EVE Fiction

Trip reaches a hand into the identity transfer port, wrapping his grip about the node that will take his memories, transfer them into that body. His other hand punches the sequence to launch the canister out, into space, perhaps to be found by someone in need of a new deckhand. A whistle, and a whoosh; these are the last sounds to be heard by Trip as flame spreads through the chamber; as twin hatch doors slice from behind the canister, wrapping it into a secure cocoon--it will launch in only a moment--the deed is done, though, and his thoughts are fading from the heat-bound, light-skinned body on the other side of the plexglass. Darkness encases his body, and he begins to drift back to sleep, jostled softly despite a range of dreams that plague him about some kind of loss....

Dreams drift in and out of his mind, reaching with a face of striking, sharp feature, almond-shaped dark eyes staring down at him from angles too intimate to address. Her fingers stroke down, over what he remembers--a scar, stretching from his left temple to the bottom of his jaw...it was his brother's final gift to him, as he squeezed the life out of the man's throat. When he heard his brother's windpipe collapse, his neck break, he knew he was captain of the Brood One. Misfregora Industries was his, from that moment on. A wrench to the face was little in comparison to leading four hundred industrialists to the heavens in search of their own heaven.

Body twitching, he reaches up to take a hand he needs to feel to... remember. His fingers pass through hers, the memory of... her... drifting in and out of his thoughts, amidst rattling ricochets of sound--explosion and screaming voice, mixing together. He watches her lithe body twist, face turning away; in a drift of emotion, he sees her on the floor of the pub, in her sleek, dark outfit. When they met, he was her target to assassinate, before he could repair the Harvester, the first time. How they'd turned around to a different course of action--to this intimacy--that was a story, indeed.

...but now, only a memory.

A twisting jostle sends him into orbit--throwing back the covers of a bed on a wide, open floor the man leaves the warmth of that bed behind, for the familiar cool of metal under the pads of dark feet. Breath heavy in his chest, he pats himself, to be certain he's real. That he does actually exist.

He crosses the room he is in, side to side, looking through it, again, as he has done for these last weeks. Confined to this room, of a hundred thousand rooms like it, in a place where he does not know the region, the system--they tell him the pod was floating in unknown space, spinning lazily. They tell him he most resembles the Minmataari, so that is where he has been sent--his world is, again, one of familiarity. Up to a point; his hands are unfamiliar to his eyes, and his face jars him, every time he sees it. His name feels familiar, somehow. Praezius Vheruk. Like a dream, a memory.

Leaving his pacing, he walks to a window port, tapping a button to withdraw the shade plate and show the starlit expanses he is soon to be floating, again. Already, the fleets are being assembled for the graduates--he among them, he is told. "Like he's done this, before," he has been told. "Top of the class," he has been called, and "Freakishly close to perfect."

In the reflection of the plexglass, his fingers stroke over his cheek, wrap thoughtfully around a dark-skinned chin, clear of marking. Just what should be on his skin, he doesn't know, but he cannot shake the feeling that his life is a collection of frayed holoreels.

...and just a memory.