That Pertumit Garundi Thing (working title) part 2

I couldn’t find the painkiller. I looped the small pack around my waist and followed the gendarme down the corridor.

Winter stood impassively waiting, arms folded, her eyes covered by mirrored glass. She handed me a painkiller, which I swallowed dry and tried not to choke. The Fairelawn station Conservator guided us down the brightly lit plexisteel hallway to the Magistrate.

The Magistrate was an AI, one of those fancy kinds with the gold faceplate and multiple arms. It was meant to look impressive, with all the fancy screens, and info discernments, but to me, it smacked of typical Fairelawnese ostentation. Plus, the light bouncing off its highly polished frame hurt my eyes.

“Order in the court!” the bailiff announced to no one in particular. The Conservator had withdrawn the moment we set foot in the room, so it was only Winter and my soggy self.

“Nevahly Ecarg Finesse, you are accused of disturbing the peace, resisting arrest, disorderly conduct in a governmental office, and non-payment of warrants, particularly those listed against your ship, The Fred. How do you plead?” The AI had one of those uninflected voices. It was neither male nor female and was like someone speaking in a long tube, at least to my ears.

“With all due respect, your honor” Winter said.  “My associate was attempting to pay said impound fees on our vehicle.  Arresting her in the offices of the spaceport registry seems counter productive.  I realize the fees are extensive, and I am prepared to pay the impound fee.  But, if you arrest me as I stand here, you won’t get your money any faster.  I suggest a compromise.  You drop the charges against my associate, I’ll pay her bond, and I will pay any and all impound fees and debts lodged against the Fred.

“Our records indicate that Darrylyn Kestrian is the Captain of the Fred, and as such the debts owed are against her.  Are you Sirra Kestrian?” The AI cocked its metal head and regarded Winter. “I am not.  Darrylyn Kestrian is deceased.  I have with me the will- in- trust agreement that she and I signed.  I am the first mate Eira Oran.  The trust agreement was signed at Ualune and has been honored at all docking stations we have traversed so far.  Will this agreement be honored here or do I need to engage counsel?”

The AI regarded her unblinking.  “Do you have a death certificate or any other warrant stating that Darrylyn Kestrian is indeed deceased?”

“I do.”

As Winter presented the documentation to the AI, I wondered where she’d acquired the paperwork.  I knew for a fact that our late Captain, wasn’t dead at all.  She’d decided to settle down with her smuggler boyfriend on Taverna.  I knew it was because her debts had exceeded her ability to pay for them. She had a compulsive gambling addiction that a stint on a non-gaming world might straighten her out.  Winter and I were honor-bound not to reveal her location to anyone.  She had plenty of enemies. 

I should note that by the time anyone reads this, Darryl will have successfully hidden herself.  So, me telling you about Taverna makes no difference.  Taverna isn’t the actual name for the planet either.  You’d have to know the name, and the smuggler’s route to get to the planet.  So, there’s that.

I had no idea what story Winter told about Darryl’s alleged death, so I kept my mouth shut and quietly dripped on their floor.

The AI magistrate seemed to be taking a long time.  I assumed it was attempting to contact the Ualune records division.  Winter seemed calm so I made an effort to appear just as serene.  Finally, it straightened and addressed Winter.  “Sirra Oran, this court will accept your offer and set bail at forty-five thousand marks.  The impound fees are seven hundred thousand marks.  All other outstanding debts are to be paid to the individual debtor. 

I winced at the amount.  We’d salvaged four freighters caught in the crossfire of a despute between the Miratosh and Saurtan Empires.  The amount we’d earned from that job was just enough to cover this mess, but only just.  My dreams of finding a decent restaurant after eating salvage rations for three months evaporated.  Winter calmly handed a Nueva Sevilla bank draft to the magistrate and waited. 

“We don’t accept…” The AI began but Winter interrupted.  “You will accept this one, please look again.  This is an Auran note, guaranteed by Nueva Sevilla and the Governance of The Realm.  If you would like to verify it, please contact Keran Dofram at Navarran.”

I glanced down at the floor, mainly to keep the look of surprise on my face from being obvious.  I let my hair fall in my face while I wondered where in the seven hells Winter got the Auran note. 

The AI called the human attendees to run the note through the scanner.  It must have thought the bank draft was counterfeit.  Hells, I thought it was counterfeit and any second now, they would figure it out and arrest both of us. Goo, thick and viscous dripped out of my hair and plopped on the floor.  The nearest guard made a face but immediately schooled his expression into blankness when I glanced at him. I glared at him and stood straighter. 

I wanted to fidget and there was a part of me that wanted to bolt for the doors but I tamped the instinct down.  Instead, I watched Winter as she calmly stared down the AI.  Finally, after standing there in the drab gray juidiciary room for more than a quarter of an hour, the AI magistrate activated again. 

“We accept the Auran note drafted from Nueva Sevilla.  Please consider the debits and impound fees discharged to Sirra Oran.  All charges against your crewmember are dropped and you are free to leave, Sirra…” The AI paused as it looked up my prisoner identification number.  “Ecarg-Finessse  Please see the adjudicator for directions to the storage facility to pick up your personal effects.”

Winter bowed slightly to the AI and gestured to me with a lift of her chin.  We walked in silence to the adjudicar concierge.  The AI there directed me down the hallway.  “I’ll wait for you here,” Winter said as she folded her arms and leaned against the wall.

The attendant was, surprisingly, a human male.  He took one look at me and blinked.  “The fresher is that way.” He pointed to the small medical bay down the curving corridor.  “There’s a bath.  Use it.”

Behind me, a small flotilla of cleaning servitor bots floated along, mopping the floor.  I took one look at myself in the mirror in the medical refresher and winced.  My face was a massive bruise, and when I peeled out of the jumpsuit, my side wasn’t much better.  The water let me know where the rest of the injuries were, but at least I was able to get the chucksa out of my hair. Real water, not the recycled and processed stuff that still smells like the gray tanks and cleaning fluid. No expense is spared, not even for prisoners of Fairelawn station and The Realm.

I didn’t want to think about how much it must have cost.

That Pertumit Garundi Thing (working title)

That Pertumit Garundi Thing (working title)

I woke up, and instantly regretted it. My crew jumper was wringing wet and I was soaked to the skin. I lay there on the hard plexisteel floor shivering and wondering what in seven hells happened. My head was next to the waste portal and the smell of sick was nearly overpowering. I tried to sit up, which was a mistake. My head was about to split open from the pain and I swear I could feel cerebral spinal fluid leaking out my ears and nose. I managed to push myself upright and lean my aching head on the ice cold plexisteel wall. My hair was sticking to my face. I tried to push the strands away from my eyes but my hair was hard, crusty, and nearly immovable. Chunks of some squishy substance came off in my hand and the smell…

Ugh.

“You are alive, then?”

I squinted up at the speaker. A tall Avonry perched on the only available bunk. Its voice was shrill, even through the vocoder it wore. It preened its feathers and appeared to lose interest in me when I didn’t reply. Somewhere, a clanging started and got louder as it came nearer. It took me a second…a long second to figure out what I was hearing. Metal on metal, growing more echoing and pronounced. The Avonry moved back and as far away from me as possible. The noise became unbearably loud and I put my hands over my ears, grimacing in pain. In my haze I looked up and a uniformed figure appeared. The figure was using something to hit the metal bars in front of me.

“Oyyeh! Princess! Time to get up, shatovahf!

A blast of ice cold water splashed over me, soaking me again. I cursed and sputtered. The Avonry squawked and flapped itself spreading feathers everywhere. I coughed until my throat felt like a blazing pyre. Bleerily, I watched as the hazy figure opened the metal bars. The Avonry squawked and backed up into the corner of the cell. The gendarme stood over me, then reached down and yanked me to my feet.

“Come on. Some folks want a word with you.”

The uniformed gendarme threw me face first into the ‘fresher. “You stink. Get cleaned up. You’ve got 3 chronos.” He marched out of the room and I tried to re-orient myself. I found the soap and tried to clean my hair as best I could. I was spraying off the collect grime on my coveralls when the gendarme reappeared. He threw a towel and a clean, unmarked ship coveralls at me.

“Move!”

He turned and stomped back out of the ‘fresher and I took advantage of the towel and suit. I rolled my soiled one up, in a vague hope it could be recycled. It bore the name of my ship, well, one of its aliases anyway. Mister charming in a uniform showed up with my pack three chronos later. He shoved it at me, and I dug around in the bottom for an ampule of painkiller.

Things Winter Says…

From “That Pertumit Garundi thing that won’t go away” (working title, obviously)

Winter’s eyes were sleepy…unfocused. She spoke slowly, as if she drifted somewhere out among the stars. He voice sounding like it was dragged unwillingly over sharp rocks. “Ah. history.” She began, ” History belongs to the victors. When everyone is dead, the victors can make up any story they want, because there is no one left to dispute their tale. Countless people, whole races have been silenced by history. Erased by their conquerors. But, if you listen, if you dig. Little by little, the truth will emerge. History lies. Bones… They tell the truth “

From a dream

The mind is a curious thing. I dreamt I was watching some YouTube content on someone who traveled around in a van and visited various historical sites. She was describing her decision to stay in the north somewhere. As she described this, she drove into this beautiful old Victorian mountain town. She had to wind down a steep hillside and she narrated a story about the town as she drove through it.

She never gave a name to the place, except to say that it was founded by Mose ironworks. There were decorative ironworks everywhere including a spectacular footbridge that held the two peaks of the mountain together. The streets appeared cobbled and everything was made of decorative iron. We saw no people as it was early morning…like dawn or so

She continued down a winding street perched about a steep hillside until we go to the main historical site. As we did, she explained that Mose Ironworks originally created decorative but functional caldrons and covers for them.

At the end of this winding street she brought us to the school and the pioneer home of Rebecca Mose. The school was blonde brick but that was not of interest. Instead the narrator parked in front of a wooden home that had a large blonde brick building attached to it. She said the historical society had built the building as a museum to show artifacts from Mrs Mose and the town. I remember it was a 30s 40s style WPA building and the windows were more window cases which would be kind of Frank Lloyd Wright ish. There was an old rifle leaning against the sill in the inside.

Then I woke up. In the dream previous to this, I am younger, and in a jail or detention center. It is a mistake and I am waiting for my parents to come get me. In the meantime, I have to pee very badly and there is a line going into this cement room. It reminds me a lot of the old stage center in downtown Oklahoma City. They tore it down but when I was growing up I performed there. It was largely made of concrete slabs and the stage was theatre in the round with the voms opening out onto the stage from corridors underneath the stage.

Anyway, I finally figured out there was a line and these naked people that cut into the line were the ruling gang. They did not hassle me but they also looked like people not to cross. I finally found the gang minion in charge of the line and was told to go find the list and put my name on it. I found a bunch of papers with numbers on it and there was an opening next to 27 and a string of other numbers like on a fortune cookie. I think another number was 36.

I chose an alias because I decided I did not want these people to know my real name. I chose the name Dallas but I think I spelled it Dalys D’alys or Dallis . The rest of the dream was about trying to find a bathroom not controlled by them. I was told I would be third baseman on the prison baseball team. I found a room full of women trying on and altering clothing…colorful skits and wanting to pee down a carpeted hole but the others said don’t do it and one of the male gang members poked his head up out of the hole and he had spikey black hair and wore sunglasses. He said something about free access to bathrooms. So me and another woman found one but it was also in use…the room was a little market. It was like a caldron and when you flushed it, it ran over. One of my friends, Cora was there and she was angry with my friend for flushing it because the e coli in the air would polute the meat she had in a basin covered with ice and she was trying to sell the meat. We left in a hurry down a little green hillside, like we were at a Renaissance Faire. My friend was in costume and maybe I was to. I was defending my friend Cora, saying she was always a bit excitable and to pay it no mind.

Then I’m in an old wood cabin and my family has been visiting another family and we are getting ready to leave. I can’t find the bathroom and there is something about turquoise bead bracelets and I am invited to take one…

I wrote this in reverse so the last part is what happened first. There was more to the prison dream, something about a stone toilet. Clearly, I needed to pee in real life and my body was trying to get me to wake up. My dreams are so vivid though. I wonder if dreams are the portals in which we see our other lives in the quantum multiverse?

I had a friend named Cora. She died this past summer. My mind must be working through the guilt and grief I feel. I admit that I tended to blow her off. She snapped at me once for trying to help her, so we were never close after that. I get that when you call in sick it’s your day off and you don’t want to hear about school…but the sub could not find her lesson plans and I could not locate them either. I did not want her to get in trouble for not having them. But she yelled at me for calling her. The sub found the plans and all was well but I never forgot it. Yeah, you have anxiety, but that was a little extreme. I never forgot it and tended to leave her alone after that.

When I woke up, I googled Rebecca Mose, but no hits. There were some hits for a Dillon Moses ironworks in Ohio though so I thought it curious enough to write it all down.

Aren’t dreams strange?