Hard Luck Hermit

Corey woke up with one of the worst headaches he’d ever had. The acidic scent of space booze still hung in the air, and nearly made him throw up before he’d even opened his eyes.

Space booze. Corey resisted the urge to open his eyes. He knew that when he did so, he’d find himself on a spaceship, lightyears from Earth, surrounded by strange creatures who had very quickly taken him in. If he kept his eyes closed a little while longer, he didn’t have to deal with the insanity his life had become. He was on a spaceship, for christ’s sake.

One of Corey’s many hungover braincells piped up with the idea that if he played his cards right, he might get to fly a space ship. He was out of bed in a flash. Then he was back in bed, also in a flash, because vertigo hit him like a truck.

“Ow.”

“I hear signs of life!”

Doprel entered the room unannounced. Corey might’ve protested, but he didn’t have the brainpower to do so at the moment.

“Whoof, looks like hangovers hit your species hard,” Doprel said. “Lucky we got pills for that. You want one?”

“You’re a saint, Doprel,” Corey mumbled.

“Oh, it’s fine, I already handed them out to Tooley and Kamak, it’s only fair,” Doprel said. “Open up, then bite down hard and swallow.”

With very little concern for his dignity, Corey opened his mouth and allowed Doprel to drop a pill into his waiting jaws. As ordered, he bit down and swallowed fast. The electric jolt that traveled through his system had Corey bolt upright in a second, and this time vertigo didn’t topple him again. He shook his head to try and clear the voltage running through his system, and felt fine in a flash.

“First time?”

“Yeah. Wow that is a kick in the head. What’s in that stuff?”

“Nanomachines,” Doprel said. “They do a full system flush in ticks. And speaking of flushing and ticks, you’re going to need to do one in about twenty. Head outside, third door on your left. Has a blue sign on it.”

“You’re a saint, Doprel,” Corey said, as he rushed out the door.

“You already said that!”

“It’s still true!”

Roughly a minute later, Corey had attended to some necessary biological functions and also found some time to straighten out his hair and wipe some drool off his face. He found Kamak and Doprel waiting in the common area, barely acknowledging him as he entered.

“Hi, guys, thanks for everything, Doprel especially,” Corey said. “One question. That glass tube-looking thingy in the bathroom, there, is that like a shower?”

“Is it a what?’

“Is it- is it for cleaning your body in,” Corey said. The translation collar he still had to wear could only do so much. “Like I stand in it and do something and then I’m clean.”

“Oh, yeah. You’re going to need to be at least mostly naked, though.”

“I assumed, yeah.”

“Okay, just making sure,” Doprel said. “Some cultures get weird about that. They need special high intensity cleansers, gets them spotless right through their clothes.”

“Weirdos,” Kamak said.

“Alrighty, I’m going to go use that, then,” Corey said. “If that’s all right. I still sort of smell like slave ship and booze.”

“You don’t need to ask permission,” Kamak said, gesturing towards the bathroom. “I ain’t going to nickle and dime you for bathroom privileges.”

“Yet,” Doprel said. Kamak gave him a dirty look, then continued reading whatever was on his tablet as Doprel continued. “Make sure you hit the red button. The blue button is my setting, and it might rattle a layer of your skin right off.”

Corey nodded thankfully to Doprel for the explanations and then went to the bathroom. He would’ve liked a proper shower with boiling hot water, but he’d take any form of cleanliness right now. He cautiously stepped into the “cleaner” and then hit the red button.

A mild buzzing sound filled the glass tube, but nothing else happened. Corey waited a few seconds and, as nothing continued to happen, looked around the tube. There definitely wasn’t any water coming out anywhere. He wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be happening or not. He considered stepping out to ask Doprel for more directions, but the bathroom door opened before he got the chance.

“Occupied,” Corey said.

“Then make room,” Tooley demanded. She opened the cleanser door and stepped into the empty space as Corey stepped as far back as he could and tried to keep his eyes up. Tooley’s species was blue all the way down, apparently. Tooley paid no heed to his discomfort and stood in the cleanser as casually as she did in the common room.

“What’re you, an infant?” she asked. She bumped her blue fist into the red button twice more, and the vibration in the air intensified until Corey could feel his skin shaking. Tooley nodded in approval of the new setting and started humming in tune with the resonance.

“Okay, good morning Tooley, hi,” Corey said. “Quick question, is sharing a sh- cleanser with someone normal for you?”

“Is it not normal for you?” Tooley asked. She turned to face Corey, which he really wished she hadn’t done. Apparently those weren’t poison sacks on her chest after all.

“Not really, no,” Corey said. “On my planet-”

“We’re not on your planet,” Tooley noted. “We’re on a starship. And on a starship, sometimes you need to be as efficient as possible with your space and your time.”

She spent a few seconds in silence and then hit the red button twice more to turn off the cleanser. Corey would’ve been relieved to see her step out -if the open door didn’t reveal a waiting, and also entirely naked, Farsus. Corey hadn’t seen so much body hair in his entire life. It almost obscured everything else. Almost.

“Good morning, comrades,” Farsus said.

“Hey, Fars,” Tooley said. “You could’ve hopped in. I was just teaching Corvash about sharing spaces.”

“A valuable lesson, yet even our large cleanser could not accommodate the three of us comfortably, given my broad shoulders and ample buttocks.”

“Hah, you got me there,” Tooley said. She stepped out of the cleanser and gave the aforementioned ample buttocks a slap on her way out, turning the cherry-red cheeks even redder. Farsus laughed his usual boisterous laugh and entered the cleanser just as Corey sped out of it. He still had to get dressed, even.

“Congratulations on your performance in our drinking contest, Corey Vash,” Farsus shouted from the cleanser. The glass obscured some things, at least. “You are truly an exemplar of your species.”

“You did kick some ass,” Tooley said. She had a shirt on now, which made it much easier for Corey to focus on talking to her. “And you only got a little existentially weird. Come by the cockpit in a drop, I’d say second place earns you copilot privileges.”

“Copilot?”

“Figuratively speaking,” Tooley said. “You can sit in the chair next to me and push whatever buttons I tell you to push. If I tell you to push them. And if you do anything I don’t explicitly tell you to do I’ll eject you into space.”

“Okay.”

“The view’s great, though,” Tooley said. She clapped Corey on the shoulder and left the room. When the door shut behind her, it was just Corey, with his pants unbuttoned, and Farsus, naked in the glass tube.

“Hey Farsus, how long is a drop?”

Corey still didn’t actually know what a “drop” a “swap” or a “tick” was. People occasionally mentioned them as if they were units of time, but never with any context.

“It is difficult to explain, but you will learn in time,” Farsus said. “I will shout when it is time, so that you may enjoy your prize.”

“Cool, thanks Farsus.”

In retrospect, Corey probably should’ve guessed that when Farsus said he’d “shout” he actually meant shout. Loudly. Once his ears stopped ringing, Corey stumbled his way to the cockpit.

The helm area had eight seats total, with six seats arrayed at the back of the cockpit in a crescent shape, and two up front, with an almost overwhelming spread of buttons and levers before them. Most of the controls were centered on the apparent pilots seat, on the left, where Tooley currently sat, but many were mirrored to the right-hand seat’s console. Corey kept his hands firmly at his sides and away from the controls as he sat down.

“Good instinct, Corvash,” Tooley said. “Just keep your hands away from anything shiny and enjoy the view.”

“The view is sort of...beige,” Corey observed. The cockpit canopy was a solid wall of off-white color.

“Yeah, that happens at FTL,” Tooley said. “All the background light in the universe sort of smears together into beige. It’ll get better when we’re not at max speed.”

“Which should be soon, by the way,” Kamak said, as he strolled into the cockpit. “Stop yapping at the new guy and-”

Kamak froze mid-sentence and stared daggers at Corey.

“Why’re you in my seat?”

“It’s his seat for today,” Tooley said. She started flipping a few levers and pressing buttons near her seat. “Because he beat you in the drinking contest.”

“He gets a prize for second place?”

“Sort of,” Tooley said. “His prize for second place is that he gets to sit next to me, and my prize for first place is that I don’t have to sit next to you.”

Kamak did a few glances between the pilot and her “copilot”, and then sank into one of the rear seats, grumbling all the while.

“Fine,” he groaned. “Better than you trying to squeeze ceces out of me like last time.”

“Oh, Kamak, I wouldn’t do that,” Tooley said. “I know you’re broke right now.”

“I am not broke,” Kamak protested. “We’re just a little in the red because the last job botched itself. Now focus on landing my ship.”

Tooley got to work, without even throwing in a witty comment before she did so. Her shimmering blue fingers danced along a series of inputs more complex than Corey could even begin to comprehend. She rounded out her performance with a single graceful pull of a lever, and the beige blur that consumed their cockpit started to shift through different hues. The monochrome of lightspeed gave way to a colorful blur of deceleration, before settling into the solid palette of reality.

A blue planet, mottled with strands of deep purple and cloudy bands of white, dominated their view of the stars. A wide ring of cosmic dust and rock encircled the gas giant’s equator, with a massive space station serving as centerpiece of the ring. The sprawling station had a long, pillar-like central structure, with visible spires and massive antenna on either end, and a slowly rotating outer ring, with ships great and small buzzing around the ring like bees in a hive.

“What do you think, ‘Uncontacted’?” Kamak asked. “How’s the majesty of interstellar society?”

“Uh...well, we have sci-fi movies,” Corey said. “It’s cool that it’s real, I guess. But I’ve seen this kind of stuff before.”

“Hmph. Lightyears from home, lost in the depths of space, the kid says he’s seen it on TV,” Kamak grumbled.

“It’s a fucking mining station expac, Kamak, take him to Centerpoint if you want shock and awe.”

“Shut up and take us in,” Kamak grumbled. “See if the kid’s any more impressed with his boots on the ground.”