King's County (6 page)

I asked them if they needed any help
and was unsurprisingly ignored. I ignored them back, though they
were only a few feet away from me and were making seemingly as much
noise as possible.

The crowd was converging toward me, out
to enjoy the afternoon sun, good looking people for the most part.
I watched them instead of the witches.

I felt myself getting drowsy; it was
time to move on, to walk around some more. The witches had gone as
quickly as they'd arrived. They left their equipment behind in a
heap by my bench.

Most of the people about were in groups
of three or four. All were young looking and chatting with each
other. Lively seabirds lined the walkway listening to them. I saw
no one alone since the mango guy on the bike and I spotted him at
the end of a pier in conversation with a girl. She had a bike of
her own. I wondered if anyone here was an artist at the
colony.

A kiosk served me a cold can of beer
that was delicious and erased the fuzziness in my head from the
wine wearing off. I'd seen enough water and birds. I needed to get
back.

*

Moon 2066

In the long silence in the empty hanger
after Gordon had left, I realized Ed already knew what I'd just
realized. It explained his nonchalant attitude during training.
Maybe it explained why I looked up to him so much.

Now that I accepted the reality of our
situation, it seemed so obvious. Now that I admitted it, the
feeling was more good than bad. Sometimes the truth does set you
free.

I had been a fool, but the regret or
embarrassment I felt was muted and unimportant. I wanted to tell Ed
about it. I even began to get excited about the mission
again.

An unfamiliar sound in my ear woke me.
I didn't realize I had drifted off. It was Junna, the younger
brunette from earlier, gently tapping on the external microphone.
She saw us open our eyes and smiled.

"Hey, hope you’re up for a party," she
said.

"Hey, yourself. Sorry to miss the party
but we’re fixin' to take off from here pretty soon." Ed’s southern
accent was back.

"Of course." Her voice chirped. "We
have this weekly thing we do but we’re moving it up a day in honor
of your visit. And we’re gonna hold it here in the hanger. Sort of
a well wishing thing."

"That sounds great...very thoughtful.
You're awfully sweet, you know that?" Ed said. Junna bounced away,
smiling at his compliment.

The girls here were different than any
I remember from home. They were open and enthusiastic; happy is
probably the right word.

Truthfully, I hadn't had any kind of
girlfriend at all since college. Nobody around me did either,
nothing serious. Marriages of people my age were only rumors. The
subject of marriage wasn’t something you would feel comfortable
bringing up, even among friends. Sitting in the hanger, I thought
maybe I should want a wife, whatever that might mean, and I
realized that I’d be in my fifties before I’d ever have the
chance.

I read on the HUD until Gordon and his
bunch brought the party to us. Everyone was very cheerful and
decent, dancing and drinking their homemade booze. We watched and
listened, sealed off from the fun. Ed was unusually
quiet.

Only an hour or so later, the party was
over. Gordon and an assistant loaded our module onto a track of 12m
diameter rings that created a directional magnetic field to
accelerate us out into the solar system where the slow but steady
radiant ion drive would take over.

There was just empty space in front of
us. I missed the girl's voices. Gentle pressure pushed me into the
back of the seat; we were away. I watched the Moon grow gradually
smaller in the rear display until I got mad at myself for doing it.
Ed was asleep. I pulled up Moby Dick but couldn't get into
it.

*

WA 2092

There was no reason to go back to my
room so I sat at a table at the empty cafe. I got a drink at the
self-serve machine and watched the place gradually fill up. The
machine had cigarettes, too. I hadn't had one since
Wyoming.

At the edge of the square near the
entrance to the cafe was a line of block-like pedestals. Atop them
were sculptures, bad ones, and all essentially the same though
attributed to different names. They looked like melted blobs to
me.

A girl saw me noticing the blobs and
came over. She sat down at the table like we were
friends.

"Can I have a cigarette?" She said
already reaching for one. Her hair was brown but strands of it were
colored red, green, and purple. She wore a big dress that looked
old and it didn't suit her but I can't imagine what kind of dress
would have.

We had a few drinks. She smoked my
cigarettes throughout.

"Wow. My brother’s
friend's
brother
was in the military. I just think it's really messed up." She
picked her purse off of the ground and slapped it onto the table.
It was a mess of glass beads and metal trinkets. She dug through
it, suddenly stopping and holding out her hand,

"I'm Elena, by the way."

I didn't respond to her introduction. I
ignored her hand to instead pick up my drink and take a pull from
it. She wasn't offended. Her attitude softened. For the first time,
she looked at me like she wasn't a little bored.

"I mean, I can't really imagine, you
know, what that's like, Alaska or whatever. I feel like I’ve
always, like I've always...meant to be an artist." She paused to
light another cigarette. "And, I'm so happy to be here, really, you
know? But at the same time? I actually feel it’s kind of confining.
Like maybe I could do more. I don't know. I feel pretty good,
actually, you know, about what I'm doing now."

"How old are you?" I said.

It was her turn to ignore me but she
was obviously uncomfortable with that question and there was a
slight tremor in her hand when she brought the cigarette to her
lips. The moment passed in silence - and then my faux pas was
forgiven, maybe forgotten. She went on talking, though a touch
softer than before,

"My last piece really just...it went
against everything I have been taught. It was so liberating. That's
just how I am, really. I see things, like, everything real is
actually abstract and I can't just ignore that. I don't feel that
that’s how I am. You know?"

"I don't. I mean, yeah, I guess."
That's all I could think to say. She was obnoxious but I didn't
want to keep insulting the only person I knew here.

"So..." Her eyes got wide then narrowed
as she leaned across the table with her hand out grabbing mine.
"What are you working on? Sculpture?"

"I have no idea. I..." She frowned but
then spotted something over my shoulder.

"C’mon. I'll introduce you." She hopped
up, still gripping my hand and pulled me over to another
table.

They looked the same age as Elena and
wore the same sort of sloppy, eclectic clothing. One of the guys
gave her a perfunctory hello.

"Hey, everyone!" Elena said while
dragging up a chair for herself. "Meet my new friend."

"Sit down why don't you?" A guy said
without bothering to look at me. He wore dirty gray coveralls with
grimy bronze colored epaulettes sewn onto the shoulders. He leaned
over to a girl next to him and they laughed at
something.

"OK, this is Ricky." Elena said
pointing at captain coveralls.

"This is El Jon." El Jon saluted me
with two fingers, barely opening his eyes. He looked like he might
fall asleep in his chair.

"OK, this is Aaron and this is
Opal."

Opal was beautiful. Aaron saw me
noticing and put his arm around her.

"So what is there to do around here? I
said.

They laughed. Opal looked
embarrassed.

"Oh! Tonight there's something. When is
that?" Opal said.

"Like ten, maybe?" Elena answered her.
"We’ll know. Everyone will be going there."

"Alright." I said. "I’ll catch up with
you guys later then. I've got a few things to do."

It was a lie, of course, but I couldn't
just sit there with them like an idiot. They all looked vaguely
displeased when I said I was leaving and I knew then that it was
the right decision.

*

Space 2067

I remember dreaming and when I woke up,
Ed was playing a game on his heads-up-display. According to my
readout, we were slowed down to a level fluctuating between 1 to 2%
of normal. That is, a minute to us would be something between 50
and 100 minutes of actual time.

Ed was playing chess. The board was a
hologram in front of him. His eye movements controlled the pieces.
I could hear a book being read aloud in a deep English
accent.

"Good morning, Captain." Ed said still
staring at the chessboard.

"Yeah. Is it? Is it morning?" I
said.

"It will be soon. You've been asleep
for four months, by the way."

I thought about that for a couple of
hours.

"Take a fresh pill, Captain. The chip
is keeping it active in your blood but you need to top it up every
so often. You’ll be good for a few years after another one. Set a
reminder for yourself."

"Yes. OK." I took another one of the
purple diamonds out and dry swallowed it. Something was bothering
me.

"Ed, how are you listening to that? How
is that audio playing at the correct speed? Shouldn't it sound fast
to us?" I asked.

"Ah, you never studied. Adjusts based
on biometric inputs. Pulse rate, blinking, respiration rate; all
feedback from the chip and I can fine tune it manually if
necessary."

"Was it necessary?"

"No. We’re at the same speed, too, if
you haven't noticed. The chips keep us synced as long as we have
enough of that shit in our system."

"I thought it adjusted the speed up or
down based on our metabolic needs."

"It does both. Our bodies are pretty
flexible. Communication is the priority."

Ed and I talked for a long time then,
about all sorts of things. If we got stuck on one topic, there was
the library to pull up for reference or to spark a new thread. The
chip tended and stabilized the sharpness of our minds. We had no
real need to sleep while in the slowed down state. Ed eventually
moved the chessboard hologram into the space between us and we
talked and played while weeks and months went by barely noticed in
our comfortable module passing through the vacuum.

*

WA 2092

Elena found me. It couldn't have been
that hard. I was taking a nap after showering when the doorbell
softly chimed.

She came in with a rush, chattering and
accidentally spilling the contents of her purse out on the glass
table. She scooped them back up without breaking her
monologue,

"I don't want you to think I
do this all the time. I really don’t very often make a connection
with anyone, you know. I feel like...we have a bond. I don't know.
We’re both so
real
.
Oh, and I want to apologize for my friends earlier. They're really
not that bad. They just, I don't know, sort of act that way around
people. Sometimes."

She smiled, taking off her clothes,
carefully folding and stacking them in a pile on the table. I had
yet to say a word.

"So? What do you think?" She said
posing a little, having stripped down to her panties and a short
T-shirt.

Her skin was shockingly pale but smooth
and free of blemishes. She had a nicely trim body under all those
clothes.

"Take a shower first," I said and went
into the bathroom to turn the water on for her.

&

It was past ten when we left the colony
building. Elena was hanging on my arm and awkwardly walking out of
step along with me. The crowd at the cafe had thinned to half
capacity. Blue burning gas lamps were turned low. Dark shiny faces
and voices followed us across the square.

"So, what is this thing? Some kind of
play?" I asked her while we slump-walked through the
park.

"Oh, no, not at all. Much more
meaningful. Genuine. I mean, it's brilliant. It's not really
something I would do, but I can definitely appreciate
it."

She didn't really answer my question
but I didn't care enough to ask again. A quiet moment followed as
we walked through a pocket of cherry trees strung with Christmas
lights.

"It's a suicide." Elena said in a small
voice.

"How’s that?" I said.

"How, what? What do you mean? They’re
going to kill themselves. It's a form of protest.” She paused for
effect and went on, encouraged by my silence,

"You’re surprised, I bet. But we’re not
all happy here...what is your name again?"

I'd not told her yet but she must have
gotten it somewhere earlier in order to find my room. Or did she
just go around trying doors?

"You need to meet with Braulio soon,
maybe tomorrow. He’ll get you going on a project. You have to do
something. Braulio's work is often amazing, truly. He uses a lot of
self developed techniques. His latest stuff has this intentional
“half finished” quality...