by Aer-ki Jyr
He’d kept in touch with his family and a few of his friends via video messaging and a few chats when he had the time…he was, after all, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and several time zones off from Indiana, so downtime for him was sleep time for his parents, but his sister, who was now a college freshman, had a bit more liberal schedule, or lack thereof, and had been available for a few 4 am chats.
They all seemed the same, whereas he had drastically changed, and they’d noticed it too. His old friends were chummy enough, but he found himself disliking their mindsets and habits…belatedly realizing that he’d been the same way prior to joining Star Force, which didn’t sit well with him. They had no sense of purpose, no mission, no nothing…their lives revolved around jokes, partying, and basically nothing all wrapped up in what they thought was a very hilarious and entertaining existence.
It now seemed petty, boring, and disgusting to Paul, though he never let it show. They were his old friends after all, and he was still loyal to them, but he knew that they wouldn’t be hanging out if and when he ever got back home. His family too seemed…dull. He was fond of them, especially his sister, but the truth was he had outgrown them, and that wasn’t something he had expected to have happen.
He didn’t regret it…not at all. He loved what he was doing and the growth he had attained, but oddly he felt sorry for them. As if their lives were empty, hollow…or maybe shallow was the word. He knew in an instant that he could never go back to that lifestyle, yet they seemed quite content with it, even happy.
Happy now seemed like a foreign concept to Paul. Everything revolved around what needed to be done, and ‘happy’ didn’t have parameters which could be studied or defined. It was abstract, and the one thing Star Force didn’t deal with was the abstract. They made a point of taking concepts that appeared abstract and breaking them down into tangible components. Everything had a reason, a function, a place in the universe. What was confusing, simply had yet to be understood. There were no paradoxes, simply a lack of sufficient logic. Mysteries were to be unraveled, questions were to be answered. The sheer idea of asking a question without wanting to know the answer now baffled Paul, whereas in the past it hadn’t.
As he thought through this and other things laying on his bed back in his quarters that night, one question above all kept popping into mind, hilariously so.
What’s your favorite color???
It was such a simple question, but one without an answer. In the past he would have said ‘clear’ just to be a smart ass, but to be honest he never really had a favorite color, or food, or music…everything had its own value, some better for some circumstances and not so much in others. That simplistic viewpoint that he seemed to have been born with had been honed into an analytical weapon by Star Force, so much so that the question now bothered him. What was a ‘favorite’ anyway? How do you define a ‘favorite?’
It was a nonsensical term, as many others were in mainstream society. ‘Opinion’ was another. What the hell was it, really? If it’s not rooted in facts, what’s the point? Like a favorite color, a person can have an opinion on anything with no reason at all…and if there is no reason behind it, isn’t it then, by definition, pointless?
Then again, Paul did have ‘favorites’ but those always had an underlying reason. His favorite weapon, favorite shirt, favorite shoes, favorite game…each of which he could describe the functional benefits of and how they were better than the other options, but the idea of having a ‘favorite’ with no rhyme or reason just annoyed the hell out of him.
By the end of the night he had traced the annoyance back to its source…with it being how much of Human society were liars, and how that deceit had infected virtually everything it touched. Politics, education, religion, sports, science…most of it was based on lies, dressed up as ‘opinion’ in one form or another, which led to…absolutely nothing. It angered Paul the most to realize that all the problems with society and his country that he’d grown up with being labeled ‘unfixable’ actually had simplistic solutions. People simply didn’t want to solve the problems, because it meant taking a long hard look in the mirror and seeing the truth for what it was…because only once you had the truth could you break down the problem and start to work the angles.
Paul also began to see, for the first time, how different Star Force was from the rest of the planet. Davis had created it from scratch and accomplished things that everyone else had declared impossible, whether it be economically, financially, or politically…and he’d proved them wrong time and again simply by studying the problem, breaking it down, and addressing each piece of the puzzle.
Which is what everyone else should have been doing…but they didn’t, and now that Paul could see that, it galled him how pathetic Earth really was. They were fighting an impossible fight, just hoping to be able to survive against an enemy that could wipe them out in the blink of an eye if they so chose, and Earth society was so inept that they were bickering over imaginary problems that could never be solved…but ones that an open minded 3 year old could see through.
People seemed to not only be the victims of liars and cheats, but complicit in the corruption at some level. It was like they knew, subconsciously at least, that what they were espousing wasn’t true because they deliberately avoided situations where their assertions would be busted…but in order to avoid them they had to know they existed, and if they knew they existed why hadn’t they junked their obviously erroneous notions?
Paul had to conclude that people wanted the lies because it allowed them to gain power, leverage, or self-delusion of some kind which they found advantageous.
His own family wasn’t excluded from it either. His mom especially, who more often than not would complain about her weight and how bad sugar-rich foods were messing up her body…then she’d go out and eat more of them, only to complain again later. If they were bad for you, then why would you eat them at all?
Once Paul had begun to learn a lot more about training and how the body actually worked he broached the subject with his mom during one of their video chats when she offhandedly complained about how chocolate was a hideous creation that was making her current diet a nightmare. Paul quickly broke down the problem for her, explaining how the food wasn’t important, but rather the metabolic balance had to be corrected before the excess weight would come off. He went on to tell her how much sugar-rich foods he consumed per day, citing that if that was really the problem he would be the size of a house by now.
The response he got was depressing. His mom totally blew off his comments, recited some quips about him understanding when he got older, then changed the subject, which really annoyed Paul, almost to the point of anger. If she really felt there was a problem worth talking about, why wasn’t she seeking a solution? He’d just given it to her on a silver platter and she’d rejected it as foolishness…no, worse than that, she’d completely dodged. If she thought he was wrong she would have argued the point, but by dodging it meant she knew that she was wrong, yet still stuck to the position that chocolate was evil and causing all her problems.
Looking back on things, Paul realized she had always been that way, he’d just never thought it all the way through before…and that saddened him. He could feel a wide gap between himself and his family forming, and in a way it felt like he was losing them, but there was no way to go back and unlearn what he had learned, nor did he want to. He wanted to help them, share his new skills and knowledge, but they didn’t really want it.
On some level he accepted that it was their choice and their lives to live out the way they wanted, but he was also loyal to them and didn’t want to stand by and watch them come to harm. After all, he was training to fight a war to save the planet…why should he potentially lose his mom to a heart attack over the villainization of chocolate?
She wasn’t really fat, though. She just liked to complain, so there wasn’t any immediate health problems, but if she and his dad and sister, let alone all his other relatives, weren’
t training and instead leading stagnant lives it would kill them eventually…so logically Paul should be able to solve the problem by teaching them how to train.
Problem was, they seemed to like things as they were, and even though this whole conversation was mainly between Paul and himself, he knew that they wouldn’t listen to him even if he flew back to Indiana and gave each and every one of them a thorough lecture on the realities of life and how they needed to change things ASAP.
How do you save someone who sabotages themself? Because then they are their own enemy, and you can’t destroy that which you are trying to save.
That question was one that had been gnawing at Paul for some time, and only now really crystallized in his mind. It sickened him that he had at least some of the answers to the problems that the people he cared about needed…but they didn’t want to hear them.
He figured it was the same basic problem that Star Force faced when dealing with the various nations on the planet…they had the ability to help them solve a number of problems, both in space and on the surface, but politics always seemed to get in the way, and he wondered if the various countries really wanted to solve the problems their populations faced, or if they were only interested in paying lip service to garner…whatever. He didn’t care about learning the ways of the corrupt, he was a problem solver, and while one needed to acknowledge that stupidity existed, trying to find a logical reason for it was the ultimate paradox.
But then again, paradoxes could be solved, so a part of him could never quite give up on stupid people.
He was realizing, as he lay in bed starting to drift off to sleep, that his biological family was no longer his real family. He had become part of Star Force, more than just signing a contract and working a ‘job.’ They were united in the quest to save the planet, and his teammates had shown themselves to be more like Paul than his own parents and sister were, and while he would never completely give up on them, he was grateful to have found his real family and his real peers.
And for that, he owed Davis big time.
7
When Paul woke up the next day he got in a morning run, showered, ate breakfast, then met up with the rest of the trainees in the same amphitheater that they’d met up in their first day in Atlantis, when Davis had explained the threat of the V’kit’no’sat and how they were to be the tip of the spear in Earth’s resistance, and hopefully survival, against the implacable enemy. Now they were assembled again, but it wasn’t Davis that was at the podium, it was Wilson.
The head trainer stood alone, which was odd. During previous briefings he was almost always accompanied by two or three other trainers.
“Today you begin your final challenge, but unlike all the others, this one will not be scored…it will not be retried…you have one and only one opportunity to succeed.”
That immediately set the trainees on edge. Everything they had been put through prior to now had been based off a learning model, where failure was expected multiple times as one adapted to the challenge at hand. A zero-tolerance approach was something completely different for them, and it worried Paul immediately.
What would happen if they didn’t pass? Would they wash out after two and a half years of work, all because of one challenge? That didn’t feel right at all.
“You begin now,” Wilson said, surprising everyone as he tapped a key on the podium and a hidden half door opened beneath the viewscreens behind him, sliding aside to review a one meter high dimly lit interior room or tunnel, Paul couldn’t be sure which.
“Battle can come at any time, any place, under any circumstances. You must be ready and able to improvise on the spot if you are to survive, and now is no exception. Form a line on the stage, you must go through individually.”
Paul exchanged glances with Jason as they stood. Neither of them understood what this was all about, but they did as instructed and filed up on stage behind eight of the others while the rest waited in the seats for room to clear.
Yori was the first in line, but Wilson held up a hand to stop him as he began to stoop down to crawl through the opening.
“Your mission is to get to the finish. If and when you do, your graduation from this program will be instantaneous. Good luck,” the Olympic gold medalist said, stepping aside to let Yori through.
Paul watched as he disappeared inside and the door closed behind him…a moment later it opened again and Wilson nodded to Tom to proceed.
“Spacing?” Jason wondered.
“I think they’re splitting us up,” Paul whispered back. “A few seconds stagger isn’t worth closing a door for.”
“Whatever it is, keep your eyes open.”
“You think our friend is going to show up?”
“I don’t know…they’re sending us in unequipped,” Jason commented as they moved up the quickly diminishing line wearing only their casual blue striped white uniforms. For challenges they almost always wore skintight bodysuits designed for maximum agility and high durability. Granted, their casual clothes were functional enough but the shoes they wore were little more than enclosed sandals, good enough to lounge around and travel in, but not designed for anything more than that.
“They always want to keep us guessing,” Paul said as he was suddenly third back in line. “And I’m totally drawing a blank on this one.”
“Same here,” Jason said from behind him.
“See you on the other side.”
“Live long and kick ass,” Jason whispered the amended Vulcan farewell as Emily disappeared inside, leaving Paul next in line.
The door slid closed behind her and Paul walked up next to Wilson, eyeing him closely but the man’s expression was stone. Whatever was going on, he wasn’t giving away any hints. When the door slid into the wall again, revealing what Paul now saw as a small tunnel, he stepped down onto his knees and crawled inside, leaving behind the brightly lit amphitheater for the octagonal tunnel with tiny orange running lights.
When the door closed behind him the lights seemed to brighten and he saw that the tunnel dead ended a few meters up. He crawled ahead to a rectangular slab ringed with a solid orange glowing trim. Once his body was completely inside the outline he fell onto his shoulder as the panel abruptly lifted up from the tunnel.
Paul glanced down at his feet and realized that the ceiling had actually been the top of a cubicle, identical in dimension to the tunnel, which was now traveling at high speed to somewhere else in the city. He felt his momentum shift again, this time going laterally as he was knocked against the side of the coffin-like chamber, then after a few more seconds of travel he came to rest with the panel in front of him sliding up to reveal another adjunct to the tunnel.
This one was about the same size as his ‘car’ but inside it on the floor was an opening with an active water pool that dipped down into a sharply descending, enclosed waterslide that led to who knows where.
Paul groaned. “Why did it have to be water?” he mumbled as he twisted about in the narrow tunnel and brought his legs out in front of him, then crab crawled forward into the pool, soaking his shoes and uniform. The water tried to pull him forward, but he kept a firm grasp on the side lips until he was situated, with his calves hanging off into the downspout of the dark tube. The orange running lights in the tunnel were not present in the waterslide.
Paul let go of the sides and was immediately pulled forward. Before he felt himself drop off the edge he leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest with his right hand coming up and pinching close his nose…then he fell down through wet blackness.
He felt several twists and turns, losing his mental placement and having no idea which direction he was traveling…then all of a sudden his butt lost contact with the waterslide and he went air born for a split second before falling feet first into a pool of water.
His head went under, but his feet quickly hit the bottom and he stood up, pushing his head back up above the waterline which ran about even with his armpits. The edge of the pool was outlined in th
e glowing orange bands that stood out in stark contrast to the otherwise pitch black environment, reminding him a bit of Tron as he pulled himself out of the pool and climbed up onto dry ground, dripping streams of water out of his soaked uniform as he looked around.
His eyes quickly adjusted to the darkness, but it still took him a while to define the edges of a circular room with the pool set dead center. No doors or lights were present, and the only illumination in the chamber was the single thread of orange light outlining the water.
The only sound audible was the water spilling out of the waterslide exit in the low ceiling. Paul reached up and touched it less than half a meter above his head. It was smooth and cold to the touch, having no texture or definition of any kind. He let his fingers linger there as he walked forward and found the wall, where the ceiling curved down through the transition without any seam.
Paul walked around the circumference of the room once, hand on the wall the entire time but coming into contact with nothing…not a door, window, switch, ridge, or bump. The room was entirely smooth, with no apparent way out. He made two more circuits, feeling low then high, but still came up with nothing.
Then he eyed the pool of water.
Figuring that was the only place left to look, Paul walked over to the edge and laid down on his stomach, bringing his eyes directly over the illumination strip which now seemed painfully bright only a few inches away. He felt beneath the waterline along the inside of the wall until he noticed a tiny bright spot underneath the falling water. At first he thought it was just a reflection from the edge lights, but after a moment of scrutiny decided it was too constant to be from the churning water and gave it a closer look.
