Ailbeart Rend & Echo Montegawitz
Echo watched Rend depart without a word, and head straight to his quarters. If anything of these false memories she knew was true, she could tell that he was extremely upset and on the losing side. Better to say nothing, better to do nothing while the enemy paraded around in their arrogance and let them think your spirit broken. She didn't think, not really. Without a word, she followed him directly after his departure, instinct calling to console him. His door closed just as she entered the hall/escape-pod bay. The round hatches in the floor were all marked and waiting for an emergency to unlock the hatches.
Rend sagged onto the pristine white bed, his brain abandoning the responsibility of controlling his body movements. An enigmatic expression was fixed on his face. The strange blue garment that he had been attached to for a while now pooled around his legs and let them nestle into the soft material of the bed. The effect was immediately therapeutic. He lay both his mental and physical burdens onto the solid foundation and closed his eyes slowly. A deep sigh sprung from his mouth without provocation. He began to rest and recalled lessons about dealing with stress from another life: delegating responsibility?
No, there's only five people who can even speak the same feckin' language as me. Plus, nobody is about to ally with me against the doctor anyway... Gather some liquid courage?
Alcohol is the thing I want most in the world right now, but anythin' cultivated by those creatures ain't something I'll drink. Put the problem away for another time?
This one has potential, aye. I'll have a rest. Just... rest...She knew she had little incentive to coax Rend into joining her company, so she shot off to her quarters for just such a thing. Looking into her nightstand, she opened a hidden rear panel and fished out a glistening bottle of scotch meant to be raised in toast to success. Often known on nautical and space vessels as the victory bottle. She wasn’t much of a drinker, and she hoped that she selected a good brand when they were inquiring about what to supply. She guessed at the most familiar name, but had no actual clue as to what she was buying. The velvet bag was still in perfect shape, preserved in a near vacuum. There wasn’t even dust in the glasses that were stowed in the same place.
Without another thought she was at the door to his quarters. Her original self put an end to her pursuit, stopping short of simply pressing the open button. This wasn't her room. Did she even actually want to chase down this quirk? Her fingers hovered over the panel in indecision. While she found the thought of him repulsive, at the same time there was an ache for the phantasm. Her logic stepped in. There were only 6 humans left, there was no disagreement on that fact, and allies (yes, even unsteady relationships) were in rare supply these days. If, and it was a large if, they could actually get over themselves, the crew could focus on the real threat... the Principality. While she would have loved to use her reasoning as fuel to press the call button on Rend's door, really they were just an excuse. She had to know, she had to see for herself if she was completely insane, or if her vision had granted her knowledge beyond what a mere fit of madness might provide. The pad flashed around the touch-panel indecating the "call" option that had been depressed.
Sleep had almost embraced him when the noise of a doorbell echoed through the room. Rend immediately slowed his breathing and snored a little, to feign sleep. He dared not go to the door. Either it would be some strange creature itching to assault and terrify him or it would be a human instead wanting to assault and condemn him. Completely ignorant of the stubborn play-acting inside, Echo tried a second time. This sparked a thought within Rend:
If it were one of those creatures surely they would rip the door apart rather than wait fer me... He raised his head from the plush pillow and craned his neck to look at the door. It was featureless, but by the side of the door there was a small panel with a circular outcrop - almost like a peephole. Rend felt some small pang of curiosity, so despite his bodily exhaustion he stood on his feet and moved quickly to the panel. He knelt down and positioned his unobstructed eye in front of the hole. His vision adjusted slowly due to his eye-patch, yet he could quickly make out the figure of a woman, and then the features of the same. It was her: Echo. Rend didn't know how the panel had footage from the other side with it being just a slab of white, heavy metal, and he didn't think to question whether her appearance had been recorded at another time, he just jerked his hand to wherever it needed to go to open the door.
Unlike many, most people's instinct would be to notice the defect... the eye, the patch, Echo had new instincts with Ailbeart as though the artificial years had worn away the awkwardness of the injury and now his face and the habit of where and how to look had become the norm. She looked him in the good eye without even a wavering glance to that which he held secret. She didn't even notice.
“Mr. Rend, I...” She was about to engage her happy bubbly persona, however, simply found it lacking. The pep melted from her form, replaced with an exhausted and weary visage.
“Do, forgive my impropriety, but we are in a very small and alien world now. I very much need something familiar, and you are the closest thing to it. Would it be alright if we spend some time being alone together?”Before he had a moment to speak, she sweetened the deal without prompting,
“I have a 100 year old bottle of scotch.”Rend just stood there, dumbfounded and visibly weary, as she provided him with the very first kind, well-meant words ever since his ejection from the pod. They hadn't ever spoken alone before.
Her accent, her dialect... I cannae imagine Victoria sounding like this.She looked back at his expression, unsure of exactly what it meant. Silence started to burgeon like an barrier of awkwardness building between them. Shocked back into action, Rend blurted:
"Sorry, lass, of course... come in, please." He backstepped into the room and took to the relative comfort of the bed again, only sitting instead of lying down.
The interior was stagnant, sterile, partially because any form of character in this ship required technology. She waved her hand to the walls, and immediately they awoke. The stereoscopic display was only the half of it, for the light emanating from the microscopic particles was also manipulated by miniscule electromagnetic fields smashing photons as though they struck objects rather than emanating from them, creating a true 3D image that was only a layer of paint thick. Using hand and finger motions you might expect a wizard to display, the technology watched her every move. She flipped through a few options while setting the bottle and glasses down on the table. The chamber changed to a relaxing star filled night. Stars... it was contrary to the mood. She promptly swiped it to a dreary night with flashes of lightning that buried deep in the clouds. Rolls of distant thunder were wafted through the chamber on sporadic but gentle breezes that were slightly chilled.
"That's a little more fitting, wouldn't you say?"Fitting that the room should come alive only when you enter, Rend thought. He merely grunted morbidly in response. Looking around the room now brought him some solace. Where before there had been soulless white walls there were now images, flashes of Earth and the past, and they had been just a few specific movements away. For a split second he thought of Echo as some kind of deity who could possess their surroundings and make them display comforting sights and emit relaxing sounds, but he knew anyone else besides him would be able to do the same - their young minds pondering the latest updates for the newest technology. A memory revealed itself to him then of her... Victoria. He had bought her some daft fish tank with a manual-load of features and functions. She was excited, and wouldn't let him leave the room until he played around with it with her. Her hand on his, both holding a thin remote control, making the tank light up, bubble... He drew away from his memories with a couple of blinks and a sharp inhale. Echo was standing by the bedside table, the bottle of scotch nestled in her palm.
Good God, I didn't even see the booze.The crystal released a harmounious tink as she poured a small portion into each glass. She looked to the storm witnessing the simulated battle of electricrons. She made to speak, but halted, finally the thought returned, as she sat.
"Do you see any of them actually going through with it?" A suddenly energized Rend jerked upwards and grabbed one of the glasses. He could feel the scotch burning through his mouth and down his throat.
That old familiar warmth..."What, rising up against the creatures? They'd be fools, but I cannae say I don't want them to try.""Actually, I was speaking of the bigger picture, repopulation. I don't see that happening. Yaz might be a good mother, but Thalia? I can't imagine her interested in children. Owen is still a boy in many ways. And I know that you have no intention of rearing..." she caught herself,
"Well... I shouldn't make assumptions."She hadn't taken even a sip of her scotch, but simply swirled it around in her cup. Without noticing her finger reached up to caress her split brow and split lip on its way back down.
"Two couples aren't enough of a gene pool. Humans don't exactly have the same privileges as dogs or chickens for in-breeding. I think we are looking at extinction, which opens up some rather unexpected things we can do with the rest of our lives.""The rest of our lives may be a much shorter period than you're thinking." Rend replied, somewhat uncomfortably, while studying her face and mannerisms discreetly. Echo lifted her glass in a toast to Rend's comment. Could she be a potential trustee? An ally for the dark, hopeless times? He didn't know. She was clearly on amicable terms with each one of the crew, including Benji and Tahlia. He shuffled closer to the bottle of scotch that now stood on the bedside table and gestured his hand towards it.
"D'ya mind?""I wouldn't have it any other way," she placed her glass back down and dumped a considerable amount into Rends'.
"I wouldn't say the situation is so hopeless. They might hold the upper hand in strength, but they can be manipulated, scared, and apparently divided. Benji has been invaluable with that, even to the point of curbing..." The mention of the doctor collapsed Rend's countenance. He unconsciously settled into a glare and a snarl, and instead of speaking or even looking at Echo, he stared down at his drink and sipped it with fervour.
She fell silent. But it wasn't an emotional knot. She simply cleared her throat as though it was a reasonable conclusion.
"Do you mind if I ask you a personal question? I mean, you don't have to answer if you don't want to. I should say, of course you don't have to, but I don't want you to feel that I'm pressuring you... But I would very much like to know.""I'm, uh... not usually fond o' spillin' my guts for people." He sipped the scotch again. When things got uncomfortable back on Earth, he could easily have dispelled the situation by taking any one of the number of phone calls that were always backed up waiting for him, or calling together an impromptu meeting. There was nothing he could do that would seem natural - nothing that wouldn't get him on the receiving end of a hostile fist, anyway.
"I guess. Go ahead."“Renascence was established to counter a doomsday scenario. Right now, the protocols have me recycling our waste and fixing protein sludge out of anything non-toxic until our crops can take hold. The concept of us encountering civilization didn’t even make the books.
Now, let’s be honest, we both know you don’t want die a hunter-gatherer in a god-forsaken wasteland? You are far too ambitious for that. And your odds of preventing doomsday greatly exceeded the odds of surviving in a post-apocalyptic world.
But, none of that happened. After years of training and conditioning, I am completely dispensable, and you are pivotal. Every single thing we have encountered falls well within your skillset.
So the question arises... why did you come along, Mr. Rend? Are you simply lucky, or were you informed?”Ailbeart Rend waited a while before he answered. There wasn't much scotch left.
"I... was clinging to life with the strength of a lion. I knew of Renascence, sure, and luck had nothin' ta do with it. I was gettin' in one of those cryo - whatever the fuck they're called - things no matter what: I murdered, bribed, lied and intimidated. Ya' see, that was the way forward on Earth... my Earth. But you can't quite get a man to do what you want when you're too frail to stand up straight, or you can't even remember what you wanted done in the first place. I've been fightin' atrophy for too long. It's why I'm here." He sighed with an age-old weariness. Without a glance at Echo, he fell back onto the bed, trying to press himself as far down as it would let him. A trembling hand climbed across the alien vestment, across the pulsing monstrosity that constituted his lungs, the wrinkled folds of his neck, his chapped lips and unkempt tufts of stubble.
He pulled his eye-patch off and craned his neck towards Echo. He might have cried like a baby, were what lay behind the patch anything more than a bunch of circuits and technology.
"Would you look at that. Traditionalist Ailbeart Rend had technology connected to his brain!" He chuckled, and lights flashed vaguely beneath his neck.
"Some fuckin' ocular implant. I never learnt it's model name. I killed a man for this! Stuck a knife in his gut after he'd finished installing the eye. But..." two pupils fixed on the girl before him, one a sky blue, the other jet black. He saw two different girls between the two eyes, but one was nothing more than a memory,
"I did it for you, Victoria. God knows I didn't love your mother, but I loved you. I was never the husband or the father type, but I tried, I fuckin' tried when it came to you. I should never have sent you away." His fingers still fondled the small black ball in his eye. He rested his middle finger on the surface.
"Lass, if you could do one more thing for me." His other hand hovered in the air, gesturing weakly towards the bottle of scotch.
She stood there, unmoving. His hand wavered for a second, but his fingers soon clenched and Ailbeart Rend let out one last, peaceful breath.
"I never was very patient."He pulled with all the strength he had left on his black, fake eye. There were no sparks, no explosion, only a crackle of electricity that followed the cable from his eye to his brain, and shut down the whole system. The life of Ailbeart Rend was over.
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