The Saffron Malformation

by Walker, Bryan

  Richter Crow stood in a room under Blue Moon headquarters and watched helplessly as his orders were carried out as best they could be.

  “What is that?” Richter asked with a furrowed brow as he watched one of the many dots floating around his massive three dimensional globe grow further and further from the ground.

  Men exchanged glances and finally someone said, “It’s a boogie flying at high altitude.”

  “Just how high?” he inquired.

  The man looked over the numbers and his jaw slacked. “Seems it’s about to leave the atmosphere.”

  Richter chuckled under his breath and said, “Fucking bitch. I was too good to you.”

  Space was different than he’d expected, though to be honest Quey wasn’t sure what he had expected. He just knew when he got there, this wasn’t it. If he had to guess he supposed he’d expected blackness but it wasn’t there. Blackness was something. Space was a vast stretch of nothing. You could see farther than you could imagine, a distance beyond any your eyes could cover on the planets surface was perfectly clear out there. His stomach turned as he looked out at it, and the world he’d spent his life inhabiting moving steadily away. Ahead was the moon, but beyond that there was nothing but specks of light and the occasional cluster of gases. You could see the stars from the ground, true enough, but there they were part of the sky. Out here you could see the spaces between.

  Somewhere out there was the bridge they’d take to another world, one not owned and operated by Blue Moon, but he couldn’t see any of that. All he saw were dots in the nothingness.

  His hands trembled.

  His heart raced.

  He almost threw up.

  “The captain has turned off the fasten seatbelt sign,” Arnie said as he turned his chair away from the controls and stood. “You are now free to move about the cabin and get drunk,” he finished as he snatched up his bag and started away.

  “Hold up,” Quey began.

  “Told you I’d get you off the world,” he said listlessly. “I set the autopilot to take you straight to the bridge, about two days that’a’ways,” he pointed past the front of the ship. “When you see the moon along the side you’ll have two hours to hack and upload whatever you like before you’re out of range. That’s plenty of time ahead where you don’t need me.”

  Quey watched him go, and he felt sad for him. Outside the windows of this ship was the most terrifying and amazing thing he’d ever seen, but Arnie didn’t care. Quey wasn’t even sure he saw it.

  “What now?” Natalie asked.

  “Now,” Quey began but found his voice absent so he started again. “Now we get settled and wait for that moon to pass so we can set to accomplishing what it is we came all this way for.”

  The ship had been stocked and designed to transport over thirty rich and powerful people comfortably, even by their standards, so it held the seven of them quite nicely. Everyone had their own space and eventually they’d have their own areas of the ship. That was good, for everyone to have some space of their own, because they’d be on this ship for quite some time. Though there would be ports along the way it’d be a long journey across a number of bridges before they made it to a world they could settle on. If they even meant to settle.

  Ryla was already taking over the core of the ship, Quey found. She was down in the belly of it, where the engine room and machine shops were located, looking for spare parts she might use to build something new. He stood in the door watching her hips sway gently in the long skirt and tank top she’d changed into after breaking atmo. It hugged her just right and he smiled as he gazed at the curvy parts of her and the way she moved them as she danced.

  Amber and Leone entered the corridor behind him and he felt like a kid caught doing something he shouldn’t. He must have looked that way too because they exchanged a glance and smirk before continuing along heavy footed. Ryla stopped and looked over at them.

  Quey watched them move to the door and asked, “What brings the two of you down here?”

  “We found something,” Leone said, a bit of excitement in his voice. It was good to hear that tone again. He’d gained it back when they left orbit and he knew they’d won. His father, Richter Crow, wouldn’t be able to hide for long. Looking out at the stars he’d said, ‘We won.’ Space was so beautiful, if his mother and his mom were anywhere at all it would be together out here.

  “What cha got there?” Quey asked the boy.

  Leone might have said something but Amber interrupted, “It’s for Ryla.”

  Ryla cocked her head and peered at them with blank curiosity. They went to her and held out a large black case. When she took it Amber was grinning and said, “We found a whole closet full of these near the activity rooms, I guess they planned to have children on board or something.” Quey shifted his weight when he saw Ryla open the case and peer inside. Her eyes lit up and she looked at the pair. Then something happened that shocked everyone in the room, even Ryla. She leapt forward and hugged them, one in each arm, and she did it without asking if she was supposed to first. Quey smiled as he watched her grin.

  She’d taken it for granted, all those years alone in the compound, and she’d come up with a number of logical reasons for every stroke of her brush, but the truth was she really loved to paint. Inside the case was everything she’d need to make her own colors along with an array of brushes.

  Quey smiled when he saw what they’d found and said, “That’s good. You get to it too. Might need another crazy idea someday.”

  Rachel found a place for herself because it was something to do. There was a corridor off the main area of the ship, where the holoscreen and kitchen and dinning area were located, and she decided that was as good a place as any. She took to a room and lay back on the bed. Just to test it out. She wasn’t tired at all. She just lay there looking down at her belly for the better part of a minute. By the time it was over she was asleep. Before she drifted completely she thought of Render. She really would have liked to have killed him.

  There were two recreational rooms on the ship, with everything from games to crafts to exersise gear. One was on the port side of the ship and the other was starport. There wasn’t much space between them but Natalie made sure Amber and Leone settled in on opposite sides. She was no dolt, she knew what was going on, it was plain as could be in the way they looked at one another these days, still she didn’t want them going any faster. Sharing a ship was one thing but sharing a room… there was plenty of time for that when they were older.

  Afterward, when the kids ran off to show Ryla the paint set they’d found, she settled herself near the entrance they’d first come through. Most of the supplies were stored there and she thought she’d like to keep an eye on them. Plus the medical station was housed there and it would be good if she became familiar with the equipment. She’d have a lot of reading to do.

  Natalie chuckled and thought, ‘See dad, I’m going to finish medical school after all. I’ll even become a doctor of sorts.’

  She took a long breath and let it out slowly. First order of business would be to dig that slug out of Quey’s arm. “I’ve sort of grown used to it,” he joked when she went to fetch him.

  Ryla had barely started to paint one of the walls when it was time to go to the bridge. They were passing the moon. She connected to and accessed the networks via proxy link. From there she easily disabled all the protocols Blue Moon was using to keep the planetary network segregated from the universal one. After that she uploaded the file package that would hack onto nearly every section of the signal and show the truth of what was happening on Saffron, and the plans Richter Crow had for it and the people living on it. When it came to the signal on Saffron itself she issued a filter command that blocked all forms of entertainment and replaced them with the truth about Richter Crow. In essence, it would be the only thing on the Internet for a very long time.

  When the moon was a distance behind them Rachel woke. She was disappointed she missed hacking the signal bu
t grateful for the rest. Invigorated, she decided to see what supplies there might be lurking in the kitchen so she could make a meal for everyone.

  “To celebrate,” she said. “Might even have a small sip myself if Arnie hasn’t finished off all the shine himself by now.”

  There was a brief chuckle and Natalie said, “A fancy ship like this, I’m sure there’s something stocked somewhere.”

  Truth was Arnie hadn’t touched the shine, even before takeoff. He was stone sober in the furthest room he could find, sitting on the floor looking down at the small bottle without a label in his lap. The night before they left for the assault he walked out of the barracks and strolled along the landscape. He wasn’t looking for anything but a little peace of mind. What he found was a small little pond of water. Looking down at his reflection he felt his chest burn, but not from fear of death, it was fear that they might live, and fear of what that meant.

  ‘Rain was just a girl.’

  Not to him. To him she was a smile when he woke. Warmth in the cold. To him she was the part of his life he could look at and say, ‘that’s what I did. I got that one.’ In every other way he’d been a coward. Only in chasing her had he ever been brave.

  He remembered sitting in her van meaning to pull it around to her, meaning to help her load up and leave him forever and then he felt… well what he was feeling now. The dread of her absence. It had given him strength and he had been brave that one time, when he crashed her van so she couldn’t leave him.

  He’d stood at the edge of that shallow bit of water for a long time and more than anything he wanted to step in, sink down as far as he could go and take a long drink. Instead he went back, found a bottle, dumped it out in the grass and filled it again.

  He was too much of a coward to take his own life but if he drank… he wouldn’t really be dead except on the inside. He was certain he wouldn’t feel her absence anymore.

  Looking down at the bottle he saw her in his mind. Then he felt her as a prescience in the room, looking down at him and knowing his thoughts. How would she look at him if she saw him now, it brought him to tears. Slumped against the wall he shuddered with sobs and said, “I’m sorry.”

  She would have consoled him. He would have felt better. He opened his eyes to look at her but she wasn’t there. Truth continued to settle on him until it was so heavy he couldn’t even cry. He could only say it again. “I’m sorry.”

  He still held the bottle in his lap. In the hangar he’d taken a sip. Had it been enough? If so, how long would it take?

  In the kitchen everyone was dressed in the garments meant for the folks who were set to inhabit this ship. It had been stocked and kept stocked because Blue Moon wasn’t sure how the end would happen or when it would be time to leave. Last thing you needed to be when that time came was waiting for luggage.

  So they dressed and gathered around the long dark wood table and laughed and talked as dinner was served with a bottle of red wine they’d found outside the stasis storage system. Even the wealthiest of folk rarely got a hold of wine anymore, but it made sense. If you’d just run off with a few hundred billion and change, you’d want to celebrate too. They’d kept it out of stasis to allow further aging, the clever bastards.

  “Well it worked,” Quey said as he took another sip. “Because this shit is fucking delicious!”

  Everyone laughed and a ‘cheers’ preceded another sip.

  “We really should check on Arnie,” Natalie said. “I feel bad for him.”

  Rachel agreed but Quey said “Leave him be. Been a lot asked of him as of late and he’s earned his share of time.” He looked to Rachel and said, “Boy needs time more than the likes of us right now.”

  She agreed to that with a sigh and a nod and dinner went on. Every one of them had it in the back of their minds that things were going to get tough on that ship sooner or later. There was also the matter of what would happen should anything go wrong. If that happened they’d be on the drift with nothing for as far as they could see and nothing but guesses as to how they might fix this thing.

  For the next few hours they set all that aside and ate a feast Rachel had prepared with the help of Natalie and Amber, and drank the wine that was supposed to toast the demise of Saffron. In a strange way, it was still doing that.

  Whatever may lie ahead, Quey was grateful for that bit of time. He was grateful for the food in his belly and the wine that accompanied it. He was grateful for the friends that surrounded him. Every once in a while he’d think of the vast nothingness surrounding him, just a cluster of meters in any direction.

  Later, when everything wound down he made his way to the bridge of the ship they’d decided to name The Acid Raindrop and stared out at space. The scope of his new landscape fluttered in his belly and had a sobering effect on his mind. He’d seen something amazing and he’d done something right.

  “What are you doing?” Ryla asked as she stepped in behind him. She’d joined them at dinner eagerly, which surprised him, and even seemed a bit excited to taste the food. She’d also drained her fair share of the wine, Quey had noticed, and seemed more at ease than he’d ever seen her, save a time or two when he came upon her and Rain together.

  “Thinking,” he replied softly.

  “Thinking what?” she inquired, allowing herself to be curious about someone that way.

  He smiled slyly and answered. “That it’s been a good run.” He turned to her and added, “And that I mean to have another.”

  She smiled at him and before she could think that she shouldn’t, she kissed him. He pulled back slightly and tried to speak but she wouldn’t let him. They’d both said and heard it before. It was better if they didn’t do it again. Maybe that was true. Still…

  “Just once more,” she said, stepping close, touching her body to his. Still, she wanted him because he felt good and she liked the way he looked at her, and the way he touched her. She greatly desired those things at the moment, and her feelings were important, not an annoyance that got in the way of clear thought. Not something she should dull with the help of her implants, but something she should recognize and accept. She was working on it, and doing so without the help of a book.

  He noted how good she looked in the snug little violet cocktail dress she’d found, and felt how soft and delicate she was as she stepped close to him. Then she started to dance in a slow soft rhythm that reminded him of how sexy she was, and it seemed new, as if he’d never seen it before. She smelled like a meadow in the spring and that was exciting too.

  It was true she didn’t love him the way a normal girl could, but she did enjoy him and that wasn’t nothing. And he seemed to enjoy her as well.

  She gave her dance a more erotic flare, and noticed his eyes as he scanned her hips and cleavage. “What do you say?” she asked him before she threw her arms around his neck and brought her face close to his. When his arms slipped around her waist she felt a rush of excitement. “You want to?” She finished with a kiss he eagerly returned as he squeezed her tight against him. After a tick and a tock she looked up and met his eyes. He was looking at her in that way that she liked.

  “You should know that you’re not the only one.”

  He peered at her with a questioning brow.

  She shrugged, “During our travels I got curious.” It was true enough.

  He nodded.

  “I’ll probably get curious again.” Their eyes met for a long time. “You still want to?”

  He shook his head, but then he kissed her deeply and slid his hands over her body. When she took them in hers, he let her lead him from the bridge, yet again allowing himself to think that once more couldn’t hurt.

  The Fallout and The Aftermath

  Render sat in the back of his rig with Eloine at his side. He was watching the feed streaming over the signal with a smile on his face. Ordinary people, the good citizens of Saffron, had turned to burning their own cities to the ground. Rioters smashed windows and forced their way into Blue Moon facilitie
s all around the world. Today, everyone was a broodling, only their haul wasn’t bits of precious. They wanted an explanation as to why their favorite shows and games were replaced with this report, and what exactly did it mean anyhow.

  He went to the front of the truck and jumped out into the broods camp, poorly crafted abodes of wood and sheet metal mostly, and called, “Celebration’s afoot boys. Three days time there’ll be a FEAST!” A cheer rang through the crowd and before long drinks were flowing and drugs were passed around.

  Render meant to head for Saffron City. He knew other broods around the world would move on other cities, other gangs would show themselves and new ones would form. Blue Moon didn’t have a hope of holding order any longer. This was their time now. The time of the outcasts. The only places not in the midst of violence were the places it was raining.

  Later that night Render stumbled back into his truck and collapsed on the bed in the back. Eloine tapped him a few times but he only groaned slightly and breathed heavy. If he weren’t so thin he’d be snoring for sure. She went to the front of the cab and peered out at the camp. It was dangerous to do here but there’d be no better time. Groping in the dark she found the Broodleader's boot and drew the knife from the sheath he’d had stitched inside.

  A light clicked on and a gun cocked. Her eyes gaped at Render, sitting up on his elbow with a pistol aimed. “Had a feeling you were up to something.”

  She looked down at the knife in her hands.

  “Just what do you mean to do with that?” he asked her.