by Sean Kennedy
“Jacob!” A voice cried out.
The suffering pressed into him from all sides, crushing him under the weight of his mind.
“Move, Jacob!” The voice said, and beneath his eroding self, a survival desperation reached through the searing fog. Jacob fought, pushing himself to his hands and knees. He felt the wind kicking at his ribs, tearing at his eyes, and smashing his head.
“MOVE!” The voice howled over the mindstorm. Jacob began to scuttle, crawling in the direction of his hands.
Each time Jacob swam forward through his thoughts, he felt the hatred of the chaos, but his will to survive gave him just enough strength to pull himself forward, inch by inch, until his hand struck something.
He heard a sound like a million ants gnashing their pincers against a shelter that dared to stand against them. Jacob pushed his hand forwards and felt something give.
A door!
“MOVE!” The voice hollered, and it gave Jacob enough strength to push on, dragging himself into a place where the storm couldn’t follow.
* * *
Thirst woke Jacob into a world of stiff pain. It felt like his eyes had shriveled and his lips dried shut. He strained to see as bright light made the world a sliding collage of colors.
Jacob squinted, forcing his mind to make sense of it. He was laying in a staging area with his back propped against a hatch door, with familiar white wall panels all around him.
The room was a long rectangle with benches lining the walls and light flooding the compartment from glowing ceiling panels. A large single bay door sat sealed at the opposite end, far larger than the hatch Jacob was leaning against.
“You're not dead!” A voice called out.
Jacob tried to look around, but the sudden motion made him nauseous. He shut his eyes, trying to swallow.
“There's a water bottle to your left.” The voice was male, husky and full; the voice of a sportball player in a post-game interview.
Jacob flailed his hand to the left until he felt the cool rounded plastic of a water bottle. He pulled it close and wrapped his fingers around the tiny cap. It took what little strength he had to crack the seal and unscrew it.
He put the bottle to his lips and felt the cool fluid reach down his rough throat and fill him. He gulped and lowered the bottle, fumbling with the cap as he felt the water caress his organs, loosening the dry grip on his mind.
“That's gotta be better!” The voice boomed.
Jacob opened his eyes more easily. The interior was a few meters wide and three times that in length with no place for anyone to hide.
“Where are you?” Jacob twisted his head around and felt a sudden scratching pain.
“The same place you are!” The champion said.
Jacob took more gulps of water, but as he did, more pain resurfaced in his mind. He was still in his arcology clothing, but the fabric had worn through, leaving great melted holes that showed angry friction burns scorching his flesh.
He reached up to his scalp and felt with a disconnected surrealism how the storm had blasted away his hair. Every movement made his burns cry out in protest, his sensitive nerves now exposed to the atmosphere.
Questions began falling over each other in chaotic consciousness.
Where?
What?
My parents...
But the answers were lost, like a dream you wished to remember without understanding why.
Jacob closed his eyes, bracing himself as he lifted the water bottle to his lips and drained the last few gulps. He dropped his arm by his side, and the pain abated, but promised to return if he moved again.
After a long time, Jacob opened his eyes to the white panel’s glow. The walls were covered in small doors, the Kaizen storage bins of...
...of...
A sudden rush of memories came surging back into Jacob's mind. The cargo stacks, Mac, Teeva, a Dojo ship in the desert, and the face of a pinched man pouring pain on him.
Jacob looked to where the pain cuff had been on his wrist, but the storm had burned away the skin of his arm and all was a pink crimson under the air's tickling blade. Moving his eyes, Jacob scanned the somehow familiar walls of storage hatches from floor to ceiling.
“What’cha gonna do now?” It sounded as though it was right next to him. The voice made him flinch, sending another flash of pain through his body.
Through the discomfort he twisted his head, searching for the voice’s owner. As his eyes followed the hatch cover’s subtle lines, there was a sudden flash of brilliant green.
A hummingbird was perched on a hatch handle. It had a ruby hood over a glowing iridium emerald body, not half as long as Jacob’s burnt thumb, with shining black eyes blinking over a needle beak as it studied him.
Jacob watched the little bird ruffle its feathers, and the voice came bellowing from its tiny beak.
“What’s your name?” The bird asked.
Jacob let his eyes slide shut. When he opened them again the bird was still there, still blinking its shiny black eyes and waiting.
“Jacob Faith.” His voice cracked as he spoke.
“I’m Vade Mecum” The bird’s wings fluttered impossibly fast as the hummingbird flew from the hatch handle, and dropped onto what remained of his pants. Jacob felt the tiny weight on his lap, like someone dropping a coin there.
Slowly, Vade shifted his wings, folding them into his body and rested between the vast mountains of Jacob’s knees.
“Are you okay?”
“Are you okay?” Vade asked, his shiny eyes looking up at Jacob.
“No.”
“Why not?”
Jacob took a breath. “Because I have no idea where I am and... and...” his voice trailed off.
“And… what?”
Jacob said nothing but felt tears run down his face as his thoughts collided in the echoes of his lost memory. He closed his eyes again.
“You're not going to quit,” Vade said.
“Quit what? There's nothing to quit! I don't even know how I got here and… just look at me!” Jacob shook as he spoke.
“You won’t quit.”
“Why not?”
“Because you cry when you fight,” The little bird’s voice became hoarse, “you don’t cry... when… you quit.” He closed his eyes, lowering his tiny beak onto Jacob’s lap.
Jacob felt the little bird was as hurt as he was, maybe even dying. He reached onto his lap, and accepting the pain of taking the bird into his burned hands, set him on the compartment floor.
Jacob spied water bottles at the far end of the compartment amongst the clutter of an open and spilled storage bin.
It felt like his flesh was an eggshell that cracked as he moved, but he took the pain as he bent his knees, pushing himself off the floor into a crouch.
The burns screamed as he staggered the impossible length of the compartment, shuffling and kicking at food bars and scattering soup packets with his destroyed arcology slippers.
He reached down and picked up the two water bottles, painfully clutching them to his chest. He picked up one sugar packet, then another and made the journey back to his new avian friend. Jacob dropped the bottles and packets in a pile beside him as he collapsed against the hatch door.
With great effort, Jacob took off a water bottle cap and ripped open a packet of sugar, dumping the white granules into the cap. Then, he carefully poured just enough water to reach the plastic threads. He stirred it with his finger and felt the sugar dissolve before he lowered the bottle cap beside the colorful bird.
Vade opened his eyes as Jacob pressed the cap against him, and with as much grace as could be packed into a few centimeters, stuck his needle beak into the water as a threadlike tongue dart into the cap. Jacob slumped back against the hatch door and took a gulp of the water from the freshly opened bottle.
He drank half the bottle this time before putting it back down. Vade had almost drained the bottle cap, so Jacob refilled it, and dumped another sugar packet into the cap.
They both drank a little more, and just as Jacob closed his eyes to drift away, he heard a sudden roar of wings like a small angry engine. He opened his eyes to see Vade had perched on the unworn patch of arcology clothing that still covered Jacob’s knee.
“You’re not gonna quit, not ever.”
“There’s no hope.”
“Hope?! We don't need hope, we got faith, Jacob Faith!”
Jacob smiled as the hummingbird went on. “Hope is a lying beggar, but faith carries you, like what you did just now.”
The pain of the burns was swelling in Jacob’s mind as he drew in a long breath. “All the faith in the world can’t stop death.”
“Oh yeah, we’re gonna die!” Vade said triumphantly. “But we’re not gonna die today. I mean you could die today if you chose to, but I know you won’t.”
“Because I was crying?”
“Because you push through your pain to help others, which is also not the mark of a quitter.”
Jacob didn’t know how to respond to that, so he closed his eyes.
“Are you even real?” Jacob tried to calm his body.
“Are you even real?”
“No, I mean, how can you talk?”
“How can you talk?” Vade tilted his tiny head and blinked.
Jacob considered it, and it seemed somehow no less strange that a bird could speak than it was that he could understand it. He finished a second water bottle as Vade fluttered to the floor to drink the last of the sugar water.
“So.” Vade flew up to a bin handle close to Jacob's ear. “What’s the plan?”
“The plan? I have no idea what the plan is.”
“That's okay. There’s still time.” Vade’s words snapped Jacob out of his daze. “What do you mean?”
“We’re not dead yet, so there’s still time.”
“Still time?” Jacob was suddenly angry, “Still time?! I've lost everything!” He screamed, and the breaking cry set his lungs on fire.
“I can't... even remember… who I am... or...” Jacob tried to keep speaking but pain closed off his throat.
Vade flew back to Jacob’s knee, his voice soft as he whispered, “You have to make a choice, right now Jacob. You need to accept that you're not a quitter, and that no matter what, it’s impossible for you quit.”
“What difference does that make?”
“All the difference. You have to draw that line. It’s a choice, the most powerful and complex thing known. Tell me Jacob, are you immortal?”
“No.”
“So you know that one day you're going to die, no matter what you do right?”
“I guess.”
“Your parents are gone?” Vade asked, and Jacob nodded,
“...your home is gone too?”
Jacob kept nodding.
“So what do you have to lose?”
“ ...but I don’t know what to do!” Jacob cried.
“Of course you don't! You haven't done anything yet, so you’ve got no idea how to start.”
“I… don't...” Jacob said.
“If you try something, anything really, it will either succeed or fail, but if you do nothing, you fail by default. If you try and fail, at least you will be able to get more information, more knowledge than when you started. Since you still have time, you can try again but only as long as...” Vade looked at him.
“...I don’t quit.” Jacob finished, and Vade fluttered back to the cabinet handle.
“I suppose that's true isn’t it.”
“Of course it's true! You don’t know what to do, because you’ve got no idea what you want. Once you figure that out, what you need to do is obvious.”
Jacob was quiet and stared into the floor panels.
“Why did you give me sugar water?”
‘You were weak and couldn’t fly.”
“But where’d you get the sugar and the water?”
“I saw them on the floor.”
“You found them?”
“Yes.”
“Because you had a clear idea in your mind of what you wanted. So you see? Once you know what you want, and you can prioritize, it’s pretty easy to know what to do.” Vade finished.
Jacob shook his head, “but... I’m just...”
“Just what?”
“I’m small, and I don't have...”
Vade laughed in a booming voice and his wings buzzed into a chorus of noise. The hummingbird flew up and hovered in Jacob's face, his beak almost touching the boy’s nose.
“You’re small?!” he yelled, “Do you know what I am? I'm the smallest bird on earth, but I’m the the only one that can fly backwards and hover! Do you know why? Do you think that’s just luck? Just something that happened on the evolutionary chain?” Vade demanded.
“It’s because my heart beats over a thousand times a minute! Because I swing my wings eighty times a second! Because I WORK!”
Jacob nodded. “Okay...” he whispered.
“Okay,” he said again with more conviction.
“Okay! I’m not a quitter.”
“I know that, but now that you know it too, we need to figure out what you want.” Vade zipped away from Jacob's nose to land on a fresh hatch handle.
“Well, I want to get home, that's the most important thing.”
“You think so?” Vade asked. “So if you get home you will be happy? You will die when your time comes with a full heart and no remorse because you got home? What is home?”
Jacob opened his mouth, but nothing came out. The arcology, his parents, everything was gone. Vade didn’t wait for his answer.
“What specifically do you want? You know what that is Jacob, you’ve known your whole life! Just tell me what it is.”
“But it’s not... it's… I don’t even remember why,” Jacob stuttered.
“Just tell me what you've always wanted, no matter what it is,” Vade asked again and Jacob looked down at his burned hands.
“I want… to explore.”
“Space?” Vade asked.
“Yeah... I've always wanted.... to explore space...” Jacob’s voice trailed off.
“Yeah!” Vade ruffled like a boxer loosening his shoulders, “That's what I’m talkin’ ‘bout! That’s good, really good Jacob, we can work with that. I knew there was a reason why I liked you!”
“Thanks.”
“Once you know what you want, you’ll never be lost. No matter how far a bird is blown off course, we all know our purpose.”
“But it doesn’t seem realistic...”
“Why not? Life is simple. Your wants tell you what your purpose is, just like with us birds, only we call it instinct.”
Jacob shook his head. “But if my wants tell me my purpose, how can I be sure what I want?”
“Everyone knows what they want deep down. You don’t need memory to have instinct.
“But how would I get to space?”
“How would you get to space?”
Jacob slumped against the staging area door. He shut his eyes and in the long blink, felt his strength draining away. Lifting his heavy eyelids, he saw Vade hovering inches from his nose, the dark orbs of his eyes shining infinite.
“How do you solve any problem?” Vade asked.
Jacob’s mind began whispering an answer. Slowly he spoke as the words formed. “You... see what the problem is, see what you have to solve it and just... take the next step.”
“So now you know what to do!” Vade zipped back to a hatch handle.
“Yeah.” Jacob smiled “Just get to space.”
“Yeah, just get to space, but one thing at a time! What's the biggest problem right now?”
Jacob laughed, but it turned into a painful cough. “I’m not feeling so great.”
“Anything you can do about that?” Vade’s head twitched.
Jacob shifted, and the rough cotton from his worn white arcology shirt rubbed against his skinless neck.
“I don’t think these are helping me any more.” He stretched his shoulders bac
k, slipping out of the storm-scorched clothing. Jacob worked through the pain as he pulled them off, ignoring the crackling sounds as the fabric broke free from where it bonded with his worn flesh.
He felt better with the blazer off, so he kept kept going. He took off his pants and underwear, dropped them in a pile on the compartment floor.
Her looked over to see Vade watching him. “Uh, sorry about this,” Jacob said, suddenly embarrassed by how casually he stripped in front of his new friend.
“Doesn’t bother me, I'm naked too!”
Jacob left his past on the floor and looked around, scanning the compartment storage bins until a small red cross caught his eye.
He felt the cool tile on his bare feet as he walked over to it, moving easier without rags clinging to him.
Vade landed on the handle next to the first-aid bin as Jacob opened it. Inside he found bandages and two tiny aerosol cans with ‘Neoskin’ printed on a label that claimed it acted as both cleaner and protectant.
Jacob looked down at the angry burns covering his naked body. He shook the can and sprayed a quick pass across his wrist. It felt cold but soothing, and a sheen like clear rubber appeared over the angry burn.
He blew on the spot, but couldn’t feel his breath on the red space, and when he touched the thin film, it didn’t hurt. He shook the aerosol can and began spraying a light layer over his body like pain repellent.
“Better?” Vade asked as Jacob finished spraying the second can.
“Very much so.” He felt the evaporating coolness soothe his skin as a protective layer formed. His eyes fell back on the door at the far end of the staging area. The doorway, like this room, seemed somehow familiar.
Maybe this was my home...
He shook his head to clear the thoughts. With his Neoskin, he could move without pain, and he stepped towards the end door. It slid open as he approached, and Jacob paused as the ceiling lights flickered and warmed, showing another staging area beyond.
Lining the new compartment walls were six wide doors like great armored lockers. A single name plate was bolted into the steel at the center of each locker door just above a hand scanning security panel.
“JONES” The first label read. Jacob placed his hand on the scanner, and a buzzer sounded.
