The Spaces in Between (2 page)

“Welcome aboard the
Soulforge
!” A grinning Rastafarian greeted me. The most striking feature was his red dreadlocks. Not red like a redhead, but pure red hair. From head to toe he was covered in full pirate regalia. His one eye was focused purely on me. He twirled the other end of my chain in his hand. “I’m Captain Cameron. But you may call me the Dread Pirate or the Pirate King,
wakari
?”

Cameron turned sharply and walked down the deck. “I’d follow me. Beats being dragged.” I complied since the chain through my stomach was uncomfortable, but it didn’t hurt, mind you. He basically dragged me along the deck behind him like a dog.

The deck looked like what you’d expect on a pirate ship, but the whole thing was surrounded by a glass bubble. I assumed this is how the Captain survived standing on the deck. We stopped in the middle of the deck, and Cameron made a grand gesture. I was surprised to see that neither of his hands were hooks. The floor split and what I could guess is an elevator rose out of the opening.

Cameron pulled me along into the elevator. As soon as the doors closed behind us the elevator slid down the shaft. The insides of elevator were a sterile white with absolutely no buttons or counters. The doors slid open once the elevator hit the bottom floor.

Under the deck the ship looked an awful like the inside of the whale in Pinocchio. It just lacked any water what so ever. I expected the ground under me to be squishy, but I had just realized I couldn’t even feel the floor.

“Mr. Elliot,” Captain Cameron said, “I’ve shanghaied you today for your technical expertise. There is something I want you’re help stealing, and I will not return you until I have it.”

“This…this is a dream, isn’t it?” I said.

“Sorta, actually you are in a coma. Dancing between the border of life and death, if you will. In a nutshell reality is made up of many layers like an onion. Now reality as you used to know it is at the core. Where you are now is in between the physical and the afterlife - what I like to call the Astral.

The Astral is where we go to dream. So I can understand the confusion. Oh, I’m sorry. I’m rambling.”

“If this isn’t a dream then why do you speak English, spaceman?”

“Oh, well, you see all inspiration originates in the Astral until it trickles down to be interpreted by those in the Physical. So many languages end up repeating with only subtle changes.
Wakarimashita?
” That last bit I thought meant, “understood?”

I was now very bored of this dream and tried to shift it towards something more exciting like sharing a hot tub with Starbuck…I mean you dear. Unfortunately, this was in no way a lucid dream.

“It doesn’t work that way,” Cameron said, “As long as I will this chain to exist, you won’t be going anywhere.”

“Alright, I guess I’ll play along then,” I said, “What are we stealing?”

“Oh, that? It’s called the Mehmet Talisman. An ancient artifact rumored to have to the power to make spirits solid. Right now it’s on display in the space museum
Asterix
.”

“So what you want me to stay on permanently?”

“No, it’s for me.” A samurai walked through the squishy wall beside me. First a pirate now a samurai, I knew now that this could only be a dream. The samurai was dressed in later samurai gear, you know, when they were wearing pants that looked like skirts as opposed to dresses. His raven hair was in a topknot, and he wore an expression like he was glaring into the sun.

“And you are?”

“
Sakamoto Ryoma deshita.”

“He’s Ryoma Sakamoto,” Cameron translated, “He’s the revolutionary father of modern Japan. Lead the riots that disposed the shogun. It’s amazing what one Samurai can accomplish when he’s packing a six-shooter. Pretty neat, huh?”

“Why would I make something like that up? Did I fall asleep watching the
Last Samurai
?” I said.

“That crazed
Gaijin
the last samurai?” Ryoma bitched in a thick George Takaiesque accent and then spat ectoplasm. Ryoma seemed to be the most real thing I saw in my dreams. Seemed the most solid.

Cameron raised his palm and gestured at the wall with a ‘Live Long and Prosper’. Boils formed on the wall and the membranes split with a sickening slurp. A computer monitor emerged from the wound.

“So what happens if I throw up the devil horns?”

“A phone rings in Hell.” Cameron clicked through the computer interface on the screen that looked suspiciously like Macintosh with his fingers. A map of space came up on the screen. Planets and stars were grayed out, but colorful symbols were splotched all over the universe. Using his finger as a stylus, he drew a path connecting the esoteric sigils.

“That Sci-Fi crap you watch dubs the Astral as Hyperspace. A Hyperspace Drive does travel by the Astral passing through connected thoughts and ideas. I do it all manually, and it’s far more efficient if you know what you are doing.”

The monitor displayed an unusual starship orbiting a puke green planet. The ship was surprisingly yonic in shape. Yonic? That’s the polar opposite of phallic. I don’t want to go into how, but you could guess how the ships docked.

This was our destination: the museum starship
Asterix.

3

“I feel like Hunter S. Thompson,” I said while looking at the fat green creatures covered in boils and ties mingling around the bar. “Though these lizards are pretty calm after getting their booze.”

“The Draco,” Cameron corrected. “They are the bureaucrats of the stars, and the administrators of this museum. The starship is orbiting their home world Baa for repairs and to change shifts for the next year.”

“Don’t you think you might be a tad bit conspicuous being the notorious Pirate King and all while the museum is closed?”

“The Draco are far more anal than even you, and would never, ever close the museum short of an emergency. It passes through war zones on a regular basis all the while charging full admission. Their spiritual aptitude is worse off than most Earthlings; I’ve made it so they’d never notice me as anything unusual. Or you at all.”

Cameron took a sip of his deep space equivalent of rum and coke.

“So what exactly do you need me for again?”

“Well most people that end up here on the Astral are mathematicians, scientists, and all purpose dorks,” Cameron said, “I’m the exception. I’m not technically inclined at all. What you were supposed to do was figure out one of the tour computers for me. Now we have to find one of these guys that can speak something like English.”

“Well, what am I supposed to do about the computers being down?”

“Well, you fix it, computer guy.”

“With what?” I punched through the glass of Cameron’s drink to emphasize my lack of substance. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed someone looking at us. He wasn’t looking past me like everyone else in the room; we actually made eye contact.

I don’t know why I didn’t notice him before. In a room full of drunken lounge lizards a nine-foot Japanese man with hair down to the small of his back still stands out. Dark half moons hung under his eyes. He was crouched over a low bench at the center of the room stabbing a chopstick into sand somehow captivating an audience of drunken lizards.

I tried to nudge Cameron, but failed miserably since my elbow passed right through him. Fortunately, he still noticed this gesture.

“What is he doing?”

Worry suddenly flared in Cameron’s eye.

“
Kuso
! A geomancer? Here?” The man stood up – he was the tallest thing in the room. He broke through the disappointed crowd straight towards us. Cameron’s hand darted to the flintlock pistol nestled in his sash. Light condensed around the Geomancer’s hands while the Pirate King produced his gun.

The hammer fell on his antiquated gat. The only report was a blinding light, and for a while I stopped dreaming.

4

I expected to wake up in my hospital bed or maybe an embedded dream, but no such luck. I was still literally chained to the dream. I couldn’t pull the reins from my subconscious. I was in another completely sterile corridor – apparently I had been dragged along with Cameron.

Down the hall walked the tall man and a Draco whose gimp mask either indicated a very high or low ranking – there was obviously no in between when it comes to gimps. They were conversing, not in English, but I still knew what they were saying.

“The gun we pulled off him defies all analysis,” Commander Gimp said, “It all looks Atlantean, but we couldn’t get a peep out of him in torture. We allow you to be here as long as you don’t bring this Atlantean vs. Lemuria shit on board, Tsuen.”

“I assure you this man is not Atlantean or Lemurian,” Tsuen said. “This is something a lot direr.” Tsuen glanced at me.
Why does that Pirate glow with the light of God?
My dumbfounded expression registered with him so he never bothered to stop. I guess I was too much of a small fry for his concern at the moment.

Once Tsuen was out of sight I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. Well, not exactly the corner of my eye, but more out of the back of my head. Cameron, surrounded in the same white light I saw around the
Soulforge
, passed through the wall behind him. I took a breath, unnecessary as it was, and followed.

On the other side of the wall, Cameron was shackled, and let out a monstrous yawn. He quickly flinched and moaned.

“Ow, shite. Either got the torture treatment or the spa treatment.” Cameron smiled then ran his tongue through the new gaps in his teeth with a cocked eyebrow. “Well, the jury’s still out on that.”

“I’ve been captured and tortured by the Draco for being a no good nick and firing a terrible weapon indoors. While they were doing that I did something productive and left my body to find that Talisman, which I did. Might I add that was far more helpful that anything you’ve done thus far?

I’m so calm about this because my gun causes an EMP after the blast and fries any unshielded technology like the locks on these shackles. The designers of these shackles were quite lazy, and hard wired the locks into the door. So when the shackles are open the door unlatches.”

“Oh, that thing? The shells hold a pocket dimension containing anti-matter. The one I fired in the restaurant held one milliliter. You see when anti-matter hits any matter such as air it-“

“Explodes. I know, I read
Angels and Demons
,” I said.

“What did you think? I think Dan Brown tried to hard to get readers to turn the page. It became hacky in a few chapters.”

“Yeah, but it was a great bathroom reader. Wait! How exactly would a notorious space pirate have read that book? And don’t give me all ‘that the same ideas trickle down from the Astral’ crap! I knew it! You’re from Earth!” Cameron made an expression like I just told him that Santa and his dog entered a suicide pact.

“Since when did you immerse yourself so far into this fantasy?” the Dread Pirate said, “I mean this is all just a dream, isn’t it? Then everything’s from Earth, because your mind is from Earth.”

“I suppose so…”

“Good, now quit arguing with your subconscious and come on! That Talisman is just two corridors down!” Cameron crept through the open door and was promptly spotted by two Draco wearing gimp masks and armed with spears. This has got Freud’s name written all over it.

The Pirate King ran incredibly fast for someone with another man chained to him. I suppose while “in the Astral” I’m weightless. Cameron darted around a corner in the corridor and ducked into another restaurant. I must have a deep-seated hatred towards restaurants.

This restaurant was a lot smaller than the last one we destroyed, and unfortunately, it didn’t have any other exits. Then I suddenly had an insight. You know how you know things in a dream. Like you’ve been filled in about your entire back-story. You’re yourself, but you know you’re someone else and exactly how you got there.

No, I wasn’t suddenly someone else. That would have been a refreshing change, but no, I suddenly knew the back-story of a gun.

This certain gun was invented the by the Atlanteans in an attempt to shoot people while in space. Gunpowder just can’t ignite in space without oxygen. So they developed a gun that fires small projectiles with a magnetic push.

Their earlier rail guns unfortunately broke the wrists of anyone stupid enough to fire one, and the toned down versions simply couldn’t pierce the average spacesuit. But since the rail guns operated in complete silence they became quite popular amongst the unsavory sorts planetside.

This particular gun was made in a munitions factory that was later converted into a slaughterhouse. Many of the guns and machines were still in place for killing…whatever animal they used for steaks. One of the Atlantean rail guns fell into the production line and was shipped with assorted fillets as a thoughtless holiday gift.

After years of re-gifting, the steaks were sold to the
Asterix
. A Draco “cook” dumped the box into a cooking robot that basically makes a steak with whatever you put in it. There are settings on the cooking robot, but they all just burn it to a crisp. I guess it’s comforting to know that all cultures have fast food.

A waiterbot rolled up to the Draco patron with a covered dish as Cameron made a mad dash across the restaurant. He snatched the plate from the robot’s uncaring claws, knocked the garnish out of the trigger, and fired seven silent shots into the two gimps before they went down. Three of the rounds hit, I think, it was very hard to tell. The other Draco in the restaurant was completely unsure of what just happened. Cameron used this to his advantage to bolt right back out the door.