EIGHT of THIRTY-TWO
*NOTE – Hello everybody, it's me, TheManFromMudos, and I'm back again today with another chapter of 'Xavier'. Again, I apologise for the fact that it's been a while since the last chapter was uploaded, but now that we're approaching almost three thousand words a chapter, these things take time. The good news it that I've just finished finalising all of the major and minor plot points for the story, and successfully woven a finely-tuned backstory into the whole thing. So please, trust me when I say that this story is going to blow your mind. For a while, nothing will make sense, and then, suddenly, everything will. I'm really looking forward to writing it, and I hope you are to reading it. But for now, we've got catching up to do. So, here it is, fresh off the press, Chapter Eight of Thirty-Two. It's 'Xavier'. THANK YOU!*
The next few moments passed in complete silence. As we made our way through the car park towards the entrance gate, I debated with myself over whether or not I should question Katie on her behaviour. I eventually decided that it was only right that I said something, albeit implicitly.
"Are you alright, Katie?" I asked in a concerned but supportive tone. I glanced at her inquisitively as I spoke, my brow furrowed with intrigue.
"I'm fine." She replied hesitantly, refusing to make eye contact with me as she spoke. Instead, she continued to gaze down at the baby in her arms.
"Are you sure?" I continued, wanting desperately to hear some sort of… confession from her. Just so that I knew where we stood.
"Honestly, Matthew," Katie insisted with a sigh. "I'm fine." She smiled at me weakly as she said this, which instantly gave the lie away.
"Alright, then." I remarked, deciding not to push the conversation any further. "If you say so." Of course, I knew in truth that we would have to discuss this in more detail at some point. If there was any risk of Katie coming between me and Xena, I had to know about it.
"Anyway…" I sighed, trying to break the awkward silence which had once again emerged between us. "Can I have a closer look at those tickets?"
"I suppose so." Katie replied, reaching into her pocket and producing the four tickets which we (well, she) had just purchased.
"Here you go." She mumbled, quickly handing the thin slips of card to me. I took them from her carefully, as they were already crumpled somewhat from being in her pocket, and I didn't want to rip them. Whatever would we do then? Then again, Katie could probably afford dozens more.
"'RCS Angelica Nine-Nine-Eight-Six-Two-Eight-Zero-Three-Four'." I said aloud, reading the bold, brown letters from the front of the mint green card. "'Boarding Pass: For Arrival at Gate Tau'. 'Please keep this card with you at all times… Do not use another person's card… Retain for future reference'."
"Seems simple enough." Katie said, shrugging her shoulders. "But where do we go once we've boarded?"
"Let's see..." I replied distantly as I scanned over the small print at the bottom of the card. "Ah, here we are. 'Upon boarding, please proceed to your nearest Registry Office to apply for citizenship and discuss housing options'."
"Housing options?" Katie repeated. "You mean we'll have to pay for a house as well as the tickets?"
"Well, you will." I said bluntly, grinning smugly as I spoke. "But surely someone of your financial stature wouldn't mind that. Would you?"
"You're a complete knob head, Matthew, you know that?" She replied jokingly. "Yes, I suppose I will have to pay for all of this. But as soon as we're settled down on this ship, you are getting a job. Understand?"
"I already have one, remember?" I assured her, pointing to the rank slide on my shoulder. "Senior Navigational Officer of the DSPSCV Archimedes. Although I suppose you could argue that I quit that particular job, especially after I… well, quit."
"Quite." Katie remarked, rolling her eyes. Honestly, I could never understand why people said that. What does it even mean, 'quite'? 'Quite right', 'Quite so', who knew? Then again, a lot of what people say these days makes no apparent sense. Never has really, has it?
"Anyway, that reminds me." Katie continued, interrupting my tangential train of thought. "How long have you been wearing that uniform, exactly?"
"Too long." I chuckled, thinking back to that fateful day back on the Archimedes. The day where it really had all began. "The nineteenth of March, twenty-three nineteen. Good lord, I haven't changed my clothes since twenty-three nineteen…"
"Don't worry about it, Matthew…" Katie assured me. "Neither have I." We both chuckled slightly at this. Admittedly, it wasn't particularly funny, but it was nice to know that we could stay cheerful in times like these. After all, we, and particularly I, had to keep our minds off of Xena. Heaven knows how close we were to the, finding her. Then it'd all be over just as quickly as it had begun… All of this, for nothing… Like I said, best not to think about it, eh?
A few moments later, Katie and I had finally reached the 'pedestrian' entrance to the Angelica. An enormous doorway, several metres wide, opened up into an airlock the size of a dining hall. Inside, hundreds upon hundreds of people were eagerly awaiting the opening of the interior door. We quickly hurried over to the doorway and hastily bundled ourselves into the huge but cramped chamber. If we didn't get in now, who knew how long it would be before the airlock opened again, to let the next batch of passengers in? As soon as we had got in though, I quickly came to regret it. There was scarcely enough room to swing a tadpole, let alone a cat. But if it got us aboard quicker, then it was our only choice. I found myself wondering for a moment or two why the Angelica had airlocks at all. It was never going to land anywhere, and pressure inside the ship would be 1G, as standard. Then I remembered what Katie had said earlier about Sedna's gravity being 1.4G, the strongest in the Solar System, and the whole thing made a lot more sense.
"It's a bit tight in here, isn't it?" Katie asked, shouting over the clamor of voices around us.
"You can say that again!" I replied, stumbling to one side as a man behind me accidentally elbowed me in the back. "At least it's not for long, though." No sooner than I had finished my sentence, a large red light on the ceiling began to flash. As if on cue, the enormous door which led back out onto the surface of Sedna began to close. The thick slab of brownish-grey metal slid from the roof to the ground, finally slamming with a mighty thud.
Seconds later, a loud hissing noise filled the room as the chamber began to depressurise. It's not often that an airlock has to depressurise to allow people into a ship, but again, there was the whole 'Sedna has a high atmospheric pressure' thing going on. Soon, the hissing subsided, and the red flashing light on the ceiling went out. With a considerable rumble, the inner door of the airlock began to move. Finally, in just a few short moments, I'd have my first glimpse of the inside of the colossal vessel that was the Angelica. I didn't know what to expect, but I was actually quite excited deep down. It was just like the first time I ever went to Mars. I was only twelve then, but I knew at once that it was the life for me. All those other planets out there, just waiting for me to visit them. That's what inspired me to join Ashbridge Industries International. To get out there and see all those planets up close. I realised at that moment, of course, that that life was now well and truly over. This was where I'd spend the rest of my days now. I'd never set foot on a planet again. But as soon as that enormous airlock door had slid itself out of view, revealing the vast interior of the ship behind, I knew that I wouldn't have to. Because what was behind that door, what was that inside that ship, could only be described as the surface of a planet.
The airlock opened out onto the dull grey concrete of a platform. A platform which belonged to a train station. Not a shuttle network, not a lift system. An actual, honest-to-God, railway station. On a spaceship. I looked right down towards the ends of the long platforms, out into the distance, and I saw green. There were fields. Grass, trees, hedges, on a spaceship. I was amazed by what I saw. It was like stepping through a portal, from the immense concrete jungle of Sedna into this, this… beautiful countryside landscape. I'd never felt so at home as I did now, billions of miles way from it.
"I… I've never seen so much colour in one place." Katie whispered to me, clearly just as awestruck as I was at the sight before us. Of course, she had lived on Sedna all her life. She'd never been to Earth, never seen such an extraordinary sight. But I had. And I can honestly say, hand on heart, that this place looked as if it was literally a piece that had been taken from the Earth. I knew at once that I was going to like it here. But, one thing at a time.
"We need to get to the nearest registry office." I said, remembering the words printed on the bottom of each of our boarding passes.
"But where's that?" Katie asked, a puzzled look on her face. Before I could answer her question, though, we were interrupted by a loud chiming of bells from the station's speaker system.
"This is an announcement for all new arrivals to the RCS Angelica." A soft female voice called across the speakers. "All passengers for Ike City Centre, please go to Platform 1. For Tinsworth, Headby and Sproxton-on-Malder, please go to Platform 2. For Gate Sigma, Platform 3. For Gate Upsilon, Platform 4. If you are unsure of your destination, please go to the Help Desk on the main station concourse."
"There you go." I said, turning to Katie and shrugging my shoulders. "Does that answer your question?"
"Well, considering my question was about the nearest registry office, no, no it doesn't." She replied bluntly.
"Look, it's perfectly simple." I assured her. "There'll be a registry office in every major town. That means the nearest one is in Tinsworth."
"What about the one in Ike?" She asked, although she soon realised how foolish that suggestion was. The world and his wife would be going to the city centre, whereas much less people would be on their way into the countryside. And besides, we had to lay low. I kept telling her that, over and over again.
"So, Platform 2 it is then?" She inquired, although I didn't have time to answer her on account of the fact that I had already started moving towards that particular platform. I was eager to get away from these crowds, to get out into the sticks, and see what this place was really like.
Twenty minutes or so later, Katie, Amanda, Xavier and I were all safely seated aboard a spacious, almost vacant railway carriage. The train had arrived just ten minutes after we had boarded the ship, and was just getting ready to leave the station as the train for Ike turned up at Platform 1.
"See?" I said to Katie, gesturing towards the heavily crowded platform beside us. "That is why we're going to Tinsworth, and not Ike." Katie wasn't listening at this point, though. She was looking around the carriage in bewilderment, her face alight with childlike curiosity.
"It's like a little room on wheels, isn't it?" She remarked. I wasn't quite sure what she found so fascinating about it, until it suddenly struck me.
"You've never been on a train before, have you?" I asked. "Or at least, not one like this."
"No." She replied, still gazing around the grand carriage in amazement. "Maglevs, Transit cars, all the time. But never this."
"They're very old fashioned. We had a few in England. Preserved lines, I mean." I explained, reminiscing once more of my home back on Earth. "They were all over the planet, in fact, back in the twenty-first century. But they never really took off on other planets, and eventually they were old news."
"I like it." Katie told me with a smile. "It's a little bit of history, isn't it? Hundreds of years have gone by, and still, here we are. On a train. On a ship."
A couple of minutes later, the doors of the carriage finally slid closed. The grinding and screeching of metal on metal resounded from the rails below us, and the train slowly began to edge forwards out of the station. I gazed through the window, eager to see more of this rolling countryside that we would soon be living in. Needless to say, I was not disappointed. As the train rolled away from the platform, pulling out from under the shelter of the station canopy and into the open, I saw for the first time the true scale of the inside of the Angelica. To our left, fields stretched out into the distance for miles upon miles on end. Because the ground had no curvature like a planet had, there was no horizon. I could see right to the very end of the ship, where tall buildings and skyscrapers towered into the air, but were dwarfed by the thick grey wall behind them, which climbed impossibly into the sky. To our right, there were yet more fields, but in the distance, instead of a wall, there was a window. It must have been literally miles in length, spanning right across the front end of the ship, and through it, I could see the stars. It was as if it was both day and night simultaneously, as blindingly bright lights on the roof of the ship simulated sunlight shining down. The sky above was a bright blue, complete with rolling white clouds, past which the ceiling was completely invisible. In the distance though, a great curved wall emerged from the heavens, plummeting down towards the ground below. In all my life, I had never seen such an awe-inspiring landscape, and I think I can safely say that I never will again.
"I… I don't know what to say." I said with hesitation, staring out across the landscape distantly. "It's… It's amazing."
"Is this what the Earth looked like, Matthew?" Katie asked, lost in a similar state of wonder and awe.
"To a 'T'." I nodded, sighing heavily with a chuckle. "It's a spitting image, Katie. Trust me."
"How could they destroy something as beautiful as this?" She continued, her tone becoming more cynical. "An entire planet like this. How could they just wave it all away?"
"They did what they had to, Katie." I told her solemnly, although I shared her sentiment on the matter. "They did what they had to."
"Matthew…" Katie began, taking a deep breath to compose herself before she continued. "Can I ask you something about Xena?"
"Go on." I said reluctantly, as I was unsure where exactly she was planning on taking this conversation.
"You've risked your life to save her, Matthew." She continued, looking down at the ground in thought. "You've done more for her than most people would do for their human partners. But why? What is it about her, Matthew? Why do you love her?"
"Look out of the window, Katie." I told her plainly. She did so, albeit reluctantly. "Tell me what you see out there."
"I see…" She hesitated, unsure of just what I was expecting her to say. "I see the most beautiful sight I've ever seen."
"That's how I feel when I look at Xena." I explained, chuckling at just how clichéd I sounded right now. "She's the most beautiful sight I've ever seen."
"That's a very romantic thing to say, Matthew." Katie replied with an honest smile.
"Thanks." I assured her, returning the expression warmly.
"Very cheesy thing, too, though." She said bluntly. I simply stared at her for a couple of seconds, before both of us started to giggle childishly. She was right, of course. Whenever I spoke about Xena, I always came across sounding like some love-struck school girl. But it was the truth, and that was that.
"Well…" I continued, composing myself once again. "I suppose I'm just a cheesy sort of bloke." Katie chuckled at this once again, as did I. And after that, we simply continued to chat, about everything and nothing, as the train slowly drifted across the countryside towards our destination. Soon, we'd arrive. We'd get our citizenship, we'd get our house, and then I could go back for Xena. I knew in that moment that everything was going to be just fine.