Crown Vic to a Parallel World

44

The Purple Manta Ray and the Green Pecker-Head

Ars’ chatter was fraying my already frayed nerves.  We were gathered in the parking garage of The HALL to wait for the pilot who was to fly us to Oppidum.  I assumed we’d meet him or her at The HALL and we would ride to the airport together.  The idea seemed a little unusual, but I didn’t see any other reason for the pilot to be coming to us.

It was early and the day was cool, like a crisp fall morning.  I’d gotten decent sleep with no dreams.  The whiskey had done its job.  I’d even managed to stay calm while I got ready to go.  Shawn felt a twinge of panic as he locked up the apartment.  “Maybe I should leave the key with Satis and Bellus.” He suggested.

“Why?”

“In case we don’t come back they won’t have to hire a locksmith.”

I lunged at Shawn and shook him by his shoulders in frustration for his pessimism.  “We ARE coming back, it’s that simple.” I said aloud.  My mind said something slightly different.  It shouted at him, ‘YOU are coming back, even if I don’t.’  I tried to make Shawn see the practical side of his worries.  “And even in the remote chance we don’t…if I’m dead, I really don’t give a fuck who I inconvenience.” Shawn bucked up some courage and stuck the key in his pocket.

I kept telling myself it was just a fucking job.  I tried to see it like a plant shutdown.  They were all the same, an impossible project with a schedule that doesn’t make sense and no real direction.  I’d done them before, no one ever died, and somehow the plant always started back up.  Production ran and everyone was satisfied even if they weren’t happy.  ‘Treat it like a shutdown.’ I thought. ‘We’ve got a good team, we’re gonna go in there and work like hell until the job is done.  Then we’ll go home.’

Getting by on grit had been working until Ars started rattling.  Not only did the staccato assault unsettle me, but I felt it working on Shawn as well.  Ars scurried around, barely pausing at each of us as he spoke.  “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, quite a moment, this is quite a moment.  Historic, historic, indeed.  My, my, my, my, my, it is quite a shame we cannot send you off properly, quite a sad shame.  Should have the press here, the press, members of government, holders of high office, dignitaries and the like.  It is quite a sad shame that secrets are so very secretive.”

The last line set me off.  I bit back a shout and called to the small man through clenched teeth.  “Ars, a word please.”

“Yes, young man, yes, you may have a word…several if you like.”

I led him a distance away and spoke as quietly as I could.  “I need you to drop the act.  I can’t fucking take it.”

Ars looked up at me with innocence that I might have believed if I didn’t already know who he was.  “Whatever do you mean, young man, whatever do you mean?  Act, I do not think…”

“ARS!” Had I opened my mouth, it would have been a shout.  It came out as a growl. “Please…I’m begging you.  I’m scared, your nephew is scared.  Maybe a show of affection for him and a simple ‘good luck’ handshake for the rest of us would be more appropriate than your usual horseshit.”

Ars’ brow furrowed on the word ‘horseshit.’  I could tell I’d offended him, but I was beyond caring.  He turned away from me to glance at his nephew.  Shawn was busy passing his suitcase from one hand to the other and brushing hair out of his face that wasn’t there.  “I concede the point, Mister Philips.” Ars said in his deeper voice. “Would you ask him to step over here for a moment, please?”

I went back to the group and did as Ars had asked.  Shawn left his bag with me and went to his uncle.  It took everything I had not to watch their exchange.  Even without watching it, I had enough trouble dealing with the roller coaster of emotions that Shawn projected.  He started with nervous, then shifted to apprehensive, then sad, back to apprehensive, relief, pride, cautious joy, and finally, love, all in the space of five minutes.  I glanced over at the end to see Shawn and Ars locked in a tight embrace.  ‘Good,’ I thought, ‘Shawn needed some encouragement.’

Ars walked Shawn back to the group.  Shawn was smiling and Ars looked…I don’t know, hopeful, maybe.  His expression was serious but not grave.  It was tough to read the man.  He stood in front of our roughly straight line of team members with his hands clasped behind his back and made a little speech.

“Warrant Officer, gentleman, you leave today on the greatest humanitarian mission the world has ever seen.  Traveling with you are the hopes of every living thing drawing breath today and all of their descendants.  You also take with you my complete confidence in your individual abilities and your effectiveness as a unit.  No obstacle is insurmountable, just as there is nothing created by man, that cannot be destroyed by man.  Please remember, the barrier and the evil locked within it, is as human and as fragile as you and I.  Go to the mountain, conquer the evil, and return for your reward.  I will not wish you luck, for wishing luck indicates a lack of faith in the outcome.  I have no such lack.”

Ars made individual eye contact with each of us in turn.  “Ahem…now, if you will forgive me, the affairs of this office do not slow.  There is much to be done.  Know that as hard as you labor toward the ultimate goal, that is as hard as I labor toward that same goal.  Goodbye, I look forward to your return.”

Ars walked around the group, bent forward slightly with his eyes on the ground and his hands still clasped behind him.  He called to me as he passed us.  “Mister Philips, walk me to the entrance, sir.”

He didn’t slow to wait for me.  I had to hurry to catch up.  I reached him right at the door to the building.  He stopped so quickly I almost ran him down.  “Move around in front of me, young man.” He directed.

I sidled around him, my back to the building, his back to the team.  “Mister Philips,” he said in his deep voice, “I take back what I said before, in my office, about my nephew not being as important as the world.  He is more important, so very much more.  The team’s mission is to eliminate the evil and thereby, to save us all.  I want you to modify your goal, young man.  Eliminate the evil, save the world, because it is where he lives.  He must live or there is no point to any of this.  Will you promise to bring him back to me?”

Ars raised his head.  There were tears streaming down his face.  “Please, sir, promise me…swear it.” He begged.

I responded without a second thought.  “I swear he will return to you, even if he has to do it alone.”

Ars’ breath caught with a gasp at the implications of my promise.  He grabbed my hands and shook them, his palms hot with worry.  “Thank you…Church.”  He released me and patted the pockets of his jacket.  One of his hands found what he wanted.  A handkerchief bloomed from an inside pocket, and he mopped his face with it.  “Would not do for me to be seen like this.  Weakness of any kind…unforgivable.  Good lu…uhm…safe travels sir.”  He shook my hands again and disappeared into the building.

“What did uncle want?” Shawn asked as I rejoined the group.

“Nothing really,” I made up a poor lie, “he just wanted to make sure I had the keys to the Vic.  Wouldn’t be good if we got there and they were back here.”

“So, do you have them?” Shawn asked.

His question caught me by surprise because I’d said what I said without much thought. “What?” I asked.

“The keys to the car, do you have them?”

“No, they’re in the car, tucked above the driver’s visor.” I grasped for a new topic before Shawn figured-out I was vamping. “What did he have to say to you?”

Pride and confidence swelled in Shawn.  He stood tall, his chest out and shoulders back.  “He told me I was a man.  He said he didn’t see any traces of Chordus, the lonely boy who came to him five years ago.  All he can see now is Shawn, the man who is part of the team that’s going to save the world.  He’s proud of me.”

“I’m happy for you.”

We lapsed into silence and waited some more.  A few minutes later, our pilot showed up in a two-seat purple egg.  She was an old woman with a great pile of curly grey hair that haloed her head, like a permanent from the 1980s.  The big hair was made more ludicrous because the woman was less than five feet tall.

She was a plump, matronly woman with a great bag of a double chin and a deep topography of wrinkles in her face.  She wore a beige-on-beige uniform, slacks and a buttoned-down shirt with some patches and other paraphernalia I didn’t understand.  Her manner suggested class trip chaperone instead of military pilot.

Her lilting, grandmotherly voice introduced her to us.  “Good morning, you must be my group.  Lovely day for flying, isn’t it?  Now is everyone ready?  I am Misses Minstra and I do so hope we will be friends.”  She took a phone from her pants pocket and did some tapping on the screen.  “I’ll take the role and we’ll be on our way.”

She called our names and we had to call back ‘present.’  If her manner wasn’t so sweet, I may have gotten angry at the exercise.  “Does anyone object to first names?” She asked.  No one said anything.  She clapped her wrinkled hands like she was going to pray and was so very pleased. “Wonderful, I always find formality so stuffy.” She looked around like she didn’t want to be overheard and placed a conspiratorial hand next to her mouth to shield her words. “You may call me Rugam if you like.”

She led us into the building, into the elevator, and up to the eighth floor.  We trooped along behind her like a row of baby ducks carrying overnight bags.  I whispered to Shawn who was walking in front of me.  “What the fuck are we doing back in the building?  Shouldn’t we be driving to the airport?”

“You’ll see.” He soothed.

We passed from the corridor through a doorway into a large room in the center of the building.  In the center of the large room, two men in charcoal grey uniforms were doing the final checks on a very small plumb-purple plastic airplane.  The roof of the building was open above the craft.  The floor that the plane rested on started to rise toward roof level as we stepped onto it.

The door to the passenger compartment of the plane was open.  A staggered row of seats alternated right side and left side from front to back and left just enough room for someone Bem’s size to slip between the seat and the plastic wall.  The plane’s appointments were every bit as luxurious as those of the egg cars I loved so much.

Nose to tail, the craft was about thirty feet long and so narrow it looked like someone cut a city bus in half long-ways and stuck wings on it.  The raised ‘T’ style tail had the two tapered jet engines tucked under it.  The wings were triangular and swept back.  From the top, it would look like a manta ray with jet engines.

One of the grey men handed a tablet to the beige pilot.  She reviewed what she saw, signed something with a stylus, and handed it back.  “Group,” Rugam called, “we are ready to depart.  Please line up so I can give you your seats.”

We lined up as directed and Rugam was just so pleased by our compliance. “Such a very attentive group you are.” She complimented us.  She took her phone from her pocket and did some tapping, then called us out to board the plane. “I think the lovely Miss Neb in the rear, then Mister Vulputate, then we will leave an empty seat, then Church over the wing center, then another empty seat, next we’ll have Cibum, then Shawn, then Bem in front.”

‘Another ego boost,’ I grumbled in my head, ‘monster in the middle with a blank space on either side.  Thanks lady.’

The one consolation to the unintentional insult was that I got to board behind Vulp.  The visual of him as he struggled to fit his extra wide frame between the seats and the wall gave me some consolation as I tried to fit my extra wide, extra tall frame into the same area.  I wedged myself in the seat, tried the seatbelt and found it too short, gave up and set my bag in my lap.

“Hey Shawn,” I called to the front, “do they start the engines for take-off or do those two guys throw this toy into the air?”

My bitter comment earned me a laugh from Vulp and a scientific response from Shawn.  “There’s an electro-magnet in the launch pad that pushes the plane into the air.”

Shawn’s seriousness earned another laugh from Vulp.  I shook my head and reminded myself to teach Shawn the fine art of sarcasm when we returned.

Rugam seated herself in the pilot’s position, easily visible from where we sat, and adjusted a mirror so she could see us.  The passenger compartment door was closed and latched from the outside.  “Group, I’m ready if you are.  It will be a four-hour flight.  Please let me know if any of you need the facilities before you get up.  That goes double for you Church.  If you need to move to the rear, the others will have to move forward at the same time.”

I dropped my face in my hands and remembered mocking Shawn when I first found out how big I was by comparison to the average Solum native.  “No Church, you’re not a monster, you’re a freak.” I said to my palms.

Rugam got herself a big handful of salt to rub in the wound.  “Oh, I am sorry dear.  I know you can’t help being your size.  Still, you can’t shift that much weight around an airplane in flight without it having an effect.”

That comment got a belly laugh from Vulp and snickers from everyone else.  “Off we go.” Rugam said.  The plane made a whining noise like a power steering pump that’s just starting to go bad and took off from the roof of The HALL like a leaf caught in a strong breeze.  It climbed smoothly and noiselessly.

“Why is this thing so quiet?  Are those engines even running?” I asked no one in particular.

Our pilot and den mother, Rugam, heard my question and raised a finger to explain.  “Motors dear, they’re electric.”

“Oh fuck…sure, an electric jet.  Why not?” I grumbled. “Shawn…oh Shawn…” I sing-songed, “if it won’t put us in a flat spin, would you step back here and knock me out?  Maybe you’ve noticed, but I’m a bit of a cranky flyer.”

Shawn asked respectfully, was given permission to leave his seat, and praised for putting everyone’s safety first.  After a few careful steps and some awkward clambering around Cy he put his hand on my head and off I went to a happier place.

*          *          *          *

I opened my eyes and realized I’d gone somewhere, though I didn’t feel particularly happy about it.  I stood in a dimly lit hallway and faced a smooth, black door.  I was mentally steeling myself to deal with the person on the other side.  I touched the right side of my face, cupping my cheek in my palm, and took a deep breath.  Something was strange, my face didn’t feel right and neither did my hand.  There was no stubble on the cheek and no callouses on the hand.

I took my hand away from my face and knocked on the door.  A preemptive voice from the other side responded with an abrupt, “COME!”  I breathed another breath to calm myself, reached for the knob, and unlatched the door.  I must not have opened it fast enough for the voice’s taste.  It harangued me.  “WELL BOY, ARE YOU COMING IN OR NOT?” It shouted.

I rushed into the room and hurried to present myself to the voice.  The room that I entered was as sterile as an operating room; four white walls and a white floor that was made to shine with the light of a brightly glowing ceiling.  In front of me, a big box of a black desk sat on a riser a foot higher than the floor with two steps up for access.  Behind the desk, sat a corpulent man with heavy features, a fat, florid face, and mousy brown hair combed flat to his head.

He leaned forward on fat hands that extended from the sleeves of what could only be described as a neon-green smoking jacket.  “WELL BOY, HERE AT LAST, ARE YOU?” The preemptive voice boomed in the space that seemed too small to hold it.

“Yes father.” A timid voice replied.  The timid voice came from me, but it wasn’t my voice, and the man wasn’t my father.  I tried to look around the room to see if something would give me a clue, but my eyes wouldn’t go where I wanted, and my head wouldn’t turn.  Both looked down and focused on the seam where the desk met the riser.

“YOU LOOK AT ME WHEN I SPEAK!” The voice demanded.

My head raised, and my eyes focused on the hairline of the man at the desk.  I couldn’t or wouldn’t meet his gaze directly.  My left hand balled into a fist, my right covered it and squeezed with the tension of the meeting.  The man settled back in his chair to scowl at me.

“Your primary education is complete.” The man announced. “It’s time for you to find your place in the world.  Before you get any ideas, that place is not here.  Your brother is coming into his twentieth year and will be joining me as a junior partner this winter.  We have no use for you.”

“Yes, father.” The timid voice said.  It sounded familiar.  I tried to place it, but it sounded so defeated it was difficult to know who it reminded me of.

“Yes, well, to my benefit, and certainly not to your detriment, your mother’s brother has called for you.  He needs someone to do for him, though I can’t imagine what he thinks you could possibly do for anyone.  It’s immaterial.  He wants you and I don’t.  You leave in the morning.  Pack your belongings and make certain your room is clean.  Cellarius will drive you to the monorail station at seven.  Do NOT make him wait.”

“Yes, father.” The timid voice said again.  It seemed to be his only line.

The man swept the fingers of his right hand through the air like a whisk broom pushing dirt.  “Be gone from my sight.”

I turned to go.  I had my hand on the doorknob when the man boomed again.  “CHORDUS,” the man called.  I turned to face him.  He pointed a fat finger at me. “Do NOT tarnish my name.  The name Summas is a fine name.  It is important to my business to keep it a fine name.  It’s bad enough I have to share it with your uncle Ars.  I will not have you destroy what I have built.  Mind my words.”  He made the sweeping gesture again.  “You are dismissed.”

I opened the door and closed it behind.  “HOLY SHIT I’M SHAWN!” I screamed, except I didn’t.  I was having a waking dream, but I wasn’t reliving one of my memories, I was reliving his.

Shawn sobbed his way along the corridor and up the stairs.  He had no love for his father, but he had a home.  He felt like he’d been tossed out, which effectively he had.  A woman awaited him in his room.  She looked like an older, female version of Shawn.  She was his mother and Ars’ sister, Lenis.

“Oh, my darling.” She gasped when she saw he was crying.  She rose from where she sat on his bed and tried to embrace him.  He shoved her away.

“He’s sending me away,” Shawn sobbed an accusation at the woman, “and you’re letting him.”

Lenis hovered close.  She didn’t retreat nor advance.  She held her hands clasped in front of her.  She wore a long dress, baby blue and pink like salt-water-taffy.  It clung to her athletic figure.  She was an attractive woman, as women go.

“Not so, darling.” Lenis corrected her son. “That is what your father thinks is happening.  I am sending you away to live with my brother in the capital.  You will spend the summer with him.  In the fall, he will send you to school.  You get to be what you want, my darling boy.  You get the education that you want, and you get away from here.  You do not ever have to set foot in this house again, unless you choose to.”

Shawn stopped crying and wiped his face.  “Really?” He asked.

“Really.” His mother said with a warm, motherly smile.  She opened her arms and he embraced her.

“Thank you, Mother.  I’m sorry I doubted you.”

They separated, and Shawn’s mother’s face became grim.  “I need to warn you about your uncle Ars.  He is a kind and loving man.  His position at The HALL is one of great responsibility and my brother has a ruthless side to him.  Be careful of him, son.  You may trust him, but only to a point.  You will have to decide where that point is.”

“I’ll be caref…”  Shawn started to say.

Someone shook me.  I felt like I rattled around inside the Shawn from the memory.  I opened my eyes and looked into Shawn’s face.  “WHAT THE HELL?” I thrashed as I woke.

“We’re here.” He said.

“What?  Where?”

“Oppidum…the mission, remember?”

I remembered.  I rubbed my face to wake it up.  “Right, sorry.  Had a bad dream.”

I extracted myself from the seat and struggled toward the exit.  I don’t think I was ever so happy to be anywhere than on the ground at Oppidum.

“What did you dream?” Shawn asked.

“Brace yourself,” I warned, “I was you the day your father told you that you were going to live with Ars.”

Shawn stopped dead and grabbed my arm over the top of the second seat from the door.  “You had a waking dream as me?” He blurted, his shock evident in his tone and his emotions.

“Yeah, it was weird as fuck.  I like your mom, she’s pretty.  You look like her.  Your father’s a pecker-head…but I guess you knew that.  I didn’t meet your brother or Cellarius.”

Shawn grinned at me.  “I’ve never heard anyone call my father a pecker-head, but it fits.  My brother is a younger version of him.  Cellarius…I think you’d like him.  He hates my father.”

“Then I’m sure I’d like him.  Come on, let’s get the fuck off this child’s toy pretending to be an airplane.”

We stumbled down the steps into the sunshine and the mining town of Oppidum.