Interzeit: A Space Opera (23 page)

“I’m kinda of a big deal here!” Iza brags, “So we’re going to get lit on the cheap, just a small
detour.
”

They all share a laugh, until Iza elbows Nol in the side in a not so playful gest. They settle into a smooth smiling anticipation, Iza pounces onto a
n
empty bar stool, throwing demands as wildly as she can gesticulate with her arms.

“IZANAMI!”
A voice shouts from across the room. Her pallid face flashes between panic and euphoria through her wild platinum locks.

“Boochin!”
She calls back, “Just the person I wanted to see!”

A towering
man comes lumbering towards her, Nol eyes Lei, giving her a furrowed inquiring brow.

“I hope not, you still haven’t made it up to me for last time,” He booms somewhat warmly,

“Ah you know,” She smiles, “I paid for everything I always do,”

“It’s not that kind of payment and you know it.” He grins,

“Heheh sure, sure,”
She says, “
T
onight I’m with my friends, so I’m looking for something a bit different you know?” She calls them over.

“This is Boochin!” She chirps happily, “He runs the place, I think, do you?” She looks at him,

“Ah, shut up kid.” He laughs, “What can I push on you people tonight?”

Lei shrugs, Nol mimics this action only with a
n
enthusiasm bordering on parody.

Boochin lets out a mocking uproar of laughter, “These people don’t know what they want do they Iza?”

“Nope,” she smiles, “Good thing there are people of culture and taste here to help
.
”

“
Yez
with what can I furnish thee?”

“Alright,” She clears her throat, “We’ll all take a grey tea extract, heavy on the grey yea? Get us a double of that,
then
we’ll definitely need to ease that out with something. Some
alcohol chew
maybe? And something to patch with definitely, set a bit of a twang onto everything you understand?”

“Hmm,” Boochin mu
tters, “I’ve got a new
canna-opioid
patch in, totally safe stuff, no ODs ever.”

“Hurm,” She mimics, “Sounds good, maybe something else too, something to really set it off, like a garnish or a cherry type piece.”

“Ah! Well kid, I can add a drop of some spaceslayer, it’s a refined lyserg, some fucking burn out on Ceres has been synthing on the low, there
’
s your fucking garnish.”

“Fuck it,” Iza looks at
her fellow pilots
, they both have a glazed look of fear and confusion, “Sounds good right guys?”

“Yes?” Lei answers,

“Alright, we’ll take it!”

“Shit yeah,” Boochin says, “Alright I’ll front you, but you guys have to drink the grey here, give the old timer some company.”

They follow Boochin back to a private table
.
It’s covered by a translucent one way veil, fully opaque on the outside, and wispy when viewed from within. He dolls out the drinks, chews, and patches like a veteran card shark
.

W
asting no time they cheers and start guzzling the small cups of amphetamine.

“You can do the chew now,” Iza says between light sips, “But save the patch, or we’ll never get to where we’re going.”

“Where are you going?” Boochin asks,

“Yeah!”
Lei and Nol say in choral unison.

“These guys are blank slates
Boo
ch
,
I’m taking them to Lunarium of course.”

He lau
ghs a bit, seemingly satisfied. H
e give them a look, that knowing look before you
’
r
e
tossed head long into a ride you didn’t see coming, or before you’re thrown off a cliff into the hidden lagoon beneath, that “Ah shit” look, the “I envy you, but I don’t envy you” look.

Izanami slams her empty cup on the table, and pops in the chew, “Alright girls, let’s get moving,” Her eyes already
dilating
with the fervor of the stimulants grasping at the base of her optical nerves.

The other three follow with syncopated cup slams of their own.

“Nice meeting you Mr. Boochin,” Lei nods,

“Yeah!”
Nols throws in needlessly,

“Please please, its just Boochin, come by anytime, but come with money, unlike the brat, okay?”

He walks them, out Nol and Lei too, soon feel the engrossing high setting in. Lei, despite indulging in Iza’s chemical habits as of late, is still taken by surprise of the potency of the drink, she shakes her head holding the chew, and sealed patch in her hands.

Nol pops in his chew, “When in Rome, huh Lei?”

“I don’t think that’s what they meant with that saying Tomson,”

He laughs,
already buzz
ed
“I’ll take you to Rome one day, sure sure, it’s a nice p
lace, you can see the real Earth
not just this hologram.”

Nol feels his blood coursing faster and faster, despite this everyone seems to be in
slow
motion calm. Every
articulation
,
from the joints of his fingers up to the base of his spine
is
precise, and perfectly efficient.

Even
Iza
walks dream-like, spinning and almost hitting other passer
s
by as they frolic through the re-apparent techno dream wood.

After twisting and turning through more woods, they emerge to a large open plaza with a glass
ceiling
that
emits
a glowing warm sunlight onto them. People course like an open sea through this place, writhing, shopping, and flowing across its surface with no tension that Nol can detect.

They come to an elevator,
Iza
pivots locking her manic chewing smile onto Lei. Iza points at her own empty hand, gesturing it back to her mouth.

“Come on Lei
,” she says wistfully, “The elevator won’t come unless you take the chew.”

“You’re terrible
Iza
,” She complains
but complies nonetheless
.
T
he inhibition wrecking chew go
es
to work through her thin spacer gums quickly.

The elevator as though watching them,
arrives
instantly after. They enter the craft, the polite synthetic voice asks them “destination?”

“Lu
-
na
-
ri
-u
m!”
Iza sings, “Y
e
a!

“Next stop Lunarium,” The voice chirps back, the cabin shifts, and they plummet down, down, down.

The elevator car is perfectly lit and pristine, maintained by some self cleaning system that Nol could only theorize on internally in his mind. The seeping chemicals in his system sharpened the corners and edges of the box. The light seemed more intense, the metal as though it had a cutting edge.

His memory shakes up, and he’s back on Earth again, descending the silo. The darkness before him resonates, sending a signal through mental telepathy all the way from that desolate place up.
Up past the silo, the sky, piercing the atmosphere, hitting him here.
Iza makes some snide remark, the content of which is lost in the fugue.

Suddenly the ride ends, the doors rolling open after a gently locking into place, dispelling the feverish amphetamine dream. The world ahead is dark and narrow, lit scantily with purple glowing masses dotting all sides of the slender chamber.

“Now is
a good time to shift into high gear.” Iza demonstrates.

She pulls the cover off the patch, rev
ealing the shiny adhesive underneath
. She unseals her pilot’s uniform, pulling it down and apart, leaving it hanging lazily on her shoulders. Finally she applies
the thing to her mid riff. She
smoothes
out the air bubbles
patiently
.

“Come on now, we’ve come this far right?” She pressures them, re-doing her pilot
suit
.

Nol
pulls
his suit open, and slapping the drug cocktail over his
chest
without much care.
Lei relents
as well, placing it gently somewhere in the shadow of her shoulder blade.

With every
one in proper lunatic order, Iza’s thrashing smile returns, and they practically sprint through the chamber.

It opens up to a purple lit lounge. The faint vibrations of
a
great machined music reverberate through the room.
It’s
crowded with faded c
orpses, still writhing
, half stolen away to the planet of dreams.

“This it?
It looks just like the last bar.” Nol says.

“Of course not you idiot!” Iza snaps back, “Have a
seat,
I’m going to get us inside.”

Lei and Nol have a
seat,
the
y
look further down the room, trying to piece together the meaning of “inside”. A large set of double doors near the far end
are the most obvious
culprit, flanked by two rather intimidating people. The whole
bar
shake
s
with vibration.

“So,” Lei says, “The door looks fuzzy, do you see it to?”

Click, click, click, the ride is on the climb,

“Yeah,” Nol answers, though he doesn’t, “Don’t worry about it, its all in our heads.”

“The whole world is in our heads,” She laughs.

Nol follows suit, mostly grabbed by the high fidelity of the laugh, his insular membrane of being experiencing the full on siege of pharmacological terrorism.

Iza materializes near their couch suddenly her head already shaking in longing for the machine.

“Come on,” she says softly, “We’re in, we’re in,” She nods her head towards the door.

They
sprint
through the doors, another hallway, more doors, and finally.

The music is in full blast, rocking through them, threatening to rip them apart whole sale, full stop. The room opens into a gigantic chamber. The floor ends, turning into a platform of sorts. In the abyss a large pearlescent orb convulses with the music. Its barriers and membrane were ethereal, con
stantly morphing and bending in ridges
and ghostly craters.

Izanami grabs Nol’s arm trapping it against her breast. Nol’s hypnotic state is broken, he looks at her smiling. She spins suddenly with violent intent, the drugs weaken his feet, and he is dragged in a long looping circle.

“Bye bye Nol,” She
says sensually, releasing and throwing him over the edge.

He looks at her with horrified betrayal, slipping over the platforms final edge,
hurtling
downwards into darkness. He screams as he plummets, falling and writhing helpless
in the slow falling grasp of gravity
.

He hits a weird point in space, he stops falling down directly, and is flung side wise
,
his whole body flipping. The realization hits him, that he is no longer headed down, but up and towards the monstrous ghost moon.

The wraith lik
e surface welcomes him
through it with no pain or resistance. The inside is a multicolored bananza, greens, reds, blues flashing in frenetic rhythms against the darkness.

To Nol’s surprise
,
the inside of the moon is hollow, although the music is intense, bordering on deafening. He falls, in concentric circles around the void, be
ing
tossed from one orbit to the next. Other participants fly around him, dancing in the gravity flux with abandon. Finally he comes crashing down onto a soft rubbery surface.

Through the
now speedily melting world, he realizes that he is on a glowing orb. People are dancing and
tripping
on all of the points of curvature on the globe’s surface. His eyes adjust
further,
some of the large lights reveal themselves to be further fake moons. In fact the whole damn chamber is filled with these ill-defined
technicolor
planets.

He is in awe,
and then
he is nothing, lost in the moment and sensation.
The whatever
working in his system reacts to the environment catalyzing and growing more and more powerful. The barriers between himself and the crowd thin out. His skin becomes a thin barrier, as the music and world blasts
through him, smearing his
skin across the lunar surface.