NOVEL NEXT Chapter 2
As I sat down, my headache returned with a vengeance. The floor of my cell was soft, squishy, and surprisingly comfortable. Within moments, I discovered it wicked away moisture too, as I began silently crying.
A hundred years. My family, my friends, all taken from me. The man who did it was likely dead too. He wasn’t wearing any relic suits that would keep him alive through the centuries like Phyllis, Molls, or myself were. Phyllis was so different. So hostile! I wanted to break something, take the ship by force, and head straight for Nu-Earth, but her presence on board stopped me.
With Phyllis alive and on board with me, I couldn’t bring myself to violence. Even after what she’d become. When the scant tears I was able to cry stopped after a few minutes, I started trying to think, in defiance of my headache.
A century had passed, and the affiliate had become something else entirely. A hobb had died simply because she hesitated when I asked her to. That didn’t bode well for my own future, if my very presence was enough to send Phyllis into a murderous panic.
I wondered about Doofus, and what might have become of him in all this mess. He had been a good boy. The chance he was still alive was slim, but I knew he wouldn’t be part of what BlueCleave had apparently become. All I could hope was that he’d run off to somewhere safe and lived out his days in what happiness a dog could find in BuyMort.
Hours passed while I sat in my cell. I couldn’t feel any movement from the ship, but I had to assume we were traveling somewhere. Phyllis didn’t seem likely to deal with me on her own. I figured she must have been acting on orders from somewhere.
She’d been part of our BlueCleave structure before so whatever that military had turned into in my absence would still have her as part of it. I just had to reassert control, somehow, without getting anyone else killed.
But Phyllis seemed unlikely to let that happen, based on what I had seen so far. That hobb woman had been kind to me too. I decided I had to be careful and simply laid flat on my back until the brig door whooshed open again.
Phyllis returned, again. This time she entered with a squad of power armored hobbs. Each carried a melee weapon and linear rifle, and all of them had the same paint scheme as the ship.
“Get up,” she said.
“Bite me,” I replied. “You’re not my boss, Phyllis. Nobody is. I’m a dead man.”
“Get up!” Phyllis yelled. “You wanted to talk, so let’s talk.”
“Against your better judgment?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Clearly,” she replied.
I sighed and stood, nodding as the energy bars blinked out.
“Behave, or else,” Phyllis warned me.
“Yeah, yeah,” I answered, stretching and stepping down from the squishy pedestal. “Just don’t kill anyone else, you psychopath.”
She bristled at the comment but held her tongue. Her guards separated to let me pass, and I walked slowly behind Phyllis out into the ship’s hallway.
Bright lights were embedded in the ceiling, and we followed them through the corridors to a large meeting room with a long table, surrounded by hard-backed chairs. The guards left us at the door, which whooshed shut behind me like the brig door had.
I glanced back and then to Phyllis. “You’re not going to kill any of ‘em? You sure? They saw my face.”
“Sit down, asshole,” she replied. “You have some questions to answer.”
“You know,” I started, leaning on one of the chairs. “I’m not feeling inclined to answer any questions until I get some of my own answered. That seems fair to me.” When she merely stared at me, I continued. “What happened to my friends? My family: Doofus, Axle, Morbin. What happened to Molls?” I forcefully asked.
“That’s classified. You’ll have to ask Nu-Earth command when I deliver you. Maybe they’ll take pity on you, dead man,” Phyllis answered. She sat down in a chair at the far end of the long desk.
I looked out the viewscreen behind her. Stars moved at a slow crawl.
“You’re taking me to Nu-Earth?” I asked, walking slowly down the desk toward the screen.
“I have my orders,” she answered.
I nodded. “Yeah, you always were a good soldier, huh?”
“Sit down, asshole!” Phyllis suddenly barked.
“No!” I replied. “I don’t feel like it! I’ve been dead for a century. I want to stand, and I’m going to stand! You don’t like it, kill me.”
“I might,” she growled, crossing her arms. “Can you really be him?”
“Yes, Phyllis, I’m really me. You weren’t sent out here to find an elaborate prank. I suspect my attempt to activate the Sleem gate set your orders into motion. Where’d they come from anyway?” I asked. “Who bosses you around now, after all these years?”
“I’m not here to answer your questions, you’re here to answer mine,” Phyllis growled.
I moved back around in front of her and leaned over a chair back, staring at her face. She looked so young. I sighed and shook my aching head. “Fine, ask me your questions.”
“Why did you name the affiliate Silken Sands?” Phyllis asked, glaring up at me. “Why the initials SS?”
I scowled at her. “Shit, I don’t know Phyll. That was mostly Clippy and Mr. Sada. We all named it together.” I frowned and tried to remember through my foggy memories. “I think it was something to do with business optimization. Alliteration helps people remember the name, and it had geographic and product relevance at the time. Pretty sure we were only selling spider silk back then.”
She stared at me while I talked, then blinked a few times and looked down. “So you weren’t making reference to world war two?”
“Cheeze on Pasta Phyllis, you see nazis everywhere! No, I wasn’t making a secret reference to the SS,” I sighed. “Tell me, did I ever execute a member of my military for insubordination? If anyone’s the nazi here, it’s you.”
She breathed heavily through her nose and scowled down at the table in front of her. “I know,” she finally said.
I raised an eyebrow at that. “Then what are you doin’ here?” I asked.
Phyllis’ scowl deepened, and she pushed back from the conference table. “My job. I shouldn’t even be talking to you.”
“Well, you’ve always been a complicated lady,” I replied.
“I barely even remember you, you know,” she said. “It was a lifetime ago. My second life.”
“Yeah, I know. I was there at the start of that second life. Do you even remember the kid with the shotgun, Phyll?” I carefully asked.
She blinked a few times, then cradled her head in her hands. “I do. I mean, I didn’t but you bringing it up . . . yeah now I do.”
“So you know, I didn’t do this to you.” I stared at her while she worked through her memories. “BuyMort did this to us both. We were friends, Phyll.”
She snorted a laugh and shook her head. “I remember a burned out, washed up loser who helped me get my groceries, when I was too old to do it myself. But we were not friends.”
“Yeah, there she is. Grouchy old bag,” I laughed back.
“Well at least you’re right about that,” Phyllis replied, her smile cold and tight. “I’m almost two-hundred years old.”
“And you only actually knew me for roughly a year,” I muttered, more to myself than to her. “No wonder you don’t remember me.”
“No, I remember you,” she corrected. “Worst damned year of my life.”
I frowned but nodded. “Yeah, me too, I think. Are you really not going to tell me what happened to Molls? I thought she was your friend.”
“Until she started dating you, anyway,” Phyllis replied. “After that, I was swept into your military industrial complex and ordered around the multiverse fighting your enemies.”
“Yeah, about that,” I said. “I need you to tell me about Admiral Omen. What happened after I disappeared?”
She shook her head. “Classified. I shouldn’t even be talking to you.”
“Don’t give me that shit, Phyllis. This entire affiliate belongs to me. I don’t give a shit if it's been a century. You know I’m going to take it back,” I growled.
Phyllis looked at me with narrowed eyes, then slowly shook her head. “No,” she said. “You won’t.”
She stood and walked to the door. “Guards. Take him back to his cell. We arrive in Nu-Earth orbit in two hours, prepare for prisoner transfer.”
“That’s it, Phyll?” I said, raising my voice in anger. “You’re sure you want this road?”
The young woman turned back and glared at me. “There are fourteen hundred souls on board this vessel, including families. You want to tear through all that to get free, be my guest. Prove me right about who you really are.”
I snarled, and for a moment, I was genuinely tempted. But when the power armored guards arrived, I relaxed and submitted to their man-handling. Within minutes, I was back in my cell, with glowing energy bars flickering all around me.
At least it was spacious. I flopped back on the soft gel and stared up through the glowing bars at the bulkhead above me. My head throbbed, and I struggled to think about anything but Molls. Admiral Omen’s betrayal flitted through my mind occasionally too, but the implications were too big for me to handle at that point.
My rebuilt brains just didn’t work the way they used to.