Lurranus 3 (Part 3/5)

Link to Part 2: https://www.abctales.com/story/trans4mer/lurranus-3-part-25

“He was a broken man, he wanted to get away from everything, so decided to go here. I came a month later. I tried to help him but... he wasn’t really there. Didn’t speak, didn’t eat. He was physically present in the room with me, that was it. And then a few days ago, he left. To Lurranus, probably. I haven’t heard from him since. I didn’t come here from him, I just came because... why not, really. I wasn’t picking from an overwhelming selection but... but it was him I stayed here for, so now he’s gone, I’ve no idea what to do.” He chuckles to himself. “Not that it’s anything new. But, I’d just hoped for once I could do something for someone, and see it through. Help the world in some way. I let my brother die, I let my friend down when I couldn’t do what he asked me, and I ignored dozens of people over the years because I was too selfish to help them. I thought maybe I could change that.”
I know how he feels “I’m sorry.” I pause. I don’t know what to say about that subject. It’s best not to elaborate on certain topics, but out I curiosity, I ask “So, he was the guy with the facial scars?”
He nods slowly. “Yeah.” This answers the mysteries Connor, Andy and I were wondering about earlier
“Those guys didn’t hold back.” I breath slowly.
“Why would they? He killed their families.” Liam says darkly.
A minute after he says his, we are still both silent. He stares at the floor, with my bottle still in his hand, slowly rolling its bottom edge in circles.
“So now you just, what? Practice boxing?”
“Yeah.” He says to the floor.
“Why don’t you, maybe, try talking to someone. You’re not obligated to, but it helps. I used to think about my parents all the time, but now...” I trail off.
“I’ve never bothered. It was just inevitable you were gonna lose them.” He remarks bluntly.
“That sounds like the kind of sentiment held by someone who never really left the war behind.”
“I’m not the only one who.” He says aggressively, leaning in and staring right at me. “You ever see the world, James? What’s left of it? I mean, it’s not like anyone organised a wide scale clean up or something. Most countries are bombed to hell, thousands can’t even get to Lurranus. They’ve been left to die. Here, everyone thinks things are better, just because the war’s fallout isn’t affecting them.”
“So, your saying they’re wrong for having a positive outlook on life?” I ask.
“I’m taking issue with their naivety.” He argues. “Just like John. They think because Oaktrus is gone, suddenly everything is all better. That there’s no one left alive who has similar world views. The world has always been full of shit people, all ready to eat their own friends at a moments notice. We believe in morality: doesn’t mean they do. Their allegiances are just out of connivence.”
I sigh, before asking “Can I have my water back?”
I see him lean forward, and do the same, and after we complete the transaction, I stand up.
“Well, it was nice meeting you. I was going to say I hope you find what you’re looking for, but I’ll say I hope you find something to look for. To kill time.” He looks at me, seemingly confused about my initial statement. “Like I said, I like cliches.” I mutter, before promptly leaving.

I see the guys again, have a shower, then go with them to eat dinner. We each get some Cubes, and sit in our usual spaces. Me on one side and the two of them together on the other, with Andy to my left and Connor directly across from me. As we sit down, I see Liam in his usual spot, and we briefly make eye contact.
“So...” Connor begins excitedly, as is the norm. “How was your day?”
“Fine.” I say. His enthusiasm is always welcome, but I can’t think of anything substantial to reply with.
“Enrichening.” Andy says wryly.
“Guess what I did today?” He asks us. Honestly, he does seem like a teenager sometimes. Of course, due to the Slow-Down, he looks like one (he’s actually twenty-nine) but maybe a secret side-effect is that you act the age your body clock is. Connor certainly makes a strong case for it.
“I don’t know.” I reply.
“I asked someone out.” He says proudly. He has to be a teenager.
“Oh, Jesus.” Andy mutters.
“Really?” I ask.
“Yeah.” Presumably, this is where he disappeared to earlier.
“Well, did she say yes?”
Connor looks away, and appears rather sheepish. “Not exactly.”
Andy sighs. “That was an underwhelming story.”
“Well, he tried.” I say, raising a handful of Cubes for a lack of an available drink. “A toast to our brave friend.”
The others copy me, and we have an clumsy three person fist bump, before eating our Cubes and laughing at the whole idea.
After the laughter subsides, I ask “What does “not exactly” mean anyway.”
He is silent, before breaking a smile. “Essentially, it means no, but it’s a more vague way of saying it.”
Then suddenly a voice asks “Can I sit here?”
I turn around, to see Liam, standing there with a bowl of Cubes in hand. I turn to face the guys, who looked too stunned to even nod an answer, and shrug. “Yeah, sure.”
He sits down silently to my left, and looks at the others.
“I’m Liam.” He states the fact bluntly, but not unpleasantly.
“Andy.” My friend says, as he extends his hand for Liam to shake.
“Hi, I’m Connor.” Connor doesn’t go for a shake of the hand, but gives our new visitor a gentle thumbs up, his right hand hovering a few centimetres above the table. Liam nods curtly in response. Noticing how the two of us aren’t exchanging greetings, he asks “I take it you guys have met?”
I nod. “In the gym, after you left.”
“Ahh.”
Andy is the first to quiz Liam. “So, Liam...” He exhales, not sure how to continue. “How do you do?”
“Thoroughly adequately, I suppose.” He replies wryly, shrugging. The two share a knowing chuckle, and I smile too.
Connor goes next. “So, what’d you do before you came here.”
Liam stutters, before laughing it of. “I just walked around, I guess.“
“Since the war ended?” Andy inquires. Liam nods.
“I met up with John Closer a bit, while I’ve been here, though, so...” Liam says slowly, as the rest of us remain silent.
Connor chuckles lightly and looks on curiously. “Wait, hang on... how can you just, walk, for seven decades.”
Liam shrugs. “You don’t intend to. You just...” He pauses, and exhales deeply.
“You don’t have anything else to do.” I suggest. He nods in agreement.
Andy smiles and moves to speak, talking slowly. Even so, he speaks in an unnoticeably captivating manner that ensures no one can look away. “I was lucky, for a bit. At least a few of my mates survived, and we went of to live of this empty area with some other survivors. It was nice, for a good thirty years. Then, one day, I left with a mate to go out hunting. It took about a week, and when we got back, everyone was gone, bar one person, who told us what happened. They all been herded into vans, like animals, to use as fucking food.” The anger rises in his voice, for a moment, and tears well up in his eyes. Talk surrounds us in the cantina, but at this moment, it couldn’t be less important. “My mate couldn’t take it. He’d lost his child, so he killed himself. I was alone, and I.. I thought about... I was...” he breathed in paused, before doing a double take, and continuing. “So I spend the next thirty years hoping between villages, until I met Connor, and some of his mates. It was like I found everything I lost, so I stayed with them.” He sighs. “Life’s a series of ups and downs. But I’ve been luckier than most. Now I’m just waiting for things to go wrong again. You always feel like it’s only a matter of time.”
Liam reaches over to tap Andy’s shoulder. “I’m sorry.” He looks at me, expectantly but not forcefully.
“Lost my mum and dad when I was young, which was my fault, and spend years looking forward to fighting to avenge them. But it wasn’t as glamorous as I thought, bad things happened, and I came out the war a broken man. Just existing, and dealing with grief, exactly like everyone else.”
Connor looks on, a mixture of sadness and confusion. As the only one here who hasn’t experienced the horrors of war, and the equally horrific after effects, he’s undeniably a naive soul and sometimes quite childish, but he is a very compassionate one, and someone I’m proud to call a friend.
“A toast!” He says suddenly. “To the friends we’ve lost. And the bright future they worked so hard to give us.”
We all look at him silently for a second, before Andy says. “To Luke, Rachel, Wyatt, Eve, Nick, and everyone else.”
Liam says “To Chris, James, Root, John...”
I go last. “To mum, dad, Joel, Tom... screw it, to everyone who died. Amen.”
“Amen.” Connor adds gently.
We sit silently, taking comfort in the fact that, while our friends and family may not be here, we have at least a few memories to smile on. The simple, insignificant things that make up their characters.
“So, um, I couldn’t help but notice you mention John Closer.” Connor adds.
“Huh? Oh, yeah. I meet him after the war, and again here.”
“Was he the guy with the scars?” Andy asks. Liam nods slowly.
“So, what happened to him? Where’d he go?” Connor inquires, perhaps a little too eagerly.
“He lost his family a year ago, and the grief was too much for him, so he went back down down to earth. If it makes him happy, it’s for the best. It’s a shame to see him gone... Not that we talked a lot. I only stuck around to give him some company. He spend most of his time alone, working on his laptop.”
Andy thinks for a moment. “On what?”
“I don’t know. Some kind of personality algorithm? And looking at some old Empirius bases? They were more his secondary projects. Mostly, he tried to digitally salvage his family. Tried and failed.”
“Digitally salvage his family?” Connor asks.
“There conscious data had been corrupted, and he was trying to repair it. It’s complicated.”
“Sounds it.” Connor pauses. “Poor guy.”
We go silent, and I look at Liam. He seems to be happy in our company, yet somehow still looks slightly distant. I feel happy for him, and I hope he feels the same. But he still has that distant look, like he feels this is a one off, and he feels he is soon to return to his meaningless life. I feel sorry for him. I know what he feels, I once felt it too. But when I met my friends here, it changed that. And I’ve let too many people down. I owe it to them to at least begin to make amends. Starting here.
“So, Liam?” I begin.
“Yeah?”
“We were going to the big cinema tonight as a group. You, um... you wanna come?” I ask.
He looks up, and smiles again. “Yeah, sure. What film is it?”
Andy and I are silent, given we don’t know the answer, so Connor says “It’s some comedy.”
“So long as it’s not The Room 2.” Andy mutters.
Liam grins again, and looks at each of us in turn. And when he looks at me, it feels like that vacant look in his eyes is fading away. “That sounds good. Let’s do it.”
So them we finish our Cubes and leave for the cinema.

As we walk to the cinema with several other groups both in front and behind, Connor is talking, as ever.
“So, I was wondering if one of you would be my wingman.”
We all look on, bemused.
“Your wingman?” Liam asks.
“Yeah. Someone who can big me up, tell the ladies how big my muscles are. What a great guy I am.” He says enthusiastically.
“Both of which are blatant lies.” I say. Andy laughs, and Liam cracks a gentle smile.
“To do that,” Andy begins, “would be a major disservice to just about anyone here. Hell, I think we should all make it our mission to steer all the girls clear of this train wreck of a man.”
I say “We could... but it would be much more assuming to just let him fail.”
“You make a compelling argument.” Andy remarks.
Liam looks on from the side, smiling. He still seems slightly reserved, a bit shy and still trying to work out the group dynamic, but he seems happy. That’s the main thing.
“You know what?” Andy says. “We’ll just let nature runs its course.”
As Andy says the word course, the lights suddenly flicker and go out. For a moment, we’re in completely darkness, before the blue emergency lights turn on.
“The hell?” Connor whispers.
We all look around, at a loss for words beyond those that voice our confusion and concern. We’re all silent, unsure what to do, looking at each other, and then the people nearby.
Liam is the first to act, leading the way back to the cantina, travelling at a moderate jog. As we pass another group of people, they turn and follow us.
“What’s going on?” One of them asks.
“I don’t know.” Andy replies.
Just at that moment, we arrive back in the cantina. Standing in the middle of the room is the captain, a man with dark black skin, similar to my own, wearing a blue bomber jacket and a concerned expression.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please gather around.” Some more people stream into the room, and we gather around the captain. I’m pretty sure not everyone is here, but he begins anyway.
“I know you’re all concerned. We’re not sure what happened. We just got a message from the base regarding important developments, before our power suddenly failed. Like I said, we don’t know what happened, but we have no doubt we‘ll soon fix the problem. All we ask is you stay calm, and give us time to solve this problem. That is all. Be sure to share this information with anyone not currently attending this brief. Thank you.”
The captain then turns, and leaves the dimly lit blue room. Everyone remains still, and the four of us stare at each other.
“What’s going on?” Connor asks. No one answers. Connor looks down worriedly, Andy sighs and Liam sits down on the nearest seat, clasping his hands together and bowing his head.
We’re silent.
Then suddenly the emergency lights go out, and the only light is that which is currently coming through the windows. We wait for them to come back on. We wait a long time. But they stay off, as we all float slowly in the darkness of space.

-

“Alex, how's it going? What’s the problem?”
“Well, it’s rather complicated.”
“Then break it down to me.”
“So, there are cases of people verbally harassing others. Let’s say person one is the bully, person two is the victim. And naturally, person two’s mind registers this as harassment, so naturally the program separates the two. Then, in a fare few cases, person one’s mind seems to register this as some kind of injustice towards them, and the system reads this feeling as truthful, so it also punishes person two.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah. Then the two are put in a waiting area, and in an attempt to get out, person two subconsciously removes their complaint. Person one is put back, and they unthinkingly does the same to person two, and everyone is put back we’re they started. The system registers this as an error, but otherwise just moves on. We’ve temporarily taken care of the most recent example of this problem - between some guy called Noel Davidson and Louis Day - by isolating Noel in some 2040’s bar he’ll probably shoot up, and we’ve slowed down time for him - a few second to him is an hour to us, but... I don’t know.”
“It that it?”
“No. I’m sorry. That’s not it at all. People sometimes see people they’re attracted to. They’ll make a virtual copy of them, and perform all sorts of perverted fantasies right in front of the actual person. Or maybe they’ll see someone they don’t like, and murder the copy in front of the person. And with some of these people don’t think there doing anything wrong, they just judge it as fun. And so, we have the same problem.”
“Surely the system picks up on that anyway.”
“I’m afraid not. It’s like, whatever people do, they find some way to justify it to themselves and the system just accepts that.”
“What can we do?”
“Well, this is only one case of potentially thousands potentially. And the systems not programmed to see anything wrong with this. It judges people’s intent, and these people don’t think they’re doing anything wrong. So, um, beyond directly intervening with every single case... I don’t think we can do anything.”
“I... I thought we were better than this.”
(2056)