Oceanus: Chapter 9
“Now I will believe that there are unicorns...” -William Shakespeare, The Tempest.
Chapter 1-5| Chapter 6 |Chapter 7| Chapter 8
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You may never know what results come of your actions, but if you do nothing, there will be no results.
Balthazar stared at the Mahatma Ghandi quote on his desktop screensaver for a few minutes before opening his computer. What was he hoping to achieve? Save the crew? From where? He didn’t even know where they were. He hoped that they were on that little wet planet down there.
Hours passed with little to no progress. Balthazar switched his computer off and went to bed.
That night, he dreamed.
“Balths, excellent work!” His father greeted him in the doorway of his cabin. Hamza Swain was wearing his favourite dinner suit. “Hurry up now, we can’t be late!” Hamza tapped his vintage wristwatch and put his hands in his pockets.
“Late for what?” Asked the bleary eyed Balthazar.
“Ha! Balths, always the joker” Hamza turned away and headed down the corridor. Balthazar followed him to a large conference hall adorned with white clothed tables and huge velvet curtains. People were talking and laughing, wearing their finest evening attire. His father walked over to a table in the centre of the room where his mother Priya, was sitting enjoying a martini.
“Balthazar, darling!” She smiled her usual warm, encouraging smile and raised her glass to him. “You made mama proud tonight.” She was wearing diamonds in her wavy black hair. She looked like a Queen of Persia, sitting in a sea of floating lights.
“Proud? What’s going on?” His anxiety was growing again. He was as nervous as he usually was when his mother was happy about something. Had he been signed up to singing lessons, tennis, amateur dramatics? He wanted to know why his mother was so happy.
Priya Swain was a loving mother, a listener and a diplomat but she was seldom proud of Balthazar’s behaviour.
When Balthazar was twelve, he stuttered and bumbled through his first performance as Hamlet. He died inside, several times to the sound of coughing and chair scraping. “I want you to be the best.” His mother would say on the way in to am dram. “Your grandfather was a fine actor.”
When he was thirteen, he scored not one but three own goals for his team. Priya had suggested “Sport is great for making new friends.” but those friends would not want to be on the same team ever again.
Now, at twenty, Balthazar was still that anxious, shaking mess that felt he had disappointed his parents at every turn.
He was perplexed. The people were seated now, falling silent as admiral James Winter took to the stage and addressed them all through the microphone.
Where am I?
“Thank you for coming here tonight.” He said in his gruff, Scottish accent. “It’s an honour to be here and even more of an honour to present this award to Mr Balthazar Swaine.”
Oh my God.
The room erupted into applause and cheers. Balthazar floated over to the stage. Admiral Winter smiled at him earnestly and held out a large, strong hand to shake. His white beard had been trimmed for the occasion and he seemed to have fewer laugh lines than Balthazar had remembered. A giant of a man, he bent over dramatically to drape a medal over Balthazar’s head, like a headmaster awarding prizes on junior school sports day.
I want to get off now.
“Thank you.” Balthazar said calmly. He turned to face the audience who were clapping again. His mother sparkled in the stage lights, wiping tears from her eyes with a giant white handkerchief.
Say something. Say something cool.
He said nothing and slunk away from the stage, returning to his parents.
After a few rounds of awards for various other things that Balthazar couldn’t quite hear or understand, people were invited to the dining room. He followed the crowd as they rambled into a great, high ceilinged room with decorative marble columns and buttresses. It had the grandeur of a cathedral but there were no relics, paintings, stained glass windows or pews. Instead, it had floor to ceiling windows and thousands of lights dangling from ornate chandeliers.
Tables, covered in a similar way to the tables in the other room, were arranged neatly across the shiny, marbled floor, like a wedding reception.
Somehow, Balthazar was seated next to an old school friend, Dev Khan. Dev was a tall, bird-like engineering student he had known on Mars as a teenager. Unlike Balthazar, Dev was in the top set for everything and excelled at all sports. He was handsome, charismatic, successful and smart. Always smart. Balthazar, as much as he enjoyed hanging out with Dev sometimes, really despised him now. He despised him even more tonight as he sat looking like India’s answer to James Bond.
Fuck you, Dev.
In contrast to the dashing, black tied Dev, Balthazar was short and dumpy with a permanent expression of surprise. He couldn’t help it. His eyebrows had always been shaped like that. Bushy and raised too far above his eyes.
“Really sorry to hear about your condition, mate.” Dev leaned in and said quietly with a little elbow jab. He gave Balthazar a kind smile.
“Condition?”
“Yeah. Devastating. I think about you most days, mate.” Dev took a sip of his wine and looked out into the distance.
Balthazar wasn’t sure that he knew what his school friend was talking about. He tried to ask but the words would not come. Then the waiting staff brought the first course to the tables.
The serving staff laid the plates down onto their table and Dev immediately covered his mouth in shock. He looked at Balthazar and erupted into hysterical laughter, as did the woman next to him and eventually, all of the table. The laughter spread like wildfire across the dining room. Everybody was looking at him.
Balthazar glanced downward at the dish and saw two sui mai that had been painted in a radioactive green food colouring. Why this was funny, he didn’t know but his instinct was to recoil in shame. He swiftly left the room and headed back to his cabin, unable to think of anything other than the green sui mai.
He burst in and removed his jacket in a desperate attempt to cool down. He wanted to wake up. He couldn’t wake up. He tried splashing his face with cold water in the basin but nothing happened. He stopped for a moment, leaning over the vanity and staring at his reflection.
Why was it green?
“Balthazar.” He heard his father’s voice again. Hamza was standing in the doorway as he had before the awards ceremony.
“Dad, what’s my condition?” Balthazar asked in panic. Hamza’s eyebrows lowered in a look of pity and he cast a look down at Balthazar’s crotch.
“I’ll be outside.” He said quietly. The hydraulic door, hissing and clunking, closed behind him with a click.
Balthazar untied his belt and looked down at his crotch. His stomach dropped.
Somehow, somewhere, Balthazar had become the owner of a radioactive green scrotum.
“The fuck?” He screeched. “No, no, no.” Pacing across his cabin, he could say nothing other than, “No, no, no.” for a time. He banged his fist against the wall in despair. “This isn’t happening.” He started to cry.
“Dad!” His voice broke as he called. No answer. “Dad!” Still no answer. He rushed to the door and opened it. There was nobody there. The corridor was as empty as it had been on the first night he found himself alone. He peered down again and saw that his scrotum was the expected colour and as unexciting as ever. He sighed with relief. It was just a weird dream.
He had fallen asleep while working at his computer again. The database query was still sitting at “Autopilot guide”.
He resolved to try his luck on the bridge.
Having no experience of flying a space vessel, or any vessel for that matter, the controls on the bridge of the Demeter were a mystery to Balthazar Swaine. He had spent hours upon hours poring over the pages of various manuals and databases while there. He decided to try and speak with the ship’s computer system, Liana, again.
“Please select a destination.” Liana’s voice instructed.
“Yes! Get in.” Balthazar rubbed his hands together.
“We could not find that destination. Please try again.”
“Atlantis.” He said clearly.
“Atlantic Ocean. Earth.”
“No, no.”
“Do you want to proceed?”
“No.”
“Request cancelled.” The screen blackened with a negative sounding “duh-dum.”It had switched itself off. Balthazar switched it back on and waited for the intro jingle to run its course.
“Please select a destination.” Liana sounded jolly this time, adopting the enthusiasm of a tour guide Barbie doll, fresh out of the box.
“AHT-LAN-TIS.”
“Atlantis. Atlantis.”
“Yes.”
“Please select the origin.”
I have no idea. Balthazar tried to select the option for “Find my location.” but he was met with “error.”
“Find my location, please.” He tried speaking to the computer this time.
“I’m sorry. Location cannot be found. Please input your location.”
“Oh shitting hell.”
“Do you mean Shitterton, UK, Earth?”
“No! Cancel request.”
“Request cancelled.”
“I don’t know the location.”
“Please enter coordinates.”
“I don’t know the coordinates.”
“I’m sorry. Autopilot requires the origin in order to map the journey.”
I don’t know where I am. Balthazar shut the computer off.
He returned to his cabin, despondent and tired. Laying on his bed, he thought for a while and repeatedly threw and caught a cricket ball in the air. Hamza had been an excellent cricketer. Despite Hamza’s fatherly, unbounded encouragement, Balthazar could not bat. He could catch though. There was that at least.
There was a knock on the door which caused him to look away from the ball for a moment. Thump. The ball smacked him directly on the right cheekbone, stinging the surrounding area in a blinding fury and bringing a tear to his eye.
Balthazar, you idiot. Answer the door.
Balthazar jolted up and sat on the edge of the bed. It was gentle knocking, as though late at night. He looked at his clock. It was only three p.m in the afternoon. The knocking continued, slowly but surely.
“Balthazar, are you there?” It was a woman’s voice in a hushed tone. He quickly looked in his mirror and slicked his black hair back then checked his breath in his hands. Opening the door, he looked up in a mix of fright and pleasant surprise.
Standing outside the door was an incredibly tall, striking blonde woman with long, golden hair. She was wearing a blue mini dress with a matching pillbox hat. Her curved, full lips were painted pink and she had dramatically long, black eyelashes. Like barbie.
“Why didn’t you let me in?” she smiled. Her teeth were perfectly straight and almost glowing white. She spoke with a Californian, girl-next-door accent.
“There’s no one else here. I thought…”
“Thought you were all alone?” She giggled and covered her mouth with her pretty long fingers. Her nails had been painted pink to match her lips. “You’re so funny.”
“What is happening?” He asked in bewilderment. She tottered past him in ridiculously high, pink stilettos and sat down on the bed.
“It’s me, silly.”
He panicked. Had he been on a date with this woman and forgot to call? Was she the girl he had abandoned in the bar a month ago because he’d accidentally punched himself in the face when a party trick went horribly wrong and had to find a way to get rid of the blood in his mouth? He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen her before but at the same time, she was familiar to him. She had noticed that he was looking at her strangely and tittered. “It’s me! Liana.”
“Liana?”
“Yeah. Liana, honey.” Her accent had relaxed into something that sounded like a sweet, silvery tinkle akin to that of Dolly Parton.
“Liana?” He asked again, processing the name.
The computer. Liana is the computer.
“Yeah! It’s me!” She smiled and laughed, shaking her head. “You’re so silly.”
“Right.” He laughed nervously, still standing in the doorway. She was twirling her long hair around her fingers and smiling at him. Her long, tanned legs were crossed now. He made an effort to close his mouth. “Don’t gawk.” His mother would say. She was saying it now in his head.
“Are you lost, baby?”
Baby? Are we a thing now?
“Actually, yes. I don’t know where I am.”
“Aw Balthazar, come here.”She said in a sympathetic voice with her arms outstretched. He did not want to move but he felt compelled to. He sat beside her on the bed. She was so warm and welcoming. He was so lost and alone.
“That little planet down there? That’s called Oceanus.” She pointed to the floor of the cabin. “Make sure you put it in your next message. Maybe they’ll reply.”
“Oceanus?” He shrugged. “I’ve never heard of it.”
“Not many people have, honey. It’s a secret.” She placed a finger on her lips and shushed gently.
“A secret? Why?”
“Oh, I can’t tell you that.” She shook her head cheekily and batted her dramatic, feline eyelashes at him. “But you just go on ahead and tell them that’s where you are.” She placed her hands on his chest and tenderly started unfastening the buttons of his shirt. This made him jump back and remove her hands.
“Ok. I’d better go then!”
“I didn’t mean right now.” She laughed. “What about lil ol’ me?” She pouted, folding her arms.
“Sorry. Erm, maybe later.” He backed out of the cabin, crashing into everything in his blinded path and ran back to the bridge.
Nicely done! Thank you and I look forward to your next installment Hanna!
Oh, the computer became a person?