Chapter 3 #2
“I have to believe nothing, human. My patience is wearing thin. Only your monetary value is preventing me from obliterating you. Turn your ship toward ours and proceed to the shuttle bay.”
“I don’t think my owners would like that,” I say. “I don’t think I’m allowed to surrender to other aliens. I don’t even surrender to them most of the time. See, I kind of have brain damage?”
“Enough!” the voice thunders. “You are stalling for time.”
“I am? What am I going to do with the time?”
“Do as you are told, you impossible wretch!”
I am starting to realize that whoever is speaking can’t actually hurt me, or really doesn’t want to. I think it is a value thing. Coming across me floating in space is like finding a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow that isn’t there. They want to take me and sell me, I bet.
I have no interest in making that easy. Seems to me, every alien I encounter is trying to make a buck off me one way or another. I think back to the auction I’ve only just remembered. I think about how helpless I was there, and how helpless I am now.
I am so tired of this.
“I wish this escape pod thing had weapons,” I say. “I’d like to shoot at you. It feels like it should be my turn to shoot at something, or dominate someone.”
“You’re a basic animal,” the voice comes back over the speakers. “Now move toward the ship.”
I stop moving. I don’t even bother to push the little handle in any particular direction. I just hang in space, like a Christmas tree bauble, and I sort of give up. I put my feet back on the dash and I wait for something either better, or much worse to happen.
“Move, human!”
“I don’t want to. Shoot me if you want. It would solve a few problems. I’m not sure who I am, and I’m getting tired of trying to find out.”
A barrage of fire blasts around me, but it all misses me.
They’re not trying to hit me. They’re trying to scare me.
But I’m beyond fear right now. A couple of hours ago, I was selling pills to zoned-out dudes who just needed to feel something.
Now I’m the zoned-out dude who just needs to feel something. Circle of life, I guess.
“Come. Here!”
The aliens try again. I reach down to my waist, and I pick up the baggie of pills.
I usually try not to take them, because they’re addictive and they ruin your ability to enjoy your brain’s natural chemistry after a while, but I am no longer sure I’m going to have a brain much longer. May as well go out happy, right?
I slide a little pink pill onto my tongue and let it dissolve. The effect is like eating an entire banquet of foods all of which are my favorite at exactly the same time. My head falls back, and I let out a little giggle. I hit the space intercom.
“Hey, Mr. Alien?”
“Yes?”
“I know a song that gets on everybody’s nerves. Do you want to hear it?”
I am so full of lightness and mirth. The prospect of impending death, or capture and torture, or being sold to some alien who tries to put his appendage inside me, is not really an issue right now.
“Human, I will end you…”
“This is the song that does not end. Oh yes, it goes on and on, my friend…”
I giggle at the annoyed sound that comes back through the speakers. Another half-hearted barrage explodes around me, but right now it just seems pretty.
“I wish I could help you,” I say, because it’s really not that serious.
The pill is helping me see this. Nobody needs to worry about anything, and remembering things is also overrated.
I’m wondering why I ever cared. There’s no such thing as a past or a future anyway.
There’s just a sort of never-ending now that won’t ever be gone.
So anything that happened before, well, it sort of didn’t, and nothing is ever really going to happen, and damn if I’m not eternal in some way.
“Why are you guys so angry?” I ask the question. “Feels like this isn’t really about me, you know? I don’t belong here. I don’t come from here, and I never did anything to you.”
“You’re a possession of outlaws. You’re being repossessed.”
“I was never bought though.”
“You’re an asset we’re going to have to liquidate.”
The alien shuttles are sort of circling me now like lazy sharks. I can’t see the ship with my aliens in it. I wonder if they’ve managed to escape the big red vessel.
I bet they did. They seemed very competent in the fragments of memory I managed to recover.
If they’ve abandoned me to my fate I don’t mind.
I don’t mind anything right now. It’s funny how life really isn’t about what’s happening, it’s about what your brain chemistry is doing.
Some people would say that being hunted by hostile aliens is objectively bad, but they are not high.
A shadow falls over my shuttle, as a bigger ship moves between me and the nearest sun. I feel myself hunkering down, a simple animal instinct bred into me in a world where we never left the atmosphere.
My orb is sucked up, like the vacuum of space just got turned on. I laugh with glee as everything goes smeary for a second. I’m moving too fast to be able to focus on anything. I end up closing my eyes so they don’t feel like they’re about to fall out.
I brace myself for hostile aliens, but when I open my eyes, I discover that the red alien ship didn’t get to me first—my alien captors did.
Boss, Kronos and yep, Sharp are all standing ready to grab me out of the pod.
Kronos is the one who gets the best grip on me, so he’s the one who throws me over his shoulder like a sack of spuds.
They take me to the bridge of the ship without saying a word. I don’t know what to say either, so we all go with nothing.
“Stay,” he says, slinging me into a chair and strapping me in. “This is about to get messy.”
Sure enough, a second later the whole ship rocks back and forth.
We’ve been hit by some kind of bomb or missile or whatever aliens call their weapons.
I giggle uproariously. This is the most fun I’ve had in a long time.
Almost dying is like being edged by existence itself.
I won’t feel like that once the drugs wear off, but given we’re under bombardment, there’s a high likelihood that won’t matter.
“Let’s go, gentlemen,” Sharp says with completely collected calm as he takes the main console. He barely seems to be reacting to the attacks. I wonder if he’s had a little something too.
The ship makes a humming noise, a deep sound that gets all the way through to the marrow in my bones. Then it sort of… blorps. Like a bubble bursting in water.
We’re no longer in the same space. There are different suns, and there’s a very pretty purple nebula in the distance.
“Are we clear?” Boss rumbles the question.
“I believe so. We’ve jumped three lightyears. They might pick up our signature if we approach occupied space, but I’d say we’re remote enough that they won’t be able to find us in the short term.”
All three of them turn to me. I scream with laughter, because it’s the funniest thing I’ve ever experienced. These men are all so hot in their various alien ways, and they are all so mad, too.
“What is wrong with you?” Kronos demands. “Why are you laughing? Do you understand how close you just were to killing us all?”
I try very hard not to laugh. I fail.
“Sorry,” I explain. “When I thought I was going to die, I had a pill.”
“What kind of pill?”
“Pure neurotransmitters, straight to the dome,” I giggle. “I have more, if you guys want some. Feels to me like you need some.”
“Show me,” Kronos says, extending his hand. I pull a baggie and drop it in his palm.
“I don’t know if your brains will respond to any of these, but you could try,” I suggest.
“We are certainly not going to try,” Sharp says.
“I’d give it a go,” Boss responds.
“Yes! Give it a go! Find out what real happiness is. The kind of happiness that doesn’t depend on circumstances or achieving anything, or being loved, or any kind of external reward. Feel true internal happiness, manufactured by the stimulation of your reward centers!”
I give the little spiel without thinking.
When I signed up to sell the pills, I had a sort of underground sales training first. They taught us how to shank the competition, flee from law enforcement, and tell people how taking the drug is actually good for them even though long term it completely deranges the mind.
Kronos’ jaw tightens. He hasn’t bought my little patter. I see his hand contract roughly, crushing the bag. The pills will be all mixed up together. That’s okay. You can snort the dust. Micro-dosing happiness is more natural anyway.
“She’s out of her mind,” Kronos says to the others. “She’s on drugs. Our sweet little pet is a junkie. We’ve failed her.”
“No, we haven’t,” Boss says. “Humans do this. If you put a human within a mile of a hallucinogenic substance, they’ll have snorted everything between them and it. They love this. It’s what they are.”
“Well I don’t intend to accept that,” Sharp says sternly. “I have standards, and she is going to…”
Boom!
The ship rocks again, and I burst out laughing.
“They found us?” Boss asks.
“No. Different hostile actors,” Sharp says. “The universe has gone to hell. One moment.”
The ship rocks and sways as Sharp takes the helm and pilots us through a series of maneuvers I first take to be evasive in nature.
Kronos and Boss take two other consoles, and pretty lights start to emanate from the ship.
I can see them through the main screen, which provides a view of the space around the bridge almost three hundred and sixty degrees.
It’s pretty. It’s really pretty. My mind is still awash in fun chemicals and things, so I’m not worried. I’m appreciating this all, like art.
“Harvesters?” Boss asks the question in a short, sharp tone.
“Harvesters,” Sharp confirms.
“Harvesters!” Boss roars and somehow manages to be even more aggressive with the weapons fire. I watch as they light the attacking ships up with what have to be high-powered energy rounds.
They fight the attackers off while I start to doze.
The pill is beginning to wear off. The half-life of these things is pretty bad, designed to last a few songs and then require another purchase.
I feel sleepy now, but I know I’m going to feel absolutely rancid in the next twelve hours or so.
I’d never take one of these pills unless I thought I was going to be dead before the hangover kicked in.
My best hope is to go to sleep long enough to get the worst of it over and done before I open my eyes again.
“Wake up.”
Kronos is standing over me with a stern expression on his very, very handsome face. I have not slept through the worst of it. I can tell that because the worst of it engulfs me immediately.
“Did we win? Or are we dead?”
“We won. And now we are going to deal with you.”
“Can you not? I have a headache. And my mouth is dry. And my eyeballs hurt for some reason? And I think I’m getting my period. And my toes are like, tingly?”
“You are going to explain yourself, and…”
“I’m going to be sick,” I tell him.
“You are going to…”
I am sick.
My stomach is so upset at me. The stomach also has a lot of the same kind of chemistry going on in it as the brain, but unlike the brain, which is stuck in the skull, the stomach can do all sorts of gross things.
Boss picks me up. “I’m going to make her some soup,” he says. “That will make her feel better. We can debrief later.”
“I suppose we will clean this up,” Sharp sighs.