Maxwell Pimkit Story - Junket C

“Pimkit,” the controller called. “Provide the class with today’s liturgy from the Book of Journeys. You’ll find I’ve already uploaded it to your reader.”

A lanky, pimple faced kid pushes his chair back causing the worn metal legs to complain against the equally worn floor. Looking at his peers in their grey uniforms, sitting in this grey room, looking at their readers, eyes averted from the teacher and each other. Maxwell Pimkit lifted the black reader off his desk. It was his dad’s old model, not the sleek new ones his classmates had, but it got the job done.

“Today, Pimkit,” barked the controller, a heavyset man in the blue uniform of the low level bureaucrats.

Maxwell cleared his throat, inhaled the stale metallic tasting air, and tapped the screen on his reader to call up the day’s liturgy. “The Book of Journeys, Chapter five, verses 33 through 37. From the very dirt we were lifted up by science and made to be things of the firmament. We come from nothing, and back to nothing will we go, our service done to the community and the captain. As the fuel of our founders was used to propel raise us up from the dirt of our ancestors, so shall our bodies fuel future generations in both life and death.” When he finished, Maxwell stood transfixed by last six words, the finality and certainty of the Captains.

He knew why the controller made him read today, normally it was a reward for good behavior, but with Max, it was always something different. This time was the most cruel. Max had missed two days of Junket C to deal with his father’s suicide. Not deal with emotionally, the Captains had forced him to clean the bulkhead where his father had shot himself. They claimed it was the only way to clean the shame from his name because his father had deprived the community of an much needed engineer. It hadn’t worked. His fellow cadets in Junket C were relentless, but not as bad as the controllers.

“Sit down Pimkit,” the controller snapped.

Max felt his face burning as he sunk into his seat to a chorus of boys snickering under their breath. He tuned the rest of the lesson out and scrolled through the file’s on his dad’s old reader. Coming across an old program his dad had used to teach him basic programming when he was nine, Max dug into it remembering the patience that his dad showed while he was learning. he remembers every line of code. It created a little stick figure that danced across the reader’s screen. So simple, but his dad had been so proud of him when he’d finished.

Max was about to run the program when he saw an extra line of code that linked to a cold stored file somewhere else on the reader in a subroutine that Max didn’t remember. What really drew his attention is that the file it was supposed to pull up was titled PIP, a nickname his father used for him sometimes. He said it was from his favorite Earth-based author Ickenson or Dickman or something. Max ran the program and a passcode box popped up with the hint: Where did Pip go? Max typed in a few possibles, his mom, Dickman, Ickenson, Earth, but none of them worked. He swore under his breath and closed the program. Later, he told himself, I’ll look at his books unless the Sweepers had already been to our bulkhead.

“Pimkit,” the controller’s voice was barely restrained.

Max looked up to see his entire class staring at him. He felt his stomach drop out, like in the centrifuge, as he realized that the controller had asked him a question and was waiting for an answer.

“Today, boy,” there was no attempt this time to restrain the annoyance in his voice.

Just then the speaker in the room came to life with a sharp whistle before the voice of a Captain came through. “Maxwell Pimkit, report to Bulkhead seven foxtrot niner niner.” Then it simply cut out.

A smile crept across Max’s face as he shrugged, pointed to the speaker on the wall and said, “I gotta go.”

“Don’t keep the sweepers waiting like you kept us waiting,” contempt clear in the controller’s voice this time. “Have a little more decency than that loser of a father you had.”

This time the class laughed outright and nodded their heads. Suicide was considered the most selfish of crimes because it denied the community. At least his dad hadn’t jettisoned himself, then they would have taken Max’s stuff too, as it was, Max would be able to select three things of his father’s to keep, the rest would be used to make up for the loss of service by gifting to the Captains. He’d planned on keeping his dad’s bulky old reader, this strange puzzle box he couldn’t get open, and his dad’s old uniform, but now he’d have to take that old book.

On the way to the bulkhead they had shared, Max tried to figure out which of the other two things he’d let go of. The reader was too important to him, too many memories, and a chance to figure out why his dad had killed himself. The puzzle box was too intriguing to let go of. Max loved a challenge and his dad had always refused to tell him how to open it. He passed through the metal corridors of the ship into the bowels toward Junket C berth. He stopped at the corner of corridor 7F knowing this would be the last time he would enter the berth he and his dad had shared since his mother’s death. He felt the tears begin to bite at the back of his throat.

“Hey Max, you okay?” Sim’s soft voice wore down some of his resolve, and he coughed to keep the tears back. Sim the only person in Junket C who hadn’t turned on him since his father’s death.

“Ya,” Max looked at this feet. “I’m just getting my stuff. They’re moving me to Junket D to apprentice with the engineers. You know, fill in for my dad.” He knew it was a lie, orphs didn’t end up as engineers, but he didn’t want Sim to feel worse for him than she already did.

“I thought you were on track to being a medic?”

“Plans change,” Max shrugged helplessly. “Captains said: Everyone must work for the good of the community. All that fusion waste.”

Sim wrapped her arms around Max’s shoulders and gave him a quick kiss under his right eye. “It could work out, I hear they transfer the good cadets up to Junket B.”

“Rumors, Sim,” Max shrugged her arms off knowing this was goodbye, but not willing to say it. “Anyway, the goblins are waiting. See you around.”

“Yah,” Sim whispered as she watched Max round the corner and plod toward his old bulkhead. “See you around.”

The cleaners, or goblins as Max liked to call them, stood like statues in their green uniforms on either side of Max’s old bulkhead. They were there to make sure that Max only took his clothes and the three things he would keep from his dad, nothing else. Everything else belonged to the Captains. Max looked at the old uniform, the pictures of his parents, arm in arm on holiday in Excelsior IV. That trip had cost them three month’s of their combined salary, but they always said the trip was worth it because no trip, no Max. At the moment, Max was wondering if that would’ve been better.

“Your clothes have been packed and moved to Junket D. Pick your three items and get down there. You’re already late,” barked the taller of the two cleaners, though that wasn’t saying much.

Max walked past them, ignoring the late comment. He planned to take his time here although he already knew what he’d take. This was his chance to say goodbye, and he wasn’t going to let the goblins take that from him. His eyes wandered around the room as he walked to the book case. Everything in there was a memory for him. He ran his hand along the back of the old leather chair his father had brought with them when Max’s mother died and they were forced to move from Junket B to Junket C. Max had wanted to take that, but there was a space limit given to orphans. His items needed to fit into the footlocker at the end of the beds in the orphan dormitory. Dropping his hand from the back of the chair he went across to the book case. He knew the spine of the book he was looking for like he knew his father’s face, a worn green tinted leather, a luxury in space that his father had plenty of. His hand found it quickly, almost by memory, it was the last book his father had been reading, his bookmark still halfway through. Max pushed the bookmark further into the book to hide it from the eyes of the goblins so they wouldn’t count it.

Max went to the table next to his father’s chair. The wooden puzzle box sat there, no discernible seams. It’s dark polished surface had confused Max for years, but his father had always insisted that the thing could open, and he’d promised to show Max when he turned 18. He called it the time capsule. That wouldn’t happen now, Max though at he hoisted the box, too heavy for its size, under his arms and began to leave the room.

“’Bout time. They radioed for you twice Orph. Get your blasters down to Junket D or they’ll space that crap you took,” the goblin motioned toward the book and puzzle box. Turning to his partner, “Thankless orphs, you think he’d take a picture of his folks or something. Come on, lets get this crap down to fuel storage so they can burn it and we can go home.”

“Okay, but remember that the Captains wanted the stuff from the main room brought to their lounge.”

That was all Max could take, and he sped up to get away from the green vultures picking the carcass of a dead man. He shifted the heavy box a couple times on his walk and realized that the contents made no noise as he did. He hoped to himself that the time capsule puzzle box wasn’t one of his father’s jokes. Max shifted the heavy box again as he stepped out of the lift leaving his old bulkhead in the single family section of Junket C behind and headed to his new one in the Orphan section in Junket D. He was going from having his own bedroom to sharing a bunk bed with some kid he didn’t even know.

Max looked turned the corner into the empty bunk room. Twelve beds, six on six. Max looked for an empty one, it was easy enough to find because the trunk was propped open at the foot of the bed. Max sat down on his new bed, tucked back in the corner on the lower section of bunks, and turned on his dad’s old reader. He pulled up the subroutine PIP and opened the book and skimmed the first few pages to find the answer. After several unsuccessful tries Max typed in churchyard and the program began to run. A new set of text appeared on the screen that said Put them in and press here and a small compartment slid open on the side of the reader exposing two small ovals attached to wires. They looked like a modified ComCell used for the Captains to communicate orders to their workers without actually having to leave the Command deck on Celestial A. Max put the ovals in his ear as he’d seen his father do when he was headed off to work and tapped the screen. His father’s face appeared on the reader and his voice whispered through the specialized ComCells.

“Pip, if you’re hearing this, then I guess they finally caught up to me. I’m not sure how they did it, but I have to assume it was made to look like a suicide so they could get the contents of our bulkhead. Hopefully you took the puzzle box, and I’ll assume if you’re hearing this you have the book too. That’s good. Keep them safe.

“There are a few of us, five to be exact, but I can’t tell you names in case the Captains are listening, but we’ve found something out that they want to keep secret. We don’t know how to act on it yet, but we’re working on it. If you’re listening to this, that means I’m gone. It’s up to you to find them and take my place. They will be watching for you, but until they know you’re not just another wide-eyed Junket boy, they won’t approach you. Don’t worry, I know you well enough to know it won’t take too long for them to figure it out.

“Max, it’s real. Find them, and they’ll show you what we know. The Earth, Max,” his dad’s voice was getting louder. His eyes widened in excitement. “We can go back. It’s livable. The Captains don’t want us to know because they’d lose control,” Max heard his own voice calling in the background, muffled he recognized it. “I gotta go, but think of it Max. Remember the descriptions I used to read you from the stories. The sky, the fields. It’s all real. I wanted this for you so badly, bud. It’s up to you. Find the Earth, Pip. Take us home.”

The screen went black.