by Eric Swanson
“Hey!” Garreous yelled as he landed with a soft thump.
Tam bounded over him and stepped up the ladder propped up next to the Virgalis model. Triumphant, she winked at him.
“Come, Genius of the Pillar!” Tam yelled, her arms spread in another grandstanding gesture. “Let’s make science together!” She smiled and clenched her fists tightly as she said ‘science’.
The pair came into the cockpit and sat at chairs next to each other.
“SAMI, Activate Virgalis Simulation.” Garreous spoke and several soft tones answered.
“Simulation running.” SAMI said. Displays and control panels around them lit with color and both set to work.
In his peripheral vision, Garreous thought he saw a shadow pass by the front of the ship but a blinking indicator closer to him stole his attention. “Simulated take-off and orbital escape achieved.”
“Propulsion systems activated.” Tam said after she pushed a few buttons.
The ship simulated high-speed space travel with a few shakes and jostles, which Garreous usually found himself hoping weren’t accurate representations of the real ship in flight.
“Speed?” Garreous asked a few quiet, wobbling moments later.
“800,000 Standard Units and… climbing.” Tam said, her eyes locked on the screen which displayed a glowing blue number that approached one million rapidly. The Standard Unit was a distance measurement created by early space-farers who thought that using terrestrial distance standards in space seemed asinine. Each SU equaled about 200 Ceran miles.
The ship shook violently and startled the pair a bit. They glanced at each other and assured by a shared smile, returned to their work.
“One million Standard Units… and holding.” Tam looked at Garreous a moment later, an inquisitive look on her face.
He was hesitating to engage the Sonic Dampener.
“Gar…” Tam said before she reached out to Garreous and rested her hand on his forearm. “We’re ready.”
“Ok…” Garreous said then drew a deep breath. “Activating Sonic Dam—”
“The heat coils are overloadi--!” Someone screamed an abbreviated warning from the shadows outside the Virgalis model. Immediately after those words, fire exploded from where the voice had been and tore into the faux ship. Garreous was thrown from his seat and landed with a violent thud against the wall.
Blood spilled from a large cut on his forehead as Garreous struggled to his feet amidst smoke and flames inside the ship.
“TAM!” He screamed, hoarse. Garreous coughed against the smoke for a beat before the demo ship’s holding area activated fire suppression measures. White foam fell on him and the equipment, somewhat quickly clearing the smoke away from the cockpit. “TAM!” Garreous dropped to his knees after a step and picked Tam up off the ground. He cradled her and said her name again, quietly. Her head lolled back over his arm, eyes locked open.
The young Ceran’s shining blue eyes stared at the ceiling while Garreous rocked back and forth, wordless. Finally, through sobs, words came: “SOMEONE HELP US!”
Virgalis Loading Dock
0950 Hours (The Next Morning)
Gathered in the entryway of the ship and preparing to launch, the twelve milled about and split into smaller conversational groups.
“You planning to wear that thing on Earth, Mike?” Wes asked and gestured to Micah’s hood.
“No, I just…” Micah whispered, seemingly intent on delaying this moment as long as possible. His shoulders slacked for a moment then rose again. Micah’s back straightened and he spoke with a louder voice than Wes had ever heard him use. “Everyone. If I could ask for your attention for a moment…”
The other ten passengers turned to him, most unsure what was happening. They knew the Hooded One would be leading the mission, but no one truly understood why they hadn’t seen Micah’s face. Micah drew a deep breath and held it. His eyes closed and he squeezed them shut as the Hood fell back to his neck. The stale recirculated air of the ship brushed his face, the King’s face, as several of his crew members gasped.
Tobiah, shocked, turned to Sanballat clearly expecting a similar expression. The Courtier regarded Micah with almost complete disinterest and Tobiah’s face shifted with shades of anger. “You knew?” He whispered at Sanballat, who simply shrugged.
“It’s just a face, Tobiah. A copy of a face.” He spoke just loudly enough for everyone in the area to hear.
“Right.” Micah stepped in the center of the group. He looked around at some of the more surprised faces: Remy, Tobiah, Lahm, Po… “My name is Micah Trace… and I am Mimic to King Artax. Rather… I was. Now, I’m going to lead this crew and our ship to Earth.”
Three Months Later
Chapter Thirteen
Seeking the Third World
2,000,435 Interstellar Units from Ceres
“Garreous to Astrometrics Pod.” Remy’s said over an intercom system that made nearly every shipmate sound as though they spoke through pinched noses. “Garreous, Astrometrics Pod, please.”
Garreous blinked hard but couldn’t stop the text on his screen from blurring a bit through tears. He thought, surely, after months of writing letters to Susa with no response, that his response wouldn’t be so emotional to ending each missive. Oddly, he knew that no reply was likely given their speed of travel but what he felt didn’t seem to consider that knowledge.
Initially, his letters to Susa were written as simple recollections of the high-points of the Virgalis’s voyage: planets scanned, unique spatial phenomena encountered… card games Wes and Aquis had taught Garreous. Typical interstellar journey notable occurrences. As Garreous wrote more letters sent with no response back (and as Susa’s wedding date to Peeksar approached then passed), the letters slipped into more emotional territory: things which reminded Garreous of the Princess, his most treasured memories of her and (in the letter he wrote while Meremoth requested his presence) his love for her.
In the moments after Garreous sent the letter, a flash of horror and an accompanying nervous heat came over him. It was entirely possible that those letters were reviewed by some third party before or after being transmitted to Susa’s private server…
Beyond possible, such a thing was almost certain. And Garreous, a lovestruck fool, fawned over a now-married Royal in writing.
“Gar. A-Pod.” Remy’s tone was more insistent and carried a new tension.
The gifted Ceran sniffed hard and violently shook away tears and fear with the same toss of his head. As Garreous moved out of the Comms Room, he absently scratched at what passed for a beard on his young face. His hand moved up to his hair and pushed it off the scar on his forehead. Every time he touches that scar, Garreous wondered if he’d still pine for Susa the same way if the scar wasn’t there. If Tam…
Garreous pushed a blinking green button in the corridor and stopped before it for a moment. “Remy… Garreous here. En route.”
“Thanks, Gar.” Remy replied over the speaker system.
A narrow, silver steel corridor led from the Comms room to a larger Pod, the ship’s Common Area. As Garreous stepped inside the Common Room, Sanballat and Tobiah immediately stopped their conversation and greeted him with a pair of curt nods.
Their subversive behavior had concerned most of the ship’s crew for a while, but the pair had become increasingly isolated over the last couple weeks.
Garreous resolved to mention all of this to everyone at their next gathering but moved on toward the Astrometrics lab. A gray steel door with a wheellock in the center blocked his path. With a labored turn of the wheel, Garreous opened the door and saw Remy, Micah and Kaymar in the Astro-Pod. They all stared at a stellar map projected onto a black wall on the far side of the room.
The blinking white scale-model of the Virgalis on the right of the map suggested a truth Garreous sometimes struggled with: this journey was VERY long.
“Remy, Micah, Kaymar…” Garreous greeted each in turn as he walked toward the screen. “Anot
her Class 4?”
“Yes.” Kaymar pushed a button and the map zoomed to a section above the ship. “We’re calling it Epsilon 4. Too far off-path to explore, but our satellite images suggest land masses and liquid water.”
“Catalogue it and send the location back to Ceres.” Remy said sharply. “Can’t do anything more than that at this point.”
“Actually…” Garreous spoke slowly. He stared intently at the map for a moment and spoke without looking away. “Kaymar? Are they ready?”
“You’d like to use one of them for this planet, Garreous?” Kaymar asked.
“Very much so, yes.” Garreous said. With an air of awe in his voice, the young genius reached toward the projected map. The light-made planet wobbled as his fingers brushed it and Garreous withdrew from it slowly. “Land masses and liquid water. Two significant boxes checked, my friends.”
Kaymar nodded and walked to a control panel on the far side of the room. He pressed several buttons in succession, quickly.
“What are we-“ Micah held up quote-fingers. “Using for this planet, Gar?”
“A communications buoy.” Garreous said. “We have two.”
“They allow us to observe the planet?” Remy asked. She was more than a little perturbed by her exclusion from this project but chose to ignore that emotion for the sake of team unity.
“From a distance.” Garreous said. “We’ll have limited control over it as well, movement, recordings…”
“One step closer to the Third World, Gar?” Micah asked.
“One step closer or one wasted resource further away from it, Mike…”
“We can only hope at this point, Micah.” Kaymar said.
On the map, the ship blinked rapidly then a small blinking light shot from it.
“Buoy launched.” Kaymar said. “It should reach orbit of Epsilon 4 in a week or two. We’ll maintain communications for a few weeks before we move out of range.”
The four of them stood before the screen and watched the blinking dot move away from the ship in silence.
Three Weeks Later
Managing the Mundane
4,000,435 Interstellar Units from Ceres
“I prefer my machines to act like machines, Meremoth.” Sanballat said while he stared through narrowed eyes at the console in front of him. A blank black screen surrounded by seemingly randomly lit and dim lighted buttons seemed to be the target of Sanballat’s frustration.
“This is going to be difficult for you to process, Sanballat,” Remy smiled as she leaned toward the Courtier. “But you might have to try a little banter before the machine cooperates.”
“Surely not the intention of this program’s designers, Meremoth…” Sanballat replied with as much respect for his fellow Ceran as he could muster. He lazily pressed a few buttons, sure that they would cause no reaction from ANDI.
“From what I’ve been told, ANDI’s original programmers were unlikely to code much of a personality into him…” Meremoth said. She pressed two buttons in quick succession and the screen lit with bright white text in the center.
Sanballat visibly bristled at Remy’s reference to ANDI as ‘him’ and rolled his eyes a bit. Space travel seemed to be the cause of the atrophy of Sanballat’s patience and tolerance for other living beings, to say nothing of half-sentient computer coded entities…
“Hello, Remy!” White text came onto the black screen and it appeared letter-by-letter as ANDI greeted Remy. The white letters read. A moment later, more text appeared: “Any interest in a game this morning?”
“No, thanks ANDI.” Remy spoke to the machine but sent a wry smile toward Sanballat.
The Courtier rolled his eyes once more.
“How can ANDI help you this morning?” ANDI replied, again in glowing print.
“Machine, I require your assistance.” Sanballat spoke as flatly as his short fuse would permit.
Several soft tones came from the PA all around the console as the white letters disappeared. In their place, red text appeared. “O, exalted Courtier of the Pillar, how may this humble assembly of circuits and code act in your service?”
Meremoth burst into a fit of laughter but tried to stifle it quickly. She pulled her white hair back over an ear with one hand and covered her mouth with the other.
“Garreous must be made to repair this machine, Meremoth…” Sanballat spat through clenched teeth. He turned back toward the console as Remy finally succeeded in quieting her giggle. “Machine, run a diagnostic on the hydroponics system and the replicator in the second living quarters.”
Meremoth chose not to tell Sanballat that, as far as ANDI was concerned, his quarters’ replicator was working perfectly. After Garreous spent a day waist-deep in ANDI’s code, the program came out a little more cheeky and under the convicted impression that Sanballat universally meant for his tea to be ice cold, no matter how he requested it from the machine in his quarters.
Ship operations were not subject to ANDI’s humor subroutines, so the system complied with Sanballat’s first request in short order. “Hydroponics systems operating at ninety-eight percent efficiency…” To Sanballat’s shock, ANDI offered another thought on the matter: “A machine could scarcely do better, Sanballat.”
Sanballat’s spine straightened and pride puffed his chest a bit. “I am aware of my area’s operational success, machine.”
Several more soft tones came, then more from ANDI. “Though, there’s still an opportunity to make up those two percentage points you’re missing, Sanballat. Let ANDI know if you would like some pointers.”
Sanballat stood and left without giving ANDI time to update him on the status of his replicator, but Meremoth quickly settled into her newfound solitude. “Alright, ANDI… What games do you know?”
Four Weeks Later
The More Things Change…
6,000,435 Interstellar Units from Ceres
“Up Up UP!” Wes yelled as he cut toward a gray steel wall with a circular goal notched into it. Sweat fell from his damp hair while it flopped back and forth but the same hair fell back onto his head when the huge Hybrid planted a foot and took to the air. The white-and-sky-blue starburst logo of the Block A Quasars flashed as Wes caught the ball and it stopped spinning in his hands.
Micah stood at the back of the miniature Antisar Court (just a single offensive end with no corridor), hand over his head after he’d sent the ball Wes’s way. He watched with a grin as Wes flew through the air toward the goal. Micah’s grin twisted into a concerned grimace as he saw Aquis, with unnatural speed and agility, close the gap between himself and Wes in two massive strides. Aquis took to the air a beat later than Wes but his size and speed more than compensated.
The sides of Aquis and Wes’s bodies collided and Aquis swiped at the ball. The Ceran’s large palm caught the ball flush and it flew from Wes’s grip. Aquis leaned away from Wes as the Hybrid planted a foot on the wall to balance himself. As the ball flew back toward the rear of the quarter-court and Micah, Aquis and Wes both showed off their athleticism by righting themselves in mid-air and landing softly on their feet.
Both stood straight up and bumped fists with wide smiles.
“I ever tell you about the time I did that to Jor Mikan?” Aquis asked Wes, a bit breathless. Rightfully, Aquis was quite proud of his bright shining moment when he bested the Hybrid widely considered the best of his kind to ever play Antisar.
“No,” Wes replied then pointed back at Micah. “But I’m almost positive we know what you’re talking about. I think Mike and I were at that charity event…”
“Yeah?” Aquis walked over to a small bench and picked up three steel water bottles. He threw one underhand to Wes and lofted another to Micah (who was still over twenty feet from Aquis). He took a drink from the third bottle as Micah’s landed in his hands. “That was right after I’d retired… I was still in training when they asked me to play for the Pillar team in that charity deal…”
“The game was great…” Micah said as he stepped towar
d the much larger pair.
“Do you remember the girl I brought with me?” Wes laughed as he pointed toward Micah again.
“No…” Micah responded honestly. Hood or not, he had a difficult time keeping count or track of all of Wes’s ‘acquaintances’. Micah smiled after a beat and added: “Do you remember her?”
“Yeah, abso-“ Wes began then stopped himself with a laugh. “I mean, yeah, the red-head with those like yellow eyes…” He twinkled his fingers before his own eyes for emphasis.
“She had yellow eyes?” Aquis asked. He threw small towels at both Hybrids and wiped his face with one he kept in hand. “Was she sick?”
Micah wobbled his head for a moment with a wry smile. “Sick is sort of an interesting way to put it…”
“Hey! Mike, we’ve been over this…” Wes turned away from Micah and back to an increasingly entertained Aquis. As a massive former professional athlete charged with the protection of his society’s most important people, Aquis had limited romantic experience. “She didn’t tell me anything and I found out from another guy later that—” Wes stopped as he saw Aquis’s face twist with a mix of discomfort and sympathy. “No! Hey, nothing happened with her! That—” Wes laughed and held up a hand to Aquis, palm to the giant Ceran. “That’s never been an issue with me… No shots for Wes, buddy, I’ve got a clean sheet, I---”
Wes stopped his self-defense again when he noticed Aquis’s eyes were focused behind him, on Micah… Micah slowly shook his head once Wes started in on his ‘Clean Sheet’ assertion.
“One time.” Wes whispered. “Once.” He held up a single finger to Aquis then turned back to Micah. “I told you that in confidence…” He laughed for a moment then called for the ball with an open hand from Micah. “Let’s just play, guys.”
