Outlaw

Phantom Boy

I hurry now. Last night I left the building on Great Russell Street (little more than an alley off the Tottenham Court road), always improving my pace until I was as good as running when I ducked into the tube station.

It wasn’t like this before. I took my time then, I was in control of my life, embedded in the world around me. Since I’ve been back all that has changed. I seem to give it all away now, indiscriminately, carelessly. I am distinct from this world here, imposed upon it somehow, as if I’ve been introduced into a finite system which can no longer accommodate me. As if in my absence the world became reordered, when it is simply that the space has long been filled.

This alienation, it tests one’s resolve. It begins by bearing down from the outside, from the environment, and then moves within, slowly, inexorably taking over the host. By some molecular osmosis it passes into your blood and flesh and memories. Down into the deep tissue, the bone and the marrow.

It’s been a long time since I was last here after all. But that’s the thing about time isn’t it? It isn’t a constant. Years can pass in no time; a day can go on forever. It is both our ally and our jailer. I am a passenger again now, a stranger in my home land.

I walked out onto that dark, stoic London street and sucked in a lungful of delicious London air and looked up at the sky. My life laid out before me, a vast ascending delta of potentiality. Distant, ongoing, stretching in every direction up to that sky. They remind me of what I left behind, and of that which I have returned to face.

I feel the simple, effortless joys of childhood returning (when we were young and used to hunt in packs); see cranes across the waterfront, freezing a sky which never passed this way.

I am not who I was when I left. But I have come back. I have come home for the last time.     

Now the first homecoming, the first return from journeying, that’s easy. Might as well have been yesterday it’s so fresh in my mind.

A fire spits and licks at the beach, faces flaring and fading from view. Toes dug in the coolness of nightime sand wriggle against each other, as the sea slops lazily against the beach. It was the disarray that made me smile that night - the delight in relinquishing all propriety and order, and surrendering to the primal impulse. The random scatter of bodies and their belongings, clothes discarded and forgotten in the dark, half a world away from the dirty mutter and mope of the city.

Yes, all those homecomings. I remember early morning warm bread and hot coffee, the wild salty seasmell and the smooth feel of the bone bleached wood of the chairs. Shivering between mouthfuls and gulps, the seawind that bites into you bonedeep. Waiting for the sun to climb higher… just a little higher. The exquisite distress, like toothache pain, knowing what relief is on its way.

A familiar face catches my eye from across the busy street. Stops, elicits a quizzical frown, then looks some more. Can’t be sure as he tilts his head first this way and then that, before breaking into a sudden portrait of disbelief and recognition all at once. He dances between cars and strolls up casually, just a hint of a grin playing across those well-versed lips.

“Jimmy! What’s up, where you been?”

“Far away brother. Needed a break. Been a long time, son.”

“Far away! I love it…I haven’t seen you in years. How long you been back?”

“Yesterday. I got in last night.”

“The Boy is back in town, alright! You around for a while?”

“I’m not sure right now.”

“So call me, Santos’s got my number. I gotta run.” Shaping to move off, then stops, “Hey, welcome back Jimmy, welcome back.” A hefty embrace, a little peck of a kiss on the crown of my head.

“Tell the boys hi!” as he disappears back through the traffic.

And so on and so forth.

Those homecomings. Rush up to meet you like ground to falling star. All of a sudden your old world order rushing back in, like a rising tide washing away sandcastles and proclamations of love written in the sand. Before you know it you’re going everywhere at once, buried under the weight of your past as it engulfs you over and over again.

This time there’s a difference though. Years that seem to have passed in a singular void of being, that I can’t account for, that were maybe only dreamt anyway. And now I am back, already intuitively adopting all that social behaviour that distinguishes the insider and the outsider. The way you avoid the eyes of others, the way you walk and talk and infer and inflect, your intonation and exhalation, your attitude and your solitude.

I left all this to be on my own, to forget. And in the middle of that first day I suddenly found myself home again, through no volition of my own, standing on a crowded streetcorner watching the same winter skies that never change.

But this particular homecoming - well, let’s just say it’s not about me.

The address of the flat was in the North of the city. I had still not heard from Santos since the transmission that requested my return. He simply left directions to the Organisation’s office, and said I’d be taken care of from there until we got a chance to meet.   

Upon my arrival I was met by a well-groomed and smartly dressed young woman. Everything about her was exact and definite, and I found myself wondering what had caused her to leave her old life behind. Anyone who worked for Santos (for us, as I kept reminding myself) had to make that sacrifice. There was no way we could do what we do, or be what we are, otherwise. He had to know that his workforce was 100% committed to us. I suppose it mostly came down to a sound judgement of character. Either way they’ve all been exemplary: reliable, loyal, discreet - at least in my experience. I like to think they get something out of it too though. Training month has always been worth sticking around for, that much I do know. Just to watch their faces when they’re briefed on the history and structure of the organization they’ve given up their lives to join. 

The woman gave me a key and an envelope which contained new banknotes, without saying a word. On it was written the address of my lodgings. I could sense her curiosity, kept in check by her consummate professionalism. I realized at that point that everyone there must have been briefed on my return.

I thanked her and left.

And that was when I first became aware of it, the urgency in my stride and the disorientating newness of the world around me.

I took the tube as far as Kings Cross. I wanted to see how one of our old hunting grounds had changed over the years, and I felt claustrophobic being underground. Always preferred the friendly skies. So I wandered around the old streets, getting carried away with the warm flushes of remembrance and familiarity. Before long I arrived by the river.

They played out around me in glorious technicolour, the idiosyncrasies of heartland London. Scenes from the new order disclosed sudden glimpses of my old life. And how I, we, had seen this place change. It did not seem long ago it was part of an unbroken planet surface, a vast sentient organism of glorious design stretching around the ‘sphere.

I was snapped out of my internal landscape by a flash, a pulse in my peripheral vision as I passed an alleyway. I caught a sudden glimpse, an outline, of a human body as it dropped to the ground, momentarily ignited from the inside. It was some kind of phosphorosodium bullet, fired from close range as I had seen no tracer defining it’s path, flaring white hot as it passed through his chest cavity. I could see two hundred thousand nerve endings light up at once, aglow with pain. The silence and darkness returned instantly, and yet the impression of some brutal event hung in the air like the smell of ozone after lightning. Then the streets closed in again, resuming their timeless chatter and thrum. Some things never change I guess, like these silly bastards killing each other still.

As I hailed a cab I realized that I was shaking softly, a delicate tremble of shock vibrating through my body. What it is about witnessing death? The snuffing out of life. Is it that death precipitates a kind of enforced reflection, a coercion to consider the nature of mortality. It seems as though we remember it. Its’ presence overwhelms the filter which usually keeps such memories buried deep in our unconscious, and we are re-minded of something which renders all other knowledge absolutely irrelevant and meaningless in that moment.

I was unsure about my place in all this. What had changed while I had been gone? Again, this doubt that was entirely new to me. Having not known death for so long, and then…well, all that is to come. In the meantime this was all I had to go on. A call, a summons. This mortal city and the curious breed who inhabit its neverending streets. The air that tastes of no other air, the centuries of crime and passion, longing and brutality which seep from its old brickwork and spectral architectures like unhealed sores.

We would all die again, this much I knew.

The cab wound up through the Holloway road, shuttered up and smattered with graffiti, the century-old patiner of grime and piss and spittle and blood, buildings grown old together like a breadline of weathered old ex-serviceman content to chew the cud into the night, oblivious to time and the inexorable activity of the ant-colony lives below. Up past the Archway and Highgate where I jumped out at an all-night cafe on the High Road. I realized I hadn’t eaten all day and I was giddy with hunger. I bought a sandwich, had them wrap it, and then began walking the last stretch to the address scribbled on my envelope. 

I knew I was putting off Santos and the whole entourage that would come with him. But he’s good like that, and he knows me too well, saying he would wait for my call. He knew what I went through and why I had to leave. In truth I don’t know who’s more surprised that I came back, he or I. I knew that it would be difficult, having made such an effort to forget it all. There is something pleasurepainful about returning to those you love, a discreet pressure bearing down from the past which forces you to examine too carefully the little differences, the nuances of change, that time and circumstance have exacted.

The flat was small and warm, as if actually built with human comfort in mind. I made some chinese tea, the only thing I could find in the kitchen, and sat out on the upstairs balcony, wrapped in a fleece and a woolly hat with earflaps I found under the stairs. The tea was hot and refreshing at once and by the time I had finished it I’d started to unwind for the first time, as the city receded and the stars came out.

I would contact Santos in the morning. All I knew at this stage was that Escobar was in trouble. This was par for the course. What concerned me however was that Santos had never had cause to have to bail him out, let alone call for myself and ‘Rider. However this time he was working for Santos and was obviously in serious danger. He was one of the crew - anyone who knows what that means will understand. I would go see them all tomorrow, catch up on a few missed years and get back to work. Easy as a summer sunday morning.

I climbed into bed, the cool comfort of moonglow like a pearlesque skein across the sheet. As I lay there memories returned to me as they had not done for many years. Before long I found myself watching a vision of an ancient time, a time that had become buried under so many years of kaleidoscopic change it had almost ceased to exist…

I remember when we were young, we would always hunt in packs.

Shape-shifters, damage innovators.

I remember how we used to glide. The calm and composure before the pace, the quickening and bloodflow - the bliss of gliding high above the planet surface. Of course all this was before the Changing, but it still makes my skin crawl thinking back to it.

And then she arrived. Straight girl, original. No implants, no silicone flicker or digital augmentation. She just walked in to Helsinki’s bar, deep within the virtual boundaries of the Noosphere, looking like one of us as she stood in the doorway. We’d always known that only us Red Landers were capable of travelling here under our own steam. We used a plant extract, which we made into tea, or simply chewed to a pulp and then swallowed, which allowed us to shift shape and traverse time-space. We called it soma. Humans had recently discovered the plant and had synthesized a crude derivative, which they called Dust or Exit Dust. It coincided with sudden advances in biotechnology and artificial intelligence hardware which, when combined with the Dust, enabled them to access a domain which had previously been unfathomable to them, and sacred to us. The only problem was, they had no way of getting back. It was like the first Apollo mission reaching the moon…only to discover they were stranded. Although they soon stopped trying little would remain the same afterwards. It was perhaps a precursor to the Changing. The start of an evolutionary shift which would cause us to become inextricably linked. But more of that later, for that part of the story needs to be told by an Elder. And anyway, Santos knows far more of it than I.   

What was certain that night was that this newcomer was not human.

We looked at each other, her and I. Some liminal recognition bound us so strongly to that moment, to the sight of this stranger in front of us, that we were momentarily paralysed. As we searched each other with nervous regard - examining scent, body language, expression, beauty - for what seemed like an age it felt as though I was watching a recurring figure from a dream older than this shadow-world itself. Which was not far from the truth.

I don’t think anyone there that night knew whether we were going to fight or fuck. I was enraged and captivated all at once. I wanted nothing but her, and yet I wanted tear us both from existence, to take us both beyond life in that instant, never to return. Anything to remove myself from her gaze.

Anyway, this one, Miette, turned out to be all soft, carefully-chosen words and swimming green eyes. She was an impossibility, a travesty, as she walked into our lives one day between pool shots and iced coffees, as she sat down next to a transfixed Escobar and began.

She told us where she was from, deep within the Red Lands. About how she had fled with her family during the final monsoon, when the full-blooded rains washed everything away and we lost most of our people in one night. We talked of D’Baser in hushed tones of reverance (because we were young, mistaking respect for fear). We never spoke of him between ourselves because noone dared mention his name. We discussed shared acquaintances and old characters, fables and legends from the days, reveling in the pure joy which comes from such reminiscences.

At the time I felt as though I’d been reunited with something which had once been a part of my own being. Something I had not missed because I had no idea it existed. But now it was back, it was as though some light only visible to us was now illuminating a world of perfect design. It lit our way, its’ warmth allowing us to slowly dissolve back into each other, just as we’d been once before. I felt then that there must be a greater design to my life, and to all our lives. It suggested there was an ordering of future process that moved inevitably toward perfection and completeness.

I had fallen in love, the world would be the same no more.

That whole night her iris’ seemed to revolve gently, framing her dilated pupils in a kaleidoscopic whorl. They were comprised of varying hues of green and purple, like fractals originating at some omega point behind her eyes. At one point I tilted my head back and looked to the heavens. High above the surface of the Noosphere shimmered the huge rotating halos of unworldly light that monitored (some believed maintained) the quasi-planet below, eliciting a similar soft hypnosis themselves.

And as suddenly as she arrived she was gone, leaving us to our silence, our tired eyes and the fugue of stale smoke.

Miette was found dead exactly 9 months later, to the day, in a remote part of the Noosphere. We knew instantly: it was Maeni Festow, one of D’Baser’s crew, symbolised in our folklore as an invisible warrior born from the dark matter of the cosmos. I remember Santos telling us how something like this had been foretold in the scriptures, and how this was not just a personal tragedy for me, but also a bad omen of what was to come. All I heard was a noise of pain and shock though, like the whitewash static of an untuned television.  

I did not see her die, but when I saw the scene I felt as though I had. I could see her holding out. She was hard as nails, that much I knew. I saw her fight, her will to resist  burning like a flaming torch being dowsed with water over and over again. I felt her lifeforce fading away in waves of slow, painful expiry. The scene suggested an exhaustive and brutal tirade of violence, objects animate and inanimate discarded indiscriminately, empty phials littered about the bloodletting and sterilised chrome. They had found a way to terminate one of us, something which had never been achieved before. It would have had to have been diabolical, born only of evil. Such is the invention, and indeed the nature, of D’Baser.

I awoke the next day cold and empty. I felt no pain, or hatred; no guilt or despair. That all came later, once I’d left. I felt only that my life had also come to an end. That everything had ceased. The only problem was that I was somehow, inexplicably still alive. I knew nothing other than a numb desire to leave, to walk away and keep on walking. Now I know that I was simply afraid, that I was unable to face what was to come. If I had stayed I would never have been able to control the rage, and would have sought a revenge that would have left stains indellible on my heart forever.

It is all this that I bring back with me, and that I return to. I think I knew deep down that I would eventually return to what is after all my life, my destiny - to confront it all again. For I have a loss, the debt of which remains outstanding. And I understand now that it is time to call it in.

I retraced my steps from the tube station, and arrived at the offices on Great Russell Street at 10.50am. The same perfunctory woman was there to greet me, this time to point me in the direction of a corridor behind her. Before long I was face to face with two well-dressed and better-built men. Behind them was a chromed door. One of them looked at me as if assessing a drunk who had wandered into the building by mistake, and then nodded to the other. Simultaneously the door opened and the titans parted to allow passage.

I arrived to find consummate 'balagan' unfolding. 'Balagan' has always been one of Santos' favourite words and means, from what I can glean, chaos. It is usually used in the context of 'crisis' or 'near-breakdown'. Judging by the tension in the room I favoured the latter in this case. There were five people sitting around a table, one of whom was Santos, the rest I had never seen before. No one had noticed me enter. They were too busy focusing upon a cannibalised radio of some sort, around which everyone present had crowded. It was spewing forth an outpouring of garbled static and speech which, following a brief pause conducted the room into a synchronized state of furious activity. Evidently this was what they’d been waiting for. I took a seat and waited for the state of emergency to notch down a few levels.

In the middle of it all I could make out Santos, sitting there all passive and still like a tall rangy Bodhisattva. He was good at filtering out any emotion or unease that might prevent him from simply absorbing information during times like this. He was not in a hurry. He never was. I could see him waiting; throughout the loss of connection with whoever or whatever was at the other end of the radio signal. He didn't move a muscle. In that instant I didn't know whether I should walk straight back out of there alone or grab my man and take him with me. Either way, before I could make up my mind it was decided for me as the unmistakable tones of Escobar emerged from the white noise:

    "Where the fuck you been, man.....?" and true to form he managed to sound like Santos had kept him waiting on lunch. Judging by the mood of the gathering here today, not to mention the generalized state of concern that had evolved of late, I guessed that in fact he was most likely up a creek without a paddle. Or even a canoe.

"Where are those bums....I'm running out of time in here....I can't ....." and then he faded back into the endless light years of interference and static that separated us. This was the point at which I felt it for the first time, that queer crawling in your balls, the perfect litmus test for alarm.

Here was our man Escobar, the nine-lifed, walk-before-he-crawled lodestar; who knew all the loopholes in time and space, all the little feints and warning signs and shortcuts. He'd got me out of situations in which I was already half way through praying for a quick death. And he was transmitting an open frequency, clearly desperate and counting the…days, hours? Who knew. All was not well though, that was certain.

"We've got him back.”

Santos leant in to the microphone in front of him, looking pallid and drawn in the sterilised whitewash of the basement lighting.

"Escobar, they're ready to run. The 'Boy is back in town. We're picking up 'Rider tomorrow morning, cavalry will be with you by tomorrow. We have some business to take care of first by way of an Outlaw who may be host to our virus. But listen: they’re holding off for good reason. If not you’d no longer be with us. So just hold tight, we'll be with you soon."

Then he switched the radio off and turned and looked at me, and the room disappeared except for his enigmatic face. Here we were looking at each other for the first time in a long time and I read the events of those years in his eyes, in that moment, before remembering nothing more as his face faded to black.

I awoke to Sofia, Santos' immeasurably more beautiful half, sat close and looking both calm and quizzical. This was not such an unusual scenario back in the day. I was curled up on a huge, deliquescent sofa that threatened to engulf me should I move too quickly. Sofia motioned for me to stay put, and passed me over a cup of green tea. Before I could voice my question she had begun answering it:

"Reacclimatisation sickness. We gave up trying to locate you Jimmy, but I’m glad the message got to you. We knew it was just a matter of time but I’d be lying if a said we weren’t getting a little desperate. Wherever you came from, it always takes its toll. You've had a lot on your mind since being back and today was just the straw that broke the camels back." She smiled, a sly wriggle of her lips and a softening of her eyes. I sipped my tea which was too hot. We looked at each other for a while.

"Well, that would explain it. And Escobar? What's all that about?"

"In good time. I think that's for your boss to disclose."

"We haven't done this for a while, have we?" 

"No, we haven’t. It's good to see you again Jimmy." I could see she wanted to talk about it, could see a similar kind of pain reflected in her eyes. And I thought I might for a second, but instead I picked up my tea and looked away, not wanting to go over that old ground which was my personal Paschendaele. I felt awkward for a while, maybe because I didn’t want to hide anything from this angel who had been a part of my life for so very long. But when my eyes fell on her again she had that unruffled, peaceful, look on her face that I knew so well. 

"Did he tell you I was coming back?"

"He told me. He just didn’t tell me when. The first I knew of an E.T.A. was when my dearest husband burst through the door carrying the prodigal son in his arms, put you down on the sofa, asked me to make some green tea and keep watch, and then promptly departed muttering his usual mantras about life and death and saving the unsalvageable.

Truth is we’re all glad you’re back Boy. This one is a strictly family affair, and you know how that goes. Rider’s been busy doing…well, whatever it is he does,” she said with a subtext of bewilderment I was used to hearing from anyone talking about Joyrider. “Santos has his hands full running everything…if the circle isn’t complete, the parts go about their own business., and before you know it…oh, a couple of years have passed.”

"What can I say," I said, shrugging my shoulders, "It’s a matter of duty maam...one of our boys has been caught with his pants down and by Jesus I have to make sure no one gets a clear sight of his sorry white ass." She broke into laughter, covering her mouth with her long fingers, as if somehow embaressed to have been caught off guard.

"Listen, we have a lot to..." she tailed off as I nodded, bringing our sudden, unexpected reunion to a close. "He said to go up when you'd come round. I'll show you," and with that she leant over and I took her hand, she pulled me up and we stood regarding each other, with pride, and I remember thinking how blood flows thicker than water. Then she opened the door and nodded her goodbye.

"I'll see you when you get back Jimmy. Be safe, and bring him back in one piece." She looked a little sad in the dim glow of suburban light, and I could tell that she didn't want my return to be followed so soon by more heartache. We’d had our fill of that.

"You're not coming with?"

She tilted her head, and looked at me as if giving her consent.

"It's been a long time. You two have some catching up to do."

A lot went through my head on that short drive. It was one of those incongruous winter days that are cold, when everything is far too bright, and the sun seems so many lights years away it makes your head swim.

I thought about what I had given up on during the last few years, the gradual turning away from the world. After all what else drives us but longing? That persistant grieving for what we wish we had, or once had and lost. The needling of unfulfilled desire. The light flashed in bright barbs and fading skeins across the glass, the radio lilting and slurring in agreement with my thoughts, like a drunken accomplice. Just a sequence of random impressions on an inscrutable winters day that somehow allowed a glimpse of the potential and enormity of this world and this life and these lives that I find myself a part of again.

I thought I remembered the cafe. I could make out a faded scene, like an old black-and-white photo, and when I closed my eyes it came easily, and began to clarify. Then I realised the definition was coming from another image, superimposed, and the cafe disappeared. I could see a young boy, at the edge of the desert. He was painfully thin, and had a sarong wrapped around him. His eyes were emerald green, and they belied a malevolence, a mischief that made me think of a kid from the streets. In those eyes I could see another image, and instantly it began to dilate and come into focus. It was someone in a clearing, kneeling, with their arms out. I felt a pang of nausea, of unease, and a familiar taste, something cold and metallic -

"You look like you could use some rest." Santos sat down opposite me, sliding a steaming cup of coffee over as I opened my eyes.

"No, I’m okay. It's strange to be back, you know." I looked at him looking back at me, older, more rueful.

"Well, I don't know. I can imagine, but I don’t know. I'm glad you came though Jimmy. It was getting lonely without you." He smiled, and I smiled back.

"Well, my brother, what do I need to tell you?  I don't know. I know you know some of it… you always could read that stuff. And I think at some unconscious level that's why we lost you for a few minutes back there. Your tiny little mind felt it might be more merciful to shut itself down than pass the data upstairs." His face shifted quickly, and he dropped his eyes momentarily. "Well, " he stretched this out sounding like William Burroughs, "it's not pretty."

This is the moment I had been waiting for since the phone call, and I could taste the anticipation around my tongue, like copper or blood. Santos took a mouthful of coffee, set it down, positioning it symmetrically over the chequered tabletop, and resumed:

"We’d received some information about abnormal activity in a future timeframe, which turned out to be year 2202. Word was that D'Baser was back on duty. So I sent Monty in. He discovered that a man by the name of Dr. Burrowes was busy isolating new compounds from Soma. It seems as though his motive was to create an antidote to a lethal and highly contagious virus, a virus which was threatening the survival of mankind. The Doctor was working with a team of specialised pharmacologists at a massive research complex , called the Dharmacy. He had set it up decades earlier in the belief that the role of artificial and organic psychoactives in furthering the evolution of the human race should be absolutely protagonistic.”

"Hence the D'Baser connection, right?"

"Exactly. Never content to let things take their natural course. Anyway, in Monty’s final report he sent back something that threw us all. One file: a picture from one of the automated maintenance satellites that monitor weather patterns. I’ll show it to you in the car. It’s something you have to see first hand. We now understand that they were probably onto Monty the whole time. But as soon as he sent that last report…that’s what got him killed." He let the last words hang, fairly sure I'd understood the fact when our eyes met back in the office. And I had, but hearing it vocalised brought the sharp ferocity of the pain to bear, like a slap to the face. I let my head rest against the window, and closed my eyes a while.

I could see in the way he was looking at me when I opened them again that a lot rested with me now. And at that moment I felt a kind of peace with it. That I would be instrumental. That it was my destiny.

“So I decided to send Escobar in. It was familiar territory, and I knew he was itching to get back there. Then within a few days I got a call from Romeos brother.” He smiled as I raised my eyebrows, the tiredness lifting momentarily from his demeanor.

“You still in contact with the old boy? Damn, I didn’t think I’d ever hear that name again. What was his brother’s name…Carlo, right?”

“Yes, one and the same. I was surprised too. Told me his brother had had a run-in with a fellow of dubious provenance…if you follow me.”

“The Outlaw I presume.”

“The Outlaw. Possibly carrying the same virus which threatened the extinction of the human race in timeframe 2202. I’m sure you can imagine what would happen if that virus got to work now. Worse that Lassa, Ebola, Crimean Hemmarraghic Fever…perhaps no more unpleasant, but a survival rate of less that 1%. It would mean the probable end of the human race long before they are supposed to become extinct. That kind of messing with the lifepool…outside of the Time Spiral anyway…it’d be cataclysmic. You know how it works Jimmy: individual beings or cohorts changing timeframes does not represent enough of a disturbance to interfere with the natural order. But a virus traveling back in time that causes an entire species, however many billion of them there are….” he sat back, opening his hands to the ceiling, shaking his head gently.

“That was when I knew you had to come back Jimmy. We have to get Escobar out, because I don’t want to lose anyone else, and because he probably has some pretty damn important answers. And we have to get to this Outlaw. I believe you might have a personal interest in ending this too. None of us has tried to forget, Jimmy. As soon as we can get to D’Baser, we will. The rest is up to you. ”  

I cast a look up at the counter, where the lights lilted and slurred off the marbled surface. There was now a coolness inside the cafe now. Someone had opened a window, bringing the scent of rain and dirty streets.

“Okay, well let’s go and see the cause of all this fuss then.” I motioned to the door.   

I couldn’t shake the image from my mind as I went to sleep that night. It seemed to replay itself over and over. It was a view of the planet, an oasis in the bleak void of space, suddenly blurring and disintegrating all at once, like an orb of ice shattering from within.