by Wayne Hill
Then why don’t you hurt, human? asks Tristitia. Why don’t you fall?
Splinter sets the cocktail aside, and strokes Gert’s cheek, soothingly.
“I have something inside my head that takes up the space where fear usually resides,” says Splinter, staring down at Gert’s fitful eyes and the shadows dancing across her delicate features.
“Splinter...Help me...please,” croaks Gert, weakly. Her eyes briefly seek Splinter’s own eyes, before rolling away like those of a wild horse, back into her own personal hellscape.
Show me this thing that replaces your fear, human, hisses Tristitia. If you refuse, I will destroy everything you love!
On Splinter’s lap, Gert squeezes her eyes shut tight, forcing tears out, and starts to tremble more violently.
Splinter frowns down at Gert’s now violently convulsing body and grits his teeth. Very quietly, he says, “Very well, but you should be careful what you wish for.”
His eyes roll back into his head.
TRISTITIA BREAKS THE telepathic link with everyone in O’Shea’s and collapses, bonelessly. She vomits, shaking from head to foot. “Am I back? AM I BACK?” Tristitia sobs, staring around, unseeing, and tearing at the ground. She puts sods of grass and dirt to her face, inhaling deeply. She tries to ground herself in this reality and forget the horrendous one Splinter had just shown her. But her treacherous mind is drawn, as if to a lodestone, back to that cavernous reality and ... that thing.
She vomits again.
Caelum looks down at her and his face distorts as if it is seen through shattered glass.
SPLINTER SITS QUIETLY a while.
His eyes slowly return to normal — or as normal as drunken eyes get — and he helps an unsteady Gert to her feet. The rest of his pirates are recovering, too. They get up from the floor — dusting themselves off, blaspheming and farting, belching, and cursing their knees, their backs, their lives. Other than Splinter, the only other person who seems unfazed is Hector.
Splinter thought this might have been the case. What a piece of work that man is, thinks Splinter. A fine example of zero-fucks-given. As he walks past Hector’s table, he can see the Cruster is doing something with matches. Getting closer, he sees a dazzlingly accurate representation of the Eiffel Tower.
“Looking good, Hector” says Splinter, pausing to take in the details of the wooden artwork.
“Has everyone finished dancing?” asks Hector, trimming another match with a blade-like protrusion from his arm.
“Did you not receive any visions, Hector?” replies Splinter.
“Some stuff. My family getting drowned. I’m watching but I can’t help them. Stuff like that. Then there’s this old man and he was trapped in this plastic beaker-type thing. He couldn’t breathe, so I shot him. Shot my family, too. Made sense, to me. I didn’t want to see them suffer.” He sticks the last match in place and stares at the work — staring through the matches, the table, the floor.
“Damn, Hector that sounded like a tough thing to do. How do you feel now?” Splinter has a wry smile on his face, awaiting the familiar response.
Hector shrugs.
“I wish I had more like you, Hector. You give psychopaths a good name. Who was the old man in the vision?”
Hector shrugs again.
“Not much of a conversationalist, though. You get points deducted.” Splinter pats him on the shoulder and looks around at the chaos.
Although most were getting up, some of his crew just lay on the floor continuing to spasm. No doubt the grotesque visions would leave their marks forever.
Gert conceals her tears in the nook of her arm before accepting another drink from the still shaking hand of Jonesy with a tearful laugh. Splinter marches over.
“You’re alright now, Gertrude. You’re in charge until I get back. Don’t let Hector kill anyone.” Splinter smiles over at the seated Hector. Hector stares back in his inimitable manner.
“Damn it if he isn’t the best,” Splinter whispers in Gert’s ear. “He’s better than me, you know that, Gert? Don’t tell him I said that, though.”
“Hector’s the best?” whispers Gert.
“He is,” says Splinter, nudging Gert. “Just look at him. Just look at the majestic bastard with his matches.”
“Did he get any bad images?” whispers Gert. “I can’t tell if he looks troubled or not ...” Gert looks to the still blankly staring Cruster. “Are you alright, Hector?” she shouts over.
“I’m on a fucking prison planet and I just had to kill my entire family and an old version of myself who was drowning my family,” says Hector in his emotionless, electronic tones, turning back to his match building. “I’m fucking chipper, Gert.”
“He is the best,” Gert asides to Splinter.
“Yeah,” Splinter agrees. “Hector’s like a cooler version of me. He’s the way I’d like to be ... or, maybe, how I see myself. But I’m not Hector.”
As he turns to leave, he finds a distressed Enslin is in his way. Splinter pushes the disoriented space pirate over to Gert. “A gift,” Splinter says with a wink and marches off.
“Eternal happy hour!” Gert shouts after Splinter.
She toasts him with a quickly raised arm and most of the cocktail, containing cherries and a pink paper umbrella, spills out over the glass rim and onto Enslin’s head. Enslin starts at the cold, unexpected shower of booze.
Splinter raises his arm cannon to acknowledge the toast, as he walks away, and leaves several fizzing bangs of compressed air and an electrical light show in his wake. He takes the wooden steps up to his sanctuary four at a time, escaping to his crow’s nest in the clouds.
Gert spends the rest of the morning waiting for Splinter to return to the bar. After several hours, she begins to think of excuses to go into his room. In this drunk state, her mind swims with romantic but bad ideas. She sways drunkenly from wall to wall as she climbs the stairs to his room.
Gert clears all non-constructive thoughts from her mind as she focuses on why she is here.
She decides not to knock, and opens the door slowly, peeking around the edge. She sees Splinter at the far end of the room, on the balcony, staring out over the Lanes. Shuffling through the door, Gert closes it behind her. She walks over to where Splinter stands, and feeling the floorboards creak under his feet, he spins around, his arm charged and ready to fire.
Gert had automatically drawn her firearm, too, but faster. “How did you make her stop?” asks Gert.
Splinter lowers his arm-cannon and gestures for Gert to join him on the balcony. “You should knock,” he says.
“You never hear me,” counters Gert, holstering her gun.
“My hearing’s twenty-twenty. Drink?”
“Okay,” nods Gert, gesturing to the large globe Earth that contained Splinter’s ample spirit collection. “Fix me something.”
“Bollocks to that, Dirty Gerty!” Splinter laughs opening the globe and grabbing a quarter bottle of dark rum. “Get yourself a drink!”
“Well, if you can’t fix a lady a drink then I’ll pass.”
“Look, what do you want, Dirt-rude?” asks Splinter, taking a large gulp of the rum and chasing it down with a handful of Oinkers. “Can’t you see I’m resting? It’s been a shitty old last thirty years. I’m just having a few more drinks before I shuffle off to meet that boney bastard Barrenite who likes to smile too much. I don’t need any more shit, so what do you want?”
“Listen, this time, you fucking arrogant, smelly beaver-fucker!” says Gert folding her arms across her chest. “How did you make Tristitia stop?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“I just do,” says Gert. She walks over to Splinter’s Ophelia painting and stares at the pale woman lying in the stream.
“You have a habit of being nosey, Gert. It’s not an attractive feature in a woman.”
Gert spins on a penny and fixes him with a narrow-eyed glare. It was a well-known and much feared look. It meant: ‘Stop being an asshole or I’ll fu
cking shoot you in the bollocks!’ He studies her. He notices she is swaying more than usual. She looks smashed, he thinks. Capable of anything.
“Fetch me one of those bottles, Gert,” says Splinter, pointing to the bottles in his antique drink cabinet shaped like planet Earth. He did not currently want anything further to drink but he needed her to move away from his Ophelia.
“Any one in particular, your highness?” Gert says snootily.
“Just ... the green one.” He flops down into his Lay-Z-Boy. “I’m having trouble taking these boots off. Could you oblige me, Gert?” Splinter winks, smirking.
“Fuck off,” says Gert, trying hard to supress a smile. It is hard to stay mad at Splinter.
“Very well,” he sighs. He pulls the reclining lever, and leans back, the Lay-Z-Boy raising his legs. “I showed her the vastness of everything. The Earth as a seeding bio-machine spewing forth us, agents of consciousness. The universe as a mental construct. I revealed our purpose: to engage with matter and bend it to our will. I showed her where she is in relation to everything around her. The Earth sat so peacefully in the solar system. The solar system positioned in the Orion spiral-arm of the Milky Way galaxy. Then the local group, then the Virgo supercluster, then the Laniakea supercluster, etcetera. Everything expanding infinitely outwards — like a radiantly interlinked mandala that ripples outwards, perpetually changing, transforming — and crashing into other expanding formations, other universes, other lives.
“Then I showed her how we, as humans, can interrelate with this. How we can ask for help from other beings using this network of energy.
“Then I asked her to ponder the infinite. I revealed what the next step is in the ever-evolving, forever-flowing, labyrinthine pursuit of knowledge and wisdom. I crowbarred open the door to our shared Akashic records, the story of our spiritual evolution. I showed her the real Eleusinian mysteries.
“I walked together with her through the fire for a century. In that maddening place in my head, time moves differently. Time itself has a new set of laws there. It obeys a foreign realm of realities. She was trapped there with me — in the ever-volatile, everlasting, everafter — and I cradled her as she birthed a universe of thought and became lost in it.”
Having said this, Splinter closes his eyes. He looks to the sky and deeply inhales the sea scents riding the cool breeze. This makes him remarkably dizzy. He motions for Gert to pass him a nearby bottle of brandy. She obliges and smirks at this unusual man that, against her wishes, she begrudgingly adores.
“I don’t understand how that would stop her,” says Gert handing Splinter the brandy. “It sounds so peaceful. Beautiful, really. Why did she stop?”
Splinter snatches it, bites the cork out and slugs down a grand quantity before belching and reciting Dr Johnson’s famous dictum: “Claret is the liquor for boys; port for men; but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy.”
Gert chuckles.
“What were we talking about?” Splinter asks as he passes the brandy to Gert.
She stares at the loose pieces of pork scratchings whirling around in the bottle and lets out an eww noise before passing it back, a grimace still on her face. “What you showed her, Splinter ... why she stopped attacking us.”
“Oh, right,” Splinter says, introducing more pig snack pieces to the bottle’s interior. “She didn’t like the part when I showed her the nothingness that she would inhabit. The part in-between all things. That which links the vastness of the ever-rippling, ceaselessly transforming energy of the universes. The deep dark where nothing ever truly exists. The shadow on the lonely side of the hill. She was a bit of an egoist, on the sly, that tele-pathetic Barrenite.”
“She won’t come back, will she?” asks Gert, with a shudder. “I could do without seeing my beloved Grandmother molested by wild animals again.”
“No,” says Splinter. “I don’t think so. She has too much to think about now. Some things to work on. Took an instant dislike to infinity and nothingness. The fucking fat moose! ... Shall we do the bottle-thing again?”
“Oh, yeah, I forgot about that. Do you think I’m a fat moose?” adds Gert shyly.
“Grab the empties, Gerty.” says Splinter, emptying the contents of a green bottle into his gullet. “No, you’re no moose. More of a young dolphin.”
“What? Intelligent and friendly?”
“No. Thick skinned, squeaky, and your breath always stinks of fish!” says a hugely grinning Splinter, jumping to his feet and punctuating the punchline by farting loudly.
They both laugh.
Gert collects ten empty spirit bottles from around Splinter’s bed and runs back to the balcony. She starts hurling them off into the distance. Splinter blasts each bottle in rapid succession, racking his pump-action biceps after each shot.
Once they run out of bottles to shoot, they howl at the moon together, play music on Splinter’s jukebox and drink until they cannot drink anymore.
They fall unconscious in one another’s arms — music still blaring — newly empty spirit bottles piled around them.
“If God is coming... Should have made it by then.” — Zager and Evans
8
Captain Levy’s latest mission from Commander Patrick McCrea excites him. It is to seek out — using whatever means necessary, short of lethal force — capture and transport the dangerous pirate Splinter Salem to the USA HQ, on New Hampshire One (a space base orbiting Saturn).
Levy has a memory plate message, from Commander McCrea himself, for Salem to watch before Levy transports him. Proof of capture is simply Salem’s fingerprint. Salem places his finger to McCrea’s memory plate and his print is relayed and confirmed by HQ. Simple, thinks Levy.
The Captain sits on a sleek white throne, alone in the control room of his ship. He commands this grand ship, the Golden Falcon, to give him all the information available on the space pirate Splinter Salem. From a pocket on his sleeve, he drags out a monogrammed handkerchief. With the square of material over his nose and mouth, Levy greedily inhales his wife’s favourite perfume. He often does this whilst on missions for the USA to feel close to her. The ship beeps three times and a robust masculine voice starts to recite the data the USA has on Splinter Salem.
“The prison planet in Delta Alpha sector AZ2794XT — formally known as Earth — is where Splinter Salem lived the first part of his life. Born —”
“Stop,” interrupts Levy in a tired voice. In the sterile, empty white control room, Levy takes another deep sniff of his handkerchief.
“Continue in my wife’s voice, and —” he points to a large, curved wall twenty feet in length — “put visual references from the story on to this wall. I want them in dark shadows on a burnt umber, blood-red backdrop with white chalk highlights. Colour the rest of the room as directed by my mood.”
He sniffs his handkerchief and waits for the show to begin.
The ship’s computer beeps three times. The computer then continues the debrief in his wife’s calming and sultry French drawl. Her voice narrates whilst, on the long wall, pictures accompanying the USA text flash up. It begins with a close-up picture of a bland building, all slab-concrete walls and cyclone fences. Clearly a prison.
“Born in prison planet Earth’s Drumcroon facility, Tommy Salem is the son of David Salem, the Head Guardian. Mary Salem, his mother, is also a Guardian. She is recorded as having made extremely important advancements in the efficiency of the Drumcroon facility. Records reflect that Tommy Salem showed an early aptitude for invention. An exceptional student in all areas of study, his passions tended to push him towards engineering and electronics, although he often exhibited a vast instinctual knowledge of weaponry and robotics. Tommy Salem also showed an early and continued dislike of authority and rules. These inclinations led to a rebellious nature that blacklisted Tommy from many of the USA’s gifted programs.
“By eight years of age, he is using specialised joining equipment, and records from the time also show that he is creating mysterious wea
ponry. Tommy was later disciplined for using the weaponry to assault one of his teachers.
“After this incident, his parents home-school him, and try to correct his behaviour using mind implants. Tommy received many sessions of hard brain calibration.
“From years nine to eleven, Tommy appears to have been a model student. During this time, he collects the USA award for revolutionising prisoner transport and for his defence innovations at Drumcroon.
“At thirteen, he enrolled on many courses concerning human anatomy and cell biology. He showed an aptitude for neurological implantation and the integration of bio-mechanical attachments with modifications for military use.
“From fourteen to fifteen, Tommy began to be less than cooperative in his therapy sessions, and he refused further treatments for his behavioural problems. At this point in his history, there is a rise in his violent behaviour towards teachers and he shows a total disregard for all Guardians. Also, during this period, are recorded many instances of AWOL, when Tommy is missing from the compound — sometimes for several days at a time.
“His criminal record starts with the stealing of the joining equipment that he had helped to create. Tommy also stole his prototype for something he called the ‘Eternal Power Clamp’. He spoke of it as an invaluable source of energy that could power a large space station for hundreds of years. Although his name is mentioned alongside its disappearance, he had previously denied all knowledge of the location of these items. He planned an escape that failed and so he was sent to the Believers court for punishment. He pleaded not guilty at the trial, much to the surprise his parents. The court sentenced Tommy Salem to banishment from Drumcroon and he then became just another prisoner of prison planet Earth.
“His banishment from Drumcroon coincided with his sixteenth birthday. His father followed his progress in the hologram control room of Drumcroon, via Tommy’s implant. The implant later turned up a few years later attached to a large black squirrel, found dead inside the Drumcroon’s crop fields. The squirrel seemed to be wearing a mind control helmet strapped to its head. Upon investigating this helmet, David Salem found a message to himself and Mary from Tommy.
