“It’s the same with me. I’m trying to teach the Kommilaire but it feels like they’re just going through the motions. Like they’re mimicking what I do without knowing why. I might be wrong half the time, but I at least know my objectives.”
“Well, you’re certainly popular. I get my people to tear down those damn loudspeakers blaring your trials, but someone puts them right back up.”
“That’s not just me. People like hearing the other programs too. I only do about a trial a week. But I just wonder, what’s going to happen in the future. What’s our legacy? What happens when you and I are gone?”
Delovoa smiled.
“I can tell you exactly. This station dies. The Portals in this system die and then eventually all of them across the galaxy. Then I suspect some thousands of years of Dark Ages where there are no empires. When the furthest any race can reach is its current solar system. Until science and technology and economies grow enough that they can make contact again.”
“Wow. You’re a downer.”
“It’s not going to happen overnight. It will likely take some hundreds of years after we’re gone. But it will happen. We’re already seeing it now. Belvaille isn’t exactly the height of civilization. And remember, we’re the center of the galaxy. We are the height of civilization.”
“So do you think when all the races meet back up again, they’ll do it different? Somehow better?”
He laughed.
“Why would they? How would they know or care what we did?”
“Then Naked Guy was right. We’re just going to repeat all our mistakes forever,” I said.
“If he really was billions of years old, then he must have seen this dozens of times at different scales. Maybe this was the biggest collapse. Maybe not. Maybe there was some prior society that spanned galaxies and then it turned to hell.”
“So why am I getting up every day and literally killing myself trying to keep this all together?” I asked.
“What else are you going to do, retire? When are you going to admit that you enjoy your job? You just like complaining even more.”
CHAPTER 8
Ouch, my brain.
I bet whoever invented alcohol totally regretted it the next day.
The previous night had been spent drinking with Delovoa. Not sure how many bottles I had gone through, but my mouth was pasty and my eyes were dry and I felt tired.
I was too old to drink like that anymore. I would feel bad for two days, probably. It so wasn’t worth it.
Being an old mutant was a drag. I couldn’t drink. I couldn’t appreciate food. There was so little for me to physically enjoy in life now.
Sex? Not many women wanted to romp with a seven ton guy.
I was very unattractive. I knew that.
I prided myself on being self-aware. I knew my weaknesses. I knew my strengths. I just didn’t go trumpeting them because no one cared, and if you did, you came across like an ass.
I twisted on my bed and grabbed hold of the reinforced railings. I got to my feet and felt three times worse.
I stumbled into my bathroom and drank from the faucet a good long time and splashed water in my face. My nose was dry I was so dehydrated.
I stood in front of my toilet trying to go. I probably had a two hundred pound prostate gland and going to the bathroom wasn’t always an easy task.
To try and relax I thought of the Ginland Glocken team, which I still considered my home team even though they were on the other side of the galaxy. The sport of glocken hadn’t stopped, though away games were rare now.
Ginland’s Reskin Sleepers hadn’t won a single game in their history. Their losing streak had outlasted the very empire they were created in. Talk about folk legends.
I heard my radio going off in the other room.
Took a few minutes longer, but I managed to empty my bladder.
“Yeah?” I answered the radio.
“Look outside,” MTB said on the other end.
I walked over to my front door and opened it.
There were thousands of people in the street!
It wasn’t violent that I could see. Wasn’t a war or gang fight. So I closed the door and decided to change. I found I didn’t have as much powers of persuasion talking to people while in my underwear.
After I got all my equipment secured and drank a lot of water, I headed out.
“What are you doing on my lawn?” I said to anyone who could hear me.
They were chanting, clapping, disorganized. They carried banners and signs. They seemed upset.
They saw me come out of my door and a hundred voices accused me at once, making it impossible to tell what they were saying.
“Whoa. Whoa. What’s going on?”
A bold man in dingy clothes walked up to me with a pamphlet.
I tried to focus, holding it a bit further away because of the small type.
It said that each Kommilaire got paid 150,000 thumbs a year salary and that we had given ourselves a 25% raise. It also went over a list of perks and bonuses that were extreme in their largesse.
I had been around forgeries for centuries. Real forgeries. This was a professional attempt to look unprofessional. It was fake.
This wasn’t printed by some concerned citizens in a rented workshop. It was on durable material with excellent presentation. Some real printers who knew their craft made it.
What’s more, it mentioned things like banking rates and lend-leasing and utilities and obscure concepts that simply weren’t known by the public and certainly not known enough to print and be pissed off about.
The details were all fabrications, of course. But I didn’t have any of this in writing. I didn’t keep a stack of ledgers I could wave around and go, “See? This is all untrue.”
I noticed I wasn’t directly mentioned anywhere. Though as Supreme Kommilaire, presumably I had something to do with it.
I looked up and could see some of my Kommilaire looking out from their apartments. They didn’t want to step into this fray. Or maybe they were, according to the pamphlet, too overpaid and pampered to care.
I moved into the mob, wondering how I could disperse them. I couldn’t just start shooting people. They cleared a space as I walked. They weren’t so upset that they were ready to throw themselves under my feet and get mashed.
They didn’t even seem to be mad at me. They were yelling at the buildings. Buildings which they knew housed a lot of the Kommilaire.
But their yelling was making my hangover worse.
Suddenly the shouts turned to screams and the street cleared like an umbrella had been raised in a heavy downpour. Not that I’d ever used an umbrella. Or been in a heavy downpour.
“Hank!” A masculine voice yelled.
I turned and saw the source of the commotion.
A man stood maybe a hundred yards from me. He was a big, grizzled guy. He wore tactical body armor covered in wild tribal markings. He carried a four-stack missile launcher on his shoulder. I could tell it was old military because it was black and boxy and unsexy… and because it said “Colmarian Navy” on the side.
Some of my Kommilaire had exited their apartments at this. I spoke into my radio.
“Everyone stay back.”
The crowd was tense. Their protest banners were limp in their hands.
I waited.
But nothing else was forthcoming.
“Yes?” I prompted.
“I’m Eshthus-Beuldarion from Polgia-Moshtha-Urmia-Rezdunta!” He said, stomping his feet at each accented syllable.
I actually laughed. I guess there were some simple things in life I could still enjoy.