Rocket Science Chapter 2

Chapter Two : Accidental Preparation          

         It was interesting how stars streaming endlessly upwards wasn't dizzying at all. It easily made one's head feel swollen, and you could forget focusing on any one topic for too long, but you never actually felt dizzy staring out a star filled window...not during decent at least. A stark contrast to the constant vommitting that occurred any lift off. It was common knowledge that when ascending through an atmosphere, whether you star gazed or not, your reflux system would never cooperate. But Jefferson knew looking at the stars downward had something to do with it. An experiment for a later time maybe. He was on his way now to report to his boss.

         My boss. The idea of being a subordinate was totally normal to him. That was how it had always been. What was odd, however, was having a group of subordinates to himself. To be fair, they were only human, but he still felt slightly jilted at his first “command” being one over men. Earth men. They had a lot in common visually, but that was the end of the similarities. Men were telepathic savages...the few times in their lives they were able to manifest their psionics, they insisted on alotting the praise for their achivements to luck or God. God was a universal idea. God, or a god at least, was the basis for most religions, on Earth or anywhere. But these were the first beings he had encountered with such a highly developed, though broken, free society that still insisted on being subserviant to something they couldn't see.

         Though he'd never had a taste for faith in any unseen power, he respected the decisions of all. But he, for one, felt that man was simply unable to deal with the stresses of their dormant power, weak as it was. So their minds would protect them accordingly. Genetic denile. At least Jefferson (he'd grown accustomed to the name) didn't have to use these abhorous prosthetics at his sides. He was short on time, so he simply let the arms hang free instead of removing them. For some reason he hated lying to the people on the sphere below. Most of them wanted so badly just to know he existed. His people had feelings. He knew joy, arrogance, and fear. He felt a little guilty everytime he exchanged a touch with a human using those hands. It wasn't important, but he made sure to remember it each time he began or ceased use of the limbs.

He was at his boss' pen now, and erased all other thoughts from his mind. The door recessed about three inches into it's frame, then disappeared, revealing the crimson mass he was about to report to.It was much brighter a red today, a sign of distress. He inhaled what could have been his last, and stepped through the door.

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         The stars were making Greg dizzy.He thought for a moment longer on it and accepted that it could have just as well been the last second turns and dramtically varying speeds of the mentally-ditant taxi driver nausiating him also. It had been three weeks since the bizarre incident at work...since his car had been confiscated...since Jefferson read my mind...
He had to let that last thought settle a bit. He'd been trying to work out the details of that day in his mind for weeks, but none of it ever added up completely. He knew something had happened to him that morning, something loud enough to make his hearing weak for the next few days, and something involving his car. Compounding his confusion was late that day, when Jefferson remarked about something he knew he'd only thought about saying. The last and most perplexing peeice of this puzzle was the blood he'd seen on Jefferson's ear.

         It was so tiny a smudge, but so glaringly prominant. In his memory the red had been like a florescent, set against a black canvas. Whatever had happened that day had battered Greg's legs and torso, broken his nose, and made Jefferson bleed from somewhere on his head. This all added up to a car accident in his mind, but certain, small facts kept his thoery from being solid. Why was Jefferson, outside of the blood smear, uninjured? The way Greg's body was bruised, Jefferson should have been worse off. And he'd heard nothing about it, and seen no wreckage or debris in the road on the way home that night. It just seemed odd that no one knew of an accident. No traffic reports, nothing in the paper. "Nothing at all..." he muttered, absent-mindedly.

         The cab finally pulled into the propper driveway, bringing a sigh of relief from deep within Greg's throat. These rides had to be getting longer everyday...anything for the extra buck with these cab drivers. He paid the man the extra dollar fifty more than yesterday and walked to his door. He stopped about halfway up the walkway to stand up a fallen yard orniment shaped as an evergreen. The first thing he noticed upon opening the door, was the stale air replacing the usual marijuana-flavored emminating from the boys' room. He headed slowly up the stairs, stopping for a second before opening the door. He braced himself against the sure to come barrage of smells and stentches of dirty clothes, twisted the knob, and burst through the door. The sight stopped him dead in his tracks. The entire room, bed and all, was covered in what could only called foam at this point. He touched a bit and found it rock-solid. This was deffinitely not the origin he had envisioned for this smell. The foam itself was wavy, looking as is it had washed into the room like rushing water. Everything that had been upright had been toppled over, and there was nothing left on the dressers that he could see. He backed out of the room and ran down the stairs to the kitchen, just around the corner.

         There he found his wife and two boys, all at the kitchen table, all shaking, and all smoking pot. None of them looked at him, but he could feel that they noticed his presence. He began to speak when he caught an odd color in his peripheral vision. Deep violet, surrounded by bright, almost illuminating red. He turned his head full pivot and nearly collapsed at the sight. It was most of the bottom half of a man. It wasn't until then that he noticed the shotgun lying on the floor in the corner. He sat against the stove, and stared at the body as his youngest began to cry.

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