Minisode - Killing Time
Hello.
Today’s Earthloop update is a strange one. I am not yet decided if every element of this story is canon (true to the story universe) but Lax Morales lies when he needs to anyway. It has to be done when you’re dealing with time.
In this short scene, Lax Morales is considering hopping diagonally through time to do something violent off-camera. Nori is trying to figure out if the alien crab is just making conversation or if he really did have a pet zombie for a few days before coming to Earth. Both of them are remembering old friends.
This scene, if it’s included, will be in EARTHLOOP 3: THE PLANET THIEVES.
Killing Time
Lax dreamed of a pearlescent bridge between Now and Then, a connective tissue stretched across the time tunnel like a chain of Healer Cells. He dreamed of leech mouths slicing triangular holes in the time vein, opening into kaleidoscopic renditions of the people he had been all his lives. Across the pearlescent bridge stood Nori, Brigid, Merten, Bill. Here they could live forever if they wanted to, existing in a myth between realities like an unspoken love between friends. Lax felt himself crying, snapped out of it, loaded the Beretta 92. He sniffed and made sure he was facing away from Nori, who today was young and alive.
“Back on my world, we used physical rounds to save energy, and to better trace who shot who,” Lax said. “Lasers worked, sure, but we conserved energy on those treasure-hunting adventures.”
“Why would you need to trace what you shot on a treasure hunt?” Nori asked. Lax finished loading the gun.
“Some of the treasure was alive.”
“So you were a hunter too.”
“No. I only killed in self-defence. It was Scohhrin who threw himself into ruins and started blasting the writhing things there. Thing is the zombies weren’t living any more, so they’re technically artefacts in the same way your mummies here are artefacts.”
“I’m sorry, zombies?” Nori had put down his newspaper, turned the radio down.
“Tekekk Luu Kol, it means ‘those of endless light,’ the ‘light’ being their life force.”
“Right. So zombies are real.”
“Not for all species. Wouldn’t work for humans I don’t think, your nervous systems degrade too quick. But augmented humans, cyborgs, sure. I’ve never seen it, but it could happen.”
“Right,” Nori said again. Lax wiped his face swiftly, turned to his friend.
“The Tekekk might be closer to a hive mind than you, but their brains lend themselves to preservation. Not sure if that’s evolved or designed.”
Nori nodded, having no idea what this meant. He remembered Nef, Brigid stooping over the corpse with her toothbrush in hand. He remembered Albert, the kid who found the body, as both a child and an old man. He was one of few people whose lives Nori had crossed over in chronological order.
“We used cauterizer beams to seal the wounds, left the bullets in, claimed zombies as our own.” Lax continued. Nori dropped his memories.
“What were they worth?”
“In our trader economy? Half a standard cargo ship.”
“Is that good?”
“Depends on the cargo. Usually nothing good, so, decent if there’s a planet of them. But the really valuable ones have stories in them, brain crystals, memories, literature, heritage. Sarbrox had a Tekekk soothsayer’s head in his backpack for a while, thing wouldn’t stop whispering. Of course, they’re dead and demented, so it was talking shit.”
In response to this, Nori Furukawa looked back to his newspaper. Some stories were just too big to work in casual conversation, and despite his decades on this planet amid the natives, Lax had not yet figured out how to divulge information in a slower, less overwhelming way.
“We went there to dig up time machines,” Lax said.
“I know that part,” Nori replied.
“I know. I mean different ones.” Again, another huge piece of information. This alone should have been a conversation, a slow walk Nori thought. But Lax wasn’t like that.
“We’d heard there were older time machines on that world, which the Tekekk reverse engineered. Nobody knows who built them.”
“Did you ever figure it out?”
“Probably another race of Tekekk. They’ve been around a while, got a genetic urge to mess with time, it’s literally in their blood. Anyway we never found them. But the soothsayer head got louder when we approached a particular burial site, so we figured something was important there. Cue five days of furious digging under the stone dome of the necropolis.”
“What was down there?” Nori asked.
“His body. Turns out he was a chef, useless, so we threw the head in the pit and sealed it.”
“Right.”
“You say that a lot,” Lax said. His eyes were yellow and bright.
“Eyes,” Nori said nonchalantly.
“Oh, thanks,” Lax squinted, forced them back to human colours.
“When I say ‘right’ it means I am listening, if not a little overwhelmed,” the professor explained. Lax Morales nodded, smiling. He admired the gun.
“You’d think I’d have figured that out by now.”
“Don’t worry about it. Brigid thought the Grand Prix was called the Grand Pricks until she was thirty.”
Before Lax could ask what a Grand Prix was, the time gate in the corner of the room sputtered to life.
“You’re not actually going to do it, are you?” Nori asked. Lax was already walking to the portal, which was already faltering. The lights in the university were flickering, some had turned off completely.
“Not got long, got to make it count,” the alien said.
END
Lore
Lax in this scene references events in the upcoming novella Tombs Of The Tekekk, which will be released before the Earthloop novels as a way to show people the universe. TOTT is the only story I have written which features both of Lax’s brothers in the same place, as it is set before they parted away and before Lax arrived on Earth. It follows the three brothers on one of their more notable treasure-hunting trips, to the cemetery planet of the beings who are hunting Lax down in Earthloop.
A bigger story is evolving.
I’ll be opening ARC (advanced reader copy) slots for TOTT later in the year, so you can read it for free in exchange for an honest review.