Neo Chronicles: Black Void
Episode 29: We Have a Problem
Table of Contents
Carlos is on the floor, holding his jaw, shouting every obscenity he can think of in English and in Spanish. The more he yells, the more blood I see stained on his teeth, and he's yelling a lot. He stumbles and eventually manages to fumble his way back to his feet, upright.
Still cussing, still shouting. Then he stops. He takes a break to spit to the side. I think that's a tooth that bounces on the floor. Didn't need this place to have spots of red spattered about, but oh well.
Still cussing, still shouting, he steps right into my face.
He closes his eyes and inhales deeply. He sighs one last time and opens his eyes again asking with a much more quiet tone, “something wrong here?”
“Nah dude,” I nonchalantly respond. “Ain't nothin' wrong here.”
“Then could you please explain to me why I'm spittin' up teeth?”
“No reason in particular,” I answer. “Just me realizin' ho much of a punk you really are.”
“Oh, okay. So you decide to deck me for it?”
“Yeah.”
“Can I ask why?”
My gaze is fixed right with his. I haven't taken my eyes off him since the incident. I want him to know exactly where I'm standing right now. I'm not flustered. I'm not ravaging. I'm not rowdy. This is me, completely in control of everything I'm feeling. Am I upset? Shoot yeah, I am. But I ain't lettin' it dictate my actions. I mean, sure, I got that punch in, but you can't blame a brutha for that. I'm not fightin' him now.
“Christophe Martin Walker,” I say. “That's the dude's full name.” I take a gulp before I go on. Like I said, I'm in control. “That's my best friend's full name. You was the dude who ran out on him.”
See, now that I'm all settled, I can take in more. I can look this dude and pick up on every slight he makes: his twitches, his gulps, his slight shrugs. He's probably not even aware of his reaction right now. It's all involuntary to him. He looks up at the ceiling as he whispers a “Ay dios mio.”
“You knew his – what are the chances of that?” he asks himself.
“With how many baby mammas you got, it was bound to happen. Just be lucky that it's me that's meetin' you an' not him, otherwise you'd be dead.”
“Look, Darius – ”
“No, you look!” My voice raises. I don't care. “You obviously don't give a crud about anything, so I'mma lay it down like this. My dad walked out on me, too. I've been there. I know how it is. I remember that night and what it did to my mom. The dude took our only car and left me, my mom's, and my sister to fend for ourselves. It wasn't pretty, but we did it. We had each other. We had God. And when it came down to it, that was all we needed. Now Chris and his mom? They had it a thousand times worse! They was always movin' around, always getting in trouble. Don't matter if it was in school or with the law. I'm convinced they was homeless at one point. If it wasn't for me, my fam, an' Lynn, ain't no tellin where the dude would be, not to mention his mother. And the way I see it right now, all that junk falls on you! And what makes it worse is even if you were around, you'da been a horrible dad. At least when mine was around, he tried. Stuck it two years longer than you. Not sayin' much. But what do you care? You're a scumbag! A deadbeat! I can't get down wit dat. Nah dude. So whatever bond you thought we had is done! We ain't friends, and we ain't cool. Now get the crud outta my room 'fore I kill you!”
Carlos doesn't say anything after that.
He doesn't leave either, which is slowly getting on my nerves.
It's cool. I just give him that death stare. Stone, cold, silent fury. He gets the point. He understands my message, and he responds by mimicking my menacing gestures. Understandable. He knows he's in the wrong, but he's trying to save face. Can't show signs of weakness.
See, I'm upset, but if I were really mad, I wouldn't be able to make any of this out. I'm in control. I'm not lashing out at him. I'm not arguing with him. Maybe I should. I know I could, and I'd be in the right, but the truth of the matter is, I don't have to. I don't need to. Any other 15 year old faced with this might. In fact, it might be psychologically healthy if I acted like that. But I made it out in my head long ago that it's not worth it. It's not a matter of bottling my disdain for deadbeat dads in. It's just that I let all that go. Dads who realize they can't deal should duck out. Better to have an absent father than a bad one.
Every so often, I look back on whether I'd be a different person if my dad stuck it out. The truth is, I would, but would that person be better or worse? I like the way I am, and a large part of who I am is based solely on how I saw my mom react to what happened. She picked herself up, and took care of her kids. I know she has you to thank for that.
“Okay,” Carlos finally says. “I'm gone, but don't act like I'm not here, though. I get that we're not on good terms right now—probably won't ever be after this—but like it or not, we're still all we've got.”
I want to retort. I want to get the last word, but I hold my tongue. Again, it's not worth it. So I watch him leave my room, and I go back to sitting on my table-bed. I don't know what to do or where to go from here.
I'm back to thinking about home and my friends. I'm back to thinking about everything that brought me here. It's the same song and dance that I'm sure you're tired of hearing about, but it's all I know. I try to do some role playing in my head about what Ri'lar would do. Makes me realize I still didn't really know the guy. So I try to imagine what my friends would do out here.
Chris is stupid, so he'd do the stupid thing. No, I take that back, he ain't stupid, he's impulsive. He'd do whatever without thinking about it. Not thinking, though. That's stupid. So he'd stupidly run out, play pirate, but still try and say he's honorable because he wouldn't cross the line of doing something to intentionally hurt someone, which is why he's stupid, because pirates are all about intentionally hurting people.
Noah? I dunno. He'd try to think of something. He's not so much an analytical type, but he will analyze his way out of situations when he needs to. I started calling him “boss” for a short while because he was always coming up with a plan to do something.
Kai just wouldn't be in this situation to begin with. His motto is to stay far away from things he doesn't want to be a part of. That's smart. But if he were in this, he'd probably do what I'm doing, except be a lot better at it: staying to himself, keeping his head down, avoiding trouble, doing what he's told only if he has to do it. I doubt he'd have gotten into as many fights as I have.
Lynn is a wild card. One moment, she's playing pranks on people, the next she's scolding Chris for doing the same thing. I guess it depends on the time of day. If she were out here, she'd either find a close knit group of people she can relate to, or she'd – no, close knit group sounds about right. What she'd do after that depends entirely on the group.
What about Jade? I usually avoid imagining my sister in these role play situations because she's my sister, thus automatically making her too lame to do anything I'm doing, but if she ended up here and now, she'd probably –
I hear a knock at my door. It's been at least an hour since Carlos left. I can't imagine what he'd want. I exhale deeply, look up to the ceiling and then back to the floor. Takes me a few minutes. Then I get up and make my way to the door. I'm really not in any kinda mood to see the dude.
So color me surprised to see a green, lizard-like, scaley skinned, goose necked, duck billed – wait a minute. Have I met this person before?
“What do you – ” I start to ask.
“My name is Mera Ven Roew.”
“Who?”
The person comes in, door shutting behind.
“Tell me you haven't told.”
“Haven't told who? Told what?”
“Please tell me you haven't.”
“What? What? Oh! It's you, the lady who's pretending not to be a lady who threw up.”
“Yes, it's me. Now who have you told?”
“No one. I don't talk to people.”
“Don't you spend time with that person who looks like you?”
“Carlos? Yeah, no. We don't—well, I guess to different aliens, we might look alike—we're not talking at all.”
“He just left this room some time ago.”
“Yeah, and I hate him now.”
“Why is that?”
“Why you tryna be a dude?”
The dino-lady clears her throat some, and her voice goes up a few octaves. “If they found out what I really am –”
“What? A girl? Ain't nobody care about dat.”
“You don't understand.”
“Fine, whatever. I don't. I don't wanna either. Don't care. I ain't told nobody, and I won't. So we through here? Can you go?”
“Actually, the reason I came here was to tell you we're all meeting in the mess hall to talk about a raid. Captain wants all hands on deck. I'm surprised you're not there already. The announcement has been playing for a while.”
I look to the ceiling. My eyes trail their way to the speaker in the center, then down to the cord connected to it all the way down to the wall by my table-bed where I may or may not have accidentally or purposefully cut it.
Mera coughs again and says in her more masculine tone, “Let's go. It's supposed to be big.”
She wasn't kidding. The two of us are now standing on the outskirts of the crowd, entire mess hall full of probably everyone on the ship, with the other ships in the fleet tuned in via audio-video stream, as evident by the particular feedback echoing throughout the room and the moving pictures of other aliens being projected as holograms in the center of the room.
The captain wastes no time once I, Mera, and the rest of the stragglers pile in.
“Kal-Artang, Scion, and I were discussing our next move. I don't have to tell you men how there haven't been that many raids as of late. You all know how we operate. We pick a space quadrant, set up station around a nearby warp gate, and hunt dead, lost, unsuspecting ships that happen to cross our path. This has been an effective method. It's been a safe method, but for whatever reason this method is failing us now. Normally when the ships start thinning out, we move to a different quadrant and start up again. We're pirates. Spacefaring is part of the job description, but when it comes down to it, relocating every six days when it used to be every twenty has become too much of a hassle, as of late. I don't know if this is some new initiative the law enforcements have started, but for whatever reason, the ships aren't coming like they used to.”
One of the holograms next to the captain makes a motion. He is a tall, lanky sort of alien with a head that looks way too big for its frame. Dude's got two big ol' eyes that take up half his face, and a mouth that takes up the other half. Human-ish looking, sorta. He kinda looks like what I'd imagine a human's nervous system covered in grey skin would be. Yeah, just that, maybe there's some slight muscle tone to him, but mostly skin and nerves. He speaks.
“The captain is right. As such, we have got to change our strategy, at least for the time being. Already, our supplies are running low. So our proposed solution is to raid a planet.”
Immediately, the room is filled to the brim with outcries against it.
“Alright, alright! Calm the staak down!” the captain interjects. “We know what that means! We know the risks! Hear Scion out before you start bellyaching!”
The crowd dies down.
“Thank you captain. Now. Yes, raiding a planet is extremely risky. Under normal circumstances, we would like to stay as far away from any civilized and colonized planet, moon, or asteroid. They are stationary places of refuge, and, as such, are under much heavier protection in terms of law enforcement. For us to even consider taking on such a colossal risk should show you just how waist-deep in mosst we really are. This is a serious manner we're faced with, and it requires a serious solution.”
“Thank you Scion,” the captain says acknowledging Scion's conclusion. “Now Kal-Artang, you have the floor.”
The captain motions to the alien to his other side. This Kal-Artang dude looks like a monkey, gorilla thing. He's a sasquach, or a yeti. Are those the same thing? Stands upright, walks on two legs, white, hairy, broad shoulders, no tail. I'm goin' with yeti.
“Scion's right. We're in some deep mosst. The drenniest of mosst, but is the risk really worth the reward? I say we stick with what we know. Keep to the ships and keep out of the law's reach. This is space. There are always travelers. There will always be travelers! There will always be ships! We know that, and we know as soon as we land planetside, the law will be there for us. We should keep to ourselves.”
“But for how long?” Scion interjects. “If the current trends are any indication, we won't last long enough for the next ship, and even if the next ship does come, how long until we wait for the next one or the next one after that? I'm not saying we should set up shop on the planets. It would be just a one time thing, a pit stop. We wouldn't even need to take the whole fleet, just a ship—one ship—is all we'd need! We would take enough for us to last us through this drought, and then we could head to the other side of the galaxy!”
“Alright, that's enough,” the captain says. “We've heard both sides. Men, now it's up for you to decide. You know how we do things. One man, one vote. What should our next move be?”
Episode 29: We Have a Problem
Table of Contents
Carlos is on the floor, holding his jaw, shouting every obscenity he can think of in English and in Spanish. The more he yells, the more blood I see stained on his teeth, and he's yelling a lot. He stumbles and eventually manages to fumble his way back to his feet, upright.
Still cussing, still shouting. Then he stops. He takes a break to spit to the side. I think that's a tooth that bounces on the floor. Didn't need this place to have spots of red spattered about, but oh well.
Still cussing, still shouting, he steps right into my face.
He closes his eyes and inhales deeply. He sighs one last time and opens his eyes again asking with a much more quiet tone, “something wrong here?”
“Nah dude,” I nonchalantly respond. “Ain't nothin' wrong here.”
“Then could you please explain to me why I'm spittin' up teeth?”
“No reason in particular,” I answer. “Just me realizin' ho much of a punk you really are.”
“Oh, okay. So you decide to deck me for it?”
“Yeah.”
“Can I ask why?”
My gaze is fixed right with his. I haven't taken my eyes off him since the incident. I want him to know exactly where I'm standing right now. I'm not flustered. I'm not ravaging. I'm not rowdy. This is me, completely in control of everything I'm feeling. Am I upset? Shoot yeah, I am. But I ain't lettin' it dictate my actions. I mean, sure, I got that punch in, but you can't blame a brutha for that. I'm not fightin' him now.
“Christophe Martin Walker,” I say. “That's the dude's full name.” I take a gulp before I go on. Like I said, I'm in control. “That's my best friend's full name. You was the dude who ran out on him.”
See, now that I'm all settled, I can take in more. I can look this dude and pick up on every slight he makes: his twitches, his gulps, his slight shrugs. He's probably not even aware of his reaction right now. It's all involuntary to him. He looks up at the ceiling as he whispers a “Ay dios mio.”
“You knew his – what are the chances of that?” he asks himself.
“With how many baby mammas you got, it was bound to happen. Just be lucky that it's me that's meetin' you an' not him, otherwise you'd be dead.”
“Look, Darius – ”
“No, you look!” My voice raises. I don't care. “You obviously don't give a crud about anything, so I'mma lay it down like this. My dad walked out on me, too. I've been there. I know how it is. I remember that night and what it did to my mom. The dude took our only car and left me, my mom's, and my sister to fend for ourselves. It wasn't pretty, but we did it. We had each other. We had God. And when it came down to it, that was all we needed. Now Chris and his mom? They had it a thousand times worse! They was always movin' around, always getting in trouble. Don't matter if it was in school or with the law. I'm convinced they was homeless at one point. If it wasn't for me, my fam, an' Lynn, ain't no tellin where the dude would be, not to mention his mother. And the way I see it right now, all that junk falls on you! And what makes it worse is even if you were around, you'da been a horrible dad. At least when mine was around, he tried. Stuck it two years longer than you. Not sayin' much. But what do you care? You're a scumbag! A deadbeat! I can't get down wit dat. Nah dude. So whatever bond you thought we had is done! We ain't friends, and we ain't cool. Now get the crud outta my room 'fore I kill you!”
Carlos doesn't say anything after that.
He doesn't leave either, which is slowly getting on my nerves.
It's cool. I just give him that death stare. Stone, cold, silent fury. He gets the point. He understands my message, and he responds by mimicking my menacing gestures. Understandable. He knows he's in the wrong, but he's trying to save face. Can't show signs of weakness.
See, I'm upset, but if I were really mad, I wouldn't be able to make any of this out. I'm in control. I'm not lashing out at him. I'm not arguing with him. Maybe I should. I know I could, and I'd be in the right, but the truth of the matter is, I don't have to. I don't need to. Any other 15 year old faced with this might. In fact, it might be psychologically healthy if I acted like that. But I made it out in my head long ago that it's not worth it. It's not a matter of bottling my disdain for deadbeat dads in. It's just that I let all that go. Dads who realize they can't deal should duck out. Better to have an absent father than a bad one.
Every so often, I look back on whether I'd be a different person if my dad stuck it out. The truth is, I would, but would that person be better or worse? I like the way I am, and a large part of who I am is based solely on how I saw my mom react to what happened. She picked herself up, and took care of her kids. I know she has you to thank for that.
“Okay,” Carlos finally says. “I'm gone, but don't act like I'm not here, though. I get that we're not on good terms right now—probably won't ever be after this—but like it or not, we're still all we've got.”
I want to retort. I want to get the last word, but I hold my tongue. Again, it's not worth it. So I watch him leave my room, and I go back to sitting on my table-bed. I don't know what to do or where to go from here.
I'm back to thinking about home and my friends. I'm back to thinking about everything that brought me here. It's the same song and dance that I'm sure you're tired of hearing about, but it's all I know. I try to do some role playing in my head about what Ri'lar would do. Makes me realize I still didn't really know the guy. So I try to imagine what my friends would do out here.
Chris is stupid, so he'd do the stupid thing. No, I take that back, he ain't stupid, he's impulsive. He'd do whatever without thinking about it. Not thinking, though. That's stupid. So he'd stupidly run out, play pirate, but still try and say he's honorable because he wouldn't cross the line of doing something to intentionally hurt someone, which is why he's stupid, because pirates are all about intentionally hurting people.
Noah? I dunno. He'd try to think of something. He's not so much an analytical type, but he will analyze his way out of situations when he needs to. I started calling him “boss” for a short while because he was always coming up with a plan to do something.
Kai just wouldn't be in this situation to begin with. His motto is to stay far away from things he doesn't want to be a part of. That's smart. But if he were in this, he'd probably do what I'm doing, except be a lot better at it: staying to himself, keeping his head down, avoiding trouble, doing what he's told only if he has to do it. I doubt he'd have gotten into as many fights as I have.
Lynn is a wild card. One moment, she's playing pranks on people, the next she's scolding Chris for doing the same thing. I guess it depends on the time of day. If she were out here, she'd either find a close knit group of people she can relate to, or she'd – no, close knit group sounds about right. What she'd do after that depends entirely on the group.
What about Jade? I usually avoid imagining my sister in these role play situations because she's my sister, thus automatically making her too lame to do anything I'm doing, but if she ended up here and now, she'd probably –
I hear a knock at my door. It's been at least an hour since Carlos left. I can't imagine what he'd want. I exhale deeply, look up to the ceiling and then back to the floor. Takes me a few minutes. Then I get up and make my way to the door. I'm really not in any kinda mood to see the dude.
So color me surprised to see a green, lizard-like, scaley skinned, goose necked, duck billed – wait a minute. Have I met this person before?
“What do you – ” I start to ask.
“My name is Mera Ven Roew.”
“Who?”
The person comes in, door shutting behind.
“Tell me you haven't told.”
“Haven't told who? Told what?”
“Please tell me you haven't.”
“What? What? Oh! It's you, the lady who's pretending not to be a lady who threw up.”
“Yes, it's me. Now who have you told?”
“No one. I don't talk to people.”
“Don't you spend time with that person who looks like you?”
“Carlos? Yeah, no. We don't—well, I guess to different aliens, we might look alike—we're not talking at all.”
“He just left this room some time ago.”
“Yeah, and I hate him now.”
“Why is that?”
“Why you tryna be a dude?”
The dino-lady clears her throat some, and her voice goes up a few octaves. “If they found out what I really am –”
“What? A girl? Ain't nobody care about dat.”
“You don't understand.”
“Fine, whatever. I don't. I don't wanna either. Don't care. I ain't told nobody, and I won't. So we through here? Can you go?”
“Actually, the reason I came here was to tell you we're all meeting in the mess hall to talk about a raid. Captain wants all hands on deck. I'm surprised you're not there already. The announcement has been playing for a while.”
I look to the ceiling. My eyes trail their way to the speaker in the center, then down to the cord connected to it all the way down to the wall by my table-bed where I may or may not have accidentally or purposefully cut it.
Mera coughs again and says in her more masculine tone, “Let's go. It's supposed to be big.”
She wasn't kidding. The two of us are now standing on the outskirts of the crowd, entire mess hall full of probably everyone on the ship, with the other ships in the fleet tuned in via audio-video stream, as evident by the particular feedback echoing throughout the room and the moving pictures of other aliens being projected as holograms in the center of the room.
The captain wastes no time once I, Mera, and the rest of the stragglers pile in.
“Kal-Artang, Scion, and I were discussing our next move. I don't have to tell you men how there haven't been that many raids as of late. You all know how we operate. We pick a space quadrant, set up station around a nearby warp gate, and hunt dead, lost, unsuspecting ships that happen to cross our path. This has been an effective method. It's been a safe method, but for whatever reason this method is failing us now. Normally when the ships start thinning out, we move to a different quadrant and start up again. We're pirates. Spacefaring is part of the job description, but when it comes down to it, relocating every six days when it used to be every twenty has become too much of a hassle, as of late. I don't know if this is some new initiative the law enforcements have started, but for whatever reason, the ships aren't coming like they used to.”
One of the holograms next to the captain makes a motion. He is a tall, lanky sort of alien with a head that looks way too big for its frame. Dude's got two big ol' eyes that take up half his face, and a mouth that takes up the other half. Human-ish looking, sorta. He kinda looks like what I'd imagine a human's nervous system covered in grey skin would be. Yeah, just that, maybe there's some slight muscle tone to him, but mostly skin and nerves. He speaks.
“The captain is right. As such, we have got to change our strategy, at least for the time being. Already, our supplies are running low. So our proposed solution is to raid a planet.”
Immediately, the room is filled to the brim with outcries against it.
“Alright, alright! Calm the staak down!” the captain interjects. “We know what that means! We know the risks! Hear Scion out before you start bellyaching!”
The crowd dies down.
“Thank you captain. Now. Yes, raiding a planet is extremely risky. Under normal circumstances, we would like to stay as far away from any civilized and colonized planet, moon, or asteroid. They are stationary places of refuge, and, as such, are under much heavier protection in terms of law enforcement. For us to even consider taking on such a colossal risk should show you just how waist-deep in mosst we really are. This is a serious manner we're faced with, and it requires a serious solution.”
“Thank you Scion,” the captain says acknowledging Scion's conclusion. “Now Kal-Artang, you have the floor.”
The captain motions to the alien to his other side. This Kal-Artang dude looks like a monkey, gorilla thing. He's a sasquach, or a yeti. Are those the same thing? Stands upright, walks on two legs, white, hairy, broad shoulders, no tail. I'm goin' with yeti.
“Scion's right. We're in some deep mosst. The drenniest of mosst, but is the risk really worth the reward? I say we stick with what we know. Keep to the ships and keep out of the law's reach. This is space. There are always travelers. There will always be travelers! There will always be ships! We know that, and we know as soon as we land planetside, the law will be there for us. We should keep to ourselves.”
“But for how long?” Scion interjects. “If the current trends are any indication, we won't last long enough for the next ship, and even if the next ship does come, how long until we wait for the next one or the next one after that? I'm not saying we should set up shop on the planets. It would be just a one time thing, a pit stop. We wouldn't even need to take the whole fleet, just a ship—one ship—is all we'd need! We would take enough for us to last us through this drought, and then we could head to the other side of the galaxy!”
“Alright, that's enough,” the captain says. “We've heard both sides. Men, now it's up for you to decide. You know how we do things. One man, one vote. What should our next move be?”
