Touch of a switch, and red light from the lamp clipped to a bookcase glared down on Corcey as he made his way through the messy obstacle course of his room. His unmade sandbed lay hidden beneath several months of rancid laundry and partially eaten food. With effort, he climbed the mountain cluttering his mattress and planted himself on top. Drawing his legs into lotus form, he blandly surveyed his surroundings. The furnishings seemed unfamiliar, paranoidly hostile. The veins in his eyes were the colour of the illumination that harshly filtered down onto everything, including the barrel of what lay in his lap.
An overwhelming silence whispered to him as he sat vulture-like, though after an infinity of moments he began to detect sounds in the void: dust sifting down, Time passing.
A deep, protracted breath. Slow release through the nostrils. As he repeated the process, his lips mimed his part in an ancient conversation. With just a hint of frustration, he discharged the breath while mouthing the word “Sorry.” Unkempt bangs flew away slightly, to resettle in his eyes a moment later.
He took off his black planters hat and tossed it down the mountain to the mess on the floor. Hands shaking perceptibly, he ran his fingers through his hair, pulling it away from his face. Slender, bony fingers interlocked at his scalp, and he felt pinpricks from where tangles, refusing to give, uprooted themselves instead.
He craned his head back, and his adam’s apple bobbed uncomfortably as sour saliva slid down his throat. Corcey studied the bleak crimson ceiling, his eyes unfocused enough to give ill meaning to the already blurry shadows. He mechanically sucked in another lungful, held it, slowly freed it. His hair fell about his face as he looked down at his lap.
His left hand slipped around peace as he numbly lifted it, studied it. His eyes slid over it with a soothing familiarity, his hand slowly tilting it to and fro so the light played dully on the features of the specially treated metal. After a few moments, the pistol found its way into firing position. Corcey’s right hand floated up to join its mate; thumb and index finger fluidly attached themselves to the top of the pistol and pulled the slide back.
With a startlingly loud meqanical click, an eight millimeter round from the full clip beneath squeezed into the chamber, its brass case shining brightly. The bullet was a special round: Corcey had drilled a small hole into the tip and poured a drop of mercury inside, resoldering over it. The difference was like being hit with a bat made of particle board and one made of petrified oak. In resoldering the top, he had chiseled lengthwise nicks, which would cause deep fragmentation.
He released the slide, again breaking the silence as it returned to position. The firing hammer was now primed. Another breath, and he flipped off the weapon’s safety.
He looked dully at the object he held. Throbbing temples caused pupils to focus improperly. It looked like peace was growing out of his hand.
Slowly, another breath. It was becoming increasingly difficult—there was a tightness in his chest, ribs trying to interlock. His whole body was consumed with an emptiness, one he desperately wanted to fill with strychnine. Even though he was sitting stationary, he had the sensation of being straightjacketed to a rollercoaster doing mach one. At the same time, he had an overwhelming feeling of listing, drifting aimlessly on days numbered long before he made the decision that brought him here with this purpose.
He forced his eyes to focus on the lethal toy in is grip. peace was an instructor, teaching Echmoth, the Wisdom of Death.
In one of the last moments of his life, he allowed himself an exhausted smile.
He was cold, alone, and tired of being alive.
It is time to
Die, so I will Live.
The barrel slid in, and lightly he put his teeth and lips on it: the deadliest felatio. Faintly, he could taste grease and oil, the tip of his tongue caressed individual grains of dirt. As he reaffirmed his grip and tensed his index finger, he was momentarily slammed in the face by something he had been on self-imposed exile from: reality. It hit him like a two-ton feather: This was phuqing final. A nanosecond after that revelation, the walls of the room (which had been moving closer and closer) crushed his skull in, and actually squeezed out a rebuttal to this revelation. It was barely a whisper.
“Good.”
As his index digit began to tighten on peace’s thin, sensitive trigger, his eyes suddenly, involuntarily flew up in reflex to movement in his peripheral vision.
Sophia stood in the doorway, one arm on the frame supporting her weight, the other on her hip. One of her legs was casually crossed behind the other, propped up on the ball of her foot.
She’d been standing there for a while, studying the Hermit atop his mountain. Her eyes were drawn to the light in his hand.
Corcey regarded her silently with hollow eyes.
Sophia displayed no response to the scene. Her gray eyes met his black ones.
Her voice was as neutral as her face. “Hey, I’m gonna take a nap, so if you’re gonna kill yourself, could you do it more quietly?”
She moved both arms up into a slight shrug, then pivoted slightly and stalked off down the hall in her bare feet.
The hall was as quiet as the room she had just left. She forced herself to look down at the cream shag carpeting as she nonchalantly made her way to her own room. It was exactly twenty paces. The door was already open, and she gracelessly glided in. Her room was equally as messy as Corcey’s, though for slightly different reasons: she was sloppy no matter her emotional state. He playfully called it a “pigsty.” She preferred the terms “homey” or “lived in.”
She traipsed the obstacle course to her own bed, unceremoniously flopped on it. Her head hit a book concealed under some cut-offs; she ignored the discomfort in favour of devoting her full attention to her hearing.
After several minutes, though, it wasn’t her auditory sense that made her look to the doorway but a sixth sense: the sensation of being watched.
She wasn’t sure how long he’d been standing there either.
Sophia propped herself up on an elbow. Long folds of raven black hair fell about her face, almost caressing it. She studied him for a moment. She couldn’t read his expression—she wasn’t even sure that he had one. However, this time there was something alive behind the stare that met hers.
His hands were empty.
They studied each other for several moments, though it was he who finally broke the silence.
“Thanks.”
“Thanks.”
Corcey said the word loud enough to bring him back toward the present. He found Jaxx looking over at him, surprised.
Jaxx moved back at Corcey’s first word during the entire trip. The pilot didn’t think his passenger was aware that they’d finished doqing. For the past half hour, Corcey had sat vacantly in the airloq scratching his back.
Sophia looked at her lover, smiled, and said “Any time.”
“Any time you’re ready, I guess...” Jaxx said lamely. His addendum brought Corcey’s attention to the present speaker.
Corcey looked at him, saw that Jaxx was sweating. Even from across the airloq he could smell its two-part mix: bourbon and fear. His clammy hands slid over the switches that would let Corcey leave.
Corcey rubbed his face, stretched, and lurchingly got up. He stretched again, yawning.
These blackouts must stop. He couldn’t remember why Jaxx was panicking. Don’t think I pissed him off or tried to kill him. Did his cargo go to court?
It had, actually, though a verdict was still a long way off. But he wanted Corcey off for reasons his old friend Mahm would have approved of. The bourbon he reeked of was hers.
“Ready when you are,” he said, rather timidly.
The Thune thought about this. The blackouts and ...thump... time were becoming dangerously inconvenient—he couldn’t remember if anything bad had happened in transit, or if he should be expecting anything bad upon his arrival at Lesser Chaldea.
He remembered hearing the station’s airloq attach outside, right before he went into the Hermit on the Hill regression.
He remembered why he was at Lesser Chaldea.
“Ready,” Corcey said, his gear and grace at hand.
Jaxx opened the airloq, and Corcey was confronted with a digital wall. It displayed the Galactiq QomTeq Qorporate logo, with a touch-sensitive interface beneath. Corcey pressed a passport up to the outlined box on the wallscreen so the metal could sense its presence. His free hand selected options to written questions. He had to tell the station’s airloq who he was and why he was here to speed up processing. The wall even offered to display an amusing screensaver program while it did the background check.
Corcey had never worked for Galaqtiq QomTeq before, so his alias, John Nathan Thunderson, was not deemed a problem. The doors parted, allowing Corcey into the station.
A sign greeted him inside:
Welcome to Lesser Chaldea
{GQT Franchise 13}
9 Days without an accident!
Chaldea as a solar system was owned by Galaqtiq QomTeq, a speculation that has lost them money to this day. Greater Chaldea was a gas giant whose major moon, contrary to the initial surveys, turned out not to be Saladrin-hospitable. The great asteroid belt yielded far less grade-nutrivium than was anticipated.
Only Lesser Chaldea had any potential, and that was in Human/Hamaddi colonization. It was a nice enough planet, but it lacked most indigenous resources necessary for long-term living. There were few takers, mostly because of the exorbitant fees GQT charged to help recoup their losses there.
Rumours of secret GQT labs in the northern hemisphere conducting experiments on live Rathgeans have been officially No Commented on in a way that would have made Cerberus proud.
Waiting for Corcey was a man, tall and slender of build. He was wearing a loose brown uniform with the GQT logo on the shoulder; his nametag identified him as Gray. Against qorporate policy, some type of red tattoo was inked on the side of his high forehead.
Planetary policy was explicit: only GQT-manufactured items allowed on the premises. Grudgingly, Corcey turned over grace, peace, his demoqit, his carypaq, and all his eleqtroniq toys.
“Why are you here?” Gray asked.
“Lookin’ up an old friend of mine,” Corcey said.
“Who?”
Corcey pulled out the paper with the (primitive!) two-dimensional illustration that the Black Box had printed.
Gray seemed impressed. And suspicious.
“Are you one of his employees?”
“No.”
“I see; I was wondering why you just didn’t fly down directly to the estate.”
“Do you know him?”
“Not personally,” Gray replied.
“But you know who he is,” Corcey pursued.
Gray hesitated slightly before answering. “Of course—he’s Warren Popplar.”
Corcey twitched, though his sunshades concealed the reflex.
There was a very large qorporation in existence called Greely-Popplar Financial. While they were not as big as, say, Gieger Dynamyx or Warteq, they were a considerable financial force, who helped soak up the underwriting of the planet beneath them.
“Then,” Corcey recovered quickly, “you will understand that I don’t wish to keep Mr. Popplar waiting. Is there anything else, then?” he asked impatiently.
Certainly sounds like he works for Popplar, Gray thought, and quickly stamped him through.