“Yes, sir,” he says, picking up his blouse and putting it on. he’s sweating. It’s freezing in here.
“Card, are you feeling well?” Wilde asks, from behind me.
“Good evening, ma’am—yes ma’am,” he says, nodding.
“No you’re not, you’re sweating, come here,” she says, nodding for him to come closer. he obeys. She puts a hand on his forehead. The jumpy kid nearly recoils but only just thinks better of it. then I pity him. didn’t his mum ever put her hand to his head like that? No, he’s been hit if anything. he expects to be hit. “You’re burning up. Go to IDMT in the morning if you’re still not well.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he says, obediently, going back to buttoning his blouse.
“You’re not to run tomorrow, not if you’re ill,” I add. The last thing we need is him fainting or dying or something and his family suing us.
“Yes, sir,” he says, his eyes flashing with an odd light. I wonder what that was. fever more than likely, now that she mentions it, his skin is more pale than usual.
How dare he I live to run it’s as close as I get to flying that is it will so strangle him and put him a washer.
“Ma’am, I don’t want to wake the others,” he says, quietly, looking past as us as he should. But I swear he swayed a little. His fever is at least a hundred if not more.
“They’ll be fine, you just get some rest, so you’re well enough for training in the morning,” I say, following Ebbel out of the brig. I shudder at how dark it is in here. I don’t know how that man up there Kip stands being locked up in here all day.
Thank god the NCOs are leaving. Honestly who invented twelve-hour shifts without nap and snack breaks. A robot? And it’s not like the videos are exactly riveting if I’m lucky one of them talks in their sleep. It’s absurd. I pull out my crisps from where I stuffed them hastily in a drawer and settle back down, head on my blouse. Oh well, only a few more weeks of this and then back to Space. Where I do exactly the same thing. It’s a living.
I wake up in a cold sweat, my hip flask closed and in my hand. My first thought is that at least I had the mind to close it. my second thought is realizing what a hellish existence I have that I curled up to sleep clutching my booze and that what I was most concerned about was if I’d spilled any of it.
But at least I didn’t spill any the stuff is hard to come by and there’s a limit to how much you can buy and that’s disastrousl
y below how much a tall man needs to get completely hammered on a nightly basis. God, I need to stop. I need to think. I need to get out of this I need to be back in space. But I can’t escape it. the event horizon of my conscious lurks before me and it has Card’s haunting all-knowing eyes. why is the devil incarnate in that boy? And why do I have to see it and know it and feel it? if I didn’t, it would be so much the better ignorance is bliss truly, ignorance, I see them, I see all of them, ignorant and happy and all is well in their minds and they don’t have to escape it because they don’t know it is where we are it is trapped in the maze in the dark—no not a maze. Mazes are simple, mazes are safe, with a maze there is a way out, there are turns you don’t know what’s coming.
It isn’t like that.
It is a path, a single straight path you can’t turn around any more than you can turn back time you can’t stray from it you can’t run you can’t scream you just keep walking towards it and you can’t stop you can’t turn away you can’t look away, there is nothing you can do but keep marching towards death but it’s worth than death it’s a horrible, slow painful death, you’re being sucked in and you can’t getaway. And all the while, Card is standing there at the end. The only one to have walked through and come back. somehow he came back from the dead and he’s seen the other side he is of the other side now. and he’s brought it back here. to infest us.
I fumble for my bible, which usually lays on my bedside table—but here it is on my chest. I was reading it, studying Revelation. I must study what I can do to fight it. the Beast. Isn’t it written that there is some way the three prophets combat the beast? And who are they? And how do I find them? Maybe that is what I must do, find them, find the three prophets---but oh yes. the Beast kills them as well.
the door to the barracks slams. I sit up, bleary-eyed. Titus walks back in, slowly, his cover in his hand. He looks worn out. in the dim light of the glow strips that mark the walkways, I see his face is pasty with sweat.
“What happened?” Peter hisses. We aren’t supposed to be talking. But absolutely nobody is here to notice.
“They let me out because I’m supposed to go to IDMT in the morning, I suppose,” he says, climbing up to his bunk.
“What was it like?” Logan asks, leaning out.
“Why are you supposed to go to IDMT?” I ask.
“Boring---Wilde thinks I’m running a fever,” he says, sitting on his bunk and slowly unlacing his boots. I come over and touch his head. he leans away almost automatically then lets me. his skin is on fire.
“You are running a fever,” I say, my hand comes back sticky with his sweat.
“I’m fine,” he says, shrugging, “I’ll go to IDMT if they like, I’ll only miss PT.”
“No, you can’t go,” Tsegi speaks up from beneath me, “It’s our doctor from the Academy, I heard he transferred here.”
“Who?” Liesel asks, she’s a few bunks down but needless to say, everyone has heard our conversation by now. “Not Dr. Truth Juice?”
“Yes, he left the Academy and transferred here,” Tsegi says.
“Oh, God, they’re right, you can’t go,” I groan.
“What?” Titus asks, extremely alert now.
“He’s this insane old dude who dopes up all of his patients because he’s convinced they won’t tell the truth if they aren’t high,” Peter puts in, “He was in charge of our dorm, I remember, even if you had a paper cut, he’d put you on the juice.”
“What juice?” Titus asks.
“Some concoction of barbiturates,” Tsegi clarifies, “Somebody gave him a license to use it and he’s out of control with the stuff.”
“What? No,” Titus says, actually concerned, “I mean---I don’t want that. I’m not that ill, I’ll tell him what’s wrong, can’t he be reasoned with?”
“No he can’t; it’s stupid,” Liesel says.
“Really, every freaking time you go in there he’s like ‘here’s some juice boy, just a little juice’,” Peter imitates the doctor rather well.
“Here,” I say, going to the end of my bunk and sorting in a pocket of my SBUs. “Take these, they give them to us girls for cramps but they’ll reduce your fever.”
“Thank you,” Titus says, taking the tablets gently from my outstretched hand.
“I’ve got some as well, if you feel it coming back later,” Tsegi says, handing him a couple more, “That way you don’t have to go see that nutcase.”
“Thank you,” he says, looking a bit surprised, tucking the extras into his pocket.
These touched her hand which was a little bit sweaty now I get to put them in my mouth. And here I was lamenting how my night was going. I smile as I let the chalk pills dissolve just a little on my tongue before swallowing them. I want to taste every last bit of her off of them.
“Anytime,” Tsegi says.
“Yeah, you do not want a run-in with that guy,” Peter says, lying back down.
“Do you feel sick?” Logan asks he’s been quiet through all this.
“No----not that I noticed---I didn’t think of it---I suppose it is warm in here,” Titus says, swallowing the pills slowly.
“Why’d they put you in the brig?” Liesel asks.
“Ah, search me,” Titus says, shrugging, as he lays down, “It was Harris’s orders, I think, I didn’t get a good look at the 314.”
“Why? Because of the singing—thing?” Peter asks.
“That and I was a bit audacious,” Titus says, “It was my fault, really.”
“You still didn’t deserve the brig,” Liesel says, resolutely, “They oughtn’t to pick on you just because you aren’t Academy.”
“They oughtn’t to do a lot of things,” Titus points out.
“True enough, glad you’re back here, though,” Peter says.
“Me too, I was worried about you,” Logan says.
“Logan, there are plenty of things to worry about in this world, I am most certainly not one of them,” Titus says. he means it as well. I wonder why.
Chapter 7
D ay dawns dark and early here at OCS. We are greeted with the usual screaming and shouting from MTIs whom I saw far too recently. They do not look so effervescent, though, their eyes are bloodshot and their uniforms aren’t all that crisp. Unlike mine. I woke up early to iron mine, since it was wrinkled from spending a few hours lying in the brig.
Did that little twerp Card seriously iron his uniform? If so can I prove it? probably not. a shame, I’m sure he broke the rules and got up too early. At least his fever is better, that should soothe Wilde’s maternal instincts towards the little cur.
Titus looks remarkably well rested and his fever is down with the pain relievers in his system. He looks very cheerful, I wonder what he’s got planned? He can’t possibly be this enthusiastic just to go and run three miles, no matter how much he likes running.
At least Card is looking better, he did seem loath to go IDMT. He’s not sweaty and his color’s a bit better.
“Card, do you still need to go to IDMT?” I ask, stopping in front of him.
“No, ma’am, I am quite well this morning,” he says, adamantly.
“Will you be able to participate in the run?” I ask.
“Yes, ma’am,” he says.
“Very good, carry on,” I say, walking on.
“Good morning, ma’am,” he says, politely, before returning to lacing his boots.
I’m actually looking forward to PT. at least we get to be outside in the fresh air with our thoughts. I’ve always loved the mountains, even growing up in the City, any chance we got, our mum would take me and my sister out there, let us run around, play hide and go seek in the trees. At least now I can remember those times. Happy times, at peace in the quiet woods. And running feels good, stretching getting out and moving in the cool morning air is relaxing after literally all day in classrooms or marching in circles on dill pads.
Ebbel is shouting orders as to how to put our oxygen tanks on. The air on Kepler has less oxygen tha
n that on Earth, apparently, I’ve never experienced it myself, however from meteorological reports I’ve read, I know its thinner. So when we have a lot of physical exertion, we have to carry oxygen tanks with us and breath from those. Even with the orders being shouted, and having done this for about two weeks, Logan still can’t get his on without my help.
I don’t mind running, Titus loves it, though, and after last night I’m sure he’s anxious to get going. I miss some of the tracks around the Academy. I used to wander out there every chance I got, especially when I was small, and we were on vacation and we’re just supposed to study or read in the library or something. I would go outside, look around, pretend I was playing with my brothers and sisters. And they were hiding and I couldn’t find them. of course, I never found them. God, that’s depressing. Oh well, I have friends to run with now. and the MTIs are all old and can barely keep up, so we can talk a bit and not get into trouble.
Titus looks better with the pain killers the other girls lent him. He probably shouldn’t be running, though, but I doubt if he’ll leave his flight. He seems curiously devoted to being a flight leader. I mean, I enjoy it, but it’s actually a bit more trouble than it’s worth, making sure everybody’s in line and all. I’d much rather just keep my head low and get on through this. There’s that Harris who Titus thinks wrote him up. He does look like an idiot. He’s doing less shouting than the rest, walking around and staring at us. come on. we all know how to put SBUs on and oxygen masks on by now it’s not like we were born yesterday. Oh, okay, Titus’ bunkmate actually doesn’t know-how. well the rest of us do.
It sounds really horrible but honestly, all of them do look alike with their shaved heads and their matching SBUs and their faces tucked down as they tie boots and fiddle with equipment. I try to pick my daughter out from the rest I thought I knew which bunk she was in but apparently not. they all do look alike.
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