by J. Naomi Ay
“Why are we meeting in there?” I mumbled more to myself, than to him.
It would be cold in there. It would be dark, and the room was always full of ghostly shadows. There was no point in heating up that large space when the few of us could circle around Kinar’s conference table.
“The Imperial Prince Shika,” the guard announced, throwing open the doors and waving me inside. “The Duke of Turko.”
He spoke as if time had stood still, as if the Empire, and the court were still intact, as if my father was waiting impatiently behind his desk for our meeting to begin.
Chapter 2
Ber
I called that day my birthday, the day I first stood on two feet that were exclusively mine. I waved my two arms, and wiggled all twenty of my fingers and toes, without anyone trying to tell me not to do it.
"How are you feeling?" the doctor asked.
"Great! Totally awesome!" I tapped my feet on the floor, stretched my arms over my head, put my hands on my amazingly small waist.
The doctor nodded, half smiled, and turned to Kie who was lying in the bed next to me.
"Good morning, Kie," he yelled.
Kie didn't move. His face was pale. He looked tiny in the adjacent bed, covered by a thin sheet. The monitors over his head blinked, sinus rhythms scrolling across them, the regular huffing of the ventilator keeping time like the ticking of a clock.
"Kie," the doctor yelled again. He clutched one of Kie's hands, pressing into it. "Kie, can you hear me? Move your hand, Kie. I need you to squeeze my hand."
Nothing happened. The ventilator wheezed, exhaling a long breath of air. Kie didn’t move. The doctor stood, waiting.
"What's going on?" I asked, hesitantly. Holding on to the side of my bed, I pulled myself to my feet. My legs were wobbly, a little bit numb. My knees buckled, and I almost fell on my face.
"Get back in bed, Ber," the doctor ordered. "Wait for the nurse to help you up. It's going to take time for all of your brain-body connections to start functioning normally."
"What about Kie?" I held onto the cabinet which spanned the distance between our two beds. "When is he going to wake up?"
The doctor didn't respond. He typed on his tablet, pressed buttons on the monitor, adjusted the IV's in Kie's bags, and once again ordered me back to my own bed. He drew the drape between us, shielding my brother from my eyes. Then, the doctor left.
I lay down and stared at the ceiling, running my hands across my body. I had chest hair that was thick and matted. I had hair on my shoulders and probably, a fair amount on my back. My fingertips were sensitive. I could feel everything I touched, but I couldn't really feel anything on the inside yet. When I pulled at my chest hair or pressed on my ribs, there was a brief tingling sensation, but that was all.
I reached down further and examined my genitals. I had seen them before. I had chosen this body from a group of brain-dead donors, and one of the reasons I had liked this one was because he had been fairly well endowed.
He was Mishnese, and his skin color more or less was the same as my head's coloring. His body hair, though thick, was very light, matching my own white-blondness. Probably, this guy was really a Lightie trying to pass himself off as Mishnese. My great-great grandfather, Duke Loman had been a Lightie too. It seemed fitting. It seemed right for me.
I felt my penis respond to my touch. It hardened and grew in my hand. This was good. It seemed to be working. I continued to stroke it just to see what else would happen.
"Ber?"
"Grandma Luci!"
The curtain between Kie and myself ruffled. The tap tap of Grandma Luci’s heels crossed the floor. Quickly covering myself with a sheet, I held up my hands.
"Look, I can move them."
"That's wonderful." Grandma Luci smiled tightly. She stood in between the two beds, right at the point where the curtain separated us. Gazing over at Kie, her brow furrowed, and her lips turned down in a frown. “Has Kie woken up yet?”
I shook my head, relishing the smooth feel of my new neck. I could move my head from side to side with no risk of bumping anyone. I could go forward and backward, or around in a circle. I could lift both arms up and run my fingers through my hair.
This feeling was incredible. For the first time in my life, I was a whole man all by myself.
“Poor dear.” Grandma Luci sniffed loudly, and then, digging through her purse, she extracted a handkerchief. “Poor, poor Kie.”
“He’ll be fine,” I insisted. I was certain he would be. Even though we were now in separate bodies, I was sure we still had a mental connection. “He just needs a little longer to get acclimated. Give him another day or two and then, he’ll wake up and be as annoying as he was before. Except, now I can leave! I don’t have to listen to him!”
Grandma Luci dabbed at her eyes.
“I hope you are correct in this.”
“I am. Don’t worry. Look at me! He’ll be up and about in no time.”
She shook her head, her eyes still on my brother.
“You were always the stronger one, Ber. You are very much like your grandfather, Marik. Kie is different. He is cautious, and careful like my beloved Berkan. He may not have the inner strength to fight like you, or the will to carry it through.”
She disappeared behind the curtain, and then I heard her whispering. Afterward, she returned to my side and gave me a quick kiss on my head. “You do so remind me of Marik,” she said, smoothing my hair.
After she left, I looked out the window at the sky. My grandfather Marik had been an Imperial SpaceNavy starship captain. Some said he was the best there ever was. I could be that. I had an ordinary Rehnorian body now that was aging at a normal Rehnorian rate. I could join the Imperial SpaceNavy, and spend my life among the stars.
“Kie,” I announced to my brother. “I’ve finally decided what I’m going to do. I’m going to attend the Imperial SpaceNavy Academy and become a starship captain like our granddad. Someday, I’ll command a ship just like him.”
Kie didn’t respond. The respirator huffed and hissed, forcing air into his lungs.
“When I’ve done all that,” I continued. “I’ll return to Mishnah and win the Imperial Princess Sara’s hand. I mean to do it, Kie, and you know when I set my mind to something, I get it done. The great thing is, you don’t have to come with me. You can stay at the university doing calculations and mixing fluids in beakers. Isn’t this great, Kie? Aren’t you glad we decided on the domectomy?”
Again, my only response was the huffing and hissing.
“I am,” I announced, more to myself than to him. “You were right. It was worth the risk.”
Two days later, when I could walk down the hall and back using only a cane, and I could hold a knife and a fork well enough to eat, our mom came to visit.
This was a first for all of us. Kie and I had spoken to Angelica briefly on the vid when we were little, and of course, we’d seen her on that show that takes place on that island.
Never before had we actually met in person. Never before, had I a mom who actually looked at me with something akin to love in her eyes. Well, maybe it wasn’t quite love. In any case, it wasn’t the revulsion that had always projected through the vid screen, no matter how far away she was.
“Hey,” Angelica said. “You’re Ber, right?”
“Right. You’re Angelica, right?”
“Right.”
I had been sitting at the little table in our room, slowing eating a bowl of jello with a spoon. My systems were still getting oriented, and soft foods were a must. Not everything that went into my mouth managed to make the complete journey to the exit door.
I stood up awkwardly, and made a small bow. Actually, at this point every movement I could muster was awkward, but that was further enhanced by my genuine bafflement at Angelica’s appearance. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to hug or kiss her, so I just held out my hand which worked as it should and opened for a shake.
Angelica took it, and briefly wobbl
ed it up and down, a silly grin on her face as if she realized how ridiculous this moment was. Her hand was soft, and smaller than I had imagined. In fact, in front of me now, she looked nearly half the size she had appeared on the vid. She was pretty too. She had long white blonde hair just like mine, and clear, unblemished pale skin, bright blue eyes, and red lips.
I realized I was evaluating her as I would any other girl. Quickly, I snatched my hand back, reminding myself this was my mother.
"So, how ya doing?" Angelica asked.
"Good," I nodded, "Real good."
"I like your body," she remarked, now appraising me in the same way. "Good choice, Ber. Real good choice. Did you have to pay extra for that tat or was it included?"
I glanced at my arm, at the fashionable eagle tattoo, which was still the rage here on Rehnor.
"Included," I mumbled, feeling a blush creep up my face.
"I've got a tat too," she giggled. "But, mine's on my butt."
"What?"
"That's a joke, sort of," Angelica said, and then, surprisingly, she blushed too.
In fact, for the next few moments we both stood there bright red, shuffling our feet and feeling ridiculous.
"Want to sit down?" I offered.
Once again, I had to mentally shake myself awake. This was my mother standing here. If I was still in my old body, probably Kie would have knocked me in the head. That was the downside of being separated. I couldn't rely on him to keep our cool.
"Thanks."
Angelica sat down at the little table, and glanced curiously at the jello, before turning her gaze back to me, her blue eyes burning holes in my skin. I calculated our effective ages, and what exactly that meant.
As a Beckwad, I had aged five times faster than a Rehnorian. Even though I was only five years old, I was actually twenty-five. My body was even older, acquired from a guy who had been nearly twenty-six. Angelica, on the other hand, was barely twenty-one.
"So, is that, like, an android body?" Angelica crossed her legs, and leaned to one side. She twirled a strand of hair around her finger. With her other hand, she reached over and pinched my arm. "You feel real."
"I am. We had our choice of androids or organic donors. We chose organic even though the risk of rejection was considerably higher."
Angelica nodded like she understood. She let the curl go, and it unfurled into a soft wisp.
"So, is that, like, what's going on with..."
"Kie."
"Right. Kie. Is he, like, rejecting his body?"
"I don't know." I sat down on my bed, my legs and back suddenly very tired.
Angelica nodded again. She bit her lip as if she was trying to think.
"Maybe, you ought to talk to him," I suggested. "Maybe, he'll wake up if he hears your voice."
"Why would he do that?" She blinked rapidly, her big blue eyes completely blank.
"I don't know." The more I thought about it, the less sense it made. "Forget it. Why are you here anyway?"
She shrugged, and twirled another wisp of hair.
"A doctor called and said I was next of kin."
Now, I lay down on the bed. My whole body felt like it was turning to stone. I hoped this wasn't a sign that I was rejecting myself. I didn't think so. I think I was just too weary to move.
"Do you mind if I finish your jello?" Angelica asked. "I missed lunch."
"No, go ahead."
I stared at the ceiling. The doctors called Angelica so she would turn off the machines. She didn't care about Kie, but legally, she was his mother. A brother's opinion didn't count as much as hers. She would let Kie die without a second thought, and then, walk out of here to go back to her life.
Chapter 3
Dave
A cascade of tiny pebbles rained down upon me as I climbed the rope ladder back to the surface. It was morning, and the sky above me was a brilliant mix of colors, oranges and reds, purples and blues.
I had my bow looped over my shoulder, a quiver of arrows anchored across my back. I was wearing my old shoes, the only shoes which I possessed since arriving on this planet. The sole was worn thin, and there might have been a hole somewhere on the bottom. Sometimes, when I stepped on a wet surface, a muddy field, or the edges of a pond, I could feel a small bit of water pooling around my toes.
“Stuff it with the dried grass,” Katie had recommended. “Those shoes are too useful to waste.”
Katie had no shoes. When she had jumped in the pod, all those months ago, and we had blasted off into the Black Eye Galaxy, she had been barefoot.
Sometime in between leaping from a bed, executing that odd creature, Luka, and racing with me to the pod, she had managed to toss on a pair of pants and sweatshirt.
When we landed on this planet, that was all she owned, and unfortunately, although the pod contained emergency food and water provisions, it didn’t provide her with any more garments.
“Good morning, Dave,” she called, just as my head emerged above ground to that thrilling and panoramic sky.
I blinked my eyes rapidly, momentarily blinded by migraine-like pains caused by the sudden burst of brilliant sunlight. After the total darkness twenty feet below, emerging to full daylight was always a bit of shock.
“How are you today?”
“Well, Katie,” I replied, my head clearing.
Pulling myself up the few remaining rungs of the ladder, I turned in the direction of her voice and smiled.
She was sitting next to a small fire, brewing a tea from the odd collection of wild herbs, which grew near the underground spring where we camped. Katie's teapot was a metallic dish that had been a console cover on the control panel of the pod. Our cups were plastic, removed from the armrests of our seats and broken into bowls which could hold our meals.
At that moment, I paid no attention to the dining implements. She could have been preparing tea for me on a solid gold service, and offering me biscuits on the finest bone china, and I would have ignored that too. I saw only Katie there, her brilliant curls once again blonde, her skin, and bright blue eyes as luminescent and beautiful as they had ever been when I first set eyes upon her all those years ago on our way to the Allied Spaceforce Academy.
“Good Dave,” she replied. “Did you sleep well?”
“Like the dead.”
I knelt down and took my cup, blowing softly on the boiling water, my eyes still fastened upon her face. She looked younger, as if arriving here in the Black Eye Galaxy, time had swept backward for both of us, erasing the wrinkles in our skin, the gray in our hair, and filling our bodies with the youth and exuberance we had thought gone forever.
“Oh, I hope we’re not dead,” Katie laughed, sipping from her own cup.
“If we are, and this is Heaven, I am content to stay here with you for all eternity.”
“Oh, Dave,” Katie said quietly, a blush creeping over her fair skin.
Her eyes drifted off to the orange sky, before briefly flickering back to mine. She smiled a little, and shrugged, offering me nothing more than the here and now. Both of us knew that somewhere far away, someone else was thinking of her. Perhaps, even two men, and both of them were imagining her just as I saw her now.
“So what’s the plan for today?” I stood up and scanned the horizon, the dead forest, and barren hills above our camp. “Have you got a bottle to break over the bow of ship, or hospital to visit, and a luncheon to attend?”
“Now Dave,” she said again, shaking her head a little while rolling her eyes. “That’s not what I did all day.”
“What did you do, Your Imperial Highness?”
“I had a lot of meetings. I was very involved in policy and planning.”
“I’m sure you were an integral part of the Empire,” I nodded gravely, “However, the Empire of Dave now requires your administration. Shall we go hunting and gathering, or stay here and make tools? I see your socks are still holding up.”
“They are,” she agreed, waggling her cotton clad feet for my benefit. She was w
earing an old pair of my socks, which made me feel oddly gratified, as if I had provided her with something no one else in the galaxy could. “If we find any life forms, something we can use for leather, I’ll be able to sew us brand new clothes.”
I liked that. I liked imagining Katie dressed in a leather sarong, myself in a tunic and leggings. I liked imagining that I could spend the rest of my life here alone with her, and that at some point, her eyes would see only me.
“Let’s continue moving onward,” she suggested, pulling herself to her feet. “We’ve got to be getting close to a place where there’s more vegetation.”
“Are you so certain there is such a place?” I asked, watching her bend, pick up her bow, and swing her quiver across her back just like I had done. “Perhaps, we shall walk across the entire planet only to discover, after years of travel, there is no different ecosystem than this.”
"Hopefully, we won't be here that long," she said, now disappearing down the rope ladder. "Hopefully, we'll be rescued long before years of travel."
"Hopefully," I repeated, recalculating the odds in my head.
Suffice it to say, our chances were slim. With billions of planets, millions of stars, and an incalculable equation of distance and space, even a thousand starships all searching simultaneously wouldn't find us. Not unless there was something else at work.
Katie and I had named this planet, Zork after our old friend from school. Zork was somewhere on the outer banks of the Black Eye Galaxy, not far from the edge of the Milky Way, and the only planet circling a dying red dwarf star. We were close to the star though, close enough that Zork was temperate, around seventy degrees Fahrenheit, regardless of the hour.
However, that clock was precisely the problem. The rotation of this planet was so slow, that in all the weeks we had been here, we had yet to see darkness. The light never ceased, the planet never cooled, and so we, and whomever or whatever else lived here, burrowed underground.
While that wasn't particularly pleasant, the situation could have been a whole lot worse. As dry and dusty as this planet appeared, it was entirely possible that it would not contain breathable air. In fact, as soon as we landed, we had a choice: step outside to discover if we might live or die, or remain in the pod and definitely die.
