Chapter 6: Fiddler's Green
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6.1
El Guapo approaches the end of the Spectrum Nexus, the colors ahead beginning to narrow and concentrate into something like a tunnel.
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"How's Ozzy doing?" Juan asks.
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"Passed out in the back," Alice says. "He says he's sitting this one out."
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Juan laughs. "You see, mija, I've been telling Ozzy he needs to train more. He's out of shape because all he does is sit around and play video games all day. I keep telling him he's going to turn into a gordito someday."
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Alice starts laughing. "I'm trying to imagine him fat now. Like, is he going to have to replace his scabbard with a golf bag or something?"
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Juan nearly loses it. "That's a good one, mija. Make sure you tell him that."
"Ozzy is such a gamer. And he has a bad mouth like one, too."
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"You're telling me. I almost regret introducing him to online matches," Juan says. "But the games aren't all bad. They taught him fine motor skills. You have no idea how many broken controllers and keyboards I went through with him."
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"Trust me, I know. Ozzy is such a sore loser."
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El Guapo clears the end of the Spectrum Nexus. The portal closes behind them and space returns to its normal, quiet black.
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Juan looks at the flower still in his hand. Its color is already fading, slowly draining out of the petals until they crumble into glitter and wisps of smoke.
He reaches up and presses a hand to his chest, trying to feel whether Metairie's golden thorns are still there. He isn't sure.
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Alice and Juan look out the window. Nothing around them but empty space and distant stars.
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"Wilbur, where are we?" Juan asks.
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"Unsure at the moment, Captain. We entered the breach point without active breach rings to stabilize the frequency. We could be anywhere."
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"Wilbur," Alice says, "let's scan for any signs of life." She glances at Juan. "Good thing none of us actually need food."
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"True," Juan says. "I still get cravings though." He rubs his belly. "Man, I could really go for a quesabirria or a Hawaiian poke bowl right about now."
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After hearing Juan talk about food, Alice wonders how that works with his hollow body. It's way too weird. She shakes her head and moves on.
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They begin scanning. Juan turns something over in his mind, then decides to ask. "Wilbur, have you heard anything about the First and Last Dream?"
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Alice notices Juan's odd question. She eavesdrops while she searches out the window.
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"Negative, Captain. Are you having sleep issues?"
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"What about the Lonely Dream?"
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"Negative, Captain. Are you having relationship issues?"
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Alice smirks at Juan.
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Juan glares at Wilbur's avatar. "Listen, murciélaguito, I happen to know that I operate well with the fairer sex."
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"Aye aye, Captain!"
Juan grins with confidence. Alice raises an eyebrow.
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Wilbur continues. "When I locate a sex change facility, I can schedule an operation for you."
Alice erupts in laughter.
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"NO! NO! You will not! That's a direct order!"
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Alice's orb falls onto the couch, giving her projection the look of collapsing into laughter.
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"Aye aye, Captain! You have so many strange requests. You may still be in shock from our last ordeal. Perhaps I can search for counseling or therapy services in the area?"
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Juan looks sideways at Alice.
Alice's projection sits up and holds both hands in the air, barely composing herself. "I didn't teach him any of this."
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Juan shakes his head slowly. "Wilbur, one last question. What about Tala? You heard about that?"
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"Aye aye, Captain. I can tell you about tala." Wilbur's voice brightens helpfully. "Tala is the primary currency used within the United Galactic Alliance, although some Sovereign sy—"
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Juan waves his hand. "Thank you, Wilbur. That's enough." He stares at the void outside. "Not really the answer I was looking for."
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Alice looks at him carefully. "Is everything okay? You're asking for a lot of weird stuff."
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"Yeah. I'm fine. Seems like the universe won't give me easy answers."
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"Something's different." She points toward his chest. "It's quiet in there now. What's going on, Juan?"
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Juan sits with that for a moment. He thinks about Metairie's words, and about how hard it has always been for him to keep his friends alive. He looks at Alice.
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"Look, mija. I carry a lot of weight. I'm just not sure how to handle it yet." He pauses. "The last friend I shared all of it with, it got her killed. She was the one who made you."
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Alice goes still. She had thought most of the secrets were out, but she is beginning to understand that she has barely seen the surface of how deep this goes.
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Wilbur interrupts. "Captain, I'm detecting a flashing light. Growing larger. Like a star, approaching fast."
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Juan and Alice look up through the windshield. A light is building in the distance, coming straight at them, growing fast.
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Alice's voice jumps. "That's impossible! There's no way she should be here this fast!"
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"Wilbur, we gotta go!"
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"Aye aye, Captain!"
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The light swallows the windshield. Juan and Alice throw themselves down. The van shakes, but there is no heat. No impact. They look up.
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A massive space freight train is passing overhead, car after car after car rolling by in a long slow chain, cargo containers the size of city blocks drifting through the dark above them. They watch it pass. Then they look at each other and start laughing. Nervously.
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Wilbur's voice comes through, measured and sincere. "Captain and Queen Alice, are you certain you don't require therapy for PTSD?"
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6.2
The freight train finishes passing. Alice watches the last of it clear the windshield.
"Wilbur, turn us around and follow that ship."
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"Aye aye, Queen Alice. Though I should note, I doubt you'd find a therapist on a freightliner."
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Alice's expression goes flat. She looks at Juan. His arms are folded, and he is doing everything he can to hold back laughter. She puts her hands on her hips and accepts her loss with as much dignity as the situation allows.
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El Guapo completes a full one-eighty. And there, right in front of them, enormous and blazing with lights, is a massive billboard sign with alien script and a large arrow.
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Juan and Alice turn to look at each other. Both of them wear the exact same expression: dumbfounded and irate.
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"Wilbur," Alice says slowly, "I told you to look for signs of life."
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"That's affirmative, Queen Alice. If you're referring to this sign, it's quite obviously not alive."
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The frustration on Alice's face reaches new heights.
Juan collapses back into the rear Captain's chair, laughing freely now, nothing left to hold back.
Alice turns and walks away.
"I've created a little monster."
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When Juan finally composes himself, he looks more carefully at the sign. There is a picture on it, a sleek android woman rendered in a style he finds oddly familiar, like something from an 80s anime. The alien text surrounds her, and a large arrow points off in the direction behind the billboard.
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Alice drifts back over, still working on her composure.
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"Alice," Juan says, "does that look familiar to you?"
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In the six months they'd spent drifting toward the asteroid belt, she had filled her processing time with anime, manga, and Korean soap operas, all of it absorbed and catalogued with the focused devotion of a recent convert.
"Yeah." She studies the image. "Reminds me of a Dezaki film."
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Juan laughs. "I knew it. You're an otaku now."
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"That's rich coming from a knock-off of Gene Starwind and Vampire Hunter D."
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"So based on that comparison, you agree that I'm popular with the ladies?"
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Alice rolls her eyes.
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Juan squints at the alien text along the bottom of the sign. "Wilbur, can you read this?"
"Yes, Captain."
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They wait.
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Still waiting.
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Wilbur seems very comfortable with the silence.
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Alice begins tapping her foot.
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Juan puts his hand over his face. "Alice. We gotta remember to be more specific with our little murciélaguito."
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"Yeah," she says, watching Wilbur's screen. "I'm starting to see that. Wilbur, can you translate the sign and read it back to us, please?"
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"Aye aye, Queen Alice." A brief pause. "It reads: One thousand klicks this way! Fiddler's Green. Drinks, food, supplies, and the cleanest restrooms in the whole sector."
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Juan leans back. "I did not expect a galactic truck stop." He looks at the arrow. "Wilbur, take us to Fiddler's Green."
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"Aye aye, Captain."
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"I wonder what we'll find there," Alice says.
El Guapo pushes forward.
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Ahead, a large purple gas giant dominates the view, deep violet swirling with darker cloud bands. They are heading for one of its moons.
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As they draw closer, the space around them changes. The van begins moving through debris, first scattered pieces, then more, then dense enough to navigate carefully around. It looks like a graveyard.
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Massive ships and fighters drift in slow silence, some with the unmistakable geometry of battle damage, others stripped down to bare frames. And amongst all of it, drifting between the wreckage, are thousands of mummified bodies, still suited, still strapped in, still holding whatever positions they'd been in when the battle ended.
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"Wilbur," Juan says quietly, "this looks like a battlefield. Do you know what happened here?"
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"I cannot say for certain, Captain. But these ships look ancient. My best estimate is that this is a remnant of the Great Galactic War, most of which was fought in the regions we now call the Grey Zones."
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"How long ago was the Great War?" Alice asks.
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"Translating to comparable units, approximately one hundred thousand years ago."
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6.3
El Guapo picks its way through the ancient battlefield with care, threading between hulls the size of city blocks. Juan and Alice watch in silence. The mummified dead drift past the windshield without ceremony.
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Looking at all this forgotten, ancient past triggers something deep in Alice. She sees two mummified corpses holding each other in one last embrace. The sight opens a wound she didn't know she had, a connection she wants to know more about.
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Alice breaks the quiet. "Juan, can you tell me more about my creator? What kind of person was she?"
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Juan lets the question sit for a moment before answering. "Her name was Zhara." He keeps his eyes on the floor. His voice is even, but his mind is somewhere else entirely. "She was the smartest, kindest soul I ever knew."
A soft smile. "I remember the time she tried to teach me how to surf. I was terrible at it." He pauses. Alice catches the gleam of a tear at the corner of his eye before he turns away. "She was a lot like you. You could say she was like your mother."
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He walks toward the back of the cabin to compose himself.
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Alice watches him go. She doesn't push further.
She turns back to the windshield. The moon is close now, its atmosphere beginning to blur the edges of the debris field. The van starts to cut through the upper atmosphere, lavender-colored, thin, cold, and the terrain below resolves into something sprawling and industrial.
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"Juan, we're almost there." She looks back at Wilbur's screen. "Wilbur, is the atmosphere safe for us?"
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"Habitable atmospheric conditions tend to be stable and consistent for most species in accordance with UGA guidelines."
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Juan returns, settled, composed. "Good to know." He leans forward, studying the approaching landscape. "Wilbur, do human-looking people exist in the UGA?"
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"Yes, Captain. Humans fall within the Zumei classification, which is one of the four main genetic family trees."
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"What are the other three?" Alice asks.
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"Saurons, Beastfolk, and Abyssals."
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"Interesting."
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Below them, a massive complex comes into view, industrial in scale but ancient in origin, a strange layering of the highly advanced over the deeply old. At its center stands something that looks unmistakably like an Aztec pyramid, its lines worn and rusted with age.
Around it, distributed in careful spacing across the landscape, are dome-shaped earthen structures, dozens of them, each set apart from the others at precise intervals.
Everything is bathed in an eerie purple light from the gas giant this moon orbits.
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Juan straightens up. "Alice, you see those igloo-shaped structures?"
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Alice looks. "Yeah, there are a lot of them."
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"Those are high-explosive weapons magazines. See how they're spaced out? If one detonates, it won't set off the others." He watches as the van descends further. "Looks like they've been converted into homes."
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"I have a memory of growing up somewhere like this," Wilbur says from his screen. "It was full of useful scraps."
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Alice blinks. "You grew up on a moon base?"
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"Yes. These kinds of places are common in the Fringes."
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Juan spots the freightliner off to one side, parked behind a large isolated building, cargo being unloaded at the rear. Out front is an array of ships in varying states of repair, parked at all angles around what appears to be a main entrance. A large neon sign glows above the doors, dancing android figures, bright and unmistakable.
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"Wilbur, park us near there."
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"Aye aye, Captain."
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-------To Be Continued
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and then Add to home screen.