Section II.II The Chisel, Hammer, and Rubber Mallet
Megan glances at the spot. There's still blood smears on the hardwood floor I couldn't mop up. Chunks and droplets I missed. She looks at the holes in the wall where the bullets landed. They went straight through him.
"He was alone?" She asks, her voice an octave too high as she forces too much air through her throat. The thought is making her giddy.
"I did a perimeter check and sent the drone up, we've not seen anybody," Rippy replies with a shrug, "Kevin is supposed to be on guard." They both look at me.
"I brought Megan in," I reply dumbly. My hands are still shaking.
"Yes, and thank you. Now you should get back to guard duty," She replies softly. She's been accepted as de facto leader as long as she keeps Rippy in check.
Rippy looks at me too, I can't read him. I always just assume disappointment and anger.
If Megan is the chisel, Rippy is the hammer. Megan leads with humanity and Rippy effeciency. We follow Megan because she cares. We follow Rippy because he's right.
I give a curt nod and turn on my heels, my face is heating up. I'm flustered. I just killed a man and they dismissed me like a child.
I freeze. My muscles are tight, my entire body tense and ready for a fight. Anger boils up inside me as I become dangerously aware of the heavy rifle slung over my shoulder.
"What about the others?" My voice sounds far away, from the far side of a long and narrow tunnel. Someone else's voice falling on my ears. The words are devoid of any emotion, completely empty. I can hear the decisiveness in her reply.
"I'll bring them in."
"I need time to myself."
"You're getting time to yourself."
"No, I'm getting a job. I need to breathe."
"I'll send someone to relieve you once we're settled."
"Kevin," Rippy interjects, ice cold, "Not now."
I'm still not facing them. They can't see the murder in my eyes. The burning, murderous fury of someone who just blew holes through a man and chucked him into a closet.
Then the battle clarity comes. My hands stop shaking and my muscles relax. Adrenaline pumps through my veins as I watch, in my mind's eye, small chunks of flesh scatter from the man's back and litter the hardwood floor. It's what had to be done then and this is what has to be done now.
Section II: The New World Dead
I don't suppose I ever actually woke up. The world is harsh, and growing harsher.
I let out a shaky breath, feeling the smoke trace along the roof of my mouth and imagine it rolling over my teeth and into the cold air. For a moment, only a moment, my hands stop shaking.
We left after Felicia shot herself. Her mark is probably still all over the wall in the attic.
It's funny how quickly you adjust to things. I never did. I don't suppose any of us did. But we're still here, so something must have happened. Several of us, anyway.
We lost Mr. Bain some months ago in a shoot-out. Olivia. We left Mrs. Bain behind because she couldn't keep up.
This new world is a harsh and cold one. Always clean up. That's what he told us. Mr. Bain did, after our first fight. Never let the women see them. As if they didn't know. As if they wouldn't see the remnants when they came in behind us. He was an old worlder, where women are sheltered and protected by chivalry and honor. I suspect that world died with him.
"We need to clean up," Rippy states. His voice is devoid of any emotion, as piercing as his killing eyes and the cutting wind. I let out my breath and enjoy feeling it roll out of my mouth. Rippy is of the new world. Women are slower, smaller, and bear just as much of the anvil of life as anyone else. Anything less means death. Apparently, though, he remember's Mr. Bain's words.
I snuff and slip the cigarrete into the tupperware case I store them within and look at the body.
"I suppose we do." Rippy had already dragged anything useful away and takes this moment to cover it in a ragged towel. Blood starts soaking through the thin material immediately.
The body is dead weight between us, limp and jiggly when we drop it in the closet. When we close the door behind us I leave a torn page peeking out from under the door. The women know that means not to enter. Because they know. They see the remnants when they come in behind us. The bottom of the page reads 4.
Victoria got sick about two weeks ago and we all avoided her. At first we hoped it was the radiation but when Jiavanni fell sick as well... They took care of each other as we watched. We didn't have medicine. We barely have food. We brought them what we could but stayed our distance. Yesterday they fell too weak to cry for food; hunger certainly gnawing at their gut. We left them in the night, too.
I go back and switch the page under the door for one that reads 6.
Waiting Room Talks
"I was prostituted"
"I know, I'm sorry. The police will want to hear that."
"It was my roommate. She did it to me."
"I'm sorry."
"They did it on purpose. The homeless shelter. They knew."
"I see."
"I want an abortion pill."
"You'll have to wait for the doctor and talk to them about that."
"Oh.
Can I have something to drink?"
"I'm sorry I can't give you anything to eat or drink. In case surgery is required."
"Oh."
"I can't give you anything to eat but I'm not going to stop you from eating those. That's the doctor's problem."
"The homeless shelter gave me a tent. A tent."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"They don't care about you unless you have children."
"That's why they put me with my roommate. That's why she prostituted me."
"When you have children they give you food. And instead of a tent you get a house. And warm clothes."
"My mother never left me."
"That's good."
"I lived with my sister but her boyfriend was a pimp."
"I see."
"He prostituted me and she abandoned me."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"My mother never left me though. I never lose."
"What do you mean?"
"I never lose. I NEVER lose. My mother never left me. But my aunt took me from her and she wouldn't tell her where I was at and so I was alone but I never lose. Never. I'll find my mother."
"I'm sorry."
"My aunt raises my cousins. But I don't trust her with them. She uses them for EBT money."
"That's terrible, I'm sorry."
"She used me for EBT money. And my sister. She feeds them McDonalds while she eats well. McDonalds. She doesn't care about them."
"That's frustrating, I'm sorry to hear that."
"She raised my sister until she moved out with her pimp boyfriend."
"I see."
"I lived with them until he started prostituting me. I left. And the shelter gave me a tent. A tent."
"I'm sorry."
"But now I'm pregnant. And I don't care about it. I'll have it on the streets and kill both of us."
"That's something you'll want to tell the SANe nurse and doctor."
"It's about the babies. That's why they give us houses."
"If we aren't pregnant we get tents. If we are pregnant we get houses. They're farming us."
"They're farming homeless people for babies. They're prostituting them for the children."
"That's why they put me with my roommate. That's what my sister's pimp boyfriend did to me."
"California owns me. They own me. But the homeless shelter owns the children."
"See these crackers? They're made from the baby fetuses."
"After I have mine I'm going to kill us both before its turned into crackers."
"Before my aunt gets it and raises it for EBT money."
"I'm going to go get some water."
Class 0 Planetarium: The Rock
“We have a rock, inbound,” Trank yells. His tinnitus must be kicking it. It’s from his soldiering days.
“A rock?” Dr. Bella Gunderson asks after several moments when no one else seems to care.
“A rock,” Trank replies with a nod of finality.
“You’re sure it isn’t a Placa?” Dr. Bella Gunderson asks playfully. Trank gives an irritated scowl in response.
Placa is a military term for the enemy. No different than the Hajji or Charlie. Placa. In the twisted vein of military humor though, Placa derived from the Andromedans’ (self-identifying as Slethcs) term for humans. Human tongues cannot quite form the true word of Placa, a mix of “Plaka”, “Plasha”, and “Plucka”. A mumbled garble that Trank says brings a variety of pronunciations across different combat units. It’s one of the reasons military personnel like the term. Though the Placa may not be the humans nor the Slethcs (another trilogy of sounds), they are the enemy. Different only in pronunciation. Trank has killed many a Placa, by any definition.
It was the way Dr. Bella Gunderson has yet to be anything less than pleased, that has bothered him.
As the crew’s psychiatrist, anthropologist, linguist, and archaeologist, Dr. Bella Gunderson is often odd to the rest of them, some even consider her the least of them, yet, still.
Dr. Bella Gunderson stands tall and lithe, hair in the changing colors of sandy-blond to red-dwarf red in the current fashion of the day. She is a well respected author of philosophy with a PhD in AI cultural studies and the long term effects of birth without a soul. Her crew specialties are in AI, software, and Quantum Mechanics. She is also the primary pilot of the crew.
Dr. Bella Gunderson is on this mission to gather data on the initial probes that were sent out to inspect the planet they stand on. She’s constructing a PeD thesis on AI and the Long Term Effects of Birth Without a Soul with Unilaterally Assigned Purpose Preceding Death Post Operation and how that is impacted by termination shortly after meeting other AI for the first time. This mission provided a rare circumstance to converse with three AI with unilateral purposes who were alone in the dead of space for five decades who all came to inconclusive readings and uncertain conclusions. Certainly fifty years alone with one mission in life and an inability to comprehend anything pertaining to that mission would prove interesting to The Board.
“Time to impact, ten minutes. We need to leave.” Trank stands, his white suit stained with purple-red cubic specks of sand.
“But my readings!” Sharon cries out, “They’re still coming in and they contrast my initial findings, some are better than I could have hoped while others spell disaster to my hypothesis!”
“I’ll warm the engines,” Trank yells and stands, but he hesitates. The most imperceptible of whimpers is released from his lips as his body comes to an ache with painful needles stab along his spine. It’s from his soldiering days. He boards the SALEEM.
His next words are furious rage.
Class 0 Planetarium: The Rock Pt. 3
Class 0 Planetarium: Landfall Pt. 2
https://theprose.com/post/798520/class-zero-planetarium-landfall
Class 0 Planetarium: Pt. 1
https://theprose.com/post/798338/class-zero-planetarium
Eons of Warmth
It was the stars, I think.
They're brighter in the winter, the skies are clearer. It's with their clarity found snippets of peace.
At night my body shook, hard wracks against the wood of the chair I slept in. The sharp stab of wood against bone was a common cause of bruising on my right shoulder.
I never much liked the feel of cotton, yet in those days cotton is what I clung to. Though touching it sent goose bumps up my neck I envoloped my body in the dead plant. Two layers of it if I could. Even now I can still feel the horrid texture gently sliding against the very tip of my left forefinger. Yet my body shook with chills and the cold hurt. Life was stiff joints and cramped muscles. Cotton would do.
I would sit on the back of the truck and look at the stars. Look at them through the thin whisp that was my breath. I'd feel the wind bite through my three layers as the wind whipped about my loose hair. My stomach would growl and the sharp pain right below my diaphragm would stab. The dull ache spreading down to my lower gut because the moldy bread I had for breakfast was not enough. It was never enough. Nevertheless, I looked at the stars.
Mornings were filled with coughing and freezing showers, if I could work up the courage to endure such torture. The smoke from the nightly fire would be so thick I could taste it down the back of my throat all day. It would scratch with every word I spoke and flavor my food. My eyes burned. So when I got home I would sit on the truck and I would look at the stars. I would breathe the daggered air because only the sharp pain of the frigid winter could cure the taste of raw smoke.
I dreamed of a warmth I did not have. Of people I did not have near. Of bread without mold. Of a bed.
What is summer but the celebrated prime of the survivors? Spring is but a youthful testing. The summer is the celebration where not a single fear is held of the soul-piercing wind of a winter night.
Stars live outside the wane of a freezing winter. I took comfort seeing their warmth, eons old. I dug deep down, seeking to find my own warmth to last the eons and I found it. It's like the fires that I made that *did* last the whole night (many did not). At the coldest point of the night the embers burned. Not with brilliant fire, for those went out the fastest. No, with a dull glow and steadfastness.
These days I work with people who never found that fire and I only hope to spread the flame. Spread the summer. To burn through one more winter.
"In the midst of winter, I finally found there was within me an invincible summer"
Class Zero Planetarium: Landfall
Trank made them hover over their landing space and quadruple check the surface for Placa traps. It's from his soldiering days.
It was the way that the purple sand seemed to ebb and flow that bothered him. Maybe the surface is an ocean? Is that not what a Desert is? An ocean of solids?
The land is soft. None of the crew even knew they landed officially until SALEEM confirmed it. Even Trank, who was acting "pilot", wasn't certain, even when the blue landing gear light had come on. The crew sat quietly for several moments.
"Are we going to go meet these Placas or what?" Dr. Bella Gunderson asks with a sly grin.
"What?" Trank asks loudly. His tinnitus must be acting up again. Mechaster ignores him;
"You guys go on ahead," Mechaster says, not looking up from his screens, "I'm going to figure out what's wrong with our equipment. We should've scrapped the mission as soon as we saw the surface."
"But my research!" Sharon crows.
"Alright, let's go," Trank says finally. He's been largely left out of the conversation and not liking it one bit. He's a slim man with the energy of a bigger one; like most things, it's from his soldiering days. He's also the crew's secondary doctor, secondary pilot, primary Xenologist and primary Astrobiologist. If it has a pulse or a hydroflux he can realive it almost as fast as he can unalive it.
"Why, yes!" Dr. Hoffen pipes up, remembering suddenly he's the crew's mission captain. Often the actual leadering comes from Trank, as is happening now. "We are here now, so let's see what this 'water' planet has to offer!" He does not bother hiding his mocking tone.
It was the way that the air had a blue tint to it, that bothered him. The suit and ship sensors both concurred the air was breathable but nobody trusted that. He also didn't trust the sand he dug his hand into, kneeling and holding a fistful by his face plate. Up close the cubic speckles are a brick red. No, he does not trust this at all.
"Why did we land here, again?" Dr. Bella Gunderson asks, spinning around amidst the endless purple desert and blue... mist? Aura? "The dune over there is hardly interesting," she doesn't gesture anywhere. There's dunes all about.
"The altitude and planet tilt are great for my research!" Sharon responds as she gently sets a box down in the cubic, purple sand. Red flecks begin sticking to its outer shell. Trank helps unload a few more boxes as Sharon sets them up.
"I suppose you're comparing your ground data against what you've been collecting en route?" Dr. Bella Gunderson asks. Sharon does not respond to such a heedless question and Dr. Bella Gunderson does not ask again.
Dr. Hoffen turns to him.
"Dr. N, can you have TEZMEEN fire probes around the planet at different altitudes so we can run data comparisons?"
It's the way the radio waves bounced through the atmosphere, that worried him. They bent just like the light. TEZMEEN did not respond.
Class Zero Planetarium: Landfall
Pt. 2
Class Zero Planetarium Pt. 1:
https://theprose.com/post/798338/class-zero-planetarium-pt-1
Class Zero Planetarium
It was the way the light bent, that worried him.
They were coming low into the atmosphere, slowing their descent enough that he could look out the double-reinforced window no longer enveloped in flames. But everything about the planet was wrong.
"The sensors are still reading all ocean," Dr. Hoffen stated with brief annoyance. He made a show of looking out his own window and grabbing his face in mock surprise "Land 'ho!" He exclaims sarcastically. Below is the face of a purple desert, as far as the sardonic eye can see.
"I don't know why they're doing that," Mechaster growls. Mechaster is a thin man with a sharp face and beady eyes. He is a hallmark example of growing up on a low gravity planet and one of the best mechanics N-Star has to offer. He crosses four disciplines as a mechanical, electrical, and software engineer with a PhD in AI analytics. This is a merest of overviews to his accolades. In short, he handles all the computers and machinery.
"SALEEM," Mechaster growls again to the shuttle's AI, "Have you come to a diagnosis yet?" The man himself is reading through the system report
"Negative Mechaster. Proposing a Class Zero Planetarium." The words are hard and frigid, robotic. It creeped Trank out when the AI spoke like a human. Bad memories from his soldiering days, he says. Mechaster scoffs.
"You just don't want to admit you're screwed in the head SALEEM." SALEEM does not reply.
Ever since the planet got "close" the crew has been extra snappy. This has bothered him too, though he's chocked it up to the home stretch jitters. "Close", of course, being the arbitrary point where one decides the trip is "almost finished". He hasn't felt like they've been "close" yet. He never feels like they're "close" until his feet touch the soil (or whatever passes for soil). And then he isn't "close", he's "here". They are not "here" yet.
"A Placa might be beaming us with something," Trank yells, getting a wave of curses thrown back in his direction.
"Pipe down Trank, some of us are trying to work here," Mechaster snaps.
"Sorry, my tinnitus must be kicking in," Trank mumbles quietly and distractedly. He's still thinking about the Placas. It's from his soldiering days.
"Or it's a Class zero," Sharon replies. She's a well-worn vaguely-plump semi-pleasant kind of woman. Sharon is the crew's astronomer, planetologist, and botanist. She's easily excitable and generally considered as boring as the stars she studies. The only reason she's on this particular mission is it brings her within fifteen light years of an understudied neutron star she believes is the key to a strange quasiwave pattern in the Quantum Foam that's been puzzling Tunneling Technicians for decades. She's doing her Peritius Doctorate (PeD) Thesis on this phenomena and hoping to bring neutron stars and their previously underutilized impact on the Quantum Foam to light. Ideally, the Tunneling Technicians take heed of her research and alter the routes they forge based on her discovery. This is her wet dream. She couldn't care less about the current object of the crew and the mention of a Class 0 planet is the first time she seems to have noticed there exists anything outside of her own research.
"Everybody shut up about the Class zero!" Mechaster snaps, violently clicking the refresh button; he's found nothing. "SALEEM has an error in the dirt and I'm going to find it. It's our data that's the problem."
He continues to watch out the window as the purple-sand-that-should-be-ocean grows ever closer, listening to his crew bicker. They're all wrong, he's sure. It's the way the light hits the atmosphere. It bends weird. But why?
Darkness, My Asylum
It's in the light that you see the shadows. And it's in the dark that you see the light...
Tonight, I sit in the dark. There's but the faintest of shadows from the light outside my window, and the lamp in the corner of my room. My shadow is stiller than a frosted lake but, perhaps, just as cold. It feels foreign to me, now. A stranger hiding amidst its kind in this grim room.
Despite its stillness I feel the length of my life, toiling beneath my skin; just as the water beneath the frozen lake. It rumbles, the endless cry of running water. Ever thirsty for more. The only dead water is still water.
I cannot bear myself to move. The weight of my years has settled upon me like the finest of dust layers. In my motionlessness is my shadow caught. It cannot but obey me. It hides now. Perhaps, so do I.
From what? The toil and froth? The unrelenting waterfall of life I've temporarily captured in my silence? My still serenity of the moment?
All of these things, I'm sure. For it's in this moment of motionless that I am free to hide, just as my shadow. The world turns outside these walls but, for now, until the desperate morning, they shield me. From the light. The shadow-giving light that demands I live. For even now, while the water flows heavy with current beneath the ice, it is thin ice.
Though I move not, my shadow ever creeps. On the morn my shadow will not be where I commanded it to stay. To hide with me. Instead it hides from me. It lurks amongst its brethren to circumvent the fury of its owner. Me.
Why do I cower from my own shadow?
Why do I cower from the roaring waters beneath my stilled ice?
Why do I cower from life, where my shadow doth walk?
Evermore it creeps along these walls, through the night. Carrying the burden of the life I've lived. For it is in the walking shadow that the past lies, and in the darkness my only asylum.
EMT-Basic
Sometimes it's hard to breathe.
Because I remember.
Dear God I remember.
It's not the inhale, it's the exhale.
The memories well up inside and make it hard to breathe and I try to force them out I try so damn hard but it. Doesn't.
I can still smell the blood sometimes.
And I try to breathe it out. Get it out of my system.
But I can't force it out, can't escape it, can't ride it out.
I remember how it pooled in the cot, gentle foam along its liquid edges. It wanted to be a ruby pink but hued more crimson on the black plastic. Maroon in the crevices.
He's dead now. He was alive when I got to him.
When I got the report there wasn't even a name. Unnamed patient. Deceased.
I know where he lives. The night was a stiff cold; the breeze cutting. Far enough from the city you can see hazy stars over the apartment complex. The buildings are a drab brown, I think. The flashing lights make it hard to tell. The dirt has pockets of grass. Roads mere bridges between potholes.
I don't remember his face. There wasn't much to see, filleted right cheek and purpled eyes bruised closed. Mouth agape and teeth jagged and yellow.
I guess I remember.
Thinking about it, I can smell it now. Just in the top of my left nostril, a quarter inch below my eye. I had four wipes in my hand and I couldn't mop it all up. The cot was covered in it and I couldn't mop it all up and I used four more and another four and then I used six and then I smelled it and
I remember a story I was told. About a time when someone pushed on a cot after it rained and the water squished out. But it squished out red with blood. They got a new cot.
After I got it clean I squished it. Mine didn't bleed.
I know the last face he saw. It wasn't mine. Sometimes it's mine that's last but not for him. A pained face. Pained and cruel. That's the last face he saw.
It took about a day and a half before it bothered me. I remember when I got a whiff, just a single smell, and I knew. I knew. I knew it would bother me later but then I forgot. It took a day and a half and I remembered.
It was three days before I could breathe easy again. I could exhale. Three days before I wasn't trying to giggle just to get that terrible feeling out of my chest. There was nothing I could do about the smell. Nothing I can do right now.
People always say they're there to talk. And you can tell when they mean it. But it's 1am. And I can smell it. And I can't think. I just remember. I remember moving his limp body and the blood and it trailed and it coated the cot so I cleaned it but it wouldn't clean it just wouldn't clean. Eventually it did. But forever it didn't.
My friends say I laugh too loud now. That my words are heavy. I've worn the inside of a man's head. I remember that too.