by M. R. Holman
his next ping pong victim might be. The sound of boots padding their way down the hall and echoing off the metal walls wrenched him from his silent reverie and he turned around.
"Fancy a game of ping pong?" he asked before he had even turned completely around to see who he was asking. It was one of the young engineers of the energy harnessing machine. Her brows were furrowed and her eyes merely glanced up from her clipboard as she walked past. She was apparently lost in thought or calculations. She did not even seem to register that a question had been asked until she had neared the end of the hall, when she turned around and briefly muttered, "No thanks, Corporal Riley..."
She exited the hallway, leaving him alone once again. He sighed deeply. Was there no one left on this ship who would face him? Were they cowards? It was only a game of ping pong...
He walked to the end of the hall and turned right, traveling deeper into the ship. The pub would certainly hold an opponent. Alcohol was his ally when it came to finding a willing or unwitting participant. He did not even want to play for Units right now, he just wanted a game.
The pub was not unruly, but compared to the silent halls he had just vacated it seemed very loud indeed. He was hailed by no one as he walked into the room. In fact, no one seemed to notice him at all. He approached the crowded bar and waited for an opening. At last, someone left with a tall mug of beer in each hand, leaving a space for him to squeeze into.
"What'll it be, Riley?" the bartender asked in a monotone voice after glancing at him most briefly.
"Just a beer, please." As he waited for his beer, he looked around the room. He had played against, and defeated, almost everyone that he recognized there. He could see, or at least he suspected, that several of them were knowingly avoiding his gaze. Others, he thought, were peering at him through their peripheral vision. Why were they so annoyed at him? It was their own fault that they had lost against him...
Corporal Riley's beer was delivered and he took a sip. He remained at the bar, not wishing to sit alone at one of the tables lining the walls of the pub. The man next to him was a stranger. He looked vaguely familiar, but he and Corporal Riley had never spoken to each other. Like most, this man was likely only on the Lasso for one or two missions. Corporal Riley had been on the ship much, much longer. The man stared at the small glass of whiskey in his hand and remained quite motionless.
"Want to play a game of ping pong?" Corporal Riley asked the man. He turned slowly from his glass of whiskey. His eyes were bloodshot.
"No," the man answered. His voice sounded like a frog's croak.
"What's the matter? Afraid you'll lose?" Corporal Riley asked with a smirk. The man glared at him for a moment, downed the rest of his whiskey, and rose from his seat without saying anything at all. He exited the pub.
What was wrong with everyone on this ship, Corporal Riley wondered? The open spot at the bar beside him that the man had vacated remained empty. The pub was just as busy, if not more so, than when he had arrived, but no one seemed to want to take the open spot. Corporal Riley finished his beer in a few quick gulps and pulled the ping pong ball from his pocket. He dropped it a few inches above the top of the bar and let it bounce against his palm.
"Another beer, Riley?" the bartender asked gruffly, watching him dropping the ball on his bar top.
"No, no..." Corporal Riley said absentmindedly, focusing on the feeling of the tiny ball thumping against the palm of his hand.
"Then you need to leave. It's getting busy and the bar is for paying customers," the bartender said sharply as he took Corporal Riley's empty mug of beer from in front of him.
Corporal Riley did not argue. He rose solemnly from his bar stool and walked to the exit. There were no opponents there. There might not even be any left on the Lasso at all, he reflected sadly. He slumped down the hall with his hands in his pockets, one hand clasping the ping pong ball. He reached a bench that was welded into the metal wall and sat down. It was across from a giant porthole that faced the energy harnessing apparatus that was being assembled around the white dwarf star. In the weeks before, this window had been heavily shaded to protect the eyes and skin of the Lasso's crew, but now that the apparatus was nearing completion the shading was no longer necessary. A great white shell of material now hid the star from view.
The shell looked remarkably like the ping pong ball he now held at arm’s length, right beside the distant energy sapping apparatus in the window. He dropped the ball to the ground and stood up, retracing his steps back to the recreation room where he had left his backpack. He could hear the ball bouncing behind him, each impact spaced far apart at first but then increasing in frequency as it ran out of energy. He turned down the hall and could no longer hear the bouncing ping pong ball at all.
Maybe he needed to find a new game, he thought. He had, after all, been rather rude to his victims. He realized as he referred to them as 'victims' in his mind that he was the problem. It was only a game. It was supposed to be fun for both parties...
As he neared the recreation room, he heard a sound that simultaneously excited him and caused his heart to sink. Someone was playing ping pong. Should he try to join, even though milliseconds previous he had considered giving it up forever? He thought, proudly, that he could challenge both players to play against him. That would make it appear fair. He knew he would still win anyways. As he prepared to enter the room, he heard the two players begin to speak.
"I'm so glad old man Riley finally cleared out of here so we could actually play."
"Heh, yeah. The guy acts like ping pong is his calling."
"Well his calling certainly isn’t cleaning... How did a janitor even make corporal? I can't remember the last time any crew member took him seriously."
"Eh, he's not all bad." Corporal Riley's heart lifted a bit. The conversation had cut him deeply, but at least he had something of an ally. He had heard conversations like this before. "I mean, aside from the ping pong thing he's not so bad. He's been on this ship the better part of forty years, I'm told. Could you imagine being on the same ship for forty years and only making corporal? Ping pong is the only thing he - "
Corporal Riley turned around. He completely abandoned his idea of challenging the two of them to a game, and even forgot that he had gone there to retrieve his backpack in the first place. His steps were rapid, and faces he passed were blurred in his periphery as he kept his gaze downcast, watching his boots take step after step over the polished metal floor. The floor he himself had polished earlier that day.
Before he knew it, he had reached his bunk. He laid down on his half-made bed and stared at the bottom of a bookshelf that hung above his pillow. The figure of a ping pong paddle was scratched into the metal. It was the one thing he was good at on this ship. It was the one thing that had made him feel somewhat equal to the brilliant minds that he had been surrounded with every day for four decades.
Soon, they would be leaving this star and the rest of the crew would be preoccupied for a while. Many would leave the Lasso for good. He wondered if every starship was like this...
"It's them that's wrong. It's all them," Corporal Riley St. Riley said into his pillow, clenching his eyes shut and thinking blissfully of the mission's end and the day that the new crew would enter and he would have fresh opponents, just as he had every mission for the past forty years.
Traveler: Day Two
A Brief Preface to Traveler: The following story is taken from a full-length novel that I am currently in the process of finishing. Although the greater story has taken many forms in the time I have been working on it, this opening chapter has remained virtually the same. I’ve been working on this story for a great deal of time, and could not wait to share at least the beginning any longer. I hope that you enjoy it, and that you will stay tuned for the full story when it is released!
A light fog hung closely over a vast field somewhere in the south eastern United States. The sun was beginning to set behind a group of trees at which three giraffes were foraging for l
eaves. It was a strange but beautiful sight and Travis Smiley hated everything about it. Of course, Travis Smiley never went by his given name anymore. To the few and far between wanderers and criminals he had introduced himself to over the last four years he had been known as Traveler. It seemed that no one went by their real name anymore. There was no reason to.
Traveler was on vacation. He was in the process of attempting to recreate a story in a book that he had read about an old man that caught a swordfish by himself. Traveler had not had any formal education, but his mother had insisted that he learn to read, and he had done a lot of it. This particular book was his favorite, and he carried a worn out copy of it everywhere he went. He felt that he would soon appreciate it even more. He missed being able to read his other books whenever he wanted, but he had abandoned them when he had left his mother's cabin, his former and only home, for the last time. They would have been far too heavy to bring along on his indeterminable wanderings.
He was on the second day of this particular vacation. The term vacation, in this context, should be interpreted loosely. Jobs no longer existed, at least not in the traditional sense, so taking a vacation was a bit of a foreign concept among those who remained. Before this trip, he had seen a
