4.

 

Flight time to Consolidated was another eight hours so Winston racked out for real, risking the dreams. As expected they came for him, and they were angry. After being suppressed for so long by his simulated domestic tranquility it was as if they wanted revenge.

~~~

The new smell of the yet unnamed tug was still strong even after a month of piloting her. Jeph, his assigned loadmaster was sitting in the co-pilot’s seat, monitoring their return approach to Lougahasa, their home terminal. A side projection was filled with the local sports feed. A pre-game analysis show caught him up on team line-up changes and injury reports for tonight’s game.

“Relax, Chingu. We’re running on time here. You’ll make it to the stadium,” Winston said with a chuckle.

“Chingu yourself,” Jeph snipped around a mouthful of Crisptaders, getting crumbs all over the seat. “I don’t make it, it’s your money I’m taking.” His loadmaster then opened up a fantasy sport site and started making some changes to his lineup for the game after one of the talking heads gave new details on the game and how that could affect one of his players.

Winston just smiled with an eye roll. The pair of them had been out for almost five weeks and he was missing Valerie. He looked over his right shoulder at the navigator’s suite. Emmy’s gift smiled back blankly. A genuine, right from the company store, Princess Nanamoushki. The toy plush, pink, winged hippo, in a princess tutu with ‘magic’ holographic projection wand stared back with a saccharine open mouth smile. Thankfully it was a dumb plush toy, not a mechoid playmate or reactive beyond that wand.

To Winston, it was a marketing nightmare of how many little girl tropes could be checked off at one time. But to Emmy, she would lose her mind and be propelled to the top of her little social circle. Valerie would enjoy some spillover jealousy from the other moms she hung out with while the kids were on play dates. Perhaps he should give her a heads up on what was coming.

He took a moment to check the lag time for video comms. They were close enough to be near instant transmission.

“I think I’ll give Val a comm,” Winston announced.

Jeph gave a soft grunt that pretended to acknowledge what Winston said.

The comm purred as he rang his wife.

Valerie picked up, her smile forcing itself through a frustrated grimace.

“Hi Darlin’,” Winston chirped.

Before she said a word, a power ballad of Emmy’s familiar shriek and tantrum began behind her.

Winston’s lips curled back in a shocked cringe. Valerie’s face became an executioner’s masque of overwhelmed mama bear.

“Enough! Go to your room!” Valerie shouted at their daughter.

Emmy’s rebellious screams off camera were incomprehensible through the snot and tears save for the repeated syllable of “No!”

Behind Winston’s disheveled wife, their apartment was a horrid mess. Toys and clothes and unidentifiable clutter were everywhere. Knickknacks, brick-a-brac and tchotchkes littered the apartment. Every trash can in sight was filled to overflowing. Then he noticed that most of the clutter was of similar items, the Princess Nanamoushki collection. So much pink.

“Be right back,” Valerie finally said and went off camera to take hold of the tantrum throwing Emmy.

He could hear the out of sight struggle to scoop up his daughter and the thump of his wife’s feet. Valerie passed by the camera marching Emmy off to her bedroom, their daughter slung over her shoulder. The sight of little girl fists hammering on his wife’s back made Winston wince. Muffled shouts of admonishment were indistinct, but Winston knew what they were. He’d said them many times himself when Emmy spun out of control like this. The howl of agony mixed with the rage of a little girl denied her power was dampened by the closed door. Yep. Consequences suck, sugar child.

The loud crunching behind him stopped. Winston could feel Jeph’s eyes looking over his shoulder at the comm projection.

The crying got loud as Emmy’s bedroom door opened again then slammed. Angry feet pounded their way back to the house comm.

Valerie looked ready to burst into tears. Her beautiful chestnut hair up was in a messy, mostly undone bun, her blouse fastened crookedly and covered with a purple stain that looked like jelly. A red welt on her cheekbone was swelling.

“Dare I ask?” Winston said.

“Go on, dare,” Valerie snapped.

Winston knew better than to take that bait. She was going to tell him soon enough.

“Your daughter,” Valerie began. He knew she was in deep trouble when Emmy was his, not theirs, “Somehow managed to get ahold of our credit account and buy the Princess Nanamoushki nanofab collection.

“Oh no,” Winston gasped.

“Oh yes!” Valerie said. “See this?” she made a grand sarcastic gesture toward the mess behind her.

“That’s what came out before I could stop our nanofab unit. Honestly, it’s not stopped, just paused. She clicked accept not just once, but Xiao knows how many times before she stopped. The fab queue is several dozen pages long!”

“Holy cheis! How much did that cost?” Jeph asked.

Winston wheeled around to find his loadmaster unapologetically staring wide-eyed at the comm. “Do you mind?” he shouted at Jeph. “Private conversation here.”

“Then don’t be screaming about it in the cab,” Jeph sulked.

“Can you just-” Winston let out a frustrated sigh. “Just please go to your sleeper for a bit?”

“Purg, yes,” Jeph said with a mix of disgust and horror. He popped open his crash frame and headed for the second sleeper, muttering. “What I don’t need is some more of your domestic tranquility.”

“I’m trying to get the money back, right now,” Valerie said.

“How much?” Winston said, now terrified of the answer.

“If they don’t give us our money back, we’re in the hole several thousand this month. I’m not sure what I’ll be able to do. The Dataoid I was talking to before you called said something about not refunding for what we’ve already fabricated.” She pointed at the piles behind her with a tilt of her head.

“Not to mention the feedstock cost. That’s just gone, but we can at least recycle these things. That was what the tantrum was about. I was dumping a trashcan into the digester. She tried to save one of the dolls and got smacked for her trouble. It would have taken off her arm.”

“Can I make my initial payment on my new tug?” Winston’s panic rose.

“Depends,” Valerie hedged.

“What do you mean ‘depends’? We can’t miss this payment!” Winston shouted.

“Don’t you take that tone with me, Winston! This was not on purpose. I still don’t know how she managed to get the bank access, though with how slippery that dataoid at customer service was, I bet something crooked was going on.”

“Nothing crooked was going on. I’m betting you had your password written down where she could find it and her little friends pressured her into doing it. Were they over there today?”

Valerie gave a suspiciously tight smile. “For a couple minutes this morning, yes. Little Lizzy and her mother came by-”

“And you two ignored the girls while you drank wine as usual,” Winston judged.

“Are you implying I have a drinking problem?” Valerie reared back, eyes filled with cold indignant fire.

“No! I’m inferring you have a responsibility problem! When Karin and her little brat Lizzy come around you always do this. You two gossip and have wine while Emmy gets pressured into misbehaving because neither of you are watching!”

“You just hate my friends!” Valerie hissed.

“No, I don’t just hate your friends. I-”

“Oh, yes you do,” she interrupted. “I’m sorry. I can’t be like you. I don’t enjoy being alone all my life!”

“What the purg does that mean? I’m a pilot. I make a living hauling on the lanes. It’s not something I can do from home.” Winston’s shouts rang off the canopy. He could feel his pulse throb in his temples.

“You’ve never tried to find anything else to do,” she sneered.

“That’s a lie and you know it! This job pays enough to make our plans possible. We jus-”

Valerie cut him off again. “There were some perfectly good local jobs where you could be home every night.”

“And they pay half as much! We’d barely make ends meet even without the tug payments!” In the silence that followed Winston rubbed his eyes as the throb grew into a dull ache.

Valerie’s lips were set in a bitter, hard slash. She glared at the camera and right into him.

“Can I make the payment?” Winston asked softly.

“I don’t know yet. By the time you get home I hope to find out.” Valerie’s voice dripped with venom. “I’ll fig-”

Both jumped at the sound of a civil defense siren wailing outside. All over Lougahasa the eerie rise and fall pierced through the comm.

“Val? What’s going on?” Winston’s mouth dried out instantly.

His cab alarms went off, building into a fearful symphony. The Sierra Madre’s horn began to blast a pattern of five short and one long tone. Red warning holos began to spin on every screen.

“Val?” He struggled to hear her as he struggled to turn off the cab alarms so he could hear. His lungs felt like frozen, unable to push enough air to speak. She was listening to a voice coming in on the emergency broadcast system that he couldn’t hear clearly over his own warnings.

“Oh Xiao, Winston! A Black Void!” He could feel his face drain of color just like hers. “I gotta go! Everyone has to evac, right now! The whole skyland!” Valerie’s voice rose to a shrill frenzy as she bolted for their daughter’s bedroom.

“Emmy? Emmy!” she shouted, “Come with mommy, baby. We gotta go! We gotta go!”

Winston could hear his wife’s frantic running to get their daughter. “My shoes!” Emmy whined off camera.

“We don’t have time, baby,” Valerie said.

Jeph burst into the cab. “What the behng is going... on...?” The words died in his throat.

Winston ignored him.

“Valerie!” Winston shouted helplessly at the comm. Streaks of static and choppy pixellated interference began to hit their connection.

“Chingu,” Jeph said softly behind Winston.

His wife rushed by, fighting to slip on her own shoes. Emmy clumsily cradled in her arms, grabbing her purse by the front door, then reversing course to head to the garage and their own flier. The unlatched door slowly swinging wide open

“Valerie…” Winston whispered, helplessness choking his words. Another burst of static. He could hear the garage door rising up, and the old junky flier start up. Light from outside poured in through the open doors. There was a funny fluctuating quality to it. The mic picked up the sound of Valerie taking off and accelerating hard, then fading into the distant cry of the civil defense alarms, and dogs barking in the neighborhood.

“Winston!” Jeph’s shout startled him.

“What?”

“Look…” Absolute horror was carved into Jeph’s face as he pointed.

Winston had been so focused on the call, he did not see what was going on in front of them.

The pitch colored cloud of the Black Void filled nearly the entire view of his canopy. They were flying right into it!

Purple lightning fractured the sky with every pulse.

A low rumble grew as Lougahasa was consumed before his eyes. One by one the sirens began go silent, destroyed by the cosmic disaster. The camera began to shake. Decorations fell off shelves and shattered. Lamps fell over.

Jeph jumped into the co-pilot chair and trained the telescope on Lougahasa. Every sort of airship fled the doomed skyland, but it was far too late for most. Even those who managed to outrun the horizon wouldn’t make it. Winston knew what came next.

“Hit the brakes, Chingu,” Jeph said.

Winston didn’t react.

“Xiao behng me! We’re gonna die if you don’t hit the Xiao nahqing brakes!” Jeph screamed.

The profanity cut through Winston paralysis and he threw the tug into an emergency stop and watched in awe.

With a series of quick blinks the comm link with his home was cut. Winston now saw through the holographic display as the calamity played out before his eyes.

With a bright purple-white flash that section of the Dream and everything in it vanished. The auto dimming canopy saving his sight. As the canopy cleared. An empty hole appeared in the heavens. Not even ash remained, only a perfect transparent void, surrounded by walls of clouds was all that was left.

But that spherical hole revealed a glimpse of something beyond the clouds. Something even more terrifying that Winston could never seem to remember.

Just for a second, he saw it. Teasing the edge of his consciousness.

“Reverse! Reverse! Reverse!” Jeph screamed. “Get us out of here!”

Jeph’s hysterical voice was miles away, but the expanding decompression wave was approaching at ultrasonic speed. But Winston remained frozen. Everything he knew and loved was gone.

The implosion hit. The hypersonic winds boomed and kept booming, tearing his tug to pieces, dragging him down into the crushing nothing.

~~~

Winston woke up screaming Valerie’s name, just like he had a thousand times before.

Deprived of the vices of smoking or drinking to numb the pain, he writhed and groaned trapped in the afterimages of his nightmare. It never took long before he could not stand the memories any more.

His hand slapped blindly on the shelf above his sleeper, looking for the induction rig. He shoved it on his brow, loaded up Levitown, and dropped in to where life was simple, safe and perfect, just as he wanted it to be.