<FWG> <Meridian> Karma's Payment, Part 3. (Zach Auron)
- From: Jason Ziredac <ziredac@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: fwgalaxy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2007 18:24:28 -0800 (PST)
Karma's Payment
by Zach Auron
Shawna Kenton
&
Jack Leirone
3.
She perfectly understood where he was coming from. Her friend in middle
school was addicted to meth once and overcame it all on his own, and she
couldn?t be prouder. Not one shade of her regard for this new heroic Zach Auron
grew any dimmer when he told her in untouchable secrecy that he had been
addicted. It could happen to anyone, she had told him, and he had been so
ashamed. He was a changing man, and with change comes chaos, especially in the
physical and metaphysical bodies of human beings.
The man had loaned her his heart after all; the least she could do was give
him the last nudge out of the prison he was so reluctant to leave. For how
long, did he say? Eight years? Jesus Christ, what a long time.
Shawna?s first adjective for Zach?s quarters was technically ?dark,? but she
forgot it promptly and gave the gold to ?stale.? A room with no life living
inside it often becomes a ghost itself, listing in walls and carpets as a
dreamless drone, skipping stones on the astral lake. Activating the light
notified her that there wasn?t much passionate use of private space in Zach?s
life either: a neatly-made bed, a spotless bathroom, and no décor save for a
single vase of flowers, alone and dry, sobbing emaciated petals onto the night
stand in surrender.
There were three places, he had told her, though something had troubled him
as if there was a fourth.
?Under the bed,? he?d said. ?In the third drawer of my dresser. Um?oh, above
the lights, and?? Shawna waited patiently as the pause slept. ?Those must?I
think those are all the places.?
Under the bed. Shawna whispered it to herself as she crossed the room to the
bed, getting down on all fours to search as if for a scared kitten. Nothing was
on the carpet beneath the sleek wood frame, so she curved her fingers and
searched along the rim of the right support. Suddenly she found a small plastic
and something hard?a couple hard somethings?inside. She pulled it out and?damn
it, spare screws for the damned bed frame. Continuing along the edge, Shawna
found the first of what she was looking for: a capsule about an inch in length,
no thicker than a roll of pennies.
A blood-red liquid was inside.
The very elixir that drove and drained Zach?s pain away, leaving him empty
and scorched inside as the cost. It left his heart open, broke him. Broke a
broken man so hard he was deluded into a false sense of repair.
Shawna looked concernedly at the capsule as if it was a child that had been
caught stealing, and it was her job to counsel it. Sighing scornfully, she
placed in her pocket and turned around to find the built-in wooden dresser
staring at her from the other end of the room. Two sets of drawers on each
side. Great. Which one does he call the ?third?? The third one down, or the
third one as if you?re, I dunno, reading it as a book or something?
So she started from the top and worked her way down. It didn?t take long, as
the drawers were starving for inhabitants. Mostly they were mingled personal
effects, old containers of memories losing their sparkle in the unattended cell
of a room they were now in. In the second drawer down on the left side, Shawna
found a holograph. A woman and two young girls. The children were ecstatic,
probably terribly amused by the photographer who might have had some puppet or
funny cartoon character. However, the woman looked like her smile was a
resigned fermata, holding indefinitely until he who would be pleased by it
would look away.
She loses, I guess, Shawna thought. He?s got it captured here for good. I
wonder if he knows you?re faking it. What happened between the two of you? I
guess I?m assuming you?re his wife. Or his ex-wife. Didn?t even know you
existed. I bet no one here does. Zach?s acknowledgement of your existence is
probably enough to compensate for a ship?s worth of people, though. Cute kids.
In a small box she found the second of the three helshudai capsules. This one
was fuller than the first one she found, obviously one of his reserves. The one
under the bed was probably his main usage one, as he had told her it takes a
tiny dose to bring on the high. Or the low, rather. Christ, it was chilling how
he described what the drug did. Those red birds? Anyway, it took a man with
daily usage a month to even get halfway through a capsule. And from what Zach
said, he was only catching up to being a daily user.
There was another thing in that same box that caught Shawna?s eye. She put
the second capsule in her pocket with the other one while she inspected the
other object, and she found that it was a commendation. Oh, this is what the
Captain gave him when he risked his neck for those people during the ship?s
shutdown not too long ago. With the Borg. But this wasn?t from the Meridian,
nor was it a commendation given to officers of Starfleet. It was what Starfleet
doled out to citizens to help a cause.
And finally, the third content in the box was a PADD containing his divorce
files. A deadly drug, a citizen?s commendation, and divorce papers. The old
children?s learning song popped into her head: One of these things is not like
the others. One of these things just doesn?t belong. Was that on Sesame Street?
How does the human mind retain such information?
Anyway, what the hell was a commendation doing with these other two marks of
suffering? Shawna had a thought and asked herself, Who could commend someone
for something they would ultimately regret?
?Better not to ask, Shawna,? she spoke to herself aloud. ?The guy?s got way
too much on his plate for me to go asking about another unrelated shadow in his
past. Where?s that third one? Above the lights, right.?
The central dome-shaped light on the ceiling was reachable by chair, so
Shawna pulled one from the dinner table and deactivated the light vocally.
?Keep the other lights on though, please.? Upon inspection, she found that the
glass dome was alike other glass domes she could have found covering lights
back in her day, screwing into the fixture on enlarged grooves. Twisting the
thing, she pulled it down and set it on the table, looking inside like a
trick-or-treating pint-sized ghoul fishing for Tootsie Pops on a cold night.
Nothing. Not even a dead fly.
Well, I guess these ships are clean to the gills; there probably wouldn?t be
flies, now would there? Wait. He said ?above the lights.? Could it??
Hopping back up on the chair, she saw that the light fixture itself could be
easily removed from the ceiling, and upon doing so she found the last capsule.
Why would he have two in such accessible places and one in such difficult
location as this? For the longest time, even as she was heading to the
Holodeck, even while she was running the simple program with no safety code,
even while she made a campfire and burned the capsules like he had instructed,
she couldn?t figure that out.
Then it came to her. All along he had wanted to be free of the drug. Either
by his own volition or in his subconscious, he sequentially made each capsule
harder to come by. One was under his bed, easy, the other was in the Little Box
o? Pain in his drawer, and the third was in a part of the room people aren?t
meant to be in.
Funny, the relationship between a man and his vice. Then Shawna took a look
around at her vice, the Liesfort replica Marius made for her, realizing she
hadn?t given it a second thought like she had earlier when she met Fyrsta. Sure
she could live without it, the calm lake and the quaint town and the Starbucks
and the Safeway and the Blockbuster video and the ketchup packets and
McDonald?s cheeseburgers and Apple II computers and Soul Coughing. But she
couldn?t leave it behind. Proudly without the help of Oridian Starfire, she
convinced herself it would be psychologically better to not have it accessible,
and to delete the program for good.
But she still couldn?t do it. Comparing her addiction to Zach?s, hers was
virtually harmless, and it wasn?t as severe to choke. Part of her wanted to
keep it around as a sanctuary to only attend when in dire emotional need, but
the logical part of her wanted to authorize its deletion. Perhaps Zach Auron?s
strength over his own back-monkey, his own shoulder-chimp, could inspire her to
be rid of hers. As she sat there by the fire, ignoring the smell of burning
chemicals, she watched the night sky and thought, Just not right now, and
smiled.
---------------------------------
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