Voidhearts Chapter 9: Flight
The Exalted Heroes do the math. Alicia grapples with her quest, and the Scavengers' expedition is joined by an unexpected guest.
“… and just so I am crystal clear not missing anything to the subtext here, you did in fact not bang her?” Felipe asked in disbelief.
Alicia had taken the morning, well, forenoon at that point, to recap the events of the previous night to the other Exalted.“I did not,” Alicia mumbled.
The hangover had been plenty unpleasant on its own with a full-body congestion and aches in joints that Alicia was pretty sure didn’t usually ache. At least the nausea was manageable, in part due to some “alche-chemical compound” that Lex had cooked up for such occasions. Alicia didn’t know what was in it, and she didn’t much want to know. All she knew was that the murky concoction smelled vaguely of cabbage and seemed to stave off the more debilitating symptoms of over-indulging in alcohol. “I don’t do drunken hookups. Plus I’m not even that sure she’s into me like that. God I fucked this up didn’t I?”
“I won’t lie, I do enjoy seeing you frazzled,” Lex opined over their coffee. “but you really have no reason to worry in this case I think.”
“You do, do you? I always knew you had a bit of that whump in you.”
“Whump?” Felipe asked.
“Now now,” Lex chided. “A gentlethey does not whump and tell.”
“You dork. Anyway what was that about not having reason to worry?”
“It’s quite simple, a question of base trigonometry when you get right down to it.”
“This better not be a joke about sin(e) you’re brewing…”
“Are you two just gonna make jokes I don’t get all day or what?” Felipe interjected. His tone was light, but there was a ghost of real distress in the margins. Felipe wasn’t the brightest bulb Alicia knew, but she also got the feeling he was smarter than he gave himself credit for.
“Let’s say, for the sake of our little piece of math today that you are… what, 6 feet tall? And your rhino friend is… closer to nine feet?”
“I’m 5’10, but close enough for math.”
“Ah, I see we’re not counting your hair. Fair enough, fair enough. Actually let’s just say that on your tippy toes you’re 6ft and you are leaning towards this thick-skinned paramour of yours at a slight angle, as one would” Lex held up their arms, one stretched up and one bent at the elbow to illustrate Ade and Lex respectively. “Now we don’t know the angle of your lean, but that doesn’t matter because we know that there is, in euclidian space, no way to bend 6 feet in such a way that it reaches close to 9 feet along the same axis.” Lex waved their ‘Alica’ arm to demonstrate.
“Ok, so what’s your point, did I grossly elongate my legs or what?”
“Ah, here is your problem, you assume only you can change in this scenario. That may be a deeper psychological point, or you just didn’t think about it… or alternatively you’re just mistaken and planted a kiss on sweet Adeyemi’s general pectoral area,”
“I think I’d remember that no matter how drunk I was actually,”
“On this we are in agreement. This means one of three things. Either the space you were occupying was fundamentally different than regular space, or you bent along some n-dimensional axis… or if you want the ‘boring but likely’ story, one of your assumptions are incorrect.”
“Go on?”
“This whole leaning scenario not adding up assumes one thing about sweet Adeyemi, that she was standing straight. Now returning to this very scientific illustration,” Lex held up their arms again “as you can see no matter how you lean, nothing’s happening, at least nothing…tradtional, however, if one assumes this little kiss of yours wasn’t an one-person job…” as to demonstrate, Lex bent their upright arm until the fingertips on both hands touched, making meaningful eye contact, wiggling their eyebrows ever so slightly. “And, as the song goes, woop there it is.”
“Ah,” Alicia said. “Now that you say it like that, that does make sense.”
“It’s not a perfect model,” Lex shrugged “as it assumes you two are both straight lines and not famously bendy human bodies, but articulation doesn’t change much from my basic argument. It still doesn’t add up that you kissed her anywhere on the face out of the blue. This whole thing was a two-person job from the start.”
“That does make me feel a little better,” Alicia said, “but I’d be lying if I said I still feel… very clear about this.”
“Man, that’s lesbians for you I guess,” Felipe said. “Having proven it’s a ‘thing’ with math, there’s still room for what ifs and how abouts.”
“Shut up Espino,” Alicia said, more out of reflex than anything. Out of line or not, Felipe wasn’t wrong. “I… it’s just an awkward time this. I just need to know there’s no foul play going on in the Scavengers before I commit to anything."
“It would be very awkward if it turned out Rhino Girl was… like a space monster I guess.” Felipe shrugged.
“A space monster?”
“Come on Felipe, she’d be a void monster if anything.” Lex chimed in
“You’re not helping,” Alicia glowered.
“I know. This is outside my field of expertise,” Lex shrugged in reply.
“Anyway when are you seeing this charming space void monster again?” Felipe asked
“This afternoon provided I can clear this fuck of a headache,” Alicia answered. “We’re going out to one of the really distant clouds tonight. They plopped down a node there only yesterday, so while it’ll be riskier, there’s also a bigger chance to get some nicer stuff.”
“Alicia, my dear sweet very attractive and most attentive lover,” Lex said, “I am not one to beg, but I do come to you now in my hour of need….”
“Yeah?” Alicia couldn’t help but smile at Lex’ antics. “What is it that you want?”
“If you find anything even resembling coffee, or even a decent tea, shit, if you come across vials of some unnerving radioactive green liquid you have reason to believe may be at least partially caffeinated, please bring them home to me, to us.”
“Coffee situation’s that bad huh?”
“If anything I am underselling it,” Lex took a swig of coffee and grimmaced like a particularly incensed housecat. “This swill tastes like beef broth and gives me the approximately the same buzz as remembering that one time I looked at a coffee bean.”
“Grim,” Alicia observed. “You know there are other drinks in here right?”
“Of course,” Lex said as she took yet another regrettable sip. “I’m desperate, not that desperate.”
While Alicia didn’t end up getting rid of her headache entirely, when time came to make a decision she gathered what tools an supplies she had available and made her way to the Scavengers’ warehouse. On the way, she tried her best not to notice a thousand litle things that her brain couldn’t help but read as portents, omens really, of disaster. It wasn’t just that she was nervous about going somewhere actually dangerous with the scavengers, nor the uncertainty of what it was that caused former scavengers to flee, nor was it to meet up again with the woman she’d had some sort of situational happening. As an aggregate these three worries probably took up approximately three fourths of her capacity for worry, and if you were to eliminate irrational fears that were merely reframing or -statng said worries you’d be up to closer to ninety percent. Then there were those ten remaining percent, the Dark Matter in Alicia’s universe of anxieties.
Had she seen something out in the Void? Something subtle but powerful that could explain the defections but shatter her world view in the progress? No, that was surely her brain desperately trying to conjure up some kind of something to fill the sensory emptiness of the void. After all, something massive and nefarious but sentient was easier for the human brain to conceptualize than the simple absence of everything we use to understand the world around us. The concept of a, say, gigantic void-dwelling gulping eel or a camouflaged space shark was perhaps unlikely, but it was so infinitely easier for the human brain to understand. Big and predatory, that’s basically just a lion again, and the brain has a number of strategies to deal with lions, biologically programmed by generation upon generations of those members of the species who were slightly less likely to be eaten by lions being eaten by lions slightly less.
The void was a different terror, Alicia realized, and it was different in a way humans were ill-equipped to deal with. With no air to carry sound or gravity to align the plane of action, the void was a unwelcoming, chaotic, and thus utterly terrifying place to be. Even without knowing that the air and protection of the void pearl is all that is keeping you alive, there is an acute peril to traveling through the void that had little to do with the actual dangers involved. There’s no way to even intuit which direction a potential ambush could come from, and without hearing, smell, or any kind of kinetic sense, one would have to rely on the admittedly pretty good vision of human eyes. It was especially disorienting to have to navigate like that, and anything that put an undue stress on the mind could distract an unwary traveler into any number of disasters.
Alicia became aware she wasn’t heading toward the Port. Her internal map of Thereafter still wasn’t perfect, but she was pretty sure she was in fact heading to Worship. Alicia had been so lost in thought that she couldn’t be sure, but it sure felt like her subconscious, or whatever else it was that was manning the wheel while her conscious mind was busy thinking about how terrifying the void was, wanted her to go straight to Michael and tell him this joint operation was off. Nothing, as far as she could see, was wrong with the Scavengers, which meant that either what was wrong was too stealthy for her to figure out safely, or that the problem laid elsewhere.
These were entirely fine arguments for why she shouldn’t go out into the void again, Alicia figured, but there was one very compelling argument why she should. Someone had to. Sure, so far she hadn’t exactly been a pivotal part of the scavenger machinery, and the only major shortage she knew of was coffee anyway. There was, however, no telling how long that would last. While the first crops of rice and leafy greens were underway in the hydrophonic tanks, there was no telling how effective a mean of food growth that’d be, and even if it turned out to be an all-time banger that sprung into full production with nary a problem, there was always the risk of crop failure, not to mention that while rice and the vegetables they had gotten anywhere close to establishing crops for was a good start, there were nutrients Thereafterians would have to get elsewhere. In other words, unless something major changed, the citizens of Thereafter would have to keep going into the void to get supplies in the foreseeable future.
Granted, it needn’t be her, but something deep in Alicia didn’t want to pass the buck. It had to be someone. As a citizen of the US, she wasn’t unfamiliar with sitting on top of a very long production chain rooted in the exploitation of others, elsewhere. It wasn’t pleasant knowledge to have, once you got to thinking about it, but by its very nature you couldn’t really get away from it either. There was no level of “ethical spending” that got around the fact that at the end of the day, you paid for goods produced by multiple levels of slave labor or slave labor-esque conditions, all in in a country built by slavery. Much like in Omelas, the roles were fixed, the Citizens and the Abandoned Child. While you weren’t having a great time of things either, there were no way to step out of the system, to take a bigger share of the burden, to change just about anything without flipping the entire system on its head. In Thereafter, it was different. She had the opportunity to do something dangerous and difficult that needed doing, something that benefited everyone. Her effort could make a difference, it could keep people fed, healthy, hell, caffeinated if she was lucky.
Additionally, Alicia found herself thinking, she was kind of curious where this whole thing with Ade was going. She had some purely practical concerns about prurient matters on the topic, but seeing as she had a very hands-on learning style there was only so much thinking about things was going to help.
Alicia was both relieved and disappointed that it was Beth that welcomed her to the Scavenger Storehouse.
“Ah, Alica, didn’t think you’d make it in today,” Beth beamed. From someone else, such a statement would come off as passive-aggressive, but Beth had a natural lightness to her that made her seem genuinely pleased by the news.
“Oh, it takes a little bit more than last night to take me down,” Alicia said. Granted, not an awful lot, but she had taken it, and continued to take it, on the chin.
“What’s with the gear?” Beth asked as she led the way through the habitually messy hallways of the Scavengers.
“Oh this?” Alicia jangled one shoulder strap carabiner. “Just a little away kit my friends and I put together. I’m planning to test it today, and if it’s helpful we could look into getting more made for the rest of the crew.” The “Away Kit” had been a creation of Lex’, and was mostly conjured gear. A minimal but sturdy backpack with water bottles and some simple first aid supplies and a thermal blanket. Outside the backpack, there were climbing supplies, ropes and carabiners, a piton or two, and the occasional doohickey whose name Alicia did not know. She didn’t have much experience with the mountain climbing that was the clear inspiration for this whole setup, but she could see the use case for most if not all of it. Besides, it was clear Lex was working on it to alleviate stress over Alicia’s expeditions, and it’d be rude not to wear it.
The rest of the Scavengers hung out in a loose circle around the teleport crystal. Logan was stretching his hamstrings, Tag’lor was doing entirely superflous push-ups, and Ade was going through some sort of calisthenics or tai chi routine. Alicia couldn’t help but notice Ade’s ear twitched when she and Beth entered, and while Alicia wasn’t sure that was a thing Ade could actually do, it sure did look like Ade’s ear was pointed her way.
“Oh, the rookie rides again?” Logan asked. “Color me impressed.”
“Impressed and sour you just lost a bet,” Tag’lor jabbed.
“I may have put in a bet on you sitting this one out,” Logan looked away as he spoke. “I figured it a win-win, as your presence is plenty pleasant.”
“Sorry about your bet,”
“Don’t be, it was with pushups over here, and it’s not a total loss.”
“I am known to be a wise and merciful overlord,” Tag’lor sprung to his feet in an unneccesarily elaborate way. “Extra” seemed to be his preferred mode to operate in. “Hell, I have been described as a ‘fun boss’ by sources that prefer to remain anonymous.”
“Everyone ready?” Ade asked. When the group assented, the ritual to teleport out started with little delay
Porting out was still an unpleasant and disorienting feeling, but not deleteriously so. What was different, however, was the destination. In a word, it was bigger and darker. The port crystal and the area around it glowed pretty brightly, but it seemed to not go very far before being swallowed by darkness. Still, it did help with visibility. There just wasn’t much to be seen.
“It’s… pretty big,” Alicia said. It was an entirely insufficient description.
“And pretty empty,” Tag’lor complained.
“It’s pretty empty right now,” Ade corrected him. “We’ve only been out here once or twice before on scouting trips, so we haven’t gotten to rustling yet.”
“Rustling?”
“Yeah, we go out and try to get the detritus to group together, only picking up the absolute top-of-the-shelf salvage. It’s tough work, but it makes it much easier to pick through the large volume stuff.”
“It’s a lot of shoving and pushing,” Beth said, “and the rocks shoving and pushing us, technically.”
“You’ll be sore tomorrow,” Logan added, “but if you’re lucky you can find some neat stuff out there.”
“You can also, quite easily, find your death,” Ade said, her voice wasn’t exactly chiding, but there was an edge in there. “We gotta stay mindful and watch our six, don’t forget that.”
“Aye aye, Ade,” the response was so quick and shared between the entire crew that Alicia, who was the sole nonparticipant, suspected that this was some kind of running joke. Ade snorted.
“Let’s split up 50/50 and explore… let’s say the north-west quadrant on the crystal plane for now.”
“There’s no north or south out here,” Beth added as she motioned for a drawn circle around the crystal, marked with directions that were, Alicia suspected, entirely arbitrary. “So we made our own.”
They got partway into negotiating who should go on expedition group North and expedition group West when Alicia noticed something.
“Hey, is it just me, or did the port crystal just start… glowing?” She asked.
“Oh dip, we’ve got incoming,” Tag’lor said, jumping into an entirely unneccesary backflip.
“Someone’s coming in from Thereafter,” Ade explained. “Might be that someone forgot something and Isam’s porting over to deliver it?”
“Don’t look at me, I had boyscout do my gear today,” Tag’lor said, still spinning in the close-to-zero gravity.
“I did,” Logan agreed. “I might have forgotten some of my own stuff though?”
“Either way we’re about to find out,” Ade said as a shape materialized in front of them.
Seeing someone port in from the perspective of a watcher was different than how Alicia had imagined it would look. It started with a blurry vaguely humanoid shape that expanded and slowly slid into focus along with the high-pitched sound that Alicia was starting to suspect wasn’t a sound at all, as it had no problem with proliferating through the vacuum of the void. What this fact could mean and the wider implications of it was, like the sharp angles of the port crystal that hurt to look at or think about in any level of detail, something Alicia wasn’t particularly keen on dwelling on.
“Let’s see who our visitor is,” Tag’lor said as he finally landed on his feet. “Hey boy scout want to bet on it?”
“And lose to your freakishly good luck again? I think not.”
“C’mon you two it pretty much has to be Isam right?” Beth said.
Fate had, it would seem, chosen to make Beth a liar this lightless afternoon. It didn’t take Alicia very long to recognize the general build of this approaching guest, and while she was thankful for the brief window of time she had to adapt to this new development before it became an actual problem, the buildup of dread was a heavy price to pay for it. This didn’t have to be terrible news, it didn’t have to be about Alicia and her business in particular, hell, it could be a good thing.
As Deepspeaker Lia materialized fully in front of the port crystal, Alicia was dead certain that her fleeting optimism had been misplaced. From Lia’s face alone she recognized the facts of the matter. This was terrible news, for her, specifically. It was about her business, and it definitely wasn’t a good thing.
“I am glad to have caught you before you headed out,” Lia spoke with a matter-of-fact tone that didn’t reveal the intentions Alicia intuited that she had. “There is an important matter we need to discuss,” Alicia didn’t avert her eyes, even though she desperately wanted to she kept Lia’s gaze, as if trying to break the calcfied calm of it. “About your newest recruit.”
Yup, Alicia found herself thinking, Terrible News sounds about right.
Author’s Note: Bit of a “to be continued” this chapter. Once you get to the next one I think you’ll understand why I chose to split this “scene” in two. It may or may not also be to help me by pushing the bit of the story that is Ch.10 a tiny little bit into the future. Now why would I do that you may ask? Well I could say it’s not to buy myself a little bit of time to figure out a potentially very complicated scene, but I would be lying.
Join me next time, when we experience two things that I find hard to write but really REALLY needs to be tthere.
VSD