I return

Now that everyone has forgotten I ever had a blog here, I can blog here again. I’m just using it as a private public journal. In other words, I’m not going to drive people to it, but I’m not going to care if people stumble upon it either.Wanna read a chapter to my novel? You do? Neat.

* * *

THE NIGHT THEY MET

NeoTerra Time – 13:24 PM

“No way did he actually say that,” said Cain. “Card 3.”

Golgato flipped card 3 over, revealing the 5 of hearts. Cain’s lips twitches with what Golgato knew to be dissatisfaction. “If I counted anything as holy I’d swear upon it.”

“I don’t see why it’s so hard to believe,” said Keri. “It’s not like he’s Empira’s galactically renowned for his humbleness. Card 2.”

Golgato flipped card 2 over. Ace of clubs. Keri’s eyes flashed for a split second. It was a card she wanted. “I guess I’m stuck with Card 1,” he said, flipping it over to reveal the 4 of clubs. The 4 of diamonds and the 4 of hearts were already in his hand. Three of a kind, he thought. Cain obviously had nothing and Keri likely only sitting on a pair of aces.

“Fold,” said Cain, setting his cards face down on the table.

“Raise 50 creds,” said Keri, tossing two 25 credit chips into the pot.

“Call,” said Golgato. He didn’t raise the pot any further. He liked to play conservatively when he had good hands so that he could bluff his way to victory with truly terrible ones.

“Still,” said Cain, “The greatest human treasure should belong to the greatest human being. Come on. I can’t imagine anyone being arrogant enough to say that with a straight face.”

“He said it with supreme confidence,” said Golgato, showing his hand. “Three fours.”

Keri showed her hand. “Pair,” she said with a scowl. “Aces.”

Golgato took the pot. He was up 800 creds. “He’s not really so egotistical, you know,” said Golgato. “He wants me to think he is, so that I’ll underestimate him. He wants the diamond for one clear cut reason: to undermine confidence in the Sradkur. Can you imagine the vitriol SMI will face in the wake of losing humankind’s most prized artifact?”

“Makes me a little sick to even be part of stealing it,” admitted Cain. “I mean, I know that SMI has no true claim to it and that it’s just as important whether it’s in the hands of Sradkur Mediations Inc. or in the hands of The Empira Corporation but… .”

“I don’t understand why it’s important at all,” said Golgato. “It’s certainly a rare treasure, but I really don’t understand the sentimental value that humans place on it.”

Tom, who had been watching the game unnoticed for quite some time chimed in: “So, you’d have no emotional attachment whatsoever to a diamond compressed from the remains of Felinia?”

Golgato began shuffling the deck once again. “Honestly? I’d find such a thing morbid.” He dealt four cards to every player and placed three cards at the center of the table.

“It’s not morbid to remember the past,” said Cain, putting 50 credits into the pot.

“Call,” said Keri, “and raise another 10.”

“Call,” said Golgato. “It’s morbid to live more in the past than in the present. It’s morbid to dwell on tragedies that have past to the exclusion of all happiness that may come.”

“Isn’t that kind of what we’re all doing?” said Tom. “Ultimately? Isn’t that the whole of our mission? To avenge those who died unjustly at the hands of those in power? If you’re truly as unsentimental as you proclaim to be, then what motivates you to seek retribution for your people?”

“Card 1” said Cain.

It was the Jack of hearts. Golgato forget to check his expression to see if it was something Cain wanted.

“Card 2,” said Keri.

4 of clubs—she had no apparent interest in it.

“That leaves me with card 3,” said Golgato, flipping it over to reveal the 2 of hearts. “I don’t seek revenge.”

“Raise 100 credits,” said Cain.

“Fold,” said Keri.

“Call,” said Golgato. “And I’ll raise you 200.”

“Call,” said Cain. Golgato winced.

“Why do you do it then?” said Tom.

“For justice,” said Golgato, laying down his cards. He had nothing.

“Full house,” said Cain, snatching up the pot.

“Ah,” said Tom. “You were bluffing.”

NeoTerra Time – 2:11 AM

Golgato sat on the roof of a seafood restaurant that had closed several hours before, staring at the star facsimiles holographically projected onto the troposphere from the projector located atop Empira Tower, where Golgato had been only hours earlier. He reflected, without emotion, that hardly anyone paid attention to the stars that Thaddeus K. Empira had spent millions of credits to give to them. If not for that effort on Empira’s part, the light pollution would render the sky utterly barren.

“What sort of man are you, really?” Golgato asked the stars, reflecting on Empira’s words and recalling with his perfect memory every gesticulation and facial expression of the man who was largely agreed to be a distant second place for the most powerful man in the universe.

The greatest human treasure should belong to the greatest human being.

That was a charade, a veneer of egoism hiding something deeper and, Golgato suspected, darker. The question was, what was Empira’s true intention? Did he want to steal the diamond solely to erode confidence in the Sradkur? If so, why couldn’t Golgato find solace in the old human truism of, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend”?

“There’s more going on here,” he said. “I have to find out what. And I have to stop talking to myself.”

Why can’t I just enjoy the stars? He wondered. Maybe it’s because I know that they’re a lie.

He wondered then, if Sorrella was looking on the same stars. If so, he wondered if she had the same doubts about them, or if, perhaps, they became real when she looked at them.

“Ugh!” he shouted at himself. Stop being so damned irrational! Reality behaves by the same rules regardless of how some girl, no matter how infatuated you are with her, conducts herself. Music doesn’t exist only for her to dance to. Fake stars don’t become real just because she looks at them. That’s not the nature of the universe and you damn well know it. Quit behaving like a mystic or some flower-tossing poet—it’s deranged.

“Lecturing myself,” he whispered to the stars. They looked somehow amused by his internal plight. Did the vastness of stars always look so smug and mocking? If so, it was no wonder people of all races had always looked to them as potential conquests, great obstacles begging to be overcome by anyone with the fortitude to take them on.

He stood up and jumped down from his rooftop vantage point, landing gracefully in the nearby ally, frightening a cat away into the night.

NeoTerra Time – 2:15 AM - 4:34 AM

He wondered the streets for a long time, taking in the sights, sounds and, perhaps unfortunately, smells of the city. In Spatter City it was all screams of terror, anger or lust—sometimes all at once and all issuing from the same throat. The stenches were unpleasant, but the thickness of them somehow made his feel blanketed and safe.

With startling rapidity, Spatter City gave way to the business district and the entire atmosphere changed. The pungent odors were replaces by crisp, chemical smells. They were vaguely dizzying. It was eerily silent, save for the occasional late-working businessman or woman diligently buzzing about the streets on their way to or from work.

When the business district finally gave way, gradually, to The River District, Golgato was happy for the change. Although most were still asleep, the river district was rich with smells every bit as potent as those found in Spatter City, and orders of magnitude more pleasant. He saw a few early morning joggers and people walking their various exotic pets.

He hadn’t know where his feet were taking him until he was there, standing in front of Sorrella’s apartment building. It appeared to be a single story on the outside, but was actually using a number of spatial compactors to cram thousands of square feet into a seemingly tiny building no greater in size than a transcar mechanic’s shop.

Such technology was, while statistically not posing more of a risk than any other type dwelling, considered dangerous by many. Spatial compression technology for living spaces had a tendency to ‘misplace’ rooms, damning their occupants to slow deaths from starvation. Such horrific fates (even though they were highly unlikely) seemed to deter all but the poorest and bravest from renting spatial compacts.

He stood at the entrance for a while. A transcar phased into being a little ways down the street and drunk girls staggered out into their apartments, howling with grating laughter. The hum of progenitor boxes releasing air-purifying nanos crept into his perception. Trash blew gently across the sidewalk with a slight scraping sound. He wished then that he could take off his hood and feel the breeze through his hair, but it was not possible. Not here. Not on this world.

He stared at the door, not seeing a door at all. It was a wall to him. It would never open.

And then it did.

And there she was.

NeoTerra Time –  4:35AM

“Hi,” she said.

He looked around, trying to find someone else she could be talking to. There was a familiarity in her tone that was entirely surreal, given the fact that he knew so much about her and she knew nothing at all about him.

“You’re Brian, right?”

“No,” said Golgato. “Sorry.”

“Oh,” she said, tilting her head to one side the way a confused puppy might. “So, what are you doing just standing out here?”

He shrugged. No good answers came to mind. Plus he was terrified that if he spoke his voice would crack with tension. He was thankful for the hood and hat mostly obstructing his face, because he was certain that it was flushed bright red. He could feel his pulse in his neck and his temples.

“You’re not planning to rob this place, are you?” she said, turning around and studying the apartment building. “There’s nothing worth stealing in there, I promise you.”

“No. I wasn’t going to rob it.”

“I didn’t think so. You don’t look like much of a thief.”

He giggled at that. The irony was too delicious.

“What’s funny?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said.

The ineptitude of his lies only seemed to intrigue her. “How can you not know what’s funny about something that you’re laughing about?”

Golgato shrugged and tried to escape, but for every step he took back, she took a step forward. The distance was actually closing—her stride was longer than his.

“It’s just complicated,” he told her.

“How complicated?”

“Very.”

“Ah.”

“You sure you’re not Brian?”

“Pretty sure.”

Sorrella sighed. “If you don’t like the way I look, that’s fine. Frankly, you’re too short for me and that hood is a little ratty for my tastes. That doesn’t mean we couldn’t go out. I mean, the plans were already made and if we didn’t like each other there’s no reason we’d ever see each other again—but you don’t like what you see right off the bat so you decide, ‘Well, she looks pretty dumb! I’ll just act like I’m not Brian and ditch her here. You know what? I’m glad you did that, because it lets me know right off the bat just how big of an ASSHOLE you are and that it’s not like I missed out on some diamond in the rough.”

“I-I’m really not Brian,” said Golgato.

“Really really?”

“Really.”

“Oh.”

Golgato stood there in stiff silence for a long time.

“I am extremely sorry for that tirade,” said Sorrella, looking as embarrassed as he felt. “I’m an idiot.”

“No!” said Golgato. “It’s okay. Just a mix-up. Um, isn’t it a little late to be starting a date?”

Sorrella sat down against her building and heaved a sigh. “We were going to The Pier.”

“The Pier?” asked Golgato.

She cast a suspicious eye on Golgato. “Not from around here?”

“Passing through,” said Golgato.

She nodded. “The Pier is a boardwalk near the Super Dome. Right in between the River District and the Business District. It’s only about 20 blocks from here. It opens at 5 AM and those who arrive first get the best deals. It’s usually a bunch of old people in the morning, but I’ve always liked deal-hunting myself. I don’t have a lot of money to spend on clothes or jewelry, but I like to try and look nice—or at least, I try to look like I’m not a flat-ass broke as I really am—so I go to The Pier. My friend, Hannah, told me that her friend Brian had insomnia traits installed in his CN’s and she set us up on a blind date and this is when Brian was supposed to be here to pick me up.”

“I see,” said Golgato.

“I’m Sorrella, by the way.”

“Go—” What the hell, Golgato! Let your guard down much? “—rin. Gorin Willis Scott. The Third.”

Sorrella raised an incredulous eyebrow. “Gorin Willis Scott III?”

“Yeah.” He said.

“You’re really and truly sure that you’re not Brian? Gorin Willis Scott III sounds like the most made-up name in the history of made-up names.”

“Well, my parents made it up, I suppose.”

Sorrella chuckled. “If Brian doesn’t show up,” said Sorrella with a small wink, “would you like to take me to The Pier if you’re not busy?”

No. Say no. This is a bad idea. No no no no no. “Sure.”

“Okay. Well, he’s already 5 minutes late, so let’s go.”

“Don’t you think you should wait for him a little longer?”

“Nope,” she said. “I’m pretty confidant he’s not coming.”

He could tell from her inflection that she was still pretty sure that he was Brian and was now making a conscious effort to punish Brian for his lies by placing him in awkward situations. Part of him was saying, What about the real Brian? What about my obligations? I need to keep a clear head. This is a bad idea. The rest of him—the part that didn’t think in words, but in tidal forces of feeling, impulse and need—was counting its lucky stars and following Sorrella’s lead.

NeoTerra Time –  5:02 AM

The only thing that made Golgato feel safe at The Pier was the fact that the Sradkur would never think of looking for him there. Even with the night still largely unbroken, vendors and their customers were crammed onto the boardwalk, haggling and heckling and perusing the wares. Golgato saw artless thieves manage to swipe trinkets here and there, relying more on the chaotic atmosphere than any real finesse—it was oddly perturbing. A real thief, he told himself, should be able to steal right before a vendors eyes in an empty store. None of these halfwits would have the skill to manage that. Just to prove it to himself, he swiped a few vials of intoxication curing nanos just as the merchant was looking at him. Then, to prove to himself that it wasn’t a fluke, he continued like that from booth to booth, swiping small trinkets at first and moving on to bigger and bigger things. Even wearing a hood to conceal his face, he wasn’t arousing suspicion. To any untrained eye, it would appear that he hardly glanced at any merchandise, let alone grabbed it.

“New hood, sir?” said a Merchant. “Your current one is looking a bit tattered.”

Golgato turned towards the man and looked at the new hooded sweatshirt he was holding in his hands. It was maroon and covered in black alchemical symbols. “No. That’s okay,” he said.

“You should get it,” said Sorrella. “It would look good on you. Or, better yet, you should get something that actually shows your face so that you didn’t look so dark and mysterious.” She said ‘dark and mysterious’ as though it were the punchline to a particularly clever joke.

“I’m fine with what I’ve got.”

“You don’t have much of a personality, you know.”

“I don’t?” Golgato had to think about that for a moment.

“Well, you’re just one of those people who never seems to say anything other than what’s absolutely necessary. Yeses, no’s and maybes. There must be something else going on in your head. It almost feels like I’m just here by myself.”

“Sorry.”

“I’m insulting you to your face,” said Sorrella. I just said I found you boring and without personality, and you’re only reaction is a quiet little sorry. I’m kind of at a loss. Are you pissed? Are you sad? Are you amused? Or are you really just completely aloof?”

“No hoody then, I suppose” said the Merchant, putting it back on the rack with a suppressed snigger.

“Hold on,” said Sorrella. “I’m getting a call.”

Golgato listened to the side of the conversation that he could hear.

“Hello? … What? But it said Jeremiah… . Middle name? … I’m really sorry. I didn’t know. I wound up going without you … I can’t believe that. I’m really, extremely sorry… . No. That’s okay… . Next time. Sure.” She hung up and looked at Golgato. “You really aren’t Brian!”

“I told you that,” he said.

“You were so unconvincing!”

“Okay,” said Golgato, unsure how to react to the statement beyond that.

“Look, I’m sorry for wasting your time. I’m gonna go. It’s been a weird morning and I don’t feel much like shopping anymore.”

“How about eating?”

“What?”

“I’m pretty hungry, and I smell bacon a little further down the way.”

“Oh,” said Sorrella. “That’s Jerry’s. It’s been here for as long as I’ve been alive, at least. Can you really smell it all the way from here though? You have olfactory enhancements or something?”

“I was just born with a good sense of smell,” he said.

“Look,” she said. “I don’t want to seem rude or anything, but the only reason I went out with you was because I thought you were Brian, who my friend Hannah sort of vouched for the non-creepiness of. I don’t really know you at all and I—”

“—It’s breakfast,” said Golgato. “How creepy does two people eating breakfast in a crowded public diner really have the potential to get?”

“I don’t know,” said Sorrella. “I feel like a total bitch right now, honestly. I mean, I just insulted you to your face because I thought you were really Brian and you were lying to me and that you deserved it.”

“So come make it up to me then. Come eat breakfast with me. Then you can go sulk.”

NeoTerra Time –  5:22 AM

“These are good eggs,” he said.

“Scrambled eggs are pretty hard to fuck up,” said Sorrella.

“I must know more ingenuitive fucks ups than you,” said Golgato, “because I’ve tasted some bad scrambled eggs in my travels. There was this one place on Belial—”

“You’ve been to Belial?” asked Sorrella, stunned.

“Yeah,” he Golgato replied. “There was this one place there called Maggie-O and Friend’s with scrambled eggs the consistency of oatmeal. I don’t even know how they managed it.”

“Can I make a confession?” asked Sorrella.

It was a question that got dirty gears in Golgato’s mind working. “Sure.”

“I’ve never been out of this city, let alone off planet.”

Golgato started rattling off the names of planets he’d been to, with each successive location he saw her interest grow.

“A lot of planets outside of the corpocracy on that list,” she noted. “What are those worlds like? Everyone seems to either say that they’re paradise or that they’re hellish and violent.”

“It really depends on the world. Damos 2, for instance, is about the most fiendish place you could imagine: people killing each other at the drop of a hat, no really industry or business—just an assortment of pushers and users. I’m actually puzzled as to how it sustains what little economy that it has. On the other hand, you’ve got places like Shambhala—the one near the Red Sector, not the one by Orion—which are just really great places with really interesting people and strong economies. Places outside of the corpocracy are just, I don’t know, more free to vary in the cultures and in their approaches to problems.”

Sorrella finished chewing a piece of buttered sour dough toast. “I’ve always wanted to travel,” she said. “I keep telling myself that I will one day, but it seems like I’m growing roots here.”

“I tell myself the opposite,” said Golgato. “I always tell myself that one day I’ll settle down, but nowhere has ever really so captivated me that I didn’t feel pulled towards some new place and some new adventure.”

“What kind of adventure are you having here?” she asked.

“It’s been pretty slow-going so far. This is a stable planet with a good economy. There’s Sradkur and Empira presence here, sure, but without any open acts of hostility towards one another.”

“A lot of people here think that that’s a powder keg just waiting to explode,” said Sorrella.

Golgato nodded. “They’re probably right.”

“And now there’s all this talk of Golgato Endings on the streets, which I think has sort of made things more tense between the Srads and Empira, with both wondering if he’s being employed by the other.”

Golgato buttered a piece of sourdough toast. “You’re pretty into politics, huh?”

“My uncle is sort of a political junky,” said Sorrella. “I spent a lot of time with growing up and I think a lot of his passion for it rubbed off on me. What about you? Not much into politics?”

“I’m more into politics than I’d like,” he said, studying his Orange Juice for a moment.

Something about the comment brought on a long silence.

Sorrella wondered about this person sitting before her. He was only her height, his wiry frame betrayed by the bagginess of clothes that would have fit more tightly on a boy with a broader frame. She’d not seen more of his face than his lips, which was mildly disconcerting but had drawn her attention to his precise elocution which rarely gave way to more informal pronunciations; she got the impression that he would never say “gonna” but “going to.” Still, to sit with someone and talk to them and have no idea what their facial features were like and no idea what was going on with their eyes was strange. She decided to give voice to this feeling.

“Is the hood you were religious?”

Golgato chuckled. “I don’t have any sort of religious beliefs,” he told her. “I’ve never really had much of a spiritual side.

“You don’t ever feel overwhelmed by the beauty of things?”

Only by the beauty of you, he thought. “Most things aren’t very beautiful.”

“I’m a Brillanite,” she said. “We try to find the beauty in all things.”

“How successful has that been for you?”

She shrugged. “I try, but it’s pretty hard to find the beauty in endless bloody revolutions all over the galaxy and the constant threat of another war between Empira and The Sradkur.”

“In my opinion,” said Golgato, “things that are beautiful should be seen as beautiful and things that are ugly should be seen as ugly. Trying to make everything beautiful undermines the value of beauty.”

Sorrella nodded. She’d had those thoughts before, but she was still curious about the initial subject and didn’t much care for the digression that had taken place.

“So,” she said, “if the hood isn’t religious, why do you wear it?”

Golgato’s heart, which he’d only just gotten under control somewhere in The Pier’s expansive marketplace, began to throb. He wasn’t sure how to answer.

After a small moment, he reached into his pockets and emptied their contents onto the table. There were three vials of intoxication curing nanos—brand name: HangUnder—four bracelets, two rings, a shot glass with “New New Orleans” stenciled onto the side in a rustic font, a locket and some voodoo beads.

She looked at the table for a moment then looked back up at him reproachfully. For a moment he was afraid she was going to yell the word “Thief!” and he would have no choice but to bolt. “You stole all of this,” she said in an angry little whisper.

“It’s what I do,” he said.

“So you were going to rob my apartment building!” She was still whispering, thankfully.

“I’ve got about 300 credits worth of stuff in this little pile just from the stroll I took with you through the market place,” he said. “Do you honestly think that a person with my level of skill needs to break into low-rent apartment in the early hours of morning—when most people are pretty much guaranteed to be home? It’s not a great strategy.”

“Skill!” she shouted. He had to cringe. Only a few heads had turned to see who was shouting, most went about their meals. “Skill!” she said again, her voice returned to the whisper. “It doesn’t take any skill to steal trinkets from vendors who have to pay the city most of their earnings to even set up shop here. There’s no skill involved in hurting small businesses.”

As she had lectured, he’d put the goods back into his pockets. “It takes immense skill,” he said. For instance, you can’t finish your eggs now.

“What?” she said, looking down. Her eggs looked just fine. They might have gotten a bit cold, but … “Hey. You stole my fork!”

He produced it from his inner sleeve and set it back down on the table. “I did it right before your eyes and you didn’t notice,” he said. “That takes skill.”

“Fine,” she said, failing to sound unimpressed. She was not the sort of person who was inattentive enough for something like that to happen to her. She was the girl who, when magicians performed at her friends parties as a child, spotted the secrets behind the tricks. “I don’t like it though.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s what I do and it’s why I wear the hood. You can look under it though, if you want to.”

“Okay,” she said. “Show me.”

“Not here,” he said, finishing off his breakfast.

NeoTerra Time –  7: 44 AM

“I must be an idiot,” Sorrella said, walking into her apartment with Golgato in tow. “I’m letting a person whose face I haven’t seen who was hanging out in front of my apartment for reasons that he’s consistently failed to explain and who I know to be a thief into my apartment.”

“When you put it like that,” said Golgato, “it really does sound pretty dumb.” He had been on the verge of his heart exploding out of his chest the whole walk back to Sorrella’s apartment. He couldn’t believe what he was about to do. It went against all of his training and all of his better judgment, but her not knowing who his identity was making him sick. He had told himself, I’m an adolescent and the chemical changes that have occurred in my body has simply made me prone to infatuation. I need to overcome this, perhaps medicate myself to repress these longings. But even though he knew it was something he should overcome, he didn’t want to. Perhaps it was the weight of his own loneliness that impelled him to remove the hood before her eyes or perhaps it was the overwhelming feeling, irrational though it was, the their meeting had been fated—whatever the reason, the hood came off without a moment of hesitation and Sorrella Mornings found herself face to face with the most notorious outlaw in all of the galaxy. The master thief who had orchestrated and executed more than a dozen of the most high-profile robberies that the galaxy had ever known to fund resistance groups from one end of the Corpocracy to the other.

She sat down. She had no choice. Her legs went out from under her and it was only good fortune that the couch was there to break her fall. She stared at him for a long time, as though he weren’t a person but a compelling hologram.

He didn’t say anything. He was waiting for her to break the silence. It felt, for both of them, like many solid minutes before she finally spoke.

“I don’t know what to say,” she said. “This is too confusing.”

Golgato reached into his left pants pocket, pulled out a small card and set it on the table. It read G2085-251920. “That’s my number,” he said. “If you wanna meet again while I’m on this planet, call it. If you wait more than three weeks, I’ll be gone. If you give it to authorities, it won’t matter because it’s untraceable. If you call and set me up—well, there’s no way I can stop that, so I guess I’m just going to have to ask you not to and hope you don’t. And, please, don’t tell anyone about this meeting.”

With that, he was gone. She sat, staring at the card, wondering how this had happened. It didn’t seem real. She closed her eyes and went to sleep, like an animal who had just incurred an injury and was prompted by instinct to sleep it off.