in time. Back to when we were all still young. Before my brothers and me went our separate ways. When we knew that there was a world outside ALCOR Station and we understood we were missing out on it.
That’s how I feel now.
I’m missing it.
Everything about this place here, it feels wrong somehow. Like the dream place was actual reality and what I’m stuck in now is only second best.
How old were they? I try to picture little Delphi and Tycho as they chased each other around the kitchen island. Four, maybe? Younger? It’s hard to tell. We don’t have a lot of kids on Harem, but aside from that, I’m not really the kind of guy who pays attention to kids.
I’m not a father.
And yet I am.
I wonder what I got them for their birthday. I wonder what I was making for breakfast. I wonder if I took that breakfast into Corla and then got back in bed with her.
“Get up! Get up! Get up!” Flicka is buzzing wildly.
I come back to the present and kinda hate it.
“We need to get Delphi out of here! Now!”
I don’t belong here. That’s my problem. I think I’ve always known it, too. I think I have always felt out of place.
This isn’t my world.
This isn’t my life.
I want to go home.
I don’t go home. Obviously.
I get up from the desk, order up a morning cocktail of extra-caffeinated, extra-carbonated energy drink, and then try not to look too hard at my reflection in the glass walls of my office.
I look past that guy and out into the harem room. Which is totally empty. Not a single princess in sight. No Cyborg Master. Not even a bot. “Where is everyone?”
“Haven’t you been listening to me? Everyone is stuck in a time freeze!”
“OK. But where’s Valor and Veila?”
“They’re on the Veiled Vixen. They went to bed just before I woke you up. But they don’t sleep long and we have a lot to do. We need to go! Now!”
“What a sun fucker. He’s sleeping with her? And what the hell is a Veiled Vixen?”
“That giant ship attached to the topside of the station!”
“Oh.” I nod my head, take another sip of energy drink. “Yeah. That makes sense. Veiled Vixen. So where is Delphi again?”
I’m having a hard time giving out fucks for this grown-up version of Delphi. I hate that for obvious reasons. But she wasn’t exactly the baby daughter I imagined all those years ago when Corla and I did that whole breeding ceremony thing. She has no interest in me, that’s for sure. And I can’t say I blame her. I wasn’t around. But it’s not like I was given a choice.
“She’s in the museum. Stuck in a spin node.”
“Right. The hidden spin node.” It still kinda bothers me that ALCOR kept that secret. I mean, I am the fucking governor of Harem Station. That’s the kind of thing I should’ve been told.
“Why are you just standing there? We have to go!”
“Because I… I…” I shrug and say the first thing that came to mind. “I don’t care, Flicka. I just don’t fucking care.”
“Don’t care about what? Delphi being stuck in the spin node? The station basically being held hostage by an evil Cygnian princess? The fact that Veila and Valor now control time? And speaking of Valor, how about his treasonous actions? He’s her soulmate! He’s in on this! He helped her lock everyone up in their rooms! Which part of this doesn’t peak your give-a-fuck-meter, Crux?”
“Meh?” I shrug again. “Yeah. All of that shit can just go fuck itself.”
“We lost! Veila won! But it’s not over yet! She’s either going to use Delphi and Tycho to blow up the station, or open the gates and let the Akeelians in, or—”
“So. Fucking. What?”
“How can you say that?”
“You know how? I’ll tell you how. Some version of the Security Beacon Number Nineteen AI came to me in a time-freeze-induced dream, showed me the life I could’ve had if I hadn’t been born in this shitty version of the man called Crux, showed me what normal looked like—and you know what my takeaway is? This place sucks. This whole fucking two-cocked version of me sucks. I don’t want to do this anymore. I mean… there were a few minutes there where I thought, Eh. Yeah. Maybe I’d like to go wake Corla up. See her again. Talk to her. Catch up on the last twenty-one fucking years. You know, those years where she went