Looking to get away? Then head down to
Palo sat, transfixed to the bright viewport of the Jade Tendril as advertisements and pitches for vacation destinations streamed across the screen. White sand beaches. Veena trees. Crisp violet skies with tufts of clouds. Children splashing in slow motion – water droplets spraying everywhere. Bright patterns flashed over his retinas. He did not blink. He did not swallow. It even looked for a time like he wasn’t even breathing. His skin drew cold and his brain felt liquefied. The voice of his COM beacon back at his apartment rung in his ears, “You have 318 communiques. 289 from your father.”
It had been twelve years. Twelve years since he last spoke to his father. He hadn’t treated him well that night. They fought. Telo brought him another gift. Palo threw it onto his trunk. Ignorance and anger. Those were the last moments he spent with his father. He couldn’t believe it. It couldn’t be happening this way. He had wished for this day almost every day for twelve years, and now that it was here, he knew he was wrong. His stomach turned, his face grew pale and his head lolled to one side.
“The washroom is down the right corridor,” Jade chimed in with perfect timing. “First door on the right.”
Palo slowly lifted his head – momentarily trying to find the person who just spoke to him. Then his neck tightened and he got up and ran down the right corridor, where he scrambled to the washroom and wretched – chunks of half eaten derr fruit and bile splashing into the basin. A systematic sensor whirred and the water came on, flushing the filthy remains away. He coughed and gagged, then wretched again.
Behind him in the corridor, he heard storming footsteps. He turned to see Morigin walk by. He stopped long enough to look in the washroom and say, “You too, huh? It’s like I have signs in here that say, ‘Welcome aboard. Puke anywhere you like.’”
Palo peeked his head out and saw Morigin detaching the cutlass that hung over the entrance to the cabin.
“What are you doing with that?”
Morigin turned and swiped the air with the cutlass. “We have a stowaway.” And like that he stormed back down the corridor and into the annals of the ship.
Palo turned back to the basin. The last rivulets of water ran down the drain with a gurgle. In the mirror, he saw a different version of himself. Not the happy-go-lucky courier washing back torripdus at Halfsie’s. He felt around the pocket of his vest and felt the imprint of the cred chip, remembering it as it rolled over his knuckles in the Shrapnel Club. Credits seemed so important just a few hours ago. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand and stepped back into the cabin.
…but if the mountains aren’t what you’re looking, grab your trino boards and head to the Turin-Malin Dunes, where the sand stretches across ticks of your imagination. Refreshing oasis bars. Trino-sailing. Kaacker safaris. Rock-climbing. If you crave adventure, Turin-Malin is the place for you…
Slumping in a wide seat behind the captain’s helm, Palo kicked his head back and stared at the wiring, couplings and control panels aglow on the ceiling. The viewport ablaze again with deep yellow sands before him – Kendarrian hunters posing by a rough Kaacker, a pack of Densii trino boarding in the sands, a party of humans lounging at an oasis bar, colorful drinks sparkling in their hands.
“Morigin means well,” said Jade. “He just hasn’t been the same since your father was killed.”
Palo lifted his head and again tried to isolate the being speaking to him but did not find anyone. “Excuse me,” he said. “Who are you?”
“The Jade Tendril.” Palo’s face flushed over in confusion and Jade said, “The vessel you are currently travelling in.”
“You’re the ship?”
“I’m sorry to frighten you.”
Palo stood up and examined the flashing viewport as if Jade was behind the screen somewhere. “I’m not frightened. I’ve only been on one ship – when I left home for Param Eon. A Nahsodrant freighter – really old. Only thing I could afford.”
“Well,” Jade said. “Morigin has given me many custom personality patches and contraband coding. And I am impenetrable from COM tampering.”
Palo looked up from the viewport and said, “What do you mean?”
“Disconnected form the COM,” Jade said. “Of course we have our onboard COM connections, but Morigin was very picky about not having any visibility on the grid.”
“But the COM connects everything,” Palo said. “How else would the GSA be able to united so many systems?”
“You really haven’t been around much lately,” said Jade. “This war with the Slavos, what did you think they were fighting for?”
Palo sat back down in his seat and thought about it. “How do the Slavos get information? How do they live without the COM?”
“The Slavos are a devout species,” said Jade. “When the GSA tried imposing alliance and the COM on their own technology and way of life, they took it as a great insult. They value their freedom.”
“But they’re barbarians,” Palo said. “Every night I hear more stories about how the Slavos are viciously rending worlds apart in the Outer Realm. They’re monsters.”
“I will not lie to you,” Jade said. “They are barbarians. They are monsters. But much of what you see through the COM has been filtered and often sensationalized. You see there are some in this galaxy that think of the COM as a disease, a disease of methodic control and hypnosis that is slowly rendering the souls of all species within the GSA dormant. For many years it has been this way. That is why the Slavos fight. They do not wish to be controlled and slowly stripped of what they are.”
“But it doesn’t make any sense,” Palo said, scratching his head.
“There’s a lot that doesn’t make – “
Before Jade could finish, a calamity ushered into the cabin. When Palo turned, he saw a spry young woman step into the cabin. She wore a tight, gray, one-piece jumpsuit with lines of red squares running down the sides of her legs and arms. Bloodstains splotched her jumpsuit and her petite face was marred with dried streams of blood stemming from her nose. Her hair was cropped short, save for a wide strip of hair slightly longer ranging from her forehead over her head and down to the base of her neck.
Morigin followed her in, pointing his Colt 45 into her back, his sash wrapped around his forehead and falling across the front of his shoulder. “Got her, Jade.”
Vaga turned around to Morigin and said, “Please, you can put the weapon away. Where am I going to go?”
“You’re a conduit,” said Morigin as he pointed to the seat next to Palo with his pistol. “Sit down.”
“Can I at least wash the blood off my face?”
Morigin pointed the pistol at the seat again and said, “No. I like that look. Cute yet feisty.”
Vaga sat down next to Palo. When she looked at him again, she recognized him and said, “You’re the kid on the video file.”
Palo looked at Vaga, then at Morigin and said, “What is going on? Why did you take us?” Morigin leaned over to Palo and handed him the Colt 45. Palo held it limp in his hands. Morigin reached over and corrected Palo, aiming the weapon back at Vaga.
“I didn’t take you,” he said to the both of them. Then he turned to Palo and said, “Well, I did take you, but not her. She’s a stowaway. And a bloody, thieving conduit.” Morigin pulled down a storage panel in the back of the cabin and rummaged through it. “I didn’t need her, but due to a completely unforeseen series of circumstances, I do now.” He quit rummaging in the storage panel and closed it, brandishing a set of ancient rusty manacles and a small key on a piece of thread.
Morigin leaned over Vaga and placed her hands in the manacles and closed them around her wrists. “Ah,” he said. “Better. These have no circuitry whatsoever, so those sneaky little finger-snakes can’t get you out of them.” Morigin turned to Palo and said, “As for you, I really had no use for you until just recently. You see before your father was killed by two Carniv mercenaries, they siphoned his brainpan,” Morigin took out the memory kor from his long-coat pocket and held it up. Palo recognized it immediately.
“I thought siphons were banned centuries ago?” asked Palo.
“Yes,” said Morigin. “Importing another beings memories into the brain of another had one nasty little side effect – insanity. They tested the product on the colonies of Valla-Hal. Marketed the thing as a way to relive the lives of those you lost. People began seeing ghosts, only they weren’t bustling around their prefabs, they were inside their head.”
Inside Palo’s chest there was a sudden vacuum. As he watched Morigin hold up the memory kor, he realized that for the last day, he actually held the remaining vestiges of his father’s memory and he didn’t even know it. He felt an immediate closeness to his father now. Something that had wavered years and years ago, was now gone. It was a feeble thought to cling to, but it was the only one he had.
“The problem is,” Morigin said. “The data, the memories, the information your father had collected in all his years far surpassed the limits that the normal human brain could hold.”
“But what does that have to do with me?” Palo asked.
“We need you to fill in the gaps,” Jade said.
“What could I know?”
Morigin stepped closer to Palo and winked at him. “Enough to continue his work.”
“But that’s impossible,” Palo said.
Morigin pocketed the kor and said, “Not impossible. Just forgotten. You never knew your father that well, did you?”
Heated, Palo stood up and said, “What do you know of my father!”
Morigin matched Palo’s intensity. “Evidentally, more than you.”
That was it. Palo stupidly threw a punch at him, which Morigin countered with a kick to his mid-section. Doubling over and gasping, Palo fell to the floor at Morigin’s feet. He leaned down to Palo and said, “You’re just a kid. I didn’t grab you to kill you. I would have done that already – you’re annoying. I grabbed you because you just may be the last pieces to a puzzle that your father was working on.”
Morigin stepped over to Vaga, grabbed the manacles and yanked her upward. Dragging her over to the console, he said, “Pull up the data. Let’s see what this kid knows.”
“Just use the kor,” Vaga said. “You don’t have to yank me all about.”
Morigin pushed her closer to the console and said, “But that isn’t as fun.”
Palo pulled himself off the floor and walked up to Morigin and Vaga. Her hands looked small in the rusty manacles, her ear lobes and hair soft. He felt himself wanting to reach out and rub a finger along her cheek. Then Vaga held out her hands over the console and Palo watched as the tiny fibers sprawled out of her fingertips and writhed into the console like a thousand tiny snakes. The viewport immediately went black – gone were the advertisements for Draedus. Only a cursor blinked in the upper left corner.
“What do you want to see?” Vaga asked.
“The R’Ihande,” said Morigin.
Vaga turned and looked at Morigin, almost as if to confirm it. Palo thought about that word. It was odd. He didn’t remember it from anything, but the movements of his mouth when he said the word silently seemed familiar. It was like he had said it before.
“What is that?” asked Palo.
Morigin turned to Palo and said, “An artifact.” He nudged Vaga and she turned to the viewport, her eyes glossing over white. The viewport flashed with thousands of scrolling files. The cursor selected one and opened it up – immediately filling the screen with lines of intricate coding.
“This is just the raw code,” Jade said. “We’ll be able to access visual and audio sensory data via the onboard systems. Unfortunately we’ll need an experience chamber to access any other sensory data.”
“Where do we want to start?” asked Vaga. “There are millions of files, referencing that thing,” Vaga said.
“Maybe you should start at the end,” said Palo. “The last thing you and my father were working on.”
“Brilliant idea,” Morigin said. “The R’Ihande was the last thing we were working on. That’s why I said it. We were excavating a fallout bunker on Typhon. We were close, he said. That’s when he sent me back to Draedus to seal another artifact in the vault. That’s when he was killed.”
A part of him wanted to jettison himself out of the airlock, but like that strange word, this code left a flutter in his mind. He tried thinking of his father. Imagining his graying hair. His pants dusty and dirty. The boots lying on the floor of the closet, nuggets of dried mud and rabble on the rug. Palo tried to imagine all the worlds Telo visited in his work, how his boots trudged the soil of hundreds of planets. The clutter in every corner of their house – trinkets, ancient parchments, bones, odd mechanisms shattered and ir-repairable.
Palo stepped forward. This was all getting old and he had eager thoughts about seeing just who his father was. He spent the better portion of the last twelve years hating him, but now he was dead…at least physically. But before him strung out on the viewport were millions of lines of code – his father’s memories. He rubbed his eyes – this was all strange. Just hours ago he was sitting with Halfsie, wishing to get enough cred to buy the ship of his dreams and now he was here – on a ship he didn’t know, with people he didn’t know, all about to peer into the private mind of his father. “Just open one…anything,” he said.
Vaga turned back to the viewport and selected a file. The screen filled with code and after a second or two, Jade translated the sensory data onto the screen.
The screen was dark and only one sound echoed through the cabin – a thick, velvety rope of water streaming into a basin. Onscreen, the blackness split and showed an aged hand holding a penis right in the middle of urination. Everyone gasped in the cabin and turned away, except for Vaga, who watched in interest. “Perhaps another,” she said.
Watching Vaga pull up file after file of his father’s memory, Palo watched his father eating meals, talking to Morigin, heaving heavy pick-axes, dusting off ancient systems consoles. He wished the file search could go slower, allowing him more time to absorb the father he missed out on. But a tiny voice in his head remembered Morigin kicking him in the stomach, so he stood and said nothing. In front of the large viewport, Morigin leaned, trying to glean any clues from the memories.
“These are all conversations I’ve had with him,” Morigin said. “We need to go deeper. We need his thoughts.”
“That isn’t possible without an experience chamber,” said Jade.
“Well, then we’ll find one,” Morigin said. “Tap into the COM and find one. Just because they’re banned doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”
“You know full well who will have them,” Jade said. “And we can’t risk it.”
Palo saw Morigin’s face flash with anger as he turned away from the viewport in disgust. What were these people up to? What was this R’Ihande thing and was it truly this important? A hollow feeling grew in the pit of Palo’s stomach. Something wasn’t right. Everything seemed to spin, so much so, Palo stuck out a hand on the captain’s seat to stabilize himself.
“We’ll use the girl,” Morigin said.
The files on the viewport immediately went away and Vaga extricated herself from the ship’s console and turned around to Morigin. “You can’t do that,” she said.
“You’re a conduit. You’re built for this.”
“You can’t do this, Morigin,” said Jade.
Jade’s voice seemed to be tender to Palo’s ear – like a mother’s voice to frightened child. He looked at Vaga. For the first time since he had met her, she looked scared. Her face had fallen pallid. Palo looked to the floor – he had to do something. He couldn’t let Morigin do this to her. He straightened up and approached Morigin. “I remember something.”
Morigin turned and looked at him. “What do you remember?”
“Gifts,” Palo said. “My father gave me gifts all the time. He knew I hated him for being away all the time, so he always sent me gifts from all the places he went to.”
“What are you getting at?”
“Well, since my father was killed for the information he knew about this R’Ihande thing,” Palo said. “Then perhaps he encrypted all his information.”
“Your father would never trust technology to his secrets.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Palo said. “His gifts to me are the encryptions.”
After he said it, Palo half believed it himself. It sounded like just the thing to distract Morigin long enough for him and Vaga to escape. Or at the very least hold him off. Palo felt the hollow feeling in his stomach dissolve. He felt in control now. Things were up to him and not up to the captain.
“These gifts,” Morigin said. “Please tell me they are not back on Param Eon.”
“No,” said Palo. “Never. After I left home I never told my father where I was going. All the gifts are back at my father’s house on Draedus.”
A smile erupted on Morigin’s face as he turned back to the viewport and said, “Good. We’ll be there momentarily.
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