Chapter 13: Jen in "Down and Out with the Soulfuckers"

"Oh don't be that girl." Hannah crowed, rolling her eyes. "I should have just left you with Cole."

For most people, fear is the unknown.

"I thought you said these chicks were cool, man." Rob the bassist said, extracting his face from Hannah's cleavage, spilling out of her uniform.

When she sleeps, it's not the specters of what might have been that haunt Jen.

"Hey, we are cool!" Hannah protested. "Jenny's just fuckin' crazy." She pushed away from Rob and sat up on the limy leather couch in the club's green room, and instinctively smoothed the frills on her apron. "Seriously, don't get us kicked out."

"So? I like 'em crazy." Joe, the lead singer, smirked sidelong at Jenny, before running a hand through his hair. "Nothing's going to happen, honey, I've done this hundreds of times before."

She remembers.

He held the little bottle out to her. It almost slipped from between her fingers, for something so delicate to be so heavy.

"You just spread some on your tongue, and bam! It's like nothing you've ever experienced before, girl, that I can promise you."

"What's it do?" She asked hesitantly.

"It. . . It re-aligns the, uh, energy fields of the body. Basically, you get to look into the other person's soul."

She resisted chortling at the fellow's ignorance, but she was so flattered by his effort to impress her that she decided not to. Turning the bottle over, she looked into the sparkling, opaque fluid, and guessed that it was some sort of connective fiber that temporarily connected the nerve endings of whatever body part it was spread on. She'd be right, of course. With things like this, she always was.

"It's a fuck of a time." Joe said, still smirking. Ain't that right, Robbie?" The bassist moaned into Hannah's cleavage. "See?"

"Fuck, Jenny, just do it!" Hannah said, fumbling with the back of her dress. "Don't make me tell the rest of the girls that you wimped out."

Jen took a deep breath. She could handle this. She was stronger than some silly little-

"Really?" Joe sighed, taking the bottle from her hands. "Fucking virgins, man." Jenny briefly looked over to Hannah, who was somewhat distracted by the bassist pawing at her bra clasp.

When she turned back, Joe leaned in, and kissed her. Being the sort of age and the sort of girl that doesn't get kissed as often as she'd like, it took a moment for her to remember to fight back.

Of course, by that point, it was too late.

As Jen had deduced, the drug forms a link between the nerve endings of the body, bridging the gap between two people. It sounds a lot nicer than it actually is, most people describe it as like "having an extra set of retarded limbs", but the prohibitively high cost of manufacture keep it in high demand amongst the galaxy's idle rich.

For most people, it's a beautiful experience. For just a moment, you get a glimpse into the inner workings of someone you care very much about. You can follow their train of thought, see the factors that influence their decision making, and even see their deepest, darkest fears. You come to understand them better as a person, creating something beautiful in the process.

For Jen, things didn't work out normally. Once the connection took place, she found Joe's mind so utterly insignificant that she hardly noticed anything at all. It wasn't until a slow, bilious panic started to cloud his judgment and cause him to crawl, flailing, across the room that she realized anything at all was wrong.

"What the FUCK?!" He shouted, recoiling. "WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?!"

Rob muttered something about chilling the fuck out into Hannah's neck, who giggled as his goatee tickled her neck.

"WHAT THE FUCK?!" He pointed straight at Jen. "YOU'RE A FUCKING MONSTER! YOU'RE NOT FUCKING HUMAN!" He grabbed his coat off of the corner table and stumbled towards the door.

Although the physical connection had been severed, Jen could still see into the boy's head. She knew the horrible things he was thinking about her, could taste the sour revulsion and bitter tang of disappointment that he didn't get to-

". . . My God. Are all guys that perverse?" She couldn't help but to think to herself.

"FUCKING FREAK!" He shouted as he stumbled through the door. "FUCKING KILL THAT BITCH!" He shouted, careening down the hall. The backstage din filled the room like so much clutter, groupies and managers and technicians wearing oversized headsets peeked in, quizzically, and those not distracted by Hannah's fervent copulation (she was still wearing her uniform cat-ears) found Jen, trying her hardest not to cry.


She rolled over in her sleep, and found herself face-to-face with Philo's crotch, thankfully contained behind a bold yet flattering pair of bell-bottom jeans she bought for him at a retro boutique.

"It is infinitely fascinating how different humans are while they sleep. Do you cry often?" He asked, as if he were asking nothing more profound than the time of day.

"Sometimes." She said, wiping her wet and puffy face on her pullover sleeve. "You used to be human, don't you remember what it's like?"

He shook his head. "Not since they put my brain in this armor-plated jar." He said, thumping his chest. "It might be nice to remember who I used to be, but it doesn't matter now."

"You're really okay with that? With just losing huge parts of who you are?" She rested a hand on his shoulder, concern etched across her face.

"Do you miss your memories of what it was like, being an infant?" She shook her head. "Well, it's like that with me. Whatever happened, happened, and it left an impression upon my character, even if I can't recall what it was. Nothing has been taken from me, merely hidden." He said, smiling at her.

"Don't tell the rest of the guys, please? I don't want them thinking I'm a weepy and ineffective-"

"Girl?" Philo asked casually.

"Well, I was going to say captain, but if you want to be a jerk about it. . ." She muttered, pulling her hair back into a ponytail.

Philo picked up a remote sitting on the bed, and flipped through the available videos on the ship's media network. The viewscreen flickered briefly, as a man in a tweed coat dipped a baseball bat into a pool of fire and proceeded to bludgeon a group of ne'er-do-wells about like they forgot to cook dinner.

"I will never understand television." Philo confessed. "I don't miss my memories, but I do miss understanding social cues. Human interaction is damn complicated, not being able to read hostile body language."

"I bet." Jen added as she folded her newly purchased wardrobe and tucked it carefully into the many drawers and cabinets recessed into the walls of her cabin. It's certainly no palace, she thought to herself as she surveyed her room, but it'll do just fine.

There was a knocking at the door. Jen slid it open, as this ship was not fancy enough to have self-opening doors. She found herself face-to-face with a sheepish-looking Ennings, which is almost exactly as terrifying as an angry-looking Ennings, but for entirely unrelated reasons.

"Er, yeah. Two things." He said, turning a broken clock radio over in his hands. "One, it's time to make the jump, so we oughta get up to the bridge. Two, I've got a word to share with Philo, if'n you don't mind." Jen glanced at Philo, who had scarcely enough time to raise an eyebrow at those words.

"Anything you've got to say to me-" He said, demurely rising from the bed. "You can share with Miss Parwing."

"Er, well, I just wanted to apologize for, ah, thinking the things I did about you. I tried not to let it affect how I governed as a captain, but still, it was unprofessional of me and I am sorry." He held out the broken clock-radio. "Gizmo set me right, concerning your inner workings, and all that."

"Wait, what was that about being a captain?" Jen asked quickly. "Did someone mention being a captain?"

"Well, this is a surprise." Philo said, slinking across the room. "Ennings in all our years together I've scarcely seen you admit your faults more than a handful of times." He took the clock out of his hands, and turned it over. "You must feel mighty stupid."

"Someone mentioned captaining." Jen insisted. "What was that about?"

"I do." Ennings confirmed. "Found that in the engine room, I did." He pointed to the clock. "Figure you or Gizmo might be able to turn it into a death ray, or something." Philo smiled.

"Well, it's certainly less conventional than flowers, but it's welcome none the less. I forgi-"

He was interrupted by a sudden explosion and the violent see-saw like rocking that tends to accompany sudden explosions. After regaining his footing, the tiniest of tremors crossed Ennings' face, like he had to swallow something unpleasant and didn't want to upset polite company.

Then, he screamed. A bloodcurdling war cry for the ages, he ran down the corridor, straight for the cockpit.

"Wait!" Jen cried, running after. "What was that you said about being a captain?"