Earthman Jack vs. The Ghost Planet

by Matthew Kadish

  Jack got out of his bed and walked back into the hallway of the ship, the door closing behind him. Jack stared at the door, his brain buzzing. Could it be? Is it possible?

  I’m hungry, thought Jack. I want some food.

  Jack stepped forward, and the door, which moments earlier had led to his bedroom, opened. But this time, it was not his bedroom at all.

  Instead, Jack was greeted with a large room, filled with scratched up wooden tables, its walls lined with faux wood paneling from the 1970’s. Dirty green-red-and-white colored lamps hung from the ceiling. In the corner stood a scratched and rickety pool table and an on-the-fritz jukebox. The smell of bad pizza hung in the air, and Jack’s heart thumped in his chest.

  It was Big Jim’s Pizza Palace.

  Everything was exactly as Jack remembered it, down to the counter Fred would stand behind, serving up slices and yelling at annoying high schoolers. In the kitchen, Jack could see the aged and blackened pizza ovens fired up, and a fully cooked pepperoni pizza lay waiting on its conveyor belt.

  Jack hopped over the counter and looked at the pizza with amazement. He picked a piece of pepperoni off the top and tasted it; its cheap, greasy goodness ran down his fingers.

  This was what I wanted, thought Jack. This is what I was hungry for!

  Jack looked around the room as if someone might be watching him.

  “Is that what you do?” Jack asked the empty pizza parlor. “I think of something… and you give me what I want?”

  Jack felt a small tingle in the back of his head, as though the ship were answering him.

  “It’s like… that stuff Professor Green was talking about? The quantum stuff – like Shepherd did? You can manifest things?”

  Jack felt a tingle again. He smiled, a feeling of excitement washing over him. That’s why the ship was so special! It wasn’t just something that flew through space. It wasn’t just a ship that was able to teleport anywhere it wanted. It wasn’t even that it had some type of psychic link with its user… it was a machine that was able to manifest anything its crew needed! That’s why it could change itself to make it easier to fly, and that’s why it could keep the Deathlords from figuring it out. The ship could literally alter itself to suit any situation!

  Suddenly, Jack found himself running out of the room and down the hallway to the medical bay. He stopped outside the door, his chest fluttering with nervous energy. He closed his eyes and thought really hard.

  Alive, thought Jack. Be alive!

  Jack opened his eyes and stepped toward the door. It hissed open, and Jack found the room inside to be brightly lit and fully repaired once again. The computers that were previously crushed and shorted out beeped and booped, all in full working order.

  On the observation table lay Shepherd. Jack rushed up and began to shake him.

  “Wake up!” said Jack. “Come back!”

  Jack continued to shake Shepherd, but he remained unresponsive.

  “I need you alive!” yelled Jack. “Be alive!”

  But it was no use. Shepherd was dead, and he wasn’t returning.

  Jack stepped away from the body. He looked up at the ceiling, and around the walls of the room. “Can’t you bring him back?” he asked. “You can manifest a freakin’ pizza! Can you manifest a living Shepherd?”

  Jack’s head tingled again. But this wasn’t like the other times. It was like a big, loud “No” in his brain. Jack’s heart sank. His ship could give him the warm, smelly blankets of home, the hot pizza with the cheap cheese and pepperoni of Big Jim’s, but not a living, breathing Shepherd to save the day.

  “That’s your limit isn’t it?” asked Jack. “You can’t manifest life.”

  Jack’s head tingled in response.

  “What do you think I should do?” asked Jack. “What is there that’s left for me?”

  Jack waited for a response, but none came. The only sounds were the rhythmic beeps of the medical machines. Jack sighed. The ship that could give him anything couldn’t give him an answer.

  Jack looked down at Shepherd. It was hard for him to believe that at one point, he’d have given anything never to see the man again. And now, he’d give anything to have him back. Whether it was teaching class or fighting off an army of Deathlords, Shepherd always seemed to know what to do.

  Jack thought back to his last detention with Shepherd. It was the very first time Jack had felt like the guy didn’t have it out for him.

  “There are people out there that believe life is just something that happens to them…” he heard Shepherd say in his memory, “that they have no control over the events and circumstances they find themselves in...”

  Jack closed his eyes and remembered sitting in the classroom after school, Shepherd leaning against his desk looking down at him.

  “But the truth is,” continued Shepherd, “we are the ones who shape the lives we live. We are the ones who allow good things and bad things to happen to us. By taking responsibility for our actions, we are able to make our lives better. When we play the victim, we allow our lives to be miserable. If you can take responsibility for yourself, decide to make your life better – and take action to that effect – then you are the master of your own destiny. And when that happens, you are capable of great things.”

  “I’m just a kid,” responded Jack. “I’m not capable of anything.”

  “You know that’s not true,” said Shepherd.

  “It is,” said Jack. “Nothing I do ever works out. I didn’t want my planet to explode. I didn’t want you to die. I didn’t want to leave Anna behind. I didn’t want any of this.”

  “What do you want?” asked Shepherd.

  Jack sighed. His chest tightened again, as if he were preparing to cry. Jack fought against the feeling. He was tired of crying. He was tired of feeling sad and helpless.

  “I want to rescue Anna,” replied Jack. “I want to stop the Deathlords, and I want to make them pay for what they’ve done.”

  “And what’s stopping you?” asked Shepherd.

  “I’m scared,” said Jack. “I’m alone, and I don’t think I can do it.”

  Shepherd nodded.

  “When we play the victim, we allow our lives to be miserable,” he repeated.

  “But if I take responsibility, then I am the master of my own destiny,” said Jack, finishing the thought.

  Shepherd nodded.

  Images of Anna flashed into Jack’s mind. The way the sunlight caught in her hair by the cornfield behind school. The cute and awkward way she looked when she showed up at his doorstep. Her smile when she tasted her first chocolate milkshake. In a way, she was the only thing from Earth that Jack had left, and now the Deathlords had her. They’d taken the last thing Jack had that reminded him of home, and in that moment, he knew he had to get her back – that it was his responsibility to save her. But in a way, that realization made him even more frightened.

  “What if I fail?” asked Jack. “What if I die?”

  “Then you die advancing,” said Shepherd. “And you fail trying to succeed. But it’s not the outcome that’s important, Jack. It’s the action that matters.”

  “It’s my decision,” said Jack.

  “Yes,” replied Shepherd.

  “It’s my responsibility.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s my destiny.”

  “You are the master of your own destiny, Jack,” said Shepherd softly.

  Jack opened his eyes and looked down at Shepherd, lying on the table before him.

  “I finally understand,” said Jack. “I get what you were trying to teach me.”

  Jack placed his hand on the breastplate of Shepherd’s armor, as though it were a sacred book for him to swear upon.

  “I’m going to save Anna. I’m going to take down the Deathlords. I’m going to get revenge for you, and everyone who has died. And I’m going to live through all of it.”

  Jack removed his hand, and with steely resolve, looked upon Shepherd one final time.

 
; “That’s the destiny I choose,” he said.

  Chapter 36

  On the bridge of the ship, Scallywag sat in the control chair, trying something – anything – to get the blasted thing moving. He’d been holed away in that dreadful Deathlord pit for far too long, and now the only thing he could think about was making his way to the nearest outpost’s red light district and finding enough alcohol and female company to make the entire ordeal seem like some far-off nightmare. He didn’t even care if the booze was watered down and the women were uglier than a beaten-up Skyrofish – he just desperately needed to relax someplace that wasn’t constantly trying to kill him.

  Of course, nothing he did seemed to have any effect. It appeared the Earthman wasn’t kidding when he said he was the only one who could pilot this ship. Scallywag glanced up from his button pushing to see Grohm sitting quietly in a seat nearby. The massive Rognok looked to be asleep again, still as a rock – much as he was in the Pit when he wasn’t fighting. For a brief moment, Scallywag wondered if it mattered to the blasted alien where he was – spaceship, Pleasure Planet, or endless Pit of death and despair – as long as he could sit around like a bump on a log and nap himself silly.

  Scallywag looked away from Grohm, growing even more frustrated. He began to punch the buttons on the chair more forcefully, as if that would suddenly make them begin to respond to him.

  “You’re wasting your time,” said Heckubus. The pirate turned and looked at the robot, who had stationed himself behind one of the ship’s control panels with his feet leisurely kicked up upon it.

  “Slag off,” said Scallywag, before going back to hitting random buttons.

  Heckubus sighed. “I’ve been through this ship’s systems approximately a billion times. Everything about it is hard-wired to only respond to native inhabitants of the Earthman’s planet.”

  “Ships are meant to be flown,” said Scallywag. “They don’t care by who.”

  “This one does,” replied Heckubus. “Whoever made it wanted to be sure that only Earthmen could fly it, for some silly reason.”

  “So what’s its deal, eh?” asked Scallywag. “Some type of DNA coding? Voice recognition? Brain scan tech?”

  “Pah,” muttered Heckubus. “If it were something as simple as that, do you think we’d still be here? I’d have hijacked this marvelous piece of machinery hours ago. No, this ship is far more advanced than anything I have ever come across. Even I am having difficulty understanding its inner-workings. And need I remind you… I am a genius.”

  Scallywag pounded his fist on the arm of the command chair. “I swear on Jerrimour the White and all his ancestors, if I hear ya proclaim yourself a genius one more time—”

  “I am a genius,” insisted Heckubus.

  “Then figure out how to fly this bloody waste heap!” snapped Scallywag. “Teleport us again! Somewhere bright, and sunny, and decadent! Make yerself useful for once!”

  “Shows how much you know,” sniggled the robot. “This ship doesn’t teleport.”

  “We were one place, now we’re someplace else,” said Scallywag. “What do you call that?”

  “Entanglement.”

  “What the blazes are ya yammering about?”

  “Have you any notion how teleportation works? And what it would take to teleport an entire spaceship across vast distances of space? I ask rhetorically because of course you have no idea, but let me just fill you in - the power requirements alone make the entire concept of a teleporting spaceship ridiculous. What this vessel appears to do is something far, far more sophisticated.”

  “Okay, I’ll bite,” said Scallywag, hopping out of the captain’s chair and sauntering his way to Heckubus’s console. “What does this ship do?”

  “The quantum theory of Entanglement is that everything in the universe is connected,” said Heckubus. “Everything we perceive in our universe – objects, spatial distance, even time itself – are all just things that are created by the minds of living beings, while the reality is that nothing actually exists. It’s all just one big, entangled mess that you organics try to give order to with your feeble minds by creating these false constructs that come to define your reality.”

  “I’m already bored, robot,” muttered Scallywag.

  Heckubus rolled his large ocular orbs. “Think about it, you simpleton. Since everything is connected, then theoretically, we exist everywhere. Spatial distance has no meaning. If we wanted to, we could choose to stop existing here, and exist someplace else instead.”

  Scallywag scratched his chin. “So… you’re saying the ship didn’t actually teleport… it just decided to exist someplace else?”

  “Precisely!” said Heckubus. “And here’s the really interesting part – only something with a living consciousness capable of defining its own reality can manipulate quantum entanglement. As far as anyone knows, only a select few Paragons in history have been able to achieve this feat. And yet, here we have a ship that seems to be able to do it on command.”

  Scallywag raised an eyebrow. “Hold up,” he said. “Are ya saying this ship is alive?”

  “Of course not; don’t be stupid,” replied Heckubus. “I admit I am a bit stymied by how a machine is able to achieve something only organics are supposedly capable of, but one thing cannot be ignored – whatever this ship is, it is without a doubt the single, most powerful vessel the universe has ever seen.”

  “That’s what I’m counting on,” came a voice.

  Heckubus and Scallywag turned to see Jack standing in the doorway of the bridge.

  “Oy, there ya are,” smiled Scallywag, relieved to see the boy had finished his crying. “Ya ready ta kick this ship o’ yers into gear, lad?”

  “I am,” said Jack, walking down toward the others.

  “Right-o!” cheered Scallywag. “We figured out where we are during yer downtime, and the good news is, there’s a Pholon trading outpost not far from here…”

  “We’re not going there,” said Jack as he walked up to a panel opposite Heckubus and began tapping some keys.

  Scallywag shared a curious glance with Heckubus before responding. “All righty, lad. Ya got someplace else you wanna go?”

  “I do,” said Jack as he hit the final key on the console.

  Behind Scallywag, a small circular platform raised up from the floor of the bridge. A holographic image of a barren, white planet popped into existence directly above it.

  “There,” said Jack.

  “I say,” said Scallywag as he regarded the image of the planet Jack had called up. “Is that what I think it is?”

  “Terahades,” said Jack. “The Deathlord’s Ghost Planet.”

  Scallywag glared at Jack. “Funny,” he said. “I was picturing someplace more tropical.”

  “The ship downloaded the entire Deathlord database while it was interfaced with the mothership,” said Jack. “We know everything that the Deathlords do about this planet. Where it’s located, what its defenses are – everything.”

  “Lad, we are not going to any bloody Ghost Planet,” said Scallywag. “Having just barely escaped from the Deathlord’s mothership, I can assure you, I have no plans on stepping foot anywhere near a Deathlord for the rest o’ me life.”

  “For once, I’m in agreement with the pirate,” chimed in Heckubus. “Really, Earthman, if you want to commit suicide, there are easier ways to do it than flying to that planet. Why, I know of approximately 237 ways we could assist you with common things we can find lying around this ship.”

  “They’ve got Anna,” said Jack. “That’s where they’re taking her, so that’s where we’re gonna go.”

  “I don’t give two swats about the Princess of the Regalus Empire,” replied Scallywag.

  “Nor I,” intoned Heckubus. “Our best course of action is to travel to the nearest celestial hub and get as far away from any Deathlord incursion as possible.”

  “And after that?” snapped Jack. “What then? Wait for them to just show up again and keep running away?”
>
  “The universe is a big place,” said Scallywag. “Lots o’ places to go.”

  “But for how long?” asked Jack. “How long can you run before they find you? You said yourself that you’re one of the most wanted criminals in the galaxy, and yet even you were captured by them.”

  “A mistake I do not plan on repeating,” replied Scallywag.

  “And if you make a different mistake?” said Jack. “What’s to prevent you from being on the next planet they blow up without warning?”

  “You can spout what-ifs ‘til yer jaw goes slack, lad,” said Scallywag. “There is nothing in this universe that could possibly justify traipsing back into the midst of the Deathlord fleet.”

  “Are you forgetting everything we learned on that ship? Anna is the last surviving member of the royal family. She's the only one able to work Ancient technology! If the Deathlords bring her to the Ghost Planet and force her to unleash this invincible armada of the dudes who destroyed the Ancients – there is nothing that’s going to be able to stop them! They'll just keep destroying the galaxy, one planet after another, unless we rescue her!”

  “And what do ya propose we do, Earthman?” growled Scallywag. “Take on the entire Deathlord army ourselves?”

  “No,” said Jack. “We just go to the planet, bust Anna out, and then jump away.”

  “Just like that?” chuckled Scallywag.

  “Yeah, why not?” replied Jack. “We got out of the mothership, didn’t we? How hard can escaping an entire planet be?”

  “This isn’t just some run-of-the-mill planet, you fool,” said Heckubus. “It is the barren wasteland of a long forgotten world, designed by the most advanced race in the history of civilization to keep anything from escaping it. It’s a tomb, Earthman. According to the data I accessed while sneaking around… I mean, analyzing your ship’s systems, the Ghost Planet is surrounded by a dense minefield hidden within a nebula that renders sensor readings useless. In addition to that, the Deathlords have recorded hidden platforms within the minefield that also fire anti-spacecraft missiles. Add to that a planet-wide repulsor shield and the firepower of an entire fleet of Deathlord Planetkillers, and anyone who gets even remotely close to that planet is dead – no matter how you look at it. And I, for one, happen to like not being dead.”