“Seems like an easy job,” I admitted as I tossed my bag onto the bed. Someone had been kind enough to drop it off outside my new room. I took a quick look around the room and shrugged. “A bit overpaid for the assignment, if you really want to know.”
“No vacation,” Gerry reminded me. “No way out. You're pretty much stuck here for a year.”
I shrugged a second time. “Must be rough for some. Me? I enjoy the solitude.”
“I don't think you understand,” Gerry said as he walked over to the small desk and pulled out the only chair in the room. He sat down and leaned back. His dark brown eyes bore into mine. “There is no escape from someone you don't like here. You have to see them every day. Every. Damn. Day. Sure, you can come back to your room. But even then, it's not like you can jet off to a vineyard for a day trip to escape from this crap. It's not as bad as living on a Navy ship while crossing the Threshold, but it's pretty bad.”
I opened my mouth to say something but stopped. He was right, of course. Plus, I didn't have the experience Gerry did, so it would be pointless to say that I would be perfectly fine. Plus, I never really had to deal with being in a Marine Expeditionary Unit and stuck on a Navy ship for months on end as it traveled between worlds. A random quirk of my enlistment, one that I was both fortunate and remiss to have avoided.
Instead of arguing, I changed the subject. “How do the single guys cope?”
“Lots of downloads,” Gerry said. “They always try to hit on the civilians we're here to guard, but that's not happening. We have female security contractors here, but there's a strict no fraternization rule that I vigorously enforce. When I catch them.”
“That's rough,” I pointed out. “Those must be interesting discussions when you do catch them.”
“I think I've given the speech once or twice.”
“That's a lot less than I thought it would be.”
“You're single, according to the file I got on you,” Gerry said. “Divorced?”
“Widowed.”
“I'm sorry.”
“So am I.”
“What happened?”
I stared hard at the far wall, thinking back. It had been a long while since I had talked about Concy with anyone not related to me. That particular wound had not yet had time to scar over, but it didn't hurt nearly as bad now as it had five years ago.
“Long story.”
“I've got time,” Gerry spread his hands. “One of my jobs here is to make sure all of my employees are mentally suitable for this sort of work. Isolation and monotony tends to make the mind wander quite a bit, and that could take the emotions of anyone in the wrong direction. So…if you're up for it, I'm all ears.”
“You remember when the People's Republic of Uganda fell awhile back, right?” I asked. It had been all over the news at the time, but public opinion – and public attention – had quickly turned towards other wars, different news stories. “When the Caliphate of Sokoto took over and all hell broke loose?”
“I remember. That was a hell of a messy civil war,” Gerry nodded. “There were an estimated sixteen million killed or displaced? Still got some hotspots flaring up even now. The US and the UN have deployed peacekeepers there half a dozen times or so since.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Well, my wife was from Uganda originally before immigrating to the states when she was ten. Left quite a bit of family behind when her mother and brothers packed up at the outset of the war. They weren't rich, not by our standards at least, but they had money squirreled away just in case. Her mother was…a bit prescient when it came to predicting if and when a government was about ready to fall. She would have made one hell of an election analyst.
“Concy was…hell, I don't know. She was special. I was a scrawny bookworm who got picked on a lot. She was this beautiful, exotic girl who seemed to enjoy hanging out with me. She was assigned to be my lab partner in middle school and we hit it off. We both loved reading, and she knew more about the classic writers than I did. We went from friends to being in a relationship, a strong one. Got some weird looks but who cared, right? We were young, in love, and I had it all planned out. I couldn't get into college – no money, my family was fairly poor – so I joined the Corps. We married right before I left for Parris Island so she could get my health benefits. My parents weren't sure about it – not because she was a foreigner or that we were too young, but they thought that she would be too traumatized from the war to acclimate and that we were rushing into it, plus I would be leaving her alone so soon after we got married. My folks may have been poor but they sure as hell weren't stupid. They were just overly cautious when it came to me. Extremely protective.
“You have my files, so you know I was assigned to the Second Marine Division. I found base housing for us. Concy was prepared to move in with me when news came that some family she still had in Uganda were in some serious shit. Like, in danger of being enslaved or executed because they had found themselves on the wrong side of the Caliphate. When she heard, she completely lost it and flew home. She had to get them out before anything bad happened to them.”
“Oh no…” Gerry's face was filled with sorrow and understanding. “She never came back?”
“She got caught in one of those religious dragnets where they whip women who are caught in public without their husbands or a male family member escorting her. They flipped out when they found out that she had come home from the US to save her family. They swore to make an example out of her. And they did.” I closed my eyes. I hated crying in front of people. Five years after the fact and it still pained me to even think about her death. “I heard about it and almost went AWOL to kill all of the bastards. Had a CSM literally drag me back on base so I wouldn't be counted as AWOL. He beat the shit out of me too, after roll call. I couldn't deal with anything at the time. Shelved all the pain and emotion for later. Broke down once in the barracks and just let it all out. Almost ended everything by eating a bullet. Again, the CSM kicked my ass and got my head back on straight. Asked me what Concy would think of me if she'd found out I had tried to take the coward's way out. Made me stop, made me think. So instead of ending the pain, I focused all of it into being the best Marine I could be. Got picked up for special ops a few years later, then my unit was sent to Soma to quell the civil war there…and here we are.”
“Damn,” Gerry said as I watched sympathy and…something else fill his eyes. “You probably suffer more PTSD from that than you ever could from being on the run from AIRS rebels.”
“That'd be a pretty good guess,” I agreed. “It hurts, but it's not nearly as bad as it was. It's worse when I think about what could have been. If I focus on what we had, it's sad, but manageable. So I lock on to the good times, like high school and stuff. Summer on the lake. Going up to Wisconsin to go snowboarding. Things that remind me of living.”
Gerry stood up from the chair. He stuck his hand out. Uncertain, I accepted it.
“You're going to be fine, John,” Gerry told me in a firm tone. “You'll fit in well here. Duty roster will be sent to you via PDA later tonight. I'll give you a day to get adjusted before you start your shifts. Get some rest and some food. Those are two things that we can offer down here that beat anything you got on Soma, that's for damn sure.”
Pretty sure the strangeness of this place beats Soma any day of the week, I didn't say as Gerry walked to the door. Instead, I said, “I'm glad I'm here. I think I'll fit in well.”
“So do I,” Gerry said and left the room. I waited a few moments before closing the door behind him. I leaned forward and pressed my head against the cool plasteel surface of the door. After a moment, I turned back and walked over to my bed. I shoved the heavy travel bag onto the floor. I crawled on top of the covers and didn't even bother to kick my shoes off. I was asleep in seconds, dreams of a smiling face looking down upon my own from the night of our wedding.
Chapter Five
It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life for me–
And I'm feelin'
good.
–Nina Simone, “Feeling Good”
Gerry gave me some time to acclimatize myself to life in the station. Over the next week, I fell into a routine – I’d wake up, exercise in the gym, shower and shave, then report for my shift. Initially, I thought a twelve-hour shift would be dull and repetitive, but further exploration of the station changed my opinion. I discovered that the fascinating creatures who inhabited the lake and rose up from The Well made the time pass by quickly.
As intrigued as I was with them, it appeared that the creatures were even more interested in me. Multiple times while I was moving through the upper galley, I found that the aliens had banded together and were following my progress and using The Well to dive into the deeper levels of the station when I moved to a lower level. I wasn't entirely certain why they were interested in me, but some of the other guards had taken to calling me the “Kraken Whisperer.”
It wouldn't have mattered so much if not for the inordinate amount of attention I received from the scientists because of all this.
“In all seriousness, John, do you not realize how important this development is?” Dr. Marillac asked me for the umpteenth time a month later as we walked through the Gallery together. Quite a few of the krakens seemed to be lounging about in their specialized pods, basking in the artificial lights. The area had been designed as a lounge for the scientists, but the discovery of the krakens had turned it into dual-purpose section.
I had tried to simply shrug off the scientists at first, but Doctor Marillac was insistent. I'd finally given in and allowed her to pester me and ask me seemingly pointless questions. I had been reticent about answering but eventually I started replying in more than one syllable words.
“They recognize you, John, and actively communicate with one another that you're here,” she said as she folded her arms across her chest. She looked at me with a look that was a strange combination of annoyance and excitement. “This development puts their QE at potential human levels.”
“Don't crows do the same thing?” I asked, trying to deflect her interest. The scientist was undeterred, however.
“Not like this. Crows call out for each other with distinctive cries,” she explained. “The krakens don't communicate that way. We thought their wings changing in color tone was indicative of a language we hadn't deciphered yet, but now we're thinking that it's body language and their real language is more empathic and they can detect this in others. It's the only explanation to how they call their brethren outside The Well to come into the facility and look at you.”
“Empathic…telepathic?” I stared at her and shifted my feet uncomfortably at the idea of aliens in my head. I scratched my chin to hide my unease as I recalled some book I’d read a few years ago. “No. Empathic is being able to feel…emotions, right?”
“Correct.” Dr. Marillac clapped her hands together and smiled broadly. She seemed immensely pleased with my apparent grasp of what she was trying to explain. “We're beginning to gather enough evidence to prove that they are both sentient and empathic beings, which we can bring forth to the UN for official recognition in accordance with UN Resolution 9012. Can you imagine it, though? Aliens, real aliens!”
“The UN is going shit themselves,” I muttered as I thought about the various geopolitical power struggles within the UN and the impact such an announcement would make. “I bet most of the countries will veto it, since the US and her allies have funded almost all of the research here.”
“No, I was thinking of the fact that we've scoured the known regions of space for signs of intelligent life, and it's been in our own backyard the entire time,” Dr. Marillac said, her tone slightly deflated.
“Oh. That too, yeah.”
“I never understand you soldier types,” she threw her hands up in the air in exasperation. “You march around with your assault rifles—”
“A tranq gun is hardly an assault rifle…”
“—and your battle armor—”
“The impact absorption shirt is nothing more than an extremely thin layer of pillow to prevent me from getting punched hard enough to damage my internal organs…”
“—and when the greatest scientific discovery in the modern era is found, all you can think of is how a global cooperative of nations is going to try and shut us down,” she complained. “Just such a typical attitude of a warmonger.”
“Hey now,” I looked at her, surprised at the outburst. While excitable, I'd never seen the doctor angry before. Nor had she ever shown any sign of being anti-military. Goes to show you that you never really know someone until they get worked up. She blinked and looked away, confusion in her eyes.
“I'm sorry,” she apologized. “I have no idea where that came from.”
“It's okay, ma'am,” I said in a neutral tone. I rubbed the bridge of my nose, thinking. I did not need the lead scientist at the best job I'd ever had pissed off at me. I also didn't want to lose this job. Though I was pretty sure that I had not done anything wrong, I needed to make certain things remained on the up and up. That meant I had to make a sacrifice. “If you like, I can spend some of my downtime in the Gallery with the kraken soon.”
“You don't have to,” Doctor Marillac shook her head. Her tone, though, told me all that I needed to know. Interacting with the kraken would make all of the scientists on the station happy and would give them more time to research the alien creatures. More time to test their hypothesis, and potentially create the greatest scientific achievements since the splitting of the atom.
Plus, it would probably keep Doctor Marillac from going off on me again, which was even better.
“It's fine, ma'am,” I told her in what I hoped was a completely convincing tone. “I have plenty of downtime to spare.”
“I do apologize for my attitude,” the scientist looked back at me. Her eyes were alight with excitement, though her face was contrite. “I've been feeling a little under the weather lately. Headaches and such. It's making me irritable.”
“I'm off shift in four hours, ma'am,” I said after a quick glance at the digital clock on the wall. It was set to match UN headquarters on Earth, which was set to UTC–4. Or, I thought as I mentally converted the numbers, two in the afternoon. “I'll be at the Gallery around 1800 hours, ma'am.”
“I do appreciate this, John,” Doctor Marillac smiled at me. Her eyes clouded briefly as she thought about it. “That's six in the evening, correct?”
“Yes, ma'am.”
“Perfect!” she clapped her hands once more. “This will be a terrific scientific opportunity! I can hardly wait!”
“Neither can I,” I lied.
Women can be downright terrifying.
ঠ
I changed up my route a bit to make the Gallery my last stop, about thirty minutes before shift’s end. I hoped that whatever mental phone tree they used would have a head start, and maybe I could get away sooner.
I had to admit that while the scientists drove me nuts, the kraken were pretty interesting. Watching them feed was a bit disconcerting to see, but their swimming and playing evoked a subtle memory of my own childhood playing with friends. Of course, that led to other memories that were more bittersweet than anything else.
The Gallery was quiet. It was early still, and I had expected someone to be in the room when I arrived, but it had been surprisingly empty. I sat down on one of the benches in the room and watched as two of the kraken brushed against the station, their alien fingers touching the plasteel as they passed. They pivoted and swam back, their bodies changing colors as they moved. A varying array of pinks and purples covered their underbellies, changing rapidly back and forth. I chuckled as one of the kraken turned a deep blue for a moment. I could almost imagine a couple arguing about something and the man getting put in his place. I laughed at the idea of my dad trying to back his way out of an argument with my mom and failing miserably.
“Good luck with that, buddy,” I told the kraken who had turned blue.
Both kraken sudden
ly stopped swimming and turned towards me. For the barest of moments, I felt as though the aliens were staring through me, peering into the depths of my heart and soul. I shivered and looked away, trying to appear as it the kraken's movements had not bothered me in the slightest.
I was fairly certain I wouldn’t have fooled anybody in the slightest had they been there.
“Stop it,” I whispered as I watched the kraken out of the corner of my eye. “That's creepy as hell.”
My PDA chirped. Saved by the bell. I glanced down at the screen—it was Poole. I think. It could have been Lockhart.
“John,” he said. “Report to Control for prisoner transport.”
“Transport? I haven’t been trained on that yet. Besides, shift ends in less twenty minutes.”
“Won’t take long, and you gotta start sometime,” Poole (or Lockhart) said, before being shoved out of the way by Lockhart (or Poole). “Consider it oh jay tee, rookie.” He was replaced by the first guy.
“Knock that off. You two are making me dizzy.” On the job training, I translated internally. Well, it could be worse. People could be trying to kill me with artillery.
Twin grins filled the screen. I sighed and made a silent promise to get their names tattooed on their foreheads once the contract at the station was up.
“Roger Control, will be there as soon as I can. Out.” I clicked off and stowed the PDA. I could still feel the two Kraken watching me. I met their gaze and gave them my best All-is-right-because-I’m-A-Marine grin. “Duty calls. You two play nice.” I pointed at the kraken I’d designated as the husband. “And trust me, buddy, just take out the trash. And tell her she’s got a nice butt or something. Chicks dig that.”
I would’ve sworn the alien gave me a thumbs up in reply.
It only took a few minutes to get to Control, most of the time taken by the elevator ride. I stepped out and walked towards the desk. One of the Things stood up as I approached. Behind him was Neil Frandsen, another guard that everyone else called Bigfoot for some reason. I’d only spoken to him in passing since he typically wasn’t in my shift rotation. He seemed like a decent enough guy.
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