“I hope it kills you,” Jaycee yelled as he climbed into the pod next to his, “Just know I’m right next to you if you try something crappy.”
Tor crossed himself and muttered a silent prayer, “Please, let me sleep while it happens.”
Jaycee thumped the side of the man’s pod, “Shut up, princess. Praying won’t get you anywhere.”
Tor cleared his throat and swallowed back his pink saliva. He noticed a bleeding scratch on the top of his arm from the melee in Botanix, “Oh God, make it stop,” he winced.
Manuel hovered over Tor and Jaycee’s pod, “Gentlemen, please. Do try to exercise a little decorum?”
“Put us to sleep, Manuel,” Jaycee crossed his arms over his pectoral muscles and closed his eyes.
“My pleasure.”
Manuel blasted two beams from his pages, forcing the glass fronts to slide into place.
Dressed in her underwear, Wool helped Jelly remove her ridiculously tight jeans, “Honey, we’re about to go to sleep for a while. You can’t wear these in the pods.”
“I know,” she clung to Wool for balance, “I hate wearing clothes. How do you spend all day in them?”
“No time to talk now,” Wool chucked the jeans over her shoulder and grabbed Jelly’s hand. They walked over to the third pod, “Okay, climb in and pretend you’re going to bed.”
“Nap time?”
Wool smiled and kept an eye on Tripp, “Yes, nap time.”
“Please, Miss Anderson. Hurry.”
“Okay, fine,” Jelly let go of Wool’s hand and climbed into her pod, “I’m going. Happy now?”
“Immeasurably.”
Jelly looked up at Manuel and screwed her face, “I don’t like you, you know.”
“That’s really of no consequence at this precise moment, Miss Anderson. Now, close your eyes.”
Manuel shot a beam over Jelly’s pod. The hatch slid up and bolted shut, pressing a shaft of gas within the tomb. Jelly closed her eyes and passed out.
“Phew. There, she’s done,” Manuel spun around and darted over to Tripp, “So, just you and Wool left—Oh.”
He caught Wool and Tripp hugging each other. A quiet and solemn embrace. A moment of sanity in an otherwise insane situation.
Wool’s pink tears wet her cheeks as she spoke, “Hold me.”
“I am,” Tripp breathed her scent in, “I am. Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve held someone?”
“Too long,” Wool kept her grip on his shoulders and moved her face in front of his, “Longer for me than for you, I think.”
“I may be married, but that’s no guarantee of physical contact.”
“Not now, Tripp,” Wool looked down and sobbed into his chest. He held her gently in his hands.
“Tripp?” Manuel mouthed, “Hurry up.”
“Wait,” Tripp mouthed back and tilted his head down to Wool, “Hey. It’s okay.”
He held her face in his hands and looked in her bleary eyes, “We did everything we could. Right?”
She nodded and wiped her messy nose, “Yeah. Yeah, we did.”
“It’s going to be okay, you know.”
Wool chuckled with disdain. She wasn’t buying a word of that particular lie.
“No. It’s not going to be okay, Tripp. Going to sleep is just going to prolong the misery. That’s all it’s going to do.”
She grabbed his hand and pulled it away from her face, “But that’s what I love about you, Tripp.”
“What?”
“Your optimism,” she pecked him on the cheek and turned to the fourth free pod, “Okay, Manuel. Load me in.”
“Certainly.”
Tripp soaked up Wool’s last words. It’s possible he was far too optimistic. But that was the whole point of being a successful captain, wasn’t it? He thought as much in his mind.
Tripp lay in the pod and closed his eyes.
“Are you ready?” Manuel asked.
“I’m ready. Seal me in and wake me up if we survive.”
“And if we don’t?”
Tripp inhaled and exhaled with a degree of peace, “Then leave me alone.”
The hatch slid up and released the sleeping gas.
Tripp may or may never see his crew again.
They may not survive the event in the sky. Even if they did, they probably wouldn’t get back home. If they did they wouldn’t be able to go near anyone. They were contaminated with Symphonium.
The odds got bleaker by the nanosecond. The best thing to do was not think about it at all.
After all, there was a sliver of a possibility that all this was stupid a stupid dream.
“Yeah, right. A dream,” Tripp’s final thought steamrollered through his mind before he conked out, “Dream on, Opera Beta.”
The sun scorched its way across the stars in the sky. The tree stomped forward and threw its branches out at it in a loving embrace.
GRRUUNNT.
The ball of white fire slammed into its root and stem as the branches closed around it. The two shimmied together and became one.
Next to it, the water from the ocean formed a twisting line in the air and sucked through into the duo like a straw.
One by one, the remaining Shanta creatures exploded as a chorus of light blasted through them.
Space Opera Beta sluiced into the harmonious concoction of light and wonder.
Everything went white – an act of God previously unseen by anyone or anything that ever lived…
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Happy birthday, poppet.”
Emily and Tony clapped their hands together and encouraged Jamie to take a deep breath. He blew out all eight candles on his birthday cake.
Emily rubbed his back as Tony slipped out of the front room. She whispered in his ear, “What did you wish for?”
“I can’t tell you or it won’t come true.”
“Hmm,” she looked at the frame of the door, along with her son, “Was it something along the lines of this?”
Tony stepped out of the way of the huge gift-wrapped birthday present, “Happy birthday, son.”
“Oh, wow.”
Jamie jumped from the chair and ran over to the flowery wrapping, “Is it what I think it is?”
“It might be,” Tony winked.
Jamie pushed his hand through the pink wrapping paper and felt a cold, metal bar, “Oh, wow. It is.”
Off came the wrapping paper in one fell swoop. Jamie laid eyes on the gift standing proud in the middle of the room, “Oh, wow. I thought you said I couldn’t have one?”
“No, no. It’s okay,” Tony moved over to the gift and retrieved two rubber sticks and ear buds, “See it muffles the sound. You put these in your ears. When you strike the pad it plays in your ears.”
Jamie took the buds from Tony’s hands and slipped them in his ears. He lifted the stick and thwacked it against the pad.
BOMPH.
“Oww,” Jamie yanked the plugs out from his ears.
“Bit too loud, huh?” Tony pointed at the slider on the side of the sticks, “Just turn the volume down.”
“Oh. Okay.”
The impressive drum kit meant the world to Jamie. He’d all but destroyed his a few of years ago in an attempt to ‘find out what made it bang’, as he described it. He loved to bash things. Why not create a cheerful tune in the process, he thought.
He felt life was complete now that he had a new drum kit. Tony and Emily were happy for him.