Chapter 3
She watch Jimmy eat some Madi meat in the cafeteria, but she had to do it from across the room because of his deadly energy. He had to remove a portion of his masked to eat, and this allowed her to calculate the radius of the kill zone with her palm computer. She sat on a chair from across the room, and pretended like she wasn't watching him. For a moment, she thought about how horrendous life must be to never touch or love another being. It seemed like such a lonely existence that her eyes watered from the thought.
"Are you crying?" Jimmy asked.
"Don't be silly," she said.
"Nothing wrong with a good cry. Well, since my tears are hostile to life, I only cry in my safe place."
"Well, you just finish your Madi meat, and don't bother with my watery eyes," she said.
"Wiwiwi," Jimmy said.
"What did you say?" She asked.
"What?"
"You're horrible," she said, "You're like an out of control kid."
"That you like," he said.
She gave him a grimace, and then Jimmy placed his mask back on, and flew into the air over to her.
"You can fly?" She asked.
"Yes," he said. He turned to his tray of food, pointed at it, and it flew into the trash.
"Incredible," she said.
Later on that evening,,,
T'Nalia's first day with Jimmy was a tedious one, and T'Rolo asked that she sleep on a cot outside of Jimmy's door. The idea of being around that little bugger caused her to cringe, and object to the idea of being in his presence any longer than needed.
"He's abrasive, rude, and childish," she said, "I can only imagine a world rejoicing when that one left."
T'Rolo laughed. "He's not that bad."
She grimaced. "He's like an infestation to the soul."
She sat her cot next to the fortified room, and watched Jimmy quietly read from the monitor. They had moved him to a better room with amenities like a computer to keep him company. He had some historical articles pulled up on his monitor of an inglorious past that Doraxians hated to discuss. He seemed so peaceful when he studied because he didn't make a sound. She felt badly for reporting his shenanigans to the head science officer, and now that she saw his penchant for learning, she saw something redeemable about him.
Jimmy turned out the light to his hovel without saying a word, and at first she thought it was a good thing until she realized it was a snub, a cold shoulder. She had only been around him for two days, but she knew what a cold shoulder felt like. Suddenly, the ship rumbled, and T'Nalia fell off her cot. She ran to the bridge, and two Green Lanterns were impeding the ship's progress.
"Lanterns what's the meaning of this?" T'Nalia asked. She had them on the big viewer. "You are in violation of section 3950 of the Lantern Manuel."
"Give us your booty?" The bigger Lantern asked. "Either that or we'll rip this vessel apart."
"Is this for real? Who are you two?"
"Corbin Priest," the bigger Lantern replied, "This is my handsome compatriot, Krull Cantor."
"I'm T'Nalia, The Blue Ghost, Lantern of Doraxia," she said, "Disperse or die."
"Disperse or die?" Corbin asked condescendingly.
"You're but one when we're two," Krull said, "Isn't it foolish to think you can take on both of us."
T'Nalia saw Jimmy creep up behind Krull without his mask, he died in front of him. He took his Lantern ring, and placed it on his finger, and shot Corbin with a ray so powerful that it sliced him in half.
"Jimmy! Where's the justice in that?" T'Nalia asked. Jimmy took his ring, and placed it in his pocket.
"Don't yell at the boy," T'Rolo said, "They tried to kill us."
T'Nalia was frustrated by Jimmy's actions, but she smiled ostensibly when she walked off the bridge. By the time she reached her cot, Jimmy was already in his hovel, and sound asleep. She thought she wasn't needed as a guard because with his powers, her ring was nothing more than a kid's toy. He could kill every soul on the ship without thinking about it, and she knew it.
The next morning Jimmy ate some Madi meat and some pip eggs in his room while T'Nalia watched, and he didn't say much to her. "How are you doing this morning?"
He shrugged his shoulders, and continued eating. She sat down on her cot, and didn't know why he was having an attitude. It was disconcerting. She then thought about him killing the two Lanterns, and realized that he had the ability to hear through the walls of the ship; it was the only thing that corresponded to his withdrawn state. "So you can hear through the walls?" she asked.
"See through them too," he replied, "You have a smashing body by the way."
She bowed her head, and said, "Do you have no shame?"
"I never looked," he said, "The real problem is you need to lighten up sometime."
T'Nalia only entered into Jimmy's hovel when he was fully dressed, and he spent hours studying the history of the Grays. She looked at Jimmy, and said, "It was another group of people on my planet who was the ruling class for eight thousand years, but slowly died out in the last thousand years," She said. She stood up and walked to the other side of the room, and Jimmy watched her. "On a planet of seventeen billion people, the Grays were less than one hundred thousand." She walked back and forth on the other side of the room as she explained her planet's history to Jimmy. "They struggled with procreation due to the premature births and deformities. The Grays didn't spend much time on the surface of the planet because of the two suns. The average temperature on the planet was one hundred and two degrees. The average temperature in Glassco is one hundred and thirty degrees. The Grays burn in the sun at any temperature."
T'Nalia explained to Jimmy that the Grays were once dominant in power, and their societies were the kernel of knowledge and medicines, and when they entered into the ancient lands of the Blues, they conquered with violence and deception. She looked at Jimmy, and said "The Grays burned the Blues' books, temples, and tore down their altars, and erected statues of their gods. All of the Blues' gods were outlawed, and anybody caught practicing the ancient religions was executed on the spot. Some brave Blues absconded into the mountains throughout the world, and hid ancient text of the ancients deep into the caves, and they remained unmolested for thousands of years. The Grays' cruelty ebbed and flowed over time, and in the fourth millennia, the Grays instituted a reprehensible form of slavery that put the Blues in bondage wherever Grays and Blues lived sidebyside. It was a horrible time, and the Blues' families were torn apart, and until modern times, generations of Blues were lost in the diaspora. In the sixth millennia and with the advent of paper and electronic media, the Grays passed around negative stories of the Blues, and portrayed them as animalistic and of low intelligence. In the Fourth Millennia, the Grays said that god cursed the Blues; but in the Sixth Millennia, the Grays said they had scientific proof that Blues were born inferior, and that message was spread in every aspect of the news."
T'Nalia sat on Jimmy's bed for a moment.
"Finish the story," Jimmy said.
"Okay," She said, "Well. A dark skinned Blue by the name of Aba Tee in the Sixth Millennia rose to the top of the Grays academic institutions, and received his Doctorate in Psychology. Around the same time, a group of Blues in Prado, a city in the southern hemisphere, found eighty two ancient scrolls that documented how the Grays attacked the Blues and destroyed their temples. A new era of thought permeated through the Blues, and through a Psychological restructuring of the Blues' minds, anything less than a doctorate in a subject became blasphemous to the Blues. They considered that person aberrant and contrary to the life of a good Blue. The title of a doctorate became a "T" in front of the last name. "
"Oh," Jimmy said,"I thought it was a stutter."
T'Nalia laughed. "That's not funny." She laughed harder. "Okay. Okay. Serious face." She rolled off the bed, and fell off onto the floor with laughter.
"Your laugh is beautiful," he said, "Refreshing."
She looked at him for a moment with a serious face, and then everything felt weird. "Maybe I should go."
"Please don't go," Jimmy said, "I want you to finish the story."
"Okay," she said, "The Grays first noticed their dwindling numbers, but the Blues didn't pay any attention to their reports because the Grays were attacking and killing Blues in the streets. When the Blues said, "Don't Blue lives matter?" The Grays replied, "All lives matter." By the time the Blues noticed a problem with the Grays, more Grays were dying than being born in the majority of nations on Doraxia. The Blues immediately started working on ways to find a cure for the Grays' low birth rate, but Aba Tee said one word that permeated throughout the Blues around the world: "Why?" He essentially said that Grays were much more smarter than Blues, stronger than Blues, and better off than Blues, and their god had blessed them over the Blues, so they should find their own cure. It was hard for many of the Blues because they loved the Grays to a certain degree. And over the next millennium, the Blues watched the Grays die a slow death. No Blue ever talked about the dying Grays, and when the Grays cried for help, the Blues would say, "We are helping," and then there would be a small pause, and the Blues would say, "By letting you die.""
"I don't know how to take this," Jimmy said, "You let them die."
"I didn't," T'Nalia said defensively, "My ancestors did."
"Why does this feel wrong?" He asked.
"Let me finished?" She asked.
A doctor by the name of Victor Glassco, the person T'Nalia's city was named after, worked on a formula that helped the remaining fifty thousand Grays on the planet. After two hundred years, the Grays now have a population of one hundred thousand, and they were a protected class of people in Glassco.
"Do you know any Grays?" Jimmy asked.
"No," she said with a smile. "They have a community apart from the Blues."
"Why?" He asked.
"So they can grow strong," she said.
Jimmy stood up and walked around his room for a moment, and then said, "But wasn't nature killing them?"
"That's true. But if we can use our intelligence to change the outcome, then we must," she said.