by M E Wise
“Want to grab some grub?” I gave Paps the choice to abandon the line we were in.
He sighed with relief. “Definitely son.” He stepped out of line and the gap closed like a zipper.
“No choice now!” We laughed. There were vendors everywhere and we made the long walk back through the expressive crowd. Tacos, burgers, hand rolled sushi cones and plenty of soda jerks lined the causeway. We couldn’t decide and started sampling everything, probably not the best idea but this was like a vacation for us both. It was nice to blend in for once.
Superman posed off against Iron Man; Batman against Wolverine. The repetition never got old. I didn’t want to leave but the day grew long and both Paps and I were wearing thin. We waited forever for a shuttle that never showed from the Hotel. After much heated internal debate we hailed a cab.
“You guys in for the convention?” The cabbies question was tip bait. And obviously so.
“Yes! My son and I are from Canada!” Paps was way to cordial for my tastes.
The cabbie was a rough looking guy. His ball cap read pussy-pounder with a cartoon cat being smashed by the words. If that wasn’t unsettling enough he chain smoked a fruity electronic cigarette banned nearly everywhere. We were caught in traffic turning our short trip into an hour wait and multiplying the fare exponentially. The cabbie of course knew this would happen.
It was hot, uncomfortably moist too. “What’s the humidity-like 200?” I complained to Paps. He fanned himself and hung his face out of the window of the cab, partly for less fruit scented vapor. I wiped sweat off my face and didn’t really think of what I was doing. “What the…” the cabbie noticed something that obviously irritated him. He leaped from the cab caught in traffic.
“Get the fuck out of my cab!” He yelled from the outside. Paps was panicking.
There was a smudge of pinkish makeup on my left glove. Dude, that is some silly carelessness Ben, I was mad at myself. Paps noticed too and looked completely angry. I had no time to stop him, and the little oriental chef-ware salesman sprang from the car in a tirade. “You think you’re special Mister Pussy-Pounder!” He screamed poking the much taller man in his filthy chest. “You think you’re better than my son! More human maybe!” Paps was on fire and other cabs horns began sounding support for the cabbie. A dusk lit overpass was nowhere to be when you weren’t the local class.
“Don’t touch me, you nasty little monkey maker?” The cabbie yelled back.
“Hey! Who calls someone a monkey-maker?” I joked with a clear want to avoid a fight. “Paps calm down.” I begged.
“No son! This man will call his supervisor or I will call the authority!” Paps believed in the system. Even if that system didn’t believe in us.
“You want to call the cops!” The cabbie laughed. “You can call an ambulance!” He punched my father hard in the face. Before I knew it I was beating the car door against the guard rail trying to leave the vehicle and ended up sliding out where my father lay bleeding from the nose at a completely disadvantaged angle. The cabbie kicked me in the face and I could hear bells instantly. And there we lay, beaten and embarrassed in cosplay costumes. “We’ll walk.” I collected myself and grabbed my stupid collectibles.
“Get to steppin’,” the ignorant cabbie jostled us as we stood. Paps needed a little help to stand up.
“I’m sorry son.” His wrinkled crow’s feet were thicker in his pained grimace. “It’s not your fault-it’s that fucking inbred piece of shits fault!” I yelled back at the cab holding the prejudice bastard inside. He gave us the finger. No one came to our aid. We walked the last couple of miles, such a short stroll for such a long winded effect.
The next few months I didn’t play a game, I didn’t make a joke and I didn’t do much of anything. I thought a lot about Comic-Con and what happened after. We left that night without staying out our prepaid visit. The hotel didn’t argue the refund and let us go like they were relieved we were leaving. We used the money to pay a door attendant to drive us to the nearby airport. He was a cool kid and even helped us carry our luggage into the airport lobby. I didn’t even get his name.
The flight home was a thinly populated overnight trip. I didn’t sleep while Paps laid his battered face on my shoulder and snored. I couldn’t help but think I nearly got him killed. He was being a father; it wasn’t his fault. It was the deformed child he carried around like Notre Dame hiding a monster in its belfry. Only his charity never once offered a lashing. My father and mother did nothing to cause my Halfer condition in any way. They never had another child because of it, lived apart because of it, and never made me wear it. Like I wore this damned mask that never came off!
I wasted everything; from a college education to flight training given to me as a gift, even if it was a professional simulation only. I didn’t hate myself for what I couldn’t change, I hated not being what I could be without it. I’m not sure there is a difference anymore. The kitchen floor was cold and I went toward the trash can to pitch out a banana peel and there it was. A crumpled pamphlet sat atop the trash I neglected to take out. The Halfer Destination it read. A palm tree obscured two cartoon eyes on a sun. It looked like a cheaply made resort flyer. I opened it up and it gave the immutable impression that being a Halfer was something people didn’t accept but there was a place for them beyond Earth. It wasn’t some religious jargon just an invitation to meet somewhere and hear them out.
“Off world.” I said out loud. “Halfer’s in space.” My joke had no one to laugh at it.
I regret leaving without saying goodbye. I pictured Paps waking up relieved so I didn’t have to feel guilty for a worry I was going to place firmly on his shoulders. I left a kind note and glued a set of googly eyes on the message pinned to the fridge with a magnet.
Hey Dad;
I’m sure you are going to be pissed when you read this. Please know that I didn’t mean for that to happen, you being angry or that thing in San Diego. You can’t say it wasn’t my fault because I know why it happened. It wasn’t because we were oriental guys dressed like idiots either. That part was awesome!
So many things happen or don’t happen because of this disguise I can’t take off. I know you taught me that I wasn’t only the mask, we all have them; but I can’t live in two cages. I love you. You’ve been my hero. I need to be my own hero for a while. Tell everyone I will be ok.
Love; Ben.
Lost Tales of Reign
Itou’s World chapter 2
Jessie’s Girl
“Benito the Hood.” That’s cheesy. “Benito! You dirty rat!” No matter how many times I threw my online nickname at the mirror I felt silly. I’ll blame boredom. Bored in space is worse than bored on a planet, or moon, or asteroid, or a great many other places I can think of but the risk, oh man, the risk! I’m no coward but I’m not stupid either. Given how dangerous trading in space could be I can’t really afford to hand my family name to everyone I meet so Benito lives. I’ve acquired a strange relationship with Big Jim; a unique Halfer, not too bright but into making credits and money anyway he can. As it turns out Halfers looking for a way to escape Earth was a lucrative business. He found them work if they were able and not afraid of meeting people; as a Halfer himself I might add.
“Too many risks, risks everyone.” He barked at me. “More importantly it risks me.” He wasn’t as selfish as most thought he was; I think. I haven’t made much of an effort to know any of the other Halfers who make up the growing population of Green Acres. The trip here was arduous and I would be lying if I said I hadn’t questioned my decision every day. I spent nearly six months hopping from freighter to freighter like some outer space underground railroad. Each Captain was a sympathizer or quite frankly looking for some cheap labor; by cheap I mean free labor from desperate people looking for a place they could live in the open.
We were all in debt to someone we never met. Whoever founded Green Acres never revealed themselves outright. They put up the cover and cash to get a Halfer
and their family into space. One night I went to a space port and emailed a scan of my registered Halfer license to a thread of random anonymous forumites and within a few hours there was a pass and some travel money in my account. I was lucky; I had money saved up but not footing the bill was nice. Whomever they were I would hope to one day thank them. I stayed busy to avoid worrying about Paps.
The thing what kept Green Acres alive was salvage and bartering with the trade lanes. Given Green Acres locale though we had a long haul to make those lanes. So half of my time; given what I do, was spent finding and acquiring junk, the other bringing it back to Green Acres for Big Jim to move. I’ve been doing that now for almost three years. I even have an old junker that I called my own, The Big Load. Retired craft were commonly traded away for scrap but some companies set up drifts of space junk like junkyards on Earth in deep space avoiding environmental taxes and restrictions. We took full advantage of this methodology as they deserved. The Big Load looked like crap, shaped like the nose of an old NASA shuttle and burnt from one too many entries. It could tow a trailer or two though and that was all I needed.
I just wished it wasn’t such a slow and tedious haul. The trans-Neptunian region wasn’t exactly close to any business. But it was really close to the salvage drops if you could avoid Tekkers. Tekkers were like urban legends where I came from. Nobody really believed people would tinker with their bodies like that, taking prosthetics and upgrades to horror proportions but they did. I have dealt with and seen some pretty interesting stuff out here. The rules were simple; don’t get caught by the OG, don’t screw with Tekkers, and keep your hood up.
Life wasn’t bad though. I was free to make my own way and at 26, many Halfers would already be dead. I finally visited Paps in the summer of 2098. He cried and begged me to come home so I bartered with my Uncle Hiroto to give the old man some leave and I took him on a back-roads tour of my new life. Green Acres made him more scared for me. The entire sanctuary relied too heavily on being remote and the fragile balance it had with the vacuum of space, and a salvage reliant existence wasn’t something he was comfortable with. We made the best of it as we always did though. Paps tried to get me to connect with more people; as he made a friend of a woman from Barbados there. Ahleea, I believe her name was. She had a daughter I had never seen.
I was happy to be rounding the scattered asteroid belt to the main site though. I had been out for almost two months gathering crap. One man’s crap is another’s something gross probably. The domed tankers and walkways were strung together with old ship to ship airlock bridges. Some jimmy rigging made them safer for continuous use. We used everything we could find; old probes were made into single and two pilot haulers. There were about two dozen traders like myself not including the random black market traders who might find themselves desperate enough to unload merch on us. We didn’t trade in people though. A very real and serious threat to disparaged people like us.
“Big Load for dock.” I hailed over the short wave. “Farm Living…” A voiced returned. “Is the life for me!” I sang back the password reply.
Call and reply passwords were great deterrents from unwanted travelers. Out here anyone could be running from the OG and that kind of thing was a threat to everyone. Get in trouble too deep and no one was going to open a door here. Sometimes that would relax a bit and then something would happen to cause a panic and we would clamp down again. Some recent increase in Tekker drones had us all keeping a watchful eye on everything. The docking lights circled over my gate, a very professional string of Christmas lights. I drifted in and made dock like a dangling tadpole. Two probe ships scanned and credited my haul and took the containers away.
“Welcome back Benito!” Yoseff jeered from his probe ship. He wasn’t a Halfer but his brother was, when he was alive.
“Hola! Yoseff!” I razzed him for being culturally challenged like me. “Good to be back.”
His craft slowly cruised to the receiving lot. It looked like a stack of old boxes linked together by four sided locking clamps; huge cargo car sized boxes that is. They would be catalogued and manifests created for easy reference. Our system was better than many trader posts, even better than some Martian posts.
I made lock and stepped off one airtight can into another. When I watched re-runs of science fiction shows, I rarely saw the truth of early space development. They always seemed to jump to a clean and vibrant future or some dystopian wasteland. I felt like this was the future but it left most people unenthusiastic. Pioneers out here lived airlock to airlock, the only fresh air we got was the first gust of air coming from a freshly changed air recycler filter. The botanical gardens here were a nice change of pace compared to that. Played hell on the filters though.
“Ben! Ben!” Called Big Jim from down the lane. This receiving bay was tight and made of a single row of airlocks and some Home² connective tubes working as tunnels mounted to the main asteroid. Big Jim ran this area leading to his Shop. “One of these days Ben…” he scoffed jokingly, “this could be all yours!” He said this too often. I’m not sure if he is serious or just taking jabs at me. He was the oldest Halfer here currently. Not the safest of titles to carry.
Jim tapped and slid his fingers on the only sophisticated thing he owned, a flat panel he networked to his inventory and receiving. The software was severely dumbed down to match his intellect, but it worked for him. “You had a decent haul!” He garbled. His Halfer condition effected his speech as large glands were swollen on his neck. Jim had this crazy bone growth on his head like a crown. Hair found random holds in the spaces between pinecone looking bumps. He was sizeable and healthy in the midsection for our kind. “Thumb.” He requested my thumb print on the scanner application of the device.
“You know; your whole system is one severed thumb away from busted right.” Jim glared at my dark humor.
“You’re sick. You know this.” He and I bantered often. Jim somehow always kept his dry demeanor in check though.
“Anything new?” I searched around in his stock. I was horrible at keeping my credits, some trinket would find my attention and I would be all over it. Sometimes I would get a request from Jim and have leverage on things I wanted. Usually I would display the item in some way; wear it, use it-whatever I needed to get his attention. He had a thing for Hawaiian shirts and hats even though he couldn’t wear them. Odd man.
“Got some military stuff in the other day. Gotta move it out quick!” He pointed to a large crate with the Orbital Guard seal on it. No one in their right mind wanted their gear. Good thing I had no such thing. “Let me see!” I popped the latches on the silver crate and it opened easily. Different electronic parts were sealed in plastic sleeves with barcodes on them. Nothing of any real note unless you needed it. There was a nice environment suit though. It was only the under suit but something like that was a nice item to have in my line of work. Big Jim noticed I wanted it.
“I see you looking!” He grinned and his tightly grouped and crooked teeth hurt my eyes. “You know what I would like.” He paused for effect.
I knew what he would like too. I just didn’t want him to have it yet. We both had a taste for vintage electronics and he wanted my prized Sega Genesis. The thing was over a hundred years old for crying out loud! Altered Beasts still worked on it too. “Oh come on. This suit means not freezing to death if the temperature regulator quits!”
“And it’s just a game.” Jim started to close the crate. I squirmed noticeably.
“Throw in some of those random components and I will sweeten the deal with Sonic the Hegdehog!” The words hurt as they came out. They hurt pretty bad.
“Deal!” He looked ecstatic. I let him gather what he was going to trade, he always tossed something extra in; so I knew he had something like a heart. “Yours when the console is in my hands.” So much for the heart. I turned around to head toward the airlock for the loot he eagerly waited for and I saw something beautiful. A pilot from one of the probe ships removed her head gear while steppi
ng free from the airlock. She was exotic for a Halfer. One of the lucky ones whose outward appearance was limited to over-sized eyes on the surface, hers were deep pools or black. She was also bald, could be from the condition but given her swagger maybe not.
“You need something?” She asked as I was caught staring. “Benito, um uh Ben Itou!” I blurted for no reason at all. “Is it Benito or Ben followed by Itou?” She asked with a warm smile. I kept staring. She waved a hand in front of my face. She was taller than me, slightly and I kind of liked it. Her figure was amazing and she had a slight islander accent. “I need to go Benito.” She made her way by and I pivoted on my heels to follow her. Those hips and that caramel skin sent shivers up my spine. I tiptoed awkwardly to Jim as she continued ahead. My obvious behavior lead to a prompt answer.
“That’s Rasha. Ahleea’s daughter.” Jim made a clicking noise with his mouth. “Good girl, even better singer.” He added to the torture. “She’s with Jessie though.” The knife twisted.
“No shit! That’s Jessie’s girl.” I knew him as a trader like myself. “Yep.” Jim answered like a burp.
