Gizzy woke, up fumbling parts and noticing Vinn entering the workshop.
“Bad dream?” He asked.
“You mean they make good ones?” She sighed. “Ugh, fuck me running, I slept for 3 hours. I gotta get something done. Stick around for a minute.”
“You know a lot of people sleep 6-8 hours every day, and uh, you did just die on the last mission.”
“PPsh, 8 hours. What a waste. I die all the time, what’s new. Anyways, I solved our problem.”
“With as many as we have, you need to narrow that down a lot.”
“Firepower. We were way out gunned. I reworked the chassis and did a new frame to support heavier weaponry. From now on if you don’t expect any problems, everyone carries the standard 5mm pistol, except you. And if we step onto any alien planet, we all carry this. The OMG20. it’s the OMG 2 point 0, but I forgot the point on the graphics print so it’s the 20.”
“Meaty.” He nodded.
“No more guessing and configuring. I got everything in one gun. Sawed off shotgun, semi auto, 5 round mag, 5mmOS submachine gun, 7mmOS Magnum bullpup with 16 inch barrel, grenade launcher over that, long range holo-scope. Plastic chassis and frame, weighs 11 pounds, so not a light gun but…well fuck it, we all got grenade launchers. Your handgun is now also a 20mm grenade launcher.”
“Nice. What’s the recoil gonna be like?”
“For any of us that can’t hold your giant damn handgun anyway, nose-breaking problematic recoil. For you, about like a human firing a 357. it’s got some push back, full auto would suck, but with a 25 round clip full of grenades you shouldn’t need that anyway. It’s integrally suppressed like the rifle so instead of making you totally deaf in one shot, it makes your ears ring and causes accumulative damage. But you got a grenade launcher handgun you can carry fairly easy in a holster so look at the positives.”
“You spent all night 3d printing these things? No wonder you don’t ever sleep.” Nicole walked in, holding their new key. She looked serious enough that Vinn took the hint and left them alone.
“Welcome to the armory, where everything is grenades now.”
“Where does the key go?” she asked.
“No idea.”
“What does the mask do?”
“As far as I know, nothing.” Gizzy yawned.
“You got your ass beaten, and stabbed several times as a distraction So Vicki could get the mask and then you made her hide it from you.”
“I took that beating for the memory card because who I killed was significant to me, the mask was a bonus grab.”
“Then why lock it up. No bullshit. Captain’s orders.” Nicole said crossing her arms and sitting on the table.
“Fine, I keep finding these items I should not be collecting. Items I have to collect, that shouldn’t exist.”
“What do you mean? I thought these were the mission?” Nicole asked.
“Some of the items are the mission, and some of them are something else. We came for the key, and I picked up this mask.” She said showing the inventory picture.
“Scary looking.”
“I’ve seen these items in my dream, from the other timeline. I keep seeing myself with a halo of black, standing in the void. White angel wings, ornate silver armor, this mask, except its merged into part of my face, the teeth and gums are growing out of it like part of my flesh, one blue eye, and one red eye, four ears, somewhere between part of the silver mask and part of me.”
“You have some fucked up dreams, Gizzy. But with what you’ve been though, I’m not that shocked.”
“They’re memories. Memories of a timeline that’s been erased. That’s what I became, in the timeline that was wiped out. So why do I keep finding the artifacts? The mask, the data cube, none of these are the mission, they don’t pertain to the path we’re on. What if the other reality is still trying to bleed through? What if we didn’t wipe it out when something overrode it, what if it just added more into it? Overlap artifacts.”
“What if you’re just overthinking your nightmares? What if you’ve just seen such dark shit happen that nobody else remembers, that you assume the worst when you see something familiar that still exists in this one. Nobody reset the universe from the beginning; you said it was a few months. That mask would still be on that world in the hands of that assassin if you hadn’t crashed there. The mask still exists. What if that’s just, irrelevant detail?”
“Then why did I find it, and why knowing what it was did I just…put it right on. It fits me, oddly well. Both in concept and in tailored precision dimensions. The woman wearing the mask found ME and gave me no choice but to kill her, and there it was for the taking.”
“Who was she?”
“Jack’s birth mother. She was supposed to be already dead but tadaa, like magic, more shit changes and intersects with me on a random world that shouldn’t be there.”
“You killed Jack’s mother?”
“Obviously don’t tell him. She was a murderous bitch and that’s coming from me, and she left him for dead as a baby and if he had found her, she would have tried to kill him too. He’s better off thinking she died long ago. Now you wanna get real serious and honest…you were inside that pitch for about an hour. She bonded with one too and she said they never let go. Have you been scanned?”
“I’m fine.” She said
“How do you know that?”
“Okay I’m not fine, I’m traumatized. I’m still shaken up and jumping at every shadow. It felt like drowning, but it didn’t stop. I don’t wanna leave the ship again, frankly but if I bitch up cry and say I can’t, you’re gonna remind me that the universe is at stake and you’re right. You’re always right. So why bother. Repress and deny, that’s the Gizzy way, isn’t it?” She said, pausing for the reply.
“There’s a difference between repressing and being numb. Pretending to feel nothing to cope is not the same as being so dead inside that you just feel nothing.”
“JD4…tell me you feel nothing.” She said as Gizzy stopped and looked up, as if hearing a name that shouldn’t be spoken. “You said JD4 was the only planet that scared you and you didn’t know why. You wipe your own memory of it. Something so bad that you had a full memory wipe, done before the cones were a thing, full surgical procedure to remove something you didn’t want to remember. How’s that for pretending to feel nothing?”
“I won’t even argue with that, because I don’t know what was there, but we’ll find out together and see if you consider it an exception. And speaking of memory wiping. Have you seen my prototype pocket cone? The one that fits my smartglass phone that was supposed to be set up on a kiosk for emergencies and now it’s missing.”
“If I stole that, you don’t think I’d have wiped my memory of stealing it? Why would I want to steal that?”
“Why would anyone on this ship? It’s as illogical for you as anyone and we’re being honest today, like Captains.”
…
Gizzy and Nicole strutted into the temple of the 4 walls. Lord Behrnought was still waiting patiently, quickly hiding his phone and trying to appear ominous and godlike.
“We got the key. We can’t figure out what it does. And we got the mask. Same problem.” Gizzy said placing down the key.
“Impressive, this key requires a sacrifice to get and one to use. They key of regret allows you to undo a single mistake.”
“Delete key, rewinds time by like 5 minutes, so what does that do to move us forward?”
“It doesn’t, it moves you backward. What moves you forward is the glasses.” He smiled. Gizzy put the glasses on, looking amazed as bright gold letters appeared on the 4thwall. “This place is a map.” She said, glancing down at the symbol for JD4 and cringing a little, noticing it was the end of the map. She traced back the symbol for the key and went one mark forward to what looked like an Egg with Saturn’s rings.
“Egg planet?” She asked.
“I have no idea what you mean. That key goes to a door, guarded by the doorman. I know the stories, but I cannot see the writing. You wear the glasses. Ask the doorman for your answers. And this…Mask you speak of. There is no mask. Why are you so sure there is?”
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.
“Just testing you to see if you knew what you were talking about or blowing smoke up my ass.” Gizzy bluffed.
…
“Well that was super specific.” Nicole huffed as they closed the shuttle doors. “The mask is nothing, they key opens some door somewhere with a guard, and we have to go to egg Saturn. They can’t just say ‘here’s the coordinates, go find the door on tenth street and Maine?’ or something.”
…
“Ghost stars, expending the search perimeter, we got 2 planets that look like Saturn in two different locations and systems. Neither are egg shaped, neither look particularly different. You wanna make the scientifical wild-ass guess or should I?”
“This one looks pretty.” She pointed. “It’s green.”
“This one is blue, high amounts of water, could be a water planet. You’d love that. Why the green one?”
“I don’t know. Blue is good too.”
“No it’s not.” Vicki said stomping into the cargo bay. “We just got our asses kicked because we lacked firepower, and we can’t shoot underwater. Jack and I almost drowned on the last water adventure and Vinn nearly ended up in a similar predicament. You may be a little bit marine reptile, but none of us are. Green means either plants and therefore oxygen, or it means toxic gas and I’m an idiot, everyone can yell at me, and we’ll all go swimming again.” She said sitting down confidently.
“Not sure if I respect the assertive confidence or consider it cocky and mildly rude. But you make a better point than we did. Green it is.”
“Captain…if you don’t mind, I need to talk to Gizzy alone.” She demanded.
“Fine. Go nuts.” She shrugged.
“So how was your day?” Gizzy asked sarcastically.
“That tar stuff. You said you might be able to reverse engineer it to cure my need for blood. Was that just something to get my ass moving so you could blow up a bitch, or was that legit?” She asked.
“I said maybe, because I meant maybe. It’s a real theory, I’m looking into it.”
“Not to keep being rude but I thought I was the first of my kind, and a billion to one fluke caused by a combination of bug venom and cancer. Then we run into another one like me. You know more about her than you’re telling.” She accused.
“No shit, I do. I’m also your boss and you signed up to a covert operative like your husband. That means need to know basis, and this is above your paygrade, Captain Vicki…oh right, sorry I meant Nurse in training on her first off-word mission Vicki. I get those confused all the time.”
“Do you know what it’s like to be afraid you might kill your husband and drink his blood because you got hungry? Do you know what it’s like to have to take 8 pills a day to MAYBE not die of cancer at 24? Or to feed on a Delmarian every day to avoid losing yourself and your sanity to murderous thirst? Because I do and I’m tired of it, none of you are a high risk of killing the one you love most because your mutant cancer has a taste for human flesh, so if you have samples of another like me, and I’m not the first one, then that sounds like an exception to the don’t ask questions policy, First officer Gizzy. How much are you thinking about that tar stuff and how much are you thinking about the mission?” She asked.
“Honey the mission is bigger then all of us. Your life, Jack’s life, my life, we don’t mean shit compared to the mission because it kills all of us and everyone we ever loved if we fail. Not just Jack, your friends, your parents, Dee, your high school prom date, and every child on every world going through some rough times in their life hoping to still have a life. The universe is almost infinite, that means there’s almost a guarantee that out there is some crazy shit just like you, and we have a bad habit of running into things that seem very unlikely. I’m sorry you have to feed, but while I’m busy trying to save reality as we know it, I haven’t had time to play with highly volatile parasitic roofing cement that can take over the host’s mind, trying to quickly engineer a half-assed cure for your thirsty ass. You like pulling rank, go ask Captain Nicole if that molten pitch is safe to play around with and see if she’ll let you experiment a little. Meanwhile, either grab a snail and get high, or go ride Vinn and piss of Nicole, or go suck on an android. You got options. I suggest you pick something instead of wasting my time. I just killed someone fairly personal and I got mixed feelings about it. We all got our demons, yours aren’t the strongest on the ship.” She barked. Vicki stormed down the hallway, stifling her anger as her eyes shifted to less red and more olive green.
“How do you know?” she asked Gizzy to herself. “Have you met my demons?” She added, spotting the android and salivating slightly.
…
Vinn organized props and gadgets in a briefcase as Nicole added some handcuffs and the portable memory cone.
“You sure this is safe?” he asked. “We’ve been doing the sexy stranger bit a lot lately.”
“Sexy stranger is exciting, I like the distraction. I’ve been through some traumatic shit, it helps. Plus Gizzy said the memory cone was about the same brain damage as a few shots of vodka, nobody gets mad when I have a few beers, or when Jack has a double old fashioned every single night, or when you knock a 6 pack down for a ball game. We’ll get burned out eventually, this is a temporary stress relief. You know how hard it is to get in the mood for sex when I know the universe might be ending if me and Gizzy don’t hold it up and take on the monsters and riddle of the weirdest parts of space? That’s a lot. Even being half of the chosen one team is rough, I need half an hour to just not know anything and meet a sex Delmarian hunk for some kinky strange on a starship. This completes the fantasy. You wanna cone too?”
“If we’re both coned then who is gonna initiate? We’re both the kinda people to go along with it, not start it. The fact that we first had sex as is is a miracle, believe me someone needs to know it’s a bit in case something goes wrong and then we’re both clueless strangers.”
“That’s a good point, we’ll just trade you in if you want next time.”
“No, I’m good. Delmarian brains work different. Safe for humans may not be safe for me. You may be getting a 2 beer brain zap, I may wake up thinking I’m a giraffe. I don’t even know what that is, so that’s scary.”
“Okay well as long as you like your role here, I think we got it.
…
Jack and Vicki sat in the workshop, her eyes wet from tears and her cheeks flush from embarrassment, shame and guilt.
“Jack, I can’t keep making you clean up my messes.”
“You’re my wife. I married you knowing what you are and knowing you have medical issues. I’d do anything to take care of you.” He said, trying to repair the android’s severed head, both of them looking disturbed by a decapitated version of their friend stained red and severely damaged.
“You shouldn’t have to. It’s not fair that you do all the work. I never take care of you.” She sighed.
“You take care of me. You give me a reason to care, you give me someone to care for, and you have saved my ass in tactical situations more than once.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Look, the snail slime isn’t going to affect everyone the same. Everyone has different biology. Vinn’s a Delmarian, I’m human, You’re human with complications, Nicole’s a hybrid human seamonster, Gizzy’s a human body with an alien personality in a robot brain. Everyone is medically unique. I know someone who’s 100 percent generic uncloned human who falls asleep with too much caffeine, so the slime that increases most people’s sex drive is going to inevitably lower someone else’s. Maybe you just need to adjust the dose, maybe you’ll get used to it, maybe we just have to keep fixing the damn robot.”
“I can’t keep play-murdering Dee every day it’s giving me nightmares. The fucking slug snot thing wipes my sex drive and I’m gonna ruin Nicole’s marriage if I feed off Vinn due to a combination of jealous husband-hogging and then HE has no sex drive because I tanked his fluid levels down and filled him with bug venom and adrenaline shots to counter it. That can’t be healthy for him OR his marriage. Now, hear me out. Gizzy said the other bugpyre she encountered had been on that planet for day or even weeks with nobody else around, nothing to feed on, and the Pitch sustained her. She was stronger than me, I took Gizzy in full personal rage mode and me with a grenade launcher to stop her, and Gizzy had to self destruct to finish the job. Just a little of that stuff could potentially have a cure in there but I’m not a scientist, and frankly the only mad scientist on the crew is Gizzy and she doesn’t understand how important that is.
“Vicki, that stuff attacked Nicole. You didn’t see how shaken up and scared she was. She said it felt like dying but it never stopped. That stuff bonds to you and doesn’t let go. You are NOT going to risk your life with that shit. Promise me you wont do anything stupid, in order to try and save our sex life for my sake, just because you feel like you’re not contributing. I’d rather us have no sex at all than have you changed or killed or made worse by some unknown evil sentient tar. Give Gizzy time, if there’s a safe medical cure to be derived from that, she’s the most likely to figure it out.”
“Maybe she should duplicate herself on the ship, spend one of their free time doing the science and the other one running missions.”
“Do you really want two Gizzys disconnected from the hive mind struggling for control and pulling rank on each other, both convinced they are the right Gizzy for the job and trying to figure out which one you’re talking to every time?”
“Never mind. One is already enough, often too much. We already have 2 captains fighting over the missions.” She huffed.
“Don’t trash your mental health for my sex life. Do the goop thing, have your alone time.”
“Jack, if you…need to use the robot for your own needs, I would understand. I know it’s not Dee, it’s just a device. I won’t get jealous of a toaster while I’m depriving you of intimacy.”
“I’m not screwing the roomba. No offense to people with the virtual girlfriend sex bots, but I have the perfect woman right here, she’s just not well at the moment. I’ll manage just fine. You worry about your mental health and your nutrient needs, Go get high with a snail, I’ll do what I need to do and if you have any sex drive left to spare, let me know. We’ll get through this. Sickness and in health, that’s the vow.”
“We wrote our own vows, Jack, that part wasn’t in there.”
“Well it should have been because it was already implied.” He said. “Get…better. Stop worrying about me and trying to impress me. You already did.”