Desert Treasure

[t0l]

Choke on it, you monster!

A group of men huddled around in near-complete darkness, with only a single blue light source shining on and around their faces, to the windows and the walls, revealing to just about anybody within a several-mile radius that this housing-box was particularly crowded on this unspectacular night of mediocre proportions.

In lieu of a massive Neural Net outage set on by perhaps the worst, or at least, most inconvenient ion storm Sirius had ever seen, the mercenaries of Unit 1738, better known as Boogieman 2, were forced to watch prerecorded reruns of the hottest dramas this season to bide their time. The plight of John Wildkins was up again tonight, for what seemed like the fifth night in a row.

Not that Tal minded, of course. John’s misadventures took place on Planet Manhattan with moody backdrops in much of it’s scenes; towering skyscrapers lit up with neon lights of all patterns and colors, bright white floodlights of the Liberty Sleeper Ship memorial shining into the cloudy night sky, all mixed in with constant rain showers and a slow, smooth ambient jazz track. It all reminded him an awful lot of his childhood home on Manhattan, where he’d spend hours looking out his bedroom window, past that unsightly fire escape and over the rooftop of a shorter apartment building to find Manhattan’s signature golden skyline staring out back at him. It was an indescribable feeling, really, to be basking in such a sprawling manmade beauty, to feel so small in comparison to the crowning achievements of those before him.

“Hey, why’d it stop?!”

“It’s buffering, you moron, be quiet! That Hawken bitch will hear you and we’ll all be fucked!”

Tal snapped back to reality, having been lost after his thoughts trailed off halfway across the Sirius Sector into that tiny, old suite that he knew as his home. He didn’t think much of it back then, but now, after a long period of sleeping in a poorly insulated box on a jagged rock that left the back of his head all raw and cut up, he’d pay just about anything to hop a ride off this god-forsaken planet and buy back that beloved apartment.

Meanwhile, John’s face had been caught in a particularly unflattering expression, while a collection of circles in a circular formation–he always regarded the loading symbol as something mesmerizingly odd–spun rapidly, compressing itself occasionally as if it were taking a short break before expanding to spin some more. This continued for some time, a low-end Neural Net tablet unable to properly process such complicated holodramas, until someone got a real kick out of John’s facial expression and began snickering out loud.

“Hey, cut that shit out!”

“Sorry, I can’t he--”

“Shh, it’s starting again!”

“I can’t hear it, can you turn it up?”

“It’s already turned up all the way!”

The hissing match never seemed to end, with John’s tired, depressed facial expression as he stood in the cargo bay of his Scimitar whilst watching as the love of his life slowly walked off into the foggy, rainy night being interrupted by rapidly moving silhouettes that just absolutely ruined everything.

“Are you sure? Lemme check the volume knob!”

“No, god damnit, it’s already turned up all the way!”

Banter passed itself back and forth, and certainly was not a worthy substitute for whatever jazz track was slowly playing over John’s sadness. Honestly, Tal didn’t know why he came to these holodrama sessions anymore.

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