by Mark Tufo
“I get it, Pender. What about…”
“Becky.”
“Becky.”
“I mean she’s a kid now, in our current time line. We’ll be meeting for the first time in another week. She just moved from St. Louis because it was safer outside the big urban areas, at least in the beginning. I wish I could go back and tell that younger Pender to play it a little cooler. I drooled on her that first time.”
“You drooled on her? That’s not a typical greeting.”
“It’s not like that,” he laughed. “A bunch of us were being transported out to an old nuclear silo. I fell asleep and my head landed on her shoulder. She left me alone for the most part, at least until drool started soaking through her jacket.”
“You’re a smooth one.”
He turned red.
“Hey, apparently it worked, right? There’s no use in looking back on all of life’s little regrets. Like I said, they make us who we are today. Odds are if you hadn’t done that, she might have never looked twice at you. Kind of tough to forget the guy that leaks on you.”
“You might be right, sir.”
“If you could tell my wife that, I would really appreciate it. She hasn’t thought I’ve been right for a good long while and well, right now I’m in a bit of hot water, and not the good, rose petal infused hot water, either but like the murky shit that comes out of a busted city sewer line.”
“Not sure where you’re going with this, sir.”
“Right, right, this isn’t about me. Though my wife keeps telling me that I always try to make it about me…”
“Sir?”
“Sorry. You know how some people have to go and face the music? Well, later tonight I’ll be facing a symphony, and it won’t be anything as soothing as some classical music…actually be a whole bunch of subpar musicians playing death metal. Shit, I just might have some narcissistic tendencies; maybe that psych eval was a little more on point than I thought. But, look. I’ll deal with my multiple problems later. Let’s get you squared away. I’m still on the fence with arresting you.”
“Sir, I did it for Becky, for us, for everyone. We’re losing. At least, we were. You were doing things that were making the aliens’ total victory more difficult and prolonged, but in the end, sir, I think we all knew they were going to win. Even you would be hard pressed to deny that.”
Hard to argue with facts. Sure, it hadn’t stopped me before, but there was always a part of me that knew that no matter how hard we fought, what we did, the battles we won, we just didn’t have the tools. We’d been pummeled so hard that first year, our population had taken a drastic hit. We were not the same great people we were. Our major cities were gone, most of our infrastructure was gone, our ability to manufacture severely hampered. That takes a toll on morale, makes you reevaluate your entire reality. We had somehow been able to cobble together a resistance, but our odds had always looked something like all of the might of the United States military in her heyday against the Island Nation of Tonga. I am absolutely positive that Tonga probably has some of the fiercest warriors known to man and that plenty of poor, unsuspecting GIs would have met their fates on that inhospitable terrain. In the end though, if the US had been losing, they would have eventually got tired of the war and just bombed Tonga back into the sea. What could Tonga have done? The Progs were on the cusp of doing that to Earth. I wanted to think me and the men and women I served with could do this, could pull off the impossible. To think otherwise just wasn’t in the way of us. If we were so sure we were going to lose, what would be the point of continuing to fight?
“I can’t disagree with that.” I conceded. “Though I’m not fully giving in.”
“I understand that, sir. And just like you, I was going to do all that I could to stop what I thought was inevitable, even if that meant being unpredictable, dangerous and reckless…like you,” he added at the end, almost not even loud enough to be audible.
“I feel like you’re playing me a bit, Pender. I’m not the sharpest blade in the knife holder but I guarantee I can still cut.”
“No sir, not playing you. Psychology and manipulation were never my strong points and maybe even less so now. I’ve developed parts of my brain almost to the detriment of others. I am always so fixated on the task at hand, I sometimes have trouble with normal interactions and doing the things that most people take for granted. Last week, Lieutenant Beckert had to remind me to eat. I was starting to feel faint and was having a tough time standing.”
“The injection, let’s go back to that. What happened?”
“Nothing at first. Nothing good, anyway. I got sick. For three days, I thought I was going to die. Wanted to die, in fact. I thought my brain was melting. I had a migraine once in high school, I thought that was pretty bad. This was different and so much worse. I was convinced my skull was caving in on itself at infinitesimally small increments. My nose bled constantly for seventy-two hours, figured it was my liquefied brains leaking out. Then…then it mercifully just stopped. I figured I was about to die, but I was happy that at least it would be pain-free and that I had at least tried to do something that would make a difference.”
“No matter how things turn out, Pender, we all have our parts to play. We all are making a difference.”
“Thank you for saying that, sir. I slept that first day afterward, peaceful, then the dreams started. I was seeing Stryvers, but I was no longer afraid of them. I was beyond that, above that, I guess?” He was looking off in the distance trying to gather his thoughts.
“Do you have an affinity for them now?”
“Are you asking if I’m on their side now, sir? Because if that’s the case, no, sir. I am not. Overall, they’re a worse creature than the Progerians. We mean nothing to any of them other than a way to gain what they need. A starving man cares not for the bees that made him honey. He takes until he is full, that is their way. Doctor Baker found that it is not a psychic link that is built into their DNA, rather it is their intelligence; that is how they pass the ability on from generation to generation. It was this genetically superior intelligence that was binding with my own.”
“So, wait. You’re really telling me you’re half spider, half man? You’re a real-life Spider-Man? Do you have a red suit? You’re not going to do that Venom split, are you? I’ll tell you what, I’m not a big fan of your name being an alliteration either, that is way too coincidental. Peter Pender, Peter Parker…this kind of trademark shit will get you sued. I guess you could be Octoleg-Man or Web-Master or something. Seriously though, Pender, I need to know if you’ve been compromised. If you’re as smart as Beckert thinks you are, there’s no telling how many steps ahead of us you are and what your potential end-game could be.”
Pender opened up a pocket on the front of his military uniform, he pulled out a picture he’d preserved inside of laminate. On the front was a picture of whom I presumed to be Becky, and on the back her lipstick print. At least I hoped it was hers.
“She’s a beautiful girl, Pender.”
“She is, sir, and she’s so much more. I took the chance for her. What I do now is in part for her. I would not, nor could I do anything, if I thought in some way it would hurt her.”
“And the sentimental thing, that’s not some ploy?”
“Sir, if you don’t trust me now then nothing I say, do, or show you is going to change that. If, however, you will trust me, then I have a couple of years’ worth of work to shove into a week.”
I eyed him, not that I was any type of sage diviner. But my heart told me all I needed to know as his gaze slipped from mine and to the picture I was still holding like he longed to have it back in his possession.
“Go, Pender. Give us our victory.”
“Yes sir, thank you, sir.” He was all smiles as he got up quickly and raced for the door.
“Hope I read that one right,” I said to no one but myself.
Chapter 12
MIKE JOURNAL ENTRY 10
I had BT and Tracy watch the
playback of the interview separately. BT didn’t trust him at all and Tracy trusted him implicitly. She noted how he had looked to the picture, but BT couldn’t get past the part of Pender being “infected” with Stryver DNA. One of those two was going to be right; I could only hope I’d made the right choice. But even if Pender was a traitor, possibly not even knowing that he was, he was still going to give me every advantage he could against the Progerians. There was no way the Stryvers would ever waste an opportunity to strike out against their old foe. No matter which team Pender was ultimately playing for, he would take this swing for all it was worth.
“Seriously man. You told him he could be Octoleg-Man? That’s what you’re thinking about when you interview a potential saboteur? He could be getting ready to perform egregious acts of treason all over what’s left of humanity. I don’t know if we should fear him or you more.” BT said. He was half-kidding, but not all. He was concerned, and he had every right to be. Everything I’d done so far had been by the seat of my pants with a heavy dose of winging it. We weren’t that much better off and we’d lost…well, we’d lost a lot of good people. Tough for anybody to get behind all that with any degree of confidence.
“You should fear me, ultimately, because I have the power to stop him. At least, at the moment.”
“But you’re not going to.”
“For what reason?” I said. BT was about to give me a dozen, but I kept talking before he could maybe come across a good argument I couldn’t ignore. “The Progs are directly in front of us, that’s a known fact. We’ll be able to surprise them for a little while, then they’re going to rally and they’ll be coming at us with everything they have. BT, you’ve been part of the drills–you’ve seen all the potential outcomes.”
“Don’t even pull that bullshit with me, you believe the computer models as much as you believe in unicorns that shit rainbow ice cream.”
“What do you think that would taste like?”
“Yeah, you keep making jokes because that’s how you cope, but I’m terrified, Mike.”
“Me too, man, me too.”
I’d had Beckert bring us out of our buckle and had the seventh deck properly vented of the dex gas. Could almost hear the crew take a collective sigh as I brought them an extra week back from the brink of a major battle and not have to worry about every breath they took. Besides the retrofitting or improvements or whatever Pender was doing, the ship needed some repairs. We’d not realized just how much until I sent crews out to do some space walking. When we dropped out of the emergency buckle the first time and the ship had been rocked, we’d all mistakenly thought it had something to do with the sudden halt. Ended up we’d been clipped, like a parked car on the side of a city street by a passing drunk driver. Only we’d done more than just trade paint. We’d lost a whole array of sensors, some comm towers, and we were going to have to make a claim on our intergalactic insurance policy. Unfortunately, the deductible was like, five billion dollars. Fucking insurance companies, screwing people over since the dawn of the notion of protecting something for a price. Wait, isn’t that how organized crime makes their money? Want to know why it’s legal for insurance companies to do this but not your neighborhood mobster? Taxes. Pay your taxes and the government doesn’t much give a shit what you do.
Where the hell was I going with this? The Stryver’s ship, namely the one Beth was on, was the one that had hit us. If the pieces of it that had remained with us were any indication, they had taken a fair amount of damage themselves. Fortunately, we hadn’t seen nor detected any more of them since that encounter. They were out there, that was for sure, but were they five years in the future, even now scratching their heads trying to figure out where we had gone. Talk about your perfect hiding spot. Where we were, no one would ever think to look. Imagine being able to play hide and seek while you manipulated time? If they had National Championship games, you’d be the winner, hands down.
We were still about to head into a war which we had severely limited chance of coming out of. Add to that we were in the middle of nowhere with no one looking for us. I figured it was the perfect time for my crew to unwind. You know that old saying, give a man some fruit and he’ll ferment it? No? Well, that’s the case. Beckert got together with Doc Baker and in 24 hours they had this weird blackberryish, Progerian fruit alcoholic concoction that they were having a hard time bottling because it kept eating through its containers, yet somehow this was safe for human consumption. The plan was to let anybody who wished to party, do so. If they just wanted time off to do whatever they felt like, they could do that as well. Most wanted a little of both. Their section heads were responsible for scheduling the festivities in their particular department. The ship still needed to be manned and guarded at all times; I couldn’t have someone inadvertently enter the Prog holding area, or worse yet, let them out to join in.
That was where I decided to spend most of my time. Not with the Progs, but watching them from up above. Their living conditions had deteriorated rapidly as they were forced to do more and more on their own without the aid of mutes or Genos. They also weren’t dealing well with the aspect of captivity. More than a few were showing constant signs of distress. Mouths hanging open, a wet, clammy-looking sheen to their skin. I felt like I wanted to give a shit, I just couldn’t. That part of me had been buried with Dee. I’ll tell you what I did do and that was look at the hangar doors button constantly. It was under a safety panel to keep someone from accidentally opening the doors, but most of the time I spent down there, the panel was flipped wide open and I stared long and hard at that small button…how easy it would be to send those murderous bastards spinning off into space.
“How’s life treating you?” I asked them over the speaker. Maybe it was the frog juice–that’s what they were calling the drink mix, or maybe I was being particularly petty. The more sips I took of that horrible tasting and even worse smelling drink, the more I saw in the Progs what Paul had. Miserable, reptilian creatures devoid of anything even remotely human who only wanted to add to their own power at the destruction of everything and everyone else.
“Well, they’re not quite entirely not like humans,” I slurred.
“Does that even make sense?” my wife asked.
“They know what I mean,” I said pointing to the glass.
“What’s with the switch cover?” she asked.
“They know what that means, too.”
“Mike, they can’t see it.”
“Fucking A if they don’t know, though.”
“Can I shut that panel?”
“Why would you give a fuck if I flushed the world’s biggest toilet of the largest turds ever?”
“It’s not the Progs I’m worried about it’s…” She paused hunting for the right words.
“What? Are you afraid what it might do to my fragile psyche?”
“Stop being so damned self-centered. You have a half dozen crews right now walking around the outside of this ship. Don’t you think it would be a little dangerous for them if a couple hundred Progs flew out and started floating around?”
“Want some?” I sloshed my glass toward her–seemed like the best defense available. She moved in and shut the panel.
“I tried some. I thought my throat had melted. How much have you had?”
“Just this one.”
She asked again without saying a word. You know the way women can, with just the look of their eyes and tilt of their eyebrows.
“And a couple of others to go along with it. I mean really the only way to be able to drink it is by washing it down with another one.”
“You know this stuff is almost pure alcohol, right? Where’s BT?”
“You mean the man you sent to babysit me? Apparently, he’s not so good at holding his liquor?” I pointed to the far side of the room. Tracy had to walk around a console to see BT splayed out on the floor, his head against the wall. He was snoring softly, a cup filled halfway still in his hand. “Oooh,” I said as I saw his cup. I staggere
d, bent down, and nearly toppled before righting myself, prize in hand.
“You think you need more?”
“Oh, I don’t think it, I know it.”
“What about the germs?” She was trying a different tactic.
My face screwed up in thought for a moment before a flash of brilliance smoothed it over. “You yourself said it was pure alcohol. Ain’t nothing can live in that, not even his larger than life cooties.” I took a big swig, swallowed hard and grimaced as it flooded into my stomach.
“The idea for this little party was to unwind and be with friends, not to get more worked up about what’s to come.”
“Even this crap can’t make me forget about that.”
“Come on, they’re about to do a karaoke contest in the cafeteria and they need a judge.”
I looked at the button again and then at BT. “What about him?”
“I’ll send some people here to get him into bed.”
“Better send a lot.”
“I heard that.” BT opened one eye.
“So, what are you going to do about it from the floor?”
“Karaoke? I want in.” He struggled to get into a sitting position.
“You can’t enter,” I told him.
“Why not? I’ve been told I have a beautiful singing voice.”
“People tell you whatever you want to hear because they’re afraid of what you’ll do to them if they don’t.”
Turns out the big guy could actually sing; came in third. Fields, of all people, came in second, and Sergeant Chesterton came in first. If the world ever came back to something on a more normal track, she could easily find herself a new career. Tracy was right. Being with the crew and enjoying a few moments together was far better than what I had been doing. The next day though? Well that day, I wished mightily we had just proceeded with the original battle all along. I had never prayed for a more merciful death in my entire life. “When you see Baker and Beckert tell them they’re both demoted and that they should shoot each other in a duel,” I told Tracy as she had headed off for her shift.