"Or what about Elliot’s dad owning this town? If people say something to him, he fires them. Or what about dad not being paid for a month when he requested time off for mom’s funeral?”
Ms. Lin-Mayer paled for a moment. “You have had to deal with a lot in a short amount of time, and sometimes people want to find someone to blame when—”
>>I may be a kid but I’m not stupid,<< Celes projected into Ms. Lin-Mayer’s mind in emphasis. >>I hear things, especially when adults don’t think I can understand them.<< Turning on her heel so Ms. Lin-Mayer couldn’t see her tears of frustration, she stomped back to her desk, plopping down in her seat. “Give me a month of detention. I don’t care. That way I won’t have to see you sell-outs,” she said aloud, using one of her father’s words and forcing herself to look apathetic.
Celes expected Ms. Lin-Mayer to continue lecturing her or even raise her voice at her. Instead, Ms. Lin-Mayer only straightened up wordlessly, giving Celes a sad look before sitting down at her desk, her holo screen flickering and blocking Celes’ view of her face. Arms still crossed, Celes scowled towards the window, watching the dingy hover vehicles on the street next to the fenced playground cough up smoke and dust.
The rest of the day went by without another exciting event besides Elliot swaggering into the classroom with his group of suck-ups after recess. Ms. Lin-Mayer continued her lesson of Pre-Intragalactic History, going over how the Iaiedal, on behalf of the Galactic Accord alliance, initiated first contact a few decades after humans colonized their second homeworld, Yuri. Celes kept her face disinterested, though she took careful notes on the datapad she hid behind the desk in her lap. Her mom had studied with the Iaiedal for a long time and had happily regaled Celes with stories about aliens anytime Celes had wanted.
“They all can use telepathy?” Celes had asked once when she was six years old, leaning in from her chair in their old house in Valen. She had held her mom’s new shiny datapad in her lap that holo-projected an alien with light gray skin in robes covering its slender and tall body, topped by a long neck that held a bald domed head with overly large pink eyes.
Her mom had nodded, trying to wrestle two-year-old Zander into his old-style high chair while her dad had cooked in the kitchen, merrily singing some retro song. “Yes. They can’t use their mouth to talk, so they use their minds. They have ears though, so you don’t need telepathy for them to hear you, but they ‘talk’ to you in your head still.”
“Whoa,” Celes had grinned, staring at the holo. Zander had waved his arms about, a perpetual scowl on his face that he had to sit down. “So, they can still listen to us if we talk like this?” >>Or this?<< she had projected into her mom’s head, frowning in a moment of concentration.
“Sort of.” A spoon had rattled on Zander’s tray before her mom had picked it up, the toddler giggling in mischief. “They need to learn what language we speak or have a universal translator first.”
Celes had to remember what a universal translator was before asking, “Can they make things float too?”
Her mom had taken Zander’s pudgy hands, her thumbs gently pressed against his palms as she waved them around, trying to distract him. “Anything humans can do with psychic abilities, they can do better,” her had mom winked at Celes. Zander had shrieked in happiness and bounced around in his favorite ‘dance’ with his mother. “Best psychics in the galaxy, along with the Rym.”
“That is so cool.” Celes had stared down at the image of the Iaiedal. She still had found the alien weird looking, with its lanky body, long neck, giant eyes—and did its hands only have four fingers?—but also kind of neat. “Can I meet one?”
“Absolutely!” Her mom had smiled in delight, bending down and giving Celes a kiss on the forehead. Zander had pouted for a few seconds that attention switched away from him before Celes leaned over to pet his head, and he squealed happily. “You think we can go to Unity next year, honey?” her mom had asked their dad when he came over to his family in the dining room, still wearing an apron.
“That cool space station?” Her dad, tall with brown hair and violet eyes, had pretended to put on a fake look of grouchiness. “I don’t know; it sounds too cool with too many cool aliens and cool places to go to. And with all of those views of outer space? Waaaay too cool.”
“Pleeeease daddy?” Celes had begged, knowing it was a game, and Zander had bounced up and down in his high chair again, repeating, “Peas peas peas peas!”
Her dad had stroked his chin, purposefully looking at the ceiling to make Celes wait impatiently. “Hmm. Maybe we can plan it during dinner, but only if Celes helps me set the table.”
Celes had cheered along with Zander, who would cheer with his sister even if he didn’t understand what was going on. She had immediately hopped up to help carry plates to the dining table while her dad had carried the big pot of spaghetti and meatballs. Her mom had watched with a smile, and grabbed cutlery from morphing into the metal table attached to Zander’s high chair as he had giggled in mischief again.
Now back in the present, taking notes in an old and stuffy classroom in a town her father called a ‘pisspot’, Celes marveled that the memory didn’t hurt as much as it used to. Her only friend might have been right: ‘Time will heal all wounds’.
While glad when school ended, the knowledge that Ms. Lin-Mayer had sent her father a note about the incident today made her nervous. Usually, her father either became furious and threw bottles around, or would be too drunk to care, and she hoped it would be the latter. Still, Celes lingered by the playground for a while after school ended, watching the students head down the sidewalk, or in Elliot and a few others’ case, have a nice brand-new vehicle hover up to the school’s entrance to pick them up.
By the time the kids all left, and the teachers straggled out, the orange rays of the sun heralded the late afternoon. Sighing, Celes compressed the datapad she had been gaming with into a smaller size by squeezing it and then stowed it in her pocket as she walked to her apartment complex two kilometers away. She needed to save her money for groceries instead of public transit.
Celes coughed as vehicles passed by, the cars barely maintaining a hover and lurching several times as if stalling, spewing black smoke. The engines had changed from using solar and hydrogen batteries to gasoline, since it was dirt cheap. The buildings stood squat and low, bunched together as if a toddler with building blocks had planned the town’s layout. Holo graffiti splattered the sides, and while some were bad words or song lyrics, quite a few were murals.
She stopped by one as adults passed her by on the sidewalk without a second glance. Tagged ‘By the Three’, the holo mural displayed the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies, shimmering brightly and lighting up the darkening surroundings. I wonder if the Tial are there, she thought as she stared at Andromeda. She couldn’t tell if anything was wrong; By the Three always had something wrong in their artwork. Celes liked to think the mistakes were intentional. By what she could tell, she could find only three mistakes every time she found a new mural. It was like a guessing game. After searching for a few more minutes to no avail, she turned back to the sidewalk, heading towards her apartment complex.
Her complex sat hunched between other complexes, each more broken down than the next. Perhaps when newly built it had been a nice place, with five buildings surrounding a small park and pond, but it had been fifty years since then. The park now sported dead grass and weeds, leaves and dirty rainwater filling the pool in the center. Two of the five complexes had been torn down in the last six months, and most of the adults in her complex complained loudly that they would be next. Celes didn’t mind, since she hated the building, but worried if she and her father would have a roof over their heads. Unless her father’s job improved—or he did himself—she would continue to spend her evenings looking into jobs on the net that a ten-year-old could do.
After climbing the outside stairs to the thirteenth floor since the elevator was broken—again—she turned down the hallway for the apartm
ents, the open air just beyond the walkways to individual apartments. Rounding the bend for her unit, a tall man stood at the end of the hallway, leaning against the walkway fence with his head down and eyes closed. The setting sun made his dark sepia skin appear warm, his black hair cropped short this time, wearing dark ‘civilian’ clothes as he called it. Celes’ eyes lit up immediately. He’s back! “Ayzize!” she called as she ran for him, waving her arms.
Ayzize lifted his head and turned to her, his open gold eyes crinkling in a smile, though he didn’t actually smile. “Hey,” he said, walking to her, and she barreled right into him for a tight hug. He didn’t hug her back, but she felt an awkward pat on her head. “You, ah, look taller.”
“I am growing, duh,” she admonished, grinning up at him and letting him go. She hadn’t seen him since his last visit five months ago, but she had missed him. “I didn’t know you were coming!”
“Had some business to take care of,” his huge gold eyes glanced towards the horizon, “but I was in town and thought I would check up on you and your dad, but…” he motioned to the shut door. “I figured your dad was out since no one answered.”
Celes frowned. Her father was off work today. “How long were you standing out here?”
“Ten minutes.”
“Least it wasn’t an hour,” she muttered, then approached the pad by the door that read DNA signatures, pressing her palm against it. A short beep sounded with the hiss of the door unlatching, a crackled automatic voice saying, ‘Welcome Home’.
The door opened to a tiny kitchen and small living room with clothes, bottles, and cups everywhere. It smelled like alcohol. Her father lay on the sofa in a bathrobe, passed out with several whisky bottles on the floor. Celes’ face burned as she heard Ayzize swear under his breath, and with a grimace she turned to him. “Yeah, sorry about the mess. You can come in and I can clean up real quick…” At least it didn’t smell like vomit like it did last time Ayzize visited.
“How about I take you out to one of the takeout places?” He jerked his thumb behind him, and she nodded, relieved. “That is, if your dad allows it.”
Celes frowned but nodded again, moving so Ayzize could approach her father. After her mom’s death, her father acted temperamental around Ayzize whenever he visited them, so her father might do anything from being friendly to punching Ayzize while sobbing. Celes hurriedly started whisking all the cups and bottles away to put them in the dishwasher while Ayzize crouched by the sofa with holes in it, shaking her father awake.
“Wha…” She heard her father mumble as she quickly deposited the glasses into the dishwasher. “Who’re… burglar…?”
“It's Nelowie,” Ayzize said, deadpanned. “Zivan, how many fingers am I holding up?”
“… Too bright. Four?”
Ayzize sighed heavily. “Two.”
She heard something clink against the hard floor by the sofa, and Ayzize held up a glass over the sofa’s edge. Coming to take it and looking over the edge of the couch, she saw her father staring at Ayzize, his violet gaze unfocused. “Why didn’t you save—”
“Are you hungry?” Ayzize interrupted with gritted teeth. Celes stayed by the sofa for a moment, watching the exchange with a knot in her stomach. Either her father would pass out again, or start winding himself up for a fight.
Her father’s face turned a slight shade of red, but he then nodded, his hand reaching to hold his own head. “Where’s Celes?”
“Right here.” Ayzize looked at her, and she chimed in to confirm Ayzize’s statement. “All right, listen up. I want to pick up some dinner for you and I would like to bring Celeste with me; we’ll be back in an hour or two. Is that something you are OK with?”
Celes waited with bated breath, still holding the glass and staring down at her father. After what felt like five minutes, her father nodded again, closing his eyes. Jerking her arm and fist back in a, ‘Yes!’ motion, Celes skipped to the dishwasher to deposit the lone glass, switched it on, and ran over to Ayzize to join him at the door. After exiting and locking the door, she and Ayzize headed for the stairs together.
“Please tell me he doesn’t do this often,” Ayzize said darkly, glancing up at the apartment’s direction as they descended the stairs. “I thought he’d be better by now.”
Celes’ earlier grin faded into a frown, their footsteps clanking against the metal stairs. “Well yeah, he kinda does this every day. Least he isn’t yelling and throwing things around.”
“Does he normally do that now?”
“Half the time, especially if he gets a note from my teachers.”
“Has he hit you?” Ayzize said, his gold eyes staring at her.
“No; he smacked Zander that one time, but that… won’t be a problem anymore. All he does is yell at me,” she said, shrugging. “You ask that all the time. Why?”
“Because your dad is getting worse,” Ayzize muttered. “If he does, you tell your teachers immediately. And the police.”
Celes huffed, shoving her hands in her pockets. “Cops don’t do anything and my teachers are useless.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Cops blamed some girl for getting beat up a few weeks ago, and the teachers ignore everything or blame me for it.”
“You say that a lot.”
“Yeah, well, got in trouble again.”
Ayzize’s gold eyes narrowed. “What happened this time?”
She tried and failed to hide a smirk when she remembered the ball bouncing off the back of Elliot’s head. “Some kid threw a ball at my head, so I hit him back so hard he fell face first in the dirt.”
To Celes’ pleasure, Ayzize nodded at her, a satisfied look on his face. “Good. If he isn’t dealt with quickly, then he’ll become a bigger problem.”
“He already is a big problem,” she sighed, taking her hands out of her pockets and folding them across her chest. “He doesn’t stop coming after me and the teachers take his side over mine. His dad is Mr. Benitz, and he owns everything here, so—”
Ayzize made an odd sound, like a startled noise in his throat. Confused, she looked up at him. “You OK?”
Ayzize cleared his throat. “Is this kid named Elliot?”
“Yeah. How’d you know?”
“Heard his name in your head,” Ayzize said, glancing away for a moment. “Is he psychic or anything like that?”
Celes laughed. “Psychic? No way. He hated Zander; I think he was jealous that Zander got more attention than him or something. Elliot is stupid and mean. The only thing special about Elliot is that he can kinda kick a football and his dad is rich.”
“I see.” Ayzize looked worried, but his face smoothed out so quickly that Celes wondered if she had imagined it. “Unfortunately, you’ll meet many people like that as you grow up.”
“Here, you mean?” She pointed to the ground.
“No, all over the galaxy,” he muttered. “We’re meeting more and more of them with us expanding…”
“Raxdrýn?”
“Yeah.”
That reminded Celes of Ayzize’s hasty promise he had made several months ago. She grinned up at Ayzize, who saw her devilish expression.
“What?” he asked suspiciously.
“Remember how you said you’d tell me about the Verakas Virus last time you visited?”
Ayzize scowled, his steps growing heavy on the metal stairs. “Still can’t find information on your own?”
“There’s a planetary block on the net about it. I think it’s a government conspiracy,” she said in a playfully dead whisper, but at the frown that Ayzize wore in response, she stared at him. “Wait, is there a conspiracy—"
“I don’t know, but yes, I remember what I said.” He looked around the landings they passed on their descent down the stairs, narrowing his eyes at several people who stood hanging out by the walkways. “Let’s discuss it after dinner.”
Once they reached the bottom of the stairs, they headed north towards the center of town down the same sidewalk
Celes had used earlier. Pausing for a moment at the ‘By the Three’ mural, Ayzize’s eyebrows shoot up, and he moved around the mural taking pictures with his neural implant, called a ‘Tristat’. He couldn’t find anything wrong, other than the galactic sector that the Selyn homeworld of Tellaris orbited in, looked too far flung from the rest of the galaxy.
Nighttime descended upon them by the time they reached an old market with food vendors, string lights powered by electricity lighting up the market. Vendors offered everything from traditional Earth cuisines, Yuri specialties, and several alien foods that weren’t poisonous to humans. Celes followed Ayzize through several large groups of people sitting at makeshift benches and counters, all laughing together while eating and drinking. Scents of fried chicken, Guanghial roasted meats, and Selyn steamed root vegetables wafted through the air, yet both of them followed their noses to the same place.
Stopping by a noodle stand with two chefs and three other customers, Ayzize allowed Celes to select and climb onto her seat, and he took the one next to her at the end of the counter. The cooks merrily waved as they sat down, one of them coming over to them and taking their order. Celes turned to Ayzize, putting on her best smile.
“So,” she said, and he narrowed his eyes at her in knowing, “why’d you come over? Did something happen?”
Ayzize sighed heavily. “Nothing has been on the news, I’m guessing.”
Celes shook her head. “No, but something happened, right?"
Drumming his fingers on the wooden counter, Ayzize grimaced. “Yeah, came here for a job. Don’t worry; it was on a different continent, and it is taken care of.”
“Were you hurt?” She looked him over. No visible bruises or new scars, though his black clothes covered everything but his hands and face. “Did they kill anyone?”
“Celes,” Ayzize hissed, and waved with a forced smile to the people next to her. “AR game tournament,” he told them as Celes turned to see the horrified looks on her neighbor’s faces. “Kids, haha.” Once the people turned away, Ayzize continued in a low voice, “No, I’m not hurt. And given the subject, I don’t think I should talk about it here.”
Origins of Hope Page 6
