Ted
Theodore Culley never really liked Prospero. It was claustrophobic, despite the terraglass that framed the tunnels that ran between the domes that comprised the Compound. Spread out like a net, the layout of the place made no sense to him, and he often found himself relying on his handheld to figure out where he was. Then again, maybe the reason he didn't much care for Prospero was his religion. Being an Anachronist on one of the most technologically advanced posts in the galaxy meant that he was surrounded by perversity. His religion taught that any use of postlapsarian technology was forbidden, which was why he used a handheld instead of the much more convenient--but also soul-damning--augmented devices that almost every other colonist used. As he walked toward the Laboratory, he noticed (what seemed like) everyone, their fingers twitching, their lips silently moving, their eyes glazed and focused ahead, but unseeing. Typical aedee behavior. But…if Ted were being honest, he'd never claim to be a very devout Anachronist. His parents had been pretty into it--living in the first spacestation, the Vanguard, even though the place was a dump and rusting and leaking radiation in a handful of places. Those areas he'd never gone to--his family was well enough off to avoid the cheapest slums, and those invariably were the ones closest to the radiation pockets--but it had always struck him, the divide between believer and infidel: Believers' lives were impoverished and often desperate, while infidels were smooth and full. Maybe that was why he took the job: A bit of rebellion. Brushing past another aedee-addict, Ted thought about his last night at home. His mother had been furious at his plan. "You're going off to another system somewhere in the Orion Spur and we're supposed to be happy about it?" Ted raised his hands, as if to ward off her verbal blows. "Come on, Mom! It's a good job, with a chance to be a part of something new. You know. Maybe this can become another Earth." Dad bristled, the red hair that flamed off Ted's head equally as bright on his father's. "Let's not be perverse, Ted." He frowned, his bushy beard folding inward. "There is no other Earth. There is only One Earth, the Earth We Had. Don't blaspheme in my house." His mom, folding her arms and looking up at Dad, took a deep breath. Her faded green eyes flashed in the dim light of their apartment on the Vanguard. "You're throwing your faith away for money." "Mom," Ted said, his voice flat, "it's not that good of a job." "Really?" she asked. Shaking back a loose curl of black hair, she regarded him suspiciously. "You think you can keep the faith while you're in the middle of infidels?" Ted rolled his green eyes and wiped at his freckled nose. "Mom. It's a job. If I go anywhere but Vanguard, I'll be surrounded by techies. That's reality!" Dad laid his large hands on Mom's shoulders. She leaned into him, but Ted could see the pain and frustration on her face, the sense of betrayal. "You are a man, Ted. A young one, but a man nonetheless. You're free to do what you wish." He sighed. "Who knows? Maybe this is what you need to see, to understand the truth of Anachronism." "Dad, I'm not a misbeliever!" Ted's shock and injury weren't feigned. "It's a good job! A chance to get to know people and move into my future." He gestured at the clean if dingy apartment that had comprised almost his entire life. "I'm sorry if this isn't enough for me!" "I work hard," said Dad, "and so does your mother to afford this place." "I know! And I appreciate it. I'm not rejecting it…I'm just…" He threw his hands up in disgust. "I'm looking for something more." Mom turned away, her pale face wrinkled with the tears she was trying to hide. Dad shook his head, obviously disapproving but resigned. Ted said goodbye, took his bag of meager belongings, and headed to the docks to travel on his first stargazer, a sleek machine called The Harbinger. The trip had been, by turns, exciting and dull--exciting when they'd pulled on lightlines and used the light emitted by stars to send themselves through space at speeds faster than light. Dull when they were between staranchors and the mysterious (and, he admitted to himself, sacrilegious) PRISM engines could only keep them heading in the same direction, if at slower speeds. Drifting between staranchors was always a bore, but the trip--which took nearly a month--had been worthwhile when they'd finally boarded a passenger shuttle and arrived at Prospero. The novelty of living on a planet had worn off within the first week. The greater gravity of a real planet--apparently 1.3 times what would be normal on Earth and 1.6 times greater than what he was used to on the Vanguard--had taken its toll, and he and a number of fresh colonists had needed that time to get used to it. During that time, Ted had learned that he wasn't needed for his understanding of history--which he'd trained in--but because they needed another janitor. Somehow, he'd missed that part of the job description. But he couldn't go back. Not only would that be admitting to his parents that he'd been wrong about the job, but it also meant breaking contract with Desert Peaks, who were the primary sponsors of the Prospero Project. Doing that would ruin basically any chance he'd have of getting a better job once his three years on Prospero were up. He sighed as he pushed the wheeled trolley filled with his cleaning supplies toward the Laboratory entrance. At least he had Kayla. Reaching out with his handheld, the door dilated appropriately…but not because of him. Someone was coming out--no, two people left as he stepped back to give them space. "I can't believe she said no," said the dark-skinned man to the woman with an eye shape that Ted hadn't seen before coming to Prospero. "I'll come with you. We can't let her get rid of the lura before we have a chance to…" Their conversation drained into the background noise before shutting off completely as the door constricted behind him. Ted was in this section of the lab all alone, it seemed. There was a tray of half eaten soup on one counter, as well as endlessly confusing tools of all sorts. This was one of the things that he didn't understand about infidels: Why did they have so much hand-held tech (not like his handheld, of course, but other tools and instruments) when their much-vaunted augmented devices should have been able to do, well, everything? This was an observation he filed away to fill his faith, though he didn't put too much pressure on the question. It was easier to assume that they were wrong and he was right and try to coexist anyway than to really understand them. His handheld buzzed. Picking it up, he flicked on the screen. Kayla's name showed an incoming voicecomm. "Hey!" he said, clipping the handheld to his coverall's belt, then pulled out his cleaning supplies. He'd start at the sink and work his way around the room...same pattern he always used, it seemed. "What are you doing?" Kayla's voice filled the small lab, making it easy to hear. "Nothing. I'm bored. I just got off shift at the docking station--some bigwig is almost here, but not before my time is off." She made a soft cheering sound and Ted smiled. Kayla was easily the best thing he'd discovered on the station. Like him, she was on her first trip away from family. Unlike him, she was interested in all of the newest tech. It made for an occasional awkward conversation, but there were other things they did together that didn't need as much talking. Still a lot to do with the lips and tongue, but not so much the verbiage. "Well, you can come hang out with me. It's not the most exciting thing on Prospero, but at least there's, I dunno…dirty dishes to see." Kayla laughed. "I'm okay with that. Where are you?" "I'll send you my location," he said, setting down his cleaning rag and pulling up his handheld. "Come by. I'll be here for at least twenty minutes." "Messy?" "Not too bad. But it's not clean, either," he said. "I'll be there soon!" "Don't get lost," he said, using the same farewell that most everyone on the planet used. "You, either," she said, and he could hear the smile in her voice. Ted smirked and set about his job--emptying trash receptacles into his larger container for eventual recycling, wiping down the knobs on cupboards and the flat surfaces that weren't overcrowded with mysterious devices, and scrubbing out some residue from inside the sink--which kept him occupied until he heard a buzz on his handheld. Glancing at it, it was a message from Kayla: Open up. He smacked his head. Kayla's aedee wouldn't allow her into the lab; it didn't have the clearance. Hurrying over to the door, he waved his handheld close to the center of the door, which dilated obediently. "Hey, there," said Kayla, leaning against the doorjamb with her left elbow, her arm across her forehead, and her other hand resting on her hip. Her short brown hair framed her face, which was attractive to Ted, though he figured the birthmark that worked its way from beneath her collar up to her jawline might have been a turnoff to some. He didn't mind it, and he was curious if he could figure out how far down it travelled below the collar. Kayla pushed herself off the door. "This it?" "Yeah, this is today's work," he said, moving aside and letting her enter. "I rotate through the labs fairly often--apparently, these scientists make up a solid third of the waste of the entire Compound, if you can believe it. There are a lot of them, I guess, so…" "What the hell is that." Kayla said it in a way that was one part demand, one part shock, no part question. "Huh?" Kayla pointed. "That." Following her finger, Ted's eyes rested on a creature kept in a glass container. He jerked in surprise. "Holy Fallen Earth!" he swore, though he immediately felt bad about it. The…thing was resting in a corner of the box. Ted had studied Earth fauna as one of his ancillary trainings--it fell in line with part of why he had remained faithful, though perhaps not devout, to Anachronism--and had even dabbled in the prehistoric megafauna of Earth's deep past. The creature looked like a garbled cross between the head of a Pachycephalosaurus and the lithe torso of a Deinonychus and the moist skin of a salamander, covered with natural armor like a Scelidosaurus. Rather than say any of that aloud, he said, "That's the weirdest thing I've ever seen." Kayla, her curiosity apparent in the way she moved, walked closer. "Is that one of the creatures from here? Or is it some weird experiment?" "It wasn't here last time I cleaned," Ted said, feeling more authoritative than he felt. How had he missed seeing the thing? He'd been focused on cleaning the outer edges of the room, not looking at what was in the middle. The most important thing in the lab and he'd missed it. A bit of embarrassment began to crawl up his face and he could feel his pale cheeks flush. "It's really…weird." It was clear Kayla didn't have the language she needed to express what she was thinking. "But I like it." "Yeah," said Ted, some of the embarrassment leaking into nervousness. If this was a special, secret experiment, then he shouldn't be in there to clean. And his girlfriend (if that's what she was, because it wasn't really an official sort of relationship, but there was an attraction, and she was a really…aggressive kisser that he liked and wanted to experience again…) certainly shouldn't be close to it. "But I don't think we're supposed to be looking at it." "Oh, don't be such a cuss," said Kayla, though there wasn't any remonstration in her voice. "It's kind of…cute." She turned to face him. "Can I hold it?" "What? No!" "Please?" Kayla pouted, her brown eyes glistening as she puckered her brow. She was so impossibly attractive that Ted wanted to take her in his arms and show her what he thought of that expression. Then his gaze fell on the creature, and he shook his head. "No, I'm pretty sure it's not a good idea. I'm supposed to clean the lab, not touch their…experiments." "Well, don't you need to clean the cage?" "Huh?" "Isn't that part of the lab? And look! There's some droppings in there." Frowning, Ted leaned forward. Kayla was right. There were some definitive turd-like remnants, swimming in a shallow puddle of liquid--probably urine, though it didn't look the same as what Ted was used to seeing. And he'd seen plenty of that liquid in the time that he'd been on Prospero. "Yuck." "It's your job to clean it out, isn't it?" Ted scowled. "I don't think…" "Please?" She arched her eyebrow at him. "It'd mean a lot to me." Ted fought to keep a presumptive smile from his face. "Well, I mean…" She stepped back to give him room, a broad, excited smile painted across her features. Ted tried not to think about what she was implying. She had already hinted that she'd be willing to sleep with him, but they'd never made that active choice. The idea that they were simply exchanging favors rankled him, but the possibility that she would be so grateful, and would want to express that gratitude in a mutually enjoyable fashion? That made sense. The container was standard for the lab, and the security passcode was within his clearance as a janitor. There were other levels of security that he couldn't bypass, meaning that the fact that his handheld opened the lock on the far side from where the creature huddled assuaged his conscience, if only a bit. The container swung open on glass hinges, and a rank wave of stench rolled out from the box. Gagging and coughing into his hand, he stabbed a command into his handheld, turning the fan on. The exhaust pumped straight out into the oxygen-thin atmosphere of Prospero, which was done in part to continue the eventual process of oxygen-introduction. He'd learned about it when they had gone through the janitorial training, but he didn't understand all it meant. For the most part, he only cared that it cleared the room. "Fallen Earth, what a stench," Kayla said, waving a hand in front of her nose. "That makes it a lot less cute." Turning to the specimen container, he said, "No kidding…" Ted's words fell off his lips. The creature stood at the precipice of the opening, its entire body trembling. Small protuberances opened and closed like so many miniature mouths. The smell worsened, a mixture of sulfur and sewage, almost profane in its thick stench. What Ted had thought of as armored bone stretched, almost like claws sliding free of a cat's paw. A low, ominous gurgle bubbled out of the creature's cavity. Wet, the growl sounded like a backed-up pipe as it swallowed a particularly thick wad of slime. It ended with a series of clicks, fingernails on a piece of plastic, except…menacing. Ted froze. "Ted?" said Kayla in a frightened whisper. She'd backed up at the smell, and now stood only a couple of paces from the door. "Don't…move…" said Ted, staring at the creature's head, trying to determine where its eyes were. The head had a casing, almost bone-like, that made it impossible to sense where it was looking. The casing cracked. Or, more accurately, splits in the casing opened up, spreading wide, and revealing a teeth-filled larynx. A vicious hiss escaped the tiny creature's body, and then it pounced, throwing itself through the air with such speed that Ted couldn't track it. All he knew was that he felt a heavy pressure on his chest, landing hard and pushing down on him, shoving the air from his lungs. He clattered to the ground, his handheld flying free. It spun to a stop in front of Kayla's feet. By then, Ted's vision had grown red and murky. There was pain, yes--sharp, searing, and inescapable--but also a vague sense of inevitability and…disappointment. Yes, that's what it was. Ted was disappointed that this was how it ended. Far from family, far from deciding what he believed. That was the great injustice, as this alien creature tore through his core: he'd been doubting Anachronism. Now he was on the brink of finding out if he was right…and that scared him. He could hear Kayla's frightened cries, her screams, and the sound of her scooping up his handheld. Distantly, like through speakers turned down too low to truly hear, the sound of the door dilating and Kayla's footsteps sprinting away echoed into his ears. His body convulsed, but he couldn't remember telling it to do that. A popping sound coming from his chest. A hot splash of something wet and a sloppy splashing. His second to last thought was this: I'm going to have to clean up that blood. His last thought was more lucid: That was a stupid thing to think. |
What is this?This is a NaNoWriMo project that publishes, day by day, the chapters I'm writing for 2017. If you're confused, go to Chapter 1 Ann and start there. ArchivesCategories
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