Steven Campbell - Hard Luck Hank - Prince of Suck

“I’ll be letting him out in… a week,” I said. “Unless you want me to search the rest of you.”

They were silent.

“You are all going home, now, right?” I asked the Totki.

“Now? Yes. We go home. But only for now,” Hong said.

The next day I travelled with my Kommilaire across the city.

There were some roadblocks of refuse along the way we had to take down. Not sure what they were for, maybe gangs trying to demarcate their territory, maybe a really big trash monster taking a crap. Didn’t matter, it was in the way, and there was no one else to move it.

We eventually came to an entire block devoted to one man. He was the most powerful person on Belvaille. He was perhaps the most powerful man alive—though admittedly I didn’t get around much, or at all, so I wasn’t exactly an authority on the galaxy’s power rankings.

The whole block, both sides, were his buildings.

I had my own block named after me: “Hank Block.” But I only owned one building. Most of the other buildings were apartments for the Kommilaire or wealthy individuals who wanted to feel safe. Or catch a glimpse of my sexy body.

At the entrance to this block—which didn’t have a name, because it didn’t need one—there were full-on concrete emplacements with manned machine guns, chainguns, and even cannons.

If Belvaille ever did fall into chaos, it would still have a tough time penetrating into here. More likely, even at the height of its insanity, it would still have the sense to leave this man alone.

I had to present my credentials before the guard unlocked and opened the massive gate that barred entrance to the street. The Kommilaire had to wait outside.

I walked to the building to meet his majesty. Guns from adjacent buildings tracked my movements.

After a series of lengthy security measures, I was finally admitted inside.

A young, incredibly athletic man, wearing billowing pink pants, stepped out to meet me. His hair was long and curly.

“And who are you?” he asked with a sneer.

At this, another figure appeared behind him, wearing a tattered blue robe and slippers. He was very old and frail. His head was peculiar in that it looked like an upside down, wrinkled pear, with no hair. He had three misaligned eyes that blinked and looked independently of one another.

It was obvious he had no teeth and his lips had collapsed inward to fill the space. His hands and feet looked gigantic on his emaciated frame, which was visible because part of his robe was open.

“Shoo! Shoo!” Delovoa said to the golden-haired twink, slapping at him rudely.

The younger man hurried away, pouting.

“Hank,” Delovoa smiled his gummy smile, “great to see you.”

Delovoa was a mutant like me, though his mutation no longer functioned. I think at one point he could create external heat a few inches from his body. Handy if you needed to solder something, but otherwise useless. That was a level-one mutation. I was level four.

The scale for mutations went up to ten, theoretically. I had met one level-ten mutant in my life, Jyonal. He could make anything he thought of happen as long as he could imagine it, and as long as he was high on drugs. Jyonal had even made himself a new body when he was trying to hide from the authorities. He was a dangerous guy to have around.

Delovoa was the last of the great engineers and inventors—at least in this region of space.

Without him the Portals would stop working and the countless improvements he had made to Belvaille’s infrastructure would fail.

Belvaille was never designed to house as many people as it currently did. It was only through Delovoa’s continual jury-rigging that we weren’t all suffocating in a massive cloud of carbon dioxide, were capable of recycling our waste, and able to refuel and repair space ships.

He was a god on Belvaille and it was a death sentence to even joke about harming him. He didn’t pay for all this security constantly monitoring his safety, the city did.

And it did so gladly.

His very name was synonymous with brilliance and eccentricity. People quoted and misquoted him often. The only ruling in a trial that could trump an official opinion from Delovoa was another official opinion from Delovoa. Like if he said something had to be done for the safety of the city, it was done. Period.

We sat in one of his spacious living rooms. Despite him having vast wealth, he was relatively humble. There were gadgets and parts and wires all over the place. Toys and projects he was currently tinkering with.

He and I had gone through a lot together.

He had a special chair for me to sit in. It was tall and kind of slanted and I could just lean into it without it crumbling.

Delovoa sat on a big cushion and his bony knees stuck out.

“What brings you here, Hank?”

Why was I here?

“Do you ever wonder why we do it, Delovoa?”

“Ah, a bitch-session,” he said, his three eyes popping.

He grabbed a little bell from the table and rang it angrily, as if he hated it.

“Boy! Boy!”

A young man, different from the first, came hurrying in. He was muscular and bare from the waist up.

“Sir, you called?”

“Not you, the pretty one. Oh, never mind. Bring a bottle of Kozk and two glasses. And ice. And…” he turned to me, “I’m sure you want food, right?”

“Sure,” I answered.

“Food. Something tasty. Bring a lot. Hank eats everything. Go!”

The young man darted away.

“Do what, now?” he asked me.

“Any of this. Remember the Naked Guy?”

“Who?”

“The Naked Guy. Come on, the guy.”

“I know a lot of… oh the Naked Guy. The person who practically destroyed the entire galaxy. Yes, he’s tough to forget.”

“Well, he was like billions of years old. And he just… despised everything. Saw how pointless it all was and how everyone just repeated all the same mistakes forever. I go riding out every day and I see the same thing. I’m not close to a billion years old, but I can see that people just don’t learn. Don’t want to learn.”

“How is this news?” Delovoa asked.

The young man ran back in with a bottle and glasses.

“I said Kozk. This isn’t even alcohol. Kozk!”

Delovoa threw the bottle at him, but the young man was too fast and Delovoa threw like an old lady with bad depth perception because of his three eyes.

“Sorry. Yes. People are stupid. You can’t teach a triangle pi. I’ve had dozens of apprentices—” he started.

“Is that what you call them?”

He continued as if I had said nothing. His snarkiness was on a whole other level I couldn’t touch.

“But none of them got anywhere. They’re either too old to learn new things or too young to understand. It’s not like I can teach feral kids advanced technology. The war wiped us out.”

“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.