by Marc Horne
Chapter 29
The feast was timeless.
They made their way to a hill overlooking the ocean and made something that looked less like a camp and more like a town. A town that would one day be a city. A fucking great city, where everyone was nice to each other.
They made a fire. Not a fire of corpses, just wood. Tree corpses, you could say but you would be taking things too far. This was a day for humans.
Around the fire they made a feasting table that took fifteen minutes to walk around. They drank berry wine and ate exquisite tofu, flowers, seeds and roasted spiced nuts that boggled the mind.
Everyone danced. Xolo totally danced. He dug the deep bass and did a swaying motion and kind of paddled down through the air with one hand and held a bottle of beer with the other. It was a new move and one all the kids were soon copying.
The feast went on for hours. The King’s children fell asleep about an hour before the sun was due to come up. Tamano dragged Gomez away to her tent soon after. As you might expect, she blew his mind.
Xolo had all kinds of women and men around him, wanting a piece of the big shot. He teased and flirted, but it would be a while before he got over that bullet to the ‘nads. That he could even dance was a feat worthy of the ancients.
The King brought Xolo a dandelion wine and they clanked tankards together as the first shine started to fall off the stars.
“Where to now, Xolo? You’re stuck on Earth but I know that even if I offered you my crown I couldn’t keep you with us. I see it in your eyes.”
“You’re right Silvio. I have a little scheme to get myself back into space, back into the game.”
“What is the game, Xolo?”
“Get all the money. Get all the power.”
“And then?”
“Use it.”
“Wisely?”
“I dunno, Silvio. I just know that this can’t go on. Slaves. Massacres.”
Xolo looked unconvincingly sad.
“Hmm. I dunno, Xolo. That sounds more like the Horned Man than you. When will we really know what you’re up to?”
Xolo stood up. He looked very normal, but intensely real. Every detail of him was unique and authentic and present. “You’ll know when the universe finally looks like the miracle it really is,” he said.
…
Xolo packed to leave. Sunny had woken up. But she was still tired. Xolo assumed she had come to hug him goodbye but she rebuffed him hard.
“Did you shoot down my ship?” she asked. “Back on Belaarix?”
To his credit, Xolo didn’t pause. “Yes, and if your pilots had known what they were doing, no-one would have been hurt.”
“But they were hurt. They were killed.”
“Yes.”
“And I thought I was going to die. And my brothers. And we were burned. And then…”
“Yeah.”
“And you lied to us and acted like you didn’t know what was going on.”
Xolo shifted his bag to his shoulder.
“Actually, that Xolo didn’t know what was going on. After I shot you down was when I triggered the double personality transplant. The top level fake Xolo you met was a few weeks old…copied before I came up with this crazy plan.”
“Call it a plan?”
“Inject craziness is always a viable plan in my world.”
He looked her in the eyes.
“Are we cool?” he asked. And the answer was of great importance to him.
“We’ll never be cool,” she answered and headed back to the camp.
Xolo walked away from the fire and the songs and the people and the future he had dirtied.
He headed towards the ocean. It called him. He scratched his stubbly chin.
Many years ago he had replaced his conscience with a machine and gone to live in far off space and only touch planets when it was time to kill.
Now he walked down to the ocean, each step bending grass and making a gentle mark.
He looked down at his scarred hands.
Maybe he would build a yacht.
THE END
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