Darkside 1

by Aaron K Carter

  As I lie in the hard metal bunk I think of Nicole Tom. Before when I was locked up, I hadn’t met her, so then I didn’t know I loved her and now I that I do it is terribly interesting. I am trying to determine if I ever loved anything before and I don’t think so.

  Now I get every waking moment to look forward to looking in her eyes. it’s terribly odd, this feeling, this wanting to hold her all the time. at first, I didn’t like it. now I do. It gives me something to use part of my brain for. all that time I spent lying in the brig before, I’d just had me to entertain myself. I’d thought up everything, ways to kill and destroy all of them. but it was only so fascinating because I couldn’t do anything. now I have her. now that I’ve seen her, heard her say my name, I’ll always have her.

  Chapter 4

  I pull out my tablet carefully, cradling the smooth plastic in my seemingly clumsy big hands. It’s new and I’m not used to it. I have no idea how my mum afforded it I’ve never owned one before. But she wanted me to be able to call home and the signal to work properly and she knew they would provide us with crap ones if that. but I feel like I’m going to drop the thing, and it’s expensive and I know for a fact we couldn’t afford it. but that doesn’t matter. Soon I’ll be making enough money for all three of us.

  Ginny answers immediately of course.

  Quentin, she types my name into the message board excitedly. Our home tablet is slow compared to this and she glares at it as she taps on the screen.

  I love you, where’s mum I ask, pressing my forehead against the screen so she sees only my face in the picture and not these awful barracks.

  working late she was sad didn’t want to miss your call she types, her dark hair filling the screen as she too presses close, like the thin screens we face are all that is keeping us apart and not a thousand miles and walls and fences with wire.

  i can call almost every night promise I say, smiling. I can; they said we’d have communication privileges from here on out and I am not going to lose them. I’m my flight’s leader look i get to wear this pin I hold up the pin from my lapel to show her, we are the dental flight.

  that is so cool she grins.

  less cool to get yelled at but it’s okay, I tell her.

  miss you her blue eyes sparkle. I know what she’s thinking, I know her mind like know my own.

  STOP IT I type, just as she levitates the pin in my hands, making it spin. I catch it out of the air, unable to keep a smile off my face. she is psychic. Some people are I’ve no idea why, but she is. And of course that’s not exactly the sort of thing one wants to be public information. Our mother had heard tales of people like Ginny being locked up to be studied by scientists and kept in cages and all that. but then she had tales about lots of things. Mums tend to.

  but I miss you and then I don’t feel so far apart she says.

  I know I type. I feel her in my head. she can get in there if she wants to. if she really focuses. Needless to say she practices all the time with me. and now that we’re apart I feel her do it throughout the day. I can even hear her voice sometimes. But I don’t encourage it. It hurts her if she does it too much, and I don’t want her to get caught---somehow. I’m in a government facility it feels like they could catch her. if people try to catch people like her. which I don’t know that they do but they might and it’s not the sort of thing one risks.

  I’m gonna be done with training before we know it I type and I get to write home it would be worse if we couldn’t talk

  (we can always talk)

  I smile I know so it’s ok, right?

  right you were sad earlier she writes.

  I know it’s kind of lonely here sometimes but I’m okay, I type. I am, really. even if the mites shout at us. so what? it’s not like we’re going to die or anything. it’s not like anything bad is going to happen

  I pace my room, drinking from the flask I don’t remember packing but am infinitely glad I have. I need to take the edge off. to relax. To stop thinking about this.

  I pick up my tablet and on impulse pull up messages to Hawking. She’s offline but I can still leave her a message. She and I were bunkmates together a million years ago in OCS training. Her last message to me was at nine this morning.

  are you ok?

  She knows there’s something wrong with me she can always tell I’ve only told her what I’m thinking in bits she wouldn’t believe me. nobody will. But I have to tell someone. And she’s a million miles away, patrolling the North rim, where I am stationed with her or was until my crash.

  I’m ok, still recovering. they say I’ll be all right in a few weeks. I sigh and keep going. I’m up at ocs school. one of my cadets tested up. I wanted to check on him. on things. Wilde, your lovely fiance, is beautiful as ever, I guarantee you. how I wish our places were traded. I cannot stand to be on the surface these days I feel as though my every step is haunted now. you know how I wrote to you that I feel I have found the edge of hell.

  well now I can tell you the feeling has not changed, it worsens by the day. I read and drink alone each night, I know you’ll think I’m spending far too much time alone here. but I cannot shake this from my mind.

  I fear not even returning to space, and to your company my dear friend, that will not free me. I’ve warned wild I told her some of what I believe but she doubts me as I am sure you will.

  but you see I’ve been studying the end times and I believe we are witnessing the coming of the second beast. he will kill me someday. we are all just players in the game you know that none of it matters I suppose.

  but enough of this drunken rambling. you’ll fear for my mind as I fear for my soul. but no matter. I’ve calculated the numbers of the beast and we have years until the false prophet falls and mankind is plunged into the apocalypse. that is all to come much later but he will kill me someday. if only I did not know. I would sleep so much easier in my bed. ignorance truly is bliss, my dear friend. I hope you too are well.

  I press send and sink down on the bed, realizing I’ve been pacing this whole time. and my hands are shaking. I lie back and close my eyes, holding the tablet in my hands, waiting for it to buzz, a message out of the ether to comfort me in the darkness. It does not come before I sleep. And in my drunken sleep I do not wake.

  I hate sleeping. It’s like disappearing into yourself forever and your mind closes up and you can’t control it or where it takes you. and it takes me places. Hiding in my room at night under quilts, my hands pressed to my head, wanting nothing more than to think but my brain overwhelming me with sleep then my mother finding me, her hands prying my hands from my head and then taping them behind my back and I can’t think anymore and I scream. And scream. And I scream till I wake up. Or I’m in an alley, looking down at my sister’s dead body as my cold hands shake and look at the bruises on her neck. Her mocking voice ringing in my ears. “don’t be stupid, there’s nothing wrong with you,” she rolled her eyes.

  “Yes, there is,” I said.

  I stare at my tablet and pretend to type. I sent a message yesterday to my mother that all was well. my father has not responded to any messages since I first arrived. So I quit sending them after the second one. My mother told me to tell her I was all right. And I did. but I’m not going to bother her every night. she has other children. a husband. I don’t know if he knows about me. surely that’s all strange. She says she does love me. that she always wanted to know me. but it’s not like she doesn’t have a life. Surely she doesn’t want to be bothered in the middle of the night. and I don’t have anything to say. I’m so alone here. I’m different now from half of my flight mates because I do have family that half cares about me so the forgotten are jealous which they know it isn’t my fault but they still are and I don’t blame them. I am glad to know. but it’s more confusing now than ever.

  My mother said she would come to my graduation. Said she was proud of me. I haven’t met her. my sixteenth birthday was two days before I shipped off here, so I didn’t have any real chance to see t
hem.

  my father wanted to know about me, but he didn’t tell me much about himself. He said he would come and meet me once I got out of training if I wanted. That he cared about me and thanked me for contacting him, wanted to know what my SFSC was. but he hadn’t answered my last message saying I’d made it to OCS all right. I wondered why. He hadn’t even sent me a picture of himself either. My mother had a picture of her and of her two other daughters. My sisters. She said they all three couldn’t wait to meet me. my father had said he wanted to meet me and had asked for a picture of me, as well as my full name. but he hasn’t sent me his picture. Maybe he is married and doesn’t want his spouse to know he’d had me. or he wasn’t really all that interested in me anymore maybe he just felt guilty and now that he knew I was okay he didn’t care. It’s okay. I guess. I mean it’s better than what Tom or Long have. they’re both forgotten, so they know their parents don’t give a damn and never did. at least mine wanted to know who I was. I should be glad. But somehow, I’m just more lonely.

  I’m lonely because I have sisters I’ve never met. And I’m not at home being tucked into bed and never was. and even if they want to know me it hardly matters because I’m grown up and gone now. and they missed me. and I missed them.

  But I have a little. It’s not much, but it’s a little to cling to in the night. the knowledge that I was in some small way loved. some didn’t have that.

  Ebbel still isn’t coming to check us in the brig. it doesn’t make sense. He usually does his rounds by now. I know the MTIs have lights out at 0 dark, while we cadets, 2300, so he would have come by now except he isn’t which means something is different tonight, but what? I resist a moan. I hate the unknown. That one variable I can never account for because I don’t even know it exists. I hate that. hate it. hate it so much it burns the inside of my brain. Something is different and I don’t know what because I’m stuck in here.

  I press my hands into my head and lean back. at least it’s quiet. At least I’m alone. even if I can’t read or anything the quiet is nice. The alone is nice. I never had a room all to myself until they put me in the brig. I thought that was funny. When they threw me in there, the first time, I stood in the middle of the room, staring at the bed, laughing and laughing for a solid hour. Because I’d never ever had a room to myself in my entirely, lonely life, and here they were gravely ‘punishing’ me for this picadillo, which I didn’t even do and I got one, a room all of my own. Even if it didn’t have any books. I wanted books. I’d always wanted a tablet of my own. I’d stolen one several times, tried to sleep over at school so I could read, I’d given that up because I always got caught and my mother made my life worse.

  Well, not anymore. Once I get out of here, I can buy my own tablet. And I will have my own room. and I will fly. And everything would perfect. no. everything won’t be perfect until Nicole Tom kisses me. I wonder if she will. I wonder if she would if she knew I was going to kill Ebbel. Had killed Ebbel, for after tonight he wouldn’t be alive, if he would ever come.

  There are a thud and bang. I sit up and lookup. That was coming from the air vents. So, I’m not the only one who knows those are conveniently sized for crawling about.

  “Shh quiet, Tim.”

  “Well, you hurt me, Tim.”

  “We’ve got to be there, now, Tim.”

  “Quit kicking me, Tim.”

  I stand up, there is distinctly something wrong with this air vent, “Shh, now am I suffering some sort of traumatic brain injury, or are there two of you in the air vent, and you’re both named Tim?” I hiss.

  “That sounds like him, Tim.”

  “It’s got to be, Tim.”

  “Let’s go with the latter, what on Kepler are you doing?” other than ruining my perfectly good murder plot. There is a rattling and air duct cover is pulled up into the vent.

  “It is Titus! He used a word I don’t know so it is him,” ahead leans out of the air vent, and a cadet dressed in PT gear leans down, holding out his hands, “Tim’s got me, here, Titus, take my hands, I’ll help you up!”

  “You do realize that there are security camera’s on us?” I ask, sitting back down as the time is almost up I’ll be back on the screen in a minute.

  “Did you hear that Tim?”

  “I told you that’s why we needed Titus!”

  “But he’s here!”

  “We still need him, Tim.”

  “You’re right, Tim.”

  During all of that one, Tim pulled the other back into the vent and I lay back down. I roll over and put my face into the pillow so that I can talk.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask, a little disappointed that this will almost definitely ruin my plans for the evening.

  “We came to get you out,” one of them says, helpfully.

  “But how are we going to do that if there are cameras?” the other one asks.

  “I didn’t think about that, Tim.”

  “Neither did I, Tim.”

  “We’ll go then---”

  “No, wait---there’s a gap in the camera coverage, where we can move around,” I say, quickly, before these two morons decide to leave.

  “Really?”

  “Well then, we’ll get you out!”

  “No! It’s not happening right now---and anyway, what did you think you’d do with me once you got me out?” I ask, suddenly suspicious. Am I the only murderer here? Suddenly I wish I weren’t face down into the cot. The hairs on my neck crawl. But then the inevitable temerarious reply comes.

  “Go back to the barracks of course.”

  “And go to bed, it’s late and we’ve got PT in the morning.”

  “I’m going to regret asking this---didn’t it occur to you that the guards would notice if I weren’t in the cell in the morning?” I mumble, into the cot.

  “Oh.”

  “We didn’t think about that either, did we, Tim?”

  “No, we didn’t, Tim.”

  “We shall just leave then—”

  “NO,” I cry, nearly sitting up in annoyance. “Just because I can’t leave the cell for long doesn’t mean I can’t leave. And it doesn’t mean we can’t have some fun, either.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Fun?”

  “Yes, fun as in games,” I say, using simple words so that they will understand me. “Good ones, ones I’ve thought up, they’re the best kind.”

  “Really?”

  “Like what?”

  “I’ll tell you, now listen carefully, because I’ve got twenty seconds left till the cameras are off of me again and then we’ll have to move quickly and perfunctorily,” I begin, a smile lurking on my lips. Even if I can’t kill Ebbel tonight, I still may have some fun.

  It’s so lonely here in the dark. I’m mad at how much I wish Titus were here. we could sneak off to the simulators and have fun. Like you’re supposed to. all I’ve read of popular fiction as well as scientific articles tell my sixteen year olds are supposed to have a decent amount of fun. Not play soldier day in and day out. I pull out my tablet and message Peter. He’s still awake and online. My other forgotten with nobody to write home to.

  “Hi,” I type.

  “Hi,” he sends.

  “I wish we could write home I” tell him.

  “Me too. I know most people’s parents don’t even want to meet them or have all that much to do with them, but it would be nice to know” he writes.

  “That’s what I wish. I’m sick of being nothing but a spaceman, even if its rotten to say. I want to have a good time here, but I’m lonely” I write.

  “We’ll have fun. Titus certainly isn’t boring” he writes.

  I’ll say I miss him more than I care to admit, and it’s only been a few hours. But he has this energy about him. It comes into the room with him and it’s dark and dangerous yet I can’t bring myself to ignore it and you know you can’t escape it so you might as well go along with it.

  “I think we’re in for a good time, considering he’s only been f
light leader for six hours and already he saved us all a 314 and got himself in the brig, whatever got him to put in there will surely be entertaining,” he writes.

  “I wonder why he doesn’t care about getting in trouble,” I ask.

  “I think he’s having fun, honestly, you saw him singing to us, he’s cut from a different cloth than the rest of us, maybe that’s what is normal is but I don’t think so, we’re not normal cause we’re projecting 10, but he’s not normal cause of something else in his head, but whatever it is, its gonna be interesting” he says.

  “Yeah you’re right, I don’t know what it is, it’s like he knows what everyone is thinking and doing all the time and only occasionally cares,” I say.

  “That and that he swallowed a dictionary peter says ill be he doesn’t know what half those words mean.”

  “I’ll bet he does,” I say.

  “Release my calcaneus, you pusillanimous prig!”

  “Ummm...I don’t know what that means.”

  “It means to let go of my foot you stupid idiot,” I hiss, resisting the temptation to kick a Tim in the head. it’s a really horrible temptation, by the way.

  “Oh, sorry. I thought that was part of the wall.”

  “Well it wasn’t it was my foot,” I say, tiredly, squeezing myself the rest of the way down the pipe. We have twenty-three seconds until I have to be back. without either of them behind me, I can make it in ten. “Now, you see where this comes out? You’ll go straight over there, and then come and report back to me when it’s done.”

  “Okay,” one Tim, the one in front of me, says, looking where I point. We are at the intake for the air system, which faces the academic halls. My cell is conveniently located near the end, so the crawl is short. However, it took much longer than I anticipated since the two Tims are not very good at crawling.

  “We’ll report back, sir,” the other Tim, the more talkative one who I am almost completely positive was chewing on my ankle, says.

  “All right, good luck,” I say, slithering backward so quickly, it doesn’t occur to me until after I’m gone that I ought to have asked them what on Kepler possessed them to come try to break me out.