Chapter 5 – Welcome Aboard

            The train station was nearly identical to the previous one. People flocked to the boarding area just outside the train and just like before, the collective smell of the people in the area was near toxic. What astonished Alos the most was the fact that no one else seemed to even notice.

            Over on the far side of the station there was a pathway that led out and around a corner. Alos pushed his way through the crowd over to the path, following it around to a bazaar he swore was the same as the last. The path led through the bazaar and then continued on into a large, auditorium-sized room. On the far wall was an elevator, while on the left and right walls there were entryways into what looked like restaurants or maybe bars.  The restaurant on the right was named “Jantoon’s Cantina,” whatever a cantina was, he had never heard of one before. The word felt foreign and vaguely distasteful to say but perhaps that was just his Optimaris conditioning showing it's hand. On the left wall a giant sign hung above an entrance with the word “Elixer,” and under it an image of a slanted half filled bottle. Alos immediately recognized it from the message sent by Darkbum earlier, and walked over to the entrance.

            He opened the entrance door and stepped inside finding a second set of doors, this time with two very large Lycanians standing outside. They both stood straight, just short of seven feet tall, each with their arms folded in front of their chest. By the thick polyester coats they were wearing and the shaded sunglasses over their eyes, Alos could safely guess that they were security guards. Why would a restaurant need security guards though?

            “Ey ah you commin inside or what?" One of the Lycanians asked Alos in a deep raspy voice.

            “Uh, yes please.” Alos squeaked, not realizing the intimidating effect the guards were having on his response.

            “Eeh looks uh litul young donchya tink?” The other guard said glancing at the first, arching his eye brow up in suspicion. “Ow old ah ya lad?”

            Are they serious? Alos was trying his hardest not to snicker. He couldn’t have looked more than a day over seventeen.

            “Twenty three, I am.” A ring of confidence resonating in his reply.

            “Awrighty den, come on in.” The previously suspicious Lycanian guard said as he gladly opened the door for Alos.

            Alos smirked and chuckled to himself as he strutted in. He had never interacted with Lycanians before, and had been told that they weren’t exactly renowned for their intelligence but that was just downright sad. Afterwards, he almost felt guilty, as if he unrightfully manipulated them. It was the feeling of shamelessly escaping a straight faced lie. This feeling instantly vanished though as he stepped through and beheld the chaos coming from inside the Elixer.

            The moment Alos had stepped through the door, a blast of cold air shot down onto him from a vent mounted just above the doorway, sending chills down his back. Holographic images filled the room with an array of strobing, bright graphics. Off in a corner of the room was a circular seating area filled with people. At the center of the circle, a waterfall of light seemed to pour down splashing out onto to the people sitting around it. Alos knew it was just light, a mere hologram, but he wasn’t so sure the people around it knew the same. As the light bounced out onto the people, one of the people reached out trying to feel the splashes, and the satisfied look on the person’s face convinced Alos she had. Most of the others on the circular couch were too busy swapping fluids with someone to notice. Alos blushed at the couples sitting completely oblivious to the others, tongues and lips intertwined. It was awkward and a little... disturbing.

            Extending out of the ceiling was a dome, inside of which contained a band of six people. Inside the dome, the music played was being funneled upwards through a hole in the ceiling by the acoustics of the small chamber. The music was then picked up, amplified, and played through the speakers that lined the rest of the ceiling.

            The music the band was playing was unlike anything Alos had ever heard before. The tempo was aggressively fast yet the music was calm and peaceful sounding. While he was unsure what most of the instruments being used were, the drums were the one exception. One looked similar to a trumpet, but was much bulkier and had a web of strings inside the bell of the horn. When a note was played from the obscure horn, it sounded like a guitar chord expanding then contracting, making a 'whuuump' noise. The horn player was playing incredibly fast though, creating a collage of expanding and collapsing whumping noises creating a most alien sound.

            Another band member was playing some sort of bass instrument. It looked like a long guitar neck, without the rest of the features of a guitar; just the neck and the strings. Most of the notes coming from the instrument were at such a low frequency they were difficult, if at all possible, to hear. Most of the time, the waves of the bass could only be felt as they pulsed throughout the room and through Alos' body.

            Two of the other band members were playing synthesizer cubes. At least they looked like cubes to Alos. They were large boxes strapped to their stomach with keys like a keyboard on each side, including the bottom. They would play a side of the cube, and then when they needed access to another side of the cube, they would give it a spin, turning a different side right side up. The constant spinning and twisting of the cubes was actually quite the performance, as the players never missed a beat.

            The last member of the band was a singer, if he could even call her that. She was more moaning on pitch with the rest of the band than actually singing. The only lyrics or words she ever said were some kind of cue or trigger for the rest of the band to instantly shift the style of the music being played. She would be moaning then suddenly stop and belt out a word like “RAAAAGE” which the band would respond to by shifting into a hardcore progression of low crunchy riffs, the singer matching them by growling and barking in tempo. It wasn’t so much progression as it was radically altering what they were playing in an instant, and it was as if it were two completely different songs from two entirely different bands. The song however would always lead back to the singer leading the lyrics into saying something like “peace” causing the rest of the band to switch back to what they were originally playing and then finishing the song, to which the audience would go ballistic over. The whole deal was extremely bizarre to Alos and never in his life had he ever felt so sheltered from other cultures even within the UDA itself.

            After the song ended the people in the Elixer applauded the band’s performance, clapping and screaming out with ear shattering affection. The funnel shaped hole in the ceiling above the band expanded, and the band was raised up through it. A moment later the hole then closed and ambient electronic music started playing. Glancing around the room Alos could see people unconsciously bobbing their head with the rhythm of the music.

            At the center of the room was a bar, enclosing the bartender in a circular counter. People were sitting at the bar in floating stools, enjoying their drinks and conversing with one another. The bartender was bending over grabbing something from under the counter when Alos started to approach the bar. The bartender stood up, threw whatever he had grabbed into a grinder, pulsed it a few times, and then tossed it into lidded cup, which he then shook vigorously. When he had finished mixing the drink, the bartender held the drink up to a tube hanging down from the ceiling. After interacting with his computer, the tube sucked the drink up, and seconds later, the drink popped up out of the middle of a table across the room. There had been a few restaurants in Optimaris that had service like this, but never to such a degree that the bartender could send a drink to any table in the place at any given time. It was kind of cool.

            Alos reached the bar and then sat down in one of the stools. There was an image on display behind the bar top of a circle with ten smaller circles surrounding it, some of the circles darkened, while several others were lit up bright green. As Alos sat down in the stool, one of the circles lit up green with a sharp ding noise, indicating to the bartender he had a new customer.

            The bartender hearing the noise, glanced over at the screen, and then turned around to Alos. As he turned one of the bartender’s overly thin arms was reaching into a glass wiping the inside out with a rag. The skin on his extremities seemed to have a loving relationship with his bones, being translucent appearance and taught against his skeleton. Even the skin on his face was hugging the outline of his bone structure, exemplifying the skeletal appearance of his head. His jaw rocked back and forth, grinded side to side, and then his eyes narrowed, as he looked at Alos.

            “0rnj?” The bartender said, his eyes darting around the room.

            Alos wasn’t sure if this man was Darkbum, as he had no description to go off of, but Darkbum would be the only person who would recognized him.

            “Darkbum I presume?” Alos replied, his eyes rotating from corner to corner checking what was around him.

            The bartender’s paranoid eyes focused on Alos with enough intensity to start a small fire.

            “Were you followed?” Darkbum said, nearly whispering.

            “No, not that I know of. There was one of those uniformed men in the train, which is why I had to cut my message short earlier.” Alos said, wincing from the pain of his detached limb. “I did manage to give him the roundabout though, leaving him on the train while I escaped.”

            Darkbum noticed the wincing.

            “Are you hurt?”

            Alos glanced around checking to see if anyone was looking at them. When he saw that nobody was, he slowly began to remove his arm from his sweater. As his arm exited the pocket of his sweater, it grazed the side, sending Alos’ face into a contorted grimace. Darkbum’s eyes widened at Alos charred stub of a  wrist.

            “What happened!?" Darkbum said, in a small shrill voice.

            “The guy grabbed my hand as the train door slammed shut on my wrist.” Alos paused. “So I cut it off before it could reopen.” The corner of Alos mouth had begun to arch up into a proud smile, but was quickly interrupted by the pain of his missing hand as he reinserted his arm back into his sweater.

            “You’re fucking crazy, kid.” Darkbum laughed, shaking his head in disbelief. “Someone who can help you should be here soon.”

            Darkbum’s eyes refocused behind Alos, towards the entrance of the room. Alos turned to see a tall heavily garbed man had just entered the Elixer. He was wearing a black leather trench coat with a military style jacket underneath. The small portion of his pants that were showing from under the trench coat were black and slim fitting. His feet were protected by heavy black combat boots and on his head was one of most peculiar hats Alos had ever seen. It was a large brown downward sloping wooden hat, at least three feet in diameter, with a slight point at the top. The man walked up to the circular bar console, standing beside Alos.

            “Hey Frank.”

            A black leather gloved hand was raised up and rested onto the counter by the man as he said this. Alos, now looking up at the back of the standing man, could see a mane of bandannas streaming down the back of his head and neck, one dangling from the man’s face as if it was recently used as a mask. His face was shrouded in the shadow of his hat.

            “Now that we’re all here,” Darkbum, or Frank, began, “let’s go somewhere more private to talk.”

            Frank pressed a hidden button under the counter and the counter-top to the bar parted. The man in the trench coat entered into the center, followed by Alos. As they got inside, Darkbum hit another button under the bar counter, causing shutters to close off the inside of the bar. He then pressed one more button under the counter and Alos quickly realized they were standing on a platform as they began descending down an elevator shaft.

            “So your name is Frank?” Alos said out loud, laughing to himself.

            The man beside Alos was infected with the laughter and began to giggle softly.   

            “Yeah, yeah laugh it up.” Frank grumbled. “Not all of us were fortunate enough to be given fancy Divimation names.”

            The platform was supported by four pillars, and was lowered down into an open room. The room had a toilet against one wall, and a bed against the opposite. The wall behind them was one large fish tank, filled with an assortment of fish and their habitats and across from the aquarium was a wall with a small doorway. All in all the room was relatively bare with only the few necessary furnishings.

            The three of them stepped off the platform and were led into a new room by Frank. The room was a small, only about half the size of the previous room with the center of the floor cut out and lowered, two steps leading into it. They were led over to the steps and sat down on them which to Alos’ surprise were cushioned and comfortable. 

            “So, Frank tells me you know your way around the Omninet.” The man said as he propped his right ankle onto his left knee.

            “Oh, did he now?” Alos hesitated before he spoke, “What else did he tell you?”

            “He tells me that you are quite the operator. More specifically, the best operator he has ever seen.”

            Alos couldn’t help but smile, and began to blush. It was short lived though as the fabric of his sweater reminded him of his recently removed hand.

            “Well, even if I was, that might not be the case anymore.” Alos said, unsheathing his handless arm.

            Frank’s face curled up as he cringed from the sight.

            “How about I propose a little deal? You help me with a small job and I'll get you a replacement for that.” The man pointed to Alos charred nub. “All the while you will be provided with food, protection, and a place to stay.”

            “How do I know I can trust you?” Alos asked suspiciously.

            Before the man could answer, Frank butt in adding, “I can’t provide protection from those men if they come for you. You should go with him 0rnj. His crew are good people.”

            “We are a trustworthy lot that much I can assure you.”

            The man stretched out his left hand to shake Alos’ good hand. Alos glanced over at Frank who was nodding at him in approval. Shrugging his shoulders as he exhaled a disconcerted sigh, he stuck out his left hand to shake the man’s hand signifying their deal.

            “I’m Alos.”

            The man pulled back in a mirage of movement, twisting his hand into a pointing finger before Alos could grasp his hand.

            “Before you fully agree, I require that you sign the contract.”

            The man removed a small orb from his coat. It lit up into a full holographic display, showing a white page with text at the center saying “THE CONTRACT", and a small line underneath saying “sign x._________________”.

            “What is it?” Alos stammered, caught off guard by the sudden introduction of this unknown factor.

            “It is merely a contract of servitude, designed to ensure your accommodation.”

            “You don’t really have a choice”, Frank said shaking his head, half of his face drawn back into uncertainty.

            Alos heart had begun nervously pounding. His pulse could be felt in his palm and his eyes were drawn back into wide ovals. Something about this contract didn’t feel right, not by any measure, but what other options did he have?

            “I... don't have a choice do I?” Alos head hung low, drifting slowly back and forth in disapproval. He knew there was no going back. What was he going to do, fend for himself? For Menelich’s sake.

            “Just get me out of here. Please.” Alos stretched out his arm and with his finger wrote out his name. In a sudden flash, it accepted the signature and with a loud beep the orb announced, “Recording saved.”

            “My name is Xri. Welcome aboard my friend.” The man said as he tilted his head back, revealing brilliant amethyst eyes staring back.