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Pulling up the lane way to the massive Company induction office…

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I am struck by the sheer size of the building. It’s an enormous rectangle of grey concrete, flat roofed, dotted with a plethora of long thin windows, set back in the wall likely used as gun embankments during times of war and civil unrest. The building is the only thing around for miles. As the launch pad is only three kilometers from here, the blow back from lift off has kept much of the vegetation at bay. Only the most sheltered portion directly in front of the building has any grass or vegetation. The air out here is dry, the remnants of the Texas afternoon heat is coming up off the sand, and rich black asphalt parking lot in dizzying waves, even at this late hour. The view of the front doors is obscured by waves of heat. From the taxi drop off and loading zone it is about a six hundred meter walk. The pavement is lined with hearty shrubs and low hanging pecan trees. There are yellowy pot lights shining up through the scrub in the planters, illuminating all manner of gnats, flies, moths and mosquitoes. The air is abuzz with the sound of wildlife. In the distance, through the heavy opaque steel doors, a muffled murmur can be heard. There are several hundred freshmen recruits gathering for our induction process to the university aboard the Torus. Earth’s largest geosynchronous space station. By all accounts, it’s absolutely enormous, but ugly as all get out. Very utilitarian in design. From all of our documentation provided to us by The Company during the application process, it was once a glorified shipyard, a dry dock for capsule repairs. What was just a huge working platform has since morphed into the best university, and entertainment hub in the solar system. The only comparables are the floating station above Venus, known only for science research into energy and propulsion systems. But it is tiny by comparison. I myself am slated to attend the robotics program at the university. I garnered a full ride scholarship for excellence in translating theory into fabricated proof of concept. I was told by my mother that I get my smarts from her side of the family. My uncle was once blown up by separatists in a plot to destroy the Torus. Ultimately it failed, but he got a glorious set of bionic arms out of the deal. My scholarship is named after his combo drill appendage that revolutionized The Company’s mining operations. I guess I’m what you’d call a legacy.

Walking up to the immense steel double doors, we are met by teams of heavily armed guards, dressed in black uniforms. The line to get through the door is about one hundred people deep. The late evening air is insufferably oppressive. Littered among the crowds inside the main reception hall are men and women with tight buns, and razor sharp hair cuts, decked out in orange jumpsuits. According to the many hours of simulations we had to run, over the last six months, those orange suited folks are among the board of directors. Very senior people. The thought of mingling with the upper echelon of The Company gives me tingles. We have been run through any number of physical and psychological testing to make sure we can handle not only the trip off the planet, but our extended stay in zero gravity. All the latest talk show vids off of Torus station mentioned just how excitingly thorough the induction process is. We had to read so many official company reports about why we have to undergo a purge to make weight for the launch. It all sounds so clinical, so removed. It’s very difficult to get a sense of what it will ultimately be like. I’m so excited. Standing in the center of the hub bub, I notice the line has moved. Finally, it’s my turn to scan my biometrics and pass through the last of the health screening. Walking through the doors, you can see how spartan the space is. The room is cavernous, with beige painted cinder block walls, a few posters and banners hung tastefully along the far wall. Oddly there are no windows inside the grand receiving hall. Before we can get too far in, there are illuminated signs hanging from the ceiling, and red clad technicians directing us to take our bags to the porters station. Our items will travel up to Torus station separately. Did not know that. That wasn’t covered in any of the provided documentation. The queue moves quickly here. In a few moments I’m at the kiosk. A tall, slender woman tells me to scan my matching baggage tags and my biometric markers and to head straight into the hall. I both see and hear my duffle bag run along the raised conveyor belt that popped up from the tile floor and disappear behind a wall with a dull thud. Inside the great hall nearly all three hundred members of our cohort are gathered tightly in a crowd. The heat in here isn’t much cooler than what is outside. Now I wish I hadn’t worn all these new clothes. I layered up in case the place had ac blasting. Taking off my dress shirt, I let my fabulous blue hair out of its tight weave. Fanning my ponytail to let some air reach my hot and sweaty neck. A commotion stirs up near the center of the crowd. A petite woman, of Asian heritage can be seen raising her arms to garner attention. Around her throat is a sub vocal mic, guess she runs this show, and doesn’t like to shout.

The crowd stops and stands at attention. The honourable Ms. Kim opens her hands wide and leads into her speech. “Good evening everyone, and welcome to orientation!” Madness ensues.

 

PART IX

“Good evening everyone, welcome to orientation!”

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The lead instructor emphasizes her remarks with an all encompassing wave of her hands. Gathered around her are the newest three hundred people who are to travel from planetside up to the Torus station orbiting the moon. Many of the young adults gathered nearby have pensive, or outright terrified looks upon their faces. For most, this is their first experience with space travel, and the prospect of living in or near zero g for the next decade has worn some of their nerves to a frayed mess. The instructor, a Ms. Kim is about five feet tall, slim but fit. She is wearing a safety coverall that is orange in colour, which signifies her as being a director or board of directors member. Turning a full three hundred and sixty degrees she surveils the large welcoming room and all of its eager occupants. She is standing in the middle of the nervous crowd wearing a head set and a sub vocal mic strapped to her throat, so as to not shout when she speaks. “For many of you, the next forty hours as we travel to near moon orbit will be the first experience you have with actual space flight, being under thrust, eating and defecating in near zero g. So, in short… a major shock to the system. We had all of you undergo strict medical testing, so no one is going to die of natural causes! Yay!…” a pause for nervous laughter, of which there is precious little. Her voice reverberates off the painted undecorated cinder block walls. The hall is spartan in design, no pillars or knee walls to hide behind. “You’ve all passed your survival training and undergone some simulations, but fear not! The next seven to ten years will be some of the best you’ll ever have.” On the outer edges of the crowd more orange suited instructors are piling into the room, followed by red suited technicians wheeling in rack upon rack of cyan coloured safety suits. The meeting hall at the space port is starting to feel cramped with all the extra bodies, and suits and equipment. The air temperature is rising as the gathered crowd grows restless and afraid. “Our expected time of departure is four hours from now, so according to my watch, around oh six hundred. By then, you’ll all have showered, trimmed your nails, shaved your heads & bodies, voided your bowels and bladders, removed any extraneous jewelry, stripped down naked and put on the provided safety suits. We have a delicate balance of weight to account for when moving three hundred souls from earth side to outer space. No exceptions, zero religious exemptions permitted. I will now turn you over to our trusty lead technician Darnel, who will take you step by step on how your safety coveralls work, and the prep needed to get you into them safely. With that, my team will bid you adou.” In a sweep of theatrics, the orange colour coded team leaves the hall, departing down a long winding ramp located near the front of the hall, and heads to the ship located three kilometers away, down the supply corridor that’s one hundred meters below ground, and very heavily heat shielded. An extremely heavy set man dressed in a rich red set of coveralls steps out from behind a cluster of suits on a steel rack on large industrial rubber wheels. He is sweating under the anxious glare of three hundred, cold, tired and weary new recruits. Gathering himself, he straightens up and raises his arms to signal the crowd. “Thank you instructor Kim, hello all… I’m lead suit tech Darnel Smythe, and I will give you all a run down on some of the suit specifications, and why you need to prep your bodies accordingly for them to work properly in case of a sudden loss of atmosphere while in transit, or while on the station, in class, at work, on a mission, or just in general through ultimately unlucky circumstance. Ha. That was a mouthful.” An audible gasp is heard throughout the crowd. Wide eyes, and a couple of horrified wails can be heard among the gathered recruits. This is information they have been given numerous times over, via document, speech, and in the simulations themselves, but never so bluntly, or all at once like that. The reality of their choice to pursue life in space is hitting home like a lead weight to the belly. In space, death lies in wait behind every choice you make. “Right, so from what I understand the majority of you are all from earth. My manifest shows a few here from Mars and a couple from the station off Venus. Now you lot have traveled previously, and can pull off from the main group as you’ve been fitted for suits, and are still wearing them.” Shocked noises from the group, again. “Oh yes people, these suits are all that you’ll be wearing from here on out. They have an internal rigging we’ll go over later, but you will eat, sleep, work, study, bathe, exercise in these suits. Until, you earn a colour coded new one that corresponds to your vocation and training. Since you are all new, young and dumb. You will spend the entirety of your time in a suit. Can’t be having green horns and noob students dying on us just because a micrometror poked a hole in a hallway, or training facility.” The look on the gathered group is one of stunned incredulity. A very stout young man with blue hair and various facial piercings pipes up.”That can’t be right, I have all these expensive clothes that I bought especially for going to university on the torus. I can’t possibly be expected to dress exactly the same as everyone else. I just can’t!” Looking at the tech, the young man has his arms crossed over his chest, and his chin thrust outward. “Eh, sorry chico, you all wear it. The bags you dropped off at the front gates, all gone into lock up. All you get are what I’m about to give you. Now in order to get you to focus on the task at hand, I need everyone. Every. One. To strip naked, yes here, right now. Yup, peel down to what your mother’s gave ya! You are all going to walk single file through the showers, then you’ll be diverted to the void rooms, where a warm milky liquid will, well… void your innards. Then you’ll have laser hair removal, yup, you guessed it, all of it. Bam! Gone. Your nails will get trimmed down to the quick and then we’ll go over the suits, pack you in, then march you to your seats. I do apologize for how cold the water is. This will be the last full flow shower you’ll have for a very long time. I wish I could say the water is above fifty two degrees farenheit, but… it isn’t. Life in space is hard folks. You signed the waivers. Took the psych tests, completed simulations and a multitude of training sessions. The movies are great, but this is the real world. Oh, here we go, the doors will open and the clock is ticking people. Move, move, move!” The sea of red tech’s move down the line of naked recruits, helping them to form a single file. A huge set of steel double doors pull open to reveal a dark and cavernous hallway starkly lined with water spigots and jets of multi coloured fluids. Not mentioned in the documentation are the delousing treatments and the mild acid wash that’ll take two full layers of skin off, and aid in the laser hair removal. Cutting weight is difficult at the best of times, so strict measures to save every possible ounce have been enacted. On the floor, a conveyor belt stirs to life, mild gasps and hearty screams of shock as the ice cold streams of water are doused over the glut of nude bodies. A flashing yellow strobe kicks up in the hallway, as men and women and the young and old are diverted one direction or another. The muffled sound of gagging and vomiting can be heard through the echos of screaming and crying. The void process is harsh, and not limited to just bowels and bladder. Breakfast must be purged too. For the biological males, prostates get emptied, in a perfunctory manner. The milky medical cocktail liquid ingested is also used to dry up gastric juices and bile, so no one suffocates in their helmets during take off or during the forty hour trek to the moon. For some, prolonged exposure to near zero g will set off violent bouts of vertigo and nausea. In order to limit the transmission of any airborne illness among so many new recruits into what is essentially a closed ecosystem, drastic medical measures are undertaken. Drugs, needles, radiation baths, invasive biometric scans, the likes of which no one would willingly sign on for are done in secret while the recruits are voided. They’re helpless and weak. Totally disoriented. Sheep for the slaughter, as it were. Each one, though surrounded by hundreds of other people, are suffering in a desperate isolation of their own choosing. The truth is, the entire indoctrination process takes about twenty four hours total, not four, and the faces of the crowd will be hollow, teary eyed, and desperately weak when they are seated before the technician, medical staff, and his army of tailors. The processing has begun, it will be hours before Darnel need address the group again.

“Welcome recruits. Glad to see so many faces after your… ordeal. It isn’t pleasant, but it is necessary. Now, on to the fun stuff. You will be given your safety suits, or coveralls, shortly. They are a very pretty shade of cyan. That denotes to everyone else aboard any base, capsule, rig or what have you that you don’t know jack shit about living in space! That fact, quickly denoted, will save your life and theirs. Yes, there is a method to the madness. If and when you are somewhere that loses atmosphere, it happens real fucking quick, so you. Can’t. Talk. Colour coding is now your friend. It’s been drilled into you by many others, but you have to live it, to appreciate it’s simple yet awesome effectiveness.” Walking through the crowd of what looks like hung over freshman college students after a week long alcohol fueled binge session. Darnel looks over the neat formation of the gathered half conscious recruits. Each laid out on a mechanical surgical gurney,in equal lines, with equal spacing between them. The lead suit tech talks animatedly. Wild gesticulations, modulating his voice with precise changes to capture and maintain their waning attention. They’ve all been run through the ringer. A type of joint trauma most will likely never fully remember, as their bodies and brains will shut these memories out, for the sake of their sanity. Dark halls, screams, purging both fluids and matter, drugs and the bitter cold knowledge of true isolation. A harsh reality, one that is a secret hidden in plain sight. “Ok kids, the suits go onto bare skin. That way you get the highest quality seal. It seals in numerous places, in case of a tear, or blow out, we can save the maximum quantity of your body in case of catastrophic failure. These bad boys seal at the ankle, calf, knee, thigh, waist, chest, neck, wrist, elbow, armpit.” Darnel is ticking off the locations on his fingers as he speaks. “There is an internal catheter system to expel and expunge bodily waste. Means you can work long hours in eva, and not have to try and hold it in. There is also a function for hooking up to the steam showers on the station, to bathe, and flush out dead skin cells and such. Your biometrics work through the suit too. The ability to get food, drugs, sleeping quarters, into and out of your class rooms, job placements, entertainment facilities all are tied to your own biometrics.” The mention of drugs, food and entertainment brings some life into their worn and weary eyes. Some faces have a haunted thousand yard stare, that begins to melt away with the following message. “This wasn’t on any program or documentation, but it’s a gift from The Company to all those stationed on the torus, and any rig, vessel that they have commissioned. You are all allotted a prescribed amount of recreational drugs, access to sex workers, education, job training, food and entertainment. Do. Not. Under any circumstance go to a private, non sanctioned vendor for either drugs or sex. Our system is heavily regulated, taxed and monitored for your safety. You can not OD, on our supply, and when you have shift hours, or class hours or some regulated function to perform, your biometrics will cancel out and nullify the effects of whatever it is you chose to use. But only If it is from The Company, or one of our chartered pharmaceutical vendors. If you’re brilliant, but socially awkward, the brothels in the green sector will take care of you. The healthcare, wages, hours of operation and peace of mind of our regulated sex workers are guarded heavily, so use them as needed, don’t go private. Your tax dollars are there to provide you with what you need and keep us all healthy. Enjoy yourselves…. so on that note, my team will come around shortly, and fit you into your suits, boots, gloves and test your auto deploy helmets and respirators. Just lay back and let us work our magic.” In the silence of three hundred exhausted newbies the experienced technicians set to work plying freshly scrubbed nude bodies into their spongy body socks with waste management system inserted and inflated, and coveralls on top. As each unit is inserted and inflated in bladders and bowels alike, for both the men and women, an occasional yelp, moan or cry can be heard among the group. Thousands of pairs of rubber gloves go into the recyclers, to be incinerated down to their constituent parts, and reassembled later as other synthetic latex products.

The three hundred bodies are wheeled down the subterranean hall way, on a long train of gurneys. Each body has been infused with a sturdy mixture of vitamins and minerals, so they will survive the next forty hour flight without food or water. The vast majority of cyan suited recruits are fast asleep, or are so over tired that they can only watch, wide eyed as they pass two and a half kilometers of cold yellow lighting, damp concrete, and the musty smell of a tightly contained, low ceilinged windowless, windless cavern that seems to stretch on into utter blackness in the distance. As the long stretch of lights comes to an end, and the gurneys travel the last five hundred meters in utter darkness, the smell of the launch vehicle hits the nose like a punch. The mix of fuel, and astringent cleaners, oil and detergents wafts over the space like a damp towel over the head. It clings to the nostrils, and burns the lungs and stings the eyes. At the base of the launch vessel, a massive elevator sits, large enough to load up thirty gurneys and the eight techs required to haul the recruits to their coffin sized berths. Slowly, the elevators move up and down, as the gurneys return collapsed, and empty, more recruits are loaded. Not long after an automated buggy interlinks with the collapsed gurneys and returns them to their resting spot, just outside of view of the welcoming grand hall. Hidden behind huge metal doors, stored just off a large empty hallway full of spigots and a conveyor belt floor.

“Goood morning freshmen, this is your captain speaking. I’m captain Hardy, flying with us today is my number two Ms. Casey Phillips. We are approximately twenty hours away from Torus station, which is both the station name, and the design. She’s ugly as fuck, but awesome in scale. Also your new home for the next seven to ten years. In case no one mentioned this, the station runs on continental shifts. That’s right folks, she’s a twenty four seven type of gal. Whether you are a worker, student or prostitute, you’ll all live in rotating eight hour shifts. Congratulations on making it this far, you are now allowed to move freely about the common areas of the ship. There is a viewing deck at both the forward and aft sections of this ship. If you are currently experiencing vertigo, or nausea please refrain from vomiting anywhere but in your immediate crew quarters, as they are designed for just such an occurence. The Company, always thinking.” With a loud click the pa system kicks back to the soothing soft jazz that had been slowly growing louder as more and more freshmen recruits regained consciousness after their ordeal during induction.

The personal crew quarters are more like pre fabricated, pale blue cloth paneled coffins, with a singular soft yellow light embedded in the ceiling, so as not to provide a surface you could cause any head trauma on. Inside the recruits are velcroed into a quilted padded blanket, to keep from bouncing off the padded coffin walls during transit. At the foot of the tiny room is a media screen set to stand by, with stock images of the launch vessel, the torus and flight crew fading in and out as a screen saver. The passengers are equal parts students, vocational apprentices, and support staff for the immense Torus station. What was once just a ship yard for The Company, has now expanded to be a system wide university of choice, tradesmen learning center, and hub of activity. The entertainment sector has ballooned from three levels to a bustling thirty. It now boasts television stations, several movie studios, theme parks and casinos. The work force in the mechanical sector alone is upwards of eight thousand souls. Capsules don’t just come here for repairs any more, they are designed, fabricated and manufactured by the score. Rivaling the designs and capabilities of anything produced by the old school earth bound teams from The Company HQ in Houston Texas. After the mark thirties were completed, the Daryl Bradley Design Shop decided that they’d show off some of their new tricks, and in secret, built, tested, and flew a newly fashioned Minotaur class starship for the first time ever. With an entirely new design for propulsion their starship was able to make a successful jaunt out passed Pluto and back in three weeks time. What had previously taken one hundred and eighteen weeks one way, was now only twenty one days. The cosmos were finally opening up. After catching wind of this momentous achievement The Company swiftly stepped in to purchase, then patent all aspects of the design. They pride themselves on being beyond competition.

The first mission would be to go as far out as they could get, ping any sensor, or antenna arrays they could find, and report back. In truth, someone very high up with The Company wants to find The Non Sequitur, and figure out what had gone wrong all those centuries ago. The greatest thing about the vaccum of space was how well it could preserve anything it came into contact with.

 

PART VIII

“What do you remember about the accident out there, anything you can give us…

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Could help us piece it all together more coherently.” Says the mousey looking woman from the internal affairs office. If she didn’t have such a short bob of a hair cut, and refrained from looking so sincere or earnest you’d think she was a real hard nosed bitch. But such as it was, she came across as mild and genuinely compassionate. Both traits, I would imagine, she’d need to work extra hard at hiding if she ever wanted to make a fully fledged investigator or a detective, or be more than some hard nosed bastards go’fer. “Not much really. I don’t even remember going in to work that day. I’m still foggy on how long ago this all went down.” Sitting in the white plastic chair, chained to a soft cream coloured formica table with a reinforced plate steel under structure, I’m over come by the itching of my wounds. “Can I get a… you know a hand, my face itches and I don’t have arms anymore. Is it really neccessary to restrain me, bodily. I can’t even walk unassisted yet.” The blast at the dock yards had done a real number to The Company. Not to mention, stolen my arms, killed a very promising career in robotics, and left me with ruptured tendons in both my legs. Those would heal, but my fine motor skills in welding robotic arms in zero g had all but evaporated in one loud, concussive boom. “Am I a suspect. I mean jesus, that blast took both of my fucking arms man. That’s my livelihood. Seven years at the university, four more years as an apprentice, and then having to get my level three certs before doing anything even remotely close to the cusp of cutting edge. No, man. No, fuck. That. Bullshit. I ain’t no suspect, I was fucking robbed. Someone took my life from me, took everything in one fell swoop. So you cut the shit. Cut these restraints off me, and tell me how long I’ve been in this hospital. I know I’m still aboard the station, as everything here is fucking blue!” God damn am I agitated. This line of questioning has been going on for what feels like twelve hours now. Maybe more than that. I don’t know. My blue room, with blue lights and blue sheets, and blue curtains has no windows or media displays. The blue hallway I get frog marched down, on ruptured tendons no less, has no visible details telling me the date, nor time of day, or even what shift we’re in. “Ok, mr. Gendry, you’re right. We don’t need to put you in leg chains, that’s me being a bit over zealous. This is my first real case as a lead investigator.” There she goes, showing contrition, helping me out. I could learn to like this woman, if she weren’t the first face I saw after losing my limbs and any future I had in robotics fabrication. “According to our records the blast happened eleven days ago, around oh three hundred hours. You were on the last shift, or first shift of the day. Not sure how you would describe that. Why don’t you tell us again what you do, erm… did. If not that day, just on the regular. What your job was, is…” the formica table is empty, save for a few sheets of paper and a manilla folder with my work history and medical reports printed inside. Leaning back in my chair, oddly off balance with no arms to cross over my chest, I start into my tale. “Listen, I’m kind of an animated talker. I’m going to need arms, robotics, prosthetics, or regenerative. Whatever they’ve got me insured for that I can try to recapture some of the old glory of my work/life balance. Just as an aside. You know. Robotic appendages are my passion. Wrote a thesis on them, did a practical application on them too. Got great Mark’s. Top of my class. Even got a recommendation from the dean of the university, old Big D “the minotaur” Bradley.” I am positively beaming, I’m so damn smug.

“So as a typical dock worker, I bunk down in standard crew quarters, you know the ones out on the torus, like less than five hundred meters from where I work sixteen hours a day. The glory of rotating continental shifts. Pays well though, eh? Yeah, buddy. Big bucks for those with a class three cert. Not many folks round here get that far along. Especially in robotics, and those outboard drill rig appendages.” I can feel the juices flowing, getting into my story now. Who boy! “Yeah, so lately I was tasked with building a real robust system that can switch seamlessly between ice hauling, towing and full on drilling. Those three elements all have very different tolerances and needs for stress loads, torque, and the ability to swap in/out bits on the fly. A real pig of a job. Designing one is difficult enough, but three, in tandem. Christ! The calculations on the timing alone was enough to write a years worth of papers on. Chip load, bit speeds, stressors out the ying yang. Anyway, I got it designed on paper and then had to fabricate a proof of concept on an old mark twelve The Company had lying around, something called The Jolene Roger.” A sudden jolt, as the investigator sits up straight, comes to life. “Wait, you built a test rig on a mark twelve that had just be laying around? Those were only put in use around Pluto. How is it one ended up here?” Writing furiously on her note pad, looking to the folder to see if she’d over looked this interesting detail. “Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t ask where the resources come from, I just build what they ask me too. May I?” Looking up from her notes, the investigator motions for me to continue. “As I was saying, I had to fabricate my proof of concept. So I spent a huge number of hours gathering plate steel, titanium blocks and pistons and shielded hydraulics components and got about eighty hours in before, Boom! Do you know if the rig survived the blast? Some of my welds were exquisite. Like liquid pearl on glass.” A tap on the window of the door brings our discussion to a sudden halt. From behind the door, I can see an older gentleman from the investigative team motion for the woman to step out into the hallway. Quickly, and quietly I watch her slip out of the room. My back is to the wall, and I’m sat facing the door with just the formica table and an empty chair in front of me. The older man is talking into her ear directly, she nods almost imperceptibly. They both look back through the window of the door at me. A flurry of activity ensues as the investigators leave, and a junior officer comes in to take me back to my hospital room. I never even learned her name. No idea what caused them to run off after all those hours of examination and questioning. Must have bigger fish to fry.

“Sorry for the wait Mr. Gendry, or Jack, is it? We had to wait for your official discharge to come through from both the police force and The Company investigators before we could release your new arms to you. They’ve been especially formulated to you based on your biometrics, and the last psych evaluation you had only a couple months ago. We realize the trauma might have pushed you outside your baseline, but we think you’ll find that you can get back to work with only a minor period of adjustment. Seems that recco’ you had from the dean ofvthe university meant you got pushed to the top of the pile for these experimental limbs.” The technician takes me through a laundry list of specifications regarding my new bionic arms, and how to best care for them. Three hours later and I’m heading down the lift to my crew quarters. Life is finally back on track for Jack!

Waiting patiently out on the gangway in the dry docks are a group of unruly out of system technicians. Desperate to harvest the secrets contained in the black boxes buried deep inside the mark twelve capsule The Jolene Roger. The explosive mining charges have been set all over the mobile gantries, the separatists are waiting for the right time to pounce. In the shadows of the torus, an insurgency is building.

 

PART VII

“Yo, Daryl, you’ve been summoned.”

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Says the giant of a Martian born man who works on smaller single pilot vessels in our dry dock section of the torus. “Don’t gimme that look man, they sent word down from above, the HR director herself wants a meet and greet with the illustrious Daryl “the minotaur” Bradley. She asked for you, by name, so go upstairs, and see what the fuck is going on.” The Martian is a seven foot tall Hulk of a man, by the name of Barry Ludens, curt but a great shop foreman with a dry wit. A joke like this wouldn’t even occur to him. People in the lounge wince when they hear Daryl’s nickname said aloud, and to his face. People learn early on not to mention the moded red mechanics coveralls he wears with the ultra wide neck. Daryl is nestled into a crash couch winding down after a couple of shifts off, coping with the tragic death of his and his brother’s last great apprentice Andy. His brother Doug is seated beside him, dinner plate in his lap, mouth full of diced steak. “Dougie, we been here, what… like twenty seven years now right? You ever, even once heard about a meet and greet with one of the fucking board of directors?” He is slowly climbing out of the industrial crash couch, groaning under the strain of his considerable bulk, and the pressure on his not so young knees. Even in low gravity, age, and stress catch up with the best of us. “No D, I ain’t never heard of that before. You think we missed something on The Last Great Venture and some one else, or a whole crew died due to negligence? Maybe I should come too, you know, moral support or show our work order documentation. We certified that shit three times over, I know it!” Doug looks agitated, word from upstairs never comes down here to our cramped crew quarters without passing through ten miles of interconnected HR flunkies asses and mouths. A human centipede of middle management tweaks to sop directives. Daryl standing half in, half out of the door to the crew lounge, staring intently at the martian foreman Barry. “How the fuck do I even get up there to see the big wig any how?” A look of sincere consternation upon his cracked and worn face. The last forty hours of mourning Andy’s passing has hit the whole sector hard, and our crew quarters the hardest. The room is littered with empty beer bulbs and smells like salty tears and sweat. “Not a problem D, if you head over to HR cubicle seven beside the bay doors, there will be a flunkie there to take you up. Let us know what it looks like from up there in their ivory tower eh?”. And with that last rejoinder, both men head out the door, down the gang plank and off to their separate duties.

Pling, pling chimes the door to the board room. With a soft woosh the double doors open, and I step passed the threshold and into an immaculately clean office space, full of crystal, real leather and an actual wooden table. Standing in front of the gigantic bay windows is the HR director, last name Taylor. That’s as much as they were willing to tell me on my trip up here. Over her shoulders the large expanse of our particular dry dock operation can be seen. From this vantage point, we look like ants in a tilt shifted photograph, the scale of the dock yards, the full enclosure, and all of those people busy at work is dizzying. Even our massive moving gantries where we park our mobile tool benches and chests look like children’s toys from up here. HR director Taylor is fitted out in a tasteful burgundy pant suit. It isn’t baggy, but nor is it too tightly fitted. Turning away from the view, she finally registers my presence. “Daryl Bradley, so glad you could make it. I’m so glad you could find the time to come and see me. I know you’ve recently been struct by tragedy.” Motioning towards the board room table and a couple of waiting seats, equipped with a view screen set to stand by and some bulbs of either pristine un recycled water or the purest vodka I’ve ever seen. “I didn’t realize I had the option to decline, Ms. Taylor.” Taking my seat opposite her, I marvel at how form fitting yet comfortable the chair is. Damn, this shit makes you want to fall asleep in it. However do these people stay awake during meetings. “Ah, yes… sorry. I do realize this is rather…undocumented. To say the least. Certainly. Listen, you are an intelligent man, so I’ll cut the shit. We here at The Company are terribly sad that your latest apprentice was murdered. You know, I oversee all three hundred of the dry docks on this station, and by far. By. Far. You have the best record on safety, and on people making their certs, and on satisfaction with your teams repairs. That mark eight was never supposed to be anywhere near here. But the crew asked for you by name. Specifically. Do you know how rare it is that a flight crew out of Neptune knew who you were, or even bothered to bypass the appropriate channels to get that experimental craft in to your work shop, under your watchful eye. The logistics and insider knowledge is astounding! no, no. Don’t worry I’m not accusing you of subterfuge. I’m paying you a compliment, that in the eighteen years I’ve been here, I have never once encountered. Now I know you’re a god damn fantastic mechanic, and you stay on deadlines, and keep your budget within reasonable margins. The best people working anywhere on this vessel came out from under your tutelage.” Ms. Taylor is now up on her feet, gesticulating wildly, as she walks the length of the room. All I can do is sit quietly, astounded by what I’m hearing. Though I sense a terrible and foreboding but, coming. “Daryl, do you mind if I call you that? Daryl, I have zero technical skills here. I understand very little of what you lot do here. I’m a people person. I get you the people and resources you need, then I get the fuck out of the way. You know, one of my fondest memories here was during the boom period of sixty three. I spend forty hours helping your crews find some compound w, and a much needed tube of preparation h. Now, I never did find those items, but you guys made me feel like I was a part of the team. Hell, the reason I got promoted so quickly onto the board of directors was because the two other junior directors I worked with got maimed or killed during their rotations on crews in other sections of the torus.” She has a wistful look upon her face at the fleeting memories. “We’ve got a serious problem here Daryl. That jag off that killed your brother’s apprentice, was moon lighting as a moon separatist. If word gets out, this whole station will erupt and blow out at the seams. For morales sake no one can know. The fewer the number of people who can recall that greasy fucks face, the better. That’s why, for your exemplary ability to teach, I’m promoting you off the shop floor and into a tenured teaching position within the machine shop. New personalized quarters, full meal plan, and no more death defying shifts crawling over ships. No need to thank me, the paperwork has gone through. It cleared the moment you came up the lift. Biometric scans for the win!” She looks genuinely pleased with herself. And with a flourish, I find myself back out in the hall, being lead down to the elevator banks. Wondering, what the fuck just happened here any how?

“Hey, there’s the big man. Back from the land of the lost I see. What’s up D, you look stunned? Oh shit, you getting a stint in rehab or something?” The question is left hanging in the air. Silence floats up to meet it. With a dull thud, Daryl flops onto an open couch. Running his hands over the well worn cracks and creases. Admiring the brilliant green light shining on the instrument panel. He turns around as though to talk to the whole room at once. “Doug has been promoted to lead all training in this sector of the docks. All dockets and work orders, change orders etc, now run through him. He’ll set the schedule from here on out. All foremen report directly to Doug. Notices have gone out all ready. I made a few notes, and some other long overdue promotions are going through, and a couple of raises. Those are my last acts before I leave for my new, university, full tenure position.” An audible gasp, as though each pair of lungs has drawn in all available oxygen in the cramped room. A heart beat passes, then two, then four.

Out on the gangway a loud commotion can be heard, emanating from the central crew quarters where the dock section leader bunks down. The sound of raucous cheers and corks popping can be heard. Music begins to blare over the loud speakers. All thoughts of misery evaporates in the tidal wave of cheers and shouts of good will. Notifications of raises and promotions begin to chime in on personal communicators.

 

 

PART VI

It’s strange, the things you come to miss while out here…

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The slow methodic drip of a faucet, or being bathed in the orange glow of the late afternoon sun, the singing of birds, or the sound of the wind rustling leaves across an old growth park. Echoes of children’s laughter bouncing off of brick and concrete. There is none of that here. At first, that made me very happy, I could finally knuckle down and focus on the laundry list of experiments I was tasked with performing by the very savvy tech guys at The Company. But now, up here, alone and isolated in the cool blue glow of phosphorescent lighting, beige cloth walls with all that sound proofing and accident protection, it’s driving me crazy. What I wouldn’t give to turn back towards earth, and hear my little girls squabble endlessly over dolls, crayons or whose turn it is to pick the next television show. The observation deck, a small bubble of a room, comprised mostly of a glass like dome where all of my technical equipment is housed. Can be quite chill, although sometimes tiny rivulets of condensation from my breath will gather on its concave surface, and gather in small pools along the outermost edges where it meets the soft padding of the bulkhead. I keep tiny polaroids of my girls taped up in there. Reminding me, constantly why I do what I do. All alone, adrift in space.

I’m currently the lowest ranking member of The Company to captain his own ship. It wasn’t always this way. When I started out this mission I had three other senior members of this crew. Three very brilliant, but problematic men. Part of an old school fraternity, a brotherhood of sociopaths and sexual deviants. I can almost imagine a large crowded meeting room down on earth at The Company HQ, where the last long amber rays of the afternoon sun would filter through some rustling leaves, and cast long deep shadows across some corporate types face. Slat shaped shadows from the tall Venetian blinds, creating a regular pattern of amber and darkness hiding portions of their faces. Phones ringing haphazardly, reams of papers all over the room, binders full of details and full ash trays and lit cigarettes with whirling eddies of smoke littering the rooms, and through it all, partial globs of conversations. “They came very highly recommended…best in their fields… brilliant minds… oh no, not too many people choose to work with them a second time… troubling attitudes, but gifted. Yes the three men achieve great results… no, no, no one would step forward… yes, suicide, found by the wife. Yeah, twins on the way… do not envy the fourth man on that next mission. Hope he knows how to comport himself during periods of high stress… can he take a joke?” There would be chuckles, and giggles or guffaw, but in the end those three bastards would get cleared to fly with me. Nine hundred million miles between us and earth. There would be no second chances to make a first impression.

Now yes, it’s true. I killed all three of my crew. I did not set out to do so. But I did it none the less. No, I will not go into it, suffice it to say that few things will test your resolve like suturing a tear to your own anus via a mirror and a needle and thread. I am not a weak man. I did not cow to them. But I exacted my revenge over the course of twenty four hours after they made their final play on my person. I’ve known military life. I can take an awful, awful lot of shit from my superiors, but not someone’s misplaced sense of desire to dominate a subordinate. No, to the man who held me down, he lost an arm at the elbow to the pneumatic press I was operating. Turns out I’m not as fast on a tourniquet as I tested on earth during med protocols. Whoops. To the gentleman who tricked me into the tightest spot on the ship, a technical corridor that houses all of the larger caliber electrical cabling, he got a sprinkle of fines from the Oort cloud in the rim of his helmet and gloves. Brilliant scientists, all of them. But bro’s don’t clean and inspect their gear to the same degree a lowly generalist grunt like me does. Failure to secure a one hundred percent connection during a space walk left him dead instantaneously at the opening of the air lock. The same airlock I fired the acting commander out of by purposefully failing to reach equilibrium with the vacuum outside our vessel when he had to go out for some last minute repairs. Launched him off the craft at nearly two hundred kilometers per second per second, from a cold stand still. Didn’t even damage the doors as his body was sucked through before it had opened more than a few millimeters. Like I said, I didn’t start this, but I fucking well ended it on my terms.

Truth is, we were way too far out for The Company to do anything about it. You don’t send out the cops for triple homicide when the guy who did it confesses, but can still produce the same money making results, and will likely never return to earth, or come into contact with another living soul. I guess space madness runs in the family. My uncle was the engineer that built the now famous capsule the Non Sequitur. This vessel is a variation of that design.

“Computer put a dozen new washers on the to build list, for when I’m in the machine shop next ok…” I’m currently shirtless in the dry, cool air of the Give More capsule. Also known more affectionately by the design staff as a mark five, or Mk.V . “Bzzrt… sorry inquiry invalid… please write down on the control pad, items to add to the official parts build list… verbal dictation function not supported… dictation function not supported… dictation function not supported…” a red blinking light is flashing rapidly in case I missed the memo. “Useless, you know that Roger, you’re absolutely useless… ableist too. What if I lose a hand or both arms huh, how you expect me to write this shit out then?” Crawling over some cabling, I find a wrist pad and write out the reminder. “Bzzrt… inquiry invalid. Roger is not my identifier. Also, crew shortage klaxon will sound off in twelve hours. We are understaffed for this mission. Crew levels are mission critical.” The beaten up yellow box is present on every surface of the ship. Wired up nodes that criss-cross all systems and manned spaces, initially designed as part of the medical monitoring system, but evolved to speak and communicate with the ships hardware and software for ease of experimental program integration. Like the ships brain, but less exciting. I’m a pretty great science generalist, and a damn great machinist, but a programmer I am not. Fuck. Why’d Danny have to go and do me like that, before he could upgrade Roger to be able to take verbal commands, or at least hold a conversation that didn’t pertain to ships diagnostics. Been a real dull thirty seven hundred days of this mission so far. Fuck him, fuck those goofs. Bastards, the lot of them. “How many times do I have to turn off that crew levels alarm… must you remind me twice a day, every god damn day, what I’ve done. You, sir. Are a terrible, terrible friend. Fuck face.”

Returning from the observation deck to the crew quarters I think, better go attune the sensor and radio antenna array some time soon. Gotta tight beam all this data back to earth. God I miss my wife and kids. What I’d give to hear a faucet drip. Nothing here, but the cool empty chill of space, adrift in the void. Would be very easy to go insane up here. Gotta find Roger a suitable communications package, or patch, or something. Maybe medical systems has a psychiatrist plug in I could tap into to get some rousing conversation going. “Hey Roger, make a note that I should check and see if you’ve got a psychiatrist plug in for conversation!”. The yellow box in the crew pod chimes in. “Bzzrt… dictation function not supported for official programming inquiries. Incorrect inquiry format, message not recognized. Roger is not my identifier…” rolling to my side, as I zip myself into my bed chamber. “Thanks Roger. Fuck you too.” A heartbeat later a chime in reply can be heard. The lights grow dim as my resting heart rate shows me drifting off to sleep. It is currently two am ship time aboard the Give More capsule. Outside the vessel it is black and empty. Breakfast will be at oh nine hundred, same as the thirty seven hundred other days gone by.

 

PART IV

“I don’t know what to tell you Michael, it’s going to be a lonely existence…

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Out there for you, and there is very little in the way of what I might offer you to assuage that.” It says in its usual cold, crisp,voice. I adjust the control panel to bring the voice down to some velvety, dulcet tones. Always so very soft and measured in my ear. Seemingly coming from the center of my own head. Standing still in the dark room, my nose pressed up to the cold rain patterned glass, I can see pin lights and movement below stretching out for miles. A vast wasteland of a city whose name I have long forgotten, splays out below. Partially hidden behind fog, haze or low cloud cover of an orange tint. I’ve been told that I am approximately two hundred floors up and that I live in a pristine, hermetically sealed glass coffin. It has all the very best someone of my peculiar talents might ever need or require. I have been told I’m a once in a lifetime creation. A synthesis of pure artistic expression made human-ish. I produce all of the best music available to the incredibly wealthy, and for that they lavish more than just praise upon me. Far more than that. I am gifted with the knowledge that they will never let me die. As long as I am able to produce, my well being and every creative whim will be indulged. Outside the glass floor to ceiling windows is a lifetime of stark contrast for everyone else.

Pacing about my rooms, I’ve a well worn path that I take, passed rows and banks of instrumentation, blinking lights, nodes, dials, and keys. The mixed and pulsing syncopation of modulators, saw tooth effects, phlanges and signal boosters and interrupters is a familiar beat in my life all their own. I’ve used my own heart beating in more arrangements than I care to think about. The light is dim, I love the ambient glow of my technology more than any incandescent, phosphorescent or led bulb that I’ve ever found available. The walls are glass, with finger prints and streaks from disinfectant cleaners. The air in here is clean, but stringent. I’m an ardent tapper, on each and every surface, keeping time with the melodies and transitions that occupy my life. The poor, miserable bots can’t keep up, and their ticking, and clicking has been known to interrupt my flow. I only allow them in with me while my files are compiling or I am asleep. They creep and crawl over the glass like blind mechanical spiders, spritz and wipe, spritz and wipe, incessantly.

I don’t get many visitors up here. For the most part I enjoy it that way. But my patrons found a few unexpected scars on my wrists several years ago, and opted to provide me with Kenneth. He stood for something, but I have long forgotten what that was. He’s a node in my brain and he’s tied to a medical system buried elsewhere in the building, constantly monitoring me and my well being. Roi and all that, you know. A lack of mortality when so much of it is available comes at a cost, whether you care to pay it or not.

“What seems to be the trouble tonight Michael? You seem stressed out, do you require medical attention. Shall I have a med bay suite set up for you to retire to this evening…” Kenneth is right there. If I close my eyes I can imagine him standing only a few inches away, the softness of those words, like a baby’s breath on the back of my left ear. But Kenneth is not here, he’s an implant. Come to think of it, beyond our conversations together, I haven’t seen, nor heard from anyone else in ages. Wouldn’t matter if I had. I have extra bones and organs and all manner of wonderous things available in the med bay suites. All automated. All given freely, though, with no chance to refuse. “No need Kenneth, I am simply trying to brainstorm the next big thing to broadcast to my/our hungry fans… looking at them all down there, like colorful ants, many miles removed gives me a renewed sense of wonder. Rain on the windows, winds on the glass. The offbeat twinkle of lights in the late night darkness. It feeds me. It…” I trail off, as I am want to do. I can feel something. Inspiration.

“I don’t know how you do it Michael, but I fear it must be a cold and lonely existence for you here.”

“Hey, we’ve got an alarm here, main bus three, now four’s on the blink too, five and six…

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What the hell is happening.” The control board is lit up like a Christmas tree, warning buzzers, klaxons and every light that blinks is going haywire. “Hey tech, are you seeing this… is this a glitch? This should absolutely not be happening. What is going on out there.” Me and everyone else at Houston Central Control are on our feet, phones are ringing off the hook and support staff are being woken up. The room is in chaos. The Company builds these capsules to ridiculously stringent specifications. Each system built with three redundancies, all on separate breakers, housed in various locations across the bulk of the craft, shielded under plate steel, or lead casings. They recycle them, over and over again because they are so robust. You could plow a five tonne asteroid into the things, and they’d just… bounce. Took some engineering to achieve that feat. The “Non Sequitur“, it really is a remarkable space faring craft. Ugly as sin, spartan in design, but it’s gods be damned sturdy as a mother fucker.

“Can we get all team leads to the tenth floor conference room, repeat, all team leads to the tenth floor conference room, stat!” The voice on the pa system is tense, and the volume has been cranked to ten. No one is going to want to claim they didn’t hear the dispatch from the guys in charge. Something has gone terribly, terribly wrong.

Outside the control room, the tone is very somber, punctuated by flurries of activity, followed by countless hours of waiting. The shadows beyond the windows stretch and shrink, stretch and shrink as the hours bleed into days, then into weeks. The once eager faces have grown grey, pale and worn. Five o’clock shadow has become the norm, in what is usually a very rigorous and stringent dress code. Walk down any hall way and you’ll find cots with passed out technicians, scattered across every corner, every nook and cranny crammed with unwashed bodies.

“So you’re telling me… after three weeks…that he’s simply not responding to our calls? Do we know if the radio and antenna array are in working order? What do we know… people! Listen. Shut up. I need you to sound off. NOW.” Bruce is about to snap, we’ve been coming to these meetings since day one of the catastrophic event aboard the Non Sequitur, waiting for something new to emerge from the raw data. He’s worked CapCom control for two decades now, and nothing even remotely eventful has ever happened. Not even a dropped call. His skin has taken on a yellow tinge, and his eyes have sunk deeper into his broad face. He looks as though he hasn’t showered or slept in days. He has picked up smoking again, so much so that his fingers tips are stained a dark mustard yellow. His over grown dirty fingernails are tap, tap, tapping on the conference table impatiently. “Well uh, we know that he’s… um, Todd…, yes sorry, Flight Commander Neil Todd, we know he’s still alive because he’s the only one with the bio-metrics to log in to conduct the scans off of the sensor arrays. The data packets are flooding back in, terabyte by terabyte. It doesn’t make much sense, what we are seeing.” The under staffer is visibly nervous about relaying this information. “What?” Says Bruce “The radios are transmitting to us? But he isn’t responding to our queries? That’s very unlike Cmdr Todd. What the fuck happened up there.” Bruce is not taking this new information well, he and Cmdr Todd go back quite a ways. Their kids were all born at the same time, both of them. “Well, we um… have some strange readings…” Terry, the capsule tech specialist chimes in. “The Co2 scrubbers must be malfunctioning, they are way below where they should be. They should need to be replaced every ten days, but we’re what, twenty one days in, on the same one…” he is pacing around the room, fingers pinched on the bridge of his nose, grimacing over the incomplete data. A sudden bang at the door startles the group in the conference room. Opening the door is dr. Sanjai, the loose bun on her head is dropping strands of hair over her face obscuring her now red rimmed eyes. “I can elaborate on that Terry, we were finally able to scour through enough of the data packets in the information dumps to mine the medical subsets. I’m so sorry Bruce…” she says stepping passed the threshold, and into the room. “Jenny and both the girls were killed in a blast. They were exposed to the vacuum of space while asleep in their bed pods.” Everyone is awestruck, Bruce sits down abruptly in his swivel chair at the head of the table. The crew quarters are the most heavily shielded and armored portion of the capsule. It’s where protocol sends you to ride out a gamma burst, radiation, or an asteroid impact. “From what we can tell Cmdr Todd suffered a blunt force trauma to the head, his brain waves sank to near dead for a period of approximately sixteen hours. I think… I… I… I believe he may have suffered brain damage in the blast. And from our other metrics, probably a good chance of substantial blood loss. If it weren’t for the antenna array logins noted on a daily basis, I would have believed him dead.” She is standing stock still in front of the room, a stunned silence fills the space. A thick cloud of cigarette smoke covers the low hanging ceiling. There are water spots on some of the drop ceiling tiles. The Company likes to see its money go into the program, and not wasted on ground staff creature comforts. Bruce, after a brief pause is up on his feet again, he resumes pacing in front of the dusty blackboards. They are covered with all the minutiae of organized space flight. “What about guidance, navigation, payload, what are his consumables like, what state is he in. Best guesses, any details, no matter how fine, are welcome.” Bruce falls back into his chair, as though the weight of the world is clutching at his shoulders and pulling him backward. A mousy slender wisp of a man steps through the gathered group. “Derick here, hi guys, from what we can tell both the navigation system and the engines themselves are fine. We have evidence that some of the crew quarters emergency lighting panels are sending out rapid fire bursts, must be sparks firing almost constantly, like the tail of a comet down off the back of the capsule. I mean, like, this is crazy, whatever hit them managed to pin point the crew pods, out of ten pods, the only three grouped together that happened to have people occupying them got blasted, gutted, fucking near vaporized. I can’t believe it…” he has his detailed spec print outs nearly crushed in his hands. You can tell he is fighting the urge to gather a consensus among the gathered technicians and scientists, for just how insane the statistical probability of this is. “The math shows him to be heading off course, hard to gauge at this point, he must have caught one hell of a bounce, that’s what I’m thinking, but right now he’s about seventy thousands miles wide of where he should be. By the time he gets out to the elliptical range of Pluto it could be as much a six, maybe seven million miles off course. It’s really worst case scenario at this point.” The life drains out of him, and he staggers backwards, dr. Sanjai points him toward an open chair. Once again Bruce comes alive, leaping up from his leather chair. “But he could course correct right? We’ve heard that navigation and engine control are operational. What’s our protocol on a redirect from here?”. He looks hopefully to Derick. All hopes are dashed as the single main priority of these missions comes crashing back into focus. There can be NO ability to redirect these missions from earth. Tensions are too high, too much is riding on their success to allow subterfuge from an errant tech or saboteur. He’s got enough food and supplies for ten men over a five year journey. It’s all down to Cmdr Todd.

Isolated out in the far reaches of space, humanities success rests entirely upon his beaten, bloody shoulders – alone.

 

 

PART II

“Can you at least look at me when I’m trying to talk to you…

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Scott. Put down the controller, take off the head set, and talk to me. God. You’re a big fucking man child. No! No, don’t you dare put that head set back on. Fuck you Scott, Fuck. You.” I’m standing in the doorway to the den, the walls to this windowless room are covered in old creased band posters, and framed sports memorabilia. The room is cluttered with comic books, action figures and empty beer cans. It smells like a gym sock, mixed with a cheap dive bar. I’m surprised there’s no stripper pole in there. The vents are always shut, and he can never be bothered to vacuum. The old dull grey carpet feels gritty underfoot.

“Huh? What’s that? Oh, oh, hey hold up. Sorry fellas…” he’s so calm, talking to his buddies through his head set, getting off the line, logging out as slowly as fucking possible. I can feel my pulse begin to rise. “Baby, babe! Yo… you ok, what’s goin’ on now?” He’s trying me, good god, lord above he’s trying out his, Hi I’m this super charming guy, voice on me. I could just slap him. My blood is pumping, and I’m not in the mood for this frat boy, laid back bullshit. “You know damn well what’s up. You man child! You fucking man baby! Look at all this shit, toys?, Scott really?, you got children’s toys in here. Comic books, toys, video games and fucking model kits. What. The. Fuck!” I clap my hands to punctuate each word. I turn from the doorway, and storm down the hall. It’s the longest stretch of our apartment, it makes for wonderful dramatic effect. I know he’s watching my ass as I storm away. I know it, and I’ll use it against him.

“This again, christ all mighty baby, you gonna do me like that, here? now!” He’s storming down the hall behind me, all one hundred eighty five pounds of him, he is chiseled like marble. He stops outside of arms reach. I can hear his breath coming faster. I can see spittle flecked on his lips as he gets going. “No, no Cheryl, not here. I told you I have to keep things stress free here. You know how bad work gets! You know. You KNOW!” His voice is quavering, and starts to take on a pleading tone. “No, you know what baby, you don’t know. No, don’t shake your finger at me. You want to know what I did yesterday. Do you, do you want to know?” He steps in close to me, I can see it in the whites of his hazel brown eyes, he ain’t going to hold back, he’s going to drop some hot scathing truth in my lap, and I’ll feel both intense love for him for it, and I’ll absolutely hate that I can’t even comprehend it. “Do you want to know what I came across yesterday, at werk!… I came across a mini van, with three kids in the back with their heads cut off at the base of the jaw…”. “Baby, God no, no… don’t say it Honey… please.” I’m pulled into his arms but the dam has broken and he’s not going to stop until it’s burned permanently into my heart. Like surgery done with an ice pick and a blow torch. “Seems the parents were junkies, love doing smack. But what they don’t know is, is that shit got fentanyl in it. Wife was driving, she’s dead as soon as the plunger drops the load in her veins, hot and thick. She couldn’t even pull off the road she was so hot for a quick taste. Crosses through the median, under an oncoming truck full of steel pipes. BAM. bitch, cut those sweet little Angel’s heads right off they necks… they wasn’t even in fucking car seats. Those kids was loose. LOOSE!” I can feel the room start to spin around us. He’s holding onto me just as hard as I hold onto him for support. We collapse together, a puddle of anger, loathing and despair. I think the floor might open up and swallow us whole. Before I can even lean in to stroke his hair, his pager is buzzing on the kitchen counter. Like a shot, he’s up and out the door. I hear something, but it is muffled by the closing door. I can’t make out what it was.

“Well, Cheryl I’m so sorry to hear of your husband’s passing. At least you told him you love him as he left for work that day. Few of us get the chance. It’s not like you two had a fight that day. I mean jesus, could you imagine?” She leans in towards me. “I hear Janis and Robert had a real banger the day he died. It’s eating her alive. But not us. No, we spent the last moments with our noble hunks in the throes of passion.” She’s smiling at me over her wine glass. The red wine must be good, it leaves a slight film on the glass every time she gesticulates with her hands. She smells of flowery perfume, and cigarette smoke. I look through her, to the open bay window beyond. Outside children can be heard playing. They’re laughing, and giggling. “Yeah… at least I have that.”

I can see the shadows growing longer…

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As the sun sets back behind the row of old mangled spruce trees. They really haven’t been the same since that last wind storm. It just blew through here like a god damned menace. Took half the shingles off the west side of the fucking barn. It was absolutely mental. You really couldn’t even hear yourself think, for the howl of the wind and the screach of twisting fensing. God, what an awful mess the last few weeks have been.

The last few moments of mottled sunlight pierce my eyes like Knives. “You know, mum really loves this view because of those trees. You remember how fucking mad she was when dad tried his hand at pruning them…”. My younger brother is standing beside me, dressed in a drab grey suit, clinging to his coffee cup, like it’s a life raft in a raging river. It’s cold, icy black waters threatening to swallow him whole. Pull him underneath, drag him down in the fast flowing current. I turn away from the view, it’s the same stretch of lawn I’d known for as long as I can remember. Turning my back to my brother, I cross the room, it’s somber dressing a reminder that things have changed. Nothing is the same, even as everything here is the same. Stopping at the door I say “It was a nice service. Food was a bit shit, for what they charged us… Bastards”. Twirling around, as though jolted out of his revere, my brother quips ” And what’s up with the vicar, what a thick fuck he is. Got her bloody name wrong, twice!”.

The sun has totally disappeared behind the stand of trees, the farm is that strange mix of dark but also still light out. The carpet smells a bit musty. There is cigarette smoke lingering on the walls, embedded in the paint, like so many other things left unsaid.

Very bad, no good, awful poetry : Series 3

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The best part about doing this series of early poetry written by myself as a teen, is that it has garnered exactly zero attention, and thus has gained no traction online, so while I have the catharsis of sharing it, I know deep down it will remain just as hidden to the outside world as it would had I left it untouched in my note book, on the shelf in my office, where it has sat since late 2009. Oh the unbridled joy of on line anonymity. Plus I’m a straight, white male, so not a whole lot of flack comes at me, unless I were to go out of my way to be a huge asshole. And I save that sort of thing for snide remarks at a movies expense while at the theater. So Boo.

If you’re just joining us now, or me, now, a few things you’ll come to understand. I’m not a professional writer, though at one point in my formative years I had ambitions for becoming a comic book creator / writer. I did give serious thought to Journalism school at Sheridan College, but did art instead. Probably money well spent given the caliber of the work if you look across the length and breadth of my old written pieces. Yikes. So feel free to curl up and have a good chuckle at my expense. From what I’m seeing as I revisit these old works, is they aren’t terribly offensive, except in that they are just awful. Low grade, faux depth, pretentious gobbledegook. Another three hot, steaming turds for your viewing delight.

1.) The sky at night Circa 1999

A lone ball of flame. Gas from an unknown region. Source of light in an uncaring life. A wonder. All ablaze, separated by nothingness and the cold distance between us. I can see you there, hovering, seemingly still, yet you twinkle. Do I dare dream on you tonight, what a wish, what wish, my wish, my right.

What I think is going on here, is like a version of wish upon a star, but kind of mopey and murky. I don’t think I had started to work nights yet, as a high schooler. I did work one semester for a place called Norkim Distributions in Brampton, a job I got because of a former girlfriends parents. I was lucky enough that they drove me to work and picked me up for the 90% of the time I worked there for a semester out of high school. I remember not being able to talk to anyone for most of the day, then as I got home, tired, I’d just natter away until I made my parents angry and they told me to just shut up. I get it now. I’m not a big fan on inane nattering. It was more as a way of dealing with being virtually silent the whole day, and feeling like I might explode if I didn’t just get a days worth of talking out once I got home. It definitely felt solitary. Doesn’t make the poetry any better though now does it. And they say that pain and sorrow create great art, no!, Talent, talent creates great art. Not merely being a morose mother fucker.

2.) Gripe : Twice daily Circa 1999

Whatever I mean, whatever I’ve said, it won’t matter much if I can’t get out of bed. Whoever I am, whomsoever I was, it doesn’t mean anything, and it didn’t mean much. Wherever I was, wherever I go, I won’t do anything, if I go it alone. With, without, what can I say.

Some of these I remember writing, even if vaguely. But this one eludes me, almost completely. I think I am really absorbing a lot of Temple of the Dog at this point, and trying to skirt the notion of completely ripping of Chris Cornell and the Mother Love Bone guys. It doesn’t flow together at all. The rhythm is off, and it sort of just fades away. Like I was trying to be prophetic, and found pathetic instead. On a second reading I guess, I wanted to be told I had something to say, but there really is no “there” there. It’s just pure, unadulterated cheese, “Fromage” for the old school Much Music Ed the Sock crowd.

3.) The fix is in Circa 2000

Sure, I still feel miserable three months down that road. A long hard journey through the vast unknown. But what’s to worry, because when I’m dead and gone, all those years from then, what will it matter, if I was a little mixed up inside my head. Time off, time alone, time apart. It’s all a healing process taken for a broken heart.

Whoo, that ones a bit of a floater. But I will say this, it follows a through line, and doesn’t get too heady. No major calling cards of a bloated sense of writing skill. Fairly layman in execution. No changing places with the man in the mirror. A break up poem if ever I wrote one. That’s it for this installment of terrible, awful poetry. If this does anything at all for you, feel free to post any of your own, miserable teen angst prone writing. Be free of your poor choice of prose! let the wicked underbelly of flatulent poetry free. Blast it into the ether! Fill the void with your own stinky mass of blind ambition.