SUNFLASH
by 94673
It was a regular drowsy morning. Even though most day shifts at most companies had started already, it was still mostly dark out, the only thing differentiating this time of day from any other being the soft purple hue of the sky.
Maurice was running late, but he had a feeling that his superiors didn’t really care. He was a bit of an underdog at the company he worked at, (a large scale real estate company,) and he often had the feeling that his colleagues didn’t notice if he didn’t show up. He worked a minimum wage job as an office drone, together with about five hundred people with the exact same job description. He wore a dress shirt and pants, the same outfit every day, and twice a week he’d go down to the laundromat to clean it. On the weekends he’d lounge around in his cramped apartment and try to catch up on some sleep.
He stopped, a few hundred meters away from the office, and stood still so he could properly look up at the sky, just once more before the view was replaced with a computer screen all day. The sky, as mentioned before, was a deep, reddish purple, and if he strained his eyes he could see a few tiny stars. There was a planet near to the one he was on, and it’s green-blueish surface covered the upper left side of Maurice’s field of vision. The sun reflecting onto it made it appear much brighter than the stars. He sighed, wistfully, thinking about how he wished he didn’t have a job. And then he immediately took it back, because he was grateful that he had a job, he just wished he had one that was more fun, or paid a bit better, or that his colleagues would stop bullying him. When he was really young, he used to want to be a singer in a rock band, but that never ended up happening.
If he made some more money, he decided, he’d buy a cheap interplanetary travel ticket and go to that next planet over. He had heard of some wonderful vacation spots there, lush nature reserves with wild animals and hiking trails and whatnot. Maybe he could take some guitar lessons while he was there, and he could finally realize his dream, if only somewhat. But alas, if he’d ever want to go on any vacation, he’d have to work for it, so he peeled his eyes off the sky and briskly walked towards the office building.
In the office, it didn’t seem like anyone had noticed his absence. The higher-ups had recently realized how much money they would save if they dimmed all the lights in the building, so he could barely see if there was anyone in the cubicle across from him, anyways. Maurice sat down in his chair and sighed, clacking his tongue a few times before turning his computer screen on. He had a few emails about a job he had been assigned to, some rich off-planet miner who was trying to find a cheap planet to buy. A whole planet, just to mine all the resources and then leave it empty, hanging in the sky. Maurice didn’t know how he felt about it, but it made a slight discomfort stir in his chest. Luckily, he wasn’t paid to voice his opinion, so he gladly didn’t do so. He spent the remainder of the morning scrolling through various planets the real estate company had access to, and others that they were aware might come onto the market soon, just so he could cross some off that the miner definitely wouldn’t like. Ones that had barely any natural resources, for example. By the end of his research he had a small list left, which he sent to his supervisor.
During his lunch break, Maurice went down to the cafeteria to get himself something to eat, intending to take it back up to his cubicle. Before he could get a glimpse of the day’s menu, however, he was halted by a few people he couldn’t really recognize in the dim light. One of them, clearly their superior, took a few steps forward until his chest almost brushed against Maurice’s nose. Maurice slowly looked up, afraid of what he might see.
“You’re Maurice, aren’t you.” It was a statement, not a question. Maurice gulped and nodded. He recognized the man’s voice- this man was so far up in the company’s hierarchy he normally didn’t even come down to the ground floor! Whatever was going on had to be quite bad, then. Did he mess up when going through the list of planets? Had he accidentally put one of the owner’s private buildings up for sale?
“Good. Come along. You’ll have lunch with us today, in the executive lounge.” The man said, and pushed Maurice along with a big hand on his back. Maurice struggled to walk along at a fast enough pace. They entered the elevator, and Maurice was finally able to see the other two’s faces as well. There was a woman he’d never seen before, with ginger hair done up in a bun. The other was his floor’s supervisor. Neither of them made eye contact with him at any point during the elevator ride, so he dropped his head back down and waited for whatever would happen next. The elevator rode up to the uppermost floor, and when they exited he had to squeeze his eyes shut in order to get used to the sudden bright light.
The upper floor was where management worked, and they were apparently allowed to have brightly lit offices. As they walked through the hall towards the executive lounge, Maurice felt as if there were a thousand eyes staring at him, when in reality it were probably only about ten pairs. A few neatly dressed businessmen shot him strange looks, and he awkwardly smiled at them, hoping they would look away again. The computers on this floor were much more modern, and there was even a corner adorned with a few yoga mats and a treadmill. These people really had everything.
The executive lounge had a similarly sleek ‘modern’ design as the rest of the upper floor, with lots of monochrome shades and clean-looking floor tiles. There was a food dispenser in one of the corners, and the two men and the woman waited patiently for Maurice to grab himself something for lunch. They had the exact same model dispenser downstairs, but this one had a lot more options. He usually got the same every day, instant noodles, but this dispenser had sandwiches, and even a curry. He wanted to take his time deciding, but he felt eyes on his back so he quickly chose a random option. About twenty seconds later a plate with a cheese-and-mustard sandwich on it popped out of the underside of the dispenser and he quickly took it back to the table.
Maurice sat down, and the three people sat down across from him. None of them had grabbed any food, and it made Maurice too anxious to eat, so he instead fiddled with the plastic plate until one of them said something.
The first one to break the silence was the man he only knew from the speeches he gave at the biannual company picnic. His voice was deep and kind of smug-sounding, as if he was playing some kind of elaborate prank on Maurice that nobody except he himself understood. “So, Maurice, I saw some very good incentive from you this morning. A list of all planets the esteemed Mr. Blake might be interested in, hmm?”
Maurice weakly nodded, as that was indeed what he’d done. He still wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing, and the man didn’t exactly seem keen on clearing it up anytime soon.
“Yes, very good,” the man rubbed his hands together, “very good indeed. Only one itty-bitty problem with your little list, isn’t there? We don’t know a lot about most of the planets you wrote down, do we? And if someone, theoretically, assumed that that list was ready to go and sent it off to Mr. Blake? And he selected one that we’ve never even been to?”
“I… I thought someone could go check them out in person, uh, if Mr. Blake seemed interested, sir.” Maurice spoke weakly, understanding full-well that the theoretical situation the man had just described was exactly what had happened.
“I see. And you thought, of course, that we would just take that out of the yearly budget, huh? Send someone to go check the planet out in person… pah! A soil expert? Do you have any idea what that would cost?” the man sneered. The man and woman sitting next to him laughed, almost as if on cue. Maurice felt miserable, but he didn’t speak, afraid he would only make it worse.
“Unless, of course,” the man leaned in towards Maurice, “you’re planning on going there yourself. I don’t know, maybe the boss will forgive you for this terrible mistake if you show him how determined you are to make it right.”
Maurice grimaced. This seemed like an obvious trick, to get him to do a dirty job while the higher-ups laughed their asses off. But… he needed this job. As long as he worked here, he at least had a place to sleep, and some money saved up in case of an emergency. He wasn’t rich, or anything, but his basic needs were met. He knew that a lot of other people weren’t that lucky. And, maybe if he did this he’d finally get some recognition at the office.
“Which planet is it?” Maurice asked. The man and woman looked at each other and snickered.
“It’s called… let me see here…” the big man in front rifled through some papers. Ah, there it is. Camden.”
The laughter doubled. Maurice didn’t know what was so funny, because he’d never even heard of that planet. He recognized the name as one of the districts of London, an old Earth city, and he had a vague idea of where in space they’d started naming all excess towns after places in England, but that was about it. Maybe it was really cold there, or really hot. He didn’t really care, as long as it was somewhat habitable. He’d go in, take some soil samples and see the sights (if there were any) and then he’d come back to the office, hopefully now treated with a bit more respect.
“Sounds like a plan.” Maurice said, slowly. The woman snorted, unable to keep herself together anymore.
“He’s going to the prozzies!” she exclaimed, falling back into her chair because of her explosive bout of laughter. The lower-level supervisor choked on his own spit and began to cough. People around them stared, and the man in the middle looked slightly annoyed.
“Ah, yes. I suppose it is my duty to give you some basic information on this planet. It is, indeed, inhabited, as far as we know. It doesn’t get much traffic nowadays, though, so it’ll probably be easy to get the remainders out of there.” the man said. The other two nodded along, looking annoyed at the prospect of dealing with people who wouldn’t want to leave their homes. “I’ll compile some basic information for you, Maurice. I’ll make someone bring it to your cubicle. You can return to your desk now. You can find your way back on your own, yes?”
Maurice nodded, mumbled the affirmative and stood up, clutching the plastic plate with the uneaten sandwich still on it in his hands. As he made his way back to his cubicle, he began to feel like he’d made a mistake. Maybe he should have stood up for himself after all, and demanded that someone more qualified to do the task should be sent out instead. But on the other hand, it couldn’t be that bad, could it? The only thing that worried him was the woman’s comment about him ‘going to the prozzies,’ whatever that meant. Maurice wasn’t a very social person, so he was initially hoping for an uninhabited planet. Still, he had to do what he had to do.
He ate in his cubicle and spent the remainder of the day doing menial tasks such as filling in surveys and cleaning up his mailbox, and getting coffee for his colleagues after they continuously pestered him into doing so. By the time someone arrived to give him a piece of paper with some information on his new job Maurice was yawning and checking his watch every few minutes. Almost 5 PM, so he didn’t feel guilty reading the paper while on the clock.
There wasn’t much information on the document, really, but it gave him everything he needed to get there. It told him which sector the planet was in, which interplanetary line he had to take to get there, and what they expected him to bring back. He was supposed to talk to some locals to see if they knew if it was worth mining, and he had to bring back some samples of the soil. Also, they would really appreciate it if he’d take some photos for their files, so if he could please take a camera with him. Maurice felt quite confident about most of these things, except the bit about talking to locals. They probably wouldn’t be very happy about his presence, what with him being a representative of the company that was going to force them to move away, and all. He shuddered at the thought of having to explain, in the nicest way possible, that he was there to take away their homes.
He thought about it all the way home, and when he got home he spent a few minutes on the couch, silently staring at the paper, before he eventually put it down and sighed deeply. It was dark outside again, already, and when he looked outside he could see multiple different planets, a whole different sight than he’d had that morning. He saw the largest planet in the solar system he resided in, a big, pink planet lovingly nicknamed the ‘black devil’ by people who lived there, and a smaller, earthlike planet behind it, which due to the angle looked like it was hiding behind the other one. Maurice thought about what life would be like on those other planets. Ever since interplanetary transport became so fast and easy, most people travelled to many different planets in their life. But he’d pretty much lived in the same place his whole life. It was a good planet, a good, middle class planet, at least, that was what his parents always used to tell him. But, in hindsight they’d also been quite racist, so Maurice wasn’t really sure what to believe anymore.
This was going to be his first big off-planet trip, and it wasn’t even a vacation. It was work. He’d probably only be able to stay a few days. He’d have to swing by the office tomorrow to get some stuff related to the soil samples, and he’d have to go to the store to grab some food in case he wasn’t able to obtain any on Camden. If he was quick, he could probably still get on the earliest transport towards the planet. Maybe, with proper planning, he could make something out of this chore after all.
The next morning, Maurice boarded a large, mass-produced interplanetary transport spaceship. They were these bulky, white ships with several floors lined with seats. The lower floors were the cheapest, and that was where Maurice sat down. He was sitting next to a window, albeit a small, round one. He was just grateful that he could look outside at all.
He’d swung by the office to pick up some stuff that morning, and he’d received multiple mocking looks from his colleagues, even ones that had the exact same job he had. Their sneers confused him, as there was no reason for them to treat him that way. They did the same things day in day out after all. Sometimes Maurice felt like there was something intrinsically wrong with him, something he himself could not see, that made everyone he interacted with assume he was worth less than them. Maybe he wasn’t exactly the most talented or interesting person, but he did his best, and that had to count for something.
The transport he was on was one of those where you had to request a stop, so he had to press a small button above his chair, which summoned a steward. Then, he asked the steward if they could please stop in Camden, if it wasn’t too much of a problem. The steward said he’d inform the captain, and the man sitting beside Maurice barked out a laugh.
“You goin’ to a pleasure planet, laddie?” the man exclaimed, and Maurice was grateful the transport wasn’t very busy. He looked at the man. The man was old, Maurice guessed around his sixties or seventies. He had grey hair, and a beard, and he was wearing a hat which made him look like a sea captain who somehow ended up getting lost in space. However, he had just given Maurice a very important clue about where he was about to go.
A pleasure planet. When Maurice was still a kid living with his parents, he used to get an earful from them every day about all the depravity they saw in the universe. Pleasure planets, they always said, were where poor people went to waste their whole paychecks. There were casinos, horse races, bars and brothels. Everything no proper person would want to be found dead near. People like them never lowered themselves to that level. It filled Maurice with a thrill. Even though he hadn’t lived with his parents for a few years now, he still felt oddly excited whenever he did something that he knew they wouldn’t approve of.
If this planet was indeed still inhabited he could go to a bar. An actual bar, not one of those near the office that didn’t even serve any alcohol or played any music, because it might distract from work. The fact that humanity was spread over so many planets now meant that planets could get more and more specific in their purpose. There were entire planets that were terraformed to be as efficient as possible if it came to rock climbing, for example, or beach vacations. Of course there were people who questioned the ethics of terraforming, but there were people much more well-spoken on the subject than Maurice was.
“It’s for my job, sir.” Maurice said. The old man huffed. When he spoke, he spoke rather slowly. He gave the impression of a man who had all the time in the world, and didn’t feel like rushing it. “What kind of job lets you travel to pleasure planets?”
Maurice didn’t answer. He wasn’t sure why, but a voice in his head was telling him to reveal as little of his company’s motives as possible. The man continued talking as if he hadn’t really expected an answer, anyhow.
“Don’t matter, anyway. I don’t judge. You see, I’m gettin’ off at the same stop.” the man said, tapping his nose and winking. He sat himself upright, and Maurice could hear the strain in his voice. “I’m not there for the hookers or the gamblin’, though. I live there, nowadays. I’m just comin’ back from my weekly shopping trip.”
That was surprising. Maurice piped up, “I didn’t know the planet had any permanent residents.”
The man stared him in the face for a few seconds, just enough to make Maurice uncomfortable. It was as if he was trying to extract his motives from his skin. “You don’t know what yer gettin’ into, do you, son?”
Maurice awkwardly grinned. “Quite, sir.”
The man was silent for a while again, and Maurice took the time to look out of the window. Space really was beautiful. His home planet was polluted to the point he could barely see any stars in the sky, except the system’s sun, of course. The other planets in the star system were visible too, of course, the Black Devil and all, but they weren’t stars so they didn’t count. From the transport, even through this tiny round window at the bottom of the ship, everything looked a lot more beautiful.
“Son,” the old man spoke again, and Maurice looked his way. The man had his hands folded together. He looked like he was thinking about something. “You got a place to stay on Camden?”
Maurice frowned. He’d thought of packing food and clothing into his luggage, but he hadn’t even thought of a sleeping bag or something like that. Defeated, he shook his head. The old man slowly nodded. “Alright, here’s what we’ll do. When we arrive at Camden spaceport, I’ll draw you a little map to a place I know where they have great, cheap beds. It’s a place an old friend of mine owns. You tell ‘em I sent ya, and they’ll give you a discount for sure.”
Maurice smiled at the man, a big, genuine smile. “Thank you, sir. That’s very nice of you.”
The man waved his gratitude away. “Oh, don’t mention it. It’s the least I can do for you, for indulging an old man in conversation.”
It didn’t take very long for Maurice and the old man to arrive at their destination. They chatted some more as they got out of the spaceship, got their luggage together, and got something warm to drink at the spaceport. Because they had been talking, Maurice hadn’t gotten a chance to look at the planet from above, but he supposed he’d see it eventually anyways, so it wasn’t really a big deal. He took his camera out of his luggage and put the strap over his shoulder so he would have it on hand if a photo opportunity presented itself.
The spaceport looked a bit dilapidated compared to the one on Maurice’s homeplanet, but not so much so that it was a cause for concern. This fact was simultaneously nice and quite discomforting, now that Maurice knew that someone was planning on buying this planet and destroying it. A spaceport that was kept up to date, even if it wasn’t completely perfect, meant that this planet still got enough traffic to be considered ‘alive’. Something Maurice did notice, though, was just how empty the spaceport was. Maurice and the old man were the only two passengers getting off there, and he didn’t see anyone boarding, either. The coffee place near the spaceport’s entrance was open, but it was unstaffed, so they both got drinks from a food dispenser similar to the one at his office.
While sitting down and drinking their cups of coffee, the old man drew him a map of the planet’s main town on the back of his interplanetary transport ticket. An easy way to recognize the place he was supposed to go to, the man explained, was that it was right next to a casino with a huge, flashing sign on the outside. Apparently, you were able to see it flickering from blocks away. The place he was supposed to visit was called ‘Henrick's Bar’, and if he said Paul sent him he’d get a nice, cheap room.
Maurice thanked the man (whose name was apparently Paul) several times, and every time Paul shook his head, saying that it really was no problem. He’d probably swing by the bar himself somewhere that day or the next anyhow, so they could catch up. Maurice said he’d say hi to Henrick for him, and Paul just laughed and waved at him as he exited the spaceport.
The spaceport wasn’t in the middle of town, which was pretty normal for any planet that wasn’t completely full of buildings. Before space transport, Earth used to have airports, and those were usually built somewhat far from residential buildings as well. Even now, many decades later, that practice still continued, even if there was less use for it now.
There were no cabs waiting outside the spaceport, but it was a nice, sunny day, so Maurice didn’t mind. It was quite comfortable temperature-wise, too, so he could even take his jacket off. After a short walk, buildings started showing up on the horizon, And Maurice got his first look at Camden’s architecture.
It was beautiful, at least, Maurice thought it was. It looked like it had been ripped straight from a book of old Earth architecture. Most of the buildings were made of dark brown brick, like the beautiful buildings of late 1800s Europe. Sometimes, there was a break in between brick buildings, separated by slick, white and grey buildings with large neon signs in front, promising Guaranteed Wins and Beautiful Women.
And it was empty. Maurice walked and walked, but he saw nobody. Nobody on the streets, nobody inside the houses. Every bar he saw was closed, and every home looked like nobody had lived there in years. He even knocked on some doors, but nobody answered. Maurice was starting to get nervous. Had it all been some kind of weird practical joke by his colleagues? Had Paul been in on it, somehow? Lulled him into a false sense of security and then ditched him on an empty planet? But, why? Wasn’t that an awful lot of work just to get rid of one person? He even had a return ticket, so it wasn’t like he’d be stuck here forever. And he’d brought food, so he wouldn’t starve, either. None of this made sense.
He snapped some pictures of the scenery, wondering what he should do next. He supposed he might as well look for Henrick’s Bar, as he had nothing better to do anyways. Otherwise, he promised himself, he’d break into one of the empty bars and get himself a beer. A real one, not one of those beer-flavored lemonades they had back on his home planet. He loosely followed Paul’s map, taking a few detours to take in the scenery. The odd thing was that the city looked like it should have many people bustling around inside of it. It didn’t look like it had been deserted over many years, and the houses looked good enough to live in. It really was like every person that used to live there had suddenly disappeared into thin air, just that morning before they could open their shops.
Maurice whistled as he walked down the streets, tunes from old Earth bands whose members had died a hundred years ago. Those were still the best, he thought, and the thought made him happy. When he was a kid, music wasn’t allowed at home. It distracted from his studies. But he’d always felt this weird, probably misplaced happiness whenever he saw one of their old, reproduced posters. If only he’d been born elsewhere, where musicians toured, and guitar lessons were seen as a fun pastime instead of…
“Will you keep it down?” A woman exclaimed somewhere behind him, and Maurice almost tripped in surprise. He turned around quickly, just to catch a glimpse of a woman before she disappeared behind a closed window. Maurice pressed his lips together and looked at all the windows in the street again, trying to see if there was anybody else silently looking at (or judging) him. But there was nobody else.
Frowning, he continued walking. According to Paul’s map, he should be able to see the flickering of the sign by now. He strained his eyes, but he saw nothing. He was at a loss, a bit, so he found a park bench to sit down on and rooted through his luggage, looking for one of the oat bars he packed. He fished out one with raisins and peanuts, and triumphantly ate it, thinking of what he’d do next. The bench was located in front of a small fountain, which unfortunately wasn’t running. A theory was starting to form in his head. Maybe the people of Camden slept during the day, and awoke at night to go about their business. It would explain why nobody was on the streets, and why that woman had yelled at him earlier.
As he sat pondering several things, he felt himself growing more and more tired. The sun beaming down on him wasn’t helping, either, and the unusual quietness outside was making him drowsy as well. He felt himself slipping away and soon he had fallen asleep, head lolling backwards against the park bench.
When he awoke it was to the sound of giggling, somewhere behind him. He squeezed his eyes shut and slowly sat up, and as he did, he heard more giggles as whoever was near him quickly ran out of sight.
He groggily checked his luggage, but as far as he could see nothing was missing. It wasn’t as bright out anymore, either- he had to have slept for quite a while, as he couldn’t see the sun anymore. It wasn’t completely dark, but he could now see a bright flashing, just behind the first row of houses. There it was- the casino by Henrick’s Bar! It just had to be! Maurice was relieved that the old man hadn’t lied to him after all.
The building with the flashing sign was just as Paul had described it. The sign flashed from black to white in quick succession, which made Maurice’s eyes hurt. He averted his eyes as he walked past it, and into a weird crevice between the casino and another building. Therein it laid, Henrick’s bar.
Henrick’s bar was a small, brown brick building with a red neon sign in front that read ‘Henrick’s’. It only had a ground floor, and the windows on the street side were boarded up, although one of the planks had since fallen off, which allowed Maurice to look inside. From what he could see, it was quite dark inside, and there seemed to be a small stage for musicians or comedians to perform upon. There was actually a man on it right now, holding a guitar.
He took a few deep breaths before he opened the door and confirmed that his eyes had indeed not betrayed him. The bar had an odd layout: on the right, by the entrance, there was the bar, which had a few bar stools in front of it. On the left was the stage, with a few tables with chairs in front of it. There was a piano next to the stage, and somebody was sitting in front of it, though they weren’t playing anything. There was a man on the stage, strumming his guitar and crooning into a microphone. A few scattered people were sitting at the tables in front of him, and there was a group of girls in one of the darker corners, giggling together. There was an old man behind the bar, cleaning a beer glass. When Maurice opened the door, a few people looked over, curiously. Most of these glances did not linger, except notably the one of the bartender.
Maurice gritted his teeth and walked over to the bar, where he checked if there was anything in his pockets before he sat down on one of the bar stools. The bartender, a man with a triangular face and somewhat bushy eyebrows, nodded at him as a way of greeting.
“I… uh…” Maurice began, and the bartender’s inquisitive eyes on him only served to make him more nervous.
“I haven’t seen you around here before,” the bartender noted. Maurice swallowed the spit that had accumulated in his mouth. “I… I’m on vacation, sir.”
The bartender huffed out a laugh and shook his head, cleaning another glass before he locked eyes with Maurice again. “Nobody goes on vacation to this place. What’s the real reason you’re here? Are you looking to buy something here, or did you just follow a really old travel guide?”
Maurice felt his cheeks heat up. He was certain this was a seedy place, because otherwise the people who knew he was going here wouldn’t have reacted the way they did, but at least he’d been expecting the people on the planet itself to be a bit more accepting.
Luckily, before the ground successfully managed to swallow Maurice whole, the bartender seemed to notice his discomfort, so he backed off a bit. “It’s alright,” he said, severing their eye contact, “you don’t have to tell me why you’re here. The fact that you came here already tells me a few things about you, anyhow.”
“Such as?” Maurice inquired, softly. He didn’t dare look around him as he was afraid everyone at the bar was staring at him.
“Well, this is Henrick’s, and I’m Henrick,” the man said. “I know my own place. Either you’re looking for a cheap room, or you’re looking for a girl to spend the night with, or both. Whatever your poison is, it made you choose this place. People don’t come here for the booze, I know that much. The place next door with the bright lights fends those guys off quite well.”
Maurice was full-on blushing. If only his parents were here to see him now, oh, they’d be enraged. Their son, at a place known for it’s sex workers. “I… I’m only here for the room, sir. A man I met while travelling recommended this place to me. He said that I should tell you that Paul sent me.”
Henrick furrowed his bushy brow. “Paul… now there’s a name I haven’t heard in a while. If it’s the same Paul I’m thinking of, of course. ‘Course, it would be weird if it was just a completely different guy, because why would anyone else recommend my place…”
He was obviously lost in thought, but Maurice patiently remained seated. After a few more mumbles, Henrick shook his head, and looked back at Maurice. “But, sure, I’ll get you a room. How long are you planning on staying? You want to see the sights?”
“The ones that are left, at least,” one of the other people sitting at the bar stools mumbled, and a few others, including Henrick, chuckled. “Naw, Pete, don’t say that kind of stuff in front of the kid. If he wants to see the sights he’s allowed to. Any business is good business.”
The other bar patrons and Henrick chatted for a bit, and Maurice remained seated, unsure of what he should do. Someone slid an unopened beer bottle over to him, and Henrick worthlessly took it from him, opened it up and gave it back. Maurice took a sip and grimaced at the flavour, which he could only compare to the smell of motor oil.
One of the girls that had been giggling over in the corner made her way over to the bar, slowly, swinging her hips as she went. She had long, blonde hair, which she had up in a ponytail. Her lipstick was a bright cherry red, and when she leaned on the bar, she did it close to where Maurice was seated, so their arms brushed together. She nodded over to Maurice. “And who’s this, then?”
Henrick looked at her. “He hasn’t said his name yet. Why, Stevie, are you interested?”
The girl, who was apparently named Stevie, shrugged. “Dunno. He’s cute, though, isn’t he? I like curly hair on guys.”
“My name is Maurice.” Maurice blurted out a bit too quickly, and Stevie giggled. He noticed one of her hands was bandaged up as she took the non-injured hand and grabbed a lock of his hair between her fingers, pulling at it a bit and smiling when it bounced back. “Well, nice to meet you, Maurice.”
“Nice to… meet you too.” Maurice said. Stevie giggled again, and, apparently satisfied with the conversation, walked back to the rest of the girls. When she was seated again, Henrick allowed himself to laugh, and one of the bar patrons patted him on the back.
“You like Stevie?” Henrick inquired. “I don’t blame you. She’s very popular.”
“And for a reason!” one of the men on bar stools exclaimed, followed by a coughing fit, having clearly overexerted himself by yelling. The absurdity of the situation almost made Maurice laugh, but he tried to keep it in. The man, now done coughing, whistled at Stevie, and she made a peace sign with her hand in response.
“She seems nice.” Maurice mumbled, and took another swig of his beer, which he found didn’t taste any less bad the second time around. A few of the guys sitting right from him laughed again, talking about how much of a gentleman Maurice was among themselves.
Maurice didn’t say anything, and for the second time that evening, Henrick took pity on him. He took off his apron and walked out from behind the bar, motioning for Maurice to follow him to wherever he was going. Maurice did so, and Henrick led him into a hallway. However, in the middle of their walk, Henrick stopped walking, and Maurice stopped as well.
“You don’t have to feel bad about what those guys are saying about you. They’re just teasing you, alright? None of them mean anything wrong. If you aren’t here to hire a girl, that’s up to you. And if you do eventually end up requesting any of their services, none of them will judge you, either. And if they do, just remember that they’re all here for the exact same reasons.” Henrick said, and he patted Maurice on the shoulder. Maurice nodded, although he had always found it hard to take teasing from anyone, even if they claimed they didn’t mean it.
“Alright. I’ll just show you your room. You didn’t say for how many days you were staying, so I put you down for a long weekend, if that’s no problem with you.” Henrick said. He started walking again, and Maurice followed him.
“I didn’t really have the chance to say anything.” Maurice confessed. “Everyone kept talking, and I didn’t want to interrupt anyone.”
They arrived at the door to his room, and Henrick smiled at him, though the smile looked a bit like it was only there to mask a bit of sadness. When he spoke, it was a tiny bit softer than earlier, as if he’d been putting on a charade, earlier. “You’re a good kid. Don’t worry about those assholes outside. Get settled in your room, and then when you come back out I can help you think of some places to visit, unless you already know where you want to go.”
“I’m open to most things,” Maurice said, and it wasn’t even really a lie. “I don’t really have a lot planned. So, if you know anything that I should definitely see, I’d love to hear about it.”
Henrick smiled. “Alright. Go unpack first, and I’ll see you in the bar in a bit.”
Maurice gratefully accepted the key to his room, and opened the door. The room was quite small, but not in a claustrophobic way. It was rather cozy, actually. The walls were painted a bright red, and the floor was made entirely of mismatched black and yellow tiles. There was a queen size bed in the middle of the room, and a radio on a table to the side. There was a plastic potted plant in one of the corners, and there was a door next to the bed that led to a bathroom with a bath, a toilet and a sink. There was a closet, too, so Maurice unpacked his clothes and put them in there.
He sat down on his bed, and almost directly bounced back on his feet due to how springy it was. He felt a bit jet-lagged due to his nap in the park earlier, but he also felt like he really should go meet Henrick as soon as possible, so he wouldn’t seem rude. After that he could take a bath and go to sleep.
Back in the bar, he noticed Henrick wasn’t at his post. This was almost enough to drive Maurice back into his room, but he put on his brave face and sat down on the bar stool he’d been sitting on earlier, too. He looked around a bit more. The guy who had been playing the guitar earlier was now gone, though the guitar remained on stage, a silent reminder of what could have been. Or in this case had been, just a few minutes ago.
“So you’re here for sightseeing, huh?” one of the men at the bar asked. Maurice turned around to face him. He was obviously wasted, and had been the man who yelled at Stevie, earlier. Maurice fought the impulse to roll his eyes. “Yes.”
“Well, then, you oughta ask Sunflash to show you ‘round! Am I right, lads?” the man loudly yelled, followed by another thunderous coughing fit. There were a few chuckles, but Maurice himself had no idea what was so funny.
“Sunflash?” he asked, softly. None of the other bar patrons said anything, clearly in on whatever joke the drunkard was playing on him. And Maurice had fallen straight into his trap.
“Yeah. She’s a… one of them ladies of the night, in the corner there. Short black hair, looks kind of like a teenage boy?” the man explained, slowly moving from side to side as he did so. Then, he snorted, and started laughing so hard that the next thing he said was barely audible. “Not that I’m complainin’!”
More laughter from around them. Maurice sighed and stood up, going for the table the girls were sitting at. When the drunkard and his friends figured out where he was going, they laughed even harder. But he just ignored them.
There was a small group of girls all sitting together. Three of them were sitting on chairs around the table, two were sitting on the table itself, and one of them was leaning against the wall. Maurice recognized one of the girls on the table as Stevie, the one with the red lipstick. She gave him a kind smile when she saw him approaching. The other girls were all good-looking in their own ways, too. But only one of them had short, jet-black hair.
“Did that lot send you here on a bet?” Stevie asked. Maurice shook his head, and awkwardly scratched the back of his head. “No, but I did mention I wanted to be shown around this planet, and they all told me to go to the same girl. Although I’m beginning to think it might’ve been a prank.”
The girls now all looked curious. One of them, a rather short girl with long brown hair, crossed her arms angrily. “It better not be me, or I swear, I’ll… ugh!”
Stevie ignored the other girl, and continued looking at Maurice, which made him feel appreciated. It was nice to not be made fun of. “What name did they say, love?”
“Sunflash.” Maurice said. Stevie shook her head. The brown haired girl sighed, and they all seemed disappointed. Except the girl with the black hair, who started laughing. “God, they’re all pricks.”
She turned to Maurice. “That’s me they’re talkin’ about. Marisol Sunflash. The, er, third. Nah, I’m making that last part up. Sorry, I do that.”
She shook his hand, and he returned the handshake, although he still didn’t really understand what had been so funny to the drunkard. The girl, Sunflash, stood up, and stretched her arms. She was wearing a jean jacket that was far too big on her, combined with basketball shorts and a shirt that said ‘LOVE’ on it in big, bold letters. She didn’t exactly look like a stereotypical prostitute. She looked more like a gym teacher. Her eyes were big and blue, and, as Maurice was quickly learning, extremely emotive as well. She almost moved like a cartoon character as she stood up and briskly grabbed a newspaper, rolled it up, walked over to the drunkard and repeatedly slapped the top of his bald head with it.
Maurice looked on in confusion, and Stevie leaned in to whisper in his ear, “They were making fun of you ‘cause Sunflash does BDSM. You know, like, pain sex. He thinks it’s funny, or something. But she’s real good. Probably the best. And she’s proud of it, too. So he picked the wrong person to fuck with.”
The man squeaked in pain, although it really couldn't have hurt that much. He raised his hands up to deflect the hits, and Sunflash dropped the newspaper and instead poked his forehead with her finger a few times to make her point clear.. “Don’t,” poke, “bully customers” poke. “Attaboy! And don’t mess with Sunflash!” poke.
Sunflash returned to the table, laughing, and stilled in front of Maurice, looking at him with those big, cartoon-y eyes. “So, are you up for it?”
“Up for what?” Maurice asked, not used to people standing this close to him while they had a conversation.
“Well, for me showing you around the place, of course!” Sunflash said. “That guy was only trying to rile you up, but I actually know a lot about the history of this place, an’ all. Not just this bar, but the whole planet! So I wouldn’t mind doing it. You up for it, yea?”
Maurice thought about it. It would be fun to have someone to show him around, but he wouldn’t be able to spend a lot of time with her, as he did still need to get those soil samples. So maybe she would only end up getting in the way. But, on the other hand, she genuinely seemed nice so far. This place was already so different from what he’d expected, anyways, so maybe he had to ‘go with the flow’ a bit.
He looked at Stevie, trying to garner what her opinion on the matter was, and she gave him two thumbs up. The other girls looked happy about what was going on, too. He looked back at Sunflash and nodded. Sunflash cheered.
“Alright, this is gonna be so much fun! Oh, what should I show you first…” Sunflash looked at the girls. “What should I show him?”
“The Ritz would be fun.” one girl said, and another hummed in agreement. Stevie shrugged. “How about the building where they used to hold those huge horse races? You know. It’s empty now, but it’s still impressive.”
Sunflash nodded slowly. “Those are both good. God, there’s so many fun places to show off! I’ll have to take him to the bunker, and the radio station, annnd-”
“The lookout point…” the girl with the brown hair murmured. The other girls stared at her. Sunflash frowned. “Aren’t you being a bit forward?”
The girl flushed. “No, I mean, only if you wanted to… I don’t know! It was just a suggestion!”
Sunflash was silent for a moment. “...Anyways, when do you wanna go? You want to sleep first? People here don’t really go out during the day much, so if you want to meet people, we should go out right now. What do you think?”
Maurice shrugged, fully embracing the ‘going with the flow’ at this point. “You choose. You know this place better than I do.”
Sunflash hummed. “That is indeed true. Alright, come ‘head, then. I’ll show you a world of wonders you’ve never even dreamed of.”
She held her arm out for him to link his arm into. He did so, and she dragged him out of the bar, and into the night. Just as they walked out, Henrick came back to the bar, and smiled when he saw Maurice was with Sunflash.
Sunflash led Maurice through the city, through deserted streets with the occasional stray human being going through a garbage can or sitting on a bench, simply taking in the night sky. It wasn’t as warm as during the day anymore, and Maurice regretted not getting his jacket before leaving.
“Where are we going first?” Maurice inquired, and Sunflash smiled at him. “I was thinking we could go dancing. There’s this club that I absolutely love- they have live musicians every day! Even on mondays! Plus, there’s a guy I know who always hangs out there, and he’s a sweetheart. You absolutely must meet him.”
“I’m not much of a dancer.” Maurice confessed. Sunflash barely seemed to register what he said. “‘Course, he’ll probably be in a bit of a bad mood ‘cause I’ll be there with you and not with him. He’s a bit, how do you say it… territorial? ‘Round me? Which is weird, because, like, he knows what I do for a living. Oh well. I’m sure he’ll be able to muster up some kindness, even if I have to slap it out of him.”
“Is this guy a client of yours?” Maurice inquired. They were walking at quite a brisk pace. Sunflash had to have walked this same route many times, as she knew exactly which side streets were faster and which cracks in the asphalt required jumping over and which didn’t.
Sunflash blew a raspberry. “A lot of it gets muddled after a while. It’s…” she gestured around, “All of this isn’t just business, you know? It’s community. Family, even, for some people.”
“You’re all close, then?” Maurice asked, hoping Sunflash wouldn’t think he was rude for asking too many questions. She didn’t seem to care, though.
“Well, I don’t think there’s anyone I outright hate. Some people really do their best to look out for like, the girls and stuff. Henrick’s well known for his hospitality, for example. He lets us stay at his place all day, and we all have rooms to sleep in. For no extra pay, though we slip him something extra from time to time, of course.” Sunflash explained. They were now crossing a bridge, and when Maurice looked over the edge, he saw that there wasn’t any water below it. Maybe there had been at one point, but it was all dried out by now.
“This BDSM.. thing.. pays well, then?” another question, but he couldn’t help it. Sunflash snorted. “You ask a lot of questions, don’t you? Are you interested in masochism? Bit of Dom-slash-sub? I don’t blame you for being intrigued by the concept of it. It’s a very interesting community. I reckon a lot more people are kinksters than you or I would think. They just never got to explore it.”
Maurice hummed. The street they were in ended in a big, black building. It looked much more modern than the houses around it, and he could hear loud bass thumping from inside. There was a small line of people outside, waiting to be let in. They were all dressed up nicely. There were a few men in dress shirts and pants, and one even wore a full suit. The girls wore brightly colored clothes, shirts and trousers or even dresses that looked hand-sewn. This place had to be a pretty big deal.
They didn’t wait in line. Sunflash leaned in and whispered something in the bouncer’s ear, and he nodded and opened the door for her. She took a few steps inside, and then turned around to face Maurice, grabbing his hand and pulling him inside. He, in his casual clothes, definitely wasn’t dressed nicely enough to even be there. He wanted to voice this concern, but once inside, the music was so loud he couldn’t hear his own voice.
Some fast-paced dance number was playing, and people were loving it. The room was packed with people dancing, bodies mingling and pressing against each other. People swung glow sticks around to the beat of the music, or simply danced their hearts out. Sunflash was still holding Maurice’s hand, and they pushed through the crowd to find a slightly quieter place. While Sunflash was slightly shorter and smaller than Maurice, she radiated confidence and authority, and pushed through the crowd with ease, not unlike a hot knife through butter. She leaned in close to him, her mouth next to his ear. “You wanna dance?”
“I’m no good,” Maurice yelled, hoping she would be able to hear it. Sunflash rolled her eyes and leaned into him again. “I’ll teach you. Come on, just follow my lead.”
The song that had been playing transitioned into another song as Sunflash pulled him onto the dancefloor. People were touching him from every angle, arms and legs brushing against him, on accident or on purpose, he wasn’t sure. He tried to focus on Sunflash, in front of him, doing a simple four-step routine. Step left with the one leg, then the other, then back. Maurice mirrored what she was doing, and she gave him a thumbs up before complicating things with an arm maneuver. He tried to copy her, and once he no longer had to focus on what he was doing, he began to understand what the appeal of going dancing was. It was remarkably easy to shut his brain off and just follow the beat. Everyone in the crowd moved at the same pace, pulsating with it. The room was warm, everyone was sweating, but nobody stopped to catch their breath.
Maurice lost himself in the music, and Sunflash seemed to notice it, giggling to herself as she watched him move. When the song was over, she pulled him towards the quiet corner again, and instructed him to sit down while she got them something to drink. He did so, and by the time his breathing evened out, Sunflash was back with two freezing cold cans of cola. She opened hers up, and he watched her throat move as she drank from it. He took a swig from his can and audibly moaned at how good it felt to drink something cold. Thankfully, the music was so loud most people didn’t hear.
Maurice pulled at Sunflash’s jacket, and she sat down on one knee to lean in again so they could talk over the music. The intimacy of the moment wasn’t lost on him as he spoke, “You come here often?”
She nodded the affirmative. “Multiple times a week if I can. I’d try to explain the feeling that makes it all worth it, but I feel like you understand it pretty well already.”
She was right. Getting lost in the crowd was intoxicating. During that last song, the whole dancefloor had briefly been one big creature, breathing in and out to the floor-pounding bass and drums. It was social, but at the same time it wasn’t, as he hadn’t really communicated anything with anyone. But he’d felt it, coursing through him, filling every vein in his body.
After finishing their drinks, they went back to the dancefloor again, and danced until they were sweaty but satisfied. A slower song came on, and Maurice followed Sunflash through a door into a hallway, where she knocked on a door. Whoever was on the other side of the door took a very long time to open it, and Maurice began to feel like they weren’t really supposed to be there, the tiled floors and walls reminiscent of the ‘backstage’ at some theatre or music venues. The sweat coating his body was beginning to cool, as well, which made him shiver uncontrollably.
Someone finally opened the door. It was a tall man, about a head taller than Maurice. He had long, shaggy dark hair that hung over his face. All Maurice could see was his mouth, which was pulled into a scowl. “Sunflash.”
The man’s voice was deep and scratchy, making everything he said sound like a growl. Sunflash blinked up at him, smiling, like this wasn’t terrifying in any way at all.
“Doggy.” She drawled, self-satisfied. This had to be that client of hers, then. Sunflash ushered Maurice into the room, and Maurice started to feel nervous. She wasn’t planning on… performing her job right now, was she? If so, she’d at least allow Maurice to leave, right? “Doggy, say hi to Maurice.”
Maurice didn’t remember telling Sunflash his name, but she’d probably overheard it when he introduced himself to Henrick or Stevie. Doggy grunted at him, and Maurice awkwardly smiled back.
The room behind the door was a normal-looking living room. There was a couch in front of a low table littered with magazines. There were bookcases all around, too, so this guy had to be well-read, if it was indeed his place. There was a small kitchenette in one of the corners of the room, and someone had put the kettle on. There was a curtain separating a bed from the rest of the room, and there was a door that presumably led to a bathroom or something of that sort.
Sunflash sat down on the couch, and Maurice sat down next to her. The man, who Sunflash had referred to as ‘Doggy’, didn’t join them on the couch, and instead sat down on his knees in front of Sunflash, head bent down in a show of submission. Sunflash tutted and patted him on the head, playing with strands of his shaggy hair.
“Poor little love,” she sighed, “Always so tense. Feel his shoulders. Feel how tense he is.”
She grabbed Maurice’s hand and laid it on Doggy’s shoulder, and Maurice could feel the tension. It felt like the man in front of him was about to snap, so Maurice quickly pulled his hand back as if he’d been burned, afraid of what he would do. But he did nothing but patiently wait for Sunflash’s next action.
Sunflash continued absently petting the man, as if he was, indeed, a dog. She threaded her hands through his hair and he shivered, but remained in place, mostly unmoving. Maurice was still pondering the house’s anatomy. Why was someone’s house in a hallway in the middle of a nightclub? Sunflash gave one tap on the man’s shoulder and he slumped forward, his face coming to rest on her knee. All tension had dissipated from his body.
She cooed at him, about how he was such a good boy, and how proud she was of him. Maurice awkwardly sank into the couch, not sure what to do. He ended up reading a magazine that was on the table in front of him. It was an edition of a music magazine that came out a few months ago. There was this new singer called Monty (or well, she was new on the scene at the time the magazine had come out) who was supposed to do a tour that spanned multiple planets. This was pretty unheard of, as most musicians nowadays mostly stayed on the planets they started out on.
It was one of the reasons music had stagnated so much ever since humanity moved away from Earth and into space. Tours were a thing of the past. You could still buy CDs and records, but since nobody heard news of any of the musicians from other planets in the first place, nobody bought their records off-planet. In retaliation, a counterculture movement had started across planets. They wore leather jackets and antique band tees and worshipped the bands that had been mainstream over a hundred years ago, like the Beatles and Queen. They communicated by interplanetary fax machine, and every one of their messages was annotated with the chords you were supposed to read them in.
Neo-Beatlemania had Maurice in its grip, too, though he wasn’t publicly able to support the movement back on his home planet. If he wore anything like a band tee out in public and one of his supervisors spotted him, he’d surely get fired. And then he would have to move back in with his parents, and he’d never be able to get away from them. They already lost him once, so they weren’t going to allow him to flee again.
This ‘Monty’ was clearly one of the new musicians movement, and Maurice loved every bit of it. Sadly, looking at the tour dates, none of the places she was going to visit or had visited were anywhere near his home planet. And Camden wasn’t on the list either, of course. It checked out, though, because as far as Maurice had seen so far, it seemed like the planet only housed about two hundred people.
He absently noticed that Sunflash had stood up, and was ushering Doggy off to bed, where she tucked him in and kissed him on the forehead. She carefully closed off the curtain to give the illusion of him being in a different room, and walked back to the couch. Her eyes met Maurice’s, and they both simultaneously grimaced at each other.
“Sorry about that,” she said.
“Do you think he-” Maurice pointed at the curtain, “will be mad if I take this magazine?” he pointed back at the magazine, “there’s an article in it about a musician I’m interested in.”
Sunflash thought about it for a moment. Maurice could see the cogs turning in her head. “He’ll probably be fine with it. I don’t think he can read.”
They both said nothing for a moment, and then both started laughing. Maurice felt like he was letting go of some kind of hesitance he had been carrying with him ever since Sunflash offered to show him around. Maurice never really had friends, or any close connections at all, really, growing up. Most of the time it had just been him and his parents. Which made the fact that he barely seemed to remember their hobbies even stranger.
“He can read, by the way.” Sunflash said later, as they once again walked the empty streets of Camden. She played with her fingers as they walked, forming a steeple, curling her fingers together and then repeating the motion from the beginning. “He’s quite bright, really. I… just worry about ‘im a bit. But I won’t bore you with that.”
“I don’t mind listening to you,” Maurice said, sounding genuine. Sunflash smiled at that. It was fully dark now, and with that came the cold. Sunflash looked cold, in her shorts and thin, oversized coat. Maybe it would be good if they found a place to go inside soon. “Really? People sometimes tell me my voice is annoying. I guess it is a bit squeaky. So I try to make it lower, but then it winds up hurting my throat. I guess you can’t please everyone.”
Maurice hopped over a crack in the asphalt, and Sunflash followed. “Are you hungry?”
“A bit,” Maurice said. “Why?”
“Well, there’s this place, uh, Maggie mentioned it earlier, at Henrick’s? It’s called the Ritz, named after some fancy old English place, ‘pparently. They do food. And they got rooms, but those are proper expensive. If someone who hires me says we’re goin’ there I can bet that they’re some rich weirdo who’s too afraid to get off on their own planet.” church, steeple, church, steeple, “but I digress. It’s good food. Omelets. With three kinds of cheese. Do you like eggs?”
“I like cheese.” Maurice noted.
“Fair enough. We can go there, then. Don’t worry, I’ll pay for everything. I feel bad that those guys at Henrick’s were teasing you. Even if they were kinda teasing me, too. But it’s less bad when they do it to me, because they always do it.” Sunflash explained. Maurice shook his head.
“I disagree.”
“Hm?” Sunflash asked. They were crossing the same bridge again, the one that went over land instead of water. Maurice could see the building with the flickering sign far away in the distance. All the city’s big neon signs were on now, and it looked very pretty. It was still extraordinarily empty, and a lot of those signs were probably just connected to a power grid that automatically switched on at night, but it still gave a cozy feeling. Camden was an odd place. It was, on one hand, very freeing, yet on the other hand reminded Maurice of his office job. The dimmed lights, the tiny rooms people slept in… if Doggy’s home was anything to go by, at least.
“I don’t think it’s okay to bully someone, even if they’re used to it.” Maurice said.
“Well, it’s hardly bullying.” Sunflash argued. “They’re just looking for a laugh. They see an opportunity, and they take it. It’s nothing personal. Just wish they didn’t do it to tourists.”
Maurice decided not to say anything about her labeling him as a tourist, though it was technically what he was. The word just didn’t seem right to him. “Still. I don’t want them to do it to you, either. I was there at Henrick’s, you know. I didn’t see you or any of the girls laughing. Is it still a joke if only one of the groups involved can laugh at it?”
Sunflash thought about it for a moment. “Stevie laughed.”
She had a point. Maurice stated, “Stevie did indeed laugh, but she also flirted with me, so it’s not exactly like she’s the pinnacle of good taste.”
Thankfully, Sunflash laughed at that, and dropped the subject. Maurice wondered if the men at Henrick’s bar always treated Sunflash like that, and if she was really fine with it. He also wondered why the situation had struck him the way it did, as he wordlessly took the mocking from his coworkers at the office, too. Maybe he couldn’t change his own situation, but he could spur Sunflash on to change hers, and that was still an improvement.
They walked in silence for a while. Some of the buildings on Camden actually looked similar to the ones on Maurice’s home planet. Sometimes it almost felt like he was back home, walking through the night after a long shift at the office. But the lack of people was one easy way to tell the two planets apart. While back home every nook and cranny was always filled with liveliness, here it was just empty. Back home, if Maurice couldn’t sleep, he’d stand up and look out of his window. But not just look, listen, too. While the sky was beautiful at night, there was also a particular sound that only came out at night. A buzzing, consisting of faraway people, cars, electricity… the veins of the city, pumping life throughout the world, keeping it turning. Compared to that, this place felt dead. When he stood as still as possible and just listened to everything around him, here was nothing to hear. There weren’t even any leaves on the trees for wind to blow through.
“Well, if you like my voice, I could tell you a story.” Sunflash offered.
“I’d like that.”
“Okay, good.” Sunflash said. “What kind do you want, though? I can tell you about the stuff me and the girls get up to- oh, there’s a really funny one about this time Maggie had a crush on a guy who worked at the old radio station, so we made her go there and confess her love to him… or! I can tell you a real proper fictional story. It’s whatever you want.”
The idea of listening to a story about a girl being forced to confess her love to someone didn’t exactly sound like great fun to Maurice, so he pressed on, instead. “What’s the fictional story about?”
“It’s about these two guys who used to travel through space long, long ago,” Sunflash said, theatrically. “But if you want to hear that one, I want to sit down first. It’s a long story, so I want something to drink to go with it.”
Maurice agreed to Sunflash’s terms, and he patiently waited until they arrived at the Ritz to hear Sunflash’s story. The Ritz was perhaps the fanciest building in all of Camden, a huge, white building with many windows and tiny white towers on top. It looked like it was made out of marble, or something expensive like that. Inside, they were once again greeted by a tiled floor, though this one had little flecks of gold in it.
Once they were inside, it was like they had entered a whole other world. Everyone was dressed in fancy clothes that looked like they were from two centuries ago. The building had a huge restaurant in the middle of it, in a big, round room that was surrounded by a big round hallway with staircases. The second floor had balconies with more tables for guests to sit at and dine. The ceiling above the big round room was made out of glass, so you could look at the stars as you ate. Sunflash and Maurice were seated at a two person table on the ground floor. There were a few other people eating at the tables, too, mostly couples and some people on their own. People were neatly using their tableware.
This place looked far too expensive. It just had to be, because the menu didn’t even have any prices on it. But when he voiced his concern to Sunflash, she comfortingly patted his arm, almost a bit patronizingly. “Don’t worry, love,” she said, “You’re not the one who’s paying.”
A trend in fancy restaurants such as these was ‘old Earth style’ food. When humans first moved away from earth and to all the other planets, this meant they discovered a whole lot of new kinds of fruits and vegetables, which were mass-farmed and exported every which way nowadays. Not even every kind of old Earth vegetable had survived this boom of new types of food, actually, having gone extinct or so rare that it was impossible for regular people to consume them. ‘Old Earth style’ meant a whole lot of old Earth dishes, such as steak and spaghetti. Many dishes with meat, actually. These were never really eaten by people at their homes anymore, as other food (mainly pre-prepared dishes!) was much easier to obtain.
They got a bottle of champagne, which fizzed comfortably. Sunflash asked whether Maurice ate meat, which he confirmed he didn’t, but that it wasn’t a moral issue but rather a monetary one. Sunflash asked if he wanted a steak. Maurice agreed with every first thing she brought up, as he’d always had trouble making decisions.
As they waited for their food and sipped their champagne, Sunflash loudly cleared her throat. “Alright, are you ready for my story?”
“Sure. What’s it called?” Maurice asked.
Marisol Sunflash’s story, about a guy who was looking for a job but ended up finding a lot more
‘This story is about a guy. He was a drifter. A real, proper old-timey one like they have in those radio plays. He was eighteen years old when he hopped onto a cargo spaceship and sailed away, never to be seen again. He left his home planet because everything was really boring there. Every day, everyone did the exact same stuff. They woke up, went to work, came back home, and went to sleep. Nobody loved each other, they just said they did ‘cause that’s what people expected them to say.
He travelled from planet to planet, hitchhiking or stowing away in the cargo bay. On each planet he visited, the first thing he did was look for a job. He made a lot of interesting friends that way. He met miners, who went to their planet’s moon in little spacesuits and cut bits off, that the people on the planet itself used as cutting boards and stuff. He met fishermen from a whole planet that was just deep water and one tiny island. And he met corrupt businessmen who owned casinos and paid their workers the barest minimum. Usually he made pretty good money hopping from job to job like that, but sometimes he couldn’t find anything good, or he didn’t get paid, and then he would have to sleep in the streets, where people pickpocketed him when he was asleep and kicked him in the stomach for fun.
So, one day he went to go work at one of those casinos, and the boss was exceptionally mean to him. He yelled at him all day, and made him stay for hours after his shift ended. So when he finally did get to leave the building, he was angry. He walked through the streets, angrily muttering to himself, until he saw a small, cheap looking bar. He’d barely gotten paid anything, and he was just in the mood to get drunk and complain about his problems to someone.
He went inside, and inside it was just him and the bartender. This place was so empty that if the bartender hadn’t waved him in he’d been sure it was all some kind of performance art or something. He sat down at the bar, asked for a beer and drank it all in one huge sip. The bartender watched on in awe and poured him another. He said it was on the house, because the first one had been gone so fast he was beginning to think it had never existed at all, and he could hardly charge the man for something that didn’t exist.
They started talking. The man first, talking about his troubles at the casino, and the way he’d been yelled at all day. How he was going to leave first thing next morning, because he never wanted to see the casino boss’s smug face ever again. After he was done complaining, it was the bartender’s turn. His life wasn’t great either, because he never really got any customers. There were enough to keep the place open and pay his rent, but not much else. When he first opened the bar, he’d wanted it to be a famous bar, one that made people travel there from other planets just to see it. Instead he had a few regulars, but that was it. This man was actually the first off-planet customer he had ever had.
They talked so long that they saw the sun come up by the time they were waving each other goodbye. The man felt like he’d made a friend. They had spent all evening talking to each other about how tough their lives were, and by morning they both felt a lot better The man wanted to thank the bartender in some way, so he vowed to return to the planet next time he was in that sector of space, so he could be the bartender’s first customer who came to the planet just to see his bar.
It ended up taking a pretty long time for them to reunite, though, as the man ended up getting stranded on some faraway planet for a while after he missed the only scheduled transport. He ended up having to live off wild berries and fish he caught by hand, so by the time he came back to civilization he had a very interesting story to tell. He returned to the planet where the bartender had his bar, just so he could tell the story. And the bartender, who still owned the bar, and still wasn’t making a lot of money, gladly listened to him. But when it was his turn to tell a story, all he could think of was to tell the man about how bad business was going. He was in his bar every day, it never closed, and he still wasn’t making any money.
So, when the man left again, he vouched to get the bartender more customers. He travelled among the stars as he always had, telling people about a very special bar tucked away on a tiny planet. People were entranced by the story, but rarely ended up visiting it, because most people tend to prefer a simple story that doesn’t require you to think too much. It’s a sad truth of humanity. But some people did end up coming to the bar, and the bartender started making more money. The next time the man visited him, the bartender was the first to tell a story, and he told the man all about his happiness, about how well business was going, how all of a sudden people treated the bar like it was special. And the man became entranced by seeing the bartender’s normally sad face folded into a smile. It looked almost unnatural, and he wanted to change that. He almost became addicted to it. He wanted to hear more happy stories, so he left again, to go look for more customers for the bartender.
He did this for thirty years, and every time he came to visit, he’d spend the whole night talking to the bartender, who told him just how happy he was. But he would always leave after one night. You see, he didn’t understand that the customers weren’t what was making the bartender so happy. He was happy because the man came to visit him.’
“Oh, wow.” Maurice said, overcome with a surprising melancholy. “I… I wasn’t expecting such a gut-punch ending.”
Sunflash smiled, slightly smug-like. “I like telling stories. Everyone thinks I’m very good at it. If I didn’t already have a job, I would like to be a wandering storyteller.”
“You’re good enough to make a living off of that,” Maurice said, sounding genuine. “Did those guys ever tell each other how much they loved each other?”
“Probably not,” Sunflash sighed. “You know how it goes, with relationships like that. You spend your whole life orbiting around someone and neither of you ever comment on it.”
Maurice detected a hint of bitterness in her voice, but he didn’t mention it. Their food arrived, and they ate in relative silence. He was starting to get tired again. He thought back to the lovely, springy bed in his room at Henrick’s, and almost salivated. A nice, warm bath, and then sleep. Then, he could go grab those soil samples the next day, take some more pictures, and his duties would be done. After that, he could pretty much do whatever he wanted with the time he had left.
He’d had fun with Sunflash, and he would certainly mention it to Henrick before he left for home. She deserved a raise, if he was indeed paying her. Otherwise, Maurice would just tell Henrick to give her a free drink. On him.
The steak was delicious, and when he finished it Maurice was more than ready to leave the Ritz behind and go to sleep. He looked at Sunflash, who still sported that mischievous glint in her eyes. “What do you wanna do next?”
She said it loudly, actively, like the late hour and filling dinner hadn’t affected her at all. Maurice yawned instead of responding, but he was fairly certain Sunflash got the message anyways. She exhaled through her nose. “You tired?”
He squinted at her. His field of vision was starting to get blurred around the edges. Everything looked kind of fuzzy, like a nice, woolen blanket. Hmm, blankets… sleep... “Yes.”
Sunflash laughed. “I’ll bring you to a place where you can sleep, don’t worry.”
Maurice followed Sunflash around. First she paid for the food, and then he followed her to her house. The sun was starting to come up, and the sky was the most exquisite shade of orange he’d ever seen. He tugged on the sleeve of Sunflash’s jacket, trying to get her to look. She pulled her arm away, annoyed, but followed his line of vision anyways. They looked at the sky for a moment. The system this planet was in had a singular sun that multiple planets spun around. It was a large, yellow thing that hung in the sky like a spotlight on a stage.
They didn’t walk back to Henrick’s, but instead walked a scenic route past yet another place where a canal used to be. Now, though, it was just a huge, angular tub of concrete, stretching out thinly between old, messily built houses. Sunflash climbed onto a fire escape, two, three floors up to the roof, and there it was almost like someone had copy-pasted the houses below. There was another concrete canal, and on one side of the water, identical houses. The only difference was that a small stream of water did run through this canal, and Sunflash jumped over it as she made her way to yet another fire escape. Maurice was starting to feel dizzy, and just as he was beginning to think it would go on like this forever, Sunflash took a pair of keys out of her coat pocket and opened one of the doors.
She walked inside and left the door open for Maurice to walk through, not wanting to wait until he climbed the steps. He groggily walked inside, and closed the door behind him. He rubbed his eyes. The house they had entered began in a long, low hallway that was barely big enough for him to stand upright in. To the right, there were a few doors, four or so, all closed. On the left, there was one door, and it was open. A soft, flickering light fell from the room into the hallway, and Maurice toed his shoes off, walking towards the light.
Sunflash’s living room was a thing of beauty. It looked wholly lived in, from the beautiful decorative cloth hanging on the wall, the bright pink carpet in front of the couch, to the kitchenette to the left, with a few empty instant meal wrappers lying on the floor beside it. Everything consisted of saturated colors, shades of blue, purple and darkest orange contrasted by a computer monitor emitting static in the middle of the room. There were posters on the walls, even one of Monty. Sunflash sat on the couch, toes buried in the deep carpet. She was fiddling with some kind of machinery. Maurice yawned again and sat down next to her.
“I’m trying to get this thing to work,” Sunflash explained, nodding towards the flickering screen. “I know nobody watches TV anymore, but I like the idea of owning a working one, anyways. Who knows, maybe I’ll even be able to pick up some signal.”
“I don’t think I even knew anyone who had a TV back home.” Maurice confessed, though it wasn’t exactly very odd, seeing as he’d grown up sheltered.
Sunflash stopped her fiddling and looked at him without fully turning her head towards him. “Yeah, speaking of that. Where do you come from? Do you have a job? I feel like you know everything about me, but I know nothing about you.”
Maurice swallowed. This was the moment he’d been afraid of. He didn’t want to lie to Sunflash, but he felt like he didn’t have a choice. If he told her the truth, she’d be very angry. She seemed to love this place, and the people who lived here, too. He didn’t want to take it away from her- or, at least, he didn’t want her to know that he was the one who took it away from her.
“I’m really not very interesting, that’s why I haven’t said anything,” Maurice offered. “I work a boring office job. All I do all day is check my email. And I don’t do anything fun, either. After work, I go straight home and to bed.”
Sunflash frowned, the piece of machinery now forgotten in her lap. “That does sound a bit dreadful. No offense, though. But don’t you get bored?”
Maurice shrugged. “I don’t mind the routine. There is something nice about knowing what you’re supposed to be doing at any time of the day. That way you don’t get surprised by anything.”
“I like surprises,” Sunflash said, solemnly. “I don’t think I’d survive doing the same stuff all day. That’s why I do the work I do. It’s fun, you get a lot of lenience in what you do and when. Plus, the people I work with often end up surprising me.”
“In what way?” Maurice inquired, though he wasn’t sure he really wanted to know. Sunflash shrugged. “In all sorts of ways. ‘Course, some people want the same stuff every day. You know, like Doggy? He just needs somebody he trusts enough to let go around. It took me months to even get him to take his eyes off me while I was in his house. I think he was afraid I’d steal from him, or something. But now he submits beautifully. I tell him to sit down, and he does it.”
Maurice leaned his head on his arm, which in turn was leaning on his knee. “What do you mean, he needs it? I mean no offense, obviously. I just don’t understand… the whole... thing. That you do.”
Sunflash picked the piece of machinery back up again. It had a piece of cable sticking out of it that led towards the screen, and she plugged it into several parts of the machine, looking at the screen to see if there was any difference in the static. There wasn’t. “I dunno. For a lot of people it isn’t even a sexual thing. They just need someone to submit too, cuz they can’t do that in their normal day-to-day life. You got big, strong guys like him, for example, who are never really allowed to be tiny. Some people need to be tiny, sometimes.”
“I’m not sure I understand still.” Maurice said. Sunflash stopped what she was doing. She pressed a button on the machine, and the screen went black. “Alright, let me try to explain it to you in a different way. Do you ever get doted on? By, like, your mom, or something? Do people on the street ever mistake you for a homeless person and try to give you loose change?”
Maurice frowned, because that exact scenario had actually happened to him a few weeks prior. “Uh, yeah, my mom coddles me a lot. I’m convinced she still thinks I’m a toddler sometimes.”
Sunflash held her hands up. “Exactly. There you go. Some people are never allowed to be the one who is being taken care of. And it hurts them a lot. They need to let go real badly, but they can’t, ‘cause they spent so much of their life taking care of others they’ve forgotten how to be cared for. That’s where I come in. I’m real good at it, too. ‘Course, some people just like to be spanked. But I don’t judge ‘em. That’s why they like me. That and the fact that I’m the best at what I do.”
Maurice decided he liked Sunflash’s confidence. “Do you think you could do it to me, too?”
Sunflash stood up and turned the light out in the living room. Maurice followed her into the hallway and through the door into her bedroom. “I dunno. I don’t think it’s your thing. I don’t really like working with people who don’t know what they’re gettin’ into. It’s nothing personal, but I don’t think you… need it, much, if that makes sense. You’re not that tightly wound.”
Sunflash’s bedroom wasn’t big, so most of the room was taken up by her bed. The bed was huge, and a big mosquito net hung above it, making it seem like the bed was shrouded in mist to Maurice’s tired eyes. He squinted, trying to get a better look at it. Sunflash walked over to the one other piece of furniture in the room, a small closet, and pulled her shirt off. Maurice quickly turned around as to not embarrass her. When he heard her get on the bed, he turned around, and he could see she was wearing pyjama shorts and an oversized t-shirt that said ‘CAR WHEELS’ on it in big, red letters. She patted the bed next to her. Maurice scratched his neck. “I can sleep on the couch.”
“No you can’t, I’ve got my stuff on there. You might crush it.” Sunflash said. Maurice sighed and took his jeans off, defeated. He neatly folded them and put them down on the floor, and crawled under the blankets afterwards. The bed had to have at least five different blankets, most of which were obviously meant to be decorative. There was one that was obviously hand-knitted, and one that looked suspiciously like a shock blanket. Sunflash reached out to turn the lamp off, and they were suddenly engulfed in darkness.
Sunflash’s back was towards him. It was so dark in the room his eyes were starting to make up shapes to keep his mind occupied. Shades of brown, dancing through the room.
His voice sounded soft, almost childish, as he spoke for the last time that day. “Why does everyone call you by your last name and not your first?”
“It’s nicer.” Sunflash said, somewhere muffled and far away. “I’m not much of a Marisol, anyways.”
By the time Maurice woke up, the sun already hung low in the sky again. It was evening, or, at least, what people on his home planet called evening. But, seeing as the people of Camden seemed to only roam at night, maybe this was the morning for them. He looked out of the window, at all the houses haphazardly filling the planet. It looked most like a quilt, he decided.
He put his pants back on and shuffled into the living room. Sunflash was in the kitchen, cooking something. It smelled nice, whatever it was. She had different clothes on today. Her gym shorts were replaced by jean shorts, which she seemed to have cut short herself. Underneath it, she wore fishnet stockings, and above it a big, rainbow-coloured sweater. She was wearing a pair of sunglasses in her hair to keep her hair out of her eyes. Maurice thought she looked very nice. “What time is it?”
Sunflash turned around. She was making them both an omelette, he could see now. She had folded a slice of cheese into both, and was now slicing tomatoes to go with it. She didn’t give him a concrete answer. “I’m making breakfast.”
Maurice nodded slowly. “Morning, then?”
Sunflash agreed. “Morning. Can you… could you get back in bed? I was gonna give you breakfast in bed but now you’re not in bed right now and it’s kind of messing with my whole plan.”
Maurice snorted, because he understood exactly where she was coming from. He hated when his plans were changed without prior notice. He gave her an apologetic look. “Sorry. On it.”
He ran back to Sunflash’s room, almost giddy for some reason he didn’t yet understand. He dove under the blankets just in time before Sunflash entered, holding two plates. She’d put a candle in his omelette, making it reminiscent of a very depressing birthday cake. She must’ve caught his look because she gritted her teeth. “On the off chance today was your birthday. I don’t know what I was thinking, either. Happy birthday, Maurice.”
“Happy birthday to you too.” Maurice said before he noticed what he was saying. Sunflash gave him a strange look and sat down next to him, her on top of the blankets, him underneath. They leaned their backs on the headboard as they ate. There was nothing special about the food, but Maurice didn’t have particularly high standards, even after yesterday’s steak. But he had to know something.
“Why are you spoiling me so much?” Maurice asked. “I mean, first we went dancing, then you paid for fancy dinner, and now you’re making me breakfast in bed.”
“I like doing nice things for nice people.” came Sunflash’s reply. Maurice’s occupation was starting to weigh on his conscience, but he willed himself to keep it together just a little bit longer. He had to get some time on his own to get the soil samples. That would calm him down a bit, at least. A job well done was a job no-longer-doing. And you shouldn’t judge people on their past mistakes, but rather their current actions.
“What’re you thinking about?” Sunflash asked. Maurice got spooked out of his thoughts and looked at his conversational partner. Her omelette had long been finished. His was still only half-eaten. He’d forgotten to eat while he was lost in thought.
“Er, nothing. I was just thinking about how I should really go see Henrick today. I still haven’t paid him anything, and I feel bad taking up a room if I’m not using it.”
Sunflash softly slapped his shoulder. “Henrick doesn’t care. He’s just happy those rooms are filled at all. And he lets people pay whenever they feel like it. That’s one of the reasons he barely makes money. People just take advantage of him and he lets it happen.”
“That’s exactly why I don’t want to take advantage of him.” Maurice said. Sunflash shrugged. “Fine. There’s something in his bar I want to show you, anyways. But we’ll have to wait until closing time. I won’t spoil it, but let me just say, it is something very special.”
Maurice sighed. This wasn’t helpful, but maybe while Sunflash was readying the surprise, he would be able to pop out and get those samples. He felt like a horrible person. He was a horrible person.
“Sooo,” he started sweetly, later, when Sunflash was situated on the couch again, “What are your plans for today? Anything you want to show me?”
There was something… off, about Sunflash, this morning. But he couldn’t put a finger on what it was. She flashed him a bright smile. “I do have stuff planned for today. But we’ll have to walk quite a lot for one of them. I hope that’s alright?”
“Sure.” Maurice said. He definitely wasn’t the sporty type, but he’d always liked going on walks. Sunflash tutted. “We can go to that horse racing place Stevie mentioned first. That’s closer by. We can feed the horses, if you want. That might be fun?”
“I thought she said it was abandoned.” Maurice said. Sunflash grimaced. “Yeah, the people who used to work there abandoned it. They left the horses in there. It’s kind of an urban legend at this point. You can visit it as you please, but you gotta leave some food behind for the horses, at this little shrine on the grass in the middle. It’s probably just superstition, but I don’t want to risk it, anyways.”
“Sounds like a good idea. What do horses eat, anyways?” Maurice asked.
“Dunno. Hay, carrots, stuff like that. I have carrots left over, so don’t worry. I’ll bring one for you, as well.”
Sunflash mentioned that it was his turn to tell a story, because she had told one the previous day. They climbed back down multiple fire entrances, and Maurice wondered what kind of story he could tell that she would like. Eventually he settled on just telling one he knew well, as at least he wouldn’t forget the words midway through.
Maurice’s story about a boy who fell in love with a girl
‘There once was a boy who didn’t really know anything about anything yet. He was still really young, and beside that, he was also really socially awkward. It was almost like a disease. He seemed to have a knack for saying the exact wrong thing at the wrong time, so his parents tended to tell him to shut up a lot. Because of that, eventually he was pretty much mute. He only spoke up in class when his name was called, or in the evening at dinner, when his parents asked how his day had been, and he would answer with ‘good.’
The boy grew older, but he remained silent except for when he absolutely had to speak. Because he never spoke, the other kids thought he was weird, even weirder than before he stopped speaking. They never wanted to play with him, and if they did, it was usually just a ruse to get him into an awkward situation and then laugh at him. The boy grew distrustful of everyone around him, even his parents, who were just happy their son wasn’t embarrassing them anymore, though they really did wish he’d make some more friends or join a club or something.
But there was something brewing inside of him. An ache, an angry, searing pain that wanted out. He carried it along in his heart, day in day out, hoping it would go away on its own. But it only got bigger, and heavier, and eventually he couldn’t go to school anymore because he could barely drag his body out of bed. His parents were really worried so they made all of these doctors come to their house, but the doctors didn’t see anything wrong with him, either, so instead his parents just took away all of his toys and books so he wouldn’t have any reason to stay home from school except truly being ill. But he was really sick, so he laid in his bed and stared out of the window all day. When they saw that was what he was doing all day, they covered the window up with his mom’s fabric scraps.
One day, he couldn’t take it anymore, and he slipped out of the house while his parents were at work. He ran, barefoot, all through their back garden, back into the park, to the most deserted place he could find. There, he started screaming. From the top of his lungs came wails of sorrow. For all of his toys that had been taken away, and for the times he’d been beaten up by classmates, and even further back, to when he was a young kid and his parents forbade him from talking whenever there were family members visiting. He screamed and cried for every iteration of him that could have existed if he’d only been able to convey how he felt. He had tried to write it down, but it wasn’t the same, and he was fairly certain his parents wouldn’t read it if he gave it to them, anyways. It wasn’t really about his parents deciding talking was forbidden, though he did hate that rule as well. He just wanted his parents to love him, to allow him to express himself.
After he was done screaming, and his whole throat was hoarse, he went back home, and immediately fell asleep. The next morning he felt better. The heaviness in his chest was almost gone, and though it was still there, it was much easier to handle. So he started to go back to school. He still didn’t talk much, but the knowledge that if it got too heavy he would be able to go scream it all out did make him more confident. The next time a bully tried to punch him, the boy punched back, rather hard. He got in trouble for that, but luckily his parents were able to blame it on the boy’s recent illness. Something about how he’d forgotten his own strength while he was laying in bed all day every day.
There was a girl in the park, where he came to scream. She was always around, and she was always smoking cigarettes. She still smelled nice, though, like flowers. Maybe she carried perfume around with her everywhere. Whatever it was, the boy was entranced by her. She was a few years older than he was, so she wasn’t in school anymore, and she looked so cool, the way she hung there, upside down on the jungle gym. He eventually approached her, and they started talking, even if he didn’t say anything. He found out that she was really smart, too, and the reason she smoked upside down was so that the ash wouldn’t get on her clothes and damage them. She allowed him to try a cigarette, and bought him a soda after he gagged from the taste.
Now, whenever he went to go scream, he didn’t do it to lessen the heaviness in his heart at all, anymore. It was still a problem he had, but he found it easier and easier to just not focus on it. Whenever he felt bad, he’d just think of the girl, of her pretty hair and the way her voice was so very nice to listen to, and he’d forget the pain was even there.
Of course, they could never be together. His parents would never be okay with him being with a girl who was older than him, and hadn’t gone to a prestigious high school. And the fact that she smoked would be the last nail in the coffin, which wasn’t nice, because that was one of the things he loved the most about her. She was the spitting image of everything cool to a boy his age. So they would have to run away together instead. Maybe they could hitch a ride on a train and go to some faraway country where nobody knew who they were and nobody cared, either.
He’d gotten so lost in thought about all of the wonderful things they would do as a couple that he’d kind of forgotten the fact that he had never uttered a word to her before. He was planning on doing so, he really was, but because he always said everything wrong, he didn’t want her to hate him. Then, he had a bright idea. He would write her a letter! Maybe his parents wouldn’t read his letters, but surely the girl would, because they were friends. So he started writing, and it took him days to get exactly what he wanted to say into words, but he finally did it. He put the letter into a fancy envelope and took it with him to the park, and he gave it to her.
She read it, upside down on the jungle gym, so he couldn’t properly see if she was smiling or frowning, because she was upside down and that was always confusing. Eventually she finished reading it, and she let herself drop into those weird soft wood chips they always have at playgrounds. She was frowning. She started yelling at him, about how selfish he was, and that she barely even knew him. She told him that yes, they hung out in the park together, but that was it. They knew nothing about each other, and, for god’s sake, he didn’t even know her name!
She walked home after that, without waiting for his response. After that, she never came back to the park. The boy sat down in the soft wood chips, and thought for a very long time. It started raining at one point, completely ruining the fancy clothes his parents had bought him, but he didn’t care. All he could feel was incredulousness. At himself, not the girl, of course. Because he’d never even thought about her name. It hadn’t crossed his mind. Not once.’
Sunflash frowned. “I’m not sure I liked that story.”
“Why not?” Maurice asked, just a tad offended. He watched Sunflash try to pry open the doors of the horse racing building. First with her hands, and when that didn’t work, she tried to bash the lock open with a rock.
“Well, it kind of makes the girl into a villain, doesn’t it? When she really isn’t the villain at all. If you were in her situation you’d get pissed too.” Sunflash said. She grumbled when her rock plan didn’t work and walked around the building to see if there were any windows open. There were.
They climbed in through the window in a place that used to be an office. The computer on the desk was a model from around thirty years ago. Maurice recognized it, because these were the computers his office was using when he first joined the team. They only recently got new (outdated) computers, and only because some union representative had complained to the bosses enough and they’d gotten annoyed and given in.
The door from the office into the hall was locked from the outside, which Sunflash found kind of creepy, but Maurice saw it as the most normal thing in the world. He still cheered when she managed to kick the door open, though, and they stumbled into the main hall together, laughing as they did so.
This building kind of reminded him of the Ritz, really. It, too, consisted of a giant room in the middle on the ground floor, and a hallway with doors and staircases surrounding it. Only this room wasn’t shaped like a circle, and it was also a lot bigger, and the middle part was filled with mud, for the horses to run around in. In the middle of the room, in the mud, there was a singular wooden chair that someone had put a framed picture of a horse on. There were multiple vegetables and fruits surrounding it, in several states of decay. Sunflash climbed over the fence and left two carrots on the chair, one for herself and one for Maurice. Maurice helped her climb back to the less muddy part of the building, and they were set to explore.
It was a strange, horse-memorabilia filled building. The outside had been big and white, reminiscent of the capitol building in Washington D.C., but it was just horses on the inside. Though it was abandoned now, it was still kept in a relatively good state. For example, there was a little coffee corner in one of the corners of the building, and there were still coffee beans in the coffee machines, though they had dried into a strange, brown sludge by now. There were also wooden chairs everywhere, the same kind of chair the horse altar was made out of. Those had to have been the chairs people sat on while they watched the horses race. In another corner there was the office where the horse bets were handled. There were handy charts everywhere, explaining how the betting worked, and calendars with many years of which-horses-when. All of those dates had since passed, though.
“I don’t see any horses here. Not even dead ones.” Maurice said. He didn’t know why he felt disappointed. Sunflash rolled her eyes. “They wouldn’t keep the horses here, duh. They only came out here when it was time to race. Otherwise, they’d be kept at the stable. That’s there, behind those big doors.”
She was pointing to a big door at the back of the muddy terrain. It made sense that it was there, as the horses could easily walk from the stable into the race track and back again. The doors were huge, and kind of intimidating. Maurice was afraid of what they’d find back there. Probably the skeletons of a few horses, which was already pretty gruesome. But the thing he was most afraid of was the idea that they’d find a live one. That fed on it’s brethren and horse altar offerings all this time, and was now really angry at humans for leaving it behind. He also imagined a crazy amalgamation of dozens of horses into one huge creature with hundreds of legs and heads sticking out. That wasn’t really a probable scenario or even relevant, but it was a scary thought nonetheless.
Sunflash had a scary grin on her face. Maurice decided he didn’t like that look. She was obviously up to no good. “Maurice, love?” she spoke, slowly, rubbing her hands together like a cartoon villain, “would you be so kind as to go first?”
This was some kind of trick. It had to be. Maybe she’d gone here while Maurice was asleep and put some kind of horse… scare… down that was triggered by the big doors opening. Maurice winced. “...Don’t you think it might be a better idea to find some other entrance? Maybe there’s a more human-shaped door somewhere at the back…”
Sunflash put on an innocent face. “But Maurice. You’re not afraid of opening these doors, are you? It’s just some doors. They’re not evil doors. They won’t hurt you.”
Maurice felt a shiver go down his spine. He hated this situation and he wanted out of it as fast as possible. He was done with exploring the city- he’d go back to Henrick’s, get his stuff, get the soil samples, and go back to the spaceport. He’d even call the interplanetary travel company to make them come get him earlier. He didn’t mind paying extra.
Slowly but surely, though, he found himself walking towards the fence and climbing over it, trudging through the mud and towards the doors, and pulling at one of the handles before he realized he was supposed to push it. Sunflash was right behind him, presumably using him as a shield against horse-shaped enemies. Maurice pushed the door open and gave it over to Sunflash. She quickly got into the room and closed the door behind her.
The stable room was just about what Maurice had expected. There were several small ‘rooms’ with half walls where the horses would be kept. There was hay everywhere, and a pile of hay bales in one corner. There was light on inside, a singular bulb in the middle of the room, that looked like it was about to fizzle out. The floor was still muddy, but much more easily traversable with the hay mixed into it. Sunflash was next to him, somewhere, and he reached out. Her hand clasped into his, and they continued walking, hand in hand.
The fear felt within the room was palpable. The air was thick with it, but it was also warm inside, and the smell of the hay felt almost ticklish in Maurice’s nose. He squeezed Sunflash’s hand, and she squeezed back. He took a careful step towards one of the stables, and then another, and another. They stopped just before the big wooden half-doors, which despite being only half-doors were still so high he could barely see over them. Horses were large animals, after all, and if there were any left alive in here, they’d surely been reaching their long necks over the doors, trying desperately to get to any food at all, even if it wasn’t something they would usually eat. Maybe even… human flesh?
Maurice shuddered. He stood up on his tiptoes and peered into the stable. Because there was only one light source in the room, he couldn’t see very well. But it was enough to be able to see that this particular stable was empty. He breathed a sigh of relief, but stopped doing so almost immediately afterwards. The absence of a horse here didn’t mean the absence of horses everywhere. The fact that the horses had been able to escape made it much more likely that they were still roaming around somewhere, maybe even in that very same building.
Sunflash tugged on his hand, directing him towards the next pair of half-doors. They walked over, and Maurice looked inside again. Nothing.
“There’s nothing here,” Maurice whispered. There was something about the ambiance that made him decide against speaking up. Sunflash sighed, and when she spoke, she was whispering as well. “I’m almost disappointed. This place, I mean, the stable part, is known for being haunted. But there aren’t any ghosts here. I never went inside before because I wanted to wait for a special moment, but to be honest I kind of wish I’d just went in the first time to know what all the fuss was about.”
“That’s a bummer. You hyped it up too much for yourself.” Maurice said. They started walking back to the heavy doors. “I don’t know if this helps in any way, but I enjoyed it, for what it’s worth.”
After they got back to the main hall, they went to check out the betting offices and the rooms upstairs. Disappointingly, the upstairs consisted almost completely of offices, though there was a kind of fancy lounge there, too, which had to be for special guests of the establishment. There was even a big screen there, which broadcasted a live feed of what was going on downstairs. Sunflash poked around trying to get the coffee machine to work, while Maurice watched as two other people walked in downstairs and left their offerings on the horse altar. When he looked closely, he realized it was him and Sunflash, and the feed wasn’t as ‘live’ as he’d initially thought. That, or two people who happened to exactly resemble them had just entered the building and were now doing exactly what they had been doing earlier.
Sunflash seemed content swivelling around in one of the lounge’s fancy chairs, but Maurice felt like the novelty of the building had worn off and he’d like to go outside now. Sunflash teased him about it a bit, mocking him for being afraid of ghost horses. Maurice didn’t take the bait, instead silently shuffling downstairs.
Outside, Sunflash stopped Maurice mid-walk. He stopped, and eyed her curiously. She had a forlorn expression on her face. She spoke softly, demurely, almost. “Be honest, Maurice. Are you enjoying today? You kind of look like you want to leave.”
She pronounced Maurice like ‘Morris’, rather than the way his parents had always said it, ‘Mau-reece’. He didn’t mind either way, but it did catch his attention every time she said it. Maurice sighed. He was a piss-poor liar, after all. But he did try. “I had a great time yesterday, and I enjoyed having breakfast with you earlier. I… thought you were going to prank me, inside the horse racing place. That’s why I was on edge.”
Sunflash scowled. “I wouldn’t do that. I was just... “
She trailed off, realization apparent on her face. ‘Just teasing you’ was going to be the end of that sentence, and they’d just had a conversation the previous day about how Maurice didn’t like the way Sunflash and her ‘friends’ teased each other. They sat down on the sidewalk. There was a car parked on the other side of the street. Somebody had thrown a rock through the front window.
“I think there is a place for saying mean things to your friends as long as you both understand that you don’t mean it.” Sunflash argued. “Like, we’re always calling Maggie a hopeless romantic, but she knows we love her still.”
“It is possible in theory, yes, but you need to set very clear boundaries and communicate with each other throughout it.” Maurice said. Sunflash scoffed. “If there’s anything I’m an expert on, it’s setting boundaries and communicating. Don’t explain it to me like I know nothing about it.”
Maurice winced, and looked away, suddenly very interested in the rock somebody had thrown through the car window. He could still see the rock- it was laying on the front seat. “...I didn’t mean it like that. I’m just saying that that’s my personal belief. I’d feel horrible if I thought I was just innocently poking fun at my friend and then found out it made them miserable months later.”
Sunflash was now looking at the car as well. Her shoulders hung low. “You’re making it sound like all of my problems, if you can even call them that, could be fixed by talking to those lads at Henrick’s bar and telling them that the way they speak to me upsets me. You know what would happen? They’d feel terribly guilty, and they’d be scared to talk to me from then on, in case they accidentally said something that hurt me. Our relationship would change forever, and it just doesn’t seem worth it to me. The way things are going right now isn’t that hurtful to me, and we can have a nice, funny back and forth like when I slapped that guy with a newspaper. It’s just… not that bad. I can take it.”
“Why can’t you just stand up for yourself?” Maurice exclaimed, no clue where his sudden outburst had come from. Sunflash squinted at him, and he could see that she was angry. She snorted, and stood up. She pointed one finger at him. She was wearing three rings- one on her pointer finger, one on her ring finger and one on her pinkie. When she spoke, she spoke eerily calmly. He decided right then and there that he didn’t like it when she wasn’t hyper.
“You need to listen to me. I am not your avatar to traverse the world through. I am a real person with my own problems, and you shouldn’t try to vicariously live through me. I’m not… I’m not your object! So don’t talk to me like I belong to you, like you get to decide anything about me!”
She stormed off, and he heard her jump another fence before silence returned to the empty Camden streets. Sighing, he laid down on the ground and looked up at the stars. He could see constellations he’d never seen in his entire life. Big, beautiful stars, in hot white and warmer yellow. The buildings on the street bent over around him, framing the shot, so to speak. He wasn’t even sure where he was, or how he was supposed to get back to Henrick’s bar. This street he was on probably used to be important, as all the buildings were huge and imposing, and there were several lanes for cars to ride on. He hadn’t seen a moving car or even a motorcycle since he’d arrived there.
This planet was dying. It was dead already, really, and the last few people still remaining were the sputters and tremors that sometimes came with rigor mortis. Maybe it was for the best if the people here moved elsewhere, circle of life and whatnot. They would probably be able to find even better jobs somewhere else. Sunflash and the other girls could move to another pleasure planet and offer their services there. Henrick could open a bar on another planet, where he’d make a lot more money. And the owners of the Ritz operated a very fancy restaurant, which would probably do a lot better on a planet where the general population could actually afford their prizes.
It would be a shame to say a final goodbye to a planet that had to have been great at some point. Maurice could imagine the many nights of fun the people who used to come here must’ve had, dancing, drinking and gambling. But he was certain stories of it would remain for long after.
He sighed, and breathed in the chilly night air. The fight with Sunflash had surprised him, but he didn’t know how to think about it, so he didn’t think about it much at all. She had been right. That was what was so bad about it- she was completely right, and what she said had uncovered something about him that he had struggled with his entire life. He had lived his life mostly on his own. He’d never interacted with his peers much, except when he really had to, like in school, or at work when he was older. He had lived his whole life feeling like nobody understood him, while simultaneously doing nothing to help people understand him. He had never dated anybody, which he sometimes felt sad about even though he’d never tried to go on a date with anyone. But there had been something in him, hidden under the facade that nothing bothered him and he was fine the way he was. A little itch somewhere in his brain that said he needed to change things about his life. So he tried, but he didn’t improve his own life in any way. Instead, he tried to change Sunflash’s, even though Sunflash was put together much better than he was.
But he wasn’t ready for this realisation again. So he wouldn’t spend the night mentally arguing with her, and he wouldn’t wallow in self-hate either. Instead, he walked until he saw a building he recognized, while thinking about completely unrelated things. Like how in the time he’d been on Camden, it hadn’t rained once, or even been cloudy. And the way the temperature was always pleasant, whether it was day or night. He wondered if that was how it’d always been, or if it had something to do with the way the place had been terraformed. He didn’t know, because he wasn’t an expert on terraforming, and he didn’t really feel like looking it up, either. So he didn’t.
When he slid into his now familiar bar stool at Henrick’s, Henrick himself was there to bring him a drink and ask him how he was doing. Maurice wordlessly took his beer and took a long, big swig of it before he felt ready to broach the subject.
“You didn’t come back to your room last night.” came Henrick’s friendly voice. If Maurice had to imagine a pair of grandparents (he’d never met his own) the grandfather would surely have a voice similar to Henrick’s, or at least a similar pair of eyebrows. “You stayed with Sunflash, I assume?”
There was a whistle from somewhere to his right. Maurice balled his fists and stood up. He was ready to walk over there and tell the drunkard just how he felt about his constant interruptions, when he felt Henrick’s warm hand on his shoulder, urging him to sit back down. “Slow down, son. Tell me what happened. Ignore those clowns.”
“We went dancing and had dinner. She chewed me out and I completely deserved it.” Maurice said, miserably. He let his head drop onto the bar. Henrick chuckled. “Yeah, that’s what she does, alright. She has a gift like that. She understands people better than they understand themselves.”
“But who understands her?” came Maurice’s muffled reply. Henrick laughed again, and patted him on the shoulder once again before moving on to go clean some dishes. ”Her friends, Maurice. Sunflash isn’t some kind of magical dream girl who can tell your fortunes in exchange for allowing her to publicly embarrass you. She’s a regular young woman. She likes trashy romance novels and live music. She spends her days off work going dancing with her mates. Don’t get obsessed with her. She’s just another person.”
A long, muffled groan came from the sad heap on the bar that used to be Maurice. One of the people at the bar walked towards the door, patting Maurice on the back as he went. “Don’t worry, sonny. It happens to the best of us.”
After wallowing in his self-created misery for a while, Maurice decided to go take that nice long bath he’d been craving the past few days. His room at Henrick’s was completely unchanged on the inside, thankfully, so he was able to take his sweet time taking a bath, brushing his teeth and hair, generally taking care of himself, and afterwards he could put on a completely clean change of clothes. More relaxed than ever, and temporarily forgetting the sinking feeling in his gut, he laid down on the bouncy queen-sized bed. But he couldn’t fall asleep, his conscience be damned. The fact that he had only woken up a few hours ago wasn’t exactly helpful, either.
He went back out into the bar. It was a slow night, and there wasn’t any live music playing, sadly. He didn’t feel like talking to Henrick, so instead he sat down at a table where Maggie and Stevie were sitting, with one other girl who’s name he didn’t know. They greeted him happily enough, so he doubted Sunflash had spoken to them since their fight. And, indeed, the first question out of Stevie’s mouth was, “Where’s Sunflash?”
Maurice had to think quickly. “I’m not sure. I think she might be with that Doggy guy?”
It was the first lie he could think of, and he hoped that it would make sense for Sunflash to be with him at this time of day. But Stevie nodded slowly. “Checks out. Awe, I feel so bad for that guy. He’s got some kind of stress disorder or something, I’m pretty sure. I heard he was fired from a job for having a panic attack in the office once.”
Maggie nodded sympathetically. “I heard that story too. It’s so sad. I’m glad he’s at least able to relax sometimes.”
The third girl looked sad at the idea of Doggy as well, but she didn’t say anything more on the matter. Maurice didn’t say much during the conversation either, but he listened as the girls discussed things they’d been doing lately. Stevie, as it turned out, was quite a big sports fan, and spent about half an hour recapping a football game she’d heard on her radio. Maurice didn’t completely follow, as he’d never been good at sports or remembering their rules, but he appreciated the excitement with which she explained every aspect of the game.
The door to the bar opened, and for a split second Maurice was afraid it would be Sunflash. But it wasn’t. It was Paul, the man he’d met on the interplanetary transport. Maggie gasped and squeezed Stevie’s hand.
“There he is! Oh my gosh. What if it happens this time?” she loudly whispered so everyone at the table was able to hear it, but Paul hopefully wasn’t. Stevie bent over the table so she could whisper in Maurice’s ear. “Mag’s convinced Paul and Henrick are gonna get together someday. Like, super-convinced. I think she writes fanfiction about them in her diary.”
“I do not.” Maggie huffed, straightening her glasses so she could get the best view of the two men’s conversation.
“Sunflash also said you were a hopeless romantic,” Maurice said, wanting to disprove Sunflash’s argument, even if she wasn’t there to witness it. But rather than prove Maurice right, Maggie didn’t react angrily at all. Instead, she started to laugh. “Jeez, she knows me too well.”
Maggie looked away from him to watch Henrick and Paul talk. Maurice unwillingly turned his chair around to get a better look as well.
Henrick had his back to the door, so he didn’t spot Paul until he turned around to face his newest customer. Henrick’s eyes widened in an expression that Maurice could only describe as befuddled happiness. “What are you doing here? I haven’t seen you in a very long time.”
Maurice frowned, and asked Maggie and the others if Paul lived on Camden. They all looked confused. “‘Course not. He’s a drifter. He goes from planet to planet and only sometimes comes to visit Henrick. Then he leaves again.”
“He told me he lived here,” Maurice said, and then clarified further, “He was on the same transport as me when I first came here. He said he lived here, and was returning from his weekly shopping trip.”
Maggie chuckled, and Stevie scoffed. “He’s always saying things like that. He changes his stories based on the people he’s telling them to. That’s why I don’t understand Mag’s obsession with him.”
Maggie slapped Stevie on the arm, softly. “You just don’t understand! He’s not a liar, it’s just his character. He’s built it up for years, perfecting it more and more. You never know just what he’s up to, or what he’s planning! He’s charming, and funny, and…”
“Seventy years old?” Stevie finished the sentence for her. Maggie groaned. “Cut it out!”
They all turned back to Henrick and Paul. Henrick had filled two pint glasses with beer and given one to Paul, while he drank from the other himself. Paul had foam in his beard. “Henny,” he said, “from all the shitty little bars I’ve visited, on every planet in every sector, yours is still my favorite.”
Henrick scoffed, but he did so with a fond smile on his face. “I’ll never understand you.”
Maggie sighed lovingly, staring at the pair. Stevie chuckled at her friend’s antics. Maurice stared at Paul and Henrick. The scenario unfolding in front of him was becoming increasingly familiar. But he shouldn’t be too quick to pass judgement, so he waited and looked on, almost as intently as Maggie did.
Paul and Henrick took time to catch up, seemingly oblivious to their audience. It was obvious that they were very old friends, just like the men in Sunflash’s story. Maurice was almost entirely sure that they were the same people. He just wondered why Sunflash had chosen that story out of all the stories she could possibly tell him. She obviously held both men in high regard, or at least Henrick, since he had only heard her speak fondly of him, and the way she described the men in her story was just lovely too. Two people who loved each other more than anything, but never told each other.
Maybe he could change that. Sunflash had been talking about how sad it was that the two men spent their whole life orbiting around each other without ever confessing anything. So the least Maurice could do was try to change that, right? He’d go talk to the men, he decided, and then if they did end up together and Sunflash would see that she’d surely be happy. It would be an entirely selfish act dressed up as a selfless one. He wanted Sunflash to see that he could be good, that he could do things that didn’t have to do with his own life and aspirations. He could help people fall in love without gaining anything from it.
It wasn’t lost on him that by doing this just to please Sunflash he was taking away all the true selflessness of the action. But Sunflash didn’t have to know that. And he’d never tell her, either. He’d just silently wait until she found out, and then he’d bask in her happiness. Somewhere later along the road he’d drop a subtle hint that what had transpired had been his doing.
He stood up, slowly, feeling Maggie’s eyes on him while he walked towards where Paul was sitting and sat down next to him. Paul looked up and gave him an amused smile. “There ye are. I was wonderin’ when you’d show your face. You did as I said, then? Told ‘im I send you?”
“He did.” came Henrick’s response from the other side of the bar. He was drinking a beer himself, too, now, so one of the regulars had taken his place behind the bar and was busy messily refilling his and his friends’ beer glasses. “I thought it was some kind of joke at first. I mean, we’re both getting older, and since you were gone so long I thought it might’ve been your last visit.”
Paul scoffed. “Oh, Henny, I’m not goin’ nowhere just yet. My bones might be old but my mind isn’t. ‘S long as I can remember where you’re hangin’ out, I’ll find my way back, don’t you worry. Even if I have to coax some poor bastard into carrying me over.”
“Do you have trouble walking?” Maurice softly asked, hoping Paul wouldn’t take it as an insult. Paul shrugged. “I can still walk, and I try to do so as much as possible. Sometimes my knees hurt, but there’s not much to be done about that. And I’m gonna have to keep walkin’ regardless, ‘cause there’s far too much rubble in these streets to get a wheelchair over here.”
He had a point. Some of the streets were very clean and obviously still being used, like the street Henrick’s bar was on. Others had obviously fallen into disrepair, whole houses that had collapsed and whose walls were now spread over streets where once cars had driven. That, and there were cracks in the pavement large enough to really hurt yourself in if you accidentally stepped in them. This place could do with some TLC… which it wasn’t going to get. Maurice felt another pang of guilt but he ignored it.
“You could stay.” Henrick offered. Paul gave him a look that Maurice couldn’t easily decipher. “I mean, I have enough free rooms here. I wouldn’t mind if you stayed.”
Paul shook his head. “I don’t think I’m even capable of staying in the same place by now. That’s the downside of living your whole life on the road, heh. I don’t know how to settle down anymore.”
Henrick lowered his eyes. He looked disappointed. He tried again. “I’d give you a job, so it wouldn’t be like you’d go hungry. And everyone here loves you. You could tell your stories, or you could pick the ol’ guitar back up…”
Paul stared in Henrick’s direction, but he looked like he was miles away mentally. “Do you have any idea how tempting that offer is, Henny, love?”
Henrick swallowed audibly and stood up to shoo the drunkard away from his beer taps. Paul turned to Maurice. His eyes looked sad, and there was still beer foam in his beard. Maurice didn’t understand the situation, but he turned around to face Paul, too, ready to listen to what he was about to say.
“You settled in alright, kid? Told you this was a nice place, didn’t I.” Paul said. Maurice nodded. “It’s very nice. Somebody even offered to show me around the planet. It’s quite beautiful, sir.”
Paul barked a laugh. “It’s a shithole, this place is. Except this bar, ‘course. Who gave you the idea that this place was nice? And don’t call me sir, it makes me feel old.”
Maurice felt his cheeks flush ever so slightly, thinking back to what the drunk men had been leering about when he and Sunflash first met. “A local girl. Marisol Sunflash. She’s been very wonderful. We went out to dinner and she showed me some sights.”
“Marisol Sunflash, huh. I remember when she was this tall.” Paul held his hand up to his thigh. He smiled fondly, as if he was remembering some happy memories. “She was the sweetest little thing back then. And she grew into a wonderful young woman, if the stories I hear about her are anything to go by. Very smart, too, I heard.”
Henrick leaned on the bar, clearly ready to rejoin the conversation. “I remember when she was little. She always loved your stories. Remember that time she fell asleep on your lap?”
Paul laughed. “I sure do. I was pretty offended at first, thinkin’ she found my story boring. But she was just so excited about it that she exhausted herself. I should speak to her again, catch up a bit, ask how she’s doing. Do you reckon she’ll be around ‘ere anytime soon?”
“Well,” Henrick said, sounding smug, “Maurice here made her a bit angry earlier this day, so she’ll probably be back soon to demand an apology.”
Maurice grimaced. Paul laughed and slung an arm around Maurice’s shoulder, pulling him into a weird half-hug that thankfully only took a few seconds. “Lovers’ quarrel?”
Maurice wished the floor would swallow him up right about now. “That’s, uh, ...no.”
Paul and Henrick both laughed at what he’d said, because it sounded exactly like something someone who had just fought with their lover would say. Paul laughed merrily. “‘Course not. Now, I almost forgot about the important part.”
He opened his travel bag and took a large sack out of it. Inside were several objects, some wrapped, some not. He gave Henrick an apologetic look. “I didn’t know exactly who left and who was still here, so I just did some guesswork. But I brought gifts.” he turned to Maurice. “I even have a gift for you.”
He produced a singular coin out of his pocket and held it up to Maurice. It was a regular 25 cent coin, the kind you’d use if you went to buy a bottle of water out of a vending machine. Maurice tried to grab the coin, but Paul pulled his hand back. “Promise you’ll hold onto this until the right moment. Don’t go spendin’ it on beer or those bowls of rice and curry Henrick sometimes sells.”
“I won’t, I’ll hold on to it.” Maurice promised, and Paul relented, giving him the coin. Maurice tucked it into his trouser pocket. Paul handed out some presents to other people in the bar. He gave Maggie a tiny notebook to write in, and she pulled him into a big hug as a response. Stevie got a pair of earrings, which she’d apparently been saving up for for a while. Her lower lip trembled as she accepted them, overcome by guilt for calling Paul a liar earlier. While Paul was giving everyone their stuff, Maurice heard Henrick mumble to himself about how he should make that curry again, since he hadn’t in a long while. Paul yelled at him from across the room that he should check Paul’s bag, and Henrick did, laughing and shaking his head when he found a plastic bag filled to the brim with fresh vegetables.
It was only now that Maurice realized that there was actually a small kitchen area behind the bar. Henrick produced a knife and a cutting board from somewhere and started cutting up spring onion and bell peppers. Maurice sat and watched, intrigued by the ease with which Henrick made the food. He had to have made the same recipe countless times to be able to do it so effortlessly.
Paul went around to give a few other people gifts. He gave some kind of dirty magazine to one of the drunkards, which caused a cacophony of hollering and laughter. Soon, the bar started to fill up with the smell of fresh, homemade curry. Paul sat back down next to Maurice, and they chatted a bit about how Maurice felt about Camden so far and if there were any places he’d liked in particular. Maurice sang the Ritz’s praises, and Paul grumbled a bit about how those rich tossers didn’t know what it was like to live in the real world, or something along those lines. Maurice wasn’t fully paying attention.Just before the curry was ready, Maurice leaned on the bar and turned to Paul, the same way the latter had turned to him earlier.
“Maggie and Stevie said you don’t live here, but you told me that you did. What’s up with that?” Maurice asked. He expected Paul to start stammering, struggling to explain himself, but Paul did no such thing. Paul gave Maurice a look that told him that he wasn’t so easily defeated. “‘S quite simple, son. You looked all uncomfortable ‘bout coming here, dunno, ashamed of the depravity, or somethin’. So I said I lived here to reassure you. Nothin’ malicious, just a little white lie to stop you from jumping out of your skin.”
Maurice sat back, feeling a bit annoyed. He felt a bit powerless in general. He wanted to get Henrick and Paul together, but he felt he was better equipped to do it by talking to Henrick, because Henrick did seem a bit more approachable to him. But he’d have to get the man alone first, which was no easy feat as he was currently the life of the party. He had filled tons of bowls with a bottom of rice, and was now ladling spoonfuls of hot curry onto them. After they were all done, he started handing the bowls out to everyone in the establishment. Maurice got one, too, and he ate without truly appreciating it, too busy watching the door to see if Sunflash would walk in. But she didn’t, not while he was eating, nor afterwards, when Paul got on the small stage and played a song on the acoustic guitar that had been left behind there. Eventually he got tired of waiting and retired to his room for the day, where he snuggled into his bed and tried his hardest to fall asleep.
He woke up a few hours, disoriented. It was still dark outside, he could see that because the room was entirely dark. Camden had successfully messed up his sleeping schedule. His brain didn’t know whether he should feel tired or rested right now, so he felt a strange mix of the two where he wanted to go out and do things but also kind of felt like he was about to fall over.
He turned the lights on and put a sweater on, deciding that right now was probably the best time to go get those soil samples. He stuffed the two small transparent tubes in his trouser pocket where they clanged against the coin Paul had given him, reminding him that he still possessed that particular item. He wondered what it was for, but knowing what he knew from Paul so far he could only guess that it would all be revealed later.
The main room of the bar was empty, but the lights were still on. The guitar that Paul had been using stood neatly against the wall. Somebody had put a sheet over the piano, though it looked like they placed something on the keys as well, like a pile of clothes or something. It was odd, as it looked like it hadn’t been used in ages when he’d seen someone sitting behind it when he first arrived.
He shrugged and continued his walk outside. The big billboard beside the bar flashed rapidly, which made Maurice’s movement seem ragged and strange, like he was watching a piece of film where half of the frames had been cut out. It gave off an almost ominous feeling, like he wasn’t supposed to be out there at that time. Nevertheless, he persisted, walking down the street back to the little park where he had taken a nap. He was sure that he’d find some soil there. He did, and he kneeled down to fill the tubes. A shiver went through him, suddenly, which was odd, as the weather had been very nice since he got there. He quickly screwed the lid back onto the first tube and put it back into his pocket, and then opened the other to fill that. He had just finished putting the second one in his pocket when he felt a hand on his shoulder and froze.
“What’re you doing here, son?” Paul. Maurice felt himself begin to stammer and shake as he looked over his shoulder at the bearded man. Paul, who normally looked like a jolly old man, looked somehow terrifying in the dark, here, standing over him.
“I… I… nothing…” Maurice said, his voice barely more than a whisper. He stood up, slowly, and Paul’s hand slid off his shoulder. He was going to go walk away, but Paul’s commanding tone stopped him. “Come sit with me for a short while, kid.”
Paul led him to the bench he’d taken a nap on that one time, the one near the trees. It looked far less welcoming now that it was dark, even a bit creepy. It didn’t help that he had been caught in the act by somebody who seemed like he held a lot of power over the people of Camden. How much Paul had seen, Maurice wasn’t sure, but he assumed the worst, judging by the tone of Paul’s voice.
“I’ll keep it real with you,” Paul began, “I know that you’re not here for some casual sightseein’. If you were, you’d have pulled a bird by now, or you wouldn’t have been shovelin’ dirt into your pockets there.”
Maurice felt his cheeks redden, despite how cold the rest of his body felt. He didn’t dare speak another word until he was sure Paul wanted him to. Paul continued, “It’s quite obvious, really. Henrick knows it, too, knew the moment you entered. He was out there tellin’ me off for bringing you in, actually. But I thought it was good for you to see some of the sights before you went back to report to your little boss.”
Maurice felt like he was about to cry, but he also felt oddly freed. He didn’t need to lie about why he was there, now.
“It’s not like I’m without my moral qualms about all of this.” Maurice said. Paul looked at him with an expression that seemed to mean ‘go on, then, explain yourself,’ so he did. “Just because I was sent here by the company I work for doesn’t mean I’m just going to allow them to take whatever they want from here.”
“Then why do you work for such a place?” Paul asked, a slight, genuine sadness in his voice. Not Paul’s own sadness, mind you, but a sadness for Maurice and his life so far. Maurice didn’t know, so he said just that. “I don’t know. I got offered the job right out of school. I wanted to get away from my parents, so I took the first job I could get. It pays well, and I usually don’t even do this. It’s mostly an office job, actually.”
“You must understand,” Paul began, and he was holding Maurice’s hand, squeezing it, and Maurice felt the sadness now, as well, “That you are not powerless. By your being here, you hold the power to either help or destroy the livelihood of the people on this planet. There are people here who have lived their whole lives here… who have seen Camden transform from a pleasure planet beloved by people all over the sector to the dump you see today. Henrick has spent his entire life trying to create a refuge for the people who were left behind. You can either take that away or allow it to fizzle out on it’s own. Do you understand that?”
“You sure do like Henrick a lot, don’t you,” Maurice said, drily, and Paul squeezed his hand so hard it hurt. His long, hard fingernails pressed into the soft flesh of Maurice’s hand. Never worked a hard day in his life.
“Do you understand?” Paul repeated, and Maurice nodded, shuddering yet again. Paul loosened his grip. “This isn’t about him, although I do greatly admire him. I am talking about a whole, thriving community here, not just us old-timers. There are families here, young people and even children… and there are people like your girl, Sunflash. Bright as a button, that one, but she won’t be able to do as well on other planets as she does here. Here, she knows the environment, she knows what people need and how to help them. But on a large planet, or God forbid, a city…”
“She was able to perfectly understand me after only knowing me for two days. I don’t think she’ll do as badly as you say she will,” Maurice said, purposefully ignoring the other things Paul mentioned, that he didn’t have such a good rebuttal against. Paul shook his head. “Maybe not. Maybe I am wrong. But she’s only one person. There are a lot of people here, more than you’d expect. And people are tryin’ their darndest to get rid of them. People spread nasty rumors about this place, you know. They no longer allow cargo ships to dock at Camden Spaceport ‘cause they think they’re all thieves. So people have to travel to another planet just to get food. Another planet! Imagine that! Not to even mention the plans to shut down the entire spaceport. Then, the only way to travel off-planet would be to either buy a spaceship or hire a private company every time!
And then there’s you, with your little company, trying to take the very ground we stand on. Taking the people’s homes, the places they played in as kids, their favorite restaurants and bars… first they take the food, then they take the way out, and now the ground itself.”
To Maurice’s dismay, he felt himself start to cry. Wiping a tear from his face, he hid his head behind his hands. “I never wanted any of this. I didn’t, I really didn’t!”
When he dared look at Paul’s face, he saw that the man looked almost as upset as he felt. He clearly didn’t like talking to Maurice like this, but truly felt there was no choice. Somehow, that made it worse.
“Then why are you still collecting those samples, lad?” Paul asked, and Maurice sobbed, throwing the tubes of soil onto the dirt in front of them. Sobs racked through his body, and Paul patted his back throughout it, waiting until he had calmed down. Maurice felt horrible. He was a horrible person. A selfish person, too. And the worst part was just how nice Paul was being. He knew that Maurice was planning on destroying a place that might as well be his only home, and he still spoke softly to him and held him as he cried.
After he’d calmed down a bit, he picked the samples back up and unscrewed their lids, emptying them out. He told Paul he was going to take them back to his home planet and fill them there, as he knew for certain there were no precious metals of any kind in the ground there. Paul commended him for doing the right thing, And Maurice felt a lot better, if still a little teary-eyed and embarrassed. Paul suggested they could walk back to the bar together, but Maurice declined, saying he wanted to talk a little bit more. Paul agreed to it and sat back down.
“Sunflash told me a story about you and Henrick. Or, well, I’m fairly certain it was about you two.” Maurice said, and Paul gave him a quizzical look. “What kind of story?”
“Well, she framed it as a fictional story. About a man who would travel through the universe doing odd jobs, but he’d always return to the same bar to help the man who owned it.” Maurice’s voice faltered a bit, but he pressed on. “And, he’d.. He’d tell people about the bar, because he wanted the bartender’s bar to do well, and he wanted the bartender to be happy but all the bartender wanted was that he would stay instead of leaving every time.”
He’d blurted the last part out and was now sitting very still, wide-eyed, waiting for Paul’s response. Paul’s expression was a funny one. He looked a bit befuddled, mouth hanging half-open in a surprised grin. Then, he slowly shook his head, and started chuckling. “Does Henrick know about this?”
Maurice shook his head. “He doesn’t, but I can tell him, if you want me to. I was… really touched by the story when I first heard it. Imagine my surprise when I saw it acted out the very next day.”
Paul laughed. “I can imagine how odd that would have been. Cor, this is a lot. I have to think about this one for a while.”
“If it’s not too much information… is Sunflash right? About you, I mean?” Maurice asked.
Paul looked at him. “I don’t know how to explain it. There is… love, I suppose, I guess we can call it that. Love that’s overwhelming. Love that you feel in your gut every second of every day, so much so that it hurts. Because for whatever reason, you’re not able to express this feeling. For example, it’s a person, and they’re in a relationship already, or they’re too far away from you, or they’re so much better than you are that confessing your love to them could only be seen as an insult to them. How dare you even think they would reciprocate, and that kind of shtick. And it grows inside of you, more and more, until you’re debilitated by it, and you need to get away from them just so you don’t end up hurting yourself.”
Paul’s regular laid-back tone of voice was gone. Maurice had felt the same feeling in his gut before- it was the same feeling the boy who loved the smoking girl had experienced. A love that never existed, but was still felt. Entire relationships could play out in his mind, and every girl he met was his dream girl. He didn’t confess his feelings to anyone, so now he fell in love with everyone he met.
“Henrick loves you, you know.” Maurice told Paul, “and he wants you to stay here with him. I could hear it in everything he said. He wants to be near you, and I think you should let him.”
Paul nodded slowly, sighing. “I think you might be right. I should have a talk with him.”
They walked back to the bar together. Many thoughts were swirling through Maurice’s head. He wasn’t sure if what he had just done had been selfish or selfless, but he was also beginning to wonder if that really mattered. If he made someone happy, even if he profited from it as well, did that make him a worse person? If a billionaire donated money just to look better to the press, was that a negative or positive thing? The money still got donated, right? He genuinely didn’t know.
Sunflash was inside. She was sitting on one of the tables, wearing a multicoloured blanket around her shoulders. Her expression was one of soft, tentative happiness. The light in Henrick’s bar was dimmed and Sunflash looked extraordinarily beautiful.
Paul saw Sunflash and quickly decided this was the perfect time to talk to Henrick, walking into the hallway where the bedrooms were and leaving the two young’uns to whatever it was they needed to talk out. Maurice tentatively walked towards Sunflash. He didn’t know what to say. But he was glad he’d talked to Paul previously, anyways. The conversation had been very calming. He wondered, if Paul and Henrick both knew he was here for work, did Sunflash know, too? The empty soil sample tubes felt like they were burning a hole in his pocket.
“Hey, Maurice.” Sunflash said.
“Hi.” Maurice said.
They both said nothing for a moment. Sunflash coughed. “Sooo… do you want to see something cool?”
Maurice frowned. “Aren’t you still mad at me?”
Sunflash shrugged, an unusually honest look on her face. “I am, yeah. But I don’t think this is the kind of thing that goes away very easily. I’ll probably still be mad for a pretty long while. But since you’re only staying a few days, I thought I’d put it aside right now. I still have stuff to show you, anyways. The others could show you around too but they don’t know as many cool places as I do. Plus I assume you learned your lesson.”
Maurice almost laughed. Nobody had ever spoken to him like that before. But she was right. He was probably only going to stay one or two more nights, so if he wanted to see the sights he’d have to make the most of it. He thought about work, and how he’d definitely get fired if he came back without any soil samples, or if he said the slightest thing that suggested that he may not want the rich miner to buy Camden.
“Okay, fair enough. What was that cool thing you wanted to show me?” Maurice asked. Sunflash gave him a curt smile and stood up, letting the colourful blanket fall onto the table behind her. She walked over to the piano, and pulled the cloth off from over it, letting it fall to the floor in a theatrical manner.
There was a man beneath the cloth, sitting at the piano. Maurice almost shrieked in surprise, but he managed to hold it in. Sunflash immediately started tinkering with the piano, and, oddly enough, moved the man’s feet so they were directly above the pedals. Maurice looked at the man, curiously. He was sitting eerily still. Was it a doll, instead? Maurice walked forward, carefully, trying to get a better look of the man’s face, but Sunflash stopped him. “Not yet! He’s not ready yet! Give me a moment!”
Maurice stood still again. The man looked to be elderly. His skin was an unnaturally pale shade of brown, and the back of his neck was wrinkled. He wore a suit, though one of the sleeves was ripped, showing his shirt underneath. He wore a hat on his head reminiscent of the kind of hat gangsters wore in comic books. Sunflash checked the man’s hands, carefully pulling them into position, and then held up the curtain covering the wall behind the piano. There was a slot there, intended for people to put a 25 cent coin into. Sunflash rifled through her pockets and sighed. “Do you have any change?”
As a matter of fact, Maurice did. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the coin Paul had given him. He gave it to Sunflash and she jumped up and down in delight. “Oh, this is great. Oh, you’ll love this! Lemme think. Uh… I want you to keep standing there, and only start walking to see him better when he’s started playing, yea?”
Maurice was very confused, but he could see that this was something very important to Sunflash, so he did as she said and stood, unmoving, as Sunflash put the coin into the coin slot. Nothing happened for a while, but then Maurice heard a series of clicking noises, slow at first, but then faster and faster until there was a steady rattling coming from the piano. Sunflash was smiling so widely it almost looked unnatural, her hands clasped together.
The man’s arms moved, making Maurice jump. They moved robotically, moving slightly upwards so his fingers were floating above the piano. His arms lowered, fingers on the keys. And then, he started playing.
The first chord of ‘Piano Man’ by Billy Joel began to play. The ‘man’ in front of the piano appeared to be some kind of animatronic, though if that was indeed what he was, he had to be extremely well made, because he seemed to be actually playing the piano, instead of touching the keys while the song played from a speaker elsewhere. Sunflash ran over to where Maurice was standing and grabbed his arm. “You can move now. Look at him. Look at his hands.”
She pulled him along to the side of the piano, where they could watch as the man played Piano Man. His body was mostly obscured by his suit and hat, which Maurice quickly learned was a good thing, as his face was truly a ghastly sight. It was a corpse’s face, long-dead and preserved by what had to have been either mummification or a peat bog. Maurice wondered how they managed to make it look so realistic, and why, because he couldn’t imagine anyone would want a dry, thin corpse as a bar pianist.
Sunflash didn’t look scared at all, though. She looked excited, sighing with happiness as she watched the man expertly play the piano. Maurice had to admit, the finger movements were extremely intricate, and if he only looked at the man’s hands, he could pretend there was a real man playing the song, a man with long, bony fingers and some kind of skin disease.
Sunflash sighed mournfully, leaning over the man with one elbow resting atop the piano. She looked back at Maurice. “He’s beautiful, isn’t he?”
While beautiful might not have been the exact word he’d use to describe the corpse-man, Maurice was still inclined to agree. “The finger movements are so realistic. I wonder how they managed to make it like that.”
Sunflash smiled dreamily. “It’s ‘cause he’s still in there. Well, that’s my theory anyways.”
Maurice walked over to the other side of the man to continue watching him. The man had no eyes, only hollow sockets, which were surprisingly round. It almost made him look surprised, which was kind of cute in a weird, creepy way. “What do you mean with ‘he’s still in there’? Who’s ‘he’?”
Sunflash reached a hand out and carefully straightened the man’s hat from where it was starting to inch to one side of his head. “He used to be a living person, you know? Like, ages ago, when humans had just started traveling through space, he was a travelling circus exhibition, moved from planet to planet every few weeks. A human body turned into an animatronic, forced to play the piano. It was just the kind of gruesome sight weary travellers liked to lay their eyes upon.”
The way Sunflash spoke was theatrical, like she had told this story before. Perhaps she had. “Anyways, he used to know like, twenty songs. He knew songs by Queen and Elton John, even some classical stuff. You could select which song you wanted him to play at a panel on the wall next to him. People loved him. There were rumors goin’ around that they actually already made him like this when he was still alive, like, put metal rods all in him and made him play the piano. It was great. Piano music, paired with a nice, gruesome story. Potentially haunted, too, people always like that.”
The music ceased and the man returned to his first pose, where he remained. The clicking noise went slower and slower until it eventually completely disappeared. Sunflash ran her hand over the man’s arm, all the way to his hand. “‘Course, as with all forms of entertainment, people eventually became sick of ‘im, and they dumped him on Camden ‘cause there was something for everyone here. You know, every vice had, like, a separate club dedicated to it. And that doesn’t even mention all the kinks yet.”
Maurice felt a bit squeamish at the sight of Sunflash touching what was apparently a genuine corpse. But Sunflash seemed unbothered. “So, eventually he got stuck in this building. They didn’t know how to make him play any of the other songs anymore, so all he can do now is Piano Man. Then, Henrick bought this place, and now I’m here to take care of him. Er, the piano man. Not Henrick. He’s old enough to take care of himself now.”
Very carefully, she kneeled down next to the man and laid her head on his lap, sighing wistfully yet again. “I clean him often, dust him off, that kind of stuff. I talk to him, too. I’ve tried to see if I can make him play any other songs, but no luck so far. Though the hardware has to be somewhere within him still, so it should be possible, theoretically.”
Maurice still stood a safe amount of steps away from the man, so he wouldn’t accidentally touch him. “Uh, do you think they really made him into an animatronic while he was still alive?”
“Dunno,” Sunflash said, “But I hope not. That seems like an awfully painful way to die, getting metal pins stuck in you and your insides hollowed out to make place for machinery. ...Early human space travellers were weird. But it’s alright now, I’m here to take care of him. Nobody’s ever going to hurt him again.”
She remained with her head in his lap for a few more minutes, while Maurice stood and stared. It was an oddly intimate moment, only broken by the first sunlight creeping into the bar through the window. Sunflash must have noticed it too, as she stood up and put the cloth back over her beloved piano man, laying him to rest once more. Maurice stood still and watched her.
“It’s almost morning.” he said, matter-of-factly.
Sunflash nodded. “That it is.”
“Do you want to sleep in my room? My bed is really big and I won’t touch you at all.” Maurice said, stumbling over his words. He expected Sunflash to laugh, but she nodded. Calmly. Like she’d already prepared herself for the situation. “I’d like that. Thank you.”
They walked to his bedroom together. Neither got undressed before they laid down in the bed, faces turned towards each other in the dark. Then, they both fell asleep, but that didn’t really change anything, because they couldn’t see each other with the lights off, anyways. Maurice was incredibly grateful that Sunflash was still giving him the time of day. As he drifted off to sleep he thought about Sunflash and her penchant for taking care of people, like Doggy and her pianist. Henrick and Paul, too, in a way. She really was nice. But he shouldn’t depend on her to magically fix all his problems. She was her own person, as well. He had to remember that.
When he woke up, the first thing he saw was Sunflash’s sleeping face. It was sundown again, the last beams of sunlight caressing Sunflash’s face, her closed eyes and her fluttering eyelashes. Her nose, which was small and pointy, and her mouth, which was closed. She laid curled up under the blankets, and when Maurice sat up he put his half of the blanket over her sleeping form as well, allowing her to rest a little longer.
The first thing Maurice did when he got up was put the plastic tubes back into his bag, underneath all of his stuff, so he wouldn’t be tempted to go grab soil samples anymore. After that he fixed himself up as quietly as possible, even brushing his teeth extra slowly so the sound wouldn’t wake Sunflash up. Eventually he decided to just put his sweater on and walk out of the bedroom to see if anyone was at the bar yet.
As he walked down the hallway, he saw that the light was on in one of the rooms on the other side of the hall. The door wasn’t like his room’s door. It didn’t have a lock, and the door didn’t fully reach the top of the doorframe. That was why the light had been so easy to spot. Curiously, he walked over and pushed the door open, wondering what he would see.
There was a washing machine as well as a dryer in the room, and Henrick was standing in front of said washing machine, completely lost in thought. He wasn’t wearing his regular bar uniform. He was dressed in an old-fashioned nightgown which reached down to his knees, which made Maurice wonder if he had one of those droopy hats to go with it. There were a few other pieces of furniture in the room as well, such as a wicker chair and a bookcase, but the washing machine and dryer were obviously the main reason people would enter this room. Henrick hadn’t even noticed when Maurice opened the door, nor when he took a step inside and closed the door behind him.
“Is something wrong?” Maurice asked, deciding to just shoot his shot. If Paul had been able to forgive him, surely Henrick would be, as well. Henrick started from his thoughts and looked at Maurice. “No. Well, yes, but these aren’t the kinds of issues that can be easily resolved by talking about them.”
Maurice walked over to the wicker chair and sat down in it. It creaked loudly as he sat down, but quieted down once he had settled. “Try me.”
Henrick sighed, relenting. “Paul slept in my room tonight.”
Oooh. Maurice leaned forward, his hands steepled together. “How is that an issue?”
Henrick thought about it for a moment, frowning at whatever thought he was having. “It’s hard to explain,” he said after a while, “I think I’ll have to tell you the whole story in order for you to understand.”
Maurice wanted to argue that he already knew the story, but he hadn’t actually heard it from Henrick’s perspective yet, and he was quite curious to see how it all played out on his side. He nodded. “Tell me the story, then. I’ve got time.”
Henrick looked at him with defeat in his eyes. “Alright. I’ll tell you. The laundry won’t be ready for another half hour, anyways.”
Henrick ten Brink’s story about owning a bar, meeting the love of his life and then subsequently losing him over a dozen times.
‘I didn’t grow up on Camden. I actually grew up somewhere far away, which isn’t really relevant to the story other than the fact that we were quite poor. My father and mother did their best to provide for me, and we were happy enough, but I still felt the need to go out and explore the universe on my own, to see if it had anything else in store for me.
I travelled around, and learned the bartending trade somewhere along the journey. They said I was good, so I figured I’d start my own bar somewhere. I didn’t need to be rich, but having a stable income and hearing stories from people’s lives sounded alluring enough. I didn’t really know what I was doing yet, not really. I was barely in my early twenties. I didn’t really understand anything yet. But I had my mind set on it. So I started shopping around for a good place to start a bar. Camden was an easy choice. It was really booming, back then, every night all the streets were crowded with people looking for another place so they could have their third night cap of the night. There were strip clubs, sleazy bars and horse and dog races. Girls used to stand on every street corner, cocking their hips at the men in cars. Heck, even men walked the streets, although they usually advertised themselves over at the viaduct.
It was pure, sleazy goodness. It was Sodom and Gomorrah, lust, greed and gluttony. You got swallowed up in it whether you meant to or not, and it was never done with you. Even after it sucked up every last drop of your savings, and destroyed every last relationship you had, you were still welcomed by every casino’s doors. I was entranced by the planet too, I can admit that. But mostly because I saw the potential for a bar. A regular, down to earth bar. For people who entered the city in transit, and didn’t want to lose themselves. A little bit of normal within a world where the world ‘normal’ had lost all its meaning.
But it wasn’t successful at all. It took me a very long time to understand why. I was still a young man, back then, so I didn’t understand a lot of things that I do understand now. Camden was a fever dream, a high, and people didn’t want to come down. I didn’t understand why people were so willing to spend all of their hard-earned money on pleasures that didn’t even last the night. I had no idea how lucky I had been, growing up in a loving family and finishing my education. Knowing how to bartend, too, so I could find a job wherever I wanted. When I saw people snorting coke or dropping tabs of acid, all I could think was how stupid I found them for falling for addiction, something that in my mind was so easy to avoid.
I suppose my bar failing was some kind of cosmic justice being brought down on me. I didn’t show compassion to anyone, so nobody showed compassion to me. My family no longer spoke to me, either, because I lived on Camden now. I wanted so desperately to make them understand that I wasn’t one of them, one of the pleasure-seekers, but then I realized that I was. Only the pleasure I was seeking was money. I was no different from the girls on the corners or the owners of the casinos. I was not special, and I was not cleaner or better than anyone there.
That realization humbled me. I still continued to run the bar, but I no longer ran it with the same mindset as I had started out with. I started befriending people who lived in the neighborhood, and even managed to get some regulars who would rather spend the long nights in my place. It was fun. I was still barely scraping by, but I didn’t feel bad about it. The bartending was the part I loved most, anyhow, not the money I got from it.
Well, on one quiet day, Paul came in. Now this was back when he was still young, so he was… a showstopper. I don’t know how else to describe him. He came in, and it was like there was a spotlight trained on him. Everyone turned around to face him, and he grinned at everyone, though he looked kind of angry.
I asked him what was going on, why he looked so angry. He told me that he’d gotten a job at one of the nearby casinos, but the owner had made him stay so late he’d missed the last transport off-planet for the day, so he was going to have to find a place to spend the night. I informed him that I rented out rooms, and he said it sounded lovely, but he needed to simmer down a bit, first. He didn’t want to go to sleep angry. So instead he vented to me about how the economy was horrible at the moment, at least for drifters such as him. It was hard to find a job in a field where you didn’t have experience yet, which was odd, because how could you ever get the experience if you couldn’t get a job in the first place? And when he was done ranting about how the only thing that would properly do us all good would be a revolution, he expected me to spill my guts as well. So I told him exactly what I just told you. About how I used to be a real idiot, and I still was, the same way I still am, now. But he didn’t laugh. It wasn’t a funny story to him, no, it was a commendable one. He was proud of me for no longer looking down on people who were down on their luck, and on addicts and whatever else. He said that the ability to change was something not many people possessed, and he was grateful to have met someone who did.
By the time we finished talking, it was morning again, and the transports were already running. He never did end up renting one of my rooms, and he was gone before I got to know him. It had been an odd occurrence for me, but I figured this would be an outlier. But then he kept coming back. Around once a year or so, sometimes more, sometimes less. My bar started doing better, and meanwhile Paul kept visiting. He got to know my regulars. He even started bringing gifts. And every time he visited we had our ritual. We’d sit together and he’d tell me everything that happened to him on his travels since the last time we’d spoken. And then he’d go silent, expecting me to tell him a story. Now I was a whole lot less interesting, but he still hung off every last word. It was exhilarating. He was so interested, and so funny, and so interesting himself, too.
But it stagnated. I noticed myself falling more and more in some kind of weird love with him. I missed him while he was gone, but when he was around, I was too nervous to enjoy it. Every time I offered him a room, just so he’d stay, but he always declined. Always. I wanted him around so badly it hurt. But he always left after one night.
Eventually, I had to accept it. I kept asking, and he kept declining. Like clockwork, effortlessly working against each other, or like Sunflash’s animatronic man. Everything worked exactly the way it did. It never changed, and it never got better. But it never got worse either. I was at peace with that. It’s been like that for fifty years. Can you believe that? All my life, held together by one thread, the constant disappearance and reappearance of a man I barely knew yet knew all too intimately.
But he stayed today. Something changed. Tonight he came into my room and asked if there was room for one more in my bed. And I said there was, so he laid down on top of the sheets and fell asleep immediately. He must’ve been tired, I suppose. I... don’t know what changed, or who he talked to, but he stayed. And I thought I’d be able to deal with it but I’m at a loss. I’ve been wanting this for so long and now that I have it I have no clue how to go about it.’
The laundry was done, and Henrick took it out and transferred it into the dryer. Maurice sat back and up again over and over so he could hear the wicker chair creak. He could on one hand not imagine pining over someone for fifty years. But on the other hand he easily could. Knowing himself, if he ever found that special someone, his cigarette girl, so to speak, surely he’d be too afraid to tell her how he felt, too.
“I think it’s just because you’re not used to it.” Maurice said. “You’ve never experienced a situation like this one before, right? Of course you don’t know how to deal with it.”
Henrick looked uncomfortable. “Maybe so. I’m not sure what I was expecting, anyways. It’s not as if the moment something happens you automatically get equipped with all the resources you need to get through it. But I still felt like I’d feel less… scared and uncomfortable.”
“I think love is inherently a bit scary and uncomfortable,” Maurice said, and then added a quick, “sometimes.”
Their conversation had ended, so Maurice padded back to his room and laid back in bed. His movement woke Sunflash up, who blearily rubbed her eyes and yawned. “Hmm. What time is it?”
“I have no idea.” Maurice said, truthfully. He couldn’t remember seeing a clock anywhere on the planet since he arrived. The sun had just gone down, but sunrise and sundown happened at different times of the day on different planets, not to mention the time of year they were in. He wore a watch, yes, but it was still calibrated to his home planet and thus pretty much useless. It did notify him whenever he’d taken ten thousand steps in one day, but that still wasn’t very useful unless he was actively attempting to get fit, which he wasn’t.
Sunflash turned around onto her back and stretched herself out, her toes pointing towards the wall in front of her and her arms bumping against the headboard. She sounded tired. “Is Henrick awake yet? I want coffee.”
“Yeah, he was doing laundry.” Maurice said. Coffee did sound nice right about now, so when Sunflash tiredly got up to go find Henrick, Maurice followed along. She looked a bit frumpled up because she had only just woken up, and Maurice thought it was oddly adorable.
They sat at the bar before it was officially open, Henrick in his nightgown serving coffee while Sunflash fixed her hair with a comb she produced from somewhere. Sunflash drank her coffee with milk, while Maurice usually drank it black with a few sugars. He didn’t see how Henrick drank it, because, truthfully, he hadn’t been paying attention. But the coffee was good, and it felt strange and fun to sit at the bar while it was still closed. When Henrick went back to his room to get dressed and ready for the day, Sunflash opened the bar for him, turning the sign and unlocking the door. She switched all of the lights on and knocked on the doors of the people who had requested a wake-up call. A few people tiredly shuffled out from their rooms and Sunflash cheerfully served them coffee as if it was the most regular thing in the world. Nobody seemed to question her doing so instead of Henrick, either.
“Do you help Henrick around the bar often?” Maurice asked, and Sunflash gave him a strange look. “We all help each other.”
Someone with a familiar gait shuffled in, shoulders low and head bent forward, hair covering his eyes. Doggy. He stood over Sunflash, and by extension Maurice, too, as they were sitting next to each other. That was just how intimidating his posture was. But Sunflash didn’t seem scared for even a second. She stood up and gave the tall man a hug, rubbing her cheek against his chest. He was wearing a ratty looking hoodie and jeans, both in pale, faded colours. It was the kind of outfit that you’d wear if you were trying not to be seen. But it didn’t really help that Doggy was so tall and intimidating-looking.
“How are you, love?” Sunflash asked him, and it was like she’d made her voice a higher pitch just to talk to Doggy. He said something, but he said it very softly so only Sunflash could hear what it was. She nodded, compassion evident on her face. “I’m sorry, darling. But you know I have other clients too, right? Aw, I wish I could always be by your side too! But I have work to do, unfortunately!”
She squeezed the man tight once more, and then pulled away. Just then Paul strode in, and took a cup of coffee before walking towards the stage and picking up the guitar. He began to play a repetitive, plucky tune, and made eye contact with Sunflash, who nodded.
“Do you want to dance with me?” she asked Doggy, and his face scrunched up in confusion, but before he could say anything she had already led him to the dancefloor, which was really just the little part of the floor in front of the stage that didn’t have any tables and chairs on it. Paul continued playing, and Sunflash instructed Doggy where to put his hands before they started a slow waltz. Paul adjusted the tempo of his song accordingly.
Henrick walked in, now fully dressed in his bartender’s outfit. He stood at the bar, directly opposite from Maurice, and sighed the way he’d heard Sunflash sigh about her piano corpse. Lovingly. Like he was desiring something. Henrick wanted Paul. Sunflash… was harder to decipher. Maurice hoped Henrick would have that important talk with Paul, soon.
After their moment of shared silence, Henrick walked to the dancefloor and started clapping along to Paul’s guitar playing. Maurice was comfortable staying behind, watching it unfold. It was a sweet morning moment, the type families who loved each other probably had all the time. There was still a lot about Camden that Maurice didn’t understand, but the people who lived there seemed to love each other a lot.
Paul played another song after the first song, but then stopped, complaining that his fingers hurt. Some people entered the bar, one of them being Maggie. Stevie didn’t seem to be coming that day, and when Maurice asked why, Maggie said that Stevie was at the home of a particularly rich client. It made sense, according to Maggie, because Stevie was the prettiest out of all of them, so she always got the richest ones. Sunflash came up behind him at some point, leaning down to whisper in his ear that she was going to bring Doggy home, and that if he would walk along, they could go to the radio station afterwards. She and the girls were actually friends with one of the guys who presented Camden’s radio programs, so she could definitely get him to give them a tour of the building and all of the radio equipment. Maurice agreed, and a few minutes later they were walking out together, Sunflash holding hands with Doggy and Maurice on his own. Maurice had told Maggie where they were going, and she, while blushing, told Maurice to please tell the radio DJ she had said hi. He agreed, and they had left.
As they walked, Doggy gradually became a bit more comfortable about Maurice being around, but not so much so that he was willing to speak up. Sunflash allowed it, stating that it was fine because he didn’t know Maurice very well yet, but that next time she was out with someone he knew well, he should speak loudly enough for them to hear. He agreed to that, and the metaphorical contract was sealed.
Maurice waved goodbye to Doggy when they were back at the nightclub, and they watched him disappear into the crowded entrance of the building. Sunflash had a fond smile on her face. “That was strange, but fun.”
“How so?” Maurice asked. Sunflash smiled. “He normally doesn’t come to me outside of appointments. But he just felt like hanging out this time, you know, like friends! I don’t think he really has any other friends, so I’m pretty proud of him for reaching out.”
They started walking towards the radio station, which promised to be another pretty long walk. They spoke about tidbits for a while, stuff that wasn’t very important, until Maurice had thought of a topic he wanted to hear more about. “So, that story you told me at the Ritz. It was about Henrick and Paul, wasn’t it?”
Sunflash stopped in her tracks but then quickly caught up again. “Yes. it was. How did you know that?”
“It was pretty obvious. I saw it the moment Paul walked in and he and Henrick started talking to each other. Those two sure are fond of each other.” Maurice said. Sunflash gingerly nodded. “I didn’t know the story was so easily decipherable.”
“It wasn’t, not really.” Maurice said. “I just happened to hear it very shortly before actually meeting their real-life counterparts. But if I hadn’t met Paul, I wouldn’t have deciphered that Henrick was the guy from the story, for example. So I don’t think you should worry about it.”
“Still, I feel like I broke their trust in a way.” Sunflash said, biting at her thumb. “Though neither of them have ever discussed it with me, obviously. But if you pay enough attention things like this just start showing up on your radar.”
“Henrick discussed it with me.” Maurice said. “This morning when he was doing laundry and you were still asleep. He told me about how he and Paul met. Basically everything you said but from his perspective.”
Sunflash nodded. “I have heard the story over the years, too. It’s strange. No offense, but he usually doesn’t really tell it to people he doesn’t know well.”
Maurice shrugged. He felt a bit smug, but decided not to let it show. “Maybe I just have one of those faces,” he said instead, which was a pretty lame line, but still kind of amusing, at least. Sunflash snorted, so he saw it as a success.
“Eh, whatever. For what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re a bad person.” Sunflash said.
“That rant yesterday seemed to suggest otherwise.” he’d said it without really intending to. Obviously, his feelings had been more hurt than he’d realized. Sunflash grimaced. “I didn’t say anything that implied that I think you’re a bad person. What I said, which I still agree with, by the way, is that you have a tendency to try and control other people’s lives because you’re powerless in your own. That is my observation. Now that isn’t a super bad thing- lots of people do it! But I wanted to make you aware of it, because people can get very angry about people giving them unsolicited advice.”
Maurice sighed, because yet again Sunflash was completely right. He was still angry. He didn’t want to be confronted with the truth. Well, he did, but he felt embarrassed about it. He was glad that Sunflash was telling him this in private, rather than in front of a bunch of people. Small mercies, or something.
Their walk took them to the base of a hill with a winding road leading to what had to be the radio building. The road was narrow and the corners were tight- it had to have been terrifying to drive up this road back in the day. But Maurice and Sunflash were on foot, so instead of walking up the road they climbed through the grass covering the hill next to the road. Before going inside, Sunflash stood at the edge of the hilltop, looking down over the city. It looked beautiful. She pointed to another hill on the other side of the city.
“Paul used to have a working motorcycle, when I was a kid.” she told Maurice. “I still don’t know how he managed to get that thing to work, or where he got it from. Anyways. He used to take kids up that hill on the back of his motorcycle, and then back down. Then, it would be someone else’s turn.”
“Yeah, I was wanting to ask. You grew up here since you were a kid, didn’t you?” Maurice asked. Sunflash nodded. “I did. I was basically raised by the community. It takes a village to raise a child, and all that.”
“Did your parents live here too?” Maurice asked. Sunflash started biting at her thumb again. “They did at the beginning, but they moved away when the community started to fall apart. I was still a kid, though I wasn’t super young. Old enough to understand what was happening, so I wasn’t really offended. I like, understood, you know? It turned out pretty well for me, though. I got lots of help from a lot of people, and I was well fed every day.”
Maurice still didn’t fully understand the timeline of Camden going from this beautiful, filthy city, to the wreck it was now. He thought about what Paul had said, about how everything that happened had seemed deliberate. First they took the food, then the way out, then the land itself. He wondered who it was that benefited from the planet being destroyed. Other than that rich miner guy, of course, but he wasn’t allowed to mine until he paid the company Maurice worked for. He frowned, because he just realized that meant his company might legally own Camden. Which couldn’t mean a lot of good for the planet.
“That sounds hard. But also nice. That people helped you, I mean.” Maurice said. Sunflash smiled again, returning to her usual cheery self. “Yeah! I love helping people. And being helped. There’s something intoxicatingly human about it all. You know, sharing your soup, providing shelter to those in need...”
She trailed off. Maurice peered over the edge of the hilltop as well, looking at the hill Sunflash had pointed at. He imagined meeting Paul when he was a kid, and being allowed on the back of the motorcycle. He’d never be allowed that back on his home planet. His parents really sheltered him a lot- not as much as the boy in the story of the smoking girl, but they were still very strict and didn’t let him do much that wasn’t school or work related. But meeting other people would probably have been very beneficial to him. Just so he would’ve had the faintest idea of what actually went down in the real world, outside of the walls of his parents’ house. Maybe if he had known, he wouldn’t have made Sunflash angry. Maybe they could have been having a picnic now, far away from Doggy and whoever else dared to interrupt their lazy mornings. He felt like they both deserved to be a little selfish today.
The radio station was just as derelict as the rest of the buildings on the planet. The tower the radio signal transmitted from was tall, rusty and fragile-looking, towering above them like an emaciated giant too starved to consider eating. The building itself was built out of metal, too, which was visible by the way the corners of the windows were rusted, and every slight breeze lifted up a loose part of the roof. It made a soft rustling sound which was very noticeable in the unusually quiet environment.
Sunflash opened the door (which was just … open, as most doors seemed to be around here) and walked in, Maurice following behind her like a well-behaved dog. They entered a dark hallway that flowed into a waiting area, which was well-lit. The ceilings were low, which gave the entire building a claustrophobic feel. There was a girl behind the counter who couldn’t have been any older than eighteen or nineteen. Sunflash walked up to her, leaving Maurice awkwardly standing in the hallway.
“Beau! How wonderful to see you!” Sunflash said, smiling that trademarked Sunflash smile. The girl, Beau, was startled by Sunflash’s sudden appearance, and took one of her earbuds out of her ear.
“Oh, um, hi Sunflash…” Beau said. “You don’t need to sign in or anything… you can just go up if you’d like to…”
Beau spoke very slowly, with a very soft voice. Her eyes were half-lidded, as if she had been asleep and was only just woken up. Sunflash laughed. “Do I really come here this often? Damn. What are you listening to?”
“Hmm?” Beau inquired, not understanding the question at first. “Oh, Kate Bush. she’s very good. She’s from the same era as um… what’s that band called again? The one you like?”
Sunflash was starting to get a bit unnerved by the slow conversation, Maurice could tell. She quickly flashed another bright smile, and patted Beau on the shoulder. “Awright, I’ll leave you to it. Have fun with your music!”
Beau gratefully put her earbuds back in and closed her eyes. She couldn’t possibly be a very efficient person to be in charge of who did and didn’t get into the building, as she probably didn’t notice most of them entering. Sunflash walked through a door, behind which was a staircase. On the second floor there was another hallway, but here the walls had windows into the other rooms. There were two soundproof rooms on this floor, one big one and one small one. There were a few instruments laying around in the big booth, suggesting people sometimes went on air to play live music. There was nobody in the big booth at the moment, but there was a man sitting in the small one, talking into a headset microphone. Another man was bent over a console on the outside of the room, moving sliders around and pressing buttons. He had a headset on as well, but he didn’t seem as intrigued about his as Beau had been about hers. He beckoned Sunflash and Maurice over, and they took seats next to him, putting on the two spare headsets he handed to them.
The headset was heavy, made out of metal except for a strangely heavy cloth on the parts that touched his ears. Now that he had the headset on, he could hear what the man on the inside of the booth was saying.
“... I particularly liked the second strophe, myself. The bit about your body being a prison- hold on, lemme just reread it out loud, so you guys know what I’m talkin’ about,” the man rifled through some papers, “ah, there we are. Your body is a prison / and all you do is caress it softly / as if that will break its walls.’ Beautiful, just beautiful. It seems so… I don’t even know how to explain it. The person the poem is about obviously doesn’t like themselves, or their situation, yet they do nothing to fix it, nothing that will actually help them, at least.”
The man at the console pressed a button, and a sound played. This was the booth-man’s cue, and he stood up, speaking “Now, time for some music.” into his headset, taking it off and leaving the booth. Once he was out, he and the other man high-fived.
“That was great, Jimmy! You keep amazing me with this stuff. How do you even think of it?” the console man asked. Jimmy shrugged. “It was easy. Everyone likes poetry, and there’s a poet among us. Might as well review some poems. Hey Sunflash. Who’s your friend?”
Maurice wanted to introduce himself, but Sunflash didn’t give him a chance. “This is Maurice. He’s from another planet.”
Jimmy held out his hand and Maurice shook it. “Nice to meet you, sir.”
Jimmy laughed, pulling his hand back. “What a polite friend you’ve got here, Sunflash! Where did you find him?”
The other man slid his headset off and stood up yawning loudly. Sunflash gave Maurice a cheeky smile. “I found him in a dumpster. Thought I’d take him along.”
Jimmy and the console man laughed. Maurice scratched the back of his neck. His voice went soft again. “I’m here as a tourist. I… like photography. And I wanted to see the sights. Um, Sunflash, she said she’d show me around.”
“Typical Sunflash, always taking care of others and never of herself.” Jimmy said, slinging his arm around Sunflash and pulling her into a side-hug. Sunflash didn’t seem uncomfortable, but Maurice still felt a pang of anger. Jimmy started pulling Sunflash away, leaving Maurice and the console man alone. “You don’t mind sitting at the controls for a while, do you, Maurice? Mo’ll teach you how it works.”
Maurice didn’t get a chance to give his opinion, as Jimmy and Sunflash had already walked out into the hallway. The console man, Mo, sighed.
“He always leaves me with the complicated tasks. Damn that man,” he said through gritted teeth, mostly to himself. He turned to Maurice. “That over there is the button that you press to go to the next song. It’s running on an automated playlist, so don’t worry about choosing. That there-” he pointed to a microphone embedded into the console, “is what you speak into to talk in case of an incoming transmission on the phone line. Now, if you want to broadcast the conversation, you press that button, but you can also just talk on the phone without anybody hearing. Got it?”
Maurice most definitely had not ‘gotten’ it, but Mo was already standing up and walking out, leaving Maurice on his own at the booth. He waited for a while, but there was no sign of Sunflash and the others returning, so when the song that was playing ended he pressed the button that made the next song play. He smiled when he recognized it as one by Monty, that singer he read about in the magazine.
He had to do it again, and then another time. He was beginning to get bored. Where was Sunflash? Where had Jimmy and Mo whisked her off to? He even found the book that Mo had written the playlist into so he could predict which song was going to play next. When one he didn’t like was about to start he pushed the button twice, skipping the song.
The phone rang, or, at least, a sound effect of a phone ringing played. Maurice’s fingers shuffled over the keys, anxiety beginning to course through him. Mo had told him which button to press when he wanted to broadcast the conversation, but had conveniently left out how he was supposed to pick up the phone. A few of the buttons were labeled, but he didn’t see a ‘pick up phone’ option anywhere. The phone rang five times and then stopped, and Maurice breathed a sigh of relief before it suddenly started ringing again.
He decided to look near the button that allowed him to broadcast the phone conversation. There were a few buttons that seemed identical, then a large blue one and a tiny green one next to it. The blue one was for transmitting, so, panicked, Maurice flicked the green switch.
He heard crackling come through his headset, but he still heard the music playing on the radio, so the phone conversation wasn’t getting transmitted. He sighed, relieved, and then immediately got tense because he was having a phone conversation with a complete stranger. “Um, hello?”
“Is this Camden Radio?” the voice on the other side asked. The quality of the sound wasn’t great, and it was just a bit too loud. Not too much to hurt his ears, but too much to be comfortable. Maurice winced. “Yes? Who is this?”
The other side of the line crackled again, and Maurice looked if he could find a dial that could turn his headset’s volume down. No luck.
“This is James Blake, with the Blake interplanetary mining company. I was trying to phone some kind of form of government, but it seems like Camden doesn’t have one. ‘T least not one that’s in the phone book.”
Maurice felt a shiver go down his spine. This was the company that Camden would be sold off to. He wasn’t sure if this was the exact guy they had been dealing with, but going by the name it was very probable. The man had a southern drawl, though Maurice wasn’t exactly sure why those were called ‘Southern’ as a lot of planets had a South, and that didn’t even start mentioning any of the planets. Maurice didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing at all. The line crackled again. “Are you still there? Man, this connection is bad. Are you sure this is the right place?”
Maurice heard the man on the other side talk to somebody, the other person’s voice nothing but a slight hum overtaken by static. The man huffed. “If you say so. Well, kid, you still there? I need to tell you something important.”
“Yes, I’m still here.” Maurice said, voice soft. He was starting to panic, simultaneously praying the others would come back and that they’d stay away for long enough so they didn’t end up hearing all about how Maurice was a filthy traitor.
“Well, good. Speak up a little more next time!” Mr Blake guffawed. “Anyways, I’m just calling to say that ownership of Camden was just transferred over to me. And I don’t want anybody livin’ on my property, if you know what I mean.”
Maurice was breathing heavily, eyes wide. He had one hand on his own neck, harshly pressing his nails into his flesh. This couldn’t be happening. It just couldn’t. “Now I am not an unfair man. I am giving you all a day to get your stuff together, and I called the transport company, too, so they’re sendin’ an extra big ship you’ll all fit in.”
“You can’t just… you can’t…” Maurice said, his voice barely more than a whimper. The man tutted. “Now, don’t be like that. You all knew this was comin’, didn’t you? This is what happens when a place is no longer profitable. It gets sold off to somebody else who can make somethin’ better out of it.”
Maurice was hyperventilating. His breathing was harsh and shallow, and his eyes felt like they were about to pop out of their sockets. “But-”
“No, boy.” Mr Blake sternly said. “I’ve given you enough time- heck, more than enough! I could start mining right now! I don’t need to wait a day. You best be grateful!”
The line made another loud crackling noise and Maurice threw his headset off, running away from the console and the booths. He didn’t see Sunflash anywhere, so he ran up the last flight of stairs, looking for her. He saw Jimmy and Mo, sitting at a table, and Sunflash opposite them, eating some kind of dessert Maurice personally couldn’t place. Maurice ran over to their table, probably looking deranged. He took a few seconds to breathe. Everyone was giving him an odd look.
“Sunflash, we need to leave. We need to get to Henrick’s bar, immediately.” Maurice said, trying to sound authoritative. Sunflash gave him a bleary look. “Why? What’s going on?”
He couldn’t do it. Maurice didn’t know how much Sunflash knew, but he wasn’t strong enough to tell her that he was the reason her planet was getting destroyed. If they went to Henrick’s bar, he could tell Paul and Henrick, since they already knew, anyways. Then, Maurice would take a separate transport back to his home planet. He’d probably get fired, but he didn’t even care. He couldn’t face the people whose life he ruined. “It doesn’t matter. We need to go.”
Sunflash, looking affronted, didn’t budge. “We’re not going anywhere. We still need to go see the bunkers today. It’s really close-by. If we go back to Henrick’s first, we’ll have to walk for ages. It’s just not efficient.”
“It’s important.” Maurice said, starting to sound whiny. Mo and Jimmy were both giving him an annoyed look. Why didn’t anyone believe him?
“If it’s so important, why can’t you give any more details?” Jimmy asked, leaning forward. Maurice groaned. “Stay out of it!”
Jimmy looked shocked, holding his hand in front of his chest. He leaned over to Mo. “Can you believe he just said that?”
“I can’t. Can you?” Mo asked, seemingly used to this little game.
“No!” Jimmy yelled. Maurice stared at them, and then shook his head, pulling at Sunflash’s arm wordlessly. Sunflash shot him a pitiful look. She mouthed something at him. “What are you doing?”
Maurice mouthed something back. “Please.”
Sunflash gave in, allowing herself to be pulled out of the room and downstairs. They walked past Beau again, who didn’t notice them, but not because she was listening to music again. This time she seemed to be scribbling something into a notebook as fast as possible. They both wordlessly agreed to leave her be.
Outside, Maurice was finally able to breathe. He inhaled so sharply he almost toppled over, but there Sunflash was to keep him standing. He leaned on her, heavily, his hands on her shoulders. She looked really worried, and also sad. He didn’t understand where the sadness came from. “Please tell me why we need to go to Henrick’s. Otherwise I don’t want us to go there. I just don’t.”
Maurice felt another sob threatening to spill out. “I just… I just can’t do it. I can’t tell you. We have to go.”
His eyes were getting a bit blurry. He was about to start crying. Sunflash shook her head. “In that case, we’re going to the bunker. You and me, together.”
She grabbed his hand, and he felt horribly nauseous about it all. Her hand was so terribly soft, and he wished he could be holding hands with her elsewhere right now, on a planet that wasn’t about to be demolished. She squeezed his hand, and they walked down the mountain at an agonizingly slow pace. Maurice tried to calm his nerves. The miner had said they still had another day, so maybe it wasn’t that bad that they were going to this bunker first after all. Although on the other hand, a day wasn’t a lot of time at all, especially if people still needed to pack their stuff together. He didn’t know what kind of game Sunflash was playing, but he knew he couldn’t disobey her.
They walked down the hill, and Sunflash swung her arms back and forth. Maurice couldn’t comprehend feeling so unbothered by everything, but then again, he was burdened by the knowledge which Sunflash thankfully lacked. He had to focus. Maybe if he pretended everything was okay and normal, Sunflash would no longer be bothered by his insistence to go to Henrick’s, and she’d allow him to leave earlier. And she would come back with him, too, obviously.
That was the plan. First, they’d see the bunker, whatever ‘the bunker’ was. For all he knew, it was another weird coffee place where all of the food was served by the ghost of a horse. He truly didn’t know what to expect at this point. First the bunker, then he’d take Sunflash back to Henrick’s. He’d tell Henrick and Paul about what was going on, and they would get everyone together, and tell them to start packing. Meanwhile, Maurice would slip away on the next transport, never to see any of Camden’s inhabitants ever again. It was better that way. He wouldn’t have to see Sunflash’s disappointed look ever again.
After climbing down the hill, they continued through a small street, with small, highly stacked houses on either side. It led them in a half-circle back to the back of the hill, where there was a door.
A door, in the middle of the hillside. It was a big, metal door, surrounded by concrete. Someone ran through the street behind them, looking alarmed, though Maurice didn’t know if it was because of them entering the bunker or some other reason. There was a keypad next to the door, which Sunflash entered some numbers into. It beeped, a small, green light turned on, and the door started to open, allowing Sunflash and Maurice to enter.
It led straight into a dark staircase, also made out of concrete. There were lights along the staircase, only barely bright enough to be able to see where you were walking. His eyes caught Sunflash’s, and she smiled at him. He loved her smile. She looked upset. “Come on, you’re not afraid of the dark, are you?”
“No…” Maurice said, and started down the stairs. Sunflash followed. The door automatically closed behind them. They had to be at least a few floors below the ground by the time they arrived at the next door. Everything around them was concrete, except for the door, which was identical to the one they just entered through. Similarly, it had another number pad next to it, which Sunflash entered a code into again. This time, a speaker made a squeaking noise, signifying that it was active.
“This is Marisol Sunflash.” Sunflash spoke into the number pad. They heard another voice on the other side of the line. “Sunflash?”
“Yes. I’m…” her voice faltered. Maurice furrowed his brow. “I’m showing Maurice what the inside of the bunker looks like.”
It took a while for the other person to respond. “Alright. Don’t stay down here too long. We… we want to see you. Soon, that is.”
“I can’t promise anything.” Sunflash said. The speaker went silent and the metal door slowly opened. Maurice studied Sunflash’s face as they waited for the door to fully open. She was smiling, had been the entire time. It was starting to make him nervous. He didn’t know what they were going to see in the bunker, but whatever it was was sure to elicit some kind of emotional response, be it negative or positive.
The second metal door turned out to lead into a small, badly lit room with some consoles in it. Sunflash linked her arm into Maurice’s and they walked through a door together, into another room, as Sunflash began to tell him what everything did.
Apparently, Camden had been built from the ground up. It hadn’t been some unused planet that was terraformed into what it had now become, no, rather it was a completely man-made structure. It was built so that it would always have perfect weather, so people could swim outside without getting cold during the day, and wear their favorite, most fashionable sweaters at night. It was also very small, so people wouldn’t be tempted to build land to live on the planet, since it was truly supposed to only be a place to vacation at. It was a huge project, intended to become a kind of refuge for rich people who wanted a place to party without being judged by their associates. What happened on the planet, stayed on the planet, that was the rule.
And in the beginning this all went well. A lot of companies wanted franchises on Camden, and a lot of beautiful, expensive buildings were built. There were fancy restaurants for men to take their much younger wives to, where they could taste wines and rub their ankles together underneath the table. Fancy hotels, where they could consummate their new relationships. Heck, there were even horses that people could ride, because according to Sunflash, there was nothing rich people liked more than horseback riding. The nightclubs were given names such as ‘the distinguished gentlemen’s club’ and looked like churches on the outside. If you paid the doorman an extra hundred of their currency he would look the other way as you entered, because everyone had seen you out with your wife the previous day, and that delectable young thing on your arm definitely wasn’t her.
But as most things built for the richest of the rich end up, it gradually started getting less profitable. The people in charge didn’t mind at first, because it wasn’t unusual to have a seasonal dip in profits once in a while, but when it kept declining, they started changing the rules in order to keep the same amount of profit. They begrudgingly allowed companies to build a few houses on the planet’s outskirts, for example, and to their disgust, the people who moved in were mostly middle class, because all the rich people already had houses on a dozen planets. And because they were starting to hang around more and more, the planet started getting a worse name. First only within the one percent, but soon everyone started to know Camden as ‘that one dirty pleasure planet’. The middle class people in the houses didn’t want others to know they lived there, so they moved away, and the people who took their place paid even less rent and couldn’t care less about keeping up appearances.
A lot of the big companies pulled back their franchises, because they didn’t want to be associated with pleasure planets. Other companies lowered their prices in order to get more customers. Suits got replaced by t-shirts and jeans, and fancy dresses got replaced by… more t-shirts and jeans, really. From a booming, beautiful metropolitan area to a place known for cheap booze and cheaper hookers.Eventually pretty much anyone who had any power over Camden distanced themselves from the project, making it pretty much self-governed in the process. It would cost more to destroy it than to simply abandon it, so they left it, and assumed that everyone would leave along with them.
But they didn’t. There were a few people left, a few stray businesspeople, a few people who didn’t want to leave their (first cheap, now free!) houses. Who had gotten to know the community over the years, and decided they liked it, no matter what state the planet was in. Sex-positive people. Counterculture people. Punks, goths and sex workers. People who never got married but still had kids. People who couldn’t read or write, but had other skills they were far better at. People who didn’t have any skills at all, but still deserved to exist, as all people do.
They found their refuge on a planet that nobody wanted. It was a perfect combination. Though there were few people left (around the amount needed to fill a concert hall, Sunflash didn’t know exactly how much that was), the people that were there did well. They had food, and they had fun. A lot of them were self-sustained, and others made money because of tourism, such as Henrick. Because even though the planet had a negative name now, there was an entire separate group of tourists who were far more intrigued by bad things they overheard than good things. Plus, throughout the years, there was always this one, odd man, a drifter, telling everyone on each planet about this one bar he knew, which they definitely had to visit.
But even though the planet had fallen into disrepair, one thing was still the truth. It was a man-made structure. If you were to, conceptually, buy a ‘build your own planet’ kit, if such a thing existed, there were a few things you would find inside of it. A lot of dirt, first of all, and then water, metals, rocks, air, things like that. And some little houses and tiny little people to live in them, because if you had a planet there really wasn’t any fun in it without living creatures. But there are a lot of different planets in the universe, so you’d want to be able to defend your little creatures. So you got some kind of defense system, a kind of shield to ward off attacks, or a large gun to shoot warning shots at whoever tried to come near. Or more than warning shots, if it was deemed necessary.
Camden’s defense system, Sunflash explained, was controlled from inside of the bunker. In the case of an extraterrestrial attack of any kind, people would be able to manually control the planet’s defenses. It had to be manual, because while all quite modern, most defense systems still had trouble seeing the difference between friend and foe. Truly, the biggest reason for the manual control was because they didn’t want to accidentally fire a warning shot at interplanetary transport ships every time they landed. There had to be someone manning the stations at every moment either of them were active, otherwise they would automatically shut off. To prevent people from leaving, the doors to the control stations would be shut by an automatic program.
While Sunflash explained all of this she and Maurice walked through different rooms, where Sunflash explained all of the controls and what they did, and which machine had which purpose. The planet had a shield, but it hadn’t been deployed in such a long time that Sunflash had no idea if it still worked. Same thing for the heavy artillery gun that was situated on one of the hills- the one Paul used to ride up and down on his motorcycle, to be specific. Maurice had been wondering why that hill didn’t have any houses on it like the other ones did.
Maurice asked if the bunker had any permanent staff, and Sunflash said it didn’t. Camden never really got targeted by anyone or anything, mostly because it wasn’t really relevant in any way. It wasn’t politically relevant, and while it had a bad name it didn’t have such a bad name that people were lining up to tear it down, either. Instead, a few of the people of Camden had the codes to enter the bunker, and they were the only ones ever taught how to control the gun and the shields, if it was ever deemed necessary. Just in case.
Maurice could easily understand that this meant that Sunflash was one of those people. There were way too many thoughts running through his head at that moment. First, he was considering the idea of saving Camden by simply shooting the miner’s ship out of space with the gun. But, logically speaking, that ship would be carrying much heavier artillery, if they were intending on destroying the planet for its resources. Besides, the rich miner himself, Mr. Blake, probably wouldn’t even be on it. Instead, they would be killing a bunch of people who were just trying to make a living, while that Blake guy would just send another ship the next day. Maurice didn’t really fancy killing anyone. He was also wondering why Sunflash thought of the bunker as a fun place to take someone on a tour to, but that was less important in the grand scheme of things. She had to be quite proud of it, of knowing the code, then. But it wasn’t a regular hang out spot, either, as that voice on the speaker had sounded pretty worried that somebody was attempting to open the doors.
Sunflash showed him the ‘bunker’ part of the bunker, as well, where people could hide in the event of a horrible storm that terraforming had failed to prevent, for example. There were several separate rooms, and one huge room filled with bunk beds, all under a thick layer of dust. However, some beds near the door looked like they had been slept on more recently. Maurice’s mind immediately went to somebody secretly living in the bunker, but Sunflash quickly explained that once in a while, somebody would come downstairs to check if everything was still in order, and sometimes that somebody happened to be a bit sleepy. Just as with the ghost horses, Maurice felt oddly disappointed, although he was certain that if there was indeed some feral person shuffling around underground he certainly wouldn’t be very excited at the prospects of meeting them.
Other than these rooms with beds there was also a large room for people to eat in, a kitchen, several bathrooms, a room for people to socialize in, and a gym so people could stay fit. Maurice could clearly see that this place held Sunflash’s interest, as she spoke of it fondly, almost in the same manner as she spoke about her beloved piano man. He asked if it was because it had to do with electronics and Sunflash stood still for a moment, then silently nodding.
“I hadn’t even thought about it like that, to be honest,” she said, “but I guess that is something I’m interested in. television, animatronics, defense systems… I never really saw a connection between them until now. I guess it really is true that you get to know yourself best by asking others to describe you.”
“It makes sense.” Maurice said. They were seated at one of the many tables in one of the rooms, chewing on rations bars that Sunflash had pulled out of a cupboard. Maurice was finally starting to calm down a bit. They still had time. It was going to be okay. “I mean, most people spend their lives looking more at other people than themselves. Introspection isn’t something most people would consider a hobby they practice daily.”
“Some people seem awfully obsessed with themselves, though.” Sunflash said, carding a hand through her short, jet black hair. Maurice’s own hair was longer, he’d just realized. He wondered why she kept it so short.
“Yeah, but they aren’t self-aware. I don’t think they really love themselves as much as you’d think.” Maurice theorized. “Like, they like the way they look, but do they really like it because they like it, or because it’s profitable to them to be attractive?”
Sunflash sighed, dropping her head onto the table, softly. She looked like she would be able to fall asleep right then and there. She also looked resigned to her fate, whatever that fate might be. Maybe she didn’t want to see Maurice anymore after this. That was alright. It was her decision. “Do you reckon they’re even aware of that?”
“I don’t know.” Maurice said. “I don’t even like thinking about others that way.”
“Me neither.” Sunflash said. She took another bite of her rations bar. They tasted oddly good for something that was meant to be eaten very slowly over a long period of time during a natural disaster. They were chocolate-flavored with soft caramel on the inside. Maybe they made them taste good because they didn’t want the people in the bunker to be even more miserable than they already were. “It feels so cruel to talk about people when they’re not around, even if we’re not talking about specific people. I don’t want to be cruel. I want to be kind.”
Something about that statement made Maurice sad. “But you are kind.” he said, trying to cheer his friend up. “Everything I have seen you do since I got here was for the benefit of somebody else. That’s why I got so angry. Not even angry, just frustrated. I want you to be just as happy as the people you are helping.”
“Helping them makes me happy, though.” Sunflash said, tiredly. “Whenever I see people smile after I’ve done something for them… that’s when I feel truly good about myself. Other people’s happiness fuels my happiness. Maybe that makes me selfish.”
“You could never be selfish.” Maurice said.
Sunflash shook her head. “I most definitely can be. And I am. I’ve thought about this a lot lately. Everything people do is for their own gain. They make others happy because other people’s happiness makes them happy. Selfish. Even if they’re purposely hurting people, it’s because they want to hurt people. Because it makes them feel better, or fulfilled, or gets rid of their rage. Whatever it is, it’s for their own benefit, at the end of the day. As everything is. I’ve always wondered if there is a singular selfless act out there, somewhere, but I haven’t been able to discover it so far.”
Maurice frowned. “Don’t you think you’re being a bit harsh on the human race, there?”
Sunflash shrugged, but she did it while laying down, so it wasn’t easily recognisable. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
She laid with her head on the table, looking miserable. Maurice scooted over a bit, and trailed over Sunflash’s hair with his fingers, carefully, barely touching her. When she didn’t push him away, he did it again, carding through the short locks. They sat there for a while, not moving at all except Maurice’s hand in her hair.
“Maurice?” Sunflash softly asked.
Maurice stopped what he was doing. “Yeah?”
“Would you forgive me…” Sunflash began, “if I did something completely selfless?”
I would forgive you for anything, Maurice wanted to say. I would forgive you if you stole, if you harmed people, if you were rude, or cruel, I would believe you had a reason for it, and I would forgive you. I would forgive you if you killed me. But he didn’t say it, because there was a time and place for a confession such as that one, and for Maurice it just happened to be never. Some things just weren’t meant to be said.
“Of course I would.”
Sunflash nodded, and she looked like she was about to cry. She was smiling, but genuinely, this time around, and her eyes were closed. When she sat up, he could see that there was a tear streaming down one of her cheeks. She pulled Maurice into a hug, and squeezed him tightly, tighter than anyone had ever hugged him before. He was certain he’d never feel that happy again. “Thank you, Maurice. Thank you so much.”
They didn’t separate after what felt like ages, but still felt like a painfully short amount of time to Maurice. They silently ate for a bit, and then Maurice cleared his throat. “So… what do you want to do after this?”
Sunflash’s defeated smile was back. Maurice didn’t understand. “Actually… I think it’s best if I stay here… and you go back to Henrick’s.”
Maurice frowned. “Why? I mean, no offense, but there isn’t really a lot to do here.”
Sunflash sighed. “It’s… it’s better if you just go.”
The roles had been reversed. Maurice shook his head, crossing his arms. “I’m not leaving until you tell me what’s going on.”
He expected Sunflash to argue more, but she sighed so deeply she had to be deflated by now. “Hey, that’s not nice. You’re stealing my tactics.”
“I want to know what’s going on.” Maurice said, and then, stammering a bit, “because I have the feeling something bad is about to happen. And I need you to reassure me that there isn’t.”
Sunflash nervously bit at the nail of her thumb. “I can’t do that.”
“Then at least tell me the truth.”
Sunflash averted her eyes, and Maurice stood up, walking around the table just so he could look her in the eyes again. She looked away again, and he sprinted around the table. He laughed, though there was no real joy to be found in the tone of his voice. “I can do this all day, you know.”
“Maurice!” Sunflash snapped. Maurice immediately froze in his tracks. Her voice was laden with sadness. “You promised. You promised you wouldn’t be angry. Please don’t be angry. Please just do as I say.”
Maurice was beginning to have another one of those thoughts, buried far down in his brain. One of those ‘aha’ moments that he didn’t yet want to experience, so he didn’t allow himself to think about it, even though it was becoming more important by the second. Two words that would destroy everything, his whole being. Sunflash knew.
Sunflash knew.
He didn’t know how she knew, but she did. And she was going to lock herself into that room, and she was going to try and activate Camden’s shields and weaponry. And she was allowing Maurice to leave, so he would be able to make it to the transport in case she wasn’t able to defend them in time.
It seemed so unlike her, yet so very like her simultaneously. The more level-headed choice would surely be to just leave, because fighting it out with a gigantic, powerful corporation just wasn’t worth it. But that was quite defeatist. On the other hand, fighting until her last stand was very stupid. She would most definitely get killed, if the weapons even worked in the first place. If they didn’t, she would have to do her walk of shame to the transport, and she would always feel like she failed her planet, somewhere in the back of her head. Regret and shame never really went away.
But she would have fought. She would have tried to make the universe a better place. She would have tried to protect her friends and her home, the way nobody else on the planet had dared to do. That was it. The true selfless act Sunflash had been looking for. She had found it, and was planning on carrying it out.
“No.” Maurice stammered. “You can’t- you can’t do this. The people here need you too much. If anyone has to stay here it should be me.”
Maurice surprised himself with that. He hadn’t been planning on sacrificing himself, but if it would allow him to save his friend, so be it. He clearly wasn’t able to convince her any other way- and maybe he could even sneak out and catch a transport after all, or lie and say that the defense systems wouldn’t start up. He wouldn’t even try starting them. It could work.
Sunflash’s eyes told him it wouldn’t. “Love, I’m sorry, but you don’t know how those machines work. Only I do.”
Maurice shook his head. “I can- I can learn it. You can teach me the basics, real quick. I’ll… I’ll do it, I promise I will. I just don’t want you to… go like this. Think of all the stuff you’ll miss. What will Doggy do without you? And the other girls? And Henrick and Paul?”
“They’ll find other people. Doggy will find someone else who he can relax around. The other girls don’t need me. They will miss their friend for a while, but they still have each other. And Henrick and Paul… they lived most of their lives without me. What makes you say they need me now?” Sunflash asked.
“They love you a whole lot,” Maurice tried. “Paul spoke so very fondly of you when he was telling me about his past. He talked about watching you grow up, always knowing that you were very bright, especially for someone your age.”
Sunflash looked defeated. She gave a pleading look. “Please don’t make me regret my decision.”
“But I want you to regret it! I want you to come with me, right now!” Maurice yelled. “I want to get out of this place before the whole planet blows up! And I want you with me!”
Sunflash looked at him once more, before standing up and walking away, quickly, hoping Maurice wouldn’t follow her. But she was not that lucky. She walked out of the bunker part of the underground building, and back up to the many different controls. Maurice walked behind her, doing his best to keep up with her long, fast strides.
“I’ll come with you, then.” Maurice begged. I’ll die for you, he thought. I’ll die with you.
“Please just go look for Henrick. He’ll help you. I have to do this.” Sunflash said. They walked through a set of doors they hadn’t previously entered, and into a large, round room lined by metal boxes and what Maurice assumed was a large electric generator in the middle. There was a spiral staircase, leading up to the next level, where there was a last set of doors. These doors were made out of the same strong metal the main doors were made of, and Maurice understood that these were the ones leading to the main controls of the weaponry. Sunflash walked up the spiral staircase, and Maurice attempted to grab Sunflash’s clothes, anything to get her back down. Even if she fell, and became unconscious, or broke her leg, he would carry her back to Henrick’s.
He only managed to grab her just in front of the doors, after she had pressed a few numbers on the number pad. He pulled her towards him harshly, and she lost her balance, falling onto the floor. Because of the momentum, Maurice fell as well, and he immediately wrapped his arms around her. Sunflash struggled against her bonds, making a noise almost like a growl. “Let me go! Let me do this!”
“No.” Maurice said, his voice eerily calm. It was like somebody had taken over his body, and was speaking with his mouth and his voice. “It took me a few days, but I finally figured you out. You feel guilty, don’t you?”
“Don’t psychoanalyze me.” Sunflash bit, struggling against his arms. He pressed her to him even tighter, her back against his chest. The fabric of her sweater scratched his arms.
“You did it to me, it’s only fair I get to do it to you,” came Maurice’s reply. He was starting to become breathless. Being on this planet had really given him a lot more respect for people who went to the gym twice a week. When he came back to his planet, he was surely going to get a gym membership.
“Well, go ahead then. Give me your best shot.” Sunflash said. She sounded tired, too. She had stopped struggling, but Maurice still held her tightly, afraid that she would use his tiredness as a way to escape more easily. He didn’t like that it had come to that.
“You feel guilty about something. About existing, maybe. About taking up your friends’ time, or that you can’t help them more than you do. Maybe something happened in your past where you didn’t help someone who needed help, and you feel guilty about it. So now you help everyone you can. Even if they don’t deserve it. Even when you’re exhausted and just want to sleep. You’re not allowed to be tired. You think you’re paying back your debt to society by doing everything on everyone else’s terms, because you feel like you’re a burden.” Maurice was rambling, suddenly seeing everything very clearly. “But you need to understand that we don’t care that you take up our time. You said it yourself, the people you grew up with built their entire society on helping each other out. Nobody minds helping each other out, and everyone is a burden sometimes. But being a burden isn’t a bad thing. All it means is that you’re taking up a bit of somebody else’s time. That’s all! There’s no shame in that!
People like spending time with others. It’s just how you said, there’s something very, intrinsically human about it. People see a situation that they can improve and they do so. Maybe that means that they’re selfish- like you said, but I don’t think it does. I think wanting to improve a situation means you’re a good person. If someone helps others in order to gain from it himself, does that make him less of a good person? What even is a ‘good person’? What does it even mean, and why is it of any importance? Why can’t you just live your life, helping out when you can, but resting when you can’t?”
Sobs racked Sunflash’s body. She felt impossibly small against him, and he wanted to wrap her up in his arms and never leave her ever again. “I’m so tired, Maurice.”
Her voice was so incredibly genuine it made Maurice tear up as well. There they were, both crying, wrapped up in each other’s arms on the cold bunker floor. Maurice kissed the top of Sunflash’s head, her short hair tickling his nose. “I know you are. But it’s going to change. If you just come with me, we’ll go to Henrick’s, and we’ll organize everyone, and we’ll leave, and everything will be different. But everyone will still be there, and they’ll be so happy that you’re there as well.”
Sunflash sobbed, turning her head towards Maurice. Her tears made her blue eyes even brighter. “It’s too late.”
“No it isn’t,” Maurice said, not understanding. “Come on, stand up. We’ll get out of here.”
Somewhere below them, he heard a noise like metal scraping against metal. Sunflash went rigid in his embrace. “I… I already pressed the buttons to the door, but I didn’t go in. It has a sensor, and if it doesn’t sense any living person in front of the door, it assumes that the system has been hacked, and goes into defensive measures.”
Another metal scraping noise from below, followed by a series of loud clangs. Sunflash stood up, helping Maurice up as well. She started pressing the buttons on the keypad again, but it kept flashing a red light. Hopelessly, she started banging on the metal door. Maurice heard more and more clanging below them, and then the entire floor started to shake, as if they were a floor above a subway station. Sunflash shrieked, pulling Maurice with her and running to the other side of the round room. It didn’t have any other doors than the big metal one, but there was a control panel on the other side of the room, where Sunflash hid behind, motioning Maurice to do the same. Maurice followed her, and they hid under the leg room part of the console. Sunflash pulled the chair that belonged to the console in front of their little hiding place, so they were almost invisible unless you knew they were there.
It was a small, cramped place, and Sunflash’s legs were entwined with his, their faces close to each other. She looked terrified. Maurice grabbed her hand and squeezed it, showing compassion even though he wasn’t sure what it was that she was scared of.
There were more and more clanging noises, and Maurice was beginning to get an idea. The noises were rhythmical, and they kept coming closer, like footsteps, although they were too perfect to belong to any human person. Maurice couldn’t help but ask. “What is that?”
He whispered it, but Sunflash still shushed him. Her response was even quieter, and if they hadn’t sat so close to each other, he wouldn’t have been able to hear it. “That’s the defense system. They’re robots. Ancient, more than a hundred years old, I think. They were put down here when the planet was being terraformed. Mechanics wise, they’re about as advanced as my piano man. They see movement, hear loud noises, sense somebody’s near them, and they shoot. If they can’t find anything, they go back into their pods and back to sleep.”
“How many are there?” Maurice asked. He heard them getting closer, but they were not quite at the console yet. More like coming up the stairs.
“About six, I’m pretty sure. If they even all activated. These things are ancient, and we never check them during our rounds, because their only purpose is to dispose of intruders. They literally aren’t capable of anything else.” Sunflash said. Maurice squeezed her hand and she squeezed back.
“Do you think they’ll be able to find us?” Maurice asked. Sunflash was shaking. She didn’t make eye contact. “Maybe not, if we’re really quiet and also very lucky.”
They sat, silently, legs entwined and periodically squeezing each other’s hand. The metallic footsteps kept coming closer. Maurice tried to hear how many there were, but it wasn’t possible, since they all took their steps at almost the exact same time. He felt how scared Sunflash was, and for a change, he was the dominant one in the situation. It wasn’t that he wasn’t scared- heck, he was terrified as well, but somehow it hadn’t really gotten to him yet. Besides, he didn’t care if he died. He just wanted Sunflash to be okay. That was the most important thing.
The footsteps came closer, now reaching the console they hid underneath, too, although they hadn’t looked underneath it. Sunflash reached into one of her pockets and took something out, which she handed to Maurice. A piece of paper, it seemed like. But it was too dark to read if there was anything on it. He very carefully, silently, put it into his pocket, and Sunflash briefly looked satisfied.
The silence in the room was deafening. All of the robots had stopped moving, and Maurice barely dared to breath, lest he accidentally make any kind of noise. He saw a pair of legs, thick and metallic, far too angular to be human, through one of the tiny bits of the console that the chair didn’t cover. This was the closest he’d ever been to any kind of robot, especially one that was specifically looking for him. He slowly turned his head back, not wanting to see the thing anymore.
“We’re going to die, aren’t we?” he mouthed to Sunflash. One sliver of light fell onto her face, making the brilliant blue of one of her eyes visible. She smiled at him, trying to reassure him. She reached her arm up, very slowly, and caressed Maurice’s cheek, trailing her thumb from his cheekbone down to his chin. She leaned in and whispered into his ear, the same way she had done multiple times before. Her breath on his ear was a welcome reminder that she was still very much alive. “If they kill one target they assume the intruder is dead and they deactivate. At least one of us will survive.”
“I don’t want to live if you don’t.” Maurice said, and he meant it. Sunflash stared at him. She didn’t know what to say to that, obviously. Sometimes, the scariest part of talking to someone is when you realize they’re totally genuine. Like, when they say they love you, and it’s not just because they thought what you said was outrageous or funny, but because they’re fond of you, and every time you say something it makes them happy.
They sat completely still for what seemed like ages. The metallic pair of legs outside of their little hiding space stood completely still, until there was a buzzing noise from above them somewhere. “Scan complete.”
The voice was the voice of a man’s. It had unmistakably come from one of the robots, so Maurice assumed it was a voice clip that had been saved to the robots’ database, instead of completely computer-generated. It probably had a bank of a few of these so whichever people were watching them knew what the machines were up to.
The buzzing noise shut down.Then, the clanging started back up, so loudly it almost made Maurice jump. He heard the clanging noise get further and further away, down the stairs, and then they were gone. The robots were gone.
Wordlessly, Sunflash peeked out of their hideout and stood up, holding out a hand for Maurice to grab. He did so. He was terrified. Every noise they made felt deafening. There were no robots in the room, but Maurice didn’t dare look down, afraid that they were waiting for them there. He wanted to talk to Sunflash, to hear her voice, but he abstained from it. He just held onto her hand and allowed her to lead him around.
She didn’t go back downstairs. Instead, she re-entered the code to the room with the gun and shield controls. She stood near enough this time, and the door slid open for them, allowing them to walk in. This was the last room. The only one they hadn’t seen yet. It was small, with just the two consoles. One for the shield, one for the guns. The door shut behind them. Sunflash pulled Maurice into a hug.
“What do we do now?” Maurice whispered.
“I’m going to try and contact someone over the console here. Can you watch the door?” Sunflash asked. She immediately sat down in the swiveling chair in front of the console. Maurice was terrified at the notion that the doors needed to be watched. He didn’t even know what she expected of him except the act of looking at the doors, so he stood in front of them, watching them intently. So much so that he kept thinking he saw them move, when they really hadn’t.
“Calling. This is Sunflash. Can anyone hear me?” Sunflash said over a microphone. Maurice stared at the door. It continued not moving. Sunflash sighed in frustration, and pressed another button. “Calling. This is Marisol Sunflash. Can you hear me?”
“Why are you trying to contact people?” Maurice asked. Sunflash leaned back in her chair, which would probably be a relaxed action in any other circumstance, but now everything was just tense. There were so many unspoken words between them that Maurice no longer knew which ones he was allowed to say out loud. The worst thing was that he wasn’t sure if Sunflash was even aware of it the way he was. Maybe all of the tension he was feeling wasn’t even real, and he was just going insane. “People from the upstairs office are able to shut off the robots remotely. I’m not able to do that from down here, to prevent people from breaking in and deactivating the robots that are after them.”
“I wish the robots were able to tell apart people who are allowed to be here and people who aren’t, somehow.” Maurice said. He already knew that if he lived on Camden, he never would’ve wanted this job. And to think people would regularly take naps in the beds downstairs? Imagine if you were asleep, and when you woke up you were surrounded by robots that couldn’t see a difference between friend and foe. Although, in that case he supposed he’d probably already be dead before he woke up, because there wouldn’t really be any point in the robots waiting until he woke up just so they could kill him. That would just leave them open to deactivation by someone upstairs who saw they were out of their boxes.
“Eh, that’s the thing about old tech. It doesn’t work, regardless of who you are.” Sunflash said. She was pressing some other buttons again, but the console didn’t seem to be working at all, though it was emitting a buzzing noise. “I like it much better like that than like those newfangled computers on other planets. Like, the ones that calculate how much lunch you’re allowed to eat based on your body fat percentage. I’d quit my job if they had one of those in the cantine.”
Maurice laughed, and then quickly looked over to the door in case his laugh had somehow opened it. It was still closed. Sunflash scraped her throat, and said the same, by now familiar thing again. “Calling. This is Marisol Sunflash. Can anyone please answer the fucking phone?”
“What if we can’t shut them off?” Maurice asked, softly. Sunflash looked at him, and then immediately looked away. “Oh, it’ll probably be fine. If they’ve gone back to their pods, they’re pretty much in sleep mode again. And if they start getting out when we’re down there, by the time they’ve successfully gotten out we’ll be long gone. They can really only do one thing at once.”
“And what if they’re not in their pods?” Maurice asked. He couldn’t help it. Sunflash gave him a wry smile. “That’s not going to happen. Come on, we might as well go. Henrick has probably already gotten everyone together.”
“Yeah, I was wondering. How did you know what happened? How does Henrick know?” Maurice asked. Sunflash stood up, and looked at him, confused. “What do you mean? Wait, are you saying you didn’t do that on purpose?’
“No?” Maurice asked, and then, “Do what on purpose?’
“You broadcasted your conversation with that guy who bought Camden on the radio, love.” Sunflash said, trying to hold in her laughter. She pressed a few buttons on the door’s keypad and the door opened. There was nobody else on the floor they were in. Everything was fine. They continued downstairs. The spiral staircase was a hundred times creepier now, every creak making Maurice think that that was it, that was the end for them. But it went well. They managed to get all the way downstairs unharmed, where Sunflash squeezed his hand once more, reminding him that she was there no matter what happened.
Not all of the robots were back in their pods. Most of them were, and some of them had never activated in the first place, rust having damaged their wiring, or inactivity having wiped their memory of what they were supposed to do. The ones that were back in their pods were inactive, now, and wouldn’t be activated until they got another alarm from upstairs.
But there was one, standing just behind the staircase, that hadn’t deactivated. Something must’ve fallen into the sensors in its pod, so it wasn’t able to locate where it was supposed to go now. It wasn’t programmed to power down without being in its pod, because it could get damaged out in the open. So instead of powering down anyways, it simply remained active, its primitive brain rechecking the room over and over again, to see if it could locate the sensor, or any heat signatures.
It hadn’t forgotten its previous command, obviously. It wasn’t smart enough to have any commands other than ‘kill’ and ‘go to sleep’. If it was capable of any thought, which it wasn’t, it had to be majorly freaking out right now. Wouldn’t anyone, if they entered their bedroom and their bed was suddenly gone, all the while they had to be on the lookout for saboteurs coming to explode their home planet?
It was two heat signatures coming down the stairs, and shot at the first one that entered its range. This specific heat signature just happened to be a human being by the name of Marisol Sunflash.
Sunflash gagged because of the sudden burst of searing pain to her back, and fell over onto her knees. Maurice, spotting the robot, ducked behind the non-translucent part of the staircase, and tried to touch Sunflash, to pull her to him, anything. She was coughing, and spit ran down her chin and the rest of her face as she doubled over in pain. Maurice’s hands were shaking.
“What do I do?” Maurice asked, coming to Sunflash for advice on how to save Sunflash. Sunflash cringed due to her pain, and clutched at her stomach, trying to get it to stop. Basic instincts had taken over.
“Maurice-” she started, and it was clear that speaking was hurting her a lot. Maurice listened intently. The robot wasn’t moving. It probably thought the last human had been eliminated. “The robots here shoot a beam that liquidises your inner organs, which is why it kills you-” she groaned, “regardless of where you’re hit. My innards are turning to mush as we speak.”
Maurice looked on, horrified. He grabbed Sunflash’s hand, but she didn’t squeeze it back. She was still talking, though, although her voice kept getting softer. “Now that the threat is neutralized but the robot still senses that somebody is alive in the building, it’s going to call for the whole bunker to self-destruct.”
She coughed. “You need to start running as soon as possible. The code to all of the doors that you’ll encounter is 1802, although most of them will open on their own if you’re coming from the inside.”
Maurice squeezed her hand again, regardless of if she could feel it or not. She gave him a small smile. “You should… you should go to Henrick’s. Tell him that I’m gone, so he won’t come looking for me.”
“I love you.” Maurice mumbled. “I love you a lot.”
Sunflash’s eyes were starting to glaze over. She was still looking in his direction, but it was obvious that she wasn’t able to see him. Yet her smile remained.
“It’ll pass,” she said, and she was gone.
Maurice sat, holding her limp hand a few seconds longer, before he suddenly heard a voice coming from the robot, ruining the moment. It was the same voice that had come from it previously, eerily human.
“Multiple unauthorized entries found. Due to our inability to properly dispose of them, we are unfortunately forced to self-destruct this facility. We apologize for the inconvenience, and hope you’ll consider buying from us again.”
The voice sounded like he was boredly reading it off a sheet of paper. Yet the next second the floor started shaking, and the robot fell over, struggling and moving its arms and legs around like a turtle on its back. Maurice looked at Sunflash, at her blank eyes and her genuine smile. At her rainbow sweater and ripped fishnet stockings. At the most brilliant girl he had ever met. And then he started running.
He ran through the first door, which automatically opened. Then he ran through the long hall, which was shaking so much he almost lost his balance a few times. A few of the lightbulbs exploded, and smoke was starting to fill the underground building. He wanted to run towards the old entrance, but just as he was trying to go there, a large closet fell onto the door opening, blocking the way. Hopelessly, he ran the other way, going upstairs at random, hoping to find some other way out. One of them had to survive. He had to survive. For her.
Maurice’s heart pounded so loud in his ears that he could barely hear anything else. Behind him, stuff was falling over, books clattering onto the ground. Plates, shattering. Whole bookcases fell over, crashing onto the ground. Strips of walls came off, revealing the metal wiring underneath. The floor was shaking, and Maurice kept falling over, but he scrambled back up, again and again. He felt something hot and warm on the palm of his hand, and when he looked at his hand, it was bleeding deeply from a wound he hadn’t even felt.
From the rubble he climbed a flight of stairs, which shook dangerously with each movement of the ground. He reached a large metal door, and he was almost afraid it wouldn’t open, but the moment he stood close enough to it creaked open, and he ran through, blinded by the bright sunset. He fell, rolling down a bit of grass. Looking back, he realized he’d just fallen out of a door in the second hill, which was on the other side of the planet’s main city, and around the same amount of steps away from Henrick’s bar, if he would even be able to find it. Next to the door stood an old motorcycle that must have been red at some point. It was missing one of it’s wheels. The ground beneath him shook, and he decided to just start running away from the bunker, even if he’d get lost in the process. His legs hurt, and his wounded hand was burning, but he pressed on, getting from the grassy hill back into the streets. Tears streaked his face, and he wiped them away with his dirt-caked sleeve, which only made him dirtier.
He heard an explosion behind him.
He wanted to look, but he was too afraid of what he would see. Plus he had to press on. He continued his half-jog for as long as he could, but the moment he was enough blocks away, he fell onto his knees, crying. He looked at his hand, covered in blood, squinting to see if there was something stuck in it that he’d have to remove. But there was too much blood, dark red and streaking down his arm, wetting his sleeve, which allowed more dirt to cake onto it. His knees hurt. He kept coughing, only interspersed by sobs. He couldn’t breathe. Hacking, he started to take his sweater off, leaving him in only a sleeveless shirt. He shuddered due to the slightly cold night air, and messily tied his sweater around his arm, trying to only touch the open wound with parts that didn’t have any dirt on them.
He allowed himself to breathe until his coughing fit was over. Then, he pressed on, even though he was crying. He walked the streets of Camden, sobbing. He should have been the person who died down there, not Sunflash. It wasn’t fair. She was so good, and so kind, and she deserved to know it. But now she would never know just how much she meant to everyone. Not because she helped them with stuff or paid for their food, but because of how smart she was, and how funny, and kind, and how fun she was to be around. How great of a storyteller she was. How talented with electronics. How surprisingly knowledgeable about mental health. How much she was able to surprise him, and how she was never boring. He’d told her, but he knew she hadn’t believed him, and that was what hurt the most.
After walking the streets endlessly he finally started recognizing the houses he walked past. One of his shoes had broken during the escape, his sole pulled apart at the middle of his foot. His foot was bleeding, too, and it filled his entire sock with warm, thick blood, which felt disgusting, It made a squelching noise with every step. He was almost there. Almost at Henrick’s. As he reached the few streets nearest to the bar, he began to see people, carrying suitcases in the same direction he was walking. Kids were crying, and mothers were picking them up, shushing them. An old man and woman used all their strength to carry an old suitcase belonging to the both of them. There were items left in the street, and nobody was picking them up. Maurice couldn’t feel one of his arms. He saw somebody’s teddy bear lying in the rubble. He picked it up with his good hand and walked on.
He could see Henrick’s bar in the distance. People were walking towards it with their luggage, all entering through the front door, which was wide open. The windows had been fully opened as well. Stevie and Maggie were there, too, both dressed in what was probably the least revealing clothing they owned. They were holding notebooks, and crossing people off their lists as they entered the building. Stevie saw Maurice stumble towards them and dropped her notebook on the pavement, running up to him. He had to look a right mess, as her features were full of worry.
“Is that Maurice? What happened to him? Where’s Sunflash?” Maggie asked from where she was standing, now holding both of the notebooks. Maurice felt lightheaded, like he was seeing everything happen through a window rather than actually experiencing it. Stevie tried to help Maurice, but he walked on like he hadn’t even registered her.
He walked through the door. Inside, everything had been opened up. Light was streaming in from the door that normally led to the rooms people could rent, and Maurice could see people leaving the building through the back entrance, which ended in a large, green field. Some people were walking through that door, while others were sitting at the tables, either waiting or repacking their stuff at the last moment.
Maurice looked around, trying to find Henrick, or Paul, or somebody who could help her. He saw Beau, Jimmy and Mo, arguing with a man about whether or not they should be allowed to take their radio equipment with them. A woman spotted Maurice, and hurried him onto a chair, where she took the sweater off of his arm and discarded it to the side. She was mumbling something to him, something reassuring, but he didn’t hear any of it, staring off in front of him with his eyes glazed over. The woman cleaned the wound in his hand with some kind of rubbing alcohol, and poured water over the rest of his arm, scrubbing it clean with the rough kindness only a nurse or doctor would be able to use.
After she finished fixing his arm and bandaging his hand, she untied his shoe, and slid his sock off. There was a piece of glass lodged in his foot. He hadn’t even seen it, but it had to have been what sliced his shoe open. She, again, disinfected his wound, and put a bandage over it, which she wrapped around his foot a few times. She stood up and yelled something, and a few moments later somebody brought her a spare pair of shoes, beaten old sandals that were a size or two too big on him. She untied his other shoe as well, and put the clean shoes on him, all the while talking to him. Maurice squeezed his eyes shut, trying to focus. He could barely hear anything, but he tried to ask the woman where Henrick was. She gave him a worried look and pointed at the hallway. He heard her say something along the lines of, ‘are you okay, honey?’ but he didn’t answer. He felt like he was about to pass out, but he needed to reach Henrick first, to tell him about Sunflash. Henrick should know. He had to tell Henrick.
Struggling his way through the hallway he first checked the laundry room, and then Henrick’s bedroom. There was nobody left in the rooms, so he did what everything was doing, and walked through the back entrance, leaving Henrick’s bar behind.
There was an interplanetary transport ship on the field. It had landed there, obviously, which Maurice didn’t even know they were capable of doing. In spaceports, they usually just got mounted on some kind of… stick, for lack of a better word, where the passengers could get off and back onto solid ground. But this one had landed right on the ground. Nobody was boarding yet, but they had opened one of the doors on it, and were now attempting to inflate some inflatable stairs for people to enter it, with mixed results. One of the men working on it tripped and fell down the staircase, which would have been funny in every other situation.
Henrick was standing on the field, on an upside-down beer crate, holding a megaphone. Maurice’s leg gave a dull throb of pain every time he put any weight on it, so he limped forward at an agonizingly slow pace. It was cold outside. He had goosebumps. Sunflash was dead. He needed to talk to Henrick.
Henrick was busy watching the interplanetary transport people inflating the stairs, so he didn’t see Maurice until they were almost close enough to touch each other. Henrick looked taken aback. “Maurice.”
Maurice tried to say something, but he just couldn’t. All he could do was give Henrick a pleading look, and Henrick understood exactly what he meant. Henrick stepped off his beer crate and wrapped his arms around Maurice, his pointy chin bumping against Maurice’s forehead. Maurice was in pain. He felt like he was about to pass out. But he couldn’t. He had to say it.
“Sunflash-”
“I know.” Henrick said.
Maurice looked up at him, bleary eyed. The woman who had fixed his arm and foot up was running towards them again, telling Henrick something that Maurice couldn’t make out. Maurice looked up at Henrick. “...How?”
“One of you had to stay behind at that damned bunker.” Henrick said. He sounded angry, but not specifically at Maurice, which was a relief. Maybe a bit angry at Maurice as well, but, given the situation that was to be expected. Maurice couldn’t blame him. Both because he was angry too, at the unfairness of it all, and he just didn’t have the energy left to feel anything.
He was lifted up and put on a chair somebody had gotten from inside. Someone else put a thick tartan blanket over him. Maurice tried to keep his eyes open, but he eventually started to doze off. People were walking and talking all around him, moving boxes and briefcases around. He usually wasn’t very good at falling asleep, but he fell asleep almost immediately, despite the noise around him.
He woke, partly, when the people around him all got their names called. A second check, done by Maggie and Stevie. He didn’t stay awake until Sunflash was due to come up, which he was grateful about. He didn’t want to know how people reacted. He didn’t know if Henrick told anybody yet.
The next time he awoke was because Paul was crouching in front of him, gently patting his face. Maurice blinked at him. Paul turned around while still crouching, and then looked over his shoulder. “Come on, kid. I don’t do this for everyone.”
“Huh?” Maurice asked. Paul pointed at his back. “Get on!”
Maurice pulled his body against Paul’s back and wrapped his legs around the man’s thighs. Paul stood up, slowly, and then exhaled in relief when he managed to keep standing. “You best be real proud, boy. I haven’t carried anyone on my back in years.”
“I think I saw your motorcycle.” Maurice babbled into Paul’s ear. “It was red.”
“Oh, was it now?” Paul asked. The question might have sounded angry on paper, but there was no real anger in his voice. “Do you have anythin’ else interesting to share with the class?”
As far as Maurice could see, there was nobody else around, so there wasn’t really a ‘class’ to speak of. “Henrick loves you. You should tell him you love him too.”
This finally got a chuckle out of Paul. “We were all a bit worried about you, but if you can get straight back to matchmakin’ so soon after getting hurt, I think you might just be fine.”
Somebody helped Paul carry Maurice up the inflatable stairs. The inside of the ship was delightfully messy, like people had been living out of it for months. Only half of the people were correctly seated, and a lot had set up on the floor in the back of the ship, where luggage was usually stored. Maurice was put down on one of the chairs near the front. His legs felt like jelly, and he found that he could barely move them. He gratefully clung to Paul until he pulled back, but not before scratching his beard against Maurice’s forehead.
Maurice scratched at his forehead. At some point, somebody in an interplanetary transport uniform handed him a complimentary cup of jelly. He wasn’t sure if the ship was in space yet. He didn’t know how much time had passed, or where Paul was. He drifted off, and when he woke up again he was still holding the cup of jelly.
At some point, after an indeterminate amount of time had passed, he decided to wander around the ship. He was still wearing the oversized sandals, and the tartan blanket hung from his shoulders like a cape. He carefully set the cup of jelly on the empty seat next to him, and stood up, stumbling a bit but ultimately making it up. He was starting to get back to himself, but everything was still a bit fuzzy around the edges. He wasn’t behind glass anymore, but there was still a curtain in front of his eyes. Metaphorically speaking, at least. His leg was still giving a dull thud once in a while, but it was bearable, for the time being.
He went to look out of the window first, and saw that they were indeed out in space. It looked quite beautiful, despite the heavy emotional load that surrounded everything like a thick blanket. Space was shades of dark blue and purple, decorated with the occasional yellow and white swirls.There were thousands of faraway stars visible, all with their own little systems of planets, some inhabited, some not. There were planets closer by as well, but Maurice didn’t immediately recognize any of them. Granted, he’d never been great at topography. It just hadn’t been necessary. As far as his parents used to be concerned, he’d never have to leave the planet.
Walking away from the window and starting to wander around aimlessly a bit more, Maurice saw a lot of familiar faces on the ship. There was an entire gaggle of girls who had laid down a few blankets on the ground and were now lying on them together, mirroring a picnic. Stevie and Maggie were also there. Maggie was crying softly, and Stevie was comforting her by reading her excerpts from a magazine out loud. Her voice was wavering a bit, as well. Maurice had assumed she would be reading about something sports-related, as that was what she had seemed to be so interested in, but instead she was probably talking about things that Maggie liked. “Listen to this, Mags. They say she’s the new Joan Jett. Are you hearing this? It’s ridiculous. Nobody can be the new Joan Jett.”
Maggie laughed a bit, through her tears. Maurice decided not to disturb them, and continued walking. The next people he encountered were the drunkards that had made fun of him back when he’d first arrived. Maurice tried to walk past them unnoticed, but it was too late. One of them punched the other in the shoulder, and then pointed at Maurice, trying to get him to look. They were all looking at him, and whispering among themselves eerily quietly, not how you’d expect a bunch of loud drunks to act at all. Maurice found it unnerving, so he continued walking.
The ship seemed huge now that he was actually walking through it instead of patiently remaining seated the way you were normally supposed to. The people of Camden had built a strange kind of tent in the backmost part of the plane, and Maurice was making his way towards it slowly, without really intending to. We all have to go somewhere, in the end, he supposed, oddly soberly given the situation.
He saw Beau, Jimmy and Mo, sprawled out on seats together. Jimmy was in the middle, and the other two were both lying next to him, using him as a pillow to some extent. Mo’s arm was around Jimmy’s stomach, and Beau’s head rested on his chest. They all seemed to be resting. Maurice didn’t want to bother them. They probably wouldn’t even like to speak to him, anyways, if the drunkards had been anything to go by.
In one of the next rows of chairs, Doggy sat, alone. He was hunched over, looking at his own hands. Maurice couldn’t see his eyes, as always, but his mouth was pulled into a frown. Maurice knew that the people were angry, but he couldn’t bear seeing Doggy so alone, knowing how much he normally needed Sunflash around him. Maurice walked over to him, gently offering his hand but not touching Doggy because he wasn’t sure if the man would react negatively or positively to that.
“Heya, Doggy. How are you holding up?” Maurice asked, as kindly as he could. A growling noise came from the man below him. Doggy looked upwards, and Maurice was able to see his eyes, which were a very deep, almost fake-looking blue. His eyebrows were downturned, and his jaw was tense.
“My fucking name is Richard!” Doggy yelled, with a force that actually made Maurice take a step backwards. Spooked, he quickly walked away, almost tripping on his tartan blanket but catching himself before he did so. He started walking towards the weird little tent-room faster, not wanting to meet anyone else on his way there.
A good amount of people probably blamed him for Sunflash’s death, he realized. It only made sense. Maurice went away with her the last time they saw her, and he returned alone. He blamed himself, too. If he’d just been quicker, or more careful, or- If he hadn’t been there, Sunflash would still be alive. It was the ugly truth. He had caused the death of somebody who could’ve gone on to do great things. But he hadn’t done it on purpose! He had only done what he thought was best at every moment! He was getting better! He was becoming a better person! He was just a bit too slow at it.
Maurice walked into the little ‘room’ made out of blankets and curtains hung up from the ceiling. It was, as he now realized, a little room for the Camden citizens’ unofficial leader, Henrick. Paul was there as well, and they both greeted him as he walked in. “Hey, Maurice. How are you holding up?”
“I feel like I’m about to start floating.” Maurice said, laughing a bit even though he was probably just worrying the other two men. They did indeed look kind of worried. Well, Paul at least. Henrick looked a bit mad. It immediately worried Maurice- he’d expected that out of anyone on the ship, Paul and Henrick would probably be the most understanding. If they weren’t, if they were angry at him too, he truly had nobody left. It left a painful reminder that after this trip ended he’d have to go back to his parents.
“Are you guys angry at me?” Maurice asked, voice small. He felt like a child that had just confessed some kind of crime to his parents, and was now awaiting punishment. He also felt weird standing in the little room Paul and Henrick had made for themselves, but he felt even worse out in the open, where everyone seemed to be giving him sideways glances. Henrick and Paul looked like they had been talking in a rather relaxed manner before Maurice walked in. Maybe they had finally been having that conversation that had been fifty years in the making. Maurice hoped he hadn’t interrupted it at any important point.Henrick was sitting on a piece of luggage. Paul stood up from where he was sitting and walked over to him.
“Of course we’re angry.” Paul said. Maurice felt his heart skip a beat. Even though he was exhausted, his eyes still filled with tears. He felt so guilty, so fucking guilty about everything. If he’d been a better person none of this would have happened. If he hadn’t lied about why he was on Camden Sunflash would still be alive. Paul saw him get upset and grabbed his face with his rough hand. He looked worried. “No, son, stay with us. What I’m trying to say is that yes, we’re angry. We had to leave our homes. We have nowhere to go. One of our dear friends died.”
Maurice sobbed, a tremor going through his whole body. Paul wiped one of Maurice’s tears away with one of his fingers. He didn’t even have to move his hand for it, that was just how huge his hands were. “But. But, Maurice, none of that is your fault, okay? Listen to me. It’s not your fault that the people who raised you never taught you compassion. It’s not your fault that your boss doesn’t mind squashing small communities in order to get some extra pocket money. And it is not your fault that Sunflash is dead. As long as the systems that allow these things to happen are in place, it’s not the fault of any single person except the ones at the top. You didn’t kill Sunflash. You didn’t.”
Maurice cried. He couldn’t help it. Sobs racked through his already shaky body. Paul pulled him into a hug. Though Paul wasn’t much taller than him, he still felt completely enveloped in warmth and safety. Henrick was somewhere behind him as well, putting his thin hand on Maurice’s shoulder in compassion. Paul pulled back, and reached up to wipe away a few more of Maurice’s tears. “You don’t need to feel guilty at all. That being said, there definitely will be a few people who will blame you for it. But all you should do is show them all the love you can bear. Be involved. Grieve together. If they are willing, they will see that you are feeling the same hurt that they are, and they will forgive you.”
Maurice held his hands out, perhaps out of some kind of instinct he’d had since he was a little kid. But Paul understood, and pulled him into another hug. Maurice melted into Paul’s hold on him for a while longer, until he finally pulled back, rubbing at his eyes with a piece of the tartan blanket. He gave Paul and Henrick a sheepish smile. “Thank you. For everything.”
“Of course.” Henrick was quick to say. “We really don’t blame you for anything, alright? So don’t worry about it so much. Maybe sleep for a bit? Get some rest, God knows you’ll need it after all of this.”
Maurice yawned just after Henrick said. Henrick was right. Sleep would be good. He nodded, and waved his goodbyes to the two men. Gratefully, he started shuffling back to his seat on the ship, which he was able to recognize by the pudding cup that was still on the seat next to his. His face was probably red from crying, but he didn’t really care what people thought about him especially if half of them already thought he was a killer, anyways.
Before sitting down, he went to empty his pockets, as used to be an automatism he developed while working his office job. Check your pockets before sitting down, because there could be important files in there that weren’t allowed to be folded. He’d always found that ridiculous, because most trouser pockets weren’t even large enough to fit any documents, much less unfolded ones. But he still did it, because those were the rules, and now he apparently even did it when he wasn’t at work. He had been successfully conditioned.
He put his hands in his pocket and cringed for a moment as his hurt hand touched rough fabric, even through the bandages. But he immediately forgot it when he felt that there was something in his other pocket, which he had forgotten was even in there. Recent memories filled his head, of when he and Sunflash were hiding and she had put a piece of paper in his pocket. He had completely forgotten about it afterwards, due to how intense the situation had been.
He took it out, carefully, slowly, as if the paper ripping would hurt Sunflash too, somehow. He looked at the piece of paper. It was a ticket. A ticket to go see Monty, that new touring singer, specifically. Maurice felt his heart swell with love. Sunflash must have noticed his interest in the singer, and immediately managed to get him a ticket, somehow. Maybe over fax machines, like those pretentious classic rock fans (who Maurice had always admired) or over the radio, or something. Whatever it was, Maurice now had a ticket to the singer who very well could lead to the rock renaissance, and he was ecstatic. He was also sad that Sunflash wasn’t around to go see the singer with him, though.
Heart full, he sat down at his seat, holding the ticket to his chest. He could just imagine her sitting next to him now. He’d thank her for the ticket, and she would laugh, say it was nothing. But he’d insist that it was the nicest thing anybody had ever done to him, and that he was forever grateful.
“I’m not your cigarette girl,” she’d sternly remind him, referencing back to the story he’d told. It had been nothing but a retelling of his own childhood, albeit dramatized. He had never been partially mute, and he wasn’t bullied that bad. He’d never met a girl in the park, because he never went to the park in the first place. He was a good kid, and he never screamed.
“I know,” Maurice would say, and he’d lean in close to her ear, whispering the way she always did, “You’re way better.”
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