Robert Duperre - The Gate 2 - 13 Tales of Isolation and Despair

“Proximity to what?”

“Hell.”

“You keep saying that. I told you I don’t like metaphors.”

“What would you like me to tell you?”

Bruce seemed to regard the question; his eyebrows furled and nose twitched. “You could tell me why you brought me out of stasis.”

Norahc sighed. “Company selected you based on Manifest. As far as I know, you’re here to relieve me.”

“Relieve you? I don’t know a thing about piloting a ship, just the basics of navigation.”

“The ship pilots itself. From Waypoint to Destination, there’s nothing you need to do except keep the controls happy and avoid any unnecessary distractions.”

Bruce reached for the carafe of coffee and refilled his cup. He sat back in his chair with a smirk on his face, whatever thoughts he might have were lost inside the blackness of his eyes. For a second the relentless stare made Norahc nervous, but then again, Company had warned him.

Bruce sipped from the cup and finally turned his eyes from Norahc. “What are my options?”

“Go back into stasis and accept whatever Company decides or take over for me and accept whatever Company decides. I really don’t think there’s an option.”

“And what becomes of you?”

Norahc smiled. He wasn’t sure of how to answer the question, and he felt perhaps he didn’t need to. Company had provided him Reprieve and given him an out. Okay, maybe it wasn’t an out, but it was a chance to relax, to stop ferrying people from Waypoint to Destination pretending he didn’t care.

If only for a few days.

The smile dropped from his face as he thought of the stares, the Awakening, the Panic, and the faint glimpse of Acceptance that sparked in the eye of every passenger as they finally stepped off the ship at Destination. “Are you ready, then?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be, I guess.” Bruce finished his coffee and stood up. “Show me the bridge?”

“This way.”

The bridge was nothing more than a small room with a window to the emptiness outside. Distant suns, faintly visible, were the only decoration on an otherwise black canvas. Below the window, a single red light blinked rapidly. Next to it there was a single red button.

“The light is the Proximity warning. You’ll see that only when you’re within sixteen hours. It’ll blink faster the closer you get.” Norahc stood at the doorway and watched Bruce take in the nothingness.

“And the button?”

“When the light stays steady, press it. That sends a signal to Gateway to open its doors.”

“Sounds simple enough.”

“It is simple.” Norahc turned, half wishing he could tell him how much he hated the job, and half wishing he could do it himself. It wasn’t the button that bothered him, nor the simplicity of the light. It was Gateway and Destination, all of it packaged together as a pill slowly eating away any bit of flesh he had left.

Still, the job had Meaning.

“You know, my father once told me that I’d be doomed to spend my life in service to others. It was my brother, Soré, that would get all the glory.”

Bruce turned from the window. “That’s a wonderful story. Anything else you want to add to that?”

Norahc frowned at the apparent sarcasm. “Yeah. I gave my father everything. Soré gave everything to others. Love and Death—they’re opposites, but married to a common thread.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“I sometimes have to look in the mirror to see what’s really going on. It was my father that created Gateway, and my father that damned Destination. What I do for him is something very few people could do themselves. Soré wouldn’t have any of it. If you pull yourself back for just a moment and see the grand scheme of things, then you’d see where we all fit in.

“You have a chance to be a part of that. Just remember that sometimes it’s the simple things that get us through the day.”

Bruce stood in silence. Norahc guessed he really didn’t understand.

In time, he would.

Norahc stepped away from the door. “Just watch the light. Company will do the rest.” He put his hand against the wall and the door slid shut.

“Thank you.”

Norahc slept.

For the first time in ages, he closed his eyes against the world around him, blocked out everything he’d ever seen, and slept. Dreams wouldn’t come, but at the very least there was relaxation. The stasis tube he placed himself in was Bruce’s—the only empty place to hide. In a few hours, Company would open Gateway, Destination would accept the ship, and Awakening would begin.

For once, he didn’t need to be a part of it all. They promised to leave him alone, long enough to rest, to recuperate, to regain his strength.

Bruce would be fine. Despite his gruff exterior and cocky attitude, he seemed like a good pick. Norahc was pleased with Company’s selection.

Evil is bound to repeat evil.

Death is a beginning.

Eternity is chaos.

The water in the stasis tube subsided. Norahc’s head fell forward and hit the glass enclosure. He waited for the signal, then opened his eyes.

Bruce stood on the other side of the glass, his eyes red. Bloody tears streamed down his cheeks. He shook, though probably not from the cold.

Norahc pointed to the access panel and waited for the glass to slide open.

“What the hell was that?” Bruce screamed.

Norahc stepped out into the holding bay. He smiled at Bruce and turned toward the door. “I guess I forgot to tell you to keep your eyes off Gateway.”

Bruce let loose a guttural laugh followed by a cough and few spots of blood. “Did you also forget to tell me where we were going? Did that slip your mind as well?”

Norahc stopped at the doorway and turned around. “No. I told you—three times, in fact. You just wouldn’t accept it.”

“That was Hell!”

“Yes. It even works as a metaphor, doesn’t it?”

Norahc looked down the row of empty stasis tubes. “Time to go pick up another load.”

Benjamin X. Wretlind ran with scissors when he was five. At ten, he wrestled the giant ape creatures of Seti Alpha Nine while nursing a bad case of the measles. At fifteen, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for blowing stuff up. At twenty, he admitted that only the scissors thing was true. He is the author of CASTLES: A FICTIONAL MEMOIR OF A GIRL WITH SCISSORS and is working on another novel to be released in 2012. You can read his musings at http://www.bxwretlind.com.

A young man dressed in black crouched in an alley between two city houses. The coming dusk cast deep shadows in every corner. Rain pelted him.

Off in the distance he heard an argument between a mother and child. Thunder rumbled overhead.

Jules sat in the shadowy darkness, watching the window of Gilbert’s house intently. There was a candle in the window of the one-room home, a dirty little picket fence surrounded the place, and the man apparently threw all of his garbage in the alley, because Jules was sitting atop a pile of it. He suspected the culprit had to be Gilbert, or his neighbors, a young couple who fought more than two people in love probably ever should. He’d been sitting there half the day, listening to them, beginning to smell like rotten eggs while he watched.

Someone snuffed the candle.

Jules smirked. He jumped down from his pile of trash and leapt easily over the fence. Glancing around, Jules saw that he was indeed alone, and with that he peered into the window that faced the alley.