The Warden nodded. “You were paid in cash. I assume by Argonaut.”
The pilot scoffed. “Doubtful. Those guys hate my guts. I used to work for them when I did legit jobs. They blackballed me. If I had to guess, I’d say it was Deeznu or Kronos-Wagner. Nobody else can afford me.” He turned at the approach of wailing sirens. “But I guess we’ll have plenty of time to discuss this on the way to lockup.”
The Warden looked at the approaching patrol skimmers. “Miss Stone, would you be so kind as to relay a message to my friend Quantum? Can you tell him I managed to find that trouble he warned me to stay out of?”
Danica frowned. “But you’re supposed to be a lawman. They can’t take you in for this. We were attacked!”
The Warden smiled. “I’ve no jurisdiction here in the Civilized Worlds, and I wouldn’t go so far as to call the system they’ve got here law, exactly.” He watched as the flashing lights came closer. “You know, I used to love this place, even though I’d only ever been here once before. But that one visit, that one Earth Day Festival has stuck with me ever since…
“The camaraderie and good cheer, the happiness… It all reminded me what it means to be a member of the human race, to be a part of something so big, so different, and so important. It reminded me how no matter how bad things can get, how bad we can get, there’s still a goodness in our nature… a love for one another that’s always just beneath the surface, waiting to extend a helping hand, offer a kind word, or a supportive shoulder. Sometimes all we need is that reminder, and the Earth Day Festival was that for me.”
He looked at Danica, noticing the hovering cam-bot for the first time. “But then, I’m just an old-fashioned kind of guy.”
When the corporate enforcement officers arrived, the Warden raised his hands in surrender.
---
“Hope you’ve got a nice little nest egg put aside, Warden.” The gunship pilot sat across from him in the prisoner transport. Both wore gravity shackles on their wrists. “They’ll probably sentence us to some pretty hefty fines in the morning. Maybe even impound our ships. If you can’t pay, then it’ll be indentured servitude for the rest of your life.”
“Nice.” The Warden sighed. What he wouldn’t give to be facing down a flotilla of space pirates at that moment. But then, he realized with a chuckle, in a way he was. But these pirates had not only plundered goods and property, they had pillaged the entire system of law and governance. How did the notions of right and wrong work when the very structures intended to safeguard society had been so corrupted?
He could only hope that Danica would have a change of heart and use her media resources and influence to do something about the pageant. If Octavia and the Earth Shrine won this fight against Deeznu, it all might actually be worth it.
The Warden’s only regret was that Quantum could be stranded in this den of greed without a ship and without a friend who understood him. Even if the Warden spent the rest of his days slaving away in a factory or digging in a mine, he would be surrounded by others of his own kind. Quantum, forever separated from his own dimension, would always be alone…
After the hours-long processing (made even longer by his complete absence from any database known to the modern world), the Warden, aka John Doe 42, was finally ushered into a small holding cell on the thirty-fourth floor of the detention center. His small window looked out over Commerce Square, the heart of the downtown corporate zone. The wink and flash of neon advertisements colored the tiny room with multitudinous hues in a hypnotic rhythm. The roaring sound of countless overlapping ditties, skimmer horns, shouts, and general street cacophony eventually turned into a mind-numbing susurrus.
Stretching out on the hard bunk, the Warden stared at the ceiling tiles until he dozed off.
---
He was awakened by the sound of his own voice: “…offer a kind word, or a supportive shoulder. Sometimes all we need is that reminder, and the Earth Day Festival was that for me.”
His words came from outside his cell window.
Standing on his bunk, the Warden was surprised to see his own visored face staring back at him from the big holographic billboard dominating Commerce Square. Danica had uploaded his speech, and the network was broadcasting it across the major channels.
The Warden watched as scores of early shoppers stopped and stared at his projected image, listened to his recorded words. When the speech was replaced by an ad for a new sports drink, the crowds returned to their business. A half hour later, his speech played again. This time the crowds were bigger, and the pause was longer. The cycle repeated twice more before a guard came to his cell.
“Sorry, fella. But your hearing’s been postponed.” The uniformed man placed a prefabricated meal on the small table beside the bunk. “Something about the bigwigs getting their heads together.”
The Warden ate the tasteless breakfast and listened to the advertisements punctuated by his brief oration. By lunchtime, he noticed that less noise came from the square. Taking another look from the window, he saw that the crowds had thinned out to the point that actually using the word “crowd” could be considered an exaggeration.
By dinner, Commerce Square was a ghost town. The hypnotic sales pitches played to an empty house.
The Warden felt somehow optimistic as he settled in for the night.
---
He was awakened hours later by something he thought he’d never hear again. In fact, at first he thought he was dreaming, remembering. It was a carol. An old Earth Day carol extoling the virtues of brotherly-love, charity, unity, and compassion. The carol was sung by the loveliest soprano voice he’d ever heard. It was coming from outside, in Commerce Square.
The Warden got up, stood on his bunk and looked through the window. Guardian Octavia’s face, twenty-feet tall, stared back at him from the titanic billboard across the way. She sang the carol. But she was not the only one. Far below, on the streets and sidewalks, a multitude of others joined in.
The sun was rising on Earth Day.
The Warden saw his own visored face on some of the smaller display screens in shop windows along the thoroughfare. His speech was still being aired.
Another voice with a now familiar whiskey-blues quality joined the carol. It came from somewhere outside the cell. The Warden turned as the door opened to find the security officer standing beside Quantum and the singing Danica Stone. All were smiling, even the guard.
“I don’t understand,” the Warden said.
“Your fine has been paid.” The guard held out the Warden’s gun belt and blasters. “And your ship is no longer impounded.”
Quantum raised a data pad displaying the official paperwork. “You have Miss Stone to thank.”
Danica laughed and shook her head. “I wouldn’t say that. Let’s just say the folks of Nu Terra V are as generous and good-natured as they’ve always been. They simply needed someone to remind them of that fact. And that someone was you, Warden.”
The Warden smiled as he buckled on his guns. “You ran a story championing the Earth Shrine’s pageant.”
Quantum’s antennae whirred. “She did more than that. The story suggested that people across the galaxy abstain from any commerce whatsoever to show their support for the Earth Shrine and the ‘true meaning of the Earth Day Festival.’
“In less than twelve hours following the story’s release, stock prices began to plummet across the board. By hitting them where it hurts, Miss Stone shamed the corporations into realizing what they had done to the festival, and by extension, the planet.”
“Argonaut paid for your and the Ranger VII’s release.” Danica took the Warden by the arm and led him from the cell. “And Kronos-Wagner put up the seven million to donate the land to the Earth Shrine. With that kind of PR coup de grâce stacked against them, Deeznu had no choice but to foot the bill for the pageant and its marketing. As I understand it, folks from all over the galaxy will be coming for the next week to experience a good, old-fashioned Earth Day Festival.”
<
br /> Stepping out of the detention center and onto the street crowded with hundreds of singing people, the Warden was astounded by the stark contrast with the day of his arrival. The crisp morning air smelled of sweet baked goods and warm cider. A total stranger smiled and slapped him on the back as he passed, shouting, “Be blessed, brother!” Another grasped his hand in both of hers and wished him, “Happy Earth Day! And thank you so much!”
Quantum leaned close. “So, are all human celebrations like this?”
The Warden laughed. “For the most part. Though the frequency of fisticuffs and incarceration varies from household to household.”
Author’s Note
The Origin of The Last Star Warden
By the summer of 2019, I was utterly exhausted by the Pop-culture War, having seen most of my beloved franchises torched into burnt-out husks by Post-Modernism, Nihilism, and Identity Politics. Disney had turned Star Wars into the cinematic equivalent of fast food, CBS had taken the intelligent optimism of Star Trek and twisted it into a mean-spirited and poorly written parody, and the BBC had essentially told generations of Doctor Who fans, “We’re taking this away and giving it to someone else because you don’t think like we want you to.”
I had given up on comics and superheroes years before, but they were faring no better. Though Alan Moore’s Watchmen and Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns had been catalysts in making me the storyteller I am today, they had also turned the paradigm of the four-color superhero on its head. Attempting to emulate (or flat-out copy) these seminal works, an ensuing generation of writers and artists embarked on the systematic and industry-wide deconstruction of the hero.
And I had grown bone-tired of it all.
So, as I sat in a local auto dealership waiting on a factory recall, I brainstormed and doodled in my notebook. I set out to recapture what I had always loved about heroic storytelling and genre fiction. Naturally, I had to go back to the beginning—my earliest childhood heroes. Who were they and what about them had fascinated me at such an early age, and why were they essentially timeless? Why, so many decades later, did I still love them?
The Lone Ranger: My dad has always been a big western buff and, like most of my tastes in fiction, I inherited that from him. As a child of the 1970s, my favorite toys were the Lone Ranger and Tonto action figures from Gabriel. I watched the old reruns of the Clayton Moore TV show and was ecstatic when the Saturday-morning cartoon finally came along. I was even more so when I found out about the live-action movie in 1981, which I saw at the local drive-in theater when I was eight years old. I remember begging for the film novelization, and then having my dad go through and mark out all the “bad words” so I could read it.
But what was it about the Lone Ranger that so captivated me? Was it the blue suit and the twin six-guns, the mask? Probably. But I think it was also the fact that he was the Good Guy, so much so that he wouldn’t even kill the Bad Guys. No matter how much harder it made his life, the Lone Ranger always did the right thing.
The Bat-Man: Like a lot of folks my age, one of the earliest memories I have of Batman comes from the Saturday-morning Super Friends cartoon. Another, of course, is from reruns of the old Adam West TV show. These incarnations share almost nothing in common with the grim and gritty Dark Knight of modern times. When I was a kid, Batman was the hero with the best gadgets and the coolest vehicles, but he also smiled and made jokes. And though there was plenty of Bang! Pow! Zap! action, as often as not, the Caped Crusader used his wits to beat the Bad Guys before sharing a laugh with Robin and Commissioner Gordon.
Captain America: I’ve always loved medieval knights even more than Old West cowboys. With his shield and chain mail shirt, Captain America seemed like the Marvel Universe’s version of a modern-day knight in shining armor. As I got older and began reading his comics, I found that the comparison extended to his ethos as well. Cap, like the Lone Ranger, is the quintessential Good Guy. He’s also a soldier, like my father and my grandfather, so I appreciated the military aspect of his character—the rigorous training and discipline, the drive to exceed one’s personal limits.
And though Buck Rogers had done it decades before, Captain America is also a man out of time. He’s a Greatest Generation character living first among the Baby Boomers, and now adjusting to Gen-Xers and Millennials. Yet, in his mind, and in mine, the Right Thing doesn’t have an expiration date.
The Phantom: One of—if not the very first—costumed crime-fighters. Another two-gun hero in a mask on a white horse. A man with a mysterious origin and a legacy of immortality. A legendary man who fights pirates and corrupt governments. But a living, breathing man all the same. The fact that the character’s mystique is built on family and lineage makes the Phantom a believable human being. We know that the man in the mask will die someday, but the Phantom and what he stands for, what he fights for, what he believes in, will live on. And the Bad Guys secretly tremble in that knowledge.
So, where to take this amalgamation of Wild West lawman, urban crime-fighter, super soldier, and jungle legend? Why, SPAAAAAACE of course! (Yes, Space Ghost was another obvious influence.)
Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers are Sam Jones and Gil Gerard in my mind, not Larry “Buster” Crabbe and, well, Larry “Buster” Crabbe… though I have watched some of the serials. But the proto/subgenre of the ray gun and rocket ship has its fingerprints on everything from Forbidden Planet through Star Trek and Star Wars all the way to Farscape, Firefly, and The Expanse. We, as human beings, love the notion of exploration, of reaching out to see what’s “beyond.” Infinite space will always be that: The carrot forever out of our reach. And that is why space adventures will always appeal to us in one form or another.
The Last Star Warden is a Good Guy. He is a lawman dedicated to doing the Right Thing, even if the modern worlds around him don’t necessarily know what that is. He’s a mortal man, alone in this quest save for his friend and one-time enemy, Quantum. The Lone Ranger had Tonto, Batman had Robin, Captain America had Bucky (and later The Falcon), and the Phantom had Guran. The Last Star Warden has Quantum, an interdimensional alien with a mind like a supercomputer.
Together, they battle the Bad Guys, wherever they find them. They’re soldiers forever fighting The Good Fight.
In SPAAAACE!
About the Author
Jason J. McCuiston was born in the wilds of southeast Tennessee, where he was raised on a carnivorous diet of old monster movies, westerns, comic books, horror magazines, sci-fi and fantasy novels, and, of course, Dungeons & Dragons. He attended the finest state school that would have him with the intention of becoming a comic-book artist. This did not pan out, so following his matriculation and a brief and unprofitable stint as an illustrator of tabletop RPGs, he embarked upon a whirlwind tour of spectacularly underpaid and uninspired careers. Half a lifetime later, he came to his senses, realizing he was meant to be a professional storyteller.
Publishing his first story about zombies, kung fu, and family ties in Parsec Ink’s 2017 Triangulation: Appetites anthology, Jason has been a semi-finalist in the Writers of the Future contest and has studied under the tutelage of bestselling author Philip Athans. His stories of fantasy, horror, and science fiction have appeared in numerous anthologies, periodicals, websites, and podcasts.
Project Notebook, his first novel, can be found with most of his other publications on his Amazon page at https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B07RN8HT98.
Jason lives in South Carolina, USA with his college-professor wife and their two four-legged children, Grendel* and Winky. Connect with him on the internet at: https://www.facebook.com/ShadowCrusade. And he occasionally tweets about his dogs, his stories, his likes, and his gripes @JasonJMcCuiston.
*Editor’s note: Grendel has since passed, but his spirit lives on in the Warden’s faithful companion, Quantum. R.I.P. to one of the goodest boys ever.
ce - Volume 1
The Last Star Warden - Tales of Adventure and Mystery from Frontier Space - Volume 1 Page 18
