“Army, like I said,” I replied.
“What is a Navy or Army?” I demanded of my entourage.
“Well, it sounds to me like the Navy goes around in boats and the Army doesn’t,” Drexil said, “Tell her you were hitching a ride though. You were going somewhere that required a boat.”
“I was hitching a ride on a Navy boat,” I said, “It was a horrible time for me if you don’t mind me saying. I really don’t want to go into much detail.”
I decided that a sad expression could leave them wondering if I’d lost a friend or a family member in the sinking. If she had any real manners like our own people, she’d let it rest.
“Japs?” John asked.
I looked at him, waiting for the rest of his sentence. I had no idea what a Jap was and I was hoping he had a little more to offer. My non-answer must have been enough though because he nodded, then looked down at his plate.
“The war ended two years ago, John,” Maisy said, “What’s your last name, boy?”
“I’m going to kill her, Steine! Let me have control of our body!” Drexil screamed in my head, “Let me kill the ugly slob.”
“Stop it, Drex,” Rewan said, “Steine, just give her any last name you choose, then tell her she doesn’t know anything. If we were in the military and she wasn’t, she has no right to tell us that we didn’t just survive a sinking boat. Stick to the story and don’t budge.”
“Your war ended two years ago, ma’am,” I replied with a smirk, “There’s still things going on out in the rest of our world that they feel ‘Maisy doesn’t need to know’.”
Her expression changed to one of disgust. I maintained my smirk, then winked at her the same way John winked at me earlier. She gasped, then pushed her plate away and rose from the table.
“Breakfast is at 6:00, and that’s only assuming we have milk and eggs by then,” she said, storming from the room.
“Congratulations Cyan. You made it through dinner alive,” John said with his trademark chuckle, “But don’t feel too special. You got the same treatment every stranger gets.”
“But why is she like that?” I asked.
“I’ll tell you about it someday. She’s definitely got her reasons,” John said, patting my shoulder as he rose from his seat, “For now though, I think I should find you a chamber pot and a couple blankets so you can go make yourself comfortable in the barn.”
. . .
The sun, a term John used to refer to the local star, was already sinking beneath the horizon by the time I settled into my new home in the top of the barn. After making the bed, I took the broom from the stables below and swept the thick layer of dust from my dresser and the floor. I waited to turn on the fan until after all the dust that I’d stirred up settled. It offered a nice breeze to the stuffy room.
“A domestic man,” Rewan said, “I’d have never thought that about you.”
“Why, because I’m a detective?” I asked.
“No, because you seemed very…” she began.
“You seemed like a boring, serious, macho, by-the-book, tough guy during our interviewing process,” Drexil finished for her, “Someone who worked all day long, then crashed on an unmade bed night after night, day after day. Boring.”
“Wow,” Rewan said, “And what would you say about me, Drex?”
“I was only finishing your sentence, Rewan,” Drexil said, “But you’re too kind to say what you wanted, so you had to pause to find some lies that would hurt a bit less.”
“Are those the words you’d use to describe me?” I asked, suddenly feeling a bit hurt.
“You can’t hide your feelings, Steine,” Rewan said, “We felt that pain the same time you did.”
“I’m not ashamed to say it hurts that you both thought I was a boring tough guy,” I said, “Just because I don’t smile a lot doesn’t mean I’m boring. Maybe I’m just sad.”
“Where did this conversation even begin anyway?” Drexil asked.
“I made the mistake of cleaning the room,” I replied.
My head was silent all of a sudden. I tossed the broom down the ladder and watched it bounce and land a few feet away. A horse whinnied in one of the stables beneath me. I turned and looked at the decorative white pot that was introduced as my chamber pot. If I understood John correctly, I believe it was expected that I’d relieve myself in this little pot and empty it every morning in the outhouse. I found that quite a bit unappealing and almost a little disgusting.
Thankfully though, this body would not need to “relieve itself” any more than it required food. That thought reminded me that I would need to discharge the food that I’d already pretended to enjoy in the dining room earlier. I brought the chamber pot to my mouth and emptied the contents of my ingestion pocket. Since this body was not equipped with a sense of taste, the release of the chewed-up food was only disgusting if I chose to look at it. I didn’t.
I brought the chamber pot to my small window and opened it. It was almost completely dark now, but since I still had the eyes of my former self in many ways, I could see clearly. Two small rodents scurried beneath my window, freely dancing in a world apparently devoid of predators. On Legacy, rodents of that size were the bottom of the food chain and tended to hide at all hours.
I dumped my chamber pot, offering my undigested food to the field mice. They darted away briefly, then cautiously returned to investigate the trouble beneath my window.
“I’ll bring you more each day if you want,” I whispered, “I’d hate to let food go to waste.”
“Domestic and caring,” Rewan whispered in my head.
“Wait a minute!” Drexil growled, “You’re trying to steal Rewan from me! This is all a ploy.”
“Unbelievable,” I muttered aloud.
“What’s unbelievable, Steine?” Drexil asked.
“You are completely and absolutely unbelievable,” I replied aloud again.
“How’s that? You’re the one who’s constantly making his ‘accidental’ moves on Rewan. You’re the ‘sweet, caring, housekeeping detective’ now and we all know how that looks to a-”
“We’re dead, Drexil!” Rewan inserted, “We’re 100% dead in every aspect. A billion miles away, our actual bodies are decaying beneath the soil right now. What’s Steine going to do? Kiss me? Make love to me?”
“He’s… well, he’s…” Drexil said.
“I’m as dead as you are, Drexil,” I interrupted, “I can’t kiss Rewan here and I can’t kiss her when our mission is over. When we’re done here on Earth, the power systems shut down and our digital selves will cease to exist… forever.”
“Dear god,” he muttered.
“Don’t tell me…” I said.
“You’re right. We’re freaking dead,” he said.
“Come on! We all went through this before we signed up, Drex,” Rewan said, “None of this is news to any of us.”
“I just… somehow I thought…”
“Thought we’d return and join our bodies again?” I asked, “Our original bodies probably died half a century ago.”
“No, I was going to say that I somehow thought I’d see Rewan again one day,” he replied sadly, “And don’t make jokes because I now realize how silly that thought was.”
There was finally a moment of shared silence in my head. I sat on the edge of the bed and looked across the room at my image in the mirror.
“But why?” Rewan asked, “What caused you to think this?”
“Your voice is tied to an image in my mind,” he replied, “I may make a lot of silly statements about how much I’ve secretly loved you, but it’s never been a joke. I’m sorry.”
I wanted to offer them a bit of privacy for what I now realized was a private and delicate conversation, but there was nothing I could do. The best I could offer them was silence and it sounded to me like everyone was offering the same thing. I shut my eyes, wishing I could provoke a reply from Rewan.
“I thought I’d see my family again. Makes no sense, but the
thought entered my mind earlier today,” I offered.
I was greeted again with silence in my head. I opened my eyes and turned on the lamp next to the bed.
“Everybody’s the same,” Rewan said, “You’re all a bunch of inane wimps who punish yourselves and the ones around you.”
“What do you mean?” I asked defensively.
“Supposedly I was pretty when I existed in my own body. And apparently the two of you are fighting for me inside the spiritual realm of this IX unit. Supposedly I was a desired woman,” she said with an audible sigh, “Yet all I ever got were a bunch of subtle smiles and jocular remarks that sounded more derogatory in nature than complimentary.”
At that statement, I also sighed aloud. I was as much an idiot as everyone else I knew. I failed in one of the most important areas of life. I failed in love or at least the pursuit of it.
“I’m sorry,” Drexil said, “More than you’ll ever know, I’m sorry.”
“Same here,” I added, “They should offer a course on this in school.”
“Better yet, they should allow us to share a mind with someone of the opposite sex,” she replied, “Because I know your unspoken feelings just as well as you know mine right now. You can feel the pain of my regrets the same as I feel yours.”
“And that just deepens my own pain,” Drexil said, “Because you’re killing me right now with the realization that you would have truly dated me.”
“And me too, Drexil,” I replied with a laugh, “Don’t just listen to half of her thoughts.”
“Yeah? Give me a time machine right now and I’ll proposition her before you ever get a chance,” Drexil replied, “I’ll marry Rewan.”
“And here we go…” she laughed.
As if choreographed perfectly to intercept our conversation, a hideous squeal came from the direction of the farmhouse. I ran to the window and looked toward the house, but the barn was situated in such a way that I could only see about a quarter of the structure. Whatever had caused that squeal wasn’t in that portion of the house.
“Was that a woman or a machine?” Rewan asked.
I suddenly made out the sound of a few voices and one of those belonged to a female in distress. I leapt from the open window, landing firmly on the grass below. The two field mice scattered, leaving only a few crumbs behind. I ran toward the farmhouse and as I passed the giant pine, I noticed the presence of two lights near the house aimed in my direction.
The angry voices coming from that direction were definitely hindering on the verge of explosion. Whomever those violent words belonged to, they were seconds away from a physical confrontation. I ran faster, but not fast enough to betray my superhuman abilities. It was then that I made out the voice of John.
“I’ll say it again! Get off my property before I call the law,” he shouted.
“I’ll leave the moment your daughter pays me for a shirt and a taillight,” a skinny man near the car shouted.
I stopped between the visitor and the porch where John stood with an unfamiliar woman. I doubted very much that either of them could see me as well as I could see them.
“Called your guard dog, old man?” the skinny man spat.
“John said to get off his property,” I said, pointing toward the road, “Or would you like to lose a few more lights on your vehicle?”
“I’m waiting for you to call the law,” he said, approaching me slowly.
“By the time the law gets here, you’ll be missing a few teeth and I doubt your want to go there,” I said, “Besides, someone as ugly and scrawny as you can’t afford to risk getting any uglier.”
“Nice one, Steine!” Drexil shouted in my ear, “If you feel the need to hit this kid, let me have a few swings.”
“You’re running out of time,” I said, approaching him just as quickly as he approached me.
Soon, we were face-to-face and to my shock, the man wasn’t backing down. I was significantly larger than this man, yet he revealed not an ounce of fear in his dead grey eyes.
“You picked the wrong fight, idiot,” he said before snapping a metallic switch and punching me firmly in the stomach.
I looked down toward my stomach; confused at the way he cupped his fist. It was inverted in such a way that a punch wouldn’t quite do as much damage as if he’d punched straight on.
“Knife,” Rewan said in my head, “He just stabbed you and he’s still holding the weapon.”
“Are you kidding me?” I asked aloud.
“What?” the skinny man sputtered.
“I said ‘are you kidding me’?” I repeated, grabbing his wrist firmly before pulling the long blade from my stomach.
It was fortunate for me that John and his daughter were standing behind me, unaware of the fact that I’d just been fatally stabbed. I didn’t think I’d be so grateful for the dark as I was right now.
“You will leave this property and you’ll never speak a word of this to anyone,” I said, tugging the weapon from his fist and snapping the blade in two.
“It’s… that’s not…”
“Never,” I whispered, “Leave now, or die.”
“Yeah! I think I’d have a heart attack if I saw something like that back home,” Drexil shouted, “Take the pieces of the knife now and eat them in front of him.”
I snickered at that as the man turned and stumbled toward his car. I didn’t even wait for him to start the car before I headed back to the porch where John waited for me.
“What did you say to him?” the stunning woman next to John asked.
“Oh my,” I accidentally spoke aloud.
“I was thinking the same thing, but I wasn’t stupid enough to say it aloud like you just did,” Drexil added.
“Uh, Evie, this is Cyan. He’s my new farmhand and he’ll be staying in the hayloft while he’s here,” John said, apparently looking for a way to break the embarrassing silence, “Cyan, this is my daughter Evie.”
The vehicle backed down the driveway, kicking up plenty of gravel as the angry visitor made his hasty exit.
“Honored,” I said, taking the hand she offered, “I fail.”
“You fail?” Rewan asked.
“You fail?” Evie asked.
“I’m searching for the words, but I fail,” I said, releasing her hand from my grasp.
Evie smiled while John put an arm around her. John cocked an eyebrow at me, then nodded toward the barn.
“They all say the same thing, my friend,” John said, looking a bit displeased with me, “But eventually they find the words and they’re all wrong. You should probably head to the barn.”
“Oh, and it was nice to meet you, Cyan. And thank you for getting rid of Rodney,” she said.
I nodded, then turned and headed to the barn. Behind me, John let Evie into the house, then turned back to the driveway. I would discover later that he caught the glimmer of something shiny in the grass. He stepped off the porch and closed the distance between himself and the glimmering object. He knelt down and picked up the broken blade. Lying next to it was the remainder of a crumpled switchblade.
“Impossible,” he whispered.
LEGACY
207 AfEl (After Elix)
The torch blazed on for several minutes, blasting its flames continually at the thin white sheet. The yellow and orange tongues licked furiously at the white sheet until the governor ordered it to stop.
“That’s quite enough, Rescil. But I don’t quite understand what it is we’re looking at,” he stated.
“Understandably so, sir,” Rescil stated as he reached out and grabbed the white sheet in his bare hands, “We are looking at a thin piece of ceramic that deflects all forms of heat. So much so that I can pick this up with my bare hands.”
“A heat shield for atmospheric reentry? We already have something quite suitable for that,” he replied, nudging one of his staff members and whispering something in his ear.
“You don’t understand, Governor. I wasn’t working on a heat shield for spacecraft. Your
administration sponsored me and my crew for two years with the promise that we’d try to develop a heat shield for a potential weapon.”
“Weapon? I don’t…” just then, one of his assistants muttered something to the governor, “Oh, the extermination project. This is about the Great Violation, right?”
Rescil groaned before tossing the ceramic sheet onto the nearby table. The Assistant Governor rose quickly from his seat, taking a hold of Rescil’s arm before he had a chance to leave the room.
“Please, Rescil,” he stated, gesturing toward the governor, “The governor wasn’t completely involved in the details of our decision to pursue the Reaction Disruptor, but this is indeed supported by our office.”
“Reaction Disruptor,” the governor repeated.
Rescil looked to the governor, then glanced back at the assistant governor who still had a hold of his forearm. He nodded only slightly before turning back toward the table where he initially performed the experiment.
“Sir, the Great Violation occurred just as the Scripts of Elix predicted. The uplanders have taken the offspring as predicted. The uplanders are spreading out as predicted. I’m sure we can all agree then that there will be a time when their spacecraft come and begin destroying our whole planet… as predicted,” he said, lifting the ceramic sheet from the table, “The IX7 has been perfected – paid for by your administration, sir. If I’m to understand correctly, you also paid for a spacecraft to send the unit to Violation. I also heard that you’re interviewing candidates to share the duty of investigating the true motives and intentions of the people of Violation,
“And what happens if the report comes back that the people of Violation are a bunch of disgusting, heartless savages? We have a bunch of destructive technologies if we chose to use those against them, but none of those technologies would be as successful as the Reaction Disruptor. A single weapon that can obliterate a complete race of people.”
“I think I remember something about that, but as far as I knew, it was just a theoretical weapon,” the governor replied.
“Definitely, sir,” Rescil replied, “We have the technology and the skills to create such a weapon. As a matter of fact, if you gave us the funding right now, I could promise to have it built completely before next harvest. Our only problem was the delivery – until now.”
The Mystic Saga Omnibus (Books 1 - 5) Page 30
