Chapter 14 – Hazy Pasts
It had been awhile since Alos had been able to get a strong enough connection to the Omninet. Today however, Xri had said something about going to an Elixer and where there are people there are sure to be enough computers to form a grid to the Omninet. The people may be intoxicated, but their computers were computers no less.
On second thought, Alos realized that connecting to the Omninet would bring a whole host of notifications and missed messages. Spending half the day flipping through pointless spam wasn’t exactly what he had in mind, especially for his first connection in weeks. And then there was Mari. Alos knew there would be messages from her. He knew that by opening up those messages he would only feel awash in guilt.
Alos was holding his Orb out in front of him, the small sphere resting on the indent of his left hand. It rocked back and forth in his hand as if he was contemplating the weight of the object. He shook his head and pocketed it.
Exiting his chambers, Alos could see Levitas walking further down the hall. In his left hand hung a bag, swaying back and forth with Levitas’ stride. Alos couldn’t quite make out what was in the bag, it was oblong and blocky, but its shape seemed to shift around inside. Half way down the hallway Levitas stopped under Xri’s chambers, allowing Alos to jog and catch up.
“What’s in the bag?” Alos asked as he slowed to a stop.
Levitas looked down at the bag and then up at the retractable ceiling door. He reached over placing his hand on a screen in the wall. A line passed over his hand wavering about, as it scanned. When it finished, it gave out a small bright ding. The ceiling door spiraled open revealing Xri’s face starring back down at them, with his usual half cocked smile.
“Aye, are you here to join us then lad?” Xri asked Alos, his face shrouded by a combination of poor lighting and his over-sized hat.
Levitas swung the bag tossing it up through the hole, Xri catching it mid air and pulling it inside.
“Ya like Hooja lad?” Levitas asked, his attention still fixated upwards.
Alos looked at Levitas. Then at Xri. Then back at Levitas. A puzzled expression swept across his face quickly followed by suspicious squinting eyes.
“I have no idea what you guys are talking about.”
Xri gave out a laugh, Levitas joining him with a smirk.
“Kid, you never know what we’re doing.” Levitas said through his smile. "It's crazy how tight of a hold the UDA has on information; I can't believe you've never heard of my dear sweet lady Hooja.”
"Here, c'mon."
He motioned up with his head and with a short bend of his knees, Levitas shot up through the hole in the ceiling landing up inside Xri’s chambers with a loud slam. Both their heads stuck back out over the doorway in the ceiling.
Alos looked up at them with a flat expression. He knew they knew he couldn’t make that jump. What the hell did they expect him to do? Climb up the smooth walls? No, they probably just wanted to get a good laugh out of watching him try. Alos wasn't one to allow himself to be bullied.
“Fuck you guys.” Alos said shaking his head, turning around to walk away.
As he turned away, Alos could almost feel Xri’s widening smile shooting out against the back of his head, calling to him with a goading malicious intent. Usually Alos was pretty good at managing his ego, but this provocation combined with everything else going on in his life left him grimacing with frustration. Why should he have to put up with this bullshit? Did they honestly feel good about enslaving some kid, just to push him around? The indignation!
Without realizing it, had Alos clenched the fingers on his remaining hand into a skin stretching, white knuckled fist. Then with radiating electric anger, Alos spun around throwing his hand up in the air violently pointing at Xri, his mouth opening to release an army of hate inspired verbal warriors, when Xri’s brilliant purple eyes gave him pause.
Xri was nodding towards Levitas.
“Why don’t you give it a shot?” Xri asked, his smile ringing through the air with a high note of authenticity.
This gave Alos even more pause, despite being riled up. How the hell did they expect him to clear ten feet, or at the very least about seven, so he could pull himself up there? Xri didn’t have his usual pretentious smile; no, instead it actually seemed warm, almost honest, as if he actually meantwhat he was saying for once. But still, ten feet? There was no way. Xri had to be full of it, but what harm could trying do?
Alos, shaking his head, walked back under the cut out, closed his eyes, and reached his hands up. For what reason he was about to attempt this, not even he knew. The whole notion was completely idiotic, and on some level he knew he was only there for the others' entertainment. Yet, the compulsion remained.
He bent his knees as far down as he could, and then like a spring, released them, suddenly launching into the air. In midair, there was a sudden jerk upwards and after the moment passed, when he expected to land back onto the ground in a loud crash, Alos opened his eyes and found himself up in the room with the spiraling ceiling door closed beneath his feet.
Bewildered, Alos starred at the ground in disbelief.
Xri was sitting back on some kind of heat transducing gel cushion off to the side of the room smiling, a long thin stringed guitar propped up on his lap. Opposite of him, Levitas sat on a matching translucent green gel cushion, pulling an ornamental crystal pipe from the bag and placing it on the floor in front of him. He reached back into the bag scooping in and then removing the pipe, the bowl fully packed with a dark green plant material speckled with shiny crystals and purple marbling. There was a bag inside the larger bag containing the plant material, with a logo of a winking eye and the word “Hooja” under it.
Levitas reached into his coat brandishing his old revolver. His thumb pressed a release beside the trigger and out the bottom of the stock, slid out a small lighter. With a quick flick of the flint, and a burst of the igniting flame, Levitas put the lighter to the pipe, drawing deeply from it and pulling the flame into the substance inside. Smoke billowed out from his mouth in a parade of thick marching rings.
Alos stood still staring blankly.
“I know I can’t jump that high. There is no way I can jump that high. I barely believe YOU two can jump that high” Alos looked turned over to Xri who was picking the strings of his instrument into a soft rich melody.
“How did I get up here?”
“You still have a lot to learn boy.” Levitas said in his gravelly voice, smoke drifting out of his mouth.
"There is a whole universe of knowledge you have yet to encounter, my young apprentice." Xri smiled with a matching softness to the chords he played, “Was it nice growing up inside the steel walls of the UDA, blocked off from the rest of the world? Such a safe and ignorant life must be blissful.”
His eyes rolled over to Levitas. “Some of us weren’t so lucky.”
Alos noticed Xri’s gesture towards Levitas, becoming curious as to what he meant.
“Why? Where do you come from Levitas? You are always calling me boy and kid, and fucking lad, and saying how naïve I am. Well here is your chance to educate me grandpa.”
Levitas exhaled deeply his mind distant from the insulting words of Alos. The base of the pipe lifted up in his hand and his grip around it released, the pipe standing straight up in the palm of his hand.
“I was born and raised in the south end of Divimatia, in Adraea.”
Suddenly the pipe was pulled out of Levitas’ hand by an unseen force, flying through the air and landing in Xri’s open hand. It was as if an invisible hand had suddenly snatched it and placed it elsewhere. Xri, unimpressed by his own telekinesis, uncaringly pressed his lips to the pipe, inhaled, and then released a range of rolling clouds from under his hat, the thick smoke transforming into small goblin like creatures as it climbed up around the edge of his wooden headwear, dissipating up into the circulating air of the room. Alos jaw just about hit the floor in awe, yet somehow Levitas was still calm, unsurprised by the magic Alos was witnessing, and continued without missing a beat.
“My family owned one of the last few private farms down in the marshes. We grew rice, cerenem, barley, even some onions and carrots. We were happy, at least I knew I was.”
The pipe zipped back across the room through the air into Levitas’ hand. He sat contemplatively with the mouth piece extending from the side of his mouth, smoke blowing out his nose with a deep sigh.
“Then one day a gang of slavers came. They weren't Crusaders, or any sort of Divimatian military, they were just some fuckin' evil gang-bangers with an airship. They came and destroyed everything we had. They tasered my prepubescent ass unconscious then kidnapped me. Their no good, demon dick gargling, piece of shit captain raped my mother, and when my father resisted, they put a bullet through his skull.”
Xri was playing a sad melodramatic melody syncing up perfectly, word for word, with Levitas story.
“Kid, this world ain’t all smiles and sunshine.”
Alos sat blank faced, staring at the ground in front of him. He wasn’t sure if it was just the story making him emotional, or if the swirling smoke had finally began to get to him. The thick gel cushions looked longer, the bag of the plant stuff looked wider, most specifically though, Levitas’ ruby spheres on the side of his head appeared more vibrant than ever, the flames inside seemingly jumping out of their domes at Alos' face.
“From that day I grew, and every day my hatred grew with me. I never forgave, I never forgot, and I damn well sought to bring them to justice.” Levitas puffed on the pipe, held his breath, and then as he spoke, a beige fog danced out with each of his words.
“My only option was to join the Divimatian military. I had to become a Crusader. They would be punished by the righteous hand of the holy sovereign for their crimes.”
“T’is rather ironic really.” Xri added, through the plucking of his tear jerking song.
Levitas continued, “As a lad, I didn’t know the slavering ways of the Crusaders, I only knew that the Non-States gangs would employ slavery, like the fucking bastards who killed my family. In Divimatia we were always taught the Crusaders were the righteous force of the world. Righting the wrongs of the other nations, bringing evil to justice, manifesting a more perfect world for both me and you; you know, all of that. I had no idea of the reality of their role.”
Levitas’ shoulders shrugged slightly as he said this, the right corner of his lips pulling up into bitter admittance.
“Propaganda is a powerful tool in the toolbox of governments.” Xri’s tone was serious and stern, but as his head tilted back, he revealed his ever biting smile. With a small giggle he continued.
“Look no further than our dear friend Alos to see just how powerful it can be.”
Alos’ brow furrowed, annoyed at the comment he had just received, but quickly relaxed in submission. Xri was right. Within the last few days, all the events, places, technology, culture, everything that he had experienced; it was all for the first time. The reality of the intricacies of the world were hidden by the culture and governance around him. Alos had never considered himself to be ignorant, but with everything that had happened recently, he realized just how cut off from the rest of the world he was. It was hard to argue against Xri, perhaps even impossible, when reflecting on all he didn't know. In comparison to what there was to know, Alos knew nothing.
“I was sold as a slave working in the lithium mines along the coast. Back then I didn’t hate slavery; I hated the gangsters who took everything from me. In my mind it was their fault, not the system they sold me into. I made it my mission to not only join the Crusaders, but to find those men and make them feel my pain. Never once along the way did I question the hypocrisy.”
“One day while working, I seized an opportunity, killed my two masters, and escaped from the Non-States to Divimatia. The very first thing I did was find the royal emissary and admit myself into the military.” Levitas continued, still puffing on his pipe, “I don’t know If it was luck or what, but they immediately put me on board the ship of the highest division within the Crusaders, on the Tellion, as an Eagle. That day, that was the proudest day of my life. In my mind, not only did I work my way to freedom, but I finally acquired the means to punish my enemies and seek the revenge I deserved. As my experience as an Eagle developed, and my exposure to the slaving ways of the Crusaders grew, my hatred drove me into a fervor of divine vengeance, blinding me to the moral contradiction I was living.”
“So what happened when you finally realized what you were getting into? What you were doing to all these people that you are claiming is so bad?” Alos asked..
“We weren’t sent to capture innocent bystanders, most the time we were after criminals of some sort, usually fugitives wanted by the Divimatian government, but occasionally we were also sent out to strike against key military targets. Like the name Eagle suggests, we’d swoop in, snatch up the target, and then be gone, before any retaliation could happen. The motto is;
“When the eagle screams, you’ll feel our talons.”
“Like what happened with Zeith.” Alos felt uneasy making this comparison given the emotional baggage attached to the whole situation, but he felt the analogy was about right, at least for what Levitas was explaining.
“Exactly like what happened to Zeith.” Levitas took one last drag from the pipe before resting it down beside him and continuing. “Eventually though, the people we were capturing became more and more difficult to justify, making it hard not to question the orders we were receiving. I mean, an eleven year old serial killer seems a little farfetched; but seeing the same bullshit countless times? You know there's something going on. After seeing the same bullshit for too many years, I was ready to call it quits. My anger just wasn't enough to keep me anymore.”
“I thought you were in that rasha-whatdoyoucallit, group thing before you joined these guys.”
“It was right about when I was plannin' on retirin’ actually, that I got promoted into the Rashakaan. To this day, I'm convinced they caught wind of my plan to retire, and promoted me just to keep me chained to the military. At that point I had been a Crusader for half my life, just turnin’ thirty six, when I was hand selected by the sovereign himself; and you can’t say no to the Sovereign. People die for saying no to his ever merciful divine grace. So I said yes, and freshly recruited as a Raven, I met and worked alongside Captain Van.” The corners of Levitas’ lips shuttered at the utterance of Van’s name, a tone of deep embedded distaste seeping through the normally stoic demeanor of Levitas.
“I’ve never met anyone who radiated malevolence like he did.”
An emotionless puzzlement curled across Alos face. “If you were thirty six then, how old are you now?” Alos asked, seemingly ignoring the last statement Levitas had made.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you kid.” Levitas laughed, his throat grating against the rocks in his voice.
“Oh yeah? Try me.”
From cheek to cheek Levitas’ spread into a rare smile, still managing to hide his teeth.
“I’m seventy six years old.”
“Yeah sure, and next you’re gonna try and have me believe Xri is forty.”
Xri suddenly shattered his lucid demeanor as he threw his head back howling with laughter, and then reached out and slappedhis knee with a loud crack, whipping his head back forward. Levitas quickly joined him clutching his knee to support his arching frame, each laugh expanding his chest.
“God damn! If I didn’t know better I’d swear this boy a psychic!” Levitas bellowed through his raspy laughter.
Xri was reaching under his hat moving his arm back and forth. Alos could swear he heard sniffling sounds, and sure enough Xri pulled his wet sleeve out. Or maybe it wasn’t wet, there was definitely moisture, but it seemed to somehow defy the quality of wetness. The water was pulled up into beads on top, rolling over the side and falling as he moved his arm. His muffled laughter spilled out from under his hat as he tilted his head back once again, revealing glassy smiling eyes.
“You had to have told him.” Xri smiled widely, shaking his head. “Dear Menelich, the intuition on this one.”
Alos sat momentarily confused. They reacted as if he predicted the answer or something. He had no idea, he was just throwing numbers against the wall to see if anything stuck. It was just a bad joke.
“I am thirty nine lad. My fortieth birthday is in a few months.”
“Everyone gets lucky sometimes I guess, even me.” Alos shrugged smirking.
Levitas picked up the pipe tilting it into small chamber in the bag and emptied it out. The ashes fell into the bag letting out a powerful smell, creating a stench that could not be ignored. He placed the spotless pipe back into the bag, and sealed it
Levitas still choking back laughter continued.
“There did come a time though when I just couldn’t carry out the Sovereign’s orders. After accidentally impregnating one of his slave concubines, he ordered us to take her to be executed, to assure the child was not known of. If people found out the Sovereign was so sinful, there would be a social revolution. I just couldn’t kill the girl though; she couldn’t have been more than seventeen. Under the guise of leaving the woman to die in the wilderness, I instead brought her to one of the Magnam tribes I had encountered.”
Levitas sighed with his hoarse crackling voice.
“When I got back I was immediately seized and thrown into the highest security Divimatian prison in the country. I never saw who reported me, but to this day I still know. Van, the lieutenant on my ship, turned me in and took my spot as captain, that bastard will have his neck wrung between my hands. He never thought I would escape, and Menelich knows he didn’t expect me to align myself with the NSR. As much as I love my mates here on this crew, not even they can stand between me and him. ”
Levitas shook his head and smiled. “Still, I can’t believe Yacapo found me and introduced me to the very kid I saved. The fuckin' way the universe aligns sometimes.”
“Yes, yes, failed royal abortion, meets merciful solider savior. It is quite the tale, but that will have to be told later, it seems for now we have just arrived in Tarantes Crek.” Xri said, standing as he held out his Orb.
“Wait, escaped prison? Royal abortion? You can’t just leave me hanging like that.” Alos stammered as he stood to his feet.
Xri stood up, tugging his coat forward and into place. He shifted something in his lower back, and cracked his neck.
“Let us go gentlemen, this can be finished later."
The spiral door on the floor opened up, and Xri jumped through.
Levitas jumped through.
Alos stood. Who would have thought this is where his life would end up? Enslaved as a hacker to a crew of self-righteous sky pirates.
"Dear Menelich," Alos thought, "what have I gotten myself into?"
Laughing to himself, he jumped in through the hole behind the others.