I arrived at the Brink Space Station very tired from too
much ‘G’ – too much continuous thruster burn. Yes, I am on the run again, but
that’s a story for another day.
The Brink is infested with nice types – pirate, thieves,
smugglers, whores and whoever else has the guts to dock. Why would anyone come
here? The station is old; a donut tube around a mid-shaft – the kind you used
to see in the old Japanese SF movies. But what makes this place so hostile is
that it orbits a dead planet in a solar system that is being slowly sucked into
a black hole.
I head to the bar; a dim, tacky place – smoky with a square
counter and two pool tables; walls festooned with alien females of all sorts. I
pull up a stool and a pretty young girl dressed in a kimono says. “Want you
drink?”
I nod. “A beer.”
“Beer! No! No! No!
I can clearly see that she not all quite there. “A whisky.”
She smiles and then bows. “Right coming up!”
I survey the bar. Two men are mingled around the pool table
drinking while three women; whores I guess are lying naked on the table. One of
the men hands the other a pouch, snaps his fingers and the two girls jump off the
table and follow him out. At the far end of the counter a group of men, can’t
tell what solar system they’re from, are engrossed in what I can only guess is
Russian roulette.
The pretty young girl brings my whisky back and smiles. “You
here are.”
“You okay?” I ask.
“They make me when, they forget something put in,” she
replies, smiling.
“Android?”
She shakes her head furiously. “No! Half…half only!”
I smile my understanding, or perhaps it is my sympathy.
“Can I get another god damn drink!” shouts a man.
She bows and goes to serve him.
I pick up my glass and spill it over myself as the gun booms
through the bar. “Damn!” I swear. Then the bar erupts with laughter. I look at
the man, half his head blown off, lying on the floor. I wipe my pants dry with
a napkin and take a long hard swig. It’s then my peripheral vision picks up the
man staring at me out of the shadows from the corner of the bar. I take another
swig and then stare back at him. His face is familiar, but I can’t place him.
“Prepare for inclusion in twenty seconds,” blares the ship’s
intercom.
“Damn!” I curse. I just got here. And whoever came up with
the ridiculous name inclusion. Inclusion as they called it is when the orbit of
the station scrapes the fringe of the black hole – just for a minute or so. What
would happen was anyone’s guess.
Everyone braces themselves. Almost at once the counter begin
to shake and the hull groans as if the metal is twisting apart. The room begins
to spin and I grip the counter hard to stop myself from falling. Then it stops.
I look at the two of men at the end of the counter. Behind them is another
dimension, but the taller of the two is in both dimensions. He opens a door;
the light splays across the floor. He steps in and a woman in bed rolls back
the covers; he begins to undress.
There’s a flash and another dimension appears with the
shorter man. He is crouching over a metal box stuffing something into his
pockets.
Flash again, and I turn to see the man in the corner rise
from the shadows and head for the door. But behind him is another dimension.
What I see him do makes a chill run down my spine. Fuck! It almost makes me
piss in my pants. Suddenly he stops, I mean the real figure, and glares at me.
The bar begins to spin again and I cling to the counter.
It stops and everyone stands there in silence.
“You did my wife you dirty scum!” shouted the shorter of the
men at the end of the bar.
“Fuck you!” said the other man drawing his gun. “You stole
from me!” He pulled the trigger and the shorter man’s chest explodes – the man
stumbles back a few steps and then crumples to the floor in a pool of scarlet.
Then I realized what’s happened. The inclusion had let every
one see into the others’ minds – the parts we try so much to keep secret from
others. I draw my gun and swing around – the counter next to me blows to
pieces. I dive to the floor shooting wildly in the direction of the attack. The
stool next to me erupts into splinters. I roll frantically to the side, lasers
exploding around me. I raised my gun and let go hailstorm of lasers, but he is
gone – the door swings slowly shut.
I get up and brush myself down.
“Bad he man,” says the young girl, surfacing from behind the
counter.
I nod and holster my gun. And then a chill runs down my back.
The nuclear power plant in Fukushima.
He’s going to –
“Drink one more?” asks the young girl.
I nod.
Just those little dark
secrets we all have, the ones we try to conceal even from our loved ones.
To be continued…
