Chapter 2: It Starts With A Hangover


Disclaimer: BioWare owns Mass Effect. Pan Books owns the rights to Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, written by Douglas Adams.


Milky Way Galaxy, Local Cluster, Sol System, Earth, North American Continent, State of Washington, Tacoma, April 11, 2013

The apartment stood on the perimeter of a grassy courtyard in the southern end of South Tacoma, overlooking the great highway that bisected Pierce County like a concrete river. Not a remarkable apartment by any means - it was about forty years old, cheap, made of brick, and had the unfortunate disadvantage of having a large bay window that faced the setting sun, throwing glare onto the television for a quarter of the day.

The occupant of that apartment was me, but I wasn't currently in it.

I woke up on the lawn in front of my apartment.

The very first thing I was aware of was that I was wet; not an uncommon occurrence in the Pacific Northwest, where it rains for half the year. I'm not exactly soaked, but I am definitely damp, my clothes from the night before having gotten soggy. As I woke up, feeling the wetness of my clothes and how they weighed on me, I found myself looking up at blue skies, a cloudless morning in Washington. This struck me as odd; clear skies in April? My brain took a minute to process this impossibility, shuttered, and then rejected the notion out of sheer lunacy. Then I noticed that there were no less than three people looking down upon my prone body, one a woman, and the other two men.

I groaned as I recognized my land lady, Elana Gonzalez.

Last night came back to me in a blur, fogged with alcohol and anger. I had been at my favorite bar, Rollies, drinking heavily for some reason, intermixed with a lot of shouting and beer. It took me a few moments to remember why as my hangover interrupted my thoughts, my poor brain desperate to ignore the pounding pain that was hammering at my temples, the awful taste in my mouth, and the fact that I was shivering slightly from the damp. The face of my land lady, Ms. Gonzalez, didn't help much. To say that she was a lot of woman was putting it mildly; she could have gotten into a wrestling contest with Rosie O'Donnell and come out the Heavyweight Champion. God or Nature decided that her being fat wasn't enough, and gave a face only a sledgehammer could love; too broad a nose, a few hairy warts, and jiggling jowls to frame an unhealthy complexion and a constant sweating disorder.

She was currently glaring down at me with all her weighty might.

Now I remember why I had gone drinking.

After spending ten years in the United States Army and over fifty accumulated months in the Middle East, I had gotten fed up of having more deployment time than everyone I had ever known, met, or even heard of. Sure, Be All You Can Be and Army Of One sounds like a lot of fun until I realized that I wasn't looking forward to another ten years of doing the same old routine of training, deployment, training, deployment, etc. I had gotten out with the half-assed idea of going to college and using my GI Bill to all its three year glory to avoid being a working stiff for a little longer. One Honorable Discharge later, I'm filing for Unemployment through the State of Washington, and getting six months of Worksource pay to 'find a job'.

That six months ended eight months ago.

Like most who have gotten out of the service, I found myself sinking deeper into depression. Didn't look for jobs, didn't apply for college, spent most of my time moping, drinking, and hating the fact that I had no idea what to do. I realized that all my Army skills had taught me one thing; how to be a soldier. But when it came to the civilian workforce, I realized that I would be at the bottom of the barrel along with recent high school graduates and everyone else that pretty much made rotten decisions in their life. The Unemployment ran out, and I found myself doing interesting things to make ends meet; letting the bills pile while selling stuff to make money for food and beer. Angry at myself and practically everyone else, I had come home yesterday to find a big heavy-duty padlock on my door, the kind you see on show homes in new suburbs, and an eviction notice taped to my front door. In my infinite wisdom, I had yelled and screamed at the door, pissed that I was now homeless, and had gone to Rollies, only a five minute drive from my apartment, and about a thirty minute walk. One long night of drinking later, I had stumbled back home and put a brick through the front window to grab the one thing I had really wanted out of my apartment, what had been denied to me because of the padlock and the eviction notice. I had spent good money on it, and I wasn't about to let it go to waste.

Said item was wrapped in a towel, held together by duct tape to disguise its contents, laying next to me.

"Mr. Gibson," Ms. Gonzalez began, her Latino-accented voice filled with as much scorn as possible as she addressed me, "you have been evicted from the premise. Now I come to find you out here on the lawn, and the front window smashed." I grunted at that; way too hungover to argue. I'm now noticing that the two men flanking her were big, burly Latino men, just as big as she, just as ugly, and just as mean. Uh oh. "What do you have to say for yourself?"

"I think I threw my shoulder out chucking that brick." I monologued. Perhaps not my greatest moment.

"This is coming out of your security deposit!" The woman screeched like a harpy, in that way that women did who believed that the louder you were, the more right you happened to be. Don't believe me? Argue with a black woman; they'll set you straight real quick. At least my land lady was sticking to English. "Now you have five minutes to leave this apartment complex or I'm going to call the cops on you!"

"Can you send INS, too? I don't have my papers on me." Hungover or not, my wit and charm haven't suffered evidently. Ms. Gonzalez's face is now a very bright red, and she looks like a fat tomato. That got me laughing.

"Hector! Jose! Tirarlo a cabo en el culo!" The harpy screeched again, and I know I'm in deep shit when it's not even in English. I can't even translate sober, but despite my hungover state, I'm pretty sure she just told Tweetle-Paco and Tweetle-Taco to chuck me out. The two burly Mexican men bend down to scoop me up, and I'm pretty sure this is going to hurt.

There's a knock on the door. And someone calling my name.

Man hands stop grabbing at me as I flail about on the ground, lacklusterly preventing from what I know is going to happen, when the sound of a fist on wood stops us from our grab ass, and all four of us look over to see a redhead knocking on my apartment door, obviously oblivious to what is going on. I look to see my best friend knocking on my apartment door, asking for me by name, shouting it out in a vain attempt to be heard through the locked wooden portal.

"Jane! Over here!"

Jane Shepard looks from the door and smiles at my prostrate self, completely ignoring the three people who each separately weigh twice as much as I do surrounding me as she turns from the door and looks at me.

Perhaps I should tell you about her.

I met Jane Shepard at, of course, a bar. About eight months ago. She was a little confused, a little lost, and in my valiant attempt to be a nice guy, decided to ask her if she needed help. I had money at the time, so after several beers and some outrageous lies on both of our parts, I found myself a friend who had the oddest sense of humor and the strangest terminology. Still, she was fun to be with, very easy on the eyes, and absolutely insane when it came to the thought of self-preservation. Who else willingly surfs on the top of a car roaring down the interstate while piloted by a drunk guy not on a dare? And that was just on the first night I met her. She lived in a small trailer in a shitty trailer park down the road, so one of us usually ended up crashing at the others' house more often than not. She didn't have a car, and as far as I was aware, she didn't have a job, either. Of course, she had a tendency to call money 'credits', get into arguments with Airmen, Astrophysicists, and anyone who put money into stocks. She also happened to be really, really good in a barfight. I still remember her using a bar stool like a club on an entire biker gang.

"Jersey! There you are! I've been looking for you!" Jane called out, all smiles as her green eyes lit up, framed by freckles and red hair. Seriously, she could have casted herself into Celtic Woman without much of a fight. "We need to leave."

"I know." I muttered from the ground, my hangover having not gotten any better. "Evicted."

"You know?" The red head looked alarmed, looking to the three heavy-set Latinos that surrounded me, and then to me, and then surprisingly, to the sky. The befuddled look upon her face was almost charming as she gaped at me for a good moment, and then she looked to the door of my apartment, seeing the piece of paper taped to it, the big, bold, red letters reading 'EVICTED' for anyone with a pair of eyes to see. "Oh. Yes, that." Jane returned to her smile, the alarm on her face disappearing as if it never happened. "We need to talk, Jersey. It's rather important. We should go." There was that phrase; anytime Jane Shepard left, she never said goodbye. It was always I should go. Nothing else. "We're also going to need a drink. A lot of drinks."

My hungover brain rather enjoyed the sound of that.

"Well, it's not like I got anywhere else to go, right?" I muttered, looking to the 'EVICTED' paper, the padlock, the broken front window, and to the three bruisers standing over me. "What about my stuff inside?"

"Wouldn't worry. It won't get very far." Jane assured me with a flip of her hand as she straightened the shirt she was wearing, a plain white t-shirt topping some blue jeans that looked like they came from Goodwill. As I said, she didn't have a job as far as I was aware. "C'mon, Jersey! It's vitally important that we talk and drink, and Rollies is only five minutes down the road. Now!" Jane Shepard was being… forceful. Commanding, even. That was a first.

"Jane, what's going on? Is something the matter?" The goons are ignored as I sat up, the towel-wrapped package in my arms, hugged tightly.

"Nothing. Nothing's the matter. Listen, Jersey - I've got to tell you the most important thing you've ever heard in your life. I've got to tell you now, and I've got to tell you at Rollies."

"Okay… and that requires a lot of drinks?"

"Trust me on this one." Jane Shepard said as she folded her arms across her chest. "What I'm about to tell you, you're going to be needing a stiff drink. And we've only got about twenty minutes to do it in."