Kaleb's Critters

by CompleteIndifference

Rating: mature
Tags: Dark, Other, Changelings, Original Character, Adventure, Human, Gore, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Length: 24940

How does one differentiate man from beast?

All roight, Robby: camera on me, now... three, two...

"Well hello there, mate! Oi'm Kaleb, your guide, and boy do we 'ave a treat for you today. Last time on Kaleb's Critters we took a load off on TB-881. Tons a' interestin' animals there: Oi even shot me a Mountain Bra'ana. Blight'ah nearly took me leg off! On a more somber note, we lost ourselves a fine man that week. Sage, we miss ya mate, and I hope you're happy, wherever you are...

But don't fret. We got a new cameraman, an' he's twice the man Sage was, ain't that roight, Robby?

An' ya know what else? We got a special surprise for you folks this episode. We're currently orbiting TB-1128, the lushest, greenest planet Oi've seen in ye-ahs. Our team of analysts and science-types have spent weeks monitoring and cataloguing the life 'ere, an' they've assured me we'll be in for a wild ride.

Tomorrow, we're goin' down there. An' I swear Oi'm gonna show you what it takes to hunt down some of the most beautiful--and oddly familiah--species this side a' the galaxy. An' Oi'll do it in record time, or moi name ain't Kaleb Burnow."

Now that, Robby, is how you do an opening... C'mon, lets take a look at some'a those pelts.

Published 2013-03-12 04:50:02 UTC
Last updated 2013-05-13 00:23:45 UTC

One: Saint Metro

Creaking. Everything creaked in her house.

The floorboards, the rocking chair, the bedsprings, the kitchen counter, her ancient, brittle bones: all creaking; all screaming for an end. Hooves cracked with age, the last great stewardess of the Royal Unicorn Families settled herself down into a semi-conscious state of repose.

Her grandson waited. At times, it seemed like waiting was all he was good for... not that waiting was necessarily a bad thing. As his grandmother, a great mare, once said:

Good things come to those who wait.

She was right, in some ways. The pristine, white unicorn colt was born sickly, and, as a child, was thinner than most fledgling pegasi. Discouraged, he was assured by peers and relatives alike that he would be handsome. So he waited, and his body grew into something noble: something eye-catching. Fillies' heads turned whenever he trot by, and colts glared in envy whenever the odd mare stopped to take in the constellations on his flank.

He was rather intelligent as well, and Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns accepted him for his academic prowess at a rather young age; but quota had been filled, and he was put on the dreaded "VMS List." He waited. Somepony died in a tragic accident, and, suddenly, he was in: learning from the greatest mages ever to walk the plains of Equestria.

Now, almost three seasons into his adulthood, his grandmother, red fur dulled from countless years under the sun, had summoned him to the oldest standing home in the town of Stableton—the closest settlement to the Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters—and now he would wait. With over a hundred years of life weighing her down, the matriarch was to be respected, no matter the personal cost. He loved the old mare dearly, and any time spent with her was valuable; any knowledge she shared, priceless.

She shifted, facing him from her place on her slow-rocking-creaking-groaning-moaning chair. The wood was old. The house was old. All aged together, blending into one great, dying creature.

A slow blink. Two. Four. Closed.

Relaxed, horn glowing a sickly grey, the Matriarch opened her mind and spoke into the ether.

It’s been many years since I’ve last told this story, and my body grows weary of late. My time is coming to an end. I appreciate that fact, and take no misery in it. Looking back on my long life, I take heart in knowing that I lived it to the fullest, all four hooves planted firmly in the right, just as He would have wanted me to.

I bore witness to the rise and fall of a great kingdom, and played an important part in the birth of its successor.

I survived seven years of chaos under the black-hearted draconequus, the War of the Alicorn Dynasties, and the Great Schism.

I have loved, and been loved for longer than most, but will never take it for granted… though, never is not as prolonged as it once was for these old, frail bones.

I have felt life grow within me, birthed seven fine additions to the great chain, and watched them mature like any mother would. First steps, first words, first schools, and first loves: all are remembered and cherished.

Yes, I have lived honorably, and it is for this reason that I cannot let my final story go untold. Because without it, or, more specifically, the one who leads it, my exceptional life would never have been.

This, my grandson, is the tale of a creature... a man I knew well.

Like a statue, young Jade Sparkle sat, waiting. The colt smiled: this was to be one of the good things.

Only good.

Chapter One

Public transportation is a gateway to mental disorder.

“Bench’s full, Fruit. Y’ll have to stand.”

It leads to self-pity, followed by loathing, then, oddly enough, a kind of false narcissism.

*District Seven… Please, watch your step*

“What are you looking at? I’ll put yer lights out, Meat. Savvy?”

No one understood the change, but it was true. Someone—Jacobson had been his name—did a study or something on it out of IC-U. The Inner City Autocarrier Line did, indeed, have an adverse effect on people.

“Yeah, I’m savvy, ya fuckin’ wino.”

“What’d you say? You tryin’ ta start somethin’?”

“Nothing. I didn’t say a thing.”

Yet, despite the hype over this discovery—and the plethora of public petitions for mag-lev engines that didn’t sterilize passengers—it all came down to one thing…

*District Six… Please, watch your step*

“That’s me. Have a nice day, Sablehound.”

“Why you little…”

“Bye!”

… No one gave a damn about the inner city. That, and “Autocarrier’s” was the cheapest form of transportation around to date.

“I’m coming for you! I’ve seen your face!”

Robin Fairweather, an unemployed, educated street ruffian and all around loveable inner city lug, stumbled out of the idling mag-bus and into the stuffy, polluted, early morning streets of the grand city of St. Metropolis.

“I’ll find you!” came another angry slur from the ratty vehicle dipping up and down in the air behind him.

Robin just smiled, sucking in a lungful of soot and chemicals from the glue factory one district over. He didn’t bother looking back.

“Aw go stim your brain to jelly ya cheap shit,” barked the bus driver. The man was probably a junkie himself—Robin noticed the telltale wrinkles about the eyes—but appearances are important for a government worker, so he kept silent. It wasn’t until he heard the hiss of pneumatics signaling the bus’s departure that Robin looked over his shoulder.

A quick flick of the wrist and a rude gesture at the departing human garbage truck later, he was off down the choked, winding streets of District Six. Sooty haze wreathed his body, a flowing robe of dirty air trailing his form as he went. Today, Robin was on a mission, and the only thing that could stop him was himself, death, or an overseer with an empty quota-book.

He was walking to New Metro, and, once there, he had an interview with the Channel.

Shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his purple corduroy jacket, Robin shuffled on, kicking the occasional carton of refuse aside with his tattered nylon shoes. The baggy, ill-fitting pants he wore had gone out of style decades ago: they were his best pair. A sad smile twitched across his face as he passed by an old Laundromat, its front window still soaped over with declarations of “Bargain Prices” and “Two-Penny Tuesdays.” When he caught sight of his reflection in the window, however, his smile faltered a bit.

Robin knew he wasn’t an ugly individual, but, seeing himself now, he gathered that not many people would know that. His once fresh, handsome face—bearing a striking resemblance to that of his father’s, relatives would often say—was now haggard and sunken. His hair was disheveled; his skin, pallid and stained with dirt, and it looked like he hadn’t slept in years. The young man pinched the bridge of his nose and looked away. Now wasn’t the time for remorse… but he gave into it anyway.

He should have listened to them: his father, his brother, his girl. Technicians. “Everyone is a technician,” they said. “There are no engineering jobs left!” they warned. “What this country needs is more doctors, more agriculturalists, and, God forbid, more businessmen.” Robin sighed heavily, no longer riding high on hope for the day.

A piece of paper fluttered by, borne on the fetid breeze that filtered down among the under-streets, and Fairweather contemplated turning back. It was a long walk to New Metro, and none of the busses he could pay for went that far into the suburbs. This was a fruitless venture. There were no jobs left for a technician: he knew that. A four year graduate of the Inner City University couldn’t get anywhere with an engineering degree.

Robin was wasting his time, and he knew it.

“No. The flyer said there were plenty of openings.”

“No one watches that damn station anymore! Network’s where it’s at these days! How could there be plenty of openings! It. Is. A. Scam.”

Robin ground to a halt, his beaten shoes scuffing the pavement. He looked up at the orange corona of dawn bleeding through the pristine skyscrapers of New Metropolis, and held his breath. The streets reverberated with the sound of an early morning tanker leaving the Outer City Shuttlestation. Grimy windows on the apartment to Robin’s left flexed inward as the behemoth of a ship crawled across the breaking dawn like a bloated, flying whale. “One day, I’ll live up there,” he’d told himself when he was but eight years old. “One day, I’ll look down on this place and laugh, because I’ll know I’ve made it. I’ll know I’m somebody.”

Yeah, well… not today.

Robin turned, prepared to make the long, early morning journey back to the Office of Inner City Employment—hopefully early enough for a weekend community service position—in District Four, when he caught a metallic glint in the corner of his eye. He stooped down, fumbling past an old Kleenex box and a crumpled up fast-food container to find the source of the brief morning glare. Once the refuse was gone, the dismal man grinned wider that he had all day.

It was a piece of old-world currency; a quarter, they called them. A flat disk of silvery metal—about two centimeters in diameter—with a man’s face embossed into the front. The title of the old world government and a few platitudes also adorned the small coin, hugging its round, ridged edges. Robin knew that if he flipped it over he would find a picture of a noble, but unfortunately rather extinct bird, and further useless platitudes written in a dead language: one used only by the Vatican nowadays. These little guys were worthless, wholly incomparable to plastic rotobucks, but someone, a long time ago, decided they were signs of good fortune, and now, if one was blessed enough to find the rare coin face up it is said that he or she will have good luck for the rest of the day.

Picking the magnanimously placed artifact up from the street, Robin considered it with the air of a man who didn’t believe in coincidences. He turned it over in his fingers, admiring its smoothness, tracing the rare groove and imperfection with his thumb. Turning on his heel, he slipped the coin into his jacket pocket and took another look at the skyscrapers of New Metro.

The buildings were beginning to wake up. Flagpoles extended and banners unfurled in the breeze, solar panels shifted to catch the precious rays of a slowly rising sun, and the daily sponsors slowly flickered to life on the wavering magboards of Outer City.

He made a decision.

The Channel building wasn’t all that far… if he ran.

Two: Applying Oneself Creatively

Chapter Two

“Oh-ho-ho! And he’s down! World Champion Brian Dunning has just punched his ticket with only one round left to go! What an upset! Can Kristine make up the point? Will she go down as the only challenger in Roulette history to make it ten rounds?”

The television took up an entire wall.

“She’s taking a minute to relax, shaking out her hands, and—oh? What do you make of this strategy, Jim?”

“Ah, it’s an old one of hers. Plucking an eyelash: one of the many Inner City superstitions. Ms. Sorenson’s been doing it since stage one, and it hasn’t failed her yet, Dan.”

It was inescapable: the screen was as wide as Robin’s girlfriend’s apartment was long. Jim Donahue and Daniel Marbury, Channel announcers often featured in shows such as “Dog Whistle,” “Escape the Rape,” and “Fear Pong,” were currently on screen. Fairweather could see them out of the corner of his eye. The two announcers’ banter reverberated through the crowded hall, providing a welcome distraction for the anxious man.

“There are still two bullets chambered, and the referee is starting the timer right… now!”

There were more applicants here than Robin was comfortable with: mostly Old Metro citizens like himself. A few of them were even dressed nicely. They packed the large waiting hall, some lingering by the stone-faced receptionist in the corner, while others mingled in small groups, chatting nervously. A guard stood at the entrance, clearly bored out of his mind, but keeping his hand on the crowd-seeder at his hip.

Most of them—far too many—had probably been in the building before Robin had even reached the New Metro border. He’d gotten there too late.

“Kristina has thirty seconds to make the shot.” They were faux-whispering, now. Can’t break the poor girl’s concentration this late in the game now, can they?

“The chamber has been rotated. Gun is up…”

Robin clutched his lucky quarter so tight that his knuckles were bone-white.

“There are plenty of openings,” He repeated to himself, “There are plenty of openings. Plenty. You won’t have to go out as a contestant. You have four years of education behind you. You can do better.”

“It’s coming down to the wire here. Can Kristine pull this off?”

“There are plenty of openings. Plenty of openings. Flyers don’t lie.”

A loud crack shook the waiting room. Nobody flinched.

“Ooooh… It looks like this one’s over folks. Once more, the Grand Prize of two million rotobucks will remain unclaimed. I’d like to take a moment to thank our sponsor, Sargenta Bankers United, and wish our viewers a wonderful holiday weekend! Until next time, I’m Jim…”

“And I’m Dan.”

“And this has been Russian Roulette!”

“Goodnight everybody!”

Robin glanced at the screen, blinking at the wire-cam view of a blood-soaked table occupied by eleven or so slumped bodies.

“Goodnight?” he mumbled, incredulous. The man next to him, a somber fellow with a bit of a paunch and the only other one in the room who seemed to be paying attention to the enormous television screen, turned to him.

“Reruns,” he grunted, rolling his eyes. The wrinkles of unabashed stim use showed on his face, and his breath smelled of alcohol. He was wearing a rumpled tuxedo, missing two buttons and a cufflink, but, nonetheless much fancier than Robin had cared to wear. He looked down at his ratty dress pants and corduroy jacket and frowned.

“I really hope this isn’t black tie.”

“You applying for ‘contest?’” the pudgy man asked, raising a brow in Robin’s direction.

“No. Tech job,” he answered nervously, uncertain how to proceed with the calmly intoxicated man. “Lights. Camerawork, maybe… You?”

He gestures to the television across the room, currently spouting commercials. “Roulette.”

“Mmmm…”

They went back to their anxious waiting. There was nothing more to say.

The commercial break ended quickly, because that’s how the Channel works: always thinking about the viewer, them.

“Well hello there, Mate! Oi’m Kaleb Burnow, and this is Kaleb’s Critters!”

Robin perked up. Kaleb’s Critters? That show was still around?

“Today, we’re on a trek through the jungles of TB-881, hunting for the most dangerous, and, unfortunately, most well-camouflaged creatures around: the Sularan Dragonsnake.”

A man of undeterminable age stood on-screen, facing the camera, a jaunty smile parting his rugged, graying beard, and a jolly twinkle in his sky-blue eyes. He was wearing a canvas snap-up aussie hat, all-khaki clothing, and a leather belt. The absurdity of the outfit was overshadowed only the size of the weapon he was carrying, slung over his shoulder on one muscular arm. The barrel had to be about an inch in diameter, and the gun itself looked like it would knock Robin over if he’d tried to shoot it.

Kaleb Burnow: the man, the myth, the legend, and the most stereotypical expression of Australian manhood on the face of the earth. It was funny now, but when Robin was young, Mr. Burnow was the epitome of masculinity, and, consequently, his idol. He’d loved Kaleb’s Critters and had often forgone homework every Tuesday night when it came on. The season’s were pretty far apart, considering the distance the film crew had to travel and so on, but that was fine by him. He didn’t care, as long as he was able to get his weekly fix of hunting dangerous animals and conquering primitive outworlders.

Robin’s parents allowed it, because, in the larger scheme of things, that was the least violent show on the Channel.

“Hold it, Sage. R’ you getting this? Come closer, mate.” The picture jiggled, likely from “Sage” the cameraman jostling to reach Kaleb, who lay crouched behind a fallen tree. “Right there, ya see it? Sularan woman. Gatherer, Oi take it. Notice the compound eyes that circle ‘round the back of her head: perfect for spotting predators and keeping tabs on the rest a’ her tribe. And the third set of arms, there, used mainly for cradling her young… simply remarkable.”

When Robin had been accepted to IC-U, he stopped watching. This was mainly because anyone caught watching the Channel on school grounds was ostracized as a “commercialist.” Professors lambasted the Channel, the Network, and the Station endlessly, preaching anti-entertainment age lessons from day one. Liberalism in its finest form.

Eventually, Kaleb’s Critters just fell off the face of Robin’s memory… until now. If he hadn’t come to the Channel applications building he probably would still be ignorant of the show’s continued existence. He didn’t watch the television, and no-one ever thinks they’ll ever stoop to applying at the Channel when they leave the University. It was altogether possible that he would never have watched Kaleb again in his lifetime.

“Let’s bag her.” There was a gunshot, followed by a drawn-out, primal wail. Robin watched Kaleb skin the Sularan for a bit, wondering how the Australian Legend could have stayed so fit as he began pointing out the body parts unique to the being he had just “bagged.” It looked like he barely aged a day from when Robin first watched his show as a child. He took a look at the date on the show calendar in the top right of the screen.

July 21st, only a month ago. This was a recent one then, and he wasn’t tricking himself. This was turning out to be a rather interesting day.

Robin watched for a bit, still working the quarter he’d found between his fingers. He quickly became bored, however, and tried to strike up a conversation with the guard at the door. A hard shove and one nasty bruise later, he gave up, and sat waiting, alone. The cold receptionist began nasally droning out names soon afterward.

“Clarissa Aaronson.”

“Alphabetical, last name… there are plenty of spots: I’ve got this,” Robin rapidly calculated, beaming to himself. Finding a position that fit his qualifications would be a snap.

“Canis Jones.”

“Shit… okay… Alphabetical, first name. That’s not too bad.”

“Ronald Berkenhaur.”

Robin cringed and deflated completely, dropping his smile and grimacing in frustration. “Order of arrival... shit…” Hunching his shoulders, Robin prepared himself.

He was in for a long wait.

“Robin Fairweather…”

“Mmmph.” It was too early… Jenna, you cruel mistress.

“Robin Fairweather…”

What could possibly be so important that Jen would wake him after so little rest? Robin smelt no breakfast cooking—the air was actually rather ripe with the stench of carpet oil and monotony, not fried oatcakes, Jenna’s culinary equivalent of a balanced meal—and the steady blaring of a television in the background was strangely soothing. Robin’s girlfriend rarely watched the TV…

“Fairweather?”

A small shiver traveled down Robin’s spine. Damn was it cold. He really needed to get the radiator fixed before he caught a cold. By the sound of Jen’s voice, she already had one. She resonated like a mag-bus recording.

Jenna sighed heavily. “Soto Nihorima.”

“What the fuck?” That was strange. Robin had been living with Jen for nearly three years, and he’d never known she spoke Japanese. “I guess you learn something every day… like how Jenna knows the pin to my bank ca—”

Remembrance jolted Robin awake like an overseer stun-rod. He bolted to his feet from the chair he had been snoring in and glanced frantically about. He was still in the CAS waiting room. Jenna wasn’t there. She’d taken his entire savings and kicked him out of their shared apartment in District Nine. She said he’d never amount to anything and that he owed her for the time he’d lived in her home.

Robin’s heart clenched in his chest, and tears threatened to spill from his leaden eyes, but he held it back. He’d cried enough already, and now it was time to prove her wrong.

“Marian Helms…”

“Shit!” Robin breathed, garnering attention from the few men and women still waiting to be called. Ignoring the stares, he quickly strode over to the receptionist’s desk—“not Jenna”—and fidgeted impatiently behind one Ms. Helmes as she received calculated instructions from the woman at the desk.

Apparently, she was applying for contest on some show called “Roaming Charges.”

When the portly woman finally moved along, escorted to the door behind the front counter by another bored-looking overseer, Robin rushed forward. He placed himself right in front of the emotionless secretary, right between a stack of contest apps and a procession of wood and rubber stamps, lined up like soldiers on parade. “Robin Fairweather. You called me?”

The receptionist—her nametag said “Sue” but her pantsuit screamed “Disgruntled Wage-Laborer”—glared at him, her lips twisted into a sneer of distaste. Her glare never wavering, she rifled through the stack of numbered applications to her left, pulling one out seemingly at random.

“Fairweather,” Sue’s eyes flicked to the paper she’d withdrawn briefly before going back to indignantly glaring into his own. “Technician… You’re lucky: there’s one technical opening left.” She reached into a drawer at her side, whipped out a sheet of reflective, green stickers, placed one on his application, and then stamped it with a rubber brand from the regiment for good measure. “Show this to the officer at the door, and he’ll take you where you need to go. However, if your attention span is as short in the waiting room as it is on the job, I wouldn’t bother. It would save yourself the humiliation.”

“Heh, thanks ma’am, I’ll take that to heart. Oh, and I’m sure you’ll get that promotion you’ve been working so hard for,” Robin replied, simpering as he rounded the desk, paper in hand. “Really, the rug burns are hardly noticeable.”

Not sticking around to witness her reaction, the beaming man slipped through the waiting double-doors and found himself in a hallway of dull, tan drywall and lush carpeting. Another hallway intersected with his own a few yards further. After a quick walk, Robin looked around the corner for the overseer he’d seen leading Ms. Helmes away. Not seeing anyone, he settled for leaning against the wall and waiting. It was then that the tidal wave of relief finally rushed in.

There was an opening! Robin practically shook with anticipation: this was the first techie interview he’d had in months, and he resolved to make it the last one he’d need for months to come. If he nailed this interview, Robin wouldn’t have to pray to make the weekly quota for community service at the ICE office in District Four. Channel positions—as long as they weren’t for “contest”—were generally very steady, consistent occupations, if not exactly glamorous.

Robin hadn’t stopped smiling since he’d gotten past the receptionist. No more meter counting. No more demolition work in the central districts. No more power washing the streets. No more “cadaver clean-up,” and, best of all, no more long hours at the waste compactor. A short bark of laughter escaped Fairweather’s lips, absorbed by the dull, plastered hallway walls.

He fucking hated compactor duty.

Now, finally, Robin could leave that behind and do a job worthy of his education, or, failing that, one that had something to do with electronic maintenance. Hell, he’d even settle for changing on-set light bulbs. As long as he never had to cart another cube of crushed debris, fecal matter, and putrid flesh to the central incinerator in District One, Robin was satisfied.

Maybe, just maybe, Jenna would be too.

Fairweather shook his head, not allowing his good mood a chance to falter. He needed to focus on the interview. Finding a place to sleep that night, and perhaps reconciliation with Jen, could wait until afterward. Robin grinned. He couldn’t wait to tell her: she’d be thrilled.

Footsteps, muffled by the excessive carpeting, sounded from around the corner. The giddy human tensed up a bit, but didn’t lose his smile. Here came the overseer. Robin leaned against the wall, hands at his sides, waiting.

A submissive posture was key. He didn’t want anyone to get the wrong idea, and overseers were notoriously jumpy.

Robin had been to a fair amount of “peaceful” protests at the University to know that first hand.

The footfalls grew louder, and Robin watched carefully from the corner of his eye as a proud member of Metro’s police force rounded the bend to his left. The officer started and took a step back, his hand lowered to the stun-rod at his belt and causing Robin to flinch. Fairweather kept his eyes low, intent on tracing the holes in his shoes. Passive enough? Probably. An effective deterrent after startling an contest-jockey? Robin could only hope this one was having a good day.

Luckily, the tension died down almost immediately. The overseer gave an annoyed snort and cleared his throat. “Papers,” he gruffly demanded, holding out a gloved palm. The man’s fingers twitched impatiently. Robin let out a breath he was unaware he’d been holding and held his application aloft. The guard quickly snatched it away and began scanning the top row.

He was in his mid-thirties or so: well fed in Robin’s point of view but not quite overweight. The Overseer’s Helm he wore was skewed slightly, the upper-case “C” embossed in its forefront leaping out in contrast with the white casing of the protective headgear. He wore no nametag—few did—and his dark blue uniform was rumpled from overuse. Fairweather felt his eyes drawn to the weapons at the guard’s belt: a short, handle-less, ebony rod and a small firearm. He wondered why contest-jockey’s were so well armed. What’d they expect, a riot in the Channel lobby? Terrorism?

St. Metropolis loved its television. No one would dare strike out at any of the three major stations. If you were crazy enough to try there was no support from the populace; if you were caught, no sympathy either. No… It was more likely that one of the other two stations would stage a raid on the CAS. But even then the chances were slim. If the Network or the Station really wanted to hit a Channel building it would be the television station headquarters in District 24, not Applications Services.

So why the weaponry?

The overseer’s brusque voice snapped Robin back to his senses:

“Cut the staring,” he grunted, eyeing Robin like a jittering sablehound might eye a particularly offending mound of rubbish: with equal amounts disgust and dark anticipation. “You’re in room twenty-two nineteen Mister… Fairweather.” The guard narrowed his eyes, looking Robin up and down one final time before turning and walking down the hall. Robin just stared after him, unsure what to do. Search or follow? “Let’s go, Innie!”

“Follow it is, then.”

Robin rushed to catch up with the overseer while managing to walk at a safe distance behind the gruff officer. He followed for God knows how long, twisting and turning down too many hallways and riding up and down too many elevators to count. The numbers posted on each wooden door alternated without rhyme or reason, leaving the numbly plodding man in a daze. He could have sworn they’d been walking in circles, but, then again, he also could have sworn he never gave his girlfriend the pin to his bank account.

Fairweather groaned, eliciting a glance from the overseer. Thinking like that would get him nowhere, but he couldn’t stop. It just kept cropping up: the love of his life had kicked him out and left him broke on the street. What did it matter that his thoughts were self-defeating anyway? He wasn’t going anywhere, was he?

It was then that he almost ran into the stiff body of his armed escort. They had arrived.

Robin’s nameless overseer stood in front of a polished oak door, just like every other door they’d passed so far. It was one polished slab of wood, adorned with a dull, metal placard with the number 2219 etched into it. Despite the mundane nature of the room’s entrance, Robin felt excitement—along with a heady dose of fear—begin to well up inside him after the seemingly endless trek deeper into the facility. This was it: a chance at an occupation worthy of his education.

The guard grunted something unintelligible and moved away. He receded down the hallway to Robin’s left, his footsteps swallowed by the lush carpet as he disappeared around another corner. Fairweather didn’t care. The door was all that mattered now. With an appropriate level of trepidation, he reached forward and rapped on the cold, oaken wedge between him and the possibility of cold, hard cash.

“Come in,” rasped a voice burdened with a highly cultured Outer City accent. Robin pushed lightly on an indent in the wooden paneling, just above the center of the door, and the polished slab slid into the wall, revealing a modestly decorated office. There were no windows, and the walls were made of the same dull, tan plaster of the hallways behind him. An occasional hanging oddity broke the monotonous expanse of drywall: a painting—watercolor—of the Appalachian Mountain Range, a diploma of sorts on the far wall, a tribal mask made of an indistinguishable red material, interwoven with dried reeds, and, oddly enough, a volleyball situated in the center of a glass case.

In the center of the room, standing tall atop a plastic carpet covering, was a desk: modest, as was the rest of the office. A personal touchboard jutted from the center of the humble mesa, flanked by a bowl of various styluses, a lamp, and a glass nameplate. There were no photographs. Apparently, Mr. Nowell—the gold leaf on his nameplate proclaimed this to be his title—had no immediate family, or even pets, that he found worthy enough to occupy his desk.

Looking at the man now, Robin thought he understood why.

Lounging languidly in an upholstery-coated rolling chair, the man who would be conducting his interview eyed Robin disdainfully. He picked idly at the fibers of his charcoal black suit for a moment before clasping his thin, spectral hands tightly under his pointed chin, drawing attention to the contemptuous frown he wore. A pair of golden irises shone like beacons from his gaunt face, tucked below a swatch of greasy, black hair. Robin was fairly certain those were contacts (they were all the rage with the citizens of New Metro), but when he approached the well-dressed Channel interrogator he couldn’t tell.

Nowell motioned for Robin toward the small chair erected in front of his desk. Fairweather handed him his application, and the ethereal man sneered bitterly. Taking the document, he held the paper between two fingers as if the glossy, ink-scrawled page were a piece of legislative refuse and scanned its surface quietly. They didn’t shake hands.

“So, Mr. Fairweather,” he droned listlessly, pausing mid-thought with a resigned sigh, “It says here you’re a registered citizen of St. Metropolis. What District?”

“Nine.”

“Mhmm… I suspected as much. Previous work experience? This says Office of ‘Ice?’”

“Inner City Employment. I worked a few cycles of community service.” Robin kept telling himself that there was nothing wrong with that, but he couldn’t help but feel embarrassed for admitting it to this man.

Nowell raised an eyebrow. It looked like a greasy caterpillar making love to his forehead. “Mhmmm.” Fairweather tensed. That sound just didn’t sit right with him. Coming from this man, confirmation sounded like an insult. “Just a few procedural questions, now. Please answer these to the best of your… ability.”

“Now he’s just being rude,” Robin thought, struggling to keep his face neutral. “The bastard’s not even trying to hide it anymore.” He held his tongue. Robin knew an altercation here would ruin any chance he had at this position—whatever it was. Besides, to Nowell he was just another Innie, and his so called “rights” meant nothing on Channel property. He couldn’t win.

A reedy whistling noise emanated from the gaunt man’s nostrils as he let out a breath. “Have you ever been accused or convicted of any commercial misdeeds, felonies, or crimes against the city of St. Metropolis, the Province of New England, or the Republic of Western Nations? If so, what were the results of the proceedings?”

“I have committed no memorable crimes to speak of.”

“Mhmm,” Mr. Nowell crooned, leaning forward to tap a small stylus to the screen of his touchboard. Fairweather winced: that sound was becoming quite irritating. “Have you ever aided in petition for, participated in, or incited a riot with the express purpose of damaging this station—either aesthetically, financially, or in repute?”

“No.”

“Right. Have you ever used stims, sable dust, raid-lite, or any other type of artificial mood-boosters, performance implants, or psychoactive drugs?”

“… Yes,” Robin conceded after a short pause, “but at the University everyone dusts up at least once a term. I tried a line of sable one year in and got a bloody nose.” He paused again, looking across the desk to gauge Nowell’s reaction. “Never tried it again after that.”

The dark-haired man seemed to perk up a little. “University?”

Feeling a minute surge of hope, Robin continued. “Inner City graduate… I was in the class three summers back.” Nowell seemed to consider his answer for a moment before his eyes narrowed.

“Who was your ‘Modern Philosophy’ professor?” he sneered, leaning back in his chair haughtily. He thought Robin was lying! How many people came in claiming they went to IC-U to warrant such suspicion? It was true that applicants for contest and employment at the three stations centered in St. Metro were rarely highly academic—that was probably why there was no “educational background” portion of the application—but did that really warrant so much skepticism when someone came in claiming they’d graduated from IC-U: one of the least prestigious colleges in the area? No matter, Fairweather would play along.

“Sorenson. Gene Sorenson.” It was the truth.

Nowell looked surprised, but the emotion didn’t last. “Degenerates of a Generation?”

“Zemo Woon.” Once again, the truth.

The interviewer didn’t miss a beat this time. “Commercial Cultures of the Western Republics?”

“Professor Ronald Hosmer.” This was getting old, but Robin knew he had this man beat. Nowell’s sneer slowly turned upward into a genuine smile. It was the grin of a confidant in some great, disgusting conspiracy: one that spoke volumes, implicating Fairweather in some age-old plot; that of the educated.

Robin felt more comfortable with the sneer.

“An IC-U man, eh?” Nowell groused. He gestured toward the diploma hanging from the wall to his left with a sweep of his thin arm. “It’s good to meet a fellow alumnus. Tell me, what do you make of Professor Sorenson’s recent refusal of tenure?”

Fairweather squinted at the dutifully framed papers on the western wall in disbelief. This man? A graduate of Inner City University?! Seeing a student of the most liberal institution in the Northeast Province employed at a major station was exceedingly rare: working as a man of the Channel—the least intellectually conscious of the bunch—no less! No one coming out of the IC-U ever saw themselves in a Channel office, so what was this man doing there? Shit, what was Robin doing there? Why?

Money? Self-assurance?

Jen?

Whatever the reason, Robin’s interview just became that much less stressful. He didn’t know whether to be disgusted or relieved.

“Honestly, sir, I thought Sorenson was a nutcase. His views on the nature of morality are antiquated and not conducive to progress. I’m not surprised to hear he was refused tenure: he’s too controversial.” Judging from the unpleasant little man’s growing smile, Robin had said exactly what he’d wanted to hear.

“I always thought exactly the same thing! He’s truly an artifact of the 21st Century,” Nowell ranted, the conspiratorial smile never faltering. He leaned in closer: “What house were you?”

“D’antonine: the engineering dorms,” Robin droned.

“I was in Scalia,” Nowell countered, smirking. “A technical major, eh? Anyone ever tell you that was a bad idea?”

“Yes…” Fairweather hesitated, “Uh… shouldn’t we get back to the questions?”

Nowell scoffed and waved an arm in negation. “Oh there’s no need for that: those were just useless procedural requirements. You’re perfectly qualified for this position.”

Robin let out an enormous breath of relief. He got the job…

“Wait, um, Mr. Nowell, sir?”

“There’s no need to be so formal Fairweather,” the gaunt man reached across his touchpad and shook Robin’s hand. “Call me Simon.”

“Sure… Simon…” Robin fidgeted uncomfortably for a moment. “What responsibilities am I expected to uphold while in this… position?”

“Oh the usual: maintenance and operations of the recording equipment for our next expedition. If you do a good job, the Channel will consider renewing your contract for the following year...”

Camerawork. That was fine. Robin hadn’t expected anything prestigious, but he was nonetheless slightly disappointed. He had studied computer programming and maintenance of complex electrical systems for his entire college career, and the only vocation he could find was being a camera grunt for a television station. Still… it was much better than community service.

Simon was still rambling about the process of contract renewal in that reedy, unpleasant voice of his when Robin was struck by something he’d said earlier. He patiently waited for Nowell to finish his lecture on “acceptable applicant behavior” and cleared his throat.

“You said ‘expedition’ earlier,” he said. “What, exactly, did you mean by that?”

Nowell gave him a blank look. “You… You don’t know? Didn’t Ms. Stebbins in the lobby explain the nature of the opening?”

“She might’ve, but she wasn’t exactly civil abo—” Robin was cut off by the whisk of an automatic door and the soft thud of boots on the bottomless, plush carpet of the hallway behind him. A deep, jovial voice boomed from the doorway:

“Oi! Simon! We take care a’ Sage’s replacement ye—oh!”

Robin swiveled around slowly, aware of only one thing: a familiar, Australian accent. It couldn’t be. Not possible…

He finished his turn and recoiled internally. There stood six foot four inches of muscle, graying hair, and khakis topped with a rumpled, dun-colored hat that shaded a pair of piercing green eyes and a dazzlingly white smile. Robin was face-to-face with him.

The man.

The myth.

The legend.

A huge, sun-bronzed hand rose in the still air before the stunned man, and Robin quickly took it, calmly losing his grip on reality.

“Hello there,” the man said, “I’m Kaleb Burnow.”

Three: Sign of the Times

"May-Ma... why are you telling me this?" Jade Sparkle fidgeted before his elder, confused and a bit frightened. His grandmother had clearly gone mad. "This place you speak of... can't possibly be real... are... are you okay, Matriarch?"

Good things come to those who wait, my little pony. A strong, feminine voice, bleeding authority like mana from a foal, reverberated in the confines of young Sparkle's skull, and he winced briefly. Small magic overflow, there: grandma was getting impatient.

"I... yes, I know, but - "

All in good time, young foal. All will be clear soon.

"I've cantered twenty summers, May-Ma... Just, please just tell me why. Tell me why I need to know this... fairytale."

You must know... because one day they will return.

"Th-They?" Jade stuttered, squinting carefully at his semi-conscious grandmother. She rocked gently in her chair, muzzle a yawning, drooling cave. The ancient mare looked asleep--she would seem dead if not for the sound of dry, rattling breath in the morning stillness of House Sparkle--but she spoke clearly: a voice in his head, projected from the yellow glow of her wizened horn as her real voice had been lost long ago.

The humans, foal. Scrawny minotaurs from the heavens.

"And, this Robin? He was a human? What does he have to do with you? With anything?"

Everything, child. He has everything to do with me; and you. Now be silent: I must continue.

The white unicorn sighed, shifting on his hooves to get comfortable on the wooden floor. There was no other furniture in the room. It was a place to die: just for his grandmother.

It was made for her, but apparently Jade was allowed to visit.

Robin was a simple creature. Born on the day of his species’ lord to a drunkard and his homely wife, he was raised to be exactly what his society needed: a dirty, splintered rung in the ladder of progress. Unfortunately, his path allowed for him to accomplish something more, and for that he was punished.

His first mistake was finding ambition; his second, acting on it. In a culture where men of his skill set were unneeded, Robin was expected to flow with the great skewed and rusted chain of the masses: destined to be one with the great, hobbled swarm of the socially impoverished. His morality—as we understand the concept—was distorted by an insatiable lust for entertainment, and, when the time came, he was to become a part of that great, deadly diversion for the populace that still held some semblance of self-respect.

That was the path he avoided—the path of thousands before him—and his mistakes were my salvation.

Chapter Three

A peal of tinkling, feminine laughter smote the evening air.

“Stop it! *giggle* H-Hey! This is Jenna!—”

“—And this is Robin!—”

“—We can’t come to the phone right now, but if you leave your name and number—*giggle* Stop, Robin!—w-we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”

The voices stopped, and there was a long, toneless beep.

“Jen? Hey, it’s me…” The cold, metal phone headpiece felt wrong in his hands: like a piece of shrapnel embedded within soft, virgin flesh. A light breeze rolled down the alleyway behind the CAS building and Robin hunched further inside his jacket. “Listen, I, uh… I got a job. It’s with Station Three…”

Robin glanced down the length of the service-way toward the mouth of the alley and began fishing in his pockets. A rubbish car rumbled by, the compactor on board screeching with oxidation. Robin’s search became frantic. He checked both pants pockets, moving jerkily—grasping. His hand brushed against his breast and felt a familiar, smooth stiffness. A long, relieved breath escaped him.

Moving purposefully, Robin lifted the small flap on his jacket pocket and removed a small photo. He held it close, face up, running a finger over the glossy image of a pale, russet-haired girl.

“The pay’s decent, but I’ll be gone for awhile…” Fairweather winced. “A long while.”

She was smiling in that picture, eyes bright over rounded, cold-tinged cheeks. Something about that smile made Robin sick to his stomach—flashes of greasy black hair and glinting gold eyes flitted through his mind’s eye—but that wasn’t her fault. Many things were, but his unease wasn’t.

“Jenna, if you’re there please pick up. It would make this a lot easier.”

Robin remembered when he’d taken that picture: their second date. It was autumn. He had still been in school then and being in a relationship had felt natural, easy even. They’d gone to eat at Reyno’s on the edge of District Fourteen. Best Greek food in the city. He’d taken the photo with an old click-and-printer—on loan from his Epistemology class on assignment to document an instance provoking “thought”—outside the restaurant.

He’d told her he loved her that day. Now… well, now “love” wasn’t the issue he needed to address.

“My new boss gave me three days to get my 'tucker in order' and put my 'skivvies through the washtub' before then. He actually said that, can you believe it?” Robin chuckled giddily but then cut off, suddenly disgusted with himself. He forced himself to continue: “I’ll be leaving after that, but until then the Channel rep’ offered me a room here… unless I can find somewhere else to stay.”

She wasn’t this pale anymore. Robin ran a finger down the edge of the photograph, wincing at how it pressed into his skin. A man on the corner sold her some tanning pills a year ago. The damn things made her queasy and she’d thrown up once or twice—maybe more while Robin was out job searching—and he’d gotten scared. He asked her to quit taking them, but she refused.

It stopped a week later. Jenna said it was worth the color: that it made her feel good about herself. She regained the weight lost to sickness after a month, and lost most of the tan even sooner.

The man on the corner never came back to sell more. Robin had made sure of that.

“I’m planning on accepting their offer for tonight,” he murmured. “Please, if you want to talk, I’ll be here at five o’ clock tomorrow evening. I don’t want to end what we had on such a sour note…” Robin held his breath.

The line remained silent.

“Goodbye, Jen. Sweet dreams.” He hung the phone in its socket with a sigh. With one last look at the photo before pocketing it, Robin allowed himself a small, uncomfortable laugh.

She hadn’t changed the answering machine. That was something, at least.

Four: Flying Dutchman

Chapter 4

“This is your Exxy?”

The hangar was a cramped, oily affair. Faulty wiring and dim fluorescent lights cast a dull glow about the place. Several of the bulbs in the banks above were burned out; others flickered intermittently. Grease-blackened rags hung from hooks above a tool cabinet with rusty, yawning doors, and the whole room smelt like an inner-city chop shop. Robin felt suddenly claustrophobic, but not because of the hangar’s size—the interior was actually rather spacious. It was the ship, resting heavily on three massive steel treads, that dominated the room: restricting Robin and Nowell’s space and making the truly large space seem confined.

“Certainly is,” Simon beamed, his reedy voice echoing across the metal-plated hangar. “Best exfiltrator money can buy! Just stay here a minute while I go look up the new system passcode.” The gaunt man walked toward a small office, his smog-jacket fluttering in the stale air, and disappeared through a thin door. Robin was left alone.

A low, almost erotic, whisper of machinery thrummed in the stuffy storage space, and several lights flickered on across its massive, asymmetrical hull. Titanium panels, each wider than he was tall and pockmarked by re-entry burns, lay in piles around the massive vehicle’s treads. Robin could make out the bright yellow of vacuum insulation and massive tangles of wire through the holes the panels used to occupy.

“It looks like a wrecked pirate rig,” Robin murmured to himself, checking over his shoulder briefly for Nowell, disbelief heavy in his voice. “This is the famous ‘Sheila?’ Really?”

“That’s what the Channel has us call ‘er,” came a deep, rumbling voice from underneath the beaten vessel. Robin jumped, and a man of midnight complexion suddenly rolled from beneath the front-most tread upon a neon orange cart—how the massive vehicle had been lifted high enough for him to work down there was a mystery. Coming to an abrupt stop, the man rose to his feet. “But we prefer ‘Satan’s Gran’ma’.”

He was about an inch taller than Robin, his stained, yellow coverall contrasting heavily with charcoal skin stretched over firm muscle. Kind, rheumy eyes blinked slowly beneath a full head of cropped black hair streaked with fibers of butter-yellow insulation. The man looked strong enough to carry a wrench the size of Robin’s arm. Wiping a thin film of sweat from his brow with a pristine, white rag, the mechanic held a hand out for Robin to shake. “Name’s Samuel Ableman, but my friends call me ‘Abe.’” Samuel flashed him a dazzling ivory grin. “You must be the new cameraman… Fairweather, right?”

“Yeah,” Robin smiled nervously, taking his hand. The shake felt of grease and calluses: the weathered hand of a workingman. Fairweather liked him immediately. “Sorry… How old is she?”

“Made in forty-nine, same as me,” Abe chuckled, releasing Robin from his grip.

“An original?” Fairweather ran his eyes along the behemoth explorer’s hull. It surely looked worn enough to be a ’49 Exfiltrator. He turned back to Abe and raised an eyebrow. “I don’t believe you. You don’t look a day over fifty.”

Abe chuckled. “Flattery will get you everywhere, kid.” He cast a loving eye over the ship. “I’ve been flying with Mr. Burnow for thirty years now…” Turning back to Robin, he clapped him heartily on the shoulder. “She’s the sturdiest ship in the city. You got nothin’ to worry about.”

Someone cleared his throat behind the pair. Looking over his shoulder—still held firmly in Abe’s friendly grip—Robin found Nowell smirking evilly at them.

“Samuel,” he schmoozed, the words slithering off his tongue like a lazy snake. “Getting a bit friendly with the new hire are we?” Abe’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly before returning to their previous, exuberant state.

“Hello, Simon! God, it’s been almost a month!” he released Robin’s shoulder and strode toward the greasy Channel Rep, his thick, gray machinist boots clunking loudly on the steel floor. “How’s the wife?”

“Still divorcing me,” Nowell’s smile morphed into an annoyed frown, “same as last year.”

“You must really love Republic paperwork, Simey,” Abe pulled up in front of Nowell and roughly tousled his oily black hair. “What is this… the third time?” Simon scowled and pushed the mechanic away.

“At least I’ve been married, faggot,” the Channel man growled. “If Burnow didn’t insist I kept you I would’ve had you canned years ago.”

Abe tutted, wagging a finger in Simon’s direction: “Testy today, Nowell?” He crossed his arms and smiled. “You may want to be careful what you say around your elders.”

Robin never thought it possible that the gaunt ICU grad could get any whiter, but in that moment Simon Nowell paled. The Channel representative nervously searched the room, eyes flickering spastically as he slowly scanned the hangar. Ableman chuckled.

“Calm down, Simon. He’s still at the Channel Office, downloading this run’s research files.”

Nowell visibly relaxed, letting out a pent-up sigh and slumping at the shoulders. He glared at the still giggling mechanic and snorted, his thin face twisting in anger. “Fuck you, Sam. That wasn’t funny.”

Abe just laughed harder.

Fuming quietly, Nowell turned and stomped back into the small hangar office, slamming the door behind him. Slowly, Ableman’s laughter died down, and he cast a warm smile in Robin’s direction. “All right, you. Lets go take a look at your new station.”

He began walking around the front tread of the exfiltrator and Robin quickly followed, questions weighing him down as he ducked under a hanging clump of wires. “If you don’t mind me asking, what was that all about?” Samuel glanced over his shoulder and shrugged.

“Simon’s a bit of an ass, but you get used to him.”

“I meant why did he get so nervous after you mentioned his ‘elders?’” Robin felt like he should know the answer to this one, but the nagging feeling of knowing who Abe was talking about was offset by total inexperience with the other members of Sheila’s crew.

“Kaleb’s a stickler for language and mutual respect among crew members,” Abe snorted. “He’s a bit old fashioned that way: a real hard-ass, him.”

Robin nodded to himself. That made sense. Mr. Burnow had been rather curt with him yesterday after the interview: he didn’t seem like the kind of man who messed around, though his warm grin and fatherly personality spoke otherwise…

“Simey loves his job,” Abe continued as the two men approached a small console jutting from the exfiltrator’s titanium underbelly. “Traveling off-planet for months at a time gets him away from his ex-wives, alimony hearings, and empty flat.” The black mechanic reached up, tapping three evenly spaced red buttons and yanking downward on a thick, gray pump. “Mr. Burnow may, technically, be an employee, but he holds the most Channel stock out of any filmman.” Hydraulics squealed, and a section of the ship above split, lowered to the ground before them on gleaming silver struts until it was just a foot above the hangar floor. “Kaleb’s been around a long time, and Nowell knows not to get on his bad side if he wants to keep his position.”

The ramp floor creaked as the heavy man stepped upward, hydraulic supports sagging lower with the addition of his weight. He turned and gestured Fairweather aboard with a carefree smile and wave of his hand. Robin paused, looking at the platform skeptically for a moment, before stepping onto the Exxy-Trap Entryway. “Satan’s Grandma, huh?”

“Eh, she’s an old ship, but she’s a good one,” Abe said, caressing a corner-support fondly. “A little rough around the edges, but I wouldn’t trade ‘er for the world.”

“You sound like a pilot,” Robin chuckled, watching the mechanic work a small hand-crank, slowly raising the platform into the belly of the beast.

“I oughta,” Ableman winked, “I do fly this tub when the mood strikes me… around every six months or so.”

Robin’s eyes widened in realization: “You’re the Dutchman?!” A memory, old and worn but still surprisingly vivid, permeated his senses. He was sitting in the wicker chair his father made in a fit of usefulness one Monday morning, watching the television. “Kaleb’s Critters” was on, and the hunt had just ended.

“Shiela, we’ve bagged our last one. Take us home.”

“This is the Flying Dutchman, calling in. S’good to hear your voice, Mr. Burnow. I’ll be making a pass in five; just hold tight.” The camera panned to a low, grassy knoll, and a dull roar emanated from the television speakers. The hulking shape of an exfiltrator crested the horizon, the straining engines making the camera shake—“Steady there, Sage”—and the alien plants rustle and sway. “Terrestrial Body – 2466, 4:25 Universal Time: this is the Captain of the Exfiltrator, Sheila, on approach.”

“Got one last catch to load here, Dutchy. Then we're Earthbound.”

The memory faded, and Robin found himself rising into a dark room. Abe’s chuckling vibrated the air to his left, and as the platform rose to a halt, fluorescent lights began to flicker on. “Yeah, that’s me. Funny story, really. Kaleb started calling me that after my first run with the show.” They were in a holding area of sorts: steel bars criss-crossed the sturdy, stagnant room, and Robin noticed glaring red and yellow signs warning away the unwary from the electrified cages. Brown stains were seared into the steel plates of several cells—vibrant and fresh. “I was still a copilot then, and we had to make a water-landing to pick up one of Kaleb’s catches—a Sleppa Whale—when the original pilot, Dante, froze up.

“It was stormin’ pretty bad by the time we got there. Kaleb’s dinghy was tossing and turning all over the place, and Jonathan ‘Danger’ Dante just stopped steering.” Samuel set the crank into a locked position and stepped off the platform, moving past the charged cages and toward a more brightly lit corridor of the ship. “So I just put on the throttle an’ scooped the boat up in the exxy-trap like one a’ them water birds Kaleb goes on about. Killed the sleppa in the process—nearly cut the poor bastard in half—but it sure impressed Mr. Burnow. S’called me ‘Dutchy’ ever since.”

Their footsteps echoed lightly around them. Lights glared from metal sockets, and the hallway met another, wider corridor lined with numbered, metal doors. The hall ahead continued for another ten yards or so before ending in a large flex-glass portal that Robin assumed led to the cockpit. Unfortunately, it didn’t appear he would be seeing the inside quite yet, for Abe disregarded the transparent doorway, turning left onto the adjoining corridor. The new cameraman pushed his disappointment aside: he’d explore the antique ship in due time, so for now, he would be content to follow Abe.

“So are you from the Eastern Republics, then?” Robin asked, hoping to continue the conversation.

“Nah. I’ve never even visited.” They passed a door adorned with a strange decoration. Frayed and fuzz-covered, an animal hide stretched across the dull, grey surface, giving it a splash of color and covering the metal number tag. “The name comes from an old legend from when people still used rigged sailing vessels. It was about a pirate ship that sailed both the skies and the sea for plunder, transitioning between the two with a violent—and very wet—crash. Hence, the ‘Flying Dutchman’.”

“That’s… interesting?” Robin had never really paid attention during his history classes at the University. Trying to imagine what a sailing vessel looked like, he nearly ran into the mid-aged pilot where he stood in the center of the corridor. He had placed himself in front of a door—the same make as the others lining the passageway—labeled “25” in black etching upon a silver tag. Scratched next to the tag, probably with a knife or razor, was a name:

SAGE

“Here we are,” Abe said, eyeing the doorway with a sad, uncomfortable smile. “Your quarters.” He pressed the door-indent, and it slid into the wall. The pilot stepped through, and Robin, hesitantly, followed.

Fluorescent lights flickered—Robin was noticing a pattern here—and a half naked woman emerged from the darkness. A dark-skinned beauty, lounging against a column of red velvet leafed with gold. Auburn curls flowed down soft, bare shoulders like a waterfall, ending just above her shoulder blades. An actress, Robin recognized, from an old film. He couldn’t, for the life of him remember her name… something Spanish…

Whatever the case, she was wearing far too much clothing.

The poster, beautiful as it was, seemed out of place in the small berth. Ten by eight walls glowed dully with bits of crafted metal, film, and glossy photos of alien landscapes. The bed was a cramped affair, tucked into the corner of the room to Robin’s left: directly across from the erotic poster. A desk of sorts jutted from the eastern wall next to a set of clothes-lockers, topped with a small touchboard and a jar filled with an earthy, red substance. There was little clutter, but the new cameraman was surprised nonetheless… it was as if someone had been living there just yesterday.

“We never got around to moving out everything,” Abe sighed, “the lockers are empty except for a few tech manuals, so you’ll have plenty of room for your things.”

“Thank you,” Robin murmured, watching his guide carefully. The Dutchman suddenly looked very old, his eyes—bright and jovial not five minutes ago—were dull and listless, his ebony skin desiccated and aged. Fairweather wanted to help him, but feared overstepping his bounds. He’d just met the man, after all…

Abe ran a hand through his hair and sighed a second time, turning to leave the room. “Make yourself at home. When you’re finished you can meet Nowell outside.”

Fuck it.

“How did he die?” Robin asked quietly, avoiding the pilot’s eyes. He heard Samuel stop at the door.

Silence reigned for several, tense seconds, before Abe finally spoke:

“He left. Walked off in the middle of the night.”

Robin finally met the cheerless pilot’s eyes, looking inward, trying to understand—to help. “Why?”

“Dunno,” Abe grunted, giving Robin a pained smile. “Dumbass smiled and waved at the main recorder, then just walked into the Sularan Jungle. We searched for a three weeks: nothing.” He turned, slowly stepping through the doorway before giving Robin one last backward glance. “Look around, then you can meet Simey outside.” He smiled—genuine and kind under a pair of sorrowful eyes. “You’re a good kid. I gotta check in with my copilot, but feel free to hit me up later, all right?”

“Thanks, sir. I’ll do that.” Robin returned his smile best he could and the door slid shut, leaving him alone in the room of a dead man; dead but still here.

He stood up and wandered the room, fingering the odd, metal objects fixed to the walls and looking at each photo carefully: an orange beach lapped by waves of deep blue and dazzling white, a rocky mountain range stretching into the heavens among clouds of grey, avian creatures, and a man, alone and vacuum-sealed in a field of blinding, colorless snow beneath a blood-red sky.

Robin leaned forward, looking closer at the final photo. The vacuum suit visor was opaque, reflecting the crimson sky above and obscuring anything that could be defined as facial features. Was this Sage? Or someone else?

Suddenly, the lights went out and a metallic screech rent the hull, making the ship shudder and jilt violently for a few seconds.

“DEX! What the FUCK!” a faint voice yelled, presumably from the bowels of the exfiltrator.

“It wasn’t me! I swear!”

The arguing faded away into the ether, and Robin carefully tried to pick his way to the door. His foot caught on the edge of Sage the Dead Man’s small bed, and he felt gravity take hold. Stumbling, Robin landed on his back and braced himself with his arms, barely avoiding a head injury. He had closed his eyes during the fall—a reflex—and quickly opened them upon landing safely. What he found gave him pause, and the new cameraman just lay on the thinly-carpeted floor and stared.

Pinpoints of light hung in the darkness, scattered like rain in the moonlight.

Stars… the ceiling was covered in glowing, painted stars.

Five: Gambling on a Spaceship

Sage Marinetta was dead, but that in itself wasn’t much reason to mourn. Hundreds of thousands died every week in the contests—aired live for the pleasure of the raging, rabid public. Humans died, and no one cared. It was all part of the great vehicle of progress; of entertainment; of profit. Death is humanity’s greatest ally, and ethics, the cornerstone of the old world, were no longer relevant: no longer conducive to the interests of mankind.

Morality died, emaciated, old, and rattling on the frail, polluted winds of evolution.

Sage Marinetta committed suicide on a distant world: he applied for contest with himself.

If his crewmates didn’t care, then who would?

Chapter 5

Hell is paved with the opposite sex.

“She changed the fucking locks,” Robin growled, punching the rec room wall in frustration.

“Bud, women are cruel, heartless skags. Get used to it.”

“Lay off, Simey. Not everyone shares your perspective,” Abe scowled, tossing another few plastic rotobucks into the center of the table. A loud crash reverberated from somewhere else on the ship. “Dex! What are you up to back there!” There was another crash, followed by muffled cursing. Abe sighed and tossed in one more chip.

“I thought you of all people would agree with me,” Nowell sneered, meeting the pilot’s bet with a clatter of plastic. “Women aren’t exactly your thing, eh Dutchy?”

Abe glared, but said nothing. Robin hardly noticed the conversation, steeped in his own problems.

It had been two days since his fortuitous job interview: two nights spent in a guest room at the CAS compound, two mornings of cold, unanswered phone calls (*giggle* Stop, Robin!), two round trips to District Nine on foot, through the low, morning smog, and two failed attempts at getting into the small, yet well-kept flat he had once shared with a loving woman.

She was there. Robin knew she was there. Jenna wasn’t supposed to head to the shops at noon, and even then she usually didn’t leave until one. She was inside, hiding from him, ignoring his calls, chimes, and frantic knocking.

That bitch… why? Why was she doing this? Robin didn’t understand anymore. He just wanted a change of clothing… and maybe to talk. Leaving for three months without any kind of contact beforehand would spell the end—the real end—of their relationship.

Something ugly wormed its way into his stomach, squirming and heavy.

Jenna was always so patient, but three months of nothing? Robin would never see her again.

“Sometimes I wonder if he’s been stimming it,” Abe grumped, pulling the stack of rotocurrency that once sat innocently in the pot back to his side of the table. “I mean, its not really my business, but I can’t have my sister’s kid hopped up on chems off-world: she’d kill me if he bought it out there.”

“Why you keep him on as a copilot eludes me, Ableman,” Nowell groaned, eyeing the moving chips petulantly. “You don’t owe your sister a damn thing, and he’s completely useless. Did he even go to the Trade Academy?”

A bulb in the light bank above popped, showering the card-table with bits of fiberglass before the room plunged into darkness. After a moment of silence, Simon, with obvious condescension, spoke again:

“I think I proved my point.”

“God Dammit, Dex!” Abe shouted. Robin heard a crunch of glass and a grunt, followed by the heavy sound of footsteps moving toward the rec-room door. His eyes adjusted; just in time to see the pneumatic gate slide open and Samuel stomp out, worn fists clenched menacingly at his sides.

DuWain Dexton III—“Dex”—was Shiela’s copilot and Samuel Ableman’s nephew. Robin had yet to meet him, not because he was avoiding the meeting, but because the twenty-year-old trade student had been waist deep in titanium paneling, fuel pipes, and yellow vacuum insulation since yesterday. According to Abe, the man was convinced there was something clogging the fuel lines near the ship’s aft that was affecting thrust capacity or something like that.

Unfortunately, half those lines fed into the main power converter—hence the flickering lights.

“The hell is the point of my job if I can’t fire anyone?” Nowell groused in the dark. Robin guessed the frustrated representative was talking to him, but didn’t answer.

He thought about Jenna.

“Get out, Robin. Just get out.”

He got out, and now she won’t let him back in. Robin tried not to let his imagination wander—his clothing sold in Alley-West, old electrical parts pawned off in District Eleven, and bank account sucked dry to buy tanning supplements—but his mind betrayed him. Everyone was betraying him lately…

The lights came back on, beating back the darkness into scattered, oily shadows. A pool table, a bank of computers, a bar, polished to a mirror-like shine, and a basketball hoop jutting dangerously above the stairwell to the lower decks emerged to the low drone of Nowell’s complaints, completing the illusion that everything was okay; that everything was as it should be.

But it wasn’t. It fucking wasn’t okay.

“You’re not even listening to me, are you?” Simon huffed, clearly irritated. Robin kept silent. He stared at the pool table from his position at the bar, following the creases and imperfections in the felt surface with his eyes. The sound of playing cards slapping and rubbing and mingling together drifted over. “Well screw you too, Newbie.”

Plastic shifted across metal, cards were dealt, and heavy footsteps heralded the return of the second gambler. Rising from the lower decks, Abe passed under the basketball hoop, arms hanging limp at his sides. He crossed the room slowly—a wraith in steel-toe boots—and slumped at the card table with a weighty sigh.

“Dumbass electrocute himself yet?” Simon sneered, doling out two cards to each of them—one face down, the other laid bare for all to see. He was the dealer now. They had been switching. Fair. Nowell was unpleasant, but fair: every crewmember was just in his own way. Not like Jenna…

“Twenty-One?” Samuel sighed, “What happened to poker?”

“You’re winning, that’s what.”

“Fine.”

Both men took a moment to glance at their cards and place their initial bets. Robin watched, waited, but didn’t participate. He had nothing to gamble with anyway.

“You never answered my question,” Nowell muttered, dealing himself another card: a two of spades atop his seven of the same. A thin smirk twitched at the corners of his mouth and he threw another ten rotobucks into the center of the table.

“He’s fine… just nearly irradiated himself is all,” Abe grunted. “Hit me.” Another card joined his six—an eight of hearts. The pilot paused, checking his bottom card one last time, before pushing half his stack of coins into the center. He leaned back, frustration at his nephew melting from his complexion. Stone faced, yet casual, he spoke once more: “Why don’t you head down there and help him, Robin? You’re an electronics man, right?”

That actually sounded great to the young wire-bug: he would do anything to distract himself from his estranged housemate back in Old Metro. Robin slipped off the stool and quickly made for the pneumatic doors. He was through the threshold when an indignant squawk from Simon froze him in his tracks.

“Hold it, Fairweather. E-engineering isn’t in your contract: just camerawork. Get back in here.”

Heartbroken, Robin marched back in, and as he made his way back to his seat at the bar he listened as Samuel defended him.

“Oh give him a break, Simey. Can’t you see he doesn’t want to just sit around?” the pilot said, glaring at the other crewmember before casting Robin an apologetic smile.

“Channel insurance doesn’t cover electrical injury to those not specifically entitled to an engineer’s position,” Nowell droned, turning his attention back to gambling as he met Samuel’s bet. The spindly man slid every rotobuck to his name into the pot, seemingly without a second thought. “He zaps himself and damages Channel property without proper vehicle insurance and it’ll be MY head, Ableman. You know that.”

There was silence for a moment as the two men stared at each other, and, finally, Samuel let out a long sigh. “You’re an asshole, Simon.”

The pale channel rep just shrugged. “It’s in my job description. Now are you gonna play or not?”

Abe gave one last look in Robin’s direction, and shrugged—What can ya do? He settled back into his seat at the table and tapped his fingers on the two cards that lay face-up. “I’m good to show, if that’s the end of it.”

Simon nodded, smiling, and drew one more card from the pile. Plastic snapped and fluttered, revealing the four of diamonds. The representative looked down, smile faltering. “Uh… final bets?”

Deep, base laughter rolled throughout the rec room. “You haven’t got a cent left, Nowell. Just flip ‘em.” Abe turned over his bottom card: another eight. “Twenty.” The pilot smiled smugly and leaned back, planting his heels on the corner of the table with a small chuckle of victory. “Been waiting to gamble with you again for over a month, Simey. I hear we’re goin’ somewhere temperate this trip and I need a new bathing suit.”

“Twenty-One,” Simon sniggered, dragging the contents of the pot toward his side of the table. Samuel shot up, searching the table in disbelief for Simon’s cards.

“Two, nine, thirteen… twenty-one…” the pilot deflated, snorting in annoyance. “Motherfu—”

Expletive half-completed, a sharp whine of static feedback drowned out his distaste in Simon’s victory.

The ship’s intercom clicked, and out poured the heavily-accented voice of the most senior crewmember:

“Boys, this is Burnow on the line,”—who else?—“Stop sittin’ around an’ meet me in ‘Processing’. The science package just came in.” Robin stood up, but the announcement had yet to end. The soft sound of a pneumatic door sliding open heralded the arrival of another voice on the line.

“I’m *wheeze* here, hah… I’m here Mr. Burnow *gasp* what… where is it?” a young voice rasped, out of breath. The electronic speakers gave it a sort of keening, pleading inflection, preventing any real recognition of who it was.

“Dexton? Blazes is wrong with you, boy? Stop drippin’ coolant on the security systems!”

“Sh—oh shit—Shit, sorry Boss.”

“And don’t curse,” Burnow growled, the intercom reverberating with his annoyance. The system cut out—another eardrum searing whine—and the rec room dropped into silence.

It didn’t last long.

“Idiot,” Nowell chuckled, as he went back to collecting his winnings. “Didn’t you warn him about that?”

“He’s just excited, Simon,” Abe sighed, running a hand across his face in exasperation. “It’s his first trip out and he’s excited.”

Robin could relate, honestly. This was a dream come true—aside from the whole “girlfriend stole his livelihood” thing…

“Fuck, man, we have too many greenhorns on this trip! I say we get rid of your fuckup nephew and keep Fairweather, here.” The Channel rep cocked a thumb over his shoulder at him, and Robin smiled nervously, glancing between Simon and Dexton’s uncle. He didn’t want to be the center of this conversation: not at all. “He’s quiet, and doesn’t break things. I like that in a cameraman.” Nowell paused, turning around and giving the fidgeting man a critical look. “Sage was too damn peppy all the time, at least until Sulara.”

“Leave Sage out of this,” Abe growled, taking a step toward his wraithlike crewmate. “Burnow says we take them, so we take them, and that’s final.”

“Oh please don’t let there be a fight,” Robin prayed to himself. “Not now. Not because of me…”

“I know that, Dutchy,” Simon sneered, “I’m simply making an observation.” He slung a small bag from his belt and dumped the pile of rotobucks he’d won inside, drawing it closed with a black, nylon string. Gingerly, the sack of money slipped into a pocket on the inside of his billowing smog jacket, and he strode toward the door. Looking back, he spoke one more time: “Mustn’t keep the Boss waiting, eh? See you upstairs.”

Robin watched Ableman carefully, staying where he was. The seething pilot clenched his fists, grimacing angrily after the quickly striding Nowell, and ground his teeth.

“Come on, Fairweather,” he snorted, shaking his head once; twice; thrice. His expression softened, and his body relaxed. Eyes closed, he smiled sadly. “Like he said: ‘We mustn’t keep the Boss waiting.”

Together, they left.

“The hunter awaits.”

Seven: Cat-Burgers in Heaven

Chapter 7

Paradise.

They were going to Paradise.

Gigantic computer screens wallpapered Sheila’s Processing and Shipboard Homeostasis Chamber, displaying photos of yawning mountain vistas, fertile meadows, sandy beaches and dense forests. Huge, reptavian creatures, frozen mid-flap in an aerial ballet, flocked among the wispy cirrus of a cobalt, alien sky. Absolutely beautiful…

“We’ve ‘ad probes seeding the atmosphere for nearly a year now, collectin’ data, photos—the usual drill. Our science boys down in Research had a field day with this stuff when they finally got it in last month.” Kaleb Burnow, lord and master of the hunt, stood silhouetted in natural beauty: a mountain among his extended family. He turned to the rest of his crew, eyeing everyone—especially Robin—with excitement. The camera angle on a snowy vista behind him changed, panning down rocky hillocks into a deep gully: an inhabited gully.

Squalid hutches of mud, rock, and weaved, gray plant life lined the edges of the depression along a rocky stream. Morning light spilled over the eastern edge of the gully wall, flowing among the stout structures to collect in the center, reflecting off a grinding and slashing knife of running water, cutting down deep through the middle of the primitive settlement. The only movement was that of running water and motes of floating dust, and Robin wondered briefly if the place had been abandoned.

Kaleb’s thick, eager intonation quickly pulled the new cameraman’s attention away from the screen and back to the “preliminary science briefing” as Abe called it. The crewmembers met with the Channel Research team on a rotation according to trip, and apparently it was Mr. Burnow’s turn, so Robin tried to give him his full attention.

“There’s a radiation field around the whole planet, so I hope you boys are up to date on rad-vacs, and the whole thing’s on an eighteen hour rotation, giving us the perfect opportunity for some night hunting.”

“Great,” Dexton grumbled to himself. Scratching behind his left ear, he gave Robin a quizzical, bordering on pleading, look. “Hey, Fairweather? You been to the clinic lately?”

“I told you to get yourself checked up weeks ago, Dex,” Abe growled, casting an apologetic glance toward Kaleb before turning the full force of his glare upon his unfortunate nephew, “and don’t interrupt.”

Dexton chuckled sheepishly, rubbing a thin shoulder. “Sorry…”

The copilot of Satan’s Grandma was small, nearly a head shorter than Robin, but what he lacked in size, he made up for in personality. Dexton had chatted excitedly since they’d arrived, only stopping to rub a hand over his uneven buzz-cut or cry “tits” in frustration or enthusiasm or… well whatever reason someone would growl the word “tits”. His uncle had to give him a swift kick in the calf so Kaleb could give his report, and he’d been generally well-behaved since. The boy was of average build, and his skin was a shade lighter than Samuel’s under a dirty, red mechanic’s jumpsuit. Thin lips twitching, he looked briefly to Robin for help, maroon eyes pleading silently.

Fairweather didn’t know what to do. He’d just met the kid and had no idea what he wanted from him, so he just gave him a quiet nod. Dexton lit up, and, smiling, turned back to Kaleb’s presentation.

“… four dominant species that we can identify: all generally quadrupedal in build, and, because of this, they vary greatly in size. We’ll have more time to focus on non-sentients on the trip out, but I want to get you all up to speed on our primitives before we get going.”

Burnow hunched, sliding into a seat at one of the terminals. Pressing a few buttons, the main viewscreen—a large LCD rig that was settled in the center of several smaller liquid monitors—flashed once, twice, three times, before resolving into a recording of a reddish cliff-side. A snow-spattered ledge had been carved into the rock, laced with caves at seemingly random intervals. A few of the cave mouths appeared to be covered with mats of vegetation or animal skins, while others remained empty, yawning and whistling in the winter wind.

“TB-1128 has one major land mass—not quite 'Pangaea' quality, but definitely large—surrounded by islands ranging in size between tha’ of the Irish Collective and Old Austrahlia.” Kaleb paused, taking a moment to gesture toward the main screen, and the snowy mountainside within. “These cliffs are located in the center of the northern-most island. Watch the cave to the far left.”

Left-most? Robin focused on the cave furthest to the left, a bare hole carved out of the cliff. No decoration: did something really live there? It seemed pretty empty to him…

Nothing happened for several seconds, and Dexton got impatient.

“Boss, what exactly are we—oh! What the fuck?”

Robin, who had glanced at the complaining copilot, quickly turned back to the screen. Red maser-fire filled the monitor, soundlessly scorching the cliff-face for nearly a full minute. Eventually the attack ended, burnt door-hides fluttering in the wind, and the mountainside was empty once more. The probe had been firing at something, but what? And why?

“Language, Dex.” Abe growled. Turning to Kaleb, he asked the question that Robin was afraid to. “Could’ja bring that up again? I didn’t catch what happened.”

“T'was just the probe’s self-preservation programming kicking in,” Kaleb explained, rewinding the recording. “Protecting the investment is priority two, here.” Static gave way to the mountainside, wailing wind carrying flurries of snow among the caves. Robin concentrated on the left-hand side of the monitor, waiting.

Suddenly, the cliff moved.

Red fur and white feathers leapt forward into the open air, a swinging flurry of naturally camouflaged limbs that froze in mid-air at the touch of a button, a long shaft of material tipped with a shining, metal point stopped several yards from the camera. Its path had been clear: a direct assault on the Planet-Hopper.

“That, there,” Kaleb began, pointing to the blurry mass frozen on-screen, “was a semi-intelligent life form: one of four suspected primitive species on 1128.”

“Can you enhance the image?” Nowell asked, squinting through a pair of old-fashioned glass spectacles he seemed to produce out of nowhere. “I need something to give Marketing for the bi-monthly promotion change.”

“Sorry, Simon,” Kaleb chuckled. “The blightah moved too fast, and the probe went and blasted ev’rything in the canyon. A shame… would’ve made a good shot for this month’s promo, you’re right. If you still want a picture, Probe Seven took a couple stock photos of another, live group, or you can have a corpse analysis picture from this one.” The screen changed, depicting what Robin assumed was the dim interior of one of the creatures’ dwellings. Several shapes lay on the dirt floor, steaming in the winter air—whether from the cold or having been half-cooked by maser-fire the cameraman was unsure.

Another change, zooming in on a sharp, cracked beak-like muzzle, and deep, yellow, pupil-less eyes. Blackened and melted brown fur extended in clumps across the creature’s body, topped with a layer of snow-white feathers from the barrel up. The camera turned, revealing a set of lengthy, majestic wings at the beast’s sides, still twitching jerkily above two sets of limbs: a pair of scaly, clawed appendages extending from its feathered chest and two muscular, furred hind-legs below a feline tail.

It looked like a cross between a cougar and an eagle... and it was really damn familiar.

Nowell grunted and considered for a moment, adjusting his glasses—Robin tried to remember if he’d seen him wear them before—and running a thin hand through his long, greasy locks. “Mmmmm’corpses sell. Send me the analysis and I’ll get it out to Daniels tonight. If you have any other good shots I could use those, too.”

“Sure thing, Simey,” the Australian mountain rumbled—an avalanche with an accent—before typing another command. The screen went dark for a moment, before reawakening to a rather similar scene, but with much less cooked eagle creatures. The recording centered on a small pack of the strange, combined beasts hovering in a tight circle around a smoking mountain bush. They hovered around, circling the burning plant, passing in and out of a stream of billowing smoke.

“Interesting little tidbit, here,” Kaleb continued, “According to Doc Sisson, these things never touch the ground when they can help it: just float around in the clouds near the mountain peaks their entire lives on those wings of theirs. Apparently the group our probe destroyed was a family of exiles 'r a trading caravan of sorts."

At age seven, Robin saw a B.E. sprite—perhaps an ancestor of the canister of sprites Kaleb's team retrieved many years ago—at the New Metro Zoo on a school trip. The creatures on screen reminded him of the tiny iridescent aviators, resting peacefully on the clouds of sulfur vapor in its enclosure one moment; darting quickly in a burning, liquid dance the next. Rippling in their immense power, the beasts' wings beat in time, continuing their eternal battle against gravity as they stalked their flaming focal point like furry vultures.

“What’s up with the smoke?” Dexton queried, closing in on the monitor to get a better look: watching the screen with equal parts amazement and disgust as the odd creatures flew round and round. “They—uh—They dancing? Like a ritual or something?”

Burnow smiled, clapping the young copilot on the back with a brief, barking laugh.

Dex flinched, but was soon smiling goofily at the hunter’s kind attention. Was Robin jealous? No…

“Good question, boy, a proper question. I knew you were a good hire the moment your uncle brought you in.”

… a little.

“The newer ’77 Planet-Hoppers have their own little chemistry analyzers,” Burnow explained, commanding a pop-up from the electronic ether in the bottom corner of the main screen. Colored spheres grew and bubbled outward—a molecular model of sorts, one that Robin couldn’t even begin to understand—and slowly rotated around a central axis. “It took a sample of the cellulose of the plant the 'Gryphons'—research team’s been calling them that straight out of an old Mythos book—are flying around, and came up positive for THC and plenty of other chemicals: relaxants, hallucinogens, you name it.”

“So they’re doping?” Nowell quirked an eyebrow, smirking at the circling, spinning, inhaling aliens. “They’re more civilized than they look.”

“Basically, yes,” Kaleb conceded. “But let’s move on.” The screen split in four, one remaining focused on the “Gryphons,” while the others quickly displayed far different scenes.

Gryphons. Oh wow it was a pack of Gryphons... that was so... coincidental? Groundbreaking? Looking around the room, noticing similar looks of mildly surprised recognition on the faces of his fellow crew members—and Nowell's near-orgasmic grin—Robin realized the true implications of this discovery: Channel ratings would go through the roof for this.

This could push their station—Robin's new home, really—ahead of the other entertainment guilds. Lord they would be rich...

Kaleb either didn't realize or didn't care about the source of his crew's excitement, simply turning their attention to the four screens with a wave of his arm and a huff. Robin quickly scanned the panes in Sheila's virtual window:

Top left: a rocky sea-shore, illuminated by a gigantic, setting sun and an enormous bonfire. Five small, bipedal creatures galloped around the blaze, dancing through the sand and surf, watched by a much larger, meatier primitive with a pair of curvaceous, wicked horns atop its massive head.

Bottom right: a familiar clutch of huts lining a sunlit river. A raft—or rather, a ferry of sorts—drifted across the rushing waterway, pulled by two impossibly thin creatures of deep ebony. Lithe and antelope-like, they pulled themselves along on a rope of woven plant fibers to the riverbank: two stretched, black voids in a world of obscene color. The only break in their unsettlingly uniform bodies were their eyes: pupil-less, like the gryphons', and white. Four each, their insane contrast made Robin blink back tears of irritation. They were difficult to track, like a distorted image in the corner of one’s eye.

Robin wondered if that was why he hadn’t seen them in the earlier recording of that same valley.

Bottom left: static. Kaleb fiddled with the keyboard, muttering angrily. He punched in a refresher code—nothing—a beta override sequence—still nothing—and finally, with an annoyed snort, he stood up to kick the console.

The casing dented inward, and the screen cleared to reveal a grassy meadow bordered by an expansive lake.

“Granny’s getting’ spotty…” Kaleb groaned, adjusting the focus on the corner screen. Makeshift rafts were defined, contrasting against the calm, blue waterfront. “Fairweather, I want you to take a look at the wiring here once we’re under way: can’t have the monitoring systems on the fritz on the jaunt tomorrow night.”

Robin started, turning away from the new picture to find Burnow giving him an appraising look. “Uh… yes?” Kaleb raised an eyebrow and Robin blanched, imagining his employment disappearing right before his eyes. “I mean—uh!—yes! Y-Yes, sir!” The big man stared him down another second, ice-chip eyes traveling right through him. Robin couldn’t help but notice the hunter had grown out his hair: a bright white swatch of fuzz covering what was once bare skin—usually hidden beneath the folds of his trademark hat. Now he was hatless and smiling in amusement, canines glittering in the fluorescent light.

“Relax, kid. Just fix the thing, aight?”

Nowell raised his hand to speak, and Robin suddenly feared further boredom at the Channel Rep’s greasy, bureaucratic hands, but the hand quickly lowered before Kaleb took notice. Simon sighed quietly, and Robin was relieved. It seemed that “Simey” would rather brave mountains of potential insurance paperwork over the Everest of “Kaleb’s Critters,” Mr. Burnow.

“Okay Mr. Burnow. I’ll take a look before tomorrow night.”

“Good, good,” Kaleb nodded. “Now, as you can see, these ‘marks’ show signs of sentience, meaning they will be the focus of our second month of filming—so take a good look, Fairweather—and will be our most challenging game…”

Robin was engrossed in the shaggy, upright creatures in the top left of the screen. The smaller ones had become sluggish as the sun dipped below the horizon. They were digging into the sand, closer to the fire, and Robin was able to make out more than just silhouettes and Kaleb was droning and… and someone was tapping him on the shoulder.

The cameraman glanced right, catching Dexton giving him a sly smile. The fuel-greased copilot winked and gave him a thumbs up, thoroughly confusing the poor cameraman. Unsure of how to respond, Robin simply nodded, smiling stiffly, and tried to pay attention. He needed to know what he would be filming, no matter how boring or technical.

Compared to the things he’d seen on the show as a kid, these ‘marks’ seemed rather mundane.

“… think doing a live dissection of the ‘Void Antelope’ would be a good way to finish up the trip, seeing as they’re by far the most impossible-lookin’. The only settlement of ‘em we could find was this one here, so we’ll leave the probe as a markah and make that our last stop.

“The ‘Minotaur’ is going to be our most challenging primitive mark, just due to size alone. I know it’s hard to tell on camera, but it is easily the mass of an Great Angolan Elephant—and their horns'll spear you clean through, too, can’t forget that…

“Anyway, it still shouldn’t pose much of a threat if we do it right. The ‘mark’ I’m most anxious about’ll be these little guys.” A meaty finger tapped the screen that had been static only a minute ago. The picture had zoomed in on the raft in the middle of the lake, revealing three small quadrupeds, sitting back on their haunches at opposite edges of the raft and staring into the still water. Robin was surprised: they were the only ones wearing what resembled clothing.

Vibrant and colorful, they had small, cat-like heads that seemed frozen in place upon their shoulders; single, spiraled protrusions jutting from their brows. Ratty, burlap-esque clothing clung to their thinly-furred bodies, very poorly covering the small creatures' heads, horse-like tails, and various appendages. Short limbs ended in blunt stubs, and their eyes! They were enormous: bright irises and deep, expressive pupils taking up almost half of the primitives' diminutive heads. The only change in their flawless hides—besides their shaggy, impossibly colored manes rustling in the breeze, they looked artificial, like metal-plated trophies—were images, like tattoos, covering the area just above their hind limbs.

Robin considered himself no longer capable of surprise after what he'd seen that day, but he was wrong. Why?

Because he was looking at a bunch of god-damned unicorns.

They were small—colored like a box of glow-oil children's markers—but they were unicorn's nonetheless. Unbelievable.

The phallic appendage atop the closest unicorn's head glowed blue, and the water stirred. A squirming, writhing, prehistoric fish—"No fucking way..."—lifted into the dry air, thrashing about with its broad tail. It was flying against its will… right toward the creatures on the raft. Robin watched as the flailing impossibility slipped quickly out of sight: wormed into a stout basket at the center of the raft with a brief flash of silver and brown. The glow surrounding the statuesque creature disappeared, and soon the lake was still once more.

“What did we just see?” Abe asked, voice quiet; contemplative.

“That,” Kaleb answered, tapping the trio of creatures on the screen one at a time, “was magic.”

“Bullsh—crrrap… Bullcrap.”

“Nice try, Dexton,” the hunter growled, “I’ve been around since this place was still called Rhode Island, and I’ve never had the need for profanity, so keep your mouth clean, pup.” Robin’s coworker deflated, rubbing his arm sheepishly, until Kaleb spoke again: “But… you’re technically right. It isn’t really ‘magic’ per se.”

“Psychokinesis?” Robin suggested, remembering an old pleasure book he’d read at the University—drugs giving people “psychic” powers.

“Yeah, like from the old raid-lite commercials!” Dexton piped, quickly recovered from his previous reprimand, much to his Uncle’s visible chagrin. He cleared his throat: “This is your brain. This is your brain with the power of raid!”

“Possibly,” Kaleb conceded, “but unlikely. Prof. Reichland thinks it has something to do with the radiation field ‘round the planet. We’re bringing him one—alive—for study in the city center waste storage bungalow, along with a sample of fish and several other small animals: the parallels in evolution interested our Research Head quite a bit, and he believes we can supplement our oceans and preserves with a few 'a them. There're two other variations of the 'unicorns' we've got here: one with just wings and another with neither wings nor rad-manipulators—like small, rainbow ponies—but Reichland only wants a horned one.”

“We don’t usually do ‘alive’ very well, Boss.”

“An’ whose fault is that, Dutchy?” Kaleb teased, swinging around in his seat to face his pilot. “Certainly not mine! The restraints were your job last trip, if I remember correctly.” He was referencing something Robin was unfamiliar with, but he assumed it had something to do with the odd stains he’d seen on the floor of the holding bay. “We’re takin’ them at a distance so’s to be out of range of their manipulation. Surprise is on our side, boys. Don’t fret.” Kaleb stood and began pacing the room, stopping in front of each of them in turn. “Since this is a Class VI terrestrial body, we’ll have to take extra care not to leave anything behind: no plastic wrap, clothing, tools. We’re also, as usual, going to steer clear of any and all major population centers.” The screen flashed, revealing a great stone fortress at the foot of a steep, jagged mountain range. Small hamlets stretched outward like District Rings from the central structure, petering out at the edges of the valley.

“Quaint,” Nowell snorted, cleaning his fingernails with a razorblade he kept in the seam of his smog-jacket.

“You could say that,” Abe mused. “Looks more ‘feudal’ to me.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Kaleb cut back in. “We’re stayin’ away from them, so no sightseeing.” One by one, the screens flickered into nothing, and Robin watched the beautiful valleys and majestic peaks disappear with a heavy heart. “We’ll finish briefing with the video Prof-Zock put together when we’re in orbit on Sunday. You boys have the rest of the afternoon to yourselves: get drunk, visit the clinic, say goodbye to your wives, whatever… because tomorrow we’re loading and leaving.” Ableman eyed Simon critically at the mention of “wives,” and the gaunt representative, checking to make sure Kaleb wasn’t watching, flipped him off and sneered. “What’re you all waiting for? Get off’a my ship!”

Technically, it was the Channel’s, but apparently no one felt like correcting him.

Dexton fled first, Abe following closely behind, and Robin and Simon trailed out together—not by any conscious choice on Fairweather’s part: he merely wanted to stay in the same room as the greatest hunter who ever lived as long as possible. As they left, Simon sidled closer to him and slipped a small, leather pouch into his hands. Plastic rotobucks clicked and rustled inside, and Robin looked at his unpleasant superior with undisguised astonishment.

Nowell scowled at him.

“For your lady friend. Believe me, kid: money’s all they care about. ‘Sides, that’s not mine anyway,” Nowell slid his pale hands into the pockets of his smog jacket and slowly waltzed away down to the lower decks. “It’s Abe’s.” Snickering and snorting, greasy hair flopping in the stale, recycled air, Simon disappeared, leaving Robin by himself with a sack of money.

Looking down, Robin wrestled the small zippered pouch open, revealing nearly a hundred “black stackers”.

Cue the moment of disbelief, aaand done…

“What? Wha…What?! I could buy an entire District with this! Ohmygod I’m going to put this in the ban—no not the bank—under my mattress?—no, no I need to spend this—I need boots and a smog-jacket—scratch that, no smog on 1128—I need a parka, swimsuit, maybe some slacks, UV-con, an auto-focus lens—does the mag-cam already have one?—wait, then what about Jenna?—should I leave her some?—I can’t even get inside—fuck her—but she might take me back—no, it won’t be worth it just keep the money—but Nowell gave it to me to—FUCK her and keep it!—I… I… shit… this is Abe’s money—did Nowell cheat to get this?—nah, he wouldn’t do that, would he?—I’m not giving it back—then should I leave it with Jenna?—bad fucking idea—What do I do?!”

Conflicted, Robin put the pouch in the ripped lining of his corduroy and slowly made his way out of the ship.

Down the stairs. Left through the rec-room. Right into the bunk halls. Past the cockpit—Abe inside flipping switches—“Get some rest Fairweather.”—“Yes, sir.” Through the main umbilical to the holding cells. Lowered into the hangar on the platform with a dull thump.

Dust billowed from the cement floor, obscuring the light of the afternoon sun through the open bay doors. Airman’s Field lay in the distance, grass brown and white and black from radiation leakages and magnetic damage. Robin smelled something burning.

“Hey, Fairweather!”

Leaning on the edge of the gaping bay doors, waiting—impatiently, of course—was Duwain Dexton III.

“Got plans?”

Eight: Last Night on Earth

They knew us before we knew them. Machines from the heavens watched us—all of us—for months. The hunter knew everything: our townships, our conflicts, our pain and our power. The knowledge was passed between them during their long journey, and soon all knew. To protect the perverse interests of their society. To protect themselves. To enjoy themselves.

They knew because they watched—listened.

Robin knew us, and they were coming.

Chapter 8

“Fuckin’ horses, can you believe it?”

“No Dexton, I can’t.”

“I mean I’ve seen some weird shit in my day, but this is just s’rreal, y’know?”

“Yeah…”

“I jus’… dude, y’know?”

“Yeah… I know.”

It was midnight, but the sun never set on the New Metro Skyline. Gaseous spheres of energy orbited the towering spires of the outer city, weaving around each other in intricate patterns of red and yellow and green. Neon magboards traveled the skyways, advertising contest on several of the smaller stations, “hard” drinks, and aphrodisiacs from across the solar system. The city shone with the light of progress, and, right then, Robin didn’t really care.

It was his third time in New Metro at night, and the novelty had worn off.

“I am shoooo ready to get out there!” Dexton slurred from his stool, swigging on a mug of BluBalls’, “Aren’t you?”

Robin looked out the glare-streaked picture window of the Sky Tumbler, an 82nd floor bar in the Ministry of Private Entertainment, searching past the bleeding lights and ads for the great black void of Old Metro. It wasn’t hard to find it: an enormous, lightless hole in the world running from District Twenty to the Central Waste Station. The mountain of garbage, pesticides, radiation, and rotting flesh disappeared into the thick smog of the Inner City—a cloud that never rained on the richer, outer districts—and Robin imagined briefly that he could see its peak before scanning the dark districts radiating from the mountain’s reeking, compacted base.

Somewhere in the darkness, Jenna slept.

“Robby? Bud, you list’nin’?”

“Yeah, Dex. I’m listening.”

“Well are ya ready ‘r what?”

“Yes. Yes I think I want to get as far away from here as I can, if just for a little while.”

A magboard floated past the Tumbler’s window—“BluBalls’: like a kick to the scrotum!”—briefly blocking out the sprawling panorama below.

“Tha’s what I’m talking about!” Dexton gurgled, rubbing his crotch with a pained expression. “Gonna be fucking sweet, man.”

“Sweet,” Robin echoed, smiling softly. “Sweet…”

The bartender swung by, cleaning a glass. “You boys had enough?”

“Nah, nah keep it—cum-heh—coming.”

“Dex, it’s late. We should get back to the Exxy,” Fairweather urged in an absent-minded sort of way, still looking out the window. They did have an early day tomorrow.

“C’mon Robby! Jus’ one more!”

Robin snorted. Seven hours with Dex and he’d graduated from “Fairweather” to “Robby.” That had to be some sort of record. The cameraman smiled wider, recalling how he’d spent his day since the science briefing.

After Dexton met him in the hangar he insisted they both go to New Metro Clinic—the one on the fashionable side of the outer city—because it “gave him the chills” when he went by himself. Robin, still trying to figure out what to do with his small fortune, agreed to accompany him.

Soon, he was waiting in the cleanest room he’d ever seen. White, plastic walls glowed with fluorescent light, bathing the entire clinic in soft glow. No posters adorned the walls; no protruding furniture clumped together past the reception area. The halls were blank, white tunnels—soothing pathways into the healthy womb of the building. He sat, naked except for a hospital gown, on a Ray-bed, waiting for a medical technician to give him his Radiad injection. Dexton had been placed in the room adjacent. Robin remembered hearing him complain about the temperature.

The doctor entered—nameplate: Errikson—and there was a pinch in his stomach. The needle was long, but Robin had had a back-alley radiation treatment before. Needles couldn’t ever scare him again after having a glorified medical rapier stuck in his belly-button. A short sting and a rush of warm nausea later, Robin was handed a pack of Radien suppositories and booted into the machine-swept streets of East New Metro.

Once again, Dexton had been waiting.

He knew about the sack of rotobucks.

“C’mon man, how much?”

“Uh… like ninety stackers?”

“Ninety? You have ninety stackers and you’re wearing that?! Fuck, Robin, I need to get you rollin’ for a strollin’!”

And so it came to pass that Duwain Dexton III, a man with inhibitions of a drunken ferret, took Robin clothes shopping. He called himself straight as an arrow, but as the smaller man led him around "Metropolis Nights" in search of satin pajamas, Robin couldn’t help but wonder if sexual preference was hereditary.

Seven bags of assorted clothing—for ALL seasons—sat clumped round Robin’s barstool, and he still had around sixty stackers in his new, obsidian roto-wallet. His riches nearly halved, Faiweather felt very little remorse at spending so much on simple clothing. It wasn’t like he was getting any of his stuff back from Jenna’s flat before the big send-off, anyway.

Taking another sip of his water—“Dex is drinking enough for the both of us…”—Robin traveled back to that afternoon: walking the NMU holo-boardwalk, catching a scratch baseball game in Shulemkeh Park, and finally making their way to the Tumbler to drink the night away. He felt… peaceful. He enjoyed himself, not thinking about Jenna, the flat, his new job—it was nice. Dex was a cool guy, if a bit impulsive, and, after a day of mindless wandering and talking with him, Robin considered the excitable mechanic a friend.

Regardless of any new-formed kinship, however, Robin had one more thing to do that night. Dex would have to skip his last round of drinks if he wanted to make it back to Sheila before daybreak.

“Up an’ at ‘em, Dex. You’ve had enough. Besides, there’s one more thing I have to do tonight.”

“S’that girl, huh? You haf’ta see her right?”

That girl… yeah. Robin wanted—needed—to see her again. Just for a minute. One more time before he left…

He had something to give her.

“Y’know th’r’s a satCOM on the ship, right?” Dex gurgled, trying to coax the bartender back over with head gestures.

“Do you have the number?”

“Y-Ye… I think so.”

“Okay, Dex. One more drink, eh?” The copilot of the Satan’s Grandma slurred something in response before falling from his stool, clutching his crotch. Robin turned back to the window, gazing out into the colorful night. “Yeah… One more drink.”

A stacker to pay Dexton’s tab and two more into the pocket of the mag-cab pilot left Robin with fifty-seven of the black rotobucks left in his wallet. He’d never had a wallet before, and the heavy, stone tube felt unnatural—almost weapon-like—as it hung from his belt. It was one of the more expensive models, shiny black obsidian laced with streaks of white marble. The pressure plate for the coin depositor on the bottom face of the heavy cylinder was a polished brass, and Robin was loathe to press it, lest he leave a thumbprint and ruin it’s pristine shine. Dexton had even made him get it engraved:

Property of
Robin Sudesquet Fairweather
333679 East District 9, Apt. 229, Old St. Metropolis
“Black Mamba”

Robin wasn’t proud of that last part…

The black rotowallet found its way back to Robin’s belt as he briskly trotted away from his waiting taxi toward the address engraved in the “Black Mamba’s” weighty, shining side. The waster had neglected their street again, and the cameraman had to weave amongst several overflowing garbage receptacles that crowded the narrow entrance to his old—just Jenna’s, now—tenement complex. Graffiti marred the doors to the lower-level rooms, lit up by the dim, flickering lights of the building’s lanterns: gang symbols, penises, and comparisons of one tenant’s mother to a “piece of skunt-licking overseer bait.”

Down the hall, left, left again, then up the narrow, dirty stairwell to the third floor he went, pausing at the sight of a familiar crumpled obstacle in his way. Irritated, Robin carefully leapt over a corpse cooling in a puddle on the third landing, hoping to avoid getting blood on his new boots.

“Dumbass new tenants,” Fairweather grumbled, scraping his soles on the ragged, wet carpeting of the next flight of steps before moving on. It was late, he was tired, and all he wanted to do was see the woman he was—used to be?—in love with. He’d dealt with enough bodies on compactor duty over the years, and he had no patience with people who couldn’t dispose of their waste properly. “Learn how to use the damned disposal chute…”

Whether dead of an altercation, an accident, or natural causes, it didn’t matter: the body was a damned nuisance, and would eventually make someone else’s job much harder. Robin felt sorry for the poor compacter who would have to come up and get it.

He peaked the fourth flight in a few seconds, quickly spotting his door despite the blackness. The hall lights in this part of the building had burnt out, but, luckily, there were no more obstacles to contend with as Robin was lead by muscle memory to Jenna’s apartment—#229.

Three steps and he was there… and he couldn’t help but smile despite the late hour.

The door was still turquoise.

He’d painted it himself… the day after they’d had a fight—not the fight: an old one that was easily resolved. He got the color off an old man traveling the understreets, selling odds and ends. Robin hadn’t expected the door to change in the three days he’d been absent, but the patch of oceanic hue was a welcome sight.

Robin raised his arm to knock, but quickly staid his hand. It was almost two AM. He couldn’t wake—shouldn’t wake—her, could he? But he had to see her… even if he wasn’t sure he loved her anymore. He needed some sort of goodbye, or something.

He could just leave the money in the mail-tube…

Fuck…

Fairweather fidgeted in front of his old home, caught between fantasy and reality in an endless whirlpool of self doubt, desire, and resignation. He knew that if he knocked she wouldn’t answer, no matter how much he wished she would… but at least it would wake her up and… and she might hear him out. Robin reached into his jacket lining for the note he wrote her—“This should cover my rent. *997*0004868.”—and brushed up against something smooth and metallic: the old coin.

He fingered the quarter in his pocket, remembering how he found it—how he had felt. It had been only three days since then, and he was ready; he was ready to leave whether Jenna acknowledged him or not. Pulling the small, metal disk into the open air, Robin traced the ancient Latin embossed in shining silver surface with his thumb.

He’d flip for it. Yeah, that was it: chance would determine Jenna’s fate that night.

Heads—he would ring the buzzer and hope to God she opened the door.

Tails—he would drop the note and the money through the mail tube and leave. If she wanted to talk she could call him.

Ceremoniously, Robin craned his neck to the ceiling and flicked his thumb. The coin sailed upward, a small, dark lump in the blackened hallway, and Robin went for the catch. He missed, and the coin clattered to the stained linoleum of apartment 229’s closed threshold. Stooping and squinting, Fairweather could just barely make out the image of an eagle, and he sighed—whether in disappointment or relief he didn’t quite know.

The coin safely replaced in his pocket, “Black Mamba” was removed from Robin’s belt, and he emptied the obsidian tube into Jenna’s mail slot along with the note he’d written on the cocktail napkin he neglected to use at the Tumbler. Honestly, the rotobucks he’d just given away were worth almost five year’s rent in that shit-hole, but Robin wouldn’t need the money where he was going…

Besides… he was feeling great; lighter on his feet, even.

Irrationally, he imagined that having the money—George Washington hung heavy, hard and silver in his pocket—would just weigh him down.

Fairweather felt lucky.

Damned lucky...

... and tomorrow he was going to get a chance to test it.

Nine: The Blue

The sun was setting, and the candles were lit ahead of the failing light, tracing murky shadows along the floorboards. Dust danced as the last, bright spires of sunlight disappeared from the sky, and Jade took the time to look out the window toward the forest looming nearby.

“Grandmother… Grandmother, you’re confusing me… none of this seems relevant.” The white stallion shuffled his hooves, looking to his ailing elder carefully. She looked asleep, unhearing and in the middle of a dream, but he knew better. “You say they’re coming back. What do you mean back? How did they find us in the first place? Why?”

Itching. The voice.

To understand my story; the man; the machine; the choice… you must first understand where he came from. Then, my child, you will be ready for their return.

Chapter 9

“What does this look like to you?”

“A rabbit?”

“Nah, man. It’s a fucking space rabbit.”

“I’m… skeptical.”

A loud groan sounded from the paneling above and Robin winced, turning away from the touchpad lying on the bar. Satan’s Grandma needed a chiropractor.

“How about this one?” Dexton queried, squinting carefully at the screen between them.

“Dex, it’s a squirrel,” Robin sighed, slipping from his stool and pacing around the bar to grab a drink.

“From space!” the excited copilot exclaimed, flourishing his arm over the touchpad—which did, in fact, display the picture of a squirrel gathering nuts. “C’mon Robby! Where’s your sense of wonder?”

Robin opened the bottom cabinets under the bar—where the “good stuff” was, according to Simon—and slithered a hand around the bottles of BluBalls’, Roddinet Whiskey and Budweiser, finally closing his fingers around a chilled can of Slime. “I’ve seen half the animals you’ve pulled up so far at the zoo,” he grumbled, pulling the tab on his drink with a familiar click and hiss, “So excuse me for not expressing the proper ‘amazement’.”

“Yeah,” Dex mocked, nursing his own can of the thick, green cola, “Y’ever see this in a zoo?” He flipped the pad around, pushing it across the polished tabletop and into Robin’s field of view. A light flickered overhead and Robin heard Kaleb yell something from the deck below.

Robin took one look at the screen and grimaced. “It’s a lion, Dexton…”

“AHA!” the copilot crowed, pointing triumphantly at the brown and gold feline—“Clearly a lion.” “Since when do lions have wings and an anthro—uh—anthropedic tail!”

“Arthropodic, Dex, and I don—well hello there…”

The lion had wings… and what appeared to be an armored tail tipped with a scorpion-like barb…

Nope. Robin had never seen “that” in a zoo.

“Told ya,” Dex groused, pulling the screen back to his side of the bar. Robin took a moment to reflect on how childish that sounded, but ignored it. Dexton went to Outer City Trades School—or, at least, he said he did—and had never spent a night in Old Metro. He’d been asleep in the cab while Robin was making his final delivery down at Jenna’s: slept through the entire ride back to the hangar.

He was innocent.

“God I could use a Roddinet right now.”

Sort of…

After getting back to his—Sage’s—room on the Exxy, Robin had finally gotten to sleep around five that morning, staring up at the glowing, painted dots above the bed—stars he missed every night, shrouded in the smog and the bright fluorescence of New Metro. Ableman woke him up two-and-a-half hours later.

“Supplies are here, Fairweather. Up and at ‘em.”

The rest of his morning was spent directing workmen—Innies, all of them—helping move crates of food, toiletries, equipment, and burying himself in the wiring of the Processing Chamber.

Insulation had been chewed from the main power lines, along with optics and transmission, but only one or two connections were broken. Apparently they had rats. When Robin brought it up to Kaleb afterward, offering to go pick up some traps in the Inner City, the Australian Mountain just laughed… and so did Samuel… and Simon.

Thinking about it now, Robin supposed it was pretty funny. There he was, a cameraman on the greatest hunting show in the Western Republics, presented with the most advanced traps and snares money could buy, and he wanted to go haggling for spring-snaps.

Idiot…

Nevertheless, the rats worried him. Problems with the wiring on a different planet could ruin their entire week; month; however long it would take to organize a rescue. He didn’t doubt that they would survive a month stranded on 1128—the place was a fertile beyond belief. It was a matter of responsibility: Kaleb asked him to fix it, and Robin didn’t want to disappoint him. Being marooned due to short-circuit would be the ultimate failure on his part, and he was unsure of what Mr. Burnow would do.

“You are fully insured by the Channel now, after all. I did the paperwork last night,” Nowell had chuckled conspiratorially, standing over Robin as he lay half inside the bowels of one of Sheila’s COM consoles. “On a distant world; surrounded by nothing but wilderness; anything could happen.”

Robin knew he was joking, or, at least, he was pretty sure…

He thought about Sage—walking away into the jungle, disappearing forever—and felt… odd. Sunken in. The feeling passed, but only after another hour of patching insulation and checking system connections, and soon he was humming an old song his roommate used to sing while they drank together:

“Oh! No! Don’tcha cut the red wire—the blue; the red; the yellow; the red...”

Kaleb disappeared after the rat incident, apparently to sterilize the holding area. When Robin asked about it—“Why doesn’t he just let Channel cleaners do it?”—he was rewarded with the tale of TB – 323 by Samuel, a trip on which, on the return flight, every single catch died en-route because of shoddy cleaning by the crew the Channel contracted.

“We lost quite a bit of funding from the NM Zoo after that,” Ableman had said after explaining the trip to the cameraman, idly jotting the kitchen inventory on a rigid, old-fashioned clipboard. “Kaleb doesn’t trust anyone to sterilize the hold anymore—‘cept himself, of course. Made an embarrassment out of him, and he took it rather personal.”

Sheila rumbled, and Dexton’s touchpad rattled against the countertop again.

“There goes the curb,” the copilot laughed nervously, swigging the last of his soda. “We should probably head up to the flight deck, eh?” Robin nodded, rising to his feet. He glanced toward at the timepiece above the bar. 4:15: it was almost time for lift-off. He would have to take a look at the camera equipment the workers piled in his room once they made orbit.

Securing the touchpad to the rec-room bulkhead, the two men crossed the room. The west pressure door slid open, and they descended a small flight of stairs that connected to the main corridor. Footsteps clicked on tempered metal, and Robin and his new—quiet, for once; almost distressingly so—friend passed through the holding bay. The odd, brown stains had faded with cleaning, but the cameraman still felt his boots stick briefly as he walked through them.

The hall narrowed once more and Nowell joined the procession—a grinning wraith in a fluttering, black duster. He appeared from the maintenance shaft to the left: the rusted, metal rungs leading down to Engineering. Robin briefly wondered why he was down there, but quickly dismissed it.

“You Innie-shits ready for a rush?” Nowell sneered, gold eyes glinting excitedly.

“I’m from West Beverly, Mr. Nowell,” Dex whined, stopping to shoot the Channel Rep a nervous look. “Robin’s the Innie, here.”

Nice, Dex. Thanks.

“S’the matter with you, Duwain? Afraid you’ll crush us on exfil’?” Simon countered. “You damage this ship and Abe’ll have your head… and I’ll have your job.” Dex blanched and opened his mouth to retort, but Simon just waved a thin, white palm over his face. “Let’s just go before Kaleb gets antsy.”

They walked in silence a moment, bland metal walls flowing by as they made their way toward the end of the corridor and the flight deck. About halfway there, Robin chose to break the silence—the obsidian tube rocking on his belt reminding him of something important.

“I never thanked you for the money you gave me yesterday.”

Dexton looked at the Channel Rep in surprise and made to say something, but quickly shut his mouth when Robin glared at him.

“No, you didn’t,” Nowell mused, not stopping. “What of it?”

“Well… thanks?”

“Did you spend all of it?”

“Yeah,” Robin answered, hesitant. Why? Was he not supposed to? Oh God was it really stolen?

“Good,” Simon chuckled, pale lips twisting into a cruel grin. “The money either went to you or to my bitch ex-wife. Glad you got some use out of it. Now shut the fuck up and get in your seat.”

Seat? Oh... they were there.

The flight deck was surprisingly small: a cramped chamber of lights and switches and monitors, all available moving space filled by six swivel chairs—only one of which was occupied. Light streamed in from a pair of thick, bulbous windows, puffing out in an insectoid fashion to reveal the dust and irradiated grass of Airman’s Field. They were lurching forward at a good clip, pulled by a small tug-sled to their designated takeoff zone.

“You put everything away up there?” Samuel asked good-naturedly, swiveling to look at the three of them as they took their seats. I nodded in the affirmative, and the pilot beamed. “Good! I’d hate to see any a’ our emergency drinks lost in the jump.” He spun back around, humming and mumbling the words to a song as he pressed buttons, seemingly at random.

Robin took a seat near the back, neglecting to strap himself into the simple, webbed restraints, and Simon took the open chair to his right. Dexton stood nearby, fidgeting nervously as Abe—“I don’t wanna be your friend. I just wanna be your lovah…”—sang to himself. He looked to Robin, anxious sweat shining with liquid patina on his forehead. The cameraman, unsure of what to do, gave him a reassuring smile curled his fingers into the universal “okay” gesture. Dex smiled back, albeit hesitantly and nodded, shuffling to the open seat next to his uncle.

Fairweather smiled: Dexton may have been a bit of a clumsy eccentric, but he took care of him, and he definitely deserved Robin’s support. Besides, it wasn’t like he was going to be flying them by himself, right?

“You ready to take her up yourself?” Abe suddenly boomed, slapping the nervous copilot on the back as he slid into place beside him.

Robin blanched. “Oh God we’re going to die…”

Dexton mumbled something unintelligible and started to shake, prompting Samuel to giggle—a bit girlishly—as he began flipping switches in earnest. Robin felt the ship’s treads jump forward on its own power, tug-sled swerving off with a muffled blare. They must have just entered in their takeoff zone. “I was like that my first time, too,” Abe chuckled. “I’ll be doing most of the flying; don’t worry.”

Everyone in the cockpit visibly relaxed.

“Thank you, Ableman,” Nowell sighed, loosening his straps a bit so he could better destroy his spinal column. “I actually felt fear for a moment, there.” Duwain sunk lower in his chair—with relief or embarrassment, Robin didn’t know. He contemplated speaking up on the copilot’s behalf, but the man’s uncle beat him to it.

“I doubt that’s a new experience for ya,” Abe smirked. “I met your last wife, remember?”

“F—nnk.”

“Aight, boys!” shouted Kaleb, tromping into the room—snowy mountain-head hatless, wearing a red-flecked undershirt and a grin—and causing Simon to choke mid-curse. Abe snorted and turned his attention back to what appeared to be a pre-flight checklist. “Crunch time, now. We only got seventeen minutes to make orbit ‘fore we’re grounded.”

Robin slouched, trying to make himself unnoticeable as Kaleb passed, taking the right-most seat behind Dexton.

“Just let me finish these last few checks,” Samuel said, pressing a green keypad to his left. The window’s darkened significantly, blocking the sun in preparation for breaking atmosphere. “Tell the greenhorns one of your ‘fabulous’ stories or something to pass the time if you’re so impatient.”

“Ah, shut up Dutchy,” Kaleb snorted, joking. “I’ll do what I want.” The hunter swiveled his chair, facing Robin, jaunty smirk twitching up the corners of his mouth. “Well, Fairweather? Want me to spin ya a merry tale?”

Shit…

“That’s alright, Sir, I’m—ah—I’m good,” Robin stammered. A story would be nice but he just wanted to remain unnoticed, and therefore employed, until they made it to 1128. “I-I mean if you want to tell a story I’m all ears, Sir, but… y’see… that is—”

“Don’t call me ‘Sir’, kid,” Burnow grunted, leaning forward and giving Robin a neutral stare. The cameraman winced, fumbling with his words.

“Oh, uh, sorry Mr. Burn—”

“Kaleb. My name is Kaleb.”

“Okay… Kaleb. A—uh—A story would be nice?” Robin closed his eyes, waiting for… something.

“Tha’s right. It would be wouldn’t it,” Kaleb smiled, winking. The hunter shifted in his seat. “How about it, Simey? Want to help me with the time you almost got your skinny ass eaten?”

Simon smirked: “You mean the one where I caught your little ‘wonder-cat’?”

The ship lurched forward, again, guided into the blast zone by Abe’s steady hand. “You were the bait, Nowell,” the pilot chuckled, flipping a small switch on the front console. Mag-engines hummed to life, and, slowly, Sheila lifted away from the scorched, radiated earth of Airman’s Field.

“Yeah, but I caught it didn’t I?”

“Shut up and let me start why don’t you?” the eldest crewmember snorted, tugging at his left ear and glancing out the viewport. Simon smirked in Abe’s direction, but kept his mouth shut. Satisfied, Kaleb settled back in his seat, stealing one last look outside before speaking again. “So we had been on this planet—34, was it?” Simon grunted in affirmation and Kaleb continued. “Yeah, and we’d been trying to catch this critter—prairie cat the science boys called it, though it looked more like a wild boar to me—for the better part of a week, and I was getting a might annoyed with the blight’ah.”

“Understatement of the year,” Samuel tittered, still facing the console. “You threatened to find its mother and rape it with your satanic ‘didgeridoo’.”

Robin laughed quietly to himself, spurred onward by the hunter’s sheepish expression. Kaleb gently patted the back of Abe’s seat, an embarrassment coloring his creased cheeks. “I was—uh—I was in a bad place.” He paused, shaking his head tiredly before carrying on. “Thing ate all the bait we left out: you’d look away for a second, and when you turned back the trap’d be sprung and empty. We went through three zap-cages, four bear-traps, a thermal trip-wire, and my gun.

“Got it in the flank with my elephant cannon on the third day—‘s blood was a nice silvery color—and it just kept running. I didn’t even get to see what it looked like.”

“The probes never got any good pictures of one,” Simon explained. “None of us had a real good idea of what the ‘prairie cat’ looked like—was before any a’ the Republic Animal Research Preserves made a requisition on that planet—probably why the research team pegged it as feline in the first place. We only found it because it started hanging around the Exxy on our third checkpoint. Was a bit frightening, really.”

“Right, so Sage got this brilliant idea: why not use Nowell as bait?”

“For the last time, he wasn’t being serious, Kaleb,” Simon growled, “He was sloshed!”

“It worked, did’n it?” Samuel offered, hands still dancing across the console as lights flickered on and off. “Oh, and ya may want to start getting yourselves secure.”

“You were lucky to be in the damned ship!” the now agitated Channel Rep exclaimed. “That thing almost killed me!”

“Oh shut up, ya baby.” Burnow brushed Nowell’s outburst aside like so much dust from his shoulder. “Dexton! Pay attention to your Uncle, not me.” The copilot, who had been listening avidly—mouth, though hanging slightly ajar, still silent—blanched and swiveled back to the front while everyone buckled their harnesses.

Robin had to stand briefly to get at the crash webbing beneath him, but once free the harness was fairly easy to slip over his shoulders. Once they were all settled, Kaleb, chair locked facing forward now, continued.

“The plan was to hide on the ridge above the Exxy an’ shoot at it when it went for Simon. Had Abe tell ‘im to dig a hole out front—as a trap or something—while Sage and I watched.”

Simon grumbled, and was ignored.

“It was around 1900 hours, the sun was going down, and Simey’d almost finished digging this big ‘ol pit when Sage an’ I decided that the beast wasn’t coming. Stupid thing wasn’t nocturnal, and the sun had gone down two hours previously, so I decided we would just have to try again the next day. Sage an’ I started climbing back down into the valley when we heard ‘im start yelling: Simon spotted the blight’ah at the edge of the flood-lamps—lucky him—and ran into the ship.”

“I almost made it, too,” Nowell sighed, bad mood cast away for a moment. “We really should invest in making the exxy-trap automatic.”

“Ah, but then the robots win,” Kaleb groused, “Your turn now, anyway—you always tell this part best.”

“Right.” The lanky channel man shook his head and sat up straighter. “So I was digging all day, pissed off at Kaleb—because digging holes just happened to be in my contract,” he glared at the back of the hunter’s chair. “The contract I wrote.”

Abe and his nephew giggled and Robin smiled, prompting their own baleful glares from the spurned Channel Rep. Eventually, Nowell cracked a sick grin of his own, and, eyes gleaming at the memory, he continued.

“So it was getting dark, and Kaleb an’ Sage were still out. I was unaware of their plan to use me as bait, and by that point the hole I dug was around six feet deep—rocky soil: don’t judge me! What I mean is, if I’d known I wouldn’t have dug myself so far down. Last I checked I’m like five-eight? I was lucky I was actually climbing out when I saw the ugly pig-bitch edging in ‘out the darkness—about twenty yards away.”

The Australian mountain rumbled discontentedly, and Simon smirked: “I’m going to call the animal that nearly gutted me a bitch if I want to, Kaleb. You and your elderly, shareholding ass have nothing on that… now where was I?”

“I think you were getting to the part where you squealed like a little… bitch?” Samuel smoothly said, pulling even further back on the steering column and tilting the exfiltrator at an even steeper angle. All Robin could see through the windows was yellow-tinged sky, and he barely caught the tinny voice on the console intercom buzz something about trajectory.

“Abe…” Simon started, looking at the pilot with a mixture of hate and grudging respect. “Sleep with one eye open.”

The pilot simply wolf-whistled, prompting stifled laughter from everyone on the flight deck… except Nowell of course.

“As I was saying,” the representative sighed, “the prairie cat charged me when I was half-way out of the hole—I was going to go take a piss, actually—and I was just able to get out of the pit when it slashed at me with its sharp tusks. Missed me, but I felt the air puff where my spine used to be. I sprinted toward the ship, and I guess the beast tripped itself on the edge a’ my hole because I was able to put some distance between myself and it before I got to the exxy-trap… and yes, I was screaming. Who wouldn’t if they were being chased by a murderous pig-lion the size of a mag-taxi?”

Unbidden images from yesterday’s science briefing flitted through Robin’s head: screeching gryphons, radiation manipulating horses, and bipedal bulls the size of an apartment building. The cameraman felt a small chill.

Yes… yes he would probably scream.

“Launch in eighteen… seventeen…”

“Ableman! Shut off that voice, will ya?”

“… sixteen… fift—” the droning voice of the automated lift-off relay receded, and the rumbling from below increased in volume.

“Thank you,” Kaleb sighed. “Hate that unnatural thing. I wish we could just get clearance from the tower.” The hunter snorted. “I miss Corby calling us on the HAM.”

“Who?” Simon asked, clearly annoyed at the interruption in his tale.

“Before your time,” Abe casually stated. His calloused, workman’s fingers danced across a retractable keyboard at the center console: displays flashed into being—maps and readouts of windspeed, pitch, and yaw—and the revving magnetic engines settled into a dull hum. “Retracting treads.”

Robin felt the ship dip, still angled above the horizon, as the exfiltrator’s massive steel treads receded into the belly of the magnetically suspended craft. His stomach wobbled a bit, and the cameraman grimaced. “Well, go on then,” he pushed, previous hesitancy forgotten. “How’d you escape?”

Nowell smiled, and Robin was briefly sick again: those immaculate, white teeth… seemed wrong—”Are those canines sharpened?”

“I’m glad somebody cares,” the channel man sneered. “Damned shame we didn’t have you before, Fairweather. Sage was a ditzy prick.” Robin noticed Samuel tense at the controls and suddenly felt very self-conscious. He wondered at the level of care Abe appeared to display at the mention of the old cameraman—“He’s dead. So what? We’re all dead, aren’t we?”—but neither he nor the pilot said a thing, and soon they were traveling upwards and outwards, leaving the blighted fields of aerial experimentation behind.

“So I made it to the exxy-trap, crankin’ the elevator as fast as I could, and all the while that cat was bearing down on me. I got the platform about halfway closed when it decided to try and hop on.”

The viewport showed nothing but roiling, yellow smog. Robin saw no buildings, no spires, no mountain of garbage: only sickly smoke lit by the seeping brightness of Sheila’s floodlights. “Breaking the inner layer in five,” Abe droned, both hands on the yoke of the steering column. Dexton, who had been silent for longer than Robin thought possible for the excitable copilot, flipped off the exterior lights, plunging the crew into ammonia-tinted darkness.

“Nearly broke my arm trying to wrench the wheel around one last time. It’s funny, really: you never know how strong you can be until you’re close to death.”

White light bled through the yellow, and suddenly they were free—free and blue! Everything was so amazingly, beautifully, obscenely blue, and Robin could do little besides gape at the color.

“That’s the sky… the real fucking sky! Oh God… I’m… I'm God...” Robin couldn’t think straight, and Simon’s story slowly washed over him as they kept blasting through the bright, blue air.

“… worst part was its eyes: how wild and barren they were. Pitch black; all pupil. Swear to God…”

The blue fluctuated, as if alive. Light to dark to light, thinning out along the edges as the inky black of the mesosphere began to leak through. Blue receded, and Robin was sorry to see it go.

“… swung its tusks at me, half-in-half-out of the lift, snorting and squealing up a storm. I lost my grip on the turn-wheel around then, and, in the moment before the platform snapped down, I made a leap for the edge of the hull above. I burned my hands pretty badly on the laser-locks, but I managed to hang there long enough for the lift to fall on the beast’s lower-half: crushed its hind legs like toothpicks.”

“Screamed like a dying elephant,” Kaleb added from his seat further up. “Sage got nearly two hours of footage before it passed out.”

“Hell, the footage from the holding bay cameras alone brought ratings up three whole points!” Simon went on, gesticulating vaguely with his right hand. “The tusks are hanging in my bunk-room—right above the inside doors—if you wanna take a look.” He cast Robin a sideways glance and the cameraman tilted his head.

“Maybe after I check on the camera equipment.”

Samuel sat up a bit straighter in his chair, and, depressing a plate on the armrest, swiveled to face the rest of them. “All right, boys,” he wheezed. Frowning, the pilot coughed into the crook of his arm and continued, deep baritone much clearer now. “Sorry. We are now in orbit around the planet and will be staying that way until we’re given clearance for a ‘hole’. Should be an hour or two, and I’ve turned on the artificial gravity until then so you’re free to go, but keep an ear out for us—we’ll be callin’ you back for the show.”

Everyone got up—save for Dexton, who was left to learn how to better pilot the ship from his uncle—and went their separate ways: Kaleb down the hallway to the room draped in an animal skin and Nowell to the rec-room. Robin considered going to his own “Video Professional’s Suite”—he had a couple recorder manuals to read, and Miss March as his silent company—but instead felt himself drawn to the viewport.

He could see his planet—the ruddy browns, verdant greens, dull yellows, and vibrant blues—and it was beautiful. Samuel glanced at him and smiled nudging his side with a free arm:

“Pretty nice, eh?”

Robin simply nodded, watching as smog-choked earth and sea rolled by underneath them. It was so colorful—really, it was...

“Pretty nice,” the cameraman breathed.

He had work to do, but for now he was just going to stand there: watching his planet flow by.

Watching the Blue.

A high-pitched whine shattered Robin’s concentration, and he looked up. The timepiece claimed that two hours had passed, but the cameraman hardly believed it—clocks were lying fucks out of atmosphere, apparently.

A tinny, yet familiar, voice filtered into his room:

“Hey, Fairweather! It’s me, Dex!”

“What do you want?” Robin half-shouted, trying his best to hide the irritation he was feeling—he was almost finished with the diagnostic on the second mag-cam, and was loathe to be interrupted. When no response came, Robin looked around the room. Seeing what appeared to be a wall-mounted intercom by the bed, he stood up and, tiptoeing carefully around scattered optic arrays, screws, and aluminum plating, approached it.

“Yeah?” he tried again, thumb depressing the red “talk” button.

“There ya are!” the voice replied, sounding distracted. “I’m finally getting the hang of this flying thing!”

“It’s on autopilot, Dexton.” Samuel could be faintly heard in the background.

“What? You’re kidding! You mean to tell me I’ve been holding this fucking thing steady for no reason at all?!”

There was a faint click, and another voice entered the circuit: “You pressed ‘open broadcast’, idiot. We can all hear you.” Nowell said, an emblematic sneer evident in his tone.

“Damn it!—I.. I mean—aaugh…”

Another whine tore through the room, and Robin shook his head, moving to return to his work. Another dull click over the COM stopped him, however.

“Hello, this is your Captain speaking. Head on up to flight: we’ve been given clearance to cross, and gravity will be off in three minutes so secure any loose items ye’ve got lying around.” Samuel said, joviality projecting quite nicely over the intercom. “See you in a few!”

Sighing quietly, Robin began to briskly trot around the room, picking up bits of machinery, wires, and glass and putting it all in one of the camera cases. He then picked up the partially disassembled mag-cam and hung it next to its smaller, hand-held counterpart in their special closet racks. Nowell had stopped by briefly and mentioned them while he was working earlier. Apparently the old cameraman built them when he was first hired nearly fifteen years ago.

They were damned useful, to be sure.

Finished, Robin sauntered out of his dormitory, passed Kaleb’s door and the communal toilet between their respective bunkrooms, and turned right into the cockpit. Everyone else was already there, either strapped into their seats or in the process of doing so. Satan’s Grandma was facing away from the planet’s surface, and Robin was graced with the view of all of space stretching out before him: twinkling stars, and endless, cloying black as far as the eye could see. As he approached his seat, primed by the nearly colorless void, he noticed a ruddy tinge gracing Nowell’s pale cheeks and smirked.

“Drinking already?” he asked, sliding into his seat next to the imbibed channel rep. “We aren’t even anyplace exotic or dangerous yet.” Robin knew he might have been pushing his luck, there. But he felt good, and, at that moment, he didn’t want to worry about luck.

He had his quarter, after all.

“Shut it, Fairweather,” Nowell grinned—something good-natured gone wrong—and fiddled with his restraints. “Learn to talk like a man of your pay-grade.”

A high-pitched whine from below and the sudden absence of gravity quickly ended their conversation, and Robin quickly buckled himself down before he could float away. His stomach looped inside of him, and he felt a little nauseous, but otherwise antigravity was a pleasant experience.

Smile nearly splitting his skull, Dexton spun in his chair up front, catching bits of flimsy and a rocking, plastic hula girl as she danced through the air. Robin hadn’t noticed that particular article earlier, and seeing it now—trapped inside Dex’s nimble fingers—he couldn’t help but laugh.

“Got it… yes… fine, Station One…” Samuel sat hunched over the console, one hand pressing the headset he was wearing deeper into his wizened ear-canal; the other, typing what looked like spatial coordinates. “Yeah, yeah: see you in a month, Charlie,” he finished. Removing the headset, he leaned back in his seat with a happy sigh and spoke again, this time to the rest of the crew. “You greenhorns ready for a show?”

Robin nodded, his counterpart jittering in his seat at the copilot’s chair.

“Why don’t you press the button, Dex?” the Flying Dutchman asked good-naturedly. He reached under the console and removed a small, hand-held depressor—like the handle of an overseer crowd-seeder, but with a big, red button at its tip.

Dexton looked at the trigger like a sablehound drooling over a full book of surf-stamps, eyes flickering from Abe’s hand to his face to his hand. “R-Really? You’ll let me make the hole?”

“Yep. Go ahead.”

“Thank… Thank you, Uncle Abe…”

The conversation was confusing Robin to no end, and, as Dexton took the depressor from Samuel’s hand, he watched carefully.

“Are they talking about nuclear displacement? There’s no way this model of exfiltrator is rigged with that kind of—”

Copilot Duwain Dexton III pushed the button and the ship rocked backwards, a spout of white rocketing out into the black.

“—firepower… holy fuck!”

A warhead—a small, custom atomic warhead—was streaking out into space, set to detonate ten miles outside of earth’s orbit according to the spatial coordinates Abe had just set on the main console. Robin stared, open-mouthed, as the searing bridge-builder continued its journey. He’d only ever read about this kind of thing in books back at the university! He never thought he’d actually get the chance to witness it in person.

Oh God it was so fresh in his mind:

“To dig a hole is to form a bridge between the surface and the deep. That is what we aim to do here at NASA, but just a little bit differently…”

A minute passed in silence… two…

White light, radiating from an unbearably bright, central explosion, suddenly burnt across the void, spreading outward like so much oil over water. Space charred for miles around, shimmering and wobbling on a liquid mirror: a mirror that was a hole that was a bridge.

Invented decades ago, nuclear displacement allowed for fast, though rather expensive travel from point “A”—namely Earth—to point “B”—just about anywhere else. A mixture of the right chemical cocktail—Robin had no idea what cocktail that was; he wasn’t a fucking chemist—and explosive force could put a ship with the right kind of equipment across the galaxy in a little less than twenty minutes.

It was going to revolutionize travel as humanity knew it… but it came nearly a century too late. Mankind had become disinterested in the heavens after the Great Famine in the first half of the 22nd Century: population was down, the sky was piss-yellow, and life was grounded.

At least the Channel found a use for it… Robin could definitely be thankful for that.

“Shit, we got a dud!” Samuel hissed, quickly lining the ship up with the slowly expanding cosmic mirror. “Rift won’t last more than five minutes at the rate it’s decelerating…”

Thrusters flashed and nudged, and Robin felt the exxy drift in line with their destination.

“Hurry along, Dutchy,” Kaleb warned—the first time Robin heard him speak since they’d come back to the flight deck. “The Requisition’ah only gives us eight a’ these per season.” His accent had gotten thicker. Odd.

“Punch it, Dex,” Ableman yelled, still working the thrusters keeping Sheila steady in vacuum. His nephew, riding high on nuclear displacement, smiled an anxious, sweat-drenched smile, and grabbed the throttle.

“Hold onto your butts!”

The copilot’s arm shot forward, and ten miles became nine, eight, seven…

Robin was pressed into his seat, eyes forced open, stomach dropped into his testicles, heart racing, sprinting, screaming through the void and they were going to die oh lord oh lord no not yet he was only twenty-nine and the Earth was still pulling him back, back, back!

When they hit, Robin could only remember the last thing Dexton had said, and he wondered why it was so damned familiar.

They named our world for themselves after the cross, a tradition of theirs, like the Summer Sun Celebration. The hunter gave the new crewmembers the honor, and they ‘flipped’ for it with this...

Her horn flashed, and a thin, metallic disk appeared before him. He held out a hoof, and it fell, landing upon the soft skin of his innui. It was cold, but not particularly heavy, and Jade could just make out the impression of an eagle clutching a talon-full of arrows and what looked like the branch of a tree.

"Is... it this the coin from the story? I..."

He named us ‘Aristotle’s Dream’ for our sun. It is significant in a way that I don’t understand.

“Which one of them was it? Who won the toss?”

Robin. My savior.

Author's Note

"John dies in the end."

—A Nice Person

Promo #9664#

Company Promotion #9664#

-Film-making-

Birds flocked away into the clear, morning air: familiar birds, common. It was odd, considering where they were.

“‘Ello there, mate! Oi’m Kaleb Burnow, and this…” the hunter swept an arm back, and Robin quickly hit the zoom function, “is Terrestrial Body – 1128.”

Flowers scattered the rolling hills of the valley below, dotting the breezy sea of green with vibrant color. The edge of a lake could be seen to the east, sandy shoreline lapped by pristine, blue water—like glass, reflecting a beautiful, cerulean sky split by a single, snow-tipped mountain spire, trailing black smoke from a cave at its peak.

“Beautiful, eh? Well, don’t get used to it.” Robin centered the recorder on Kaleb again—panning down on his dun-colored gunny hat, frizzy, white hair and khaki, button shirt. “Because today we’re headed to the badlands! Sheila picked up a set of catacombs under the desert south of here: caves excavated by something… unnatural.” The hunter shifted a leather strap from his shoulder, and suddenly he held a rifle the size of a four-by-four in his hands. “Our probes didn’t pick it up, so we’re going down there blind.” A loud clacking sound signaled the chambering of one of the weapon’s banana-sized slugs, and Kaleb grinned: “Let’s go spelunking.”

Promo #9919#

Channel Promotion #9919#

-Kaleb's Critters-

"Did you have fun last night?" a voice schmoozed in the early morning smog. The street-corner Overseer sneered flippantly, ebony stun-rod turning silently--one hand to another; another; another. "Because you look like shit, sablehound."

2:30 am: the mag-bus floated up-street on the fetid wind, leaking wet, red oil like watered-down blood. Reaching its designated stop, the off-white transport slowed with a dull, erotic hum.

Pneumatic doors shifted dust.

"I dunno..." Robin answered, "Why don't you ask your wife?"

The Channel Policeman chuckled dryly. "Can't... She left me a long time ago."

Robin rose into place in the threshold of his destiny, but turned back for this man--brutish, brash, employed by the great gluttonous sinners of his world. The bus floated, and the Overseer stood rooted to his post, prisoner to Mistress Gravity.

"I'm sorry," Robin muttered. "I know how that feels."

The doors closed.

Promo #9567#

Channel Promotion #9657#

-Edible-

“You’re eating them wrong.”

Robin looked to the girl sitting next to him. “S’that so?”

“Yeah, you’re doing it all wrong,” the child—a red-headed daughter, dressed in a dirty, indigo dress, sitting on his right with her father at the bus stop—frowned, looking at the scruffy student like he’d just crawled from the sewer. The father glanced at Robin and snorted, but otherwise ignored the two of them: sitting, waiting.

Fairweather shuffled the bag in his lap, thinking. “Would you show me how to eat them properly, then?” he finally asked, smirking at the pouting girl that fidgeted to his right. She held out a little, soot-stained hand, fingers twitching petulantly.

“Gimme!”

“What do you say?”

The girl glared, poutiness swallowing her whole upper lip and approaching her nose in a rather impressive display. “Please,” she grunted. The discontent in her voice prompted another snort from the father, wiping his nose on a sleeve, and Robin had to hold back a small bark of laughter at the scene.

“All right.” The engineer slid a hand into the plastic sack, retracting with a single, green candy: a gummy bear. “Show me.”

Green, squishy candy was snatched from his hand.

“First, you bite off his legs—so he can’t get away,” she squeaked, eyes screwed up in concentration as she nipped the nubby, green legs from the bear. “Then you bite off his arms, so he can’t hug his momma goodbye.” Limbs gone, the gummy candy was just a torso and a head, molded eyes bugged out—in pain?—like inverted dimples. “An’ then you bite the ears and the nose, so he can’t hear or say his farewells.”

The father was watching now, chuckling at his daughter’s antics as she explained why she bit off the bear’s head—“to make sure he’s dead.” Soon, the treat was finished, and there was nothing: only traces of green-tinged spittle on her fingers.

A breeze blew down the street, and Robin clutched his candy tighter, plastic crinkling in his hands. The girl and her father giggled, and Robin joined them. Looking to the father for permission—he received a nod—the young man passed the bag right.

“Here,” he said, “You eat them better than me.”

The child squeaked happily and carefully took the package, resting it in the pouched cloth of her dress. She reached inside, pulling out a blue bear, and looked at it for a moment, contemplating, before holding it out to him.

“Here! You try eating it now,” she suggested, smiling innocently. Gingerly, Robin took the bear from her, holding it up to the dim light of the rising sun.

He smiled and bit off its legs.