Prisoners of Paradise

by Brandon Lars Erikson

  There was darkness as the memory faded to black and was suddenly interrupted by another one that made his heart beat faster and faster. Harris remembered how his heart felt as if it was going to pound itself right out of his chest as he exhaled a long stream of smoke and handed the Makani joint to the young, Kupano man who was sitting in the passenger seat next to him.

  As the young man took the joint and inhaled, Harris noticed how scared he looked as he said, “This is some really messed up shit we are about to do. We’ve done some really bad things lately…but this?”

  Harris could hear the thumping sounds coming from behind the back seat of the hovercar as he said to the young man sitting next to him, “we gotta do it.”

  The young Kupano man said, “what if we get caught?”

  “That’s not what I’m worried about…if the boss says we gotta do something…and if we don’t do it…that is what I am scared of.”

  The thumping sounds from behind the back seat became louder and louder as Harris felt his heart beating faster and faster.

  The young Kupano man took another drag and said, “But he never did anything to us…I was beginning to like the guy, despite all the trash talk that comes out of his mouth.”

  “I know…”

  “Iki…do we have to do this?”

  Harris remembered how he sighed and said to his Kupano friend, “Let’s just get it over with.”

  He remembered how they exited the car and walked to the back of the hovercar. They both gave each other a painful look as they heard the pounding that was coming from inside the trunk. Harris gasped as he remembered opening the trunk, and seeing the young, Kupano man, with the wild hair, lying in the trunk, tied up and gagged. His eyes were pleading with them, “Don’t do this to me!”

  “Iki…do we have to do this?”

  “Yes…we do…”

  There was darkness, and silence, followed by the sound of a gunshot.

  Harris opened his eyes just as he heard Jori shouting at him, “Ron! Did you hear me? I said, are you going to visit any friends while you are on Ailana?”

  “Yes,” Harris said as his eyes began to appear glossy. “Just one…but it’s gonna have to be a real quick visit.”

  “Well, there ya go…we now have something else in common. I am also going to Ailana to visit someone…and hopefully, it will be real quick as well.”

  Jori noticed how uncomfortable Harris appeared and began to feel a little more emotional about the situation.

  “Ron?” She asked quietly as she noticed his hands shaking. “Are you all right?”

  Harris noticed that his lower lip was trembling as he took a deep breath while trying to keep his inner turmoil private. “Uh, yeah…how rude of me. I never did answer that question you asked me yesterday Jori. After thinking long and hard about it, I’d have to say that I do have many, many regrets about the past…and because of that…I do worry a whole lot about the future.”

  “Please, tell me about it…talking will make you feel better.”

  “No…not now…I guess it’s something that’s hard for me to talk about,” Harris said as he began to rub his face with his hands. He felt so nervous and tired. “Can I ask you a question, Jori?”

  “Yes…please do.”

  Harris began to stutter; maybe actually talking to someone would be slightly therapeutic for him. He was willing to give anything a try. “W-w-well, it’s really not that big of a deal or anything, b-b-but I’ve been…having some problems lately… and I just wanted to know if anyone else felt this way.”

  “Felt like what?”

  “As if you’ve only been given half the story…and you know that there is another half to complete it, and allow it to make more sense. I just wanna know if is normal to feel angry…when ya think that people are telling you a lie.”

  Jori became direct, “Who lied to you, Ron?”

  “Everyone…s-s-sometimes, I think that everyone has been lying to me…because they told me that the things I remember…never even happened at all.”

  Harris became silent for a moment as the monitor blared, “Tonight we have commentary from both Conservative and Liberal Moralist Groups, as to why the Ailanian economy went down the tubes. Was it because there was too much of a dependence on Military markets? Or was it the risky practice of loaning money to Ailana’s Immoral citizens that bankrupted the government? Is the concept of pseudo-capitalism just a scapegoat? Or is it the real reason for the planet’s economic woes? Should we allow the Ailanian people the independence to start their own business ventures, or should we force them to accept the newest terms The Alliance has recommended in order to bail them out of this recession? We’ll discuss this just as soon as we talk about how Ambassador Chezui Banka successfully negotiated a peace settlement between warring factions in North Africa…which, of course, leads us to wonder, can he pull off that same kind of magic in the tense political climate on Ailana? Join us on the Harry O’Neil Show at ten.”

  “Turn it!” She shouted.

  Harris snapped to attention and used his thumb to scroll through the channels until he found a channel devoted to nature shows. He sighed with relief as he noticed how she seemed pacified by this move.

  “Well, then I guess we have something else in common now,” she said sharply. “I’ve been lied to as well, I know how you feel. It hurts when someone is deceptive for whatever reason they use to justify themselves.” She shuttered as she said, “And I know what you are thinking right now. You’re saying to yourself, ‘now I have to go to Ailana, and face the person who lied to me, and somehow try to not come unglued when I start to wonder if they are telling me the truth, or filling my defenseless heart and soul with more of their charming lies while my brain screams at me that I had better not fall for that again.’”

  Harris seemed a bit stunned, and was careful as he said, “you have issues, don’t you?”

  “Look, I’m sorry,” she wheezed as she said, “you met me at an odd time in my life…I’m not usually like this…normally, I’m out excavating a dig site, or lecturing at a University…but lately, things are different for me. Ya see, it’s like this, I got involved with the wrong person, and ended up saying some of the wrong things, to the wrong people…and I let my love for this person, get in the way of my better judgment…I got hurt real bad because of the decisions I made for their benefit…” She began sniffing and sobbing a bit.

  Harris felt himself becoming sympathetic, and patted her hand gently, “I am sorry ma’am…you just relax, and we’ll get you through this. I know what you’re going through…sometimes, I would come back from battle in way worst shape than you are ma’am, and they’d but me through hell just to fix me up again. Believe me, I know how you feel.”

  “But have you ever been through the pain of knowing how someone you loved, trusted and admired simply used you as a means to their own selfish ends and then sold you out? Do you know how it feels to come to the stark realization that someone you loved betrayed you, and abandoned the dreams you shared together, draining you financially, emotionally and spiritually…all because…they were weak, and morally corrupt?”

  Harris sighed as his mind’s eye focused in on a familiar face, “yes…I have.”

  “Do you ever feel angry because of it?”

  Again, he remembered a familiar person’s face as he said, “yes…yes I do.”

  “Do you ever wish you could destroy that person, thinking that if you did…the anger and hurt would stop, because those who caused it…won’t be around to hurt you anymore?”

  Harris closed his eyes and remembered how the gun felt in his hands. He remembered what the Ailanian boy looked like. His heart raced as he heard the boy’s voice saying, “Iki…do we have to do this?”

  “Yes, we do…”

  He remembered the sound of gunshots.

  A crashing noise came from the monitor, dis
tracting Harris from his memory.

  The monitor featured a nature program. “The vastness of the Ailanian Ocean has produced aquatic monsters like no one has ever seen before! This is an artist’s conception of what the Anagigantoliation looks like, it’s a fifty meter long, three hundred ton, armored whale with rows of enormous, razor sharp teeth that could cut any unsuspecting swimmer in half! Coming up next on MONSTERS OF THE AILANIAN SEAS! What else lurks in the unknown depths of the largest known ocean in the galaxy?”

  Harris looked over at Jori and noticed that she was asleep. He looked at her face and noticed how she did appear healthier and a bit happier. He felt his mind became heavier with guilt and shame, it was almost as if there was nothing he could do to make the sadness he felt stop. He looked back at the monitor screen and saw the animation of a sea monster devour an artist’s conception of a large, Ailanian fish.

  He said with a sad whisper, hoping that Jori would hear it in her sleep, “I’ll be honest with you, Jori. I know you just want to hear some honesty from another humanoid. Well… I’m going to Ailana to settle one last score. I’m going there to get some well-deserved revenge.”

  He gazed at her smiling face and felt the salty taste of his tears on his lips, “I’m going to kill myself when I get to Ailana…I just don’t want to live anymore…not after all the horrible things I have done.”

  Location: The Penitentiary….Hana Paloi FederalBuilding.

  Ailanian Standard Time: 0700 Hours.

  Van Dien gazed upon Andrea as her eyes pleaded with him, “please don’t do this to me…”

  “My dear child…you got caught with an ounce of Cutz…and now I have the legal means to make sure that you are no longer a threat to me or my plan.”

  Her eyes begged him for mercy as tears streamed down her cheeks.

  “Do you know why you are here?” He asked as he produced a remote control device from his jacket and pressed a button that opened up two metal panels and made a monitor move into the room from behind the gray wall.

  Her eyes opened wide. She held her breath as she saw a video in which she was speaking to a crowd of students at a University. She began sobbing as she heard her own voice saying, “The Hydroplantations are still operating on a form of nuclear power that is potentially dangerous to the Ailanian people, potentially destructive to the delicate ecosystems they border and is simply economically unsustainable. There is a better ‘mousetrap’ that we could be using, so to speak. This planet has a vast ocean. That ocean has strong currents and what we can refer to as layering within it. As you can see in this animation, much of the surface water near the planet’s equator is quite warm, while just a few hundred meters below this warm surface layer exists deep layers of ocean water that are substantially cooler.”

  Her breathing became labored as she saw herself pointing to the multicolored map which showed how currents revolved within the Ailanian Ocean. She began to grind her teeth as she heard herself saying, “The Hydroplantations could easily be reconfigured to pump both this warm and cold water into their infrastructures. We could then use the temperature differences to drive turbines to create the electricity needed to power our cities as well as provide all the energy The Hydroplantations must have to grow crops.”

  Van Dien marveled at the animations that showed what happened when the cold ocean water was pumped into a tank containing warm ocean water. He nodded his head as he saw how pumping a layer of cold water on top of a layer of warm water could create powerful micro-currents within the tank that could drive a high-tech generator without the use of nuclear fuel rods.

  He bit his lower lip to keep it from trembling as he thought, “Just like the perpetual energy machine once described by a great prophet…how ingenious…oh how I wish there was no need to control such imagination…oh the things we could do…the things we could accomplish…such a waste…such a waste…”

  Andrea whimpered as she saw herself pointing to an animation that showed how the cold water would then be diverted from these tanks into flexible, thin-walled pipes, which were several kilometers long and located underground in the fields that The Hydroplantations supported. A tear fell from her eye as she saw how this cold water, which had been pumped from the deep layers of the ocean would create condensation on the outside of the pipes, which would then provide the moisture needed to grow a vast array of organic vegetables fertilized by worms, which could all be harvested and sold to hungry Ailanians.

  “The Hydroplantations we use today are obsolete and need to be reimagined and redesigned. The Hydroplantation food production system we use today is designed to grow a monocultured, genetically modified plant that provides a source of low quality protein which is must be chemically altered before it is processed into MEALS READY TO DIGEST and various fast food products, all of which are unhealthy. The systems we currently employ to grow our food and need a dangerous source of nuclear power, along with steady inputs of toxic chemical fertilizers, harmful pesticides and continuous genetic modification of the crops, which are expensive, economically unsustainable and environmentally hazardous. The system, which we use, at this point in our civilization’s history, produces vast amounts of low quality food items that help contribute to economic recession if investors start selling their stock as a toxic asset, because they fear they will not see a sizable return, due to the fact that this system has the ability to flood the market with products that cannot be sold if the demand for them suddenly becomes low. This inferior system, which we are forced to use right now, makes an elite group of investors, CEO’s and other people on the top rungs of huge, intergalactic corporations, very wealthy because The Hydroplantations, which we the people did not want, allow these Elites to make money from the sales of nuclear fuel, synthetic chemicals and unethical genetic engineering, all of which are not needed to feed the people of this planet.”

  She closed her eyes when she realized how Van Dien was staring at her like an angry father figure.

  She began crying harder when she heard herself saying, “The Hydroplantations that we want to rebuild will not operate in this fashion. The Hydroplantations we are proposing will work with nature and not against it. The Hydroplantations we want to operate will supply every person on this planet with good, nutritious food and a safe source of power. However, these new Hydroplantations will only be big enough and powerful enough to provide for every person’s need…but not every person’s greed…”

  He looked at her with dark eyes as he said, “And believe me…I actually agree with you. I even sympathize with you. Do you think it brings me joy to have to do this to you? I hate the fact that I have to do this, but what you fail to recognize, is that there is something bigger and scarier in this universe than you can possibly imagine…and my plan is the only way to stop it…and that is why I must do this to you.”

  “No please! You can’t!”

  “Oh my precious child, but I must. In this cell you will be injected daily with brain altering chemicals…and will be watching this monitor so that we can retrain you to work at one of The Hydroplantations as the worker that I want you to be. If you want to save your people, Andrea…then you should become one of them…you will soon become a worker who performs one repetitive task daily, and does not have the need to ask any questions about why you are doing it. You were warned once, now the punishment begins.”

  Van Dien took his com out of his pocket. He smiled as he realized that someone wanted to talk to him. He answered the com with a sincere voice, “Kenny…I am so glad to finally hear from you.”

  The voice from the com was nervous as it said, “So…what is it you want me to do for you?”

  Van Dien’s face became like stone as he said, “I want you to help me steal something, Kenny.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Location: The living quarters of Makula Pilikoa…Uptown Polynea…Ailana.

  Ailanian Standard Time: 1300 Hours.

  Bronson Pet
rilock adjusted his tie as he peered into the muscular bodyguard’s sunglasses. Bronson swallowed his fear, and smoothed out the sleeves on his suit coat. He stared at the large man, who stood there, like a wall in front of Makula’s office door. Bronson couldn’t see the big man’s eyes, and that bothered him.

  “You can’t figure someone out, or determine who they really are, if you can’t see their eyes,” Bronson thought as he sized up the broad-shouldered Kupano man. Bronson bit his lower lip as he saw how the bodyguard wore his hair in a tight ponytail.

  The big Kupano man remained stoic as he cocked his head to the side, just a bit, as if to show the skinny human that he knew what was on his mind.

  Bronson felt his palms sweating as he realized how much more menacing the large man appeared because his black, leather jacket was unzipped in a way that displayed how his sidearm was within easy reach.

  The Kupano bodyguard stood in front of the door in a casual manner, like a bouncer at a club. He presented the aura of a black-clad statue that would leap to life and beat down anyone who tried to open the door without permission.

  Bronson didn’t want to open the door, because he knew the man behind it, was much more deadly than the man, who was currently standing in front of it

  Bronson took a deep breath and timidly asked, “Is he in a good mood this morning?”

  The bodyguard hesitated before replying, “That’s hard to say.”

  Bronson sighed. He rubbed his face and ran his hand through his thick hair as he said, “Well…he won’t be after he hears what I have to tell him.”

  The bodyguard stepped aside and let the nervous human enter. The door closed with a light tapping sound. A few moments later, Makula Pilikoa, roared like an angry lion. The door flew open and the bodyguard stood at attention as he saw how the skinny human, who had just walked in, strode out, with the short, stocky gangster on his heels. Makula’s face was bumpy and scarred. His long, gray hair looked like a mane that was almost standing on end from excitement.