Earthman Jack vs. The Ghost Planet

by Matthew Kadish

  And now he was gone.

  In the chaos of their escape from the Ghost Planet, she hadn’t even noticed he was missing. Everything had happened so fast, she hadn’t had time to think about her beloved guardian’s absence. It wasn’t until after they had jumped to safety and the celebratory high of succeeding in making it out alive had wound down that Jack had broken the news to her.

  He had taken her into the medical bay, her brain still numb from the tragic revelation, and she had seen Shepherd’s body. It had been a surreal experience for her, as though the whole world dropped away the moment she had seen him lying there, and a cold feeling of emptiness had taken root in her stomach. Jack told her Shepherd had a message for her – his last words before he died.

  Be strong.

  It was at that moment she had broken down. The tears had flowed out uncontrollably. She had cried out, hugging Shepherd’s body as she collapsed on top of it, as though she were not able to bear the weight of the situation. Jack had tried to comfort her, but he might as well have not even been there; she had been so lost in her grief. Eventually, he had left her alone to mourn.

  Anna didn’t know how long she’d been in the medical bay or how long she’d cried. But it had been long enough for the feelings of sadness and grief to subside and for her to be left feeling exhausted and empty.

  She reached out and stroked Shepherd’s head, her hand brushing over his short, buzzed hair, feeling both prickly and soft at the same time. She bent over and kissed Shepherd on the forehead gently.

  Be strong.

  She could almost hear him saying the words. Even as he was dying, Shepherd’s thoughts were of protecting her: one last order, one last piece of advice, one last mantra to live by.

  How she now wished she’d taken more time to appreciate him. The things he did that annoyed her so much… how she’d give anything to experience those moments again. His overprotective ways, his tendency to order her around as if he knew what was best for her, his stubbornness – she wished she hadn’t spent so much time resenting those things.

  Be strong.

  “I will,” Anna whispered, her voice cracking. “If I can be half as strong as you, I’ll be able to survive anything.”

  Anna breathed deeply and sighed, letting the last bit of sorrow flow out of her with the breath. She was still sad, and most likely would be for some time, but her grief had passed, and the world around her was returning into focus – the friendly metal of the walls, the soft, warm lighting of the room, the beeps and blips of the medical equipment. And suddenly she realized where she was – safe and sound on the Earthship, rescued from certain doom by an Earthboy, without any help or guidance in the least.

  And at that moment she realized that though her losses had been great, she also had a lot to be thankful for.

  When Anna entered the bridge of the ship, the image of the Ghost Planet’s destruction played over and over again on a holoscreen. Heckubus Moriarty, the greatest criminal mind in eight star systems – and now self-proclaimed “destroyer of worlds” – watched the recording with glee.

  “Mwuahahahaha!” the robot laughed. “Mwuahaha... MWUAHAHAHAHA... MWU-hahahahahaha!!!!”

  Anna gave him a curious look as she approached Scallywag, who was lazily sitting at the navigation terminal with his feet kicked up, examining the back of his hand as though he were looking for some type of change in it.

  “Is that robot malfunctioning?” asked Anna.

  “Mwuahahahahahahahaaaaa!” Heckubus laughed.

  “Bloody tin can’s been laughing like that fer the last hour,” mumbled Scallywag. “Thinks he’s all hot stuff because he hatched a plan that blew up a blasted planet. Now we’ll never hear the end o’ it.”

  Anna smiled. She hadn’t known this odd band of rogues long, but if anything, they certainly were colorful.

  “Have you seen Jack?” she asked.

  “I think he’s somewhere to the aft,” he said. As Anna began to walk away, Scallywag piped up again. “Oy, by the way, Your Majesty…”

  Anna stopped and turned to face the pirate.

  “I hope when we return ya safe and sound back ta civilization, you’ll remember all I did ta risk my rather pretty neck to save yers.”

  Anna nodded. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I promise your good deeds will not be forgotten.”

  Scallywag smiled smugly and sat back in his chair.

  “Nor will all the bad ones you commit from here on out, either.” finished Anna.

  The quickness with which Scallywag’s smile disappeared was enough to let her know she’d made herself clear, and she abruptly headed toward the back of the ship in search of Jack.

  “Mwuahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!” laughed Heckubus as the Ghost Planet blew up, yet again.

  “Oh, shut up!” said Scallywag sullenly.

  On her way out, she saw Grohm standing in the corner, the Rognok gazing out the viewport into the swirling pixelscope of lightspeed. Anna approached him and gently touched his arm. The large alien looked down at her.

  “Grohm,” she said. “Thank you so much for bringing Shepherd to the ship and for coming to rescue me. When we get back to Imperial space, if there is ever anything I can do for you – anything at all – please, just let me know. I was in your debt before, but now I shall be forever grateful.”

  Grohm grunted and turned back to the view. For some reason, Anna thought he looked sad, but then again, it was always hard to tell what, if anything, Rognoks were feeling.

  After exiting the bridge, Anna made her way down the hallway toward the aft of the ship. She’d just started to explore the rooms when Professor Green came walking out of one and looked at her with a big toothy grin.

  “Ah, Princess,” he said, bowing slightly. “How are you feeling?”

  “Better, thank you,” replied Anna. Green had been close to Shepherd, as well. She knew he’d be dealing with his own grief of the loss, but one of the things she had always admired about the Professor was his tendency to put the well-being of others before himself. “I see you’re exploring as well.”

  “Indeed!” he said excitedly. “Out of everything I’ve seen these last few days, this ship still manages to amaze me. To think, a machine that can perform quantum manifestation! Can you imagine the possibilities?”

  Anna smiled. “Any I don’t think of, I’m sure you will.”

  “Yes, yes, yes. Why, not long ago, I was thinking how wonderful it would be to get back to my lab and start collecting my findings from our rather harrowing adventure. And low-and-behold…”

  The Professor stepped to the door he’d just come out of, and it opened with a hiss. Anna glanced inside to see a room so cluttered it was a wonder he could navigate through it at all. Bookshelves, file cabinets, and computers of various ages and states of disrepair lining the lime green walls were overflowing with books, charts, graphs, doohickeys, and artifacts from around the galaxy. Monitors, mounted in odd places, were displaying various bits of scientific data, and the lushly maroon-carpeted floor was pimpled with piles of books, papers, and data pads. Somewhere at the center of the mess was a large elderwood desk, practically overflowing with papers marred with various scribblings, which Anna could only assume were the Professor’s notes.

  “This is your lab?” Anna asked.

  “Exactly how I remember it,” replied the Professor with a happy sigh. “Everything is perfect, to a tee. Even the half-eaten ugonabutter sandwich on my desk.”

  Anna raised an eyebrow. “Um… you didn’t…”

  “It was still delicious,” said the Professor, licking his lips.

  Anna giggled. “We’ll have to see about manifesting you a maid to go along with your new quarters.”

  “Your Majesty, don’t be ridiculous!” said Green. “I know exactly where everything is. Someone cleaning up after me will only serve to ensure I’ll never be able to find a thing. Besides, in my opinion, a clean desk is the sign of an inactive mind.”

  Anna nodded and smiled.
“Far be it from me to ruin your system of organization, Professor. You haven’t seen Jack around, have you?”

  “But of course!” Green responded. “After he explained to me about the ship’s quantum manifestation ability, he led me here and helped me to re-create my lab.”

  “And where is he now?”

  “Oh!” exclaimed Green, as though the idea that Anna actually wanted to see Jack had just occurred to him. “I believe he retired three doors down, on the right if I’m not mistaken.”

  “Thank you, Professor. I’ll leave you to get back to recording your notes.”

  “Yes, yes, yes. Best to do it while the memories are fresh. Wouldn’t want to forget anything important. But where to begin? Where to begin? Why, there’s the Deathlord language, their apparent religious fundamentalism, their propensity to espouse megalomaniacal monologues…”

  Anna left the Professor mumbling to himself about all the things he needed to write down and headed to the door he’d indicated. She hesitated a second in front of it, not sure if she should just enter unannounced. For a moment, she had the same feeling in her stomach that she’d had the first time she’d sought Jack out, walking from her house up to his on Eagle Hill and knocking on his door, unsure of what was going to happen. It was a nervous kind of excitement, something she was surprised she could still feel after all they’d just been through.

  She knocked on the door. After a moment, it hissed open, revealing a room with which Anna was already familiar.

  The discolored ceiling tiles scarred with water damage, broken up occasionally by dirty plastic panels that housed the unflattering fluorescent lights she had always disliked. Rows of abused single-seat desks were arranged from the back of the room to the front, atop the scuffed light beige tiles of the floor. The large chalkboard at the head of the room was in bad need of a cleaning, and Shepherd’s desk was off to the side, neat and empty, with a stack of pink demerit slips on it ready to be issued.

  Against the far wall were three windows, recessed slightly into it. Normally, they would have had a view of the school’s parking lot with the edge of the football field and an ocean of corn stalks in the distance, but now they had the beautiful and chaotic swirl of blue and white lightspeed rushing by.

  Jack sat on the sill of the window by Shepherd’s desk. His legs kicked up casually ran the length of it. His head leaned up against the glass as he stared out into the haze of lightspeed. He’d changed back into his jeans and t-shirt, and his hair looked rumpled and uncombed in a way Anna couldn’t help but feel suited him perfectly. If it weren’t for the view, Anna would have sworn she was back on Earth. When she entered, he looked at her and smiled.

  “Hey,” he said.

  Anna put her hands on her hips and looked around. “Really?” she smiled. “A ship that can manifest any location you desire, and you choose homeroom?”

  “Don’t be hating,” Jack replied. “Believe it or not, I learned some important stuff here.”

  “Oh, yeah? Such as?”

  “Meh. It’s kinda hard to explain. Let’s just say that this place helps me think.”

  Anna walked up to the window and leaned against the sill. “And here I thought out of all the things that’ve been blown up lately, this would be the place you’d miss the least…”

  Anna caught herself just as she finished talking, embarrassment flushing her face. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I… that was me trying to be funny.”

  Jack laughed. “It’s cool,” he said.

  “No, no, it isn’t. I lost somebody, but you… your family, your friends… everything – it’s not something to be joking about.”

  “It wouldn’t be…” responded Jack, “if I’d really lost them.”

  Anna looked at Jack quizzically. “What?” she asked.

  Jack grinned at her as if he knew a secret she didn’t. “Something happened when I busted open that Great Seal on the Ghost Planet. Something that makes me think they can be saved.”

  “Who?”

  “My mom,” said Jack. “My friends. Shepherd. Everyone.”

  Anna furrowed her brow as if Jack’s words were too difficult to comprehend.

  “Jack,” she said. “You’re not making any sense.”

  “Hey, I gave up on sense the minute aliens shot up the Burger Shack.”

  Anna couldn’t keep herself from chuckling at that. She caught Jack’s eyes and felt her heart flutter slightly. She may be a galactic princess, but to him, she was still that somewhat socially awkward girl from West Virginia, trying her first milkshake on a date that felt like it happened decades ago. And for some reason, that made her feel good. She reached over and placed her hand on top of Jack’s.

  “Tell me what happened to you,” she said.

  Jack shifted on the windowsill a tad uncomfortably. He licked his lips as if to get them ready to form words he didn’t quite know how to speak.

  “I saw my dad,” he said softly.

  “Your dad?” asked Anna.

  “I know, right?” said Jack. “I don’t know if it was a figment of my imagination… like some strange electrically induced hallucination that just showed me the thing I wanted to see the most… but if that were the case, why wouldn’t it have been my mom? I hadn’t seen my dad in forever – didn’t even remember what he looked like anymore. Except it felt real. HE felt real. As real as you and I are right now.”

  “What did he say?” asked Anna.

  “A bunch of stupid stuff,” muttered Jack. “He was being all cryptic and not making any sense. Didn’t even bother to mention he was my dad until I was being sucked away by a weird vortex thingy.”

  Anna looked at Jack quizzically.

  “Yeah,” Jack responded. “I don’t know how else to explain it.”

  “I’ve navigated a lot of Ancient technology, Jack,” said Anna. “But I’ve never encountered another person while doing so. Or a weird vortex thingy for that matter. Of course, I’ve never broken open a Great Seal either. But my guess is whatever you were exposed to, on some level, you know how to access it.”

  “That’s kinda what he said,” replied Jack. “Like, my brain downloaded everything that was in the Great Seal and is hiding it all somewhere ‘cause if I remembered it my head would explode or something.”

  Anna laughed.

  “What? What’d I say?” asked Jack. “Does my head blowing up amuse you?”

  “No, not at all, it’s just… the brain’s not a computer, Jack,” said Anna. “It can’t download stuff.”

  Jack blinked, confused. “But then… how do I know all these weird things? Like, how can I understand these alien languages and speak them?”

  “I actually have a theory about that,” said Anna. “For whatever reason, I think the Ancients wanted your people to find this ship. And when they did, they wanted your people to be ready to meet with the other races of the galaxy. So the access orb was meant to prepare whatever Earthman touched it for venturing out into the universe.”

  “So you’re saying that access orb thing taught me every language in the universe?”

  “It didn’t teach you, it opened your mind to them.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “The Ancients had a different way of sharing knowledge than most of us do, Jack,” explained Anna. “They believed that all knowledge already exists, and that our minds don’t learn things, so much as we open them to what’s already there. Do you remember the words you spoke that opened the temple that housed this ship?”

  “Kinda hard to forget them,” said Jack. “Eldil Meldilorn.”

  Anna nodded. “That’s the Ancient language of Old Solar. It was the mantra of the Ancients, and the code by which Paragons live. It’s also the philosophy around which the entire Regalus Empire is based. It means ‘free your mind.’ When you free your mind and allow yourself to shed its constraints, you can tap into any knowledge in the universe. Anything you want to know, you realize you already know. You just needed to open your mind to it.”
>
  “So, the access orb helped to open my mind to all the languages of the universe?”

  “Probably to all the languages that ever existed and ever will exist, which is highly unusual, since freeing one’s mind typically can’t be assisted by machines. I’m guessing that because your species evolved under the influence of Ancient technology at the core of your planet, you have some type of pre-disposition to be affected by it. That would allow your mind to be opened more easily than other species. Couple that with the fact that you’re young and your brain is still forming… that would make you the perfect test subject.”

  “Whoa. So I’m like… special, right? Ancient technology can give my brain super powers?”

  “I’m saying your entire race was special,” smiled Anna. “There’s no telling what the people of Earth would have been capable of, if this is true.”

  Jack was quiet for a moment. “But, why does it only work sometimes and not others?” Jack asked. “After I broke open the Great Seal, I could do some kick-butt stuff. But now, it doesn’t seem to be working.”

  “Freeing one’s mind is a complicated thing,” said Anna. “I’ve been in training to do it almost all my life, and I still don’t fully understand it. Shepherd was one of the most talented Paragons I’d ever met, and even he would struggle with it. We all put limitations on our minds without even knowing it. We can spend all our efforts to open our minds, and then fall back into bad habits that close them off again. Maybe in your case, you were able to open your mind when you needed to, and after the need passed, your brain allowed it’s former limitations to settle in.”

  Jack frowned. “So no superpowers anymore, huh?”

  Anna shrugged. “Well, you did it once. Maybe you can do it again?”

  “Yeah, if I figure out how to open my stupid mind.”

  “Well, from what I know, the first step is always the hardest,” said Anna. “But after you’ve been exposed to knowledge once, it’s easier to access it. Whatever you were exposed to when the Great Seal fell, that’s knowledge you are now aware of, even if you’re not conscious of it. Which means that with the right training and discipline, maybe you can access it again.”