The January First Selected Writer is Shawn P. Madison
Please feel free to email Shawn at: asm89@aol.com
THE BLACKNESS OF NIGHT
by Shawn P. Madison
Trevor Vandour stood like a statue outside the entrance to the Borealis StarPort, his legs not knowing what to do. Should he move a step closer, take a step back, or what?
The massive doors waited there, a lousy five meters in front of him, standing more than ten meters high, more than a meter thick and made out of some of the heaviest rock to be found on this side of the galactic spiral.
He’d stood here before, many times, but it was different then. He’d been other people before, known by other names, and following different paths…all of those paths, however, seemingly ended up right here. Five meters from these huge doors. The last stop between here and the rest of the entire universe…the rest of his life.
He took several deep breaths and went through his mental checklist one last time while also trying to urge his terrified brain to stop the incessant shaking that was rattling his body. Why was this time so different? Why was this time so horrific?
A short laugh burst uncontrollably and he quickly stifled it, looking around with skittish eyes to see if any of the other thousands of beings roaming past his unmoving body had taken any notice of the outburst.
Good Lord, but he had to come down and fast. First the shaking, then the terror and now this—pure and unbridled laughter, coming from the depths of his inner core.
He knew why this time was more terrifying—this time, he was playing for all the marbles, to coin an ancient phrase. There would be no going back after this…these last few steps, crossing over the brink of the doorway and into the Borealis StarPort. Once he passed through, there would never be any coming back to this galaxy.
If his plan worked, that is.
Right now, all he had to do to test out his plan, to see if all the research, the painstaking preparation and the overwhelming dread of the surgery were worth the fortune he’d spent—a stolen fortune, sure, but a fortune nevertheless—was to cross that threshold. It all depended on this, on these last few steps, on willing his legs to move.
He would either emerge on the other side of those doors to begin his new life in another galaxy or he would join the endless ranks of mindless mercenaries, poor tortured souls, who now cluttered the great unknown realm in the heavens that was known to all simply as the Blackness of Night...The Long Sleep…The Forever End.
Those sets of three lousy words—so beautifully describing what brought dread for so many—meant that other side of this life, that unknown quantity that lurked behind every being’s dying eyes. He was haunted relentlessly by the mystery to end all mysteries. He’d worked all his life to escape obtaining that final knowledge. To him, it was one mystery that he’d prefer remain unsolved.
However, he had not come this far, had not put himself through all that he’d gone through just to reach this moment, to turn back now. Never…not when he’d put it all on the line like this. Not when he’d covered every track, had done all his homework, had made it this far to the very edge of a new reality.
No…he would cross…he would embark on his new journey…he would do it, yes, but just not this very second, because his legs were unwilling to move.
Trevor frowned and concentrated, pushed, urged, but there he stood. Looking up once more at those great golden doors, he marveled at how tall and majestic they seemed. They were but a pittance of the total height of the StarPort, the towers above thrusting ever upward, through the soft milky clouds above and beyond. What a measure of human achievement, this place, what a sheer monument to the brilliance that was mankind among the stars. Many more way-stations just like this were scattered across this galaxy and several others.
They performed perfectly, as they shoved their utter incompatibility with known physics and the pure structure of the universe back into the face of science. They did their jobs endlessly, without fail. No one alive today knew how they did it, these gateways to those other places, but they worked. Today, tomorrow, yesterday and forever more. Even after he’d passed on to the dust of nothingness, these doors would still stand and be doing their jobs.
Right now, he didn’t know was if he could ever get his godforsaken feet to take those last few precious steps forward. It was the chip! Dammit! The new chip!
That tiny little piece of fantasy circuitry lay within his gray matter. The chip was doing this to him, freezing him in place, not allowing him to make this final test of its competency.
Trevor frowned then as a huge being with thick green scales and foul breath brushed past him wearing an ancient cream-colored raincoat and fedora cap, two sizes too small for its huge head. Looking like some bizarre reincarnation of the legendary cinematic performer Humphrey Bogart in the celluloid classic Casablanca, the lizard looked back at him with a sneer and then disappeared into the shimmer of those great golden doors.
Of all the thousands of others of varying creatures who hurried on past him, only this one—the scaly reptile pseudo-Bogart—dared to touch him, to shake him from his reverie, to pry loose one of his frozen feet as he staggered forward to keep his balance. All at once the waiting was over and he found his other foot moving forward so that he didn’t fall down…and now he was less than two meters from the doorway.
He felt his breath come in a rush as his foot started moving again. Now he was less than a meter away. All of his thoughts came crashing down as time slowed. This near to the portal, he felt his body elongating toward the golden shimmer of the doorway as his other foot now started to rise and swing forward…still not all the way there but almost…almost…
Trevor felt a moment of sheer panic engulf him as the events of the past few days reared up to tackle his brain. The chip, that damnable chip…it was to blame! The old chip would have never done this to him, no matter how many times he’d had it wiped so that he could start over new. The old chip had been buried deep inside his brain since he’d been a teenager, more than two decades ago, so that the overwhelming paranoia of the current galactic regime could keep track of him and the countless billions of others every single minute of every single day.
He couldn’t walk through any door anywhere this side of the galactic spiral without some sec-system somewhere reading his ID-Chip and downloading every single aspect of his life instantaneously. Based on his past behavior, his profession, his likes and dislikes, his criminal record and his individual identity, any civilian or federal business establishment could either choose to deny him their services or accept his business once his ID-Chip had been scanned. It was that way for every species that roamed the galaxy. ID-Chips were now the norm, embedded in every living head at birth and remaining until death, when it was cut out of the dead flesh for recycling purposes.
Trevor had seen many a brain-shunt in his day, triggered in people who couldn’t or wouldn’t accept that they were being told to take their business elsewhere. People who, for no other reason than someone, somewhere, was disapproving of the information contained in their ID-Chip, were being told to leave peacefully or hit the floor face first and unconscious for later pick-up by the authorities.
Brain-shunts hurt like hell, too, he knew…he’d been the victim of more than his fair share over the years, to be sure. However, this time, this single time in all his years, would be a final test. A test to end all tests…a test of whether or not the surgery had gone as flawlessly as the extremely overpriced and unlicensed surgeon had said it had gone.
Chip-Wiping entailed the manipulation of certain data-streams and sec-systems into believing that the brain holding your ID-Chip was now inside someone else, someone with a far different past, someone with no ties to who you had been. ID-Chips that had been previously Wiped would no doubt retain many of the original programming signatures of the previous ID, which could pop on out unexpectedly and at any time. To the dismay of many of society’s criminals, who found Chip-Wiping very useful and for various obvious reasons, very necessary, those inopportune times always seemed to happen when crossing over a security threshold…such as the one Trevor was currently in front of.
There was nothing worse than having your previously Wiped ID-Chip begin blaring that you were not who you said you were to various Port Officials, especially when the person it was saying you were was someone who was wanted on so many planets that it surely meant a lengthy stay in some Godawful jail sharing a cell with the worst smelling alien thugs imaginable.
He knew about this type of experience first-hand, which was one of the reasons why he was so terrified about this next step forward. If the test, this final test, failed…he would not find himself in a surgeon’s table for a Wiped ID-Chip operation. No, he would have to go in for the worst: De-chipping. De-chipping carried a death sentence…the Blackness of Night, that’s what being discovered meant for him. Right here. Right now. With one more step…
Trevor coughed, doubled over, felt nauseated, shot out a hand to steady himself and grabbed hold of the cloak of a passerby. He heard a feminine yelp and looked up to see a young lady, quite beautiful too, slapping at the hand he had planted on her body. He muttered an apology, let go of the slick yellow fabric and stood up.
The encounter had brought him very close to the doorway. He could see the golden shimmer as the woman passed through, on her way to wherever her ID-Chip had pre-programmed the settings prior to her passage across the threshold.
He could see the concerned faces of the Port Officials through the shimmer as they stood on the other side of the doorway looking at him, studying his unusual behavior just shy of the portal. He could see that he was causing a minor traffic buildup as comers and goers had to wend their way past his frozen position in order to enter the StarPort.
What was he waiting for? What was he scared of? But wasn’t this an all-or-nothing gamble?
He wanted to do this. He wanted life anew somewhere else, in a different galaxy, to grab this thrill by the horns and never let go. Say goodbye to Trevor Vandour and say hello to Troy Vinson, multi-megatrope, a rich man in his own right, with enough money to start a small empire on some small and insignificant little world where he would never catch the attention of anyone who mattered within law enforcement circles.
Trevor, soon to be Troy, stood up straight, took a deep breath, told those paranoid demons inside him to shut the hell up and he lifted that last foot up, propelling his body forward. He felt his heart catch in his chest as he felt the tingle of the scan and the shrill explosion of the portal sending him on his way.
*****
Deep inside the Borealis StarPort, the surgeon who had removed Trevor Vandour’s original chip had replaced it with a defective chip that had been re-coded to Vandour’s original ID. The doctor stood up from the small magenta-colored table in the Security Office, shook the hand of the Port Officer in front of him, and allowed his petite blonde assistant to accept the envelope containing the bounty.
This small pittance would be added to the great wealth that had been accumulated by Trevor Vandour over the past few years, the money that the idiot had hoped to use to start his so-called new life. Enough to allow the surgeon to leave his highly illegal practice with a new identity of his own and, along with his curvaceous assistant, act as a married couple who had noticed a suspicious looking man outside the StarPort and reported him as a possible threat to the authorities. This last had been just in case the defective chip hadn’t set off the alarm like he’d hoped it would.
Looking over his shoulder and out the windows leading down to the inner-sanctum of the terminal, where he watched Trevor Vandour vanish into the golden shimmer of the doors mere minutes before, he smirked without pity and hoped that the poor slob, a dirty little criminal in his own right, was getting just what he deserved.
*****
Trevor Vandour felt a tingle on the left side of his head and he opened his eyes. Just like that, the pain in his lower jaw burst into his now conscious brain and made him wince. The lights were not too bright, lessening the impact of the subdued whiteness of the room on his quickly adjusting eyes. He found himself standing, but secured tightly in place, not even able to move his head.
He recognized the room at once—it was a prison infirmary. Not one that he’d been in before, but they all looked the same: like an antiseptic morgue. It reminded him of the Blackness of Night and he wondered about finding it.
With a gulp he allowed his eyes to roam as far across his confines as possible. Lights blinked at several terminals, there were some medical readings on some equipment set off to the right and he could see a white-smocked back to his left. Suddenly another person was standing before him, facing him and smiling.
“Trevor Vandour,” the man with bad breath said, mere centimeters from his face. “You have been convicted of seeking a De-chipping. That act is highly illegal in this part of the galactic spiral, as you well know. That act is punishable by death. That punishment will be meted out right now.”
“Right now?” Vandour croaked.
“Yes, right now,” the man said and flashed Trevor a wicked smile. “I only woke you from your stupor so that you could see it coming…you know, the Blackness…”
“But…” Vandour tried to protest in terror, his medical readings suddenly elevating to very dangerous levels and setting off multiple alarms in the small confines of the Infirmary. Further words escaped him as the man in the white smock turned toward a switch at the terminal beside him and pointed to the prison guard’s head.
“Stand back, Petrie,” the lab man said. “Remember, that chip’s gonna explode inside there, so you don’t want to get hit with an eyeball or a wad of jelly, now do you?”
“But…” Vandour tried to protest in terror, his medical readings suddenly elevating to very dangerous levels and setting off multiple alarms in the small confines of the Infirmary. Further words escaped him as the man in the white smock turned toward a switch at the terminal beside him and pointed to the prison guard’s head.
“Stand back, Petrie,” the lab man said. “Remember, that chip’s gonna explode inside there, so you don’t want to get hit with an eyeball or a wad of jelly, now do you?”
The guard, obviously Petrie, took two steps back but didn’t lose the grin.
Trevor tried to cry out, but his voice didn’t want to cooperate. The white smock-wearing lab man flicked the switch, looked at Petrie and held up his fist. Then he extended one finger, then another, then another…
Trevor’s body seized as a loud crash filled the room but it wasn’t the chip inside his head exploding. Instead, he strained his neck to see Petrie sprawled on the cold tile floor, blood leaking from a good sized fissure behind his left ear.
Suddenly the lab man was at his side, strong hands ripping at the bindings holding him tight to the upright platform he’d been strapped to, manic strength tearing at the straps, ripping them to shreds.
“Get me out of here!” Trevor managed as his bindings were shredded through. He lifted his hands to see small streaks of blood streaming down his wrists. He hadn’t seen the blade the lab man used to cut through the tough straps but there were several small cuts in his flesh.
A loud smack rocked him back and he realized from the sting on his cheek where the lab man had struck him. “Snap out of it, Vinson!”
The lab man grabbed hold of his shirt and yanked him toward the room’s only exit. Trevor wasn’t able to dodge the small puddle of blood leaking from Petrie as the man dragged him on.
They ran through the exit door, bursting into the sunlight.
“Listen closely, Troy,” the man rasped, dragging out the last word. “I’m the one who sold that thieving surgeon the supposedly defective chip he put inside your head. He told me your whole sob story about wanting a new life and amassing no small fortune to start over with. He asked me for a defective chip so you would trigger the Starport’s Security and he could walk away with all your stolen wealth.” The man’s eyes darted left and right as if he expected to be swarmed by Security Guards at any moment. “He’s an idiot. Never thought to check me out, to know who he was doing business with. His mistake…and a big one at that.”
“So…I am Troy Vinson?” Trevor asked, hands tightly gripping the other man’s shoulders, realization suddenly dawning on him.
“Yes, Troy,” the man answered, face just inches from his own. “For as long as you agree that we will split that fortune you’ve squirreled away. What, you think I’m saving your thieving ass for free?”
Trevor walked quickly in the sunlight next to his partner, leaving the infirmary behind, leaving his life behind. Grasped from the jaws of what he thought was a sure death just moments ago, an entire future of possibilities suddenly loomed before him.
Troy breathed deeply of the crisp clean air as they strode forward, taking everything in as each step brought him closer to freedom—the colors, the smells, the sounds, the opportunities that lay ahead for him and his new partner in wealth.
“Anything you say, my brother,” Troy Vinson said.
Shawn P. Madison, creator of the Guarder/U.E.N. Universe, currently makes his home in the beautiful Garden State of New Jersey. He has written in the genres of action, childrens, contemporary, fantasy, horror, humor, mystery, non-fiction and science fiction. He has published more than seventy short stories in thirty different magazines and anthologies, both electronic and print.
His first novel, Guarder Lore, was released by NovelBooks, Inc. in March of 2002, the follow-up novel, The Guarder Factor, was released by NovelBooks, Inc. in November of 2003 and his collection of short horror fiction, The Road to Darkness, was released by Double Dragon Publishing in April of 2003.