by Richard Sosa
“Duh. It’s not safe here, Iris. It will become progressively more dangerous for me
the longer I stay. God, you’re dense.”
“You’re saying that as the harrow comes closer, we’ll change somehow and became
more aggressive toward you? I messed up. We need to protect you.”
Iris stood and began her Kung fu-like routine with chopping motions. Rik
watched her. She noticed him watching and said, “We fight close in.”
“Well stop. It’s still very distracting. You told me you want to beat me up and
you threaten me all the time. I think you are changing right now.”
Rik stood up and Iris suddenly flipped him backward to the floor. His back hit the floor hard and he rolled over to catch his breath and then slowly climbed on his chair in pain holding his back. “Geez. Stop it.”
“My moves work.” She said triumphantly then continued to work through her routine.
“Lucky shot girl, you won’t get another pass from me. Try that again and I’ll kick your ass. Besides what you’re doing proves my point, you’re a violent woman.”
“Why did you want to kill the Orb things?” Iris asked.
“Revenge. By the way that hurt my back.”
“You won't succeed.”
“What?”
“Blinded, not a way to enter battle you’ll pull your sword too early and show your enemy your weakest spot. You’ll run to the battle without a plan.”
“I see, the art of war as told by a little girl. Look, I am tired of this shit. I’ve seen enough carnage for many lifetimes this is not some game. This is damned serious. There is no winning here, no army can defeat them. And those stupid cute moves are worthless.”
Iris stopped her routine and sat down hard. “Oh, I forgot, you're an ass. Why the hell am I even trying? You should just leave.”
“I need some air. I gotta find some food.” Rik stood up. He quickly stepped out into the night and walked toward the park. As he walked, he fidgeted with his locator. Iris watched him disappear into the shadows.
Chapter Nine
After a long aimless walk, Rik saw the lights of the pod units in the distance and took a shortcut back through the dark park. His stomach rumbled to reminded him that he was lousy at hunting and gathering for food. He heard the fast footsteps coming up behind him. His brain registered too late that they were running toward him. He turned around and instantly he was body-slammed and he twisted as he fell backward then stumbled to the ground. On his back, he saw two men around him and he tried to stand up. Before he caught his breath and organized his thoughts about what was happening, a punch landed on his face that knocked his head back against the ground. He saw a glimpse of a foot coming toward his ribs and adjusted his position to grab the boot. He held on to the foot and twisted it fast while swinging his leg under the kicker. Rik’s training made fighting movements second nature and while still laying on the ground he kicked the second man in the groin. The second attacker stumbled and fell to the ground holding his crotch. The first man who failed to execute his kick hopped back on one foot. Rik kipped up and was on his feet as the second attacker got up, Rik punched him in the throat and pushed him into the first attacker who was hobbling but rushing him with a knife. Both men tumbled down again. The second attacker rolled over on his knees trying to breathe, holding his throat. Rik stepped back and used the space to wrap his jacket around his arm. A strange accent registered in his brain as the attacker approached slowly. “I am going to cut your balls off.”
Rik needed the man closer in and let the man approach and instantly kicked the knife out of the attacker’s hand. “I hope you brought another knife because I am going to use this one.” In one motion, Rik grabbed the falling knife out of the air and plunged it into the man’s shoulder. His surprised expression erased when Rik punched him directly in the face. The attacker stumbled backward and sat down hard on the turf. He ripped the knife from his shoulder immune to pain and narrowed his eyes at Rik. Rik braced for a second round. Then the attacker stood and looked behind Rik and ran, knife in hand.
A familiar voice shouted behind him. “Leave him alone.” Iris was running toward Rik with three others right behind her. They sprinted fast and Iris stopped to check on Rik and then took a quick kick to the ribs of the remaining attacker on the ground who rolled on his back like a turtle. While two of the men with her continued to chase the knife-wielding assailant. She and the other person with her were breathing hard and Iris pointed to both in turn. “MekTaj-jec from the 52nd, Rik Onanes space visitor from the planet ‘what the hell,’” Iris put her hands on her knees, bending over to catch her breath.
Rik watched the two men laughing as they walked back. Iris regarded the person on the ground and grabbed a hand full of his hair yanking his head back, “What were you two doing? I should kill you.”
The man was terrified and began to babble and stammer. “We’re just jesting with him we didn’t mean anything. Let me go.”
“Lies. Tell the truth,” Iris ordered.
Rik stepped up and twisted the man’s ear hard, “before I cut your throat.”
The man put up his hands in terror as the others circled him. “We were told we’d get fifty credits if we could get his square.”
“You’re too late he already lost it,” Iris glanced at Rik, “but word has it that it’s recovered.” Rik’s eyes widened.
The man looked deflated, frightened and pleaded, “please let me go. I am poor. I needed the credits to feed my family. I just wanted to rob him. I am not the one with the knife.”
Rik looked at him sitting in the mud. “Let me just kill him.”
Iris looked at Rik serious, cocked her head. “Is that what you would do in your world. We’re not that barbaric.”
“He tried to kill me. I’d be lying here bleeding to death. Do you think he would have stopped to give a damn about me? Let me kill him. I could do that in my world. I can do it real fast; he won’t feel a lot of pain.” Rik winked at her.
Iris contemplated as if running out of options. “Since you’re not of this world, I can’t stop you,” Iris let the man’s head go harshly without missing a beat, “you can kill him and we’ll pretend we didn’t see anything we’ll start walking now, came on guys.” She gestures to her companions.
The man on the ground looked at Rik with a surprised expression. “No, No. Don’t leave me. Please don’t let him kill me. I didn’t know what I was getting myself involved in.”
Rik stared down at the man with rage. “You know what’s going on. Tell me who put you up to this and I might consider sparing your life. If you lie, God help you.”
The man begged at Iris. She put up her hands. “You think I can control him? I can’t,” she pointed at Rik, “he’s not from here. He comes from a brutal world where their god is jealous. He kills all the time sometimes twice in a day especially if he hasn’t had a dol-ve,” she shifted her stare to Rik, “did you have your dol-ve today?”
“No. I haven’t had anything to eat in this ‘gods’ damn place. I am starving.”
Iris turned around. “Shit,” she pointed at the frightened man, “you’re a god damn dead man, cooperate. Dumb ass.”
The man put up his hands in front of him and spoke fast, “Mahja from the church wanted to help us to earn fifty credits for food. We went to see the Overseer. The one on the
The-ok Street corner 589B and got our instructions.”
Rik pressed. “First tell me who is Mahja and then I want the name of this Overseer, whatever the hell that is.”
The man on the ground tried to stand but he was pushed back down. “I don’t know the name of the Overseer,” he said, “never saw him, it was dark last night.”
Rik didn’t hide his disgust. “A man of faith like you lies like the devil. I don’t know what to think about you.”
They stood around looking down on the man. The silence engulfed him as he wrestled with his moral compass. He spoke softly.
“Mahja is my tutor at the Theology Center.”
“I know that place,” Iris said, “heard of the person also.”
The second companion with Iris showed her his hand-held IARI and said, “We got it. The Overseer is Abulanket from the ‘Grizath’ parish region. They are the ones who don’t believe in cities, vaccines, or peace on the planet.”
The man protested and tried to stand up. “Did you share this? This is a private matter. All I wanted to do was rob this…this devil. You have no business getting others involved.”
Rik pushed him back to the ground again and raised his fist. “Shut the hell up.” The man fell backward on his back and laid silent sprawled on the ground.
Iris scanned her IARI. “Yep, we got the tutor located and someone is doing a scan on him now. This entire conversation is being recorded by everyone because they think Rik is ‘actually’ going to kill that little man,” she smiled at Rik, “you’re a convincing actor.”
“Who says I am not going to kill him?” Rik stared down at the prone man, “it’s my right to kill the person who tried to take my life. It’s an honorable thing to do.”
Iris ignored Rik and read from her devise, “plus, it looks like the Overseer is under investigation for beating children in his care,” Iris inspected Rik, “let’s go. You O.K. no knife wounds or anything?”
“Nope,” Rik inspected his arms and body.
They walked away leaving the man sitting on the ground in a state of shock. As they came to the edge of the park Iris introduced the rest of the group. “This is geek extraordinaire Gelka-tec and this is Sergeant Alisteris-okpt from the military strategy group but not related to anything with Dask.” She pointed to Rik, “this is Rik Onanes the man of the hour and chief F-up. His words, not mine,” they all shook hands, “and you met MekTaj-jec already.”
Rik ran his hand through his hair as Iris watched him. “Thanks for coming to my aid. I didn’t know the second guy had a knife or I would have been more careful,” he inspected the group, “you fellas scared him off.”
Iris laughed. “That was fun. You did a pretty good job of handling yourself. We didn’t think you had it in you.”
Rik frowned at the group. “I can fight. I am Lare after all.”
“I thought you told me that the Lares just run away.”
Rik touched her shoulder. “There are some fights you can’t run from.”
She looked at the spot where he touched her as if she could see it. They smiled at each other.
Sergeant Alisteris-okpt sized Rik up. “Military? Is there a branch you associate with?”
Rik thought. “Infantry but I started to pilot due to attrition.”
“Sergeant Alisteris-okpt here, you can call him ‘Ali,’ is not military,” Iris pointed at Ali but directed at Rik to assure him, “he’s different from Dask’s military, you know, the nice people who greeted you this morning. Ali’s role is logistics. It’s a function that gets contracted out. But he gets a commission and rank, lucky man,” Iris playfully punched Ali on the arm.
“What I do in my work gives us,” Ali pointed around the group, “an advantage in information gathering so we can get data before Dask’s military or even before DARP.”
“DARP? What’s that?” Rik moved his eyes to each one in the group, “All this sounds like you’re at war with others when it comes to information. What’s DARP again?” He tried to listen to data in his inner ear translator, but nothing was translating.
“War is a strong word. I’ll show DARP to you when we get back,” Iris said.
Rik finally heard a translation in his inner ear. “Oh, ‘database,’” then he regarded the other two, pointing to each, “what do you two do?”
MekTaj-jec had a well-lived in young-boy’s face and he smirked. “I am not military, so you can trust me. I own a few technology companies and we enhance some products and sometimes we help citizens connect to resources.”
Iris pointed to the entire group. “These are the people who can help you, Rik. Gelka-tec here works for Trar-Tech at the Institute and he consults and teaches in military tactics.”
Rik’s eyebrow shot up, but he cocked his head sideways. “You were both very brave and stupid to chase a man with a knife into that dark area of the park. A crazy knife welding man isn’t going to respond to harsh words before cutting you up and pulling your underwear up your butts.”
Iris nodded ‘no’. Rik sized up the slightly built men. “Obviously, I don’t have the whole story so let me in.”
Iris gestured in turn to each. “MekTaj-jec and Gelka-tec are designers of the human simulation defense programs and they sell an imbedded program that replicates self-defense routines for any situation. The program learns so the more movement and fighting they practice the better the integrated program becomes. And since these guys are super-geeks, they practice all the time on those simulators.”
MekTaj-jec added. “Our company does a lot of consulting with the military, security and safety companies. It’s been a nice asset for those service providers,” MekTaj-jec turned his head and pointed to a small square chip near his ear, “we place the chip here so it can access nerve endings leading to the brain.”
Rik inspected the spot. “Ouch. Did that hurt when it was installed? Does it ever crash?”
MekTaj-jec and Gelka-tec looked at each other confused.
Iris held up a finger. “‘Crash’, I got this,” she tapped on her device, “major systems fail that results in non-function of the central processing unit; to hit a stationary wall without a gavitaic inhibitor resulting in damaging consequences to machine or body; to fall off a chair to the floor after drinking,” she frowned. “Which one of these do you mean?”
“The last one,” Rik said.
They all frowned as they tried to respond to his question.
Gelka-tec put his hand on his chin. “No, I’ve never experienced a ‘crash’ like that, I think these are fairly stable. I am confused.”
Rik smiled and looked at Iris and she said, “he is so messing with us.” Iris changed the topic. “Rik, are you hungry? Do you want dinner?”
Rik almost shouted. “Gods I thought you would never ask. I searched for some energy bars, but Neil has them. I thought maybe I could walk around and find a store or something to eat near the river, but I got turned around. I was even looking in trash cans.”
“Good luck with that,” Gelka-tec said, “food is recycled and re-distributed, we never throw away food. You need to take it from the collection bins before it is transferred to the recyclers. But that is considered theft.”
Rik pushed out a tight embarrassed smile. “Good to know for next time.”
The group broke up and Rik and Iris walked the rest of the way back to her flat.
Chapter Ten
Iris stood and moved around in the small space as she spoke from her kitchen. “This will take about three gaml-ites.”
“O.K. that’s not too long, right?” Rik felt his rumbling stomach.
Moments later she returned with two steaming plates of food, placed them down and handed Rik a napkin and utensil. The food was served on white plates with a purplish red potato-sized tuber in the middle. The tuber had spiny insect-like legs protruding and was bleeding a reddish-purple juice. On the side, a thick slice of bread and green vegetables. Iris got up and then returned with drinks. Each glass was fluid to the top with a purple fluid and a leaf floated at the bottom of the glass. Rik sipped the drink and savored it and then drank most of the glass in one gulp. He picked at the tuber unsure and then tasted a small piece, nodding his head in a positive motion and then ate ravenously. “Oh, this is good. I’ve had something like this before. I am starved.”
“I can see. When was the last time you had a meal?” Iris asked between bites realizing she was famished as well, “you can shallow before answering,” she pointed at him with her fork.
“It’s complicated to respond to that. Maybe three of your cycles of suns light in this timeline but from where I cam
e from in the universe, it’s probably a long time. If you want a Da-earra day, it was Thurskday. The invasion was Bridayl morning and I missed breakfast.”
Iris chewed and pointed her fork at him again, “You know, I don’t understand you, but I am going with it. The translators will catch up. You’re saying there are two timelines?” she thought, “and Bridayl and Thurskday are daytime sun cycle periods.”
“Yes. There are multiple gravity-centric timelines because there are billions of large bodies in space producing significant gravitational forces that distort a portion of time called Standard Garbmter. It’s waves of time in a configuration of vortices, concaves, and elliptical configurations all dependent upon the interaction of G-forces in space. We’re in one elliptical system that you share with Da-earra but as best as I can tell a mere eight hundred fifty-nine light-years from here is one of the primary pulsating giants. It’s blue and white and time shifts significantly near this system in multiple waves that may even impact this time now.”
“Blue and white? Is that star the primary to five massive stars around the supergiant?”
Rik’s head rose like a prairie dog. “Yes, it’s called Reginal which means the ‘pole that one balances on.’”
“You’re speaking about a hydrogen giant in the Gregam system about eight hundred forty-five light-years from here. We call it O-567D or Begatin which means the ‘anchor of god.’”
Rik sat back and enjoyed the conversation and his meal. “On Da-earra they called it ‘the foot of god’, Rigeela,”
“You said people in the harrow worlds might almost speak the same language. That’s interesting,” Iris thought, her glass halfway to her lips.
Rik watcher her face then re-focused on his meal, “You’re a good cook.”
She pointed to the food. “Leftovers.”
Rik ate most of his food. “This is good. What is this?”
She pointed to his plate. “That's Grit-ar-roo and Recam-seven vegetables and Gertar bread that we need to eat before it goes stale.”
“Yum. Wait,” Rik pushed his food around with his fork, “this Gritaroo something,” Rik indicated his half-eaten food with his fork, “this isn’t something nasty like bug intestines, right?”
