The Bebop began to plummet at a sickening speed. The last thing Jet saw before he closed his eyes was the surface of Earth 2.0 growing nearer. He bent at the waist and hunched his shoulders around his ears. Then, he tucked his arms in front of his stomach and only hoped that everyone else had had enough sense to protect their head and vital organs. The first impact was worse than he had anticipated. It sent a jolt through the entirety of his body and rattled his prosthetic arm. For a brief second, they were airborne and then the ship collided back down again - this time sending him bouncing against his seat. He felt the ship gliding against a rough surface and chanced looking up, just in time to see Patty's head collide with the dashboard. Her head snapped back again and she sighed before closing her eyes and going limp as a ragdoll. He stuck his arm out and held her down against the floor in an attempt to keep her from colliding with anything else.
Finally, the ship came to an abrupt and startling halt that threw them all forward. His body stung and ached everywhere, and the ringing in his ears was damn near unbearable.
"Spike! Faye! Ed!" He called out in a voice that he could not hear. "You guys okay? Where are you?!"
"We're here!" Came Faye's voice, muffled and far away. Her shadow appeared from behind a veil of smoke. She was clutching Spike, who was bent over at the waist. For a minute, Jet feared that he was dead but then he roused himself and peered around through one eye.
"You hurt?" He called. Jet shook his head and coughed.
"No, but Patty got knocked out. Come one, we gotta get outta here before the fumes get to us."
The crew ran as fast as they could towards the exit, hacking and coughing all the way. Once at the exit, Jet pulled a large lever and the large doors slid open to reveal a ramp descending onto a sandy surface. They descended quickly and sprawled out upon the sand, breathing in deeply and cherishing the feel of the sun on their faces. Jet set Patty against the exterior of the ship and her head rolled to one side. He gently pushed the stray locs away from her face and recoiled at the sight of blood on his hands.
"Shit, I think she-"
"Wait, give me a sec," Faye knelt in front of her and pulled a small, pink packet from the inside of her bra. She gave it a shake, flicked it twice, and then tore the edge off under Patty's nose. Patty's eyes flew open and she gasped until she was wheezing with the effort. Her eyes momentarily rolled into her head before settling back down and darting Faye's way.
"Chanel Number Fifty Two?" She croaked and Faye nodded.
"Never know when a girl's gonna need it, so I always keep a spare on hand."
"Smart," Patty said with a wink. "Very smart." She attempted to get up and then groaned, putting her hand to her head. "Where are we?"
"Doesn't it look familiar?"
Patty looked up and around in a daze before saying, "Oh. Crimson Beach. I'm back home."
"Huh? We're on a beach?"
"Go around to the other side of the ship."
Faye and Jet did as they were told. Ed descended the ramp timidly with Ein by her side. She was still clutching her computer to her chest and her goggles now rested on her chest. The sight that met them when they rounded the Bebop was breathtaking and they stood rooted to the spot in shock.
"Well, I'll be damned," Spike said. Upon landing, he had immediately walked around to the posterior of the Bebop but had stopped when he caught sight of the view. "It really is a crimson beach."
The water was a deep, bloody red that extended out as far as the eye could see. The sand was a pale yellow color and stretched back for miles in the opposite direction. Far off in the distance lush green heads of trees could barely be made out. Faye reached down and sifted the sand through her fingers in disbelief.
A piercing roar cut through the air and she looked up. The Earth 2.0 Officer's ship flew past them and then circled back around. She walked towards the others and watched it descend slowly onto the beach. It idled and then came to a complete stop. The hatch opened and a small man dressed in a sharp blue uniform climbed out. When he saw the four adults gazing at him with increasingly spiteful expressions he stopped and drew his gun from its holster.
"Stop where you are! I am Frederick C. Allen, Officer of the Merit Society's Police Section," he cried out in a quivering voice. "Don't move! Don't try any funny business. I will blow you to bits!"
"Like you did my ship," Spike said vehemently.
"Silence! Where is the criminal?"
"You can usually find them behind the hand that wields the gun," Faye said lightly, fanning herself. "But, in my own case, I'd have to disagree. Bang!" She whipped out a pistol faster than the eye could blink and aimed for the space between his legs. The Officer jumped and his gun went skittering across the sand.
"You bitch," he said, throwing his hands in the air.
Patty stood up and wobbled towards her. Blood began to drip into her eye and she covered it with one hand. The other, she steadied on Faye's shoulder as she regarded the Officer with dislike.
"Oh," she said, her eyebrows creasing in pity for the red-faced man, "You wet yourself."
The man's hand darted into his jacket and he pulled out a small blade. He tossed it with surprising accuracy and Patty pushed Faye to the ground, just in time to miss the whistling projectile. It embedded itself in a groove in the Bebop, taking a tuft of a surprised Ed's hair with it. Patty stood up and whipped her head around at him in surprise.
"Aw, man, now that was a bitch move," she said.
"Hey, Ein, make yourself useful and go grab that bit of rope in the maintenance closet," Jet said. "You know, the one that you always chew on."
Ein yelped happily and scattered back into the still-smoking ship. He returned with a coiled bit of rope which he placed gently in Jet's mechanical hand.
"Since this guy insists on causing trouble," he said, approaching the Officer slowly, "we'll just have to tie him up. Hey - ow! He bit me!"
"Jet, that's not even your real arm."
"I know but it still hurts. You know, in a spiritual sort of way. Ever heard of a phantom limb? Come 'ere, you."
Jet none-too-gently tossed the rope over the Officer's head and made quick work of a strong knot behind the man's back. He tugged and, satisfied with his work, stuck a handkerchief in the man's mouth.
"What's the damage," he said, circling the Bebop towards Spike, who by that time had his hands buried deep in a compartment holding wires and switches.
"She's not too bad. Might need a little coaxing, that's all." He pulled his hand back and inspected a wire that had come loose and was now crackling in his gloved hand. He lifted the goggles off of his face and set them on his head. "Or a lot of coaxing."
"Can we patch 'er up, just long enough to get us to the next planet?"
"Here. Take a look and see."
The two men set to work inspecting the hissing engine. But Faye noticed none of this. She was staring at Patty, as an odd expression had drawn itself across the runaway's face. As she watched, Patty limped towards the Officer and knelt in front of him. He backed away from her, his face contorted in disgust. She pulled the handkerchief away from his mouth.
"I have a question-" she started but he shook his head, enraged.
"Get away from me, you filthy criminal-" here, he muttered a racial slur that put them all on edge. Patty's face twisted in anger and she clamped her hand over his sweaty mouth.
"Okay, this is how it's going to go," she said softly, her voice dripping with venom. "I'm going to talk and you're going to listen. And when I'm done you're going to answer me, slowly and clearly. I know about the System Patchwork repairs. But there's one thing that I don't understand. When the System deletes the files of the people within the Patch, how do the maintenance workers know what information to reenter during the reboot process, after the information has been deleted? Do they make a record before the repair?"
She withdrew her hand from his mouth and he hogged a loogie her way. She jumped back, just barely missing the watery phlegm.
"I'm not telling you nothing," he said.
She simply looked at him for a long time. Then, without warning, she swung her leg back and kicked him square in the stomach.
"Tell me," she said, kicking him again. "Tell me! Tell me! Tell me!"
Her face was ugly with rage. Her kicks came harder and faster and the man jolted with each impact. The crew of the Bebop watched in shock as she assaulted the man, unsure of what to make of this change in her demeanor. Jet turned to Spike and raised his eyebrows.
"So this is the woman who you swear is so innocent," he said as the Officer yelped in pain. Spike shrugged.
"She must have bumped her head pretty hard when we crash-landed," was all that he said.
"Tell me! Tell me! Tell me!"
"Alright, stop!" Faye said, throwing herself between Patty and the Officer. "You'll kill him!"
"I was getting around to it." Patty wiped the blood from her nose and suddenly looked around her. Everybody was staring at her with apprehension and this humbled her more than anything else. Breathing heavily, she swiped at her nose again and stared at the blood on her hands as if she had never seen something like it before. A memory slunk its way into her mind and she grimaced.
A gas station...gunshots...her mother...one crazed man, his Classification: Harmful…
She curled her bloody fingers into a ball, her fingernails digging sharply into her palm. The Officer below her gave a sharp wheeze and spit out a tooth.
"Fine, I'll tell you. It's the Records! The Record Books!"
"The Record what now?" She said quickly.
"Promise you won't kick me?"
Patty swung her leg back and Faye put a warning hand on her shoulder. The man cowered and began to speak in a frightened voice.
"Its standard procedure for every maintenance worker to write down the information for all citizens in a designated Patch before performing repairs. Then, when the System reboots, this information is manually re-entered into the database. It's an old technique but it works."
"And these...these handwritten documents are kept in the Record Books?"
"That's what I said. Sorry, I mean, yes ma'am."
"Wait, wait," Patty put her head down and thought for a moment, "how many of these Record Books are there?"
"Thousands. Each one has been kept in a special room in the Maintenance Building since the colonization of Earth 2.0."
"So, potentially, these books contain intermittent Classification records of each citizen going way back in time?"
"...yes."
"Spike," she said, turning to face the man, "I want those books."
"Great," he said, loading a full clip into his gun, "I'm coming with you."
"What? No!"
"Yeah, are you crazy? You'd only be digging yourself deeper into this insanity," Jet said.
"I've been digging myself into insanity since the day I was born," he said. He held the gun up high and checked the bottom in the glaring sunlight, "what's a little bit more gonna do? You guys stay here and fix the ship. I'll be fine."
"Spike-" Patty started but he silenced her with a glance.
"Ever heard of the Domino Effect?"
"...no."
"It goes a little something like this. Imagine you place six upright Dominos in a line. You take your finger and push the first one down. It'll bump into the second one, and the second one will bump into the third, so on and so forth until they all fall down. Events that cause a chain reaction, much like the domino falling into the next domino, are called the Domino effect. Now, think back to that night that I heard you singing in the bar. I called you out on it, which started its own Domino effect. I revealed that I knew your identity. Surprised, you came after me and tripped, causing your cloak to reveal your face. You were then forced to flee your planet. And now we're here."
It was the most that she had heard him speak at one time. Her cheeks turned hot and she looked away from him. "It's just happenstance," she said quietly, "It's not your fault."
"I didn't say it was," he shoved his hands deep down in his pocket and leaned back on his heels, "I was just part of an out-of-control sequence. And I want to help you reset the dominos. Imagine if I had never opened my mouth in the bar that night. You'd probably still be anonymous and relatively safe. And I'd still have my cigarettes. So. How far is this System Maintenance Building anyway?"
He had defeated her. She glanced back at him and recognized the resolute expression on his face. She struggled to reel her thoughts in place before saying, "About a day's trip from here. If we leave now, we'll reach the forest at night and we can stop to rest. We'll be in town by tomorrow morning. Dig it?"
"I dig it," he took his coat off and threw it over his shoulder. "After you, pardner."
Jet watched the two of them walk away. "Aww, what a cute little couple," he turned his attention back to the hissing compartment and yelled, "Hey, Ed, gimme a hand, will you? Ed! Ed!"
But the child wasn't listening. She had waded far off into the crimson water and was splashing merrily about, with Ein doing the doggy paddle at her side.