SWNOVELS Chapter CHAPTER SEVEN
Van and Dallas were still midway through their simulated bullet-fest, when the Bessie dropped out of warp in the Skolarean system. Dallas was just about to land on an explosive trap when the simulation ‘paused’ him in mid-air.
“What the fuck?” he exclaimed, “I mean, I’m not complaining, I was gonna lose a life if not for the pause, but still; the fuck?”
“D00D must have paused it,” said Van, “we must be nearing Thosisa.”
The simulation fell away and Van and Dallas found themselves in the modestly sized guest quarters once more. D00D’s voice was projected into the room; “We have arrived in the Skolarean solar system, Van. How would you like to approach?”
Van removed his ocular interface, acclimating to his humble surroundings. In truth he had been hoping they would never reach Thosisa, but now he had to play the hand he’d been dealt and there was no way of avoiding that. He thought for a second, then answered the loyal AI; “Head for the dense moon holding the planets.”
“You may want to rethink that Van,” warned D00D, “if we slip too close, we will be torn apart by the gravity.”
“Trust me,” replied Van.
“I would, but the last time you said that you ended up working for that Mondo character.”
“Just ’go’ ok, I have a plan. I’ll be taking over the controls before we get caught in the gravitational field,” retorted Van exhaustedly, “Dallas, come with me, I’m gonna need help with my disguise.”
Ten minutes later, the two men stepped into the cockpit, only, they appeared to have been replaced with an overweight, middle-aged couple in Happy World t-shirts with random food stains around the neckline. They were the perfect, stereotypical image of the average human tourists.
“You went with the fat suits then” scarfed D00D disapprovingly, “do you really think that’s enough to fool the Skolareans?”
“Yep,” replied Van, “They see all human’s as the same subspecies. They’re the dumbest smart guys in the Universe. I’d go without a disguise, but I don’t look anything like a tourist.”
“And, why have you chosen the guise of a tourist in the first place?”
“Yeah,” Dallas chimed in, “why are we dressed like fat idiots?”
“You’ll find out just as soon as we get too close to the moon.”
Before D00D or Dallas could enquire any further an incoming message blared onto the HUD. Van answered the hail and was confronted by the blue face and large black eyes of a Skolarean ‘Peace agent’. His long, spindly neck kept his body from being visible on the screen.
“Turn back immediately,” instructed the Peace agent, “you are dangerously close our moon.”
“What’s that dear?” asked Van doing his best impression of a Midwestern retiree, “we are looking for Thosisa dear, do you know where it is?”
The Skolarean sighed, “That’s the planet I am hailing you from. You must head for my coordinates or you will be dragged into our Moon’s orbit and eventually destroyed.”
“This is a rental ship, sugar. Could you not just bring us to you, we don’t really know the controls yet?”
“No,” snapped the Skolarean, “You must turn away from the Moon and head to one of our orbiting customs satellites.”
“Ok,” said Van, his novelty voice breaking slightly, “which button is that?”
“It’s not a button!” said the peace agent, beginning to lose his calm, “you should rotate your vessel toward our orbital satellites and use maximum impulse propulsion to break the hold-“
“Is that it?” asked Van, turning on the landing lights.
“NO!” shouted the Skolarean, “You need to turn around!”
“How about that?” asked Van.
“NO!” cried the agent, “you just set the lights to ‘blink mode’. You need to turn around or you’re going to die!”
“I don’t know which button to press. Could you do it for us?”
“NO!” screamed the now furious alien, “You know what, screw it. I’ll use a gravity beam to bring you down to the surface, just don’t press anything. Ignorant, fat ape-creatures.”
The peace agent disappeared from the screen and was replaced by a notification that the ship was being manipulated by a gravity beam.
“Skolareans are terrified by the possibility of something affecting the gravitational pull of the moon. They think that the slightest crash could fuck up their entire binary orbit,” explained Van, “they’ll do anything to avoid it. And, if we’re docked on the planet we can escape faster.”
“That was actually a brilliant plan,” commented D00D, “passing yourselves off as tourists should make infiltration much simpler.”
”Don’t sound too surprised,” said Van, “I’m not always an idiot. I grew up here after all.”
The Bessie Fontaine made its way softly toward the pearl blue planet of Thosisa as if carried along by invisible hands. It began to make planet-fall, seemingly unaffected by the heat of entering the atmosphere. It floated downward softly, the ground beneath grew as the weathered, purple vessel sank towards the landing pad awaiting it below.
As the landing gear touched down on the steely platform, Van turned to Dallas, “There’s blood pouches under the fingerprints of the fat guy suits. They’ll take a bio-metric scan as we go through customs. We’re Georgina and Larry McHolstein, and we’re from a small agricultural outpost in the Andromeda galaxy. If they ask, we’re here to visit some guy called ‘Dr Thingson Suche’. He’s human so we’ll need to gain passage to the exo-terran research district. If anyone asks a question you don’t understand, you play dumb.”
“Got it,” answered Dallas, “just one thing; why did you choose to dress like a woman?”
“What’s a matter, jealous?” Dallas didn’t respond, “If you must know, it’s so I can sneak out whatever we came to pick up. This fat suit has a hidden compartment, plus women are less likely to be searched.”
The two men made their way down the ship’s ramp on to the landing pad. The air here was clean, so clean you could taste the lemony freshness as if each particle had been individually scrubbed.
The fat-suits were cumbersome, but the slowing effect that this had just added to the dumpy aesthetic they were trying to portray. This didn’t do anything for the heat being emitted by Thosisa’s Purple sun though. These were relatively primitive constructs and served as an oven for the wearer.
Van led them toward a wide glowing doorway, where an interspecies menagerie was amassed. The inconceivably diverse collection of creatures were all queuing to get through customs and see the Universe’s largest university in all its glory. Though they would have rather seen the mysterious Thosis, only Thosisa was open to off-world travellers. But this by no means deterred visitors; they came by the million to see the public side of the Skolarean race. This had never sat well with Van, he had never truly grown to trust the four-armed aliens, even when he had no reason not to. Something just didn’t seem right about hiding half of your own species, even from your invited guests. The only things that get hidden are those whose power we fear.
Dallas and Van waited in line for their turn to pass the border patrol, eventually their moment came. They approached a tall metal podium with an 8 feet tall Skolarean bureaucrat, barely visible from the ground, stood behind it.
“Please state your name and the nature of your visit,” said the huge Skolarean desk-jockey.
“Well hello there,” said Van in his best southern-American accent, “My name is Georgina, this is my husband Larry and we are the McHolsteins. We’ve just come to visit our dear friend; Thingson Suche. Y’all wouldn’t happen to know where that boy got to now would yuh?”
The Skolarean sighed with annoyance that such an obvious moron had graced his presence. “Place your thumbs on the pad as you walk through the gate and- Hey, wait a minute,” he said, “Madam, is your face melting?”
The heat had begun to warp the polymer the suits were crafted from. Van giggled nervously, trying to push his face back into shape. “I recently had some plastic surgery, is all. Don’t you pay it no mind now, I’ll be fine when I get out of this here sun of yours. Come on Larry.”
They scurried through the customs gate and off toward a shady spot in a nearby forecourt. Van knew the suit would have issues if exposed to the heat for too long, they would have to do the mission faster than planned.
Van scanned the area, spotted a transport pod preparing to take off and dragged Dallas toward it. They made it on board just in time to have the door slide shut behind them.
“Exo-terran research district, human quarter,” announced Van to the empty pod. The pod made an upbeat beeping noise and zipped off over the building tops.
“These things are great when you can get one before the tourists do,” commented Van, still holding his prosthetic face in place. “This is the first time I haven’t been on one that’s swarmed with idiots.”
He looked over at Dallas who was frantically clawing at his own mouth. Van grabbed the top of his head and pulled. The head slid off to reveal a very sweaty, very oxygen deprived, panting Dallas. He gasped for air as the helmet-like prosthetic was cleaved from his head.
“Oh fuck!” he managed to say, “The. Mouth. Melted shut. Then. The eyes!”
He slumped to the floor and caught his breath, looking out of the transparent sides of the transport pod, onto the sprawling metropolis below.
The view was magnificent; the geometric buildings, seemingly grown from the ground below them. Every surface covered with neatly regimented plant life, stretching up the monolithic skyscrapers around them. Unique flying machines that mirrored the city’s beautiful aesthetic swooped by silently. This was why Dallas had gone travelling, this was a whole new world. A world with a purple-blue sky and giant, hyper-intelligent aliens. This was what he had wanted to see, even if he hadn’t known it until that very moment.
During his life, growing up on a space station, Dallas had only seen sights like these on broadcasted media but now it was right there all around him. He moved closer to the wall of the transport, pressing his nose against it. He watched as the scurrying populous below went about their lives; living an existence that he longed to know, but could only bear witness to. They rode around in odd vehicles and walked in groups. He had never seen so many people in one place, he hadn’t even conceived of it before.
This was what his journey was to be about, to see things that he had never even conceived of and if that meant the occasional brush with death, then so be it. He would follow his new companion to the end of the universe, if this was the reward.
“So, this is where you’re from then? What was it like?” asked Dallas, not breaking from his observation.
“Meh,” replied Van, focussing on fixing the heat damage to his disguise, “I was more interested in leaving. Even more so, now that I’m wanted for a capital offence.”
Dallas hadn’t really listened to his answer, he was trying to imagine for himself what it would be like for him in this apparent utopia. How might his life be different, had circumstances been different?
The transport soared over a large wall, at least a hundred feet tall. It was coated in more of the same foliage that covered the city it cut through.
Over the wall, the landscape changed radically. Gone were the skyscrapers covered in plant life, in their place were small, multi-storey buildings, entirely white in colour. Instead of the mechanical looking streets, there were grass-lands and small trees. Neatly carved, stone paths linked the various buildings and picturesque pond areas dotted the terrain. This living embodiment of an ideal Earth stretched for miles, the far side of the wall barely visible, even from the cruising altitude of the transport pod’s vantage point.
They began to descend toward the surface once more. Van put his helmet-like mask back on and prepared to depart. The pod came to a halt a few inches above the grass. Van turned to Dallas; “put your head back on, sugar,” he said in his cheesy accent.
“It’s fucked, mate. I’ll just go without,” Dallas replied, in no mood to put what was now effectively a plastic bag over his head.
Van smiled, “you’re gonna look like a freak, but ok. Let’s just get this over with, if anyone asks; I’m your mother and you suffer from a rare ‘head shrinking’ disorder.”
They stepped out onto the soft, green earth beneath them. Van knew that the disproportionately small head that Dallas now appeared to have would raise a few eyebrows, but he was counting on leaving before anyone got wise to what was really going on. Besides, there were only humans in this area, so there was no threat of a Skolarean civil enforcer cottoning on to what was really happening.
He checked the instructions that the enigmatic scientist had given him. He cringed when he saw they had to head for the quantum research labs. Van would have to be at his most crafty, this was the workplace his parents had occupied. They were total believers in the Skolarean ideology and had no doubt denounced him before his escape had even been discovered. Van and his parents had very little in common. His father had always preferred his work to his family life and his mother had always played everything safe, chastising Van for his risk taking even when it was inconsequential. Only in his darkest moments in his life after Thosisa, had he ever spared them a thought or wished to see them once more. But this was not a time for that sort of thinking, this was the time for swift, inconspicuous and, if necessary, cowardly action.
They made their way briskly to the quantum research labs. They were housed in a large cylindrical building that dwarfed the smaller domestic buildings surrounding it. Van drew a deep breath and pressed the door release.
The two odd-looking visitors lumbered into the entrance hall of the building. It was like a hospital; soft music played repetitively as lifeless, fake plants stood motionless in the corners of the room. Every surface was white and spotlessly clean. A female receptionist sat behind a long desk to the back of the room, she appeared to be playing a game on the holo-screen in front of her. Van and Dallas walked up to her;
“Well hi there, young miss,” said Van, his mask portraying a warm smile, “Me and my young son here, we’re lookin’ for Doctor Thingson Suche. Y’all wouldn’ happen t’know where that boy’s at now would y’uh?” The young woman paused her game and looked up at the yokel beaming at her from across her work space.
“Oh,” she said trying not to offend the melty-looking woman in front of her, “do you have an appointment?” Van didn’t reply, he had a breath-taking view of the lady’s cleavage, courtesy of her low cut shirt.
“We’re friends of Professor ‘Orange-peal’,” said Dallas, breaking the awkward silence, “he isn’t expecting us by name.”
“Ok,” said the receptionist, “he’s down the hall, room 3785. Follow the blue running lights and you won’t get lost. You’ll need to sign the biometric log book as you go through the door.”
“Why, thank you child,” beamed Van, cleaving his gaze away from the woman’s heaving chest, “if we get lost, I’ll just give y’all a call. Goodbye now.”
The rotund pair made their way down the long corridor off the reception area and began the long trek towards room 3785. Van’s heart was pounding in his chest, he knew they would have to walk past his parent’s lab. They had been working in a lab that was only 3 doors away, when he had last been here and they weren’t the sort to change things up unless they had to. He just had to keep up the facade and they wouldn’t recognise him… Hopefully.
The corridor snaked off around a corner near room 2841. Van was concerned that he had not seen anyone in the building since the receptionist. The atmosphere he remembered was always abuzz with activity; people eager to share their latest findings or running through in a hurry to finish an experiment. He had even once seen a friend’s father appear from nothingness in the middle of a crowd.
The building he found himself in now however, was deathly silent and seemingly devoid of life. What had happened since he left? As they rounded the corner, Van caught a glimpse of someone in a white coat run off into the distance. This was weird.
They continued on and Van soon became very aware of how close they were getting to his parent’s lab. He stopped. The door to the lab opened with a hiss, but it wasn’t his mother or father who stepped out it was someone Van had somehow forgotten all about, it was Penelope Light. And she was the first and only love that Atlas Van Morrison had ever known.
+++++
There once was a young boy, who liked to watch clouds. All of his friends thought he was strange, because while they fiddled with computer games and played boisterous pranks, he preferred to dream about other worlds. One day, the boy met a girl named Penelope.
Penelope, like the boy, also didn’t care for the things that her friends found important. The two of them founded a friendship based on being different. They became inseparable, spending every waking moment possible together. They learned together, played together and, as they grew up, loved together. The young girl excelled in her passions, spurred on by the love she shared with the boy. But the boy grew complacent. In his mind he had found what made him most happy, so didn’t care what the future had in store for him, as long as it included her.
He began slacking off with his schooling and even tried to cheat his way through a few exams. One night there was a fire at their school and all of the girl’s work, that she had worked so tirelessly on, went up in smoke. The next day she could not find the boy. The news spread quickly that it was he who had started the fire, before fleeing the planet.
The young girl, now a young woman, was heartbroken. Her once cheery exuberance had been extinguished along with the fire that had burned in her heart for the boy. The young woman grew into a great scientist, but the true happiness she had felt with the boy, never returned.
She had grown a lot over the following 10 years, but she had never truly gotten over the boy, even when she married.
Now the boy was standing only a few feet away and she had no idea.
++++
Van stood there motionless, he had no clue what he should do. How could he have forgotten about Penelope? His brain was in a full state of panic, but his feet wouldn’t move. Penelope turned towards the two men. Van could only stand there, defenceless against the torrent of memories that came flooding back to him. He could still taste her soft, brown lips and the look of her emerald eyes as she laughed. It was a laugh he had only ever seen directed at him. He fought the urge to tear up.
“Excuse me,” said Penelope, “Can I help you, you seem like you might be lost?” Van composed himself and answered her;
“Well, as I was just explaining to my son here,” he pointed at Dallas, who waved, “the last time I visited, there was a charming young couple who worked in this laboratory. I don’t suppose you know where they are now?”
“Oh, you mean the Morrisons” said Penelope, “Well, that’s a bit of a sore spot for the building. You see, their son kind of destroyed everyone’s work and a school and when they refused to denounce him, they were deported back to Earth as punishment. So now I work here.” She shrugged awkwardly as she said the last part, feeling embarrassed to be filling ’deadmen’s boots’, so to speak. Van was silent. His parent’s had actually defended him, even though they knew how much it would cost them.
“Oh, I see,” he said, taken aback, “Was their boy a real bad sort then?”
“I don’t know,” she replied, hiding her face, “I guess I never truly knew him. If you’ll excuse me now, I have some work to take to a colleague.”
“Of course, child,” said Van, moving out of the woman’s path, “y’all take care of yourself now, you seem like a really amazing girl.”
Penelope smiled slightly and walked off down the hall. Van watched her intently until she was out of sight. He had never gotten his goodbye with her or his parents and now he felt a pain, deep within his chest. It tore at his heart, demanding to be acknowledged. He fought it with all he could muster, pushing it down. He would deal with this fresh guilt later, there was still a lot to be done before he could breathe easily.
“I’ll take it you know her, then?” asked Dallas cautiously.
“I did,” began Van, “but that’s the shell of the person I once knew.”
The two men continued onwards to room 3785 without another word shared between them. They reached the door and Van pressed the intercom next to them. There was a loud buzz and the door slid open. They entered to find the room in a state of total chaos; tables had been haphazardly pushed off to the sides of the room and paper littered the walls and floor. At the back of the room, there was a man in a stained lab coat, with his back to them. He was yammering incoherently to himself as he fiddled with something on a worktop. He seemed to have no idea that he was no longer alone, despite the fact that he must have let the two odd-looking visitors in. Van cleared his throat loudly and the man spun around with a start.
“Wh-what are you doing here?!” he yelped.
“We’re here to collect the Walford drive component and we’d prefer to do it quickly. Where is it?” asked Van in a calming tone.
“That, you’re here for that?!” asked Dr Suche, hurriedly “But that was supposed to be collected a month ago. Or was it a week? Hell, for all I know it could have been an hour, or maybe you’re early. Just take the damned thing. I don’t want it here any more.”
Dallas and Van shared a confused look. Van took off his helmet, “are you ok?” he asked the frantic scientist.
“To tell you the truth,” said the doctor, “I don’t really know. Creating this thing, you see. It changes things. Time stops making sense to what you understood before. Hell, even ‘before’ doesn’t mean what it used to.”
“Riiight,” said Van, glossing over the man’s rambling tone and manic appearance. “Anything we need to know about it? I mean, it’s not radioactive or anything is it?”
Doctor Thingson Suche let out a strange chirp. “Radioactive? No that would be far too simple. You see the component is 20 grams of Kanosei.”
“Really?” asked Van, straining to believe that it could be something so common.
“What’s- whatever he called it?” asked Dallas.
“Kanosei,” answered Van, “is an artificially created element that Skolareans use in their communication transmitters. It has nothing to do with travel. You usually use about a micron of it to allow for intergalactic communication.”
“Oh,” said Dallas, underwhelmed, “then why are we picking it up?”
“Because,” announced Doctor Suche, “data is energy and energy is matter, this can transport energy instantaneously to anywhere.”
Van pondered this for a moment. He knew what the crazy man was getting at, but would making a massive amount of Kanosei actually allow you to treat solid matter as you would a radio signal? Either way, it wasn’t his problem, all he had to do was take it back to the other crazy scientist then he could go on living and get as much distance as possible between him and Mondo.
“Ok,” he said finally, “I’ll take it. Where is it?”
The man pointed to a cloth draped over a cube shaped object in the corner of the dishevelled laboratory. Van approached it and pulled away the cloth. Beneath it was a glass box, lined with metal corners. Inside it was a floating cube. It glowed, and changed in colour and visible density before his eyes. Dallas walked over next to him and stared in awe at the strange little box. Van turned to face the doctor who had now began talking to himself once more.
“Doctor Suche,” he said, causing the man to snap back to reality, “Is it safe to transport?”
“Safe?!” said the crazed scientist, “Oh yes, yes, very safe as long as you don’t-“ he froze, in utter shock. Dallas had just opened the box. The Kanosei inside let out a faint orange glow, then faded out of existence. Van and the doctor stared, dumbstruck, at Dallas.
“Shit, sorry,” said Dallas, “Have you got another one?”
Van’s jaw dropped, that was it, Mondo was going to skin him alive over and over again until he got bored. Kanosei, he knew, was not the kind of element you could just throw together in your free time and such a quantity must have taken years to fabricate. He stood motionless as the doctor crumpled silently to the floor beneath him. He clutched his head and wept quietly. Van was going to kill Dallas.
“I am so sorry,” said Dallas, recognising the baleful look in Van’s eyes, “I had no idea-“
“I’m gonna fucking kill you, you pathetic cunt!” said Van with a timbre of doom in his voice. He began to step towards Dallas, gripping him gingerly by the throat. “I am going to get tortured to death now, all because you wanted to play with things you’re too stupid to understand. Well, I’m not going down alone, every second I have before Mondo catches me will be spent causing you pain. I’m going to start by sharpening up an ice pick and sliding it down your dick-hole, then I’m gonna-“
“WAIT!” interrupted the doctor, sitting up, “The formula! Of course, yes, the formula!”
He scrambled to his feet and began frantically searching through a pile of papers on one of the discarded tables. Van watched attentively, maintaining his firm grasp on Dallas’ throat. The doctor was scan reading the papers until he found what he had been looking for. He picked up the scrap of paper and scurried over to Van. Van released Dallas’ throat and looked at the paper the doctor clutched in his gnarled fingers. It appeared to be a formula of some description, but it was far more advanced than anything he had laid his eyes on before. Is this the molecular formula for the Kanosei? What did this guy expect him to do with this? It might not be as good as delivering the actual substance, but maybe it could keep his head off of the chopping block, at least for a little while. He took the piece of paper from the doctor;
“Is this the formula for the Kanosei?” he pressed the doctor.
“It’s not that simple,” said the doctor, “you see, that formula is how to get the Kanosei back again.”
Before Van could ask what he meant the door to the lab shot open and three Skolarean Civil Enforcers burst into the room. So much for saving his skin now. He turned towards the Skolarean agents, stuffing the paper into his pocket and affected his southern American accent; “Well, hello there gentlemen, can we help y’all?”
“Nice try, Mr Morrison,” said one of the agents, “but I think you forgot something”.
He gestured to the helmet of Van’s disguise, which lay on a table across the room, mirroring his facial movements. Van closed his eyes and sighed; this was game over.
++++
There once was a boy, who loved a girl so much that he would risk his life to be part of hers. He was not as book-smart or capable as her, but his love for her was true. To keep up with the girl, he was willing to do anything. He cheated on tests to stay in her classes and even messed with school records to be at her level. When the school noticed that something was going on, they began to investigate the student records. The boy was so scared that he would lose the girl that he did the only thing he could; he tried to destroy the records that tied him to the misdeeds. Unfortunately, his plan got out of hand and he burned the school to the ground. The boy knew that he would be caught if he stayed with the girl and might even get her in trouble too, so he ran far, far away. Over time, the boy forgot about the girl, but his heart still loved her, even if the love would be forever unrequited.
++++
Van and Dallas sat in a holding cell, beneath the capital of Thosisa. The Civil Enforcers had taken away their weapons and disguises. The cell was very comfortable, at least as far as cells go, it had a padded bench and was well lit and quite clean. A glowing barrier of light encompassed one of the walls, while the others were solid and perfectly white. Light seemed to be emanating from every surface, but the temperature remained cool.
No sound permeated the room, only the rhythmic billow of the two men breathing was there to accompany them. Van was contemplating what he had learned from his brief exchange with Penelope. His parents had actually stood by him. He had always thought they didn’t care, putting their work and their lives before him, always. Why had they made such a sacrifice? He was only their son but they loved their work so much. He wondered if they had sat in this cell, or one like it, before their trial. Then he thought about what she had said about never really knowing him. Had she meant that? Could she not understand that he would never do anything to harm her? He knew what it must look like though; he had panicked when the fire got out of hand. He hadn’t even had time to say good-bye to her before he stowed aboard an off-world transit vessel, to make his escape.
His mind screamed with regrets and filled his heart with self-doubt. How could he have made so many stupid mistakes? How could he have been so blind to the wider consequences of his actions? None of it would matter soon though, he would leave this ‘resume of failure’ as his legacy, when he left the realm of the living.
The outcome of the trial was already decided, it was more a matter of ceremony than of justice and fairness. He would be put to death soon and possibly Dallas along with him. This was the end.
“I’ve never been to Court before,” said Dallas, eager to break the unnatural silence, “what’re they like?”
“Depends where you’re sat,” answered Van grimly, “and our seats aren’t exactly the ‘fun’ ones to be in.”
“What happens if we lose?”
“I’m charged with a capital offence. If I lose, I die and get recycled into something else.”
“Oh,” said Dallas, “How do you think that’ll feel?”
“You know, I think I preferred silence. How about we go back to that?”
The guards came to fetch them from their cell and led them into a large, dark amphitheatre. On raised platforms around the hall, were onlookers chattering between themselves in hushed voices. The two men were led to a space in the middle of the room, where a spot light carved a path through the surrounding darkness. Ahead of them was a large desk. Sat behind it, one at each end, were two humans in dark robes. Between them, the desk raised several feet and sat behind its peak was a Skolarean with a stern, unforgiving look on his face. The Skolarean raised his hand and the gallery fell silent. He brought up a holo-screen in front of him and quickly read the information that it projected. He finished reading and nodded slowly to the woman sat to his right. She acknowledged his gesture and stood up.
“We are here today, to bear witness to the passage of justice upon one; Atlas Van Morrison. He is charged with crimes against knowledge, as well as his colleagues in education, and for the abdication of his responsibilities in ratifying these matters. It is the prosecution’s assertion that, had Mr Morrison stayed and faced his actions, he would have been shown some form of leniency. However, as the culprit showed no signs of remorse for his actions and did wilfully run from his crimes for a decade; it is the request of the prosecution that he should face the maximum sentence for his crimes. Namely; death” The woman said with authority. “Moreover, we believe it prudent that his companion at this time share his sentence, in accordance with Skolarean law.”
“The fuck?!” exclaimed Dallas, “I barely know this fucker!”
“Were you aware of the crimes perpetrated by the accused, prior to accompanying him on his return?” asked the prosecutor.
“Well, yes, but-“
“The prosecution rests,” announced the woman, returning to her seat. The Skolarean turned to the man sat to his left and nodded once more. The man stood up, an air of defeat already stained his being. His posture was one of a man without hope. This ought to be good thought Van sarcastically. He knew how draconian the Skolarean justice system was, the defence council hadn’t a prayer and they both knew it. The man cleared his throat, adjusted his posture to one of confidence and exclaimed;
“The defence rests.” He sat back down and lowered his gaze away from the angry disappointment in his clients’ eyes.
“Very well,” boomed the voice of the Skolarean, “then by the laws of Thosisa, I find you guilty of the charges before you and hereby sentence you to death. You will be led from this court and taken to a sterile environment for disintegration. The matter and energy of your being will then be recycled and put to a positive use. Do you have any final words before the sentence is carried out?”
“Yes,” said Van, taking to his feet and facing the gallery, “what I did, I did to stay with the only person I have ever truly loved and to that person, I just wish to say; ‘I never wanted to hurt you, I may not be the man you remember but I am still the man you loved and who loved you’.”
A small squeak could be heard from the gallery, somewhere in the darkness, Penelope stifled her tears.
“And you?” the Skolarean asked Dallas.
“Yeah,” answered Dallas with indignance, “you’re all fucked in the head and this is bullshit!”
“Duly noted,” said the Skolarean, “Guards! See the condemned to the disintegration chamber.”
Several Skolarean guards surrounded Van and Dallas and led them out of a side entrance to the room and into a long, brightly lit corridor. Towards the far end, a door slid open revealing a square compartment. The guards pushed the two men into the room and the door sealed shut behind them.
There was a humming sound, as if a laser was warming up. Van looked around the room, there was no way out. He turned to Dallas; “you don’t deserve this and, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I’ve lead a selfish life and it’s about to get you killed. I deserve to meet this fate alone.”
Dallas half smiled and nodded at him, “See you on the other side I guess.” The men shared one last knowing look as the humming grew louder. There was a sudden flash of light and the room was empty once more.