by Wayne Hill
“All you have to do is explain your EPC device and all your sufferings will end. You can go home. And live. And love.”
The voice sounds almost kind to Splinter, but he dismissed this routine. They are merely capitalising upon his weakened state, as ordinary religious folk do. In his shell of steam, he stops fumbling with cables and typing on his arm’s control panel as a picture of Marie-Ann flashes into his dying mind. A beautiful image. She is smiling, stood on one of The Weeping Willow’s tables, about to start singing. This beautiful vision is quickly replaced by a horrific one: her brutal death beneath their weeping willow tree. He grits his teeth in agony as another finger steams off to strike the ceiling. He needs to hurry. He cannot be distracted.
“The portal is now open, Splinter, and it leads to two main scenarios. The reality portal can be used to take you to the other universe where you can replace your other self and be with the one you love; or, alternatively, we can send you back to that painful embrace under your mourning tree. You will find yourself back at O’Shea’s, consuming ale, while the memorial sign you made sparkles above the hovel you call home, and you will be forever without her. You will live the rest of your long, healthy life while she lies dead in the ground beneath your tree.”
Splinter grins an evil grin.
His head is pounding, and his breathing is laboured, as he grants the Nirmana permission to start the process of boarding the SS Shit, formerly the Golden Falcon.
“Okay, hippies, I’ve only got a few things to say to you before you dock. Firstly, Buddha was a spoilt kid who wanted to go backpacking with no shoes on. Secondly, who suffered the most? His wife and child, who were left behind to worry and fend for themselves, or his stupid fucking feet?”
“We are preparing to board your craft now,” the hissing hive voice says peremptorily. “We will have plenty of time to talk more on your ... theological delusions.”
Splinter’s index finger hovers over a red button, then he screams “You filthy little wasps! THREE-HUNDRED MILLION METRES A SECOND!” ... and pushes the button.
(Splinter’s last words are heard by everyone on board the Nirmanan ship, including Captain Levy and his family. Levy simply closes his eyes and whispers “Oh Shit.”)
Splinter’s ship powers up and darts into the Nirmanan portal.
Before he pops out of existence, Splinter hears a long, drawn-out scream echoing in his skull. It might have been the scream of the Nirmanan leader. Then again, the scream might have been his own.
POSSIBLY THE LAST EVER device designed and made by Splinter Salem, at least in this universe, springs into action.
The red liquid inside of the empty Jack Daniels bottle incorporated into the device contains Splinter’s blood. Crudely, drunkenly, ingeniously, he had incorporated himself into the spacecraft, a spacecraft that — combined with his EPC and the Nirmanan time-portal — could pass through multiple realities. By pumping some of his blood around the ship, he tricked the Nirmanan pod into recognising the ship as his body.
Once the Splinter-ship-pod gestalt reaches the purple portal in the centre of the Sun it is atomised, destroyed. It is deconstructed to its component quarks — swarming, swirling, flickering — and then reordered. This cycle of obliteration and reformation repeats several seconds later, and then again, a second after that. These death and rebirth cycles accelerate until they can barely be noticed.
Splinter’s mind screams in protest at this hallucinogenic experience and tries to protect itself by shutting down — one of our more anciently evolved protection mechanisms. Consciousness of this flickering non-existence fading, Splinter attempts, more from habit than inclination, to cool his forehead on his metal arm. The mech-arm is no longer there and — as nothingness finally claws him into its cold embrace — he glimpses, with eyes unblurred by age or alcohol, two normal and immaculate arms.
Lying unconscious on the floor of the SS Shit, Splinter is oblivious as trillions of alternate realities are traversed in less than the time it takes for a match to flare.
GRADUALLY AWARENESS warms him from the chill of the void. Nightmares like a trillion hangovers over-crowd his raw mind. The spacecraft comes to a halt, and three electronic bleeps sound. His throbbing mind would prefer his eyes never to open again but, eventually, he steels himself and opens his eyes.
Splinter feels different, lighter. His senses seem sharper, smells (mostly his own vomit) more distinct, images sharper, sounds crisper. He inspects his arms and finds what he thought was a hallucination is real. His trusted arm-cannon is gone. His usually mouldy green and ink-scarred arm is pink, smooth and blemish free. No mould, no scars, no tattoos. He runs his hand through his long hair in wonderment and finds that his dreadlocks are also gone. His dirty clothes are hanging off him, nearly falling off. Tying his leather, patchwork top around his waist and removing his soiled vest he admires his flesh. No black swirls rose on his chest, which was as smooth and perfect as his arms. He traces his ivory fingers over his smooth and — for the first time in decades — solidly muscled abdomen in awe.
“SS Shit’s diagnostic check complete,” says the ship.
The words seem so loud. Like most, Splinter is naïve of just how much he had lost to the aging process. In Splinter’s freshly made auditory system, the sound is so loud that the ship’s computer seems to be speaking directly into his eardrum.
Partly out of habit, partly because he could think of nothing else, Splinter grabs a nearby bottle of scotch and takes several large gulps of amber goodness. It hurts a lot more than he remembers — he can almost feel individual cells being destroyed by the socially-acceptable toxin as it flows down into his stomach.
Predictably, his fresh stomach rebels against the whisky’s unsubtle touch and, collapsing to his knees, his eyes streaming, he vomits up the burning liquid along with his stomach lining.
Splinter starts to laugh. His body’s strange response to his favourite tipple and his vivid senses combine to push him towards hysteria. When his fleeting mania passes, he levers himself up out the large puddle of vomitus, whisky and bile and says, “Mirror on port wall.”
A large part of the port wall flickers and becomes reflective. Splinter stumbles over to it and greets his new self with his baby-smooth jaw almost on the floor. Splinter Salem is gone. Looking back at him is a teenaged Tommy Salem. He looks nearly eighteen, the same age he was when, in the other universe, he met his love, Marie-Ann O’Shea. He sticks out his tongue, his reflected doppelganger does likewise. He smiles. No blue tongue, either.
The strange monster of hope rises from his chest, clogs his throat and stabs at his eyes. He weeps with joy and, automatically, feels for his silver tear-flask, but then remembers he left it in another universe. How clumsy. Now he is in a universe where he does not have his tear-flask and, perhaps — just perhaps — does not need it.
Tommy Salem — a man in his late-forties in the body of a barely pubescent boy — walks over and enters some coordinates into the Nav-console.
Turning the prow facing curve of the wall to Clear Vision, Tommy watches his homecoming. The bright, blue ball of Earth fills the screen — one of the most beautiful things he has ever seen.
Soon, his whole field of vision is the Earth, and the SS Shit descends into the atmosphere of the third rock from the Sun. The golden craft pierces rain-filled clouds and masses of moving air, splitting weather systems with delicate grace. The falcon-like craft moves below the clouds and flies, meters above the rough ocean waves, until the Drumcroon Facility comes into view.
The prison building turns his thoughts to his parents. Are they still alive in this universe? Are they in that building, wondering, worrying about their prodigal son? Maybe in this universe his escape worked, he was never captured, and they just think he is missing, maybe hiding somewhere? Maybe, in this reality, he never wanted to escape the Drumcroon facility? Maybe he was in one of the infinite realities where he is a USA drone?
He glides past the facility, unnoticed, and out, over the Ba
rrens, towards the barriers of the Lanes. What will he find there? Will Marie-Ann be there? Will she still be alive? Will she love another version of him, or perhaps another person? Will the pub still be called O’Shea’s? As the rain lashes against the Clear Vision wall, Tommy remembers that he made the sign to commemorate the deaths of Marie-Ann and her parents. If I see that sign then Marie-Ann must still be dead, he thinks, suppressing the logical part of his mind. Once inflamed, emotions always trump logic, even in the most rational of biological organisms..
Quickly reaching the barrier wall, the ship formerly known as the Golden Falcon lands in a plot of arable land next to the grand willow tree that is thrashing around in the rainstorm now scouring the Lanes.
Tommy runs down the lowering ramp feeling light and fast, and not caring in the slightest about his half-naked appearance as he charges out into the storm. He runs along the old, dry stone wall partially surrounding the willow tree with cat-like nimbleness, his heart about to burst out of his chest, seemingly endless energy driving his pumping legs.
Then he sees the front of the pub and all his burgeoning elation drains away.
Energy leaks from his body, along with all his hopes. He drops to his knees. Kneeling in muddy water, fresh tears mixing with the rain pounding his skinny frame, he blearily stares up at a twinkling new sign. A sign that hatefully says: O’SHEA’S. Splinter created this sign in memory of the Marie-Ann and her family.
The cold sting of the storm. The adrenalin still coursing as he let out a yell that was lost in a thunderclap. Tommy staggered a while panting heavily and beginning to sob; he fell to his knees, down into the mud. A stone has cut his knee, but he showed no reaction as warm blood mixed with the cold, muddy water, the pain was coursing from his knee to his foot, his hands went into the pool of water in front of him as he broke down in uncontrollable fits of despair to the opposing sound of clapping and joyous cheers, breaking out inside the lively pub. The cheering and clapping commenced for a while until it suddenly fell silent and Tommy could hear his sorrow with pitch-perfect clarity, he clutched his hands together and slammed them into his chest repeatedly until he ached
“I’ve tried my best; I’ve done my best...what else could I have done?”
He shouts; only the storm hears. He slams his fists into the sodden earth in front of him. Small stones cut his knuckles; the earth answers. He catches sight of his reflection again after his wave of violence had subsides, the music flows out from inside the bar, a solo violinist then the voice of a young girl. Its her song. Listening carefully to the singer, she sounds different to Marie Ann, less fun, voice full of sorrow. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up as an inflexion in the girl’s voice triggers memories. He bounds up the steps and through the old saloon doors.
There she stood on a table at the far end of the bar, her long red hair cascading down onto the most eloquent emerald green dress, her mother sat on a chair below her playing the violin. Marie Ann O’Shea was singing and captivating the entire room with her sober sorrowful song. Tommy shook from head to toe and hesitantly, in a dazed state, a dream state, he walks towards her, an arm came to his chest.
It was Jonesy,
“The fuck are you playing at Tommy, clean yer self-up!” He pushes Tommy to the side of the bar and got him a towel and bandages for his wounds. While a shaking sixteen-year-old Tommy Salem watched his long-lost true love singing for the first time in what would have seemed an eternity filled with pain and hatred and filth. His broken ears now fixed, his agony gone, but then the fear she might not even know who he is, that she might not even know his name. “Jonesy, the lady singing, who, who, is, is, she....”
“Ya drunken lout shell be done soon.”
“Are we, are we”
“I don’t care what ya do as long as it’s not in my cinema room upstairs, ya hear me ya dirty little wasp!” with that Jonesy winked and belched before belting full palm young Splinter round the back of the head. He passed him a beer and said, “sit down and shut up, this is my favourite part of the night.”
Splinter grabbed the back of his head and said loudly “Aaarrrh!”
Jonesy shoots him a sharp glance and holds his fist up threateningly.
“Okay, okay,” Tommy whispers placatingly. “I just forgot how much of an arsehole you can be towards the young me.”
Jonesy briefly looks a little confused at that comment, but he quickly turns his attention back to Marie-Ann. Young Tommy Salem sips his beer. Enjoying Marie-Ann’s Irish folk songs, he notices little differences in this reality. Certain furniture is different, certain decorations. Marie-Ann looks the same, but her mother looks slimmer, and younger. Jonesy also looks younger and, furthermore, seems to be sporting a good deal more teeth. He is still missing a few, but the canonical toothless grin looks a long time off. Not like the Jonesy in his reality — toothless old bugger!
He feels a pang of guilt. Here he is in this reality, alive and well, and he has left his friends and loved ones — much as Buddha did — to an uncertain future in another universe. Perhaps they will all die? And perhaps it is his fault? No.
Tommy stops his ruminations to take another gulp of the beer, marvelling over the taste. He was not even sure that he liked beer but, still, the flavour is incredible. He pauses, deliberately placing the tankard down on the bar top, and pushes it firmly away. Thirty years of enforced alcoholism is enough for anyone.
His attention is now fully Marie-Ann’s. Tommy beams at her; he cannot help it. Marie-Ann notices him and gives him a worried look, no doubt because of his busted nose and scratched face. Tommy can only shrug at her sheepishly. She shakes her head, smiling. And with that smile, Tommy’s heart becomes whole for the first time in decades. Marie-Ann maintains glinting eye contact with him until the end of her set, when the silent pub suddenly erupts in a cacophony of applause and whistles.
Then the singer in green, barely acknowledging her audience, bounds over tables — knocking glasses and beer pots flying — and leaps into Tommy’s outstretched arms. He spins her around three times and kisses her, to the extended clapping and wolf-whistling of the patrons.
For the first time in nearly thirty years, Tommy kisses the love of his life. It is a kiss that was worth all the pain that he had endured. It was a sweet panacea. In her warm embrace, all pain is forgotten. This universe disappears and there are only her eyes, her smile, her lips, and her kiss. After what feels like an eternity — an eternity of bliss — he softly peels his lips from hers.
“My apple tree,” he whispers huskily, his liquid eyes shining, devouring her.
“Tommy,” she smiles. Then, finally realising his dishevelled and soiled appearance, she chuckles. “Look at you, you filthy little wasp!”
Tommy grabs her hand and pulls her with him, out of the bar and into the storm-wracked night.
“Oh no, it’s raining cats and dogs, Tommy!” Marie-Ann gasps. “Where are you taking me...?”
Tommy shouts back to her as they run through the storm, lightning stitching the sky to the ground, “Do you remember saying to me once that, in your whole life, you have never seen anything, never gone anywhere?”
Too busy watching her footing and trying not to fall in all the mud, Marie-Ann does not see the large, golden spacecraft that is periodically illuminated by flashes of lightning.
Tommy tows her under the cover of the towering weeping willow tree and pulls her into a passionate clinch. Her back to the craft, she pulls away, facing him now, smiling and laughing.
Tommy says, “I'm taking you away from all this, my love. I'm going to show you the universe.”
“Oh, Tommy!” gushes a giggling Marie-Ann. “You are so adorable. And just how do you propose to whisk your fair maiden away without a suit of armour or a faithful steed?”
Tommy waits for the next flash of lightning before spinning Marie-Ann around and proudly announcing, “I call her the SS Shit. Right, where do you want to go, Ophelia?”
“Tommy! What the fuck is that! and... wa
itaminute ... Who the fuck is Ophelia?”
7
The Nirmana’s mistake was believing a dying wasp could not sting.
This mistake could either be understood as an unfortunate miscalculation or a naïve lack of piratical knowledge. Perhaps both.
The Nirmanan ship had lowered its defensive shields to board the vessel formerly known as the Golden Falcon. Splinter let them access the SS Shit’s mainframe and access the boarding tunnel. Splinter had waited what felt to him an agonising long time — his brain boiling in his skull, his extremities steaming and detaching explosively — until the long golden tube was fully extended. Then, using his coveted EPC, he overrides the Nirmanan systems with a massive surge of energy.
The spacecraft now captained by Splinter was built in a much less technologically advanced time than the Nirmana’s super high-tech vessel. The Golden Falcon was built to last, rather than be constantly updated and replaced. It was able to withstand the harshness of interstellar space without forcefields. Sometimes, older things are just made of tougher stuff.
Splinter uses the extended golden docking tunnel like a lance to ram into the Nirmanan craft. The future ship, with its force fields down, cannot compete with the robust construction of the Golden Falcon. The docking tube slices through the Nirmanan ship with remarkable ease, like diamond through chalk. The supernova-like heat of the SS Shit’s thrusters, as it forces through the time-travelling ship, causes a variety of damage. All protection removed, explosions rip through the spacecraft and the moribund Nirmanan ship wallows in space, as a dying whale might before sinking into the lightless depths.
Splinter accelerates the SS Shit, pushing through the side of the Nirmanan ship and shooting into the solar reality portal — disappearing into the unknown. As Splinter and the SS Shit wink out of this agreed reality, the Nirmana’s colossal ship fades, its magnificence slowly dulling.
The only chance of survival for the Nirmana is the Earth.
