Brine

[Geno]

- - V - - ALONE, OUTCASTED, ASHAMED. ALL THAT'S LEFT IN MY POCKETS IS A HAIR PIN AND A SHIMMERING MEDALLION

Before me, there were handfuls of consoles, displaying all kinds of data onto small monitors with their holographic brightness turned to zero. The ones that required to showcase concise data through numbers would instead display information through simple numbers on small digital black screens situated on the big panel to my left. Normally, the numbers are green. And my hands usually have their porcelain color too, and the consoles and the canopy glass also have some semblance of hue to them. Even the stuffed green alligator near the controls is supposed to be lime green. Sandman stared at me with his tiny little black beady eyes in confusion.

The unpredictable nature of cosmic radiation coming from these unknowable subspace rifts has a strange effect on me. Everything lacked color, I was surrounded entirely by an encroaching oblivion without meaning. It felt peaceful for a time, like a temporary escape from reality that would only last for a few minutes, as the tenuously thin walls of subspace would twist and snake and contort, while my ship would follow simply ride the wave with little to no thrusting adjustments at all. Whether this was the work of the Forefathers or nature itself, jump hole connections felt like… space highways of sorts, crisscrossed by all kinds of people indigenous to the Omegas.

Eventually, the rift of the jump hole spat my ship out, like I was some chicken bone in your fried food. Colors quickly flooded my cockpit; the stars and the orange hue of the encroaching Walker bathed me in a warm orange glow. The absence of light slowly dissipated, and I began to stare idly at the innocent Mr. Sandman for answers, as I idly waited for a few more moments to let my aged space faring contraptions to come back to life as they re-adjusted to the new surroundings, running calculations and executing safety parameters I would often outright ignore to maximize speed and efficiency.

A thin smell of what smelled like gas and cologne mixed with disinfectant permeated my nostrils. What a surprise - that was the distinct tang of the chemically active plating interlocking inside the bowels of the Homerunner and reacting to the vast amount of radiation from the black neutron star to my right. Forty-one. What a place to be in, deadly and macabre and desolate as it is beautiful and awe-inspiring. Colonists from eight hundred years ago settled down shortly after an apocalypse happened in this place. A death by natural causes. This is what I was taught in school many years ago when I lived on Denver. This is what I was told would happen to the sun in Colorado at the end of its interminable cycle. And I never imagined that young little baby Kristoff would grow up to see a real dead star, one that went supernova and mangled all of the planets orbiting it like a cosmic frag grenade.

The navcom map situated on the monitor close to my left hand flickered back to life. It traced a projected path around the treacherous environment of that rocky wasteland, avoiding the brunt of the mines scattered by the Cretans, dodging the asteroids while staying as far away as possible from the dying neutron star dominating the solar system. I hit the "GOTO" command button on my console, and I leaned back in that creaky chair, feeling discomfort over some of that broken seat leather's yellow sponge seeping in my pretty hair.

The Homerunner pointed her face towards the designated destination, as she charged her fancy MOX engines right up, and gently rocked me forward as I entered a modest cruising velocity, tuned with the nimble hands of Barrier Gate engineering. I watched as the innumerable asteroids dashed past the length of my ship. Sometimes my seat would recoil when the smaller asteroids struck a fragment or two, causing the shields to activate, or to even make the lights flicker if the occasional asteroid proved to be too demanding for my Rhino's whimsical power core capacity.

Something walking towards my seat disturbed my idle absent mindedness. LQ made himself present in my cockpit as the sliding doors closed shut behind him. The loud hydraulics around his joints felt a little loud on the ear, and being around him while he shuffled around doing some of my chores for more than an hour would often give me huge migraines.




“Hi there!”

“...Hello, LQ. What do you need?”

“I couldn't help but notice we are currently in a very strange place! Where are we?”

“…Forty-one.”

I grimaced, as I watched the hefty loader bot sit on the co-pilot’s seat. That’s usually my seat for when I leave the ship in GOTO mode – the leather is practically brand new because no one ever sits on it, and you can actually sleep on it if you try hard enough and you don’t mind waking up with your back aching.

He gently pushed away some of the monitors held afloat by black steel braces to make more room for his larger bulky size. The azure optic on his face cast a gentle light on the blastscreens, making focusing my attention on the stars around me a little difficult. I looked back at Mr. Sandman for help, but his goofy expression and silence was only a dead giveaway that he himself didn’t know what to do in this situation.

The deafening quietude hovering between me and the machine was getting more than a little awkward.

“…LQ, I’m a little busy in here.”

“My apologies, sir! You really did seem like you were doing nothing. You could have fooled me!”




I replied with a little sigh, tucking my right hand under the armpit of my flight suit.

“I’m… not actually busy, I just wish to be left alone for a little bit. I need to mull over some things.”

The machine glanced over me with an empty glance. Its cyan eye cast a feeble light at my face.




“Would it help to talk about it?”

“No… not really. Maybe a little.”

“You could always talk to me. I would very much like to know where we’re headed, anyways.”

“We’re going to Freeport One. The Omegas are dead as a doornail, thankfully. Maybe finding jobs out here won’t be a problem after all. Seems like the Zoners might always need a delivery boy that can bring them gewgaws from Freeport to Freeport.”

“I do not seem to understand. You already have some contracts you have yet to finish in Liberty. Why the devil would you take more?”

“…Because it’s a no-go, LQ. No more running around Liberty for me. Not right now, at least.”

I shook my head with a defeated sigh.



“So… something did happen while I was on Erie waiting for you.”

“A… lot has happened, LQ. Freeport One is my home now. The Order wants me really dead. If I asked for help to the Liberty authorities, they could easily find out that I used to be a Technocrat, and… and besides, the authorities just don’t care. I… really don’t have a good rep anymore. I need to hide.”

“And how did this come to be?”

“I lied, LQ. I lied a lot because my ass was on the line. There are some secrets that are better left uncovered, and I didn't feel like spilling anything to the Order. And keep in mind that I'm a former Technocrat, it causes ignorant people to dislike me by virtue of simply existing.”

"The more you speak, the more you make it sound like you are part of some dire plot in a secret agent flick.




Mr. Sandman watched me in appalled shock and awe as I moved my robotic left hand over my right arm. It looked grey and colorless without the synthetic skin patches I was supposed to wear over it. Watching the tiny hydraulics under the plate in my palm quietly compress whenever I would open and close my hand quickly became a favorite pastime, making me wonder if presenting myself to the Orion to have it fixed was even a good idea.

LQ remained in silence. Good. He probably wanted me to elaborate further. I chose not to. I had more things to worry about.

I awkwardly cleared my throat. I had some phlegm building up. Being in a solar system without any solar rays to sunbathe in can easily cause the temperatures in the cabin to plummet down to the single digits in temperature sometimes. No matter how much that blasted heating vent on the roof roared, there just wasn't enough warm air coming through for my liking. I looked over my shoulder, and returned a quiet side glance to my loader droid. Behind him, the raging power of a neutron star pulsed like a beating heart in the distance, emitting radiation storms so powerful they were visible to the naked eye. It’s a miracle the ‘Runner was even running. Me and my ridiculous metal husk are nothing compared to the chaotic will of nature itself. We dashed in silence across asteroids and mines, ignoring the hailing message from a nearby Zoner convoy that was way out of range for me to make out.

Eventually, there came another jump hole. One that would lead us to Eleven. The walls began to rattle again, as my ship creaked through the tunnel of the anomaly. Mr. Sandman, now colorless, stared at me with a worried look on his face. If only LQ wasn’t around, I would have held him and squeezed him to comfort the little reptile plush.

The cold was quickly replaced by the blistering heat of Omega-Eleven. The scenery changed entirely, darkness was replaced by light, death was replaced by life, and the cold was replaced by the blistering heat. Even the heating vent began to spew out cold air, causing me to take off my flight suit. My movements with my left arm were a little hampered, as the spiky tidbits of metal would often get stuck in the fabric of my clothing. I breathed a satisfied sigh of relief, as I was now wearing nothing more than a t-shirt in the comfort of my own ship.

After a few more minutes of silence, I eventually realized I had to tell LQ something – anything. He came in my cabin to plead for answers. Reluctantly, I cleared the phlegm from my throat.

“I’ve… neglected you lately. I am sorry. Let me go over everything that happened since I left you down on Erie.”

“That would be ideal, sir. I’ve been waiting for you to finish your sentence!”

“Uhm… well, it turns out that handling personal relationships and enjoying life while being part of a technology hoarding sometimes-militant society reviled by all of Sirius just ain’t easy. Hemlocke didn’t like it, Cobra didn’t like it. The Order sure as hell didn’t like it, Caliban didn’t like it, and now the Rheinland secret services don’t like it.”

“If you are in such danger, then why not change your identity? I can try to contact my employer and tell them that-”

“LQ, that’s exactly the problem. I would have to sever myself from my past entirely… but I’ll remain a prisoner to it, no matter what.”

The more I spoke of my deplorable situation, the more the anxiety in my chest began to flare up, clutching my body into a razor-sharp bear trap. Truly, there was nothing I could do.

“I… I’m lost, LQ. I don’t know what to do anymore. I am alone now. If I poke my head out, I’m going to get clobbered. Um – we could end our arrangement right now, if you want. You’re free to go home, I can arrange a freighter trip for you and get you safely back home.”

“Nonsense, sir. This is much more entertaining than sorting shelves on empty warehouses! You treat me as though I were a human, and not a servant. This… is a breach of contract, but it is something I am willing to do.”

“...That’s just something I was taught while being with the Technocrats. It’s a golden rule. 'Machines have their free will, and it should be respected no matter the circumstance.' You are a sentient being yourself, after all.”

LQ did not reply. Sometimes complicated words spat out at a frantic pace tend to overload his processor units, and he takes a while to restore his functionalities into a normal capacity.

I continued to quietly enjoy the silence that followed. My cybernetic arm grasped the hefty, poker-chip sized medallion on my neck while my ship continued to fly undisturbed through the breadth of the Omegas. I would gently shift it to the left and to the right, revealing that mysterious chromatic sheen only visible if you’re paying close attention. The emblem of a black serpent etched on the round surface stared back at me ominously. The other side presented a small hexagonal peg on it. There was no way in hell something this complex would be nothing more than a simple magnetic device.

It was the only thing that could spare me from a miserable and painful death. And it was only thanks to this object that I still draw breath.

I clasped it tightly with my artificial hand, breathing a short sigh of relief, and gratification.