by Forbes West
You leave the thing in the middle of the street, making the quick calculation that if you are in The Oberon by next year, which is fast approaching, no one’s going to be bothering you about abandoning the car. So you leave it here, in the middle of a suburban street, and hop on a piss-smelling bus.
You remember that you are poor and without a father who can gift you a Maserati.
You chew on a fingernail on the bus ride to work. You see a large billboard across the street. The advertisement is already fading from days of sun and rain but you can just make out the block letters:
ADVENTURE AND A NEW LIFE AWAIT YOU.
START YOUR MOVE TO THE OBERON TODAY! CALL 1-800-OFFWORLD TO SEE IF YOU QUALIFY FOR SETTLING! COLLEGE GRADUATES WANTED!
The stylized blue and white symbol of the Off-World Network takes up the rest of the billboard’s space.
You take out your cellphone and start to dial. After ten minutes on hold, you speak with a helpful operator. You talk all the way to Subway, being told what you need to do in order to apply.
YOU stand half asleep behind the counter in Subway; as lifeless as a doll you wait for the customer to make up her mind about whether she wants pepper jack or provolone on her sandwich. You wear your green shirt and hat that are covered in grease stains and probably bits of mustard that have been misplaced.
“I want pepper jack.” You start to put on provolone by accident, and then ask if she wants bell pepper and onions with that.
You look up, not even hearing what she is saying. She’s a tall woman, forty years old, beefy but not fat. Thick glasses cover her face. She is someone who can definitely put you down pretty quickly. “I asked you a question. I asked you a question, Miss. Why are you putting provolone on my sandwich? Did I say provolone or did I say pepper jack?”
You blink a couple of times. “Oh, sorry, I’ll take it off…”
“I want you to start over. I want you to start over right the hell now.”
You look up, confused. “You want- wait, what? A new sandwich?”
“Damn right I want a new sandwich. You got that provabone crap all over my sandwich.”
“Provolone. Not provabone,” you reply. You start to smolder, looking angrier and angrier. One eye is starting to twitch a little. You reflexively grab onto the cross on your neck.
You notice that the customer behind her is snickering and muttering something to his friend. A few “Yo, dawgs” are thrown about in muttered whispers.
“I can just take it-”
“Is there a manager here? Is there a manager here? I want to talk to a manager here right damn now,” the customer says, raising her shrill voice. She is slapping her side of the counter with her palm. “You have not been concentrating on my meal at all. This is just poor customer service Miss, and I believe that some compensation is in order.”
You stand quietly for a second, biting your lip. “Look, I’m sorry, but I can just take the provolone off.” You start to remove the little triangle slices from the wheat sandwich bread. “See? There?”
The customer snaps her fingers in the air. “I don’t see a thing except for poor customer service.”
You smolder for a moment and notice that one of the other customers is filming the exchange with an iPhone; you hear snickering again.
Your manager, an Indian man in his late forties by the name of Rajendra, comes out and starts to talk with the customer, apologizing. The woman asks for compensation, stating that she is there every day (which is not true, this is the first time you’ve seen her). The manager apologizes and offers to give her a free set of three cookies. You watch this in absolute disgust.
You mutter to yourself about this being bullshit.
“What did you say to me Miss? You want to say it to my face? You want to say that to my face?” One of the other customers is cracking up about the whole exchange while still filming with his phone.
The manager asks you to finish making up her sandwich.
You smile a little, a pained and small smile, and just leave Subway, walking straight out of the front door after tossing your apron into the garbage.
~~~~
YOU arrive at your apartment, a small two bedroom, one bath over in Marina Pacifica that you share with your mother. You trudge up the side stairs after a half hour bus ride that would normally have taken you just five minutes if you’d had your now broken down car.
You open the door to your home; bare, sparse, cold to look at. It’s not dirty per se, it’s even got a little bit of a view, but it has a soft prison cell décor: old, bland furniture and a bland carpet within soft beige walls. You sit down on the couch, turn on MTV, cry a little, and stare at meaningless television. You hear footsteps outside your apartment after a little bit, little stomps, and realize almost instinctively that your mother is now coming home.
Your mother opens the door almost as if she is bursting into the apartment to make an arrest.
“Sarah! So your car’s broken down again? And how are you gonna fix it without me paying for it?” your mother cries, her voice shrill. As she gets closer, you can see the lines on her face and her perpetually watery eyes. However, the years can’t take away her good looks that she’s definitely passed down through her genes to you.
You don’t say anything at first. Your mother relents for a brief second, sitting down at the dining room table a small distance away from where you are sitting on the couch. You don’t say anything but turn the TV off.
“Oh just go goddamn mute, I don't give a rat’s ass,” your mother says, blowing out her breath and taking a moment to look through the contents of her purse for something. “I’ll call Triple A tomorrow but…” Your mother slaps her hands together. “Next time I’m going to really kick your ass, sweetheart. You don’t take care of anything. Anything.”
“I took care of it and I can pay,” you say and your mother just waves her hands around, humming at the top of her lungs so she doesn’t hear you. She does this all the time, making you want to scream. It’s so childish and surreal you now just feel a sort of crazed pity and hatred for your own mother. “Could you listen?” you ask, dejectedly. “I broke up with Tyler.”
Your mother replies with a dismissive, “Thank you for telling me that. It’s really fascinating the love life of a teenager.”
“I’m twenty.” Your mother stares at you for a moment, looking like she wants to ball up her fists and take a swing at you. “I’m moving to The Oberon,” you add, off-handedly.
Your mother looks like all the life has left her body for a moment but she raises up her defenses again and her angry self quickly returns. She walks over and flips the muted channel to something else. “What on earth for? You really hate being around normal people?” she says, her voice sharp as she sits in the loveseat watching an old pirate movie—Captain Blood, you think, with Errol Flynn. Swashbuckling pirates are fighting each other, slashing with cutlasses and shooting cannonballs at each other’s ships.
“Jaime sort of turned me onto it. I called the local Network office, and I qualify since I have an associate’s degree. I have to go in for an interview, but they have a lot of settling slots available.” You cough into your hand.
“Fantastic.” Your mother rolls her eyes, saying the word like it is loaded with poison. She steps out of the room.
Unconsciously, you take a look at the framed picture of your smiling sister that’s hung on the wall behind the TV for the past few years. It’s actually a framed copy of TIME Magazine with her face on it with the headline Professors of a Different World next to it. She was a tall, attractive brunette with hazel eyes, and the picture was of her on a balcony somewhere.
You stare at the picture for a while and listen to your mother return to the room. The television is now showing flickering images of the game show Jeopardy before switching to a line of jabbering commercials for random products, cars, and orichalcum for everyday use.
“Your sister was a professor—a professor of xenoarchaeology—and she’s missing.
She knew everything—and I mean everything—about The Oberon and she died out there. You are just a naïve little bitch of a twenty-year-old girl who doesn’t know her asshole from a hole in the ground. I’m sorry to talk so crude, but you know it. You know it.”
You stare at her for a long time. “I’m twenty years old. I don’t need to listen to you,” you say coldly. “Since Rachael disappeared and Dad died, I’m just your punching bag.”
“You are not going to The Oberon. Period.”
“I’m going,” you say, staring right into her eyes.
Your mother lights up for a moment, smiling. “Sure! Sure, just go, go on out, go to The Oberon. Enjoy that life. Be like your sister—someone who thought they knew how to handle anything and everything until they wound up missing one day. You go and do that.” Your mother has this hideous smirk on her face that makes you hate her even more, which you didn’t know was possible.
Your mother squints her eyes. “I say it’s wrong. There’s nothing for a little girl there. It’s nothing for a girl to be dealing with, I just know it. There’s only—what’s the word I’m looking for? Promises of money and death. But you go ahead, my little girl. Go ahead.”
Your mother sits right next to you on the couch. Her eyes look straight into yours. “Sarah, you need to remember something. Something very specific.”
“What nonsense do you want to-?”
Your mother slams your arm hard with a closed fist, making you yelp with surprise and fear. “There’ll come a time, little girl of mine, when you won’t have me or anyone else to tell you what’s right and what’s wrong. Remember that! There’s only that small, still voice inside of you that can tell you what’s right and what’s wrong. You can either listen to it or ignore it. You can’t just have some outside person tell you that. And what does that still voice say to you now? Does it say to play around in The Oberon, make your mother sick with fear? Or does it say to stay here?”
You start to shake a little and cry. Your mother tells you that she’s taking a nap because she’s tired after work, but catching the look on your face, her voice softens a little. “You will never do it, because you are weak. Right, sweetheart? You are a weak person. You are not like your sister at all. She was strong, and you are weak. You are weak compared to her.” She holds your chin for a moment in her hand, looking you in the eye. “You will never do anything like going to The Oberon because you are weak. Unlike your sister, unlike your father—it’s no fault of your own.” She caresses your cheek for a moment and then lets you go. “We can go to Hof’s Hut. They have a Thanksgiving deal, two for one. We’ll split it, real cheap and good. You like that, right, sweetheart?”
You nod.
~~~~
YOU pretend to go to sleep early that day, occasionally looking at your phone. Text after text from Tyler are coming in, at first apologizing about cheating, then wanting to talk, then calling you a bitch, and then calling you something that rhymes with punt and starts with a C.
It’s midnight and your mother is asleep in her bedroom, with earphones still in, listening to some odd relaxation music. You sneak into her room, grab a prescription bottle of Vicodin off her bathroom counter, and sneak out again. You sit in your lonely little room, a muted TV playing old episodes of MASH on the screen. You pop a couple of the pills and wash them down with a gulp of water from the sink. You sit down in front of your computer, boot it up, and start deleting photograph after photograph of you and Tyler during happier days. You then eliminate him completely from your Facebook account. You change your status to “single”.
After a little bit, the Vicodin starts to hit your system and you get a bit angrier in your mind. You find a box of letters from Tyler, and before you know it, you are ripping each and every one in half with a dull, drug-induced slowness, muttering curses to yourself as you shred every bullshit little note, every scripted lie. You take a moment to read one letter where Tyler talks about marriage a little, in hesitant and specifically vague terms. You rip it up.
When you are all done, you look at the prescription bottle of Vicodin, thinking of what you could do with that right now, what you could do to yourself with that… You take another pill and put the bottle back into your mother’s room. Stoned on prescription pills, you jump back on the computer and start cruising the Internet, coming upon the Off-World Network’s settler recruitment site.
~~~~
GOOD Morning LA
ABC 7 KABC
Aired November 21st, 2012
David Ervine: Anchor
…Seen ten months ago, it has been confirmed that it should be seen over The Oberon skies around June of next year. And now, Karen, I think we are getting what has become the most popular part of the show. Let’s take a look at California Weather Control over at Grissom Island in Long Beach.
*CUT TO*
Karen Whitemore: Presenter
Thank you, David. Sorry, Southland, even though you were looking at a nice weekend full of sunshine, here’s Aaron Sizemore from the Off-World Network…
Aaron Sizemore: NWS Orichalcum User (Weather Control)
Good morning.
Karen Whitemore: Presenter
Now Aaron is an experienced orichalcum user with a level five rating. He is here with his orichalcum baton, embedded with the rarest type of orichalcum to be found in The Oberon. Now, Aaron, the Department of Agriculture is looking for a small storm for the area because we are a little bit behind in rain volume, is that correct?
Aaron Sizemore: NWS Orichalcum User (Weather Control)
That’s correct Karen. The Department of Agriculture is concerned about what little rain we have had so far, so it’s our job to make up some ground so we can avoid a drought. Now, I know everyone watching now is probably going to hate me for doing this, but I’ll have to begin.
Karen Whitemore: Presenter
Literally raining on their parade?
Aaron Sizemore: NWS Orichalcum User (Weather Control)
[Long pause] Sure. Now I’m going to ask you to back away about one hundred feet—you and your crew there—and I will begin the process in—checking my watch here—in exactly two minutes.
Karen Whitemore: Presenter
Now, David, as I am sure you are watching right now, we are moving away from Aaron who is now in this wide open space on Grissom Island. This island is open and uninhabited. It gives the ori user the best view of the sky and keeps the ori user away from all the possible interference that can happen if this were to be done in a city environment. Now, as you can see behind me, Aaron is exhibiting the ori glow—which, since he is highly skilled and trained to conduct weather control, is turning the air around him to a deep green. Weather control has been, of course, the most successful ori practice to come from off-world and is responsible for those perfect summers that have been such a boost to tourist areas like Long Beach or San Diego.
However, as much I think everyone would love to be consistently rain and cloud free, we do have to ensure that agriculture in the area is taken care of, and so we do need maintenance storms like the one Aaron will be creating. The Weather Service tells us that every time an ori user takes control of the weather for the area it costs the taxpayers $44 million dollars. This includes the user’s training and time and also that this particular ori is worth $43 million for every gram, which is always spent after the weather has been controlled.
I’m now turning and seeing behind me that Aaron is levitating several feet above the ground; his arms are outstretched and his eyes have now taken a strong appearance of almost pure white light… If you can still hear me right now, David, beams of green, almost like lightning, are spreading from Aaron’s chest, eyes, and hands and are now bouncing across the entire sky. Now Aaron is descending downward, and the green bolts are disappearing. He is back on the ground and back to his usual self. I’ll give him a moment to rest, and then we can go over there as ask him. Oh, he’s come over here David, and he’s-
Aaron Sizemore: NWS Orichalcum User (Weat
her Control)
It’s a rush, it really is, I tell you that much. I don’t think anyone will understand—but it’s something else. Phew… It’s a feeling that you are actually one with the Earth, but it’s a bit much. It’s very exciting…
(Loud thunder clap drowns out audio.)
Chapter Two: Network Interview
You end up on a street corner in downtown Long Beach the very next day, outside the Off-World Trade Center building, staring up at the height of the place. The sign confirms that you are in the right place. You look in desperation at your watch, and Mickey Mouse is letting you know the unfortunate—five minutes late to the interview, 11:35am. You get a face full of warm, wet wind and diesel fumes as you move down the sidewalk. The rain is coming down hard, soaking your dress clothes and coat you have worn for the interview. The heels you wear hurt your feet.
You walk into the first floor of the Trade Center and past the glass doors that separate a very small throng of protestors proclaiming “Stop the settling!” and “No Blood for ori!” A statue of a Ni-Perchta warrior in full armor with an ori-staff and a model of the Ni-Perchta city of Solomon’s Bay laid out on what looks like a giant stone palm are centered in the lobby.
You pass them without a glance, rushing inside, and see a glass elevator that can lead you to the fourteenth floor of the building.
~~~~
WAITING outside Christopher Lee’s office takes two hours; you have to stand in line with other prospective settlers and candidates for direct employment with the Off-World Network. It’s a very motley group, mostly women though, ranging from your age to their fifties.
You made the mistake of getting a free cup of coffee earlier and now you have to pee. You’ll have to hold it until the interview is finished since your name has just been called. You get that feeling of fullness in your bladder but Christopher Lee, the recruiter, is asking you inside, holding a manila folder in his hand. “No, there is no relation between myself and the other Christopher Lee,” he says, after he shakes hands with you. Mr. Lee states this in a delightfully British accent as you step inside his large, almost football field wide office that looks over the Long Beach Harbor. Christopher Lee is a slightly bucktooth man, middle-aged, no wedding ring on his finger. He sits behind his desk, his gut slightly extending over the smooth mahogany desktop. A new Macintosh, flat screened, is perched on top of his desk. He wears, to your non-surprise, the blue jumpsuit uniform of the Network. It’s that goofy NASA flight suit wannabe outfit that apparently all the Network employees off-world dress in. On his left breast are the two overlapping circles of the Network, and on his right shoulder is a British flag patch.
