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- Aug 5, 2014
A Rock And A Hard Place
“Freeze!” barks the thunderous force behind me. The silvery armored Iron Commander and his lower-ranking associates point their Mark VII Hephaestus rifles at the back of my forehead, itchy fingers on the triggers, eagerly awaiting an order to shove an electric paralysis beam up my posterior.
“Ah, come on, fellas. Do we really want to go through this again?” I tease. As I josh about, one of the Iron Guards marches his merry way toward me from behind, gradually taking baby steps on approach. Unbeknownst to him and the other cannon fodder, this only allows me more time to analyze the matter at hand.
I place both hands behind my skull, allowing the guard to pat me down. Once he finishes, the excuse for a soldier pulls out some shiny silver binders. As he reaches for my wrists, with a motion as swift as light, I snatch the bracelets from the guards cold, pleather gloves and strike him on the temple. A roundhouse kick meets the side of the Commander’s helmet; a standard judo chop meets a guard’s neckline with unparalleled force, followed by subsequent beat-downs to the other guards’ balaclava clad scalps. I make a dash for it until I feel a surging numbness in the back of my neck. I pull something out from the back of my neck. I can feel the venom from the paralysis dart seep through me. I squint at the needle before my knees meet the ebony tiled ground, followed by a loud *thump* and an “Oomph!” I feel greater numbness throughout my body until an enveloping darkness consumes my vision as the lights fade out.
Once my sight returns to process my surroundings, my numbness seems to relieve itself automatically. I spread my wrists only to discover they stop at the snapping of a black, rattily chain. I discover my legs regard similar restraint. My vision fixates on the silhouette above. I initially have difficulty remembering the figure, but then the lengthy dart rifle and black beret allows for a memory implanted in my head to implode. “Have a nice nap, foreignee?” laughed Kreen.
“I did until I saw your hideousness,” I poorly wisecrack in return.
“Ah, the great Josiah Bennet makes a funny! There need be more comedians like you around! Otherwise it gets drearily depressing real fast…” Kreen sardonically replies.
I feel my body just want to lay there, with a lethargy encompassing my interior vibes. Yet I want to cave in the skull of the excuse of a man towering over me. The strength to do so eludes me. “I feel that, under your falsetto, you must be miserable. You seem to love invading G.A.P. colonies and execute actions that couldn’t be farther from moral because deep down you’re dead on the inside. You all are,” I remark.
Kreen’s eyes shift back and forth, like I had touched a part of the region of his lifeless soul yearning for redemption. “You know what the down-side to caring is?” Kreen picks me up and thrusts me against the wall so fast it takes me a few seconds to process my shift in location. A gust of his alcohol-stained breath blasts against my face, wafting up my nostrils. I feel my heart sink to new levels of low. “You have more to lose,” Kreen sneers. “Move, planetary scum.”
Trudging down the hallways of S.T.R.Y.K.E.R.’s paramilitary base is far from dissimilar to braving the halls of any high school as an unpopular outsider. People exchange malicious glances from those who actually have guts to look you in the eye. Word-of-mouth of the negative sort is covertly whispered from behind. People pace steadfastly to vacate their proximity within mine only to have it filled again by one of equally resentful disposition. I realise my charcoal tinted titanium wrist bands come to symbolise not only restraint of the physical and mental as well as general oppression, but any typical flaw within oneself. A flaw noticeable enough to be frowned upon by mainstream society. Yet, my tenacity level is set at 11 out of 10.
Entering the Chambers of Mongers, as the platinum inscription carved at the door’s apex clearly states, allows for feelings of juxtaposed awe and precarious inner tumult to was over me. As I succumb to such feelings, I am reminded of how much I yearn for my family in my own time. Jenny, with her certain affinity for latex apparel and tendency to dismiss any form of tenderness I show to her, or anyone, for that matter, as mere symptoms of annoyance. Then there’s my mother, sharing a similar affinity, with the irking need to wipe smudges off my face after eating when “I’m 24 god-damn years old.” Yet these obsessive compulsions are what I miss the most. Lastly, there’s my father, chewing my ass out on making crappy turns when driving. I realise his bandaged nose (The “skiing accident” he was in ended up doing permanent damage to it, leaving it permanently scarred) is a symbol of rock steady hardening. My dad only wants to see me flourish in way I’ll be able to appreciate when I reach his age. All these “flaws” actually leave me wishing they were beside me in my hour of longing. How they would view such a rather…unorthodox situation of their son will at least bring me a form of assurance, that if I die, it won’t be vainful.
The control chamber is cluttered with plexiglass monitors in the wall adjacent to holographic projectors doubling as tables. Server racks line a portion of the room one must step down unto. Here I see an unlucky engineer step as if she is expecting another section of flooring only to fall right through the air onto the step due to her skimming through her data pad. A co-worker of hers nearby softly chuckles at the sight of her gravity inducing fall. With a brief motion, the side of the data pad meets the fellow’s temple like a baseman hitting a ball upwards to arrange a meeting with the heavens above the park. The stick of a man struggles to stagger to his feet. The embarrassing gravity of the scenario presents itself in the fellow’s struggle to regain a sense of dignity. I myself chuckle before the back of Kreen’s rifle meets my adjacent cranium.
I am lead into a circle with immense glass monitors serving in place of the wall hanging down above. Kreen marches away to leave me in the circle’s center.
“You’ll miss me, Kreeny,” I yell as he trudges across the vastness of the center enveloping me, pretending not to hear me.
“Not nearly as much as you probably miss your own dimension,” retorts a sultry, feminine articulation from behind.
I turn to see a familiar sight: the midnight shade of storm cloaks; the rotten tree bark brown leather gloves; the silvery mane adjacent to a blonde ponytail; the 30-something age range; the maroon irises…Those are what strike me at my core. The piercing, hellish blaze of a glare leaves my heart at a level of pacing normally reserved for hogging a mile in the sweltering heat. I do my best to conceal my inner doubts.
“The fact that I long for something separates me from the likes of you two. You only have a spacious gap where a heart should be,” I counter with some amount of confidence. I can feel my inner doubt slowly slip away. “From your perspective, that seems to be the case,” declares Kenzith von Krause. “Let’s take a second to consider what you say to be truthful; if we are indeed soulless, how would we mend this inner void?”
I shrug, trying to conceal the fact of how little I care. “Oh, let me guess, by completely disregarding sentient life?” I inquire.
Both von Krause siblings sneer spitefully, like the kind of sneer a malicious soul would make while taking immense pride in having committed a heinous crime only the sorts of souls without any nobility in their streaking black oceans of malign “hearts,” if there is one at all.
“Perhaps,” purrs Tessa von Krause. “However, we tend to focus on the wrongs committed by the Galactic Alliance of Planets and exploit them. Only then will you subject yourselves to your erroneous nature and amend yourselves. It’s for your own good, you know.” I wrinkle my nostrils at the thought of their perception of a greater good, surprised they even comprehend the very notion of such philosophical meanderings.
“My idea of a greater good isn’t so much as rebelling against the Federation to aid those of such self-centered beliefs,” I consider.
Kenzith frowns. “Our people are starving!” he growls. “Everything we do is devoted to a greater ideal shared amongst us in the Confederacy of Allied Star Systems. We aid each other in times of need. If that isn’t helping others, you must be misguided.”
I come to an agreement, yet I mentally inquire further. “Understandable,” I concede, “but that doesn’t excuse your actions in the slightest.” I fidget through my bracelets. I hear a soft snap at the meeting of the chain and cuff. I shuffle slightly through my ankle braces. I hear a similar snap at the bottom in the same place as above.
“You’re right,” admits Tessa. “It only justifies them. The G.A.P. would never comprehend such a modus operandi as our own. On a separate matter, would you like to hear our plans of…renovation of your beloved ship of operations the Eternal Euphoria?”
I stare dead-eyed. “Do I really have much of a choice?” I ask. A sudden epiphany springs into my head. I’ll just wait until opportunity presents its gracious self. It makes me want to ignore the threat made on the very heart of my new home.
“There’s always a choice,” chuckles Kenzith. As he speaks, both approach me in intimidation.
With Tessa standing mere centimeters adjacent to my position, I reach a formidable conclusion. “You’re right,” I acknowledge. “And I just made mine.” I’m still having difficulty believing I just lunged my forehead forward to meet Tessa’s, knocking her to the floor with a palm clutching a bloodied nose. I slip out of my cuffs and send neutralizer picks hidden in my belt into contact with both von Krauses’ neck lines. One of the engineers working on a server rack across from my current position shouts my course of action and calls for attention to the matter before his bellows are quelled. I now have only four out of my originally seven picks left.
I dash to the box of ammunition crates stacked against the wall and climb up to the rafters, which I find leads to a conveniently placed vent. As I approach my new center of asylum, tremendous *BOOMS* envelop my eardrums and leave the rafters I currently stand on riddled with holes. I trudge down the vent far enough until I finally reach an opening leading to a barren expanse of field. Sirens begin to wail behind me as I leap down on to the ground below. A brief somersault is all that’s needed to suppress my descent.
Once I venture far enough from my former captors’ base of operations, I am finally in a wide enough space to forward my coordinates to my fleet. I continue panting without cessation as I finish sending my position and collapse in to the dry, golden, elongated grass. Within an hour-and-a-half, after hiding in the grass and watching the fighter ships fly overhead, (I couldn’t be more relieved I had picked up that motion suppressor in the lab) I finally greet the pilot with an exhaustive salute. “Feels good to be surprised you’re still alive, Brant,” joshes Richard Kaynor.
“I couldn’t agree more,” I pant as I step in to the vessel with an overwhelming sense of relief abating anxiety.
“You’re always quick to retort, Kay.” For once, I found the marijuana fumes effusing from the cock pit heartening. Like I’m home.
“Freeze!” barks the thunderous force behind me. The silvery armored Iron Commander and his lower-ranking associates point their Mark VII Hephaestus rifles at the back of my forehead, itchy fingers on the triggers, eagerly awaiting an order to shove an electric paralysis beam up my posterior.
“Ah, come on, fellas. Do we really want to go through this again?” I tease. As I josh about, one of the Iron Guards marches his merry way toward me from behind, gradually taking baby steps on approach. Unbeknownst to him and the other cannon fodder, this only allows me more time to analyze the matter at hand.
I place both hands behind my skull, allowing the guard to pat me down. Once he finishes, the excuse for a soldier pulls out some shiny silver binders. As he reaches for my wrists, with a motion as swift as light, I snatch the bracelets from the guards cold, pleather gloves and strike him on the temple. A roundhouse kick meets the side of the Commander’s helmet; a standard judo chop meets a guard’s neckline with unparalleled force, followed by subsequent beat-downs to the other guards’ balaclava clad scalps. I make a dash for it until I feel a surging numbness in the back of my neck. I pull something out from the back of my neck. I can feel the venom from the paralysis dart seep through me. I squint at the needle before my knees meet the ebony tiled ground, followed by a loud *thump* and an “Oomph!” I feel greater numbness throughout my body until an enveloping darkness consumes my vision as the lights fade out.
Once my sight returns to process my surroundings, my numbness seems to relieve itself automatically. I spread my wrists only to discover they stop at the snapping of a black, rattily chain. I discover my legs regard similar restraint. My vision fixates on the silhouette above. I initially have difficulty remembering the figure, but then the lengthy dart rifle and black beret allows for a memory implanted in my head to implode. “Have a nice nap, foreignee?” laughed Kreen.
“I did until I saw your hideousness,” I poorly wisecrack in return.
“Ah, the great Josiah Bennet makes a funny! There need be more comedians like you around! Otherwise it gets drearily depressing real fast…” Kreen sardonically replies.
I feel my body just want to lay there, with a lethargy encompassing my interior vibes. Yet I want to cave in the skull of the excuse of a man towering over me. The strength to do so eludes me. “I feel that, under your falsetto, you must be miserable. You seem to love invading G.A.P. colonies and execute actions that couldn’t be farther from moral because deep down you’re dead on the inside. You all are,” I remark.
Kreen’s eyes shift back and forth, like I had touched a part of the region of his lifeless soul yearning for redemption. “You know what the down-side to caring is?” Kreen picks me up and thrusts me against the wall so fast it takes me a few seconds to process my shift in location. A gust of his alcohol-stained breath blasts against my face, wafting up my nostrils. I feel my heart sink to new levels of low. “You have more to lose,” Kreen sneers. “Move, planetary scum.”
Trudging down the hallways of S.T.R.Y.K.E.R.’s paramilitary base is far from dissimilar to braving the halls of any high school as an unpopular outsider. People exchange malicious glances from those who actually have guts to look you in the eye. Word-of-mouth of the negative sort is covertly whispered from behind. People pace steadfastly to vacate their proximity within mine only to have it filled again by one of equally resentful disposition. I realise my charcoal tinted titanium wrist bands come to symbolise not only restraint of the physical and mental as well as general oppression, but any typical flaw within oneself. A flaw noticeable enough to be frowned upon by mainstream society. Yet, my tenacity level is set at 11 out of 10.
Entering the Chambers of Mongers, as the platinum inscription carved at the door’s apex clearly states, allows for feelings of juxtaposed awe and precarious inner tumult to was over me. As I succumb to such feelings, I am reminded of how much I yearn for my family in my own time. Jenny, with her certain affinity for latex apparel and tendency to dismiss any form of tenderness I show to her, or anyone, for that matter, as mere symptoms of annoyance. Then there’s my mother, sharing a similar affinity, with the irking need to wipe smudges off my face after eating when “I’m 24 god-damn years old.” Yet these obsessive compulsions are what I miss the most. Lastly, there’s my father, chewing my ass out on making crappy turns when driving. I realise his bandaged nose (The “skiing accident” he was in ended up doing permanent damage to it, leaving it permanently scarred) is a symbol of rock steady hardening. My dad only wants to see me flourish in way I’ll be able to appreciate when I reach his age. All these “flaws” actually leave me wishing they were beside me in my hour of longing. How they would view such a rather…unorthodox situation of their son will at least bring me a form of assurance, that if I die, it won’t be vainful.
The control chamber is cluttered with plexiglass monitors in the wall adjacent to holographic projectors doubling as tables. Server racks line a portion of the room one must step down unto. Here I see an unlucky engineer step as if she is expecting another section of flooring only to fall right through the air onto the step due to her skimming through her data pad. A co-worker of hers nearby softly chuckles at the sight of her gravity inducing fall. With a brief motion, the side of the data pad meets the fellow’s temple like a baseman hitting a ball upwards to arrange a meeting with the heavens above the park. The stick of a man struggles to stagger to his feet. The embarrassing gravity of the scenario presents itself in the fellow’s struggle to regain a sense of dignity. I myself chuckle before the back of Kreen’s rifle meets my adjacent cranium.
I am lead into a circle with immense glass monitors serving in place of the wall hanging down above. Kreen marches away to leave me in the circle’s center.
“You’ll miss me, Kreeny,” I yell as he trudges across the vastness of the center enveloping me, pretending not to hear me.
“Not nearly as much as you probably miss your own dimension,” retorts a sultry, feminine articulation from behind.
I turn to see a familiar sight: the midnight shade of storm cloaks; the rotten tree bark brown leather gloves; the silvery mane adjacent to a blonde ponytail; the 30-something age range; the maroon irises…Those are what strike me at my core. The piercing, hellish blaze of a glare leaves my heart at a level of pacing normally reserved for hogging a mile in the sweltering heat. I do my best to conceal my inner doubts.
“The fact that I long for something separates me from the likes of you two. You only have a spacious gap where a heart should be,” I counter with some amount of confidence. I can feel my inner doubt slowly slip away. “From your perspective, that seems to be the case,” declares Kenzith von Krause. “Let’s take a second to consider what you say to be truthful; if we are indeed soulless, how would we mend this inner void?”
I shrug, trying to conceal the fact of how little I care. “Oh, let me guess, by completely disregarding sentient life?” I inquire.
Both von Krause siblings sneer spitefully, like the kind of sneer a malicious soul would make while taking immense pride in having committed a heinous crime only the sorts of souls without any nobility in their streaking black oceans of malign “hearts,” if there is one at all.
“Perhaps,” purrs Tessa von Krause. “However, we tend to focus on the wrongs committed by the Galactic Alliance of Planets and exploit them. Only then will you subject yourselves to your erroneous nature and amend yourselves. It’s for your own good, you know.” I wrinkle my nostrils at the thought of their perception of a greater good, surprised they even comprehend the very notion of such philosophical meanderings.
“My idea of a greater good isn’t so much as rebelling against the Federation to aid those of such self-centered beliefs,” I consider.
Kenzith frowns. “Our people are starving!” he growls. “Everything we do is devoted to a greater ideal shared amongst us in the Confederacy of Allied Star Systems. We aid each other in times of need. If that isn’t helping others, you must be misguided.”
I come to an agreement, yet I mentally inquire further. “Understandable,” I concede, “but that doesn’t excuse your actions in the slightest.” I fidget through my bracelets. I hear a soft snap at the meeting of the chain and cuff. I shuffle slightly through my ankle braces. I hear a similar snap at the bottom in the same place as above.
“You’re right,” admits Tessa. “It only justifies them. The G.A.P. would never comprehend such a modus operandi as our own. On a separate matter, would you like to hear our plans of…renovation of your beloved ship of operations the Eternal Euphoria?”
I stare dead-eyed. “Do I really have much of a choice?” I ask. A sudden epiphany springs into my head. I’ll just wait until opportunity presents its gracious self. It makes me want to ignore the threat made on the very heart of my new home.
“There’s always a choice,” chuckles Kenzith. As he speaks, both approach me in intimidation.
With Tessa standing mere centimeters adjacent to my position, I reach a formidable conclusion. “You’re right,” I acknowledge. “And I just made mine.” I’m still having difficulty believing I just lunged my forehead forward to meet Tessa’s, knocking her to the floor with a palm clutching a bloodied nose. I slip out of my cuffs and send neutralizer picks hidden in my belt into contact with both von Krauses’ neck lines. One of the engineers working on a server rack across from my current position shouts my course of action and calls for attention to the matter before his bellows are quelled. I now have only four out of my originally seven picks left.
I dash to the box of ammunition crates stacked against the wall and climb up to the rafters, which I find leads to a conveniently placed vent. As I approach my new center of asylum, tremendous *BOOMS* envelop my eardrums and leave the rafters I currently stand on riddled with holes. I trudge down the vent far enough until I finally reach an opening leading to a barren expanse of field. Sirens begin to wail behind me as I leap down on to the ground below. A brief somersault is all that’s needed to suppress my descent.
Once I venture far enough from my former captors’ base of operations, I am finally in a wide enough space to forward my coordinates to my fleet. I continue panting without cessation as I finish sending my position and collapse in to the dry, golden, elongated grass. Within an hour-and-a-half, after hiding in the grass and watching the fighter ships fly overhead, (I couldn’t be more relieved I had picked up that motion suppressor in the lab) I finally greet the pilot with an exhaustive salute. “Feels good to be surprised you’re still alive, Brant,” joshes Richard Kaynor.
“I couldn’t agree more,” I pant as I step in to the vessel with an overwhelming sense of relief abating anxiety.
“You’re always quick to retort, Kay.” For once, I found the marijuana fumes effusing from the cock pit heartening. Like I’m home.
