“I wish this escape pod thing had weapons,” I say. “I’d like to shoot at you. It feels like it should be my turn to shoot at something, or dominate someone.”
“You’re a basic animal,” the voice comes back over the speakers. “Now move toward the ship.”
I stop moving. I don’t even bother to push the little handle in any particular direction. I just hang in space, like a Christmas tree bauble, and I sort of give up. I put my feet back on the dash and I wait for something either better, or much worse to happen.
“Move, human!”
“I don’t want to. Shoot me if you want. It would solve a few problems. I’m not sure who I am, and I’m getting tired of trying to find out.”
A barrage of fire blasts around me, but it all misses me. They’re not trying to hit me. They’re trying to scare me. But I’m beyond fear right now. A couple of hours ago, I was selling pills to zoned-out dudes who just needed to feel something. Now I’m the zoned-out dude who just needs to feel something. Circle of life, I guess.
“Come. Here!”
The aliens try again. I reach down to my waist, and I pick up the baggie of pills. I usually try not to take them, because they’re addictive and they ruin your ability to enjoy your brain’s natural chemistry after a while, but I am no longer sure I’m going to have a brain much longer. May as well go out happy, right?
I slide a little pink pill onto my tongue and let it dissolve. The effect is like eating an entire banquet of foods all of which are my favorite at exactly the same time. My head falls back, and I let out a little giggle. I hit the space intercom.
“Hey, Mr. Alien?”
“Yes?”
“I know a song that gets on everybody’s nerves. Do you want to hear it?”
I am so full of lightness and mirth. The prospect of impending death, or capture and torture, or being sold to some alien who tries to put his appendage inside me, is not really an issue right now.
“Human, I will end you…”
“This is the song that does not end. Oh yes, it goes on and on, my friend…”
I giggle at the annoyed sound that comes back through the speakers. Another half-hearted barrage explodes around me, but right now it just seems pretty.
“I wish I could help you,” I say, because it’s really not that serious. The pill is helping me see this. Nobody needs to worry about anything, and remembering things is also overrated. I’m wondering why I ever cared. There’s no such thing as a past or a future anyway. There’s just a sort of never-ending now thatwon’t ever be gone. So anything that happened before, well, it sort of didn’t, and nothing is ever really going to happen, and damn if I’m not eternal in some way.
“Why are you guys so angry?” I ask the question. “Feels like this isn’t really about me, you know? I don’t belong here. I don’t come from here, and I never did anything to you.”
“You’re a possession of outlaws. You’re being repossessed.”
“I was never bought though.”
“You’re an asset we’re going to have to liquidate.”
The alien shuttles are sort of circling me now like lazy sharks. I can’t see the ship with my aliens in it. I wonder if they’ve managed to escape the big red vessel.
I bet they did. They seemed very competent in the fragments of memory I managed to recover. If they’ve abandoned me to my fate I don’t mind. I don’t mind anything right now. It’s funny how life really isn’t about what’s happening, it’s about what your brain chemistry is doing. Some people would say that being hunted by hostile aliens is objectively bad, but they are not high.
A shadow falls over my shuttle, as a bigger ship moves between me and the nearest sun. I feel myself hunkering down, a simple animal instinct bred into me in a world where we never left the atmosphere.
My orb is sucked up, like the vacuum of space just got turned on. I laugh with glee as everything goes smeary for a second. I’m moving too fast to be able to focus on anything. I end up closing my eyes so they don’t feel like they’re about to fall out.
I brace myself for hostile aliens, but when I open my eyes, I discover that the red alien ship didn’t get to me first—my aliencaptors did. Boss, Kronos and yep, Sharp are all standing ready to grab me out of the pod. Kronos is the one who gets the best grip on me, so he’s the one who throws me over his shoulder like a sack of spuds.
They take me to the bridge of the ship without saying a word. I don’t know what to say either, so we all go with nothing.
“Stay,” he says, slinging me into a chair and strapping me in. “This is about to get messy.”
Sure enough, a second later the whole ship rocks back and forth. We’ve been hit by some kind of bomb or missile or whatever aliens call their weapons. I giggle uproariously. This is the most fun I’ve had in a long time. Almost dying is like being edged by existence itself. I won’t feel like that once the drugs wear off, but given we’re under bombardment, there’s a high likelihood that won’t matter.
“Let’s go, gentlemen,” Sharp says with completely collected calm as he takes the main console. He barely seems to be reacting to the attacks. I wonder if he’s had a little something too.
