Tag: Series

If you want to read from the start -> Coming of age, 2484

Breath lost as they look up to the gigantic Olympus Mons looking chandelier hanging over the casino floor.

The place is buzzing. The life of the casino condensing out of the air into droplets of pure, nervous excitement. Punice decries “Now this, my young padawan is where we can get proper fucked up”. Dervlah elbowing Punice hard in the ribs, “seriously, stop calling me stupid names, I’ll beat you.” Punice looking down his nostrils at her. Dervlah sticks a finger up each of these nostrils, hard. “And we are proper fucked up already, now shtap your squealing, ya fuckin padawan yourself”.

The man walking directly towards them has a meaningful look in his step. Dervlah reaches out her left arm to grab a drink from a passing tray. Punice reaches their hand to the right. Both sip. Nonchalance personified.

“Yezers are late, boss man don’t like to be kept waiting”. Both, in beautiful, slightly alcoholic rainbows, spray their drinks all over this meaningful bouncer.

Brought to a dark office (detour to bar for meaningful bouncer to get some paper roll). Whispers of the crowd below leaking through the window. “Have you brought it?” Says the sweaty mess wearing a name-tag “Himon Garfield”.

Not to be outdone, Dervlah leans forwards, both hands on table “yes we fucking have, have you, ya cuntcha?”. Himon, rich fucker he is, taken slightly aback-“brought what?”.

Dervlah rotates to Punice, “I thought so, fu–cking amateur hour here.” To Himon: “You dumb cunt, there is nothing, you don’t even know what your asking, now what the fuck do you want?”.

Himon is so taken aback his face is about to exit the back of his head. Punice, already a few drinks in, pukes onto the still wet meaningful bouncer standing at his side. Dervlah snorts with laughter, pulling an envelope like a weapon from inside her jacket, and fucks it hard at Himon’s face. In fairness, it’s an envelope, so it just kinda flops onto the table, but Derblah is still rather please with herself.

Propping up the casino bar, some minutes later, a pale Punice is Silent. With a capital S. Dervlah sighs “There’s no way I could afford to get off the moon without taking a few, ahem, part time jobs. Just a few deliveries is all”. Punice’s look says it all; they thought they were going to be the hero of this story. But they are not. They may have been a prick to her in school, but Dervlah has changed. She looks like she is about to fuck this whole galaxy, right up the hole.

Continued in Coming of age, 2484 (8)

If you want to read from the beginning, part 1 is here: Coming of age, 2484

‘Ok, thanks for that, I was feeling a bit dry there for a moment’ Punice sneers.

Punice takes a drink themselves. Dervlah decides retribution is in order; ‘Fuck it why not, let’s do it together’. It’s Punice’s turn to snort juice out their nose, showering Dervlah in, now warm, fluids.

They stand, facing each-other, breathing hard, both slightly moist. A tension between them, magnetic. Eye contact maintained. Did Dervlah raise an eyebrow? Was there a tremble of Punic’s lips? The moment passes. ‘Right then, together!’

Due to the nature of the strong atomic force engines, and the absurd levels of acceleration, their ships can’t actually fly while connected together. The AIs would pilot both carts within millimeters of eachother all the way up to .99c, but even with the ability to be so aligned, they can’t be physically connected. Dervlah sighs at the thought, she certainly knows the feeling.

With Punice grabbing their stuff from the other cart (Dervlah’s ‘Cart named Kit’ was roomier), she had a moment to breath. ‘So here I am, trying to get away from my old life, and the one fucker who I would have stayed for, has decided to join me.’ She may have left the moon, but it appears, the moon has not left her.

‘OK cartmate (‘Don’t call me that’) why are we going to Mars?’. Dervlah was sure she could hear a touch of desperation in Punic’s voice. She takes a deep breath, turns to Punice; ‘Well, I was just gonna find the first bar I can find, and get, ya know, fucked up. I’ve never gotten properly wasted before, like in the movies. I just wanna get, well, proper fuckin pissed’… she awaits judgement. The new Dervlah is through with being a good girl, through lying her way through life to make sure people have the right reactions. Punice slowly turns away, looks out the front window, and deflates with a sigh; ‘Well thank fuck you brought me, first bar indeed. My girl (‘Don’t call me that’), to get properly fucked up, you must go somewhere properly fucking classy. I know this…. I saw it in a movie’.

Continued here… Coming of age, 2484 (7).

Part 1 of this series is -> Coming of age, 2484

Dervlah’s heart beats and beats. ‘Punice Milord, what the fuck are they doing here?’ Dervlah’s future, stretched like a rubber band out in front, starts to shrink. The universe seconds before, unimaginably vast, is now the distance between two ships. The universe shrinks.

But, she has already started this journey. She has momentum. This fucker can’t stop her.

Momentum = mass x speed. Finger tip pushes throttle forwards to the stops. An iron ion is fired into the ignition chamber. Superconducting coils dump terawatts of energy in the shielded tunnel. From the iron atoms’ perspective, the universe shrinks.

‘I am iron’.

Such extreme force pulls at the atom, the distances between the protons, neutrons, quarks and haydrons start to widen. The force applied so quickly that momentum prevents the iron ion’s movement, but the generated energy field has the local force of a magnetar.

For the iron atom, space has contracted, to the outside observer (the cart called Kit) the atom has stretched over a kilometer out the back. To the atom however, the universe had shrunk to the point where the strong nuclear force dominates all others. And this force does not want anything spread out over a kilometer.

A rubber band the length of the galaxy. To the engine, about to transfer this potential energy to kenetic. To Dervlah, an irresistible force dragging her away from her home, her life. Away from fucking Punice.

While the electromagnetic energy was the equivalent of pulling the trigger, at two orders of magnitude more, the strong nuclear force was the gunpowder blowing out the bullet. In this case the bullet was a former iron atom, and the recoil was the cart named Kit, accelerated to .33c, or a third the speed of light.

Dervlah hoped it was fast enough.

Continued in part 5 Coming of age, 2484 (5)

Part 1 > Coming of age, 2484

Pop. Well no pop, but there should have been a pop. Black tunnel and pop, the whole universe. Is this what the big bang felt like?

Although not reccomended, Dervlah knows what has to come next.

Her hand drops to her right, fingers feeling for the small, roughened plastic rocker. Finger tip pushes back.

The whole chair gives a slight jar and slowly moves back, with a hum of gears and electricity. Dervlah has dreamed about this moment ever since she can remember. Her eyes stay fixed and the jewelled universe unfolding outside her cart’s canopy. ‘There, that’s enough’. Her right hand now has access to the small fusebox panel set close to the floor.

Dervlah’s heart races, her head races, but her hand is steady, it knows what to do. The panel falls open (bottom hinged for easy access), revealing row upon row of small, round, circuit breakers.

How she has dreamed of this. Barely breathing now, her fingers grip the first breaker, and pull.

Tiny pop. Warning light. Second breaker, pull, pop, new warning light. Repeat. About half way through now. The alarms start their clamour. About three quarters through now, the Alarms stop their clamour.

The last pop. Dervlah exhales. Tears begin to swell on her eyes. It doesn’t matter. The light of the cosmos distorted through tears on wet eyes with no gravity to wick them away. It doesn’t matter. The panels are all dark now, and the controls are dead. It’s not about her eyes now.

She was born on the moon. Her whole 24 years were on the moon. Air cleaned by filters and pumps and shifted in a never ending cycle. People crowded the few percent of the suface capable of holding human life. Constant fucking noise.

For the first time in her life, she had it.

Silence.

Part 3 > Coming of age, 2484 (3)