Neo Chronicles: Black Void
Episode 03: Gangbangers in Space
Table of Contents
What type of guy am I? Normal? Sure, I'm no different than any other guy, at least, I don't think I am. I like the way girls look. I like action, games, comics, music, TV – those are all normal things, right? So that makes me normal. See my reasoning? So everything in my life should be fairly normal, too. Maybe not exactly the same as everyone else, but still normal in the sense that it happens to everybody. So that means it's normal for a person like me to get kidnapped, right? Sure, people get abducted by aliens all the time. Right? Please tell me I'm right.
I'm out of my element. I'm out of my comfort zone. I like to think I can adapt to anything I'm thrown into, but adapting to standing inside some stranger's spaceship, staring at the world through his rearview –
Oh God. Do you hear me? You see this right? I'm gonna die.
“What the crud's goin' on?” I ask.
Ol' whale-face doesn't look like he's payin' me no mind. I ask again.
“Ayo! Tell me what's goin' on! Why are we in space?”
“Not now!” he says.
“'Not now?' Then when? What the world's your problem?”
“Shut the staak up!”
Staak? What the world is that? Stupid alien, tryna abduct me. We're probly headin' straight for his muthaship. They probably wanna poke an' prod me, dissect me. Crud, what am I gonna do? It's not like I can jump out. Space an' people don't mix well. No air. I need air. Hey, I'm breathing. This ship's got oxygen.
“Just sit down and strap in,” the alien says. “I'm sorry for this, but we have to leave now, before they get here.”
“'They?'” I repeat. “'They' who? More aliens? What's going on? Where are we going?”
“Away from here! Now shut up!”
“Away where? We're in space! Away from Earth? That's where I live! We can't leave!”
“Do you want an invasion?”
“What's that supposed to mean?”
The alien doesn't respond. That worries me. I fumble my way up next to him. I look at the giant screens in front of us. We're definitely in space. We're not just flying on Earth, we're flying in space. The black sky, the orbiting satellites, the floating rocks and debris – Funny, but I kinda imagined them being closer together, but it's space! It's all spaced out! Everything about it is, well, space.
I see the alien's eyes quickly trail left to right as the written overlays—overlays I'm trying desperately to make heads or tails of—flash across the screens every second. I assume they're alerting him of some very important somethings.
Then, all of a sudden, I'm jolted back to the floor. Something big hit us. I can see it on the monitor—or I think I see it. Either way, somethin' just flashed by and it causes the alien to utter something under his breath.
“What the crud was that?” I ask.
“Sploc it, they're shooting at us. Didn't think they'd risk it. Certainly not out here –”
“Shootin' at us!? Who shootin'? We're bein' shot at?”
There's another impact. I'm thrust towards the back into a wall. The wall itself sorta cushions my fall, with it bein' all lifelike, membraney, and organic, but it's still not a pleasant ride.
“C'mon dude, don't leave me in the dark here. Talk to me!” I plead.
With a gruff pitch, the alien finally addresses me. “Look, we're being chased right now.” He points to the leftmost screen and on it is a visual of what looks like three shuttle-like jets trailing us. “A bunch of bad people don't like me, so they're here to kill me.” From the jets, I see a flurry of red lights shoot forth our way. Another impact soon follows. “Lousy pnoks care nothing about the sentient life around here.”
“So why am I in the middle a' this?”
“You just had to get on the boat.”
I just had to get on the boat. What the crud was I thinking? This is why you're not supposed to jump inta someone else's mess. If you see a fight, don't try t'break it up. If you see a wreck, go around it. If you see a spaceship in your backyard, please, for the love of God, LEAVE IT BE!
It goes without saying that I'm terrified for my life right now. In the next few moments, I very well could die. I'm scared outta my mind. I desperately look around the ship for a way out. I see the front control center where the alien's standing at. I see the big screen monitors in the front of the ship. The side walls also seem to have turned into monitors displaying the outside like they're some side-door windows. I don't know where the doors are. They seem to have morphed into the walls. Maybe I'm just blind, but it doesn't look like there is a way out.
“Kid I don't think I can shake 'em,” the alien says. “I'll have to open up a warp gate.”
I'm almost afraid to ask. “What does that mean?”
“It means this very well could be the last time you see your little, blue home.”
I'm speechless. I want to voice my concerns. I want to shout out that he can't do this. I want to tell him to stop, turn the ship around, and put me back where he found me. I want to argue. I want to fight back. I want to react, but the words don't come. The action—my action—is inaction. I'm frozen, mouth gaped wide in disbelief.
The thought of leaving everything behind is so surreal, so weird, so bizarre. My mind can't accept it as fact. It can't accept that I'm about to never see my mom, my sister—Chris, Lynn, Noah, Kai—or anyone else I know ever again. I feel like I'm in a dream. I've had dreams like this before. Right about now, I'd be fighting some hammer wielding, lightning shooting, horse-faced cyborg right before waking up.
I pinch my arm again. There's a sting, but I can't trust that. I can't trust that. I just –
“Why can't you just fly me back!?” I yelp.
“I'm sorry, but if I do that, they'll still be on our tail, and that means dragging your whole dasst planet into this.”
I hear him speak. My mind interprets the words. They're as plain as English speaking words can be, but I still can't understand. I still can't –
“Now brace yourself,” he says, and as if on command, the wall and floor where I find myself propped up against morphs around me. It encroaches itself around my body. I'm not quite sure what's happening, but the next thing I know, I'm sitting in some sort of pod-like enclosing. It's like a cockpit: a snug fitting chair and armrests to boot. I look up and see the alien sitting in something similar now. It's like the ship knew exactly where we were and took over.
“The gate's open and we're going through,” the alien states.
The monitors around us show everything—and I mean everything in space—turn into these weird straight lines of light. Then the light disappears. All of it, completely. All except for an orb—or is it a disc?—of white light appearing directly in front of the ship.
I feel pressure. There's a huge amount of force pushing me back further and further into the seat. I want to throw up. It feels like I'm about to throw up, but I can't move. Not at this second anyway. I'm traveling—we're traveling—and just like that, it's over.
The sky comes back, the stars pop back up, space looks like space again. Everything looks the same, except for a couple of things missing.
For one, those ships that were trailing us are gone. I guess the alien was right about that being his best move. We lost them.
The second, though—and this is the one that I care the most about—is that “little, blue planet,” as he called it, is gone, too. I scan every monitor I see, but it ain't nowhere to be found.
That queasy feeling creeps back up on me. I'm dizzy. It feels like I'm—up, there it goes—throwing up. I'm throwing up all over dis fool's floor. Serves him right, doe. I'm mad at him. I mean I'm mad at him right now. I've been kidnapped. I've literally been abducted.
I hear him moan. He's not pleased. I groan. I'm unhappy. Then he says, “Again, I'm sorry for having to do that. There just wasn't another option.”
“Oh, there was another option!” I snap back. “I don't know what was goin' on in your mind, but you coulda played that out way better!”
“I don't think you understand the gravity of the situation.”
“I understand that you kidnapped me and left those posers back there on Earth!”
“Believe me, they won't stay there long. As we speak, they're setting a course out of your star system. Your people are safe. This was the only way.”
I try to fire back again, but if what he's saying is true, then he's right. He did make the best choice. I don't like it. I really don't like it, but it really did work out for the best.
“Dang it,” I say. “So what did you do?”
“Excuse me?”
“Why do those other dudes have beef with you?”
“It's a long story.”
“Ain't like I'm goin' anywhere. Let's hear it.”
He stops guiding the ship and turns his full attention towards me. After drawing a deep breath, he begins, “It started many cycles ago. On my planet, if a household couldn't pay its tribute to the lord of the land, then he would send men to enslave an able-bodied person for a life time. This would continue until either the house caught up, or there were no more occupants.”
“Dang.”
“My family was always struggling to keep up with the tribute. We had already lost my father and older brother to the lord. It was down to my sister, my mother, and me. I had become desperate. I started looking for money wherever I could find it. Eventually, I found it in the wrong place. The people were willing to pay our tribute in exchange for my loyalty. They would often send me on favors and errands. Some were harmless, but a majority of them were morally questionable.”
“How so?”
“I'll let your imagination decide. It won't be far off. As bad as it got, as long as the tribute was still paid, I was still willing to do the work. This went on for a few more cycles. Each task I was sent on was more unpleasant than the last. Finally I reached a line I could not cross.”
“That means no more – wait, what was that line? Or am I supposed to guess that, too?”
“I was ordered to kill a child to send a message.”
“Shoot, you didn't do it, right?”
“Absolutely not, and that was the final straw. I stopped answering to them, stopped following their orders. I figured that would mean the end of the tributes, but every time it came up, they were still being paid. But after a cycle or two, they sent someone to send me a message. I arrived home to find my house burned down with my mother and sister inside.”
“That's horrible.”
“That's understating it. I always knew who I was dealing with. After working with them for so long, it shouldn't have come as a shock to me, but until you see it—until it's laid out in front of you, burning up in smoke—I knew I had to get out of there. And so I did. I got my hands on this boat, changed my name to Ri'lar-Asp'ec-Tripae, and set sail into the cosmos. My hope was that once I was off world, I'd never see them again.”
“And then they started chasing you.”
“And it's been that way ever since.”
Episode 03: Gangbangers in Space
Table of Contents
What type of guy am I? Normal? Sure, I'm no different than any other guy, at least, I don't think I am. I like the way girls look. I like action, games, comics, music, TV – those are all normal things, right? So that makes me normal. See my reasoning? So everything in my life should be fairly normal, too. Maybe not exactly the same as everyone else, but still normal in the sense that it happens to everybody. So that means it's normal for a person like me to get kidnapped, right? Sure, people get abducted by aliens all the time. Right? Please tell me I'm right.
I'm out of my element. I'm out of my comfort zone. I like to think I can adapt to anything I'm thrown into, but adapting to standing inside some stranger's spaceship, staring at the world through his rearview –
Oh God. Do you hear me? You see this right? I'm gonna die.
“What the crud's goin' on?” I ask.
Ol' whale-face doesn't look like he's payin' me no mind. I ask again.
“Ayo! Tell me what's goin' on! Why are we in space?”
“Not now!” he says.
“'Not now?' Then when? What the world's your problem?”
“Shut the staak up!”
Staak? What the world is that? Stupid alien, tryna abduct me. We're probly headin' straight for his muthaship. They probably wanna poke an' prod me, dissect me. Crud, what am I gonna do? It's not like I can jump out. Space an' people don't mix well. No air. I need air. Hey, I'm breathing. This ship's got oxygen.
“Just sit down and strap in,” the alien says. “I'm sorry for this, but we have to leave now, before they get here.”
“'They?'” I repeat. “'They' who? More aliens? What's going on? Where are we going?”
“Away from here! Now shut up!”
“Away where? We're in space! Away from Earth? That's where I live! We can't leave!”
“Do you want an invasion?”
“What's that supposed to mean?”
The alien doesn't respond. That worries me. I fumble my way up next to him. I look at the giant screens in front of us. We're definitely in space. We're not just flying on Earth, we're flying in space. The black sky, the orbiting satellites, the floating rocks and debris – Funny, but I kinda imagined them being closer together, but it's space! It's all spaced out! Everything about it is, well, space.
I see the alien's eyes quickly trail left to right as the written overlays—overlays I'm trying desperately to make heads or tails of—flash across the screens every second. I assume they're alerting him of some very important somethings.
Then, all of a sudden, I'm jolted back to the floor. Something big hit us. I can see it on the monitor—or I think I see it. Either way, somethin' just flashed by and it causes the alien to utter something under his breath.
“What the crud was that?” I ask.
“Sploc it, they're shooting at us. Didn't think they'd risk it. Certainly not out here –”
“Shootin' at us!? Who shootin'? We're bein' shot at?”
There's another impact. I'm thrust towards the back into a wall. The wall itself sorta cushions my fall, with it bein' all lifelike, membraney, and organic, but it's still not a pleasant ride.
“C'mon dude, don't leave me in the dark here. Talk to me!” I plead.
With a gruff pitch, the alien finally addresses me. “Look, we're being chased right now.” He points to the leftmost screen and on it is a visual of what looks like three shuttle-like jets trailing us. “A bunch of bad people don't like me, so they're here to kill me.” From the jets, I see a flurry of red lights shoot forth our way. Another impact soon follows. “Lousy pnoks care nothing about the sentient life around here.”
“So why am I in the middle a' this?”
“You just had to get on the boat.”
I just had to get on the boat. What the crud was I thinking? This is why you're not supposed to jump inta someone else's mess. If you see a fight, don't try t'break it up. If you see a wreck, go around it. If you see a spaceship in your backyard, please, for the love of God, LEAVE IT BE!
It goes without saying that I'm terrified for my life right now. In the next few moments, I very well could die. I'm scared outta my mind. I desperately look around the ship for a way out. I see the front control center where the alien's standing at. I see the big screen monitors in the front of the ship. The side walls also seem to have turned into monitors displaying the outside like they're some side-door windows. I don't know where the doors are. They seem to have morphed into the walls. Maybe I'm just blind, but it doesn't look like there is a way out.
“Kid I don't think I can shake 'em,” the alien says. “I'll have to open up a warp gate.”
I'm almost afraid to ask. “What does that mean?”
“It means this very well could be the last time you see your little, blue home.”
I'm speechless. I want to voice my concerns. I want to shout out that he can't do this. I want to tell him to stop, turn the ship around, and put me back where he found me. I want to argue. I want to fight back. I want to react, but the words don't come. The action—my action—is inaction. I'm frozen, mouth gaped wide in disbelief.
The thought of leaving everything behind is so surreal, so weird, so bizarre. My mind can't accept it as fact. It can't accept that I'm about to never see my mom, my sister—Chris, Lynn, Noah, Kai—or anyone else I know ever again. I feel like I'm in a dream. I've had dreams like this before. Right about now, I'd be fighting some hammer wielding, lightning shooting, horse-faced cyborg right before waking up.
I pinch my arm again. There's a sting, but I can't trust that. I can't trust that. I just –
“Why can't you just fly me back!?” I yelp.
“I'm sorry, but if I do that, they'll still be on our tail, and that means dragging your whole dasst planet into this.”
I hear him speak. My mind interprets the words. They're as plain as English speaking words can be, but I still can't understand. I still can't –
“Now brace yourself,” he says, and as if on command, the wall and floor where I find myself propped up against morphs around me. It encroaches itself around my body. I'm not quite sure what's happening, but the next thing I know, I'm sitting in some sort of pod-like enclosing. It's like a cockpit: a snug fitting chair and armrests to boot. I look up and see the alien sitting in something similar now. It's like the ship knew exactly where we were and took over.
“The gate's open and we're going through,” the alien states.
The monitors around us show everything—and I mean everything in space—turn into these weird straight lines of light. Then the light disappears. All of it, completely. All except for an orb—or is it a disc?—of white light appearing directly in front of the ship.
I feel pressure. There's a huge amount of force pushing me back further and further into the seat. I want to throw up. It feels like I'm about to throw up, but I can't move. Not at this second anyway. I'm traveling—we're traveling—and just like that, it's over.
The sky comes back, the stars pop back up, space looks like space again. Everything looks the same, except for a couple of things missing.
For one, those ships that were trailing us are gone. I guess the alien was right about that being his best move. We lost them.
The second, though—and this is the one that I care the most about—is that “little, blue planet,” as he called it, is gone, too. I scan every monitor I see, but it ain't nowhere to be found.
That queasy feeling creeps back up on me. I'm dizzy. It feels like I'm—up, there it goes—throwing up. I'm throwing up all over dis fool's floor. Serves him right, doe. I'm mad at him. I mean I'm mad at him right now. I've been kidnapped. I've literally been abducted.
I hear him moan. He's not pleased. I groan. I'm unhappy. Then he says, “Again, I'm sorry for having to do that. There just wasn't another option.”
“Oh, there was another option!” I snap back. “I don't know what was goin' on in your mind, but you coulda played that out way better!”
“I don't think you understand the gravity of the situation.”
“I understand that you kidnapped me and left those posers back there on Earth!”
“Believe me, they won't stay there long. As we speak, they're setting a course out of your star system. Your people are safe. This was the only way.”
I try to fire back again, but if what he's saying is true, then he's right. He did make the best choice. I don't like it. I really don't like it, but it really did work out for the best.
“Dang it,” I say. “So what did you do?”
“Excuse me?”
“Why do those other dudes have beef with you?”
“It's a long story.”
“Ain't like I'm goin' anywhere. Let's hear it.”
He stops guiding the ship and turns his full attention towards me. After drawing a deep breath, he begins, “It started many cycles ago. On my planet, if a household couldn't pay its tribute to the lord of the land, then he would send men to enslave an able-bodied person for a life time. This would continue until either the house caught up, or there were no more occupants.”
“Dang.”
“My family was always struggling to keep up with the tribute. We had already lost my father and older brother to the lord. It was down to my sister, my mother, and me. I had become desperate. I started looking for money wherever I could find it. Eventually, I found it in the wrong place. The people were willing to pay our tribute in exchange for my loyalty. They would often send me on favors and errands. Some were harmless, but a majority of them were morally questionable.”
“How so?”
“I'll let your imagination decide. It won't be far off. As bad as it got, as long as the tribute was still paid, I was still willing to do the work. This went on for a few more cycles. Each task I was sent on was more unpleasant than the last. Finally I reached a line I could not cross.”
“That means no more – wait, what was that line? Or am I supposed to guess that, too?”
“I was ordered to kill a child to send a message.”
“Shoot, you didn't do it, right?”
“Absolutely not, and that was the final straw. I stopped answering to them, stopped following their orders. I figured that would mean the end of the tributes, but every time it came up, they were still being paid. But after a cycle or two, they sent someone to send me a message. I arrived home to find my house burned down with my mother and sister inside.”
“That's horrible.”
“That's understating it. I always knew who I was dealing with. After working with them for so long, it shouldn't have come as a shock to me, but until you see it—until it's laid out in front of you, burning up in smoke—I knew I had to get out of there. And so I did. I got my hands on this boat, changed my name to Ri'lar-Asp'ec-Tripae, and set sail into the cosmos. My hope was that once I was off world, I'd never see them again.”
“And then they started chasing you.”
“And it's been that way ever since.”
