STRANGE, STRANGE UNIVERSE

STRANGE, STRANGE UNIVERSE

by Paul L. Mills

Yes, OK, I told the son of a bitch.

But it turned out that no one was listening. No one is ever listening. It’s just me, sitting alone in the dark.

As usual.

I had been here, how long?

Or was it really me? Some other captain, undercover, so undercover he’s completely in the dark.

Wondering.

I rehearsed it again. “OK.”

“OK. Whatever you want.” Surely it didn’t matter anymore at this point, wherever we were now, far from Jesus, the ghost who appears, glowing, even in the most pitch darkness, to encourage me. But not today, tonight, this moment. Jesus was far away now. I found him in a book. He came to me in a dream. But you can’t read in pitch darkness. And sleep was just a stray thought.

The door cracked open. The light hit each of my eyes like a separate stiletto, plunging deep behind them, toward all my memories, my personality, as xPm!lz22 entered the space. This was my chance, to open my eyes and actually see my surroundings, but the pain of finding this truth was too great after the unmeasurable interval of blindness. No wonder Jesus wasn’t coming around. The door swallowed the room in darkness again with a clang.

I heard the hulking movement of another behind xP. His “Coordinator.” No name, just huge fists, and a skill at whipping your knees with a shrieking length of chain.

“Well, Captain,” xP silently asked, using the mind-grope his kind like to use for communication with their prey. “Shall we hear your answer at last?”

“Ok. Whatever you want. It can’t matter now.”

“Good. Excellent! Time has raised your level of intelligence. So, then, Captain, once again: what was the nature of your mission before your most recent blunder?”

He wasn’t exaggerating, either. He had outwitted me at every turn. Child’s play, it seemed. One nasty surprise after another, with wreaths of sincerely empathetic laughter. I was simply not up to this. Never had been.

“To find you. To thwart your takeover of this system. Or at least delay it until…”

“Yes?”

“Something. I was never told.”

“Oh, dear,” he said, sympathetic as always. “It seems their faith in your success was less than perfect.”

“I think I was just a stupid decoy. A distraction. From the real plan. They thought you were good enough to elude me, but not both me and the others.”

“Unlikely. Your people could barely send you this distance, alone and naked. More would be beyond their powers. It is not for them to frolic among the stars.”

“As I say. Just a guess.”

“But what was the plan? How exactly were you to ‘thwart’ me?”

“There was no plan. Only training. And imagination.”

“Not enough, apparently. Not enough training. Or not enough imagination. Not enough imagination to invent a story of your agenda realistic enough to satisfy me.”

“Then do…your…worst,” I growled.

But he had no intention of killing me. His most recent orders were only to release me from the ship we had both boarded in disguise. Release for xP would, of course, take a diabolical form.

So now, here I sit, in the intensity, the cold -- cold intense enough to sit like a boulder of death on my chest and crush every breath, in this tiny craft, surrounded by black, a wilderness of celestial display unfolded over head, waiting for the colossal mother ship to disappear, leaving me to the quiet observation of towering indifferent white crystals of magnificent purity. This escape craft is empty, but for me. “Enjoy your repose,” xP had suggested, with his signature chuckle. “You’re not going anywhere.”

But the great ship, too, goes nowhere, unless I’m dreaming.

It sits there as I drift away, loose, hugging myself and giving up life, without strength, without Jesus. Finally, at a lonely, echoing distance, the huge, absolutely unsinkable shape, its festive lights extinguished, slips beneath the black, liquid glass, leaving him (me) entirely by myself in this strange, strange universe.

A few scattered craft, identical to mine, litter the distant expanding disk of obliterated memory, most overloaded with hysterical humans in absurd garb, arguing, pleading, singing.

xP not among them.

Three hours later, the rescue ship arrives.

END