The Man Who Sold a World

The Man who sold a World
Featuring Everett Johansson

The red breasted robin perched outside the office window was trying desperately to get Everett Johansson’s attention. It fluttered its feathers, hopped up and down, and twittered furiously. The bird started pecking at the window, like a student tapping a pencil against a desk but Everett paid it no mind. Seemingly giving up, the bird flew away into the distance . . . only to return minutes later, hurtling itself toward the window at full force. The impact caused the robin to fall back and plummeted to the street below. Most people would have rushed to see if the bird was ok but Everett knew better and he work to do, the numbers weren’t going to crunch themselves at Burkington and Sons.
The Kolinsky report was due at 6 and wanted to get out by 4, not that he had anywhere special to go, just home. It would be another typical Friday night, while everyone was out at LOON-AR, the hottest club; Everett would be at home eating lasagna and catching up on his favorite shows during the week via his DVR. He overheard some of the guys in the cubicle next to him planning an impromptu rock climbing trip and hoped they would peer over the adjoining wall and ask:

“Hey EJ, whatcha’ doin’ this weekend?”
“Nothing much, but with my crazy schedule who knows what could happen.”
“Well I know exactly what’s going to happen friend, your coming rock climbing with us.”
“You sure?”
“Positive, it’ll be a blast; we’ll even bring some girls along.”

And so on . . .

But it doesn’t happen. It never happens. He knows he’s a nice enough guy and maybe that’s the problem. No one like hanging out with a nice guy. The window flickers, like a computer monitor on the fritz and the bird has returned to its perch.
Five o’clock and Kolinsky report is finished. Everett lost an hour when his sister had called to tell him that she would be coming into town to visit and wanted to be shown around. He was more than happy to breakup the boring night he had planned and agreed to meet at his apartment.
The Johansen siblings didn’t mean to be complete opposites, it just happened that way. Katie Johansen was two years older and had done more with those extra years than Everett had planned to do with his “In 10 Years I Want To Get This Stuff Done List”. She had visited all over the world, made tons of friends, worked odd jobs, and once saved a Spanish dignitaries life by accident. She loved life and wished her brother would try to do more with his. She would invite him to parties and try to hook him up with her friends but nothing took, but she never gave up. That’s why she had come to visit him, she didn’t want her only brother to be a shut in, especially not one on the moon
Everett hadn’t always lived on the moon, he was transferred there because his bosses needed some their best accountants to represent the only accounting firm on the moon, which had recently been terraformed and made livable. Everett always wondered why he was picked since his performance was a B+ at best. One day about 50 young accountants were told they would leave to go work on the moon in one week. The room was filled with excitement and dread because everyone knew of the limited space of the transport ship and that meant some people couldn’t bring their families until new homes and apartments were built. This meant some people would be living by themselves, away from their loved ones, for quite some time. The Johansson couldn’t have been more excited for their son and agreed with their daughter that Everett need to get out more. Even on Earth he was seen as socially awkward, which blamed on being on an accountant. His parents begged him to get out more and do something besides work and Everett gave a half-heated nod of the head as he boarded the space ship and told his family goodbye. He made an honest effort the first month he was there to get out more and meet new people, but he got back into his rut of going home as soon as possible when work was over.
Katie was determined to show Everett the time of his life and by doing some research, she found the hottest clubs and where all the single women hung out. She had also gone out and bought him some “club clothes” after going through his closet and finding only work clothes. It took some convincing to wear, what Everett considered outlandish attire, but the two of them eventually made their way out to LOO-NAR.
He had only been in a few clubs and bars, the institutions confused him with the absence of proper light and music you have yell over. He hung around his sister as she ordered drink and started roaming around the room. Every now and then she would bump into people she knew from Earth and began catching up on old times while Everett hung back, trying to strain his hearing to figure out what they were talking about. Katie always introduced her brother to people but he seemed to get lost in the excitement of long lost friends. He tried his luck at the dance floor and the awkwardness of dancing by oneself kicks in and he shuffles back to his sister, when he realizes after about ten minutes of searching the club like a lost puppy, he couldn’t find. He couldn’t call her cell phone because they hadn’t figured out how to get cell phones to work on the moon yet. Not wanting to go into a panic attack, he sits down on the velvet and leather couches and begins nursing his drink, shifting his eyes over the room trying to seek out his sibling. The drink made his worries softer and he began to relax. He didn’t notice the person who sat beside him who was carrying the same anxious look he had at the beginning of the night. It wasn’t until she spoke at him with full volume.

“Are you here by yourself?”

The question shook him out of soberness and reminded him that he was looking for his sister whom he was going to tell the mystery voice about but once he turned around saw it belonged to a very attractive girl who was invading what he always considered his personal space he decided he didn’t want to embarrass himself with a story about his sister,

“Um … Well…You See… My girlfriend just dumped me and I was just, you know, soaking it all in.”
“That’s awful! Why did she dump you?”
“Uhh…It was her fault really, she had been cheating on me and couldn’t to bear the guilt.”
“You poor thing. My name is Glendora by the way.”
“Pleasure to meet you. I’m Everett. Everett Johansson. So what are you doing here?”
“I came with some friends and they all went and hooked up with some guys as soon as we walked in. So, I’m here by myself and I was just going to go on home and I saw you looking all mopey and I figured I tried to cheer you up, nobody should be alone.”

The two talked the rest of the night and eventually made their way out of the club and started exploring the town. Everett learned she was a pre-med student who taught aerobics in her free time. She was always looking for something new to do and was sensitive to their needs of others, just the type of girl Everett felt he needed. One of the intriguing things about her was the way she mindlessly twirled the green pendant around her neck. The pendant was two snaked intertwined with the snake on the left engulfing the head of the other snake with it’s mouth, she said she had found it at a Korean flea market and bought it because it reminded her of the caduceus.
After all these years, Everett still doesn’t know what compelled them to end up at Burkingstons and Sons, but he had a key and the two giggled as they stumbled inside and made their way up to his floor. Drunkenly explaining his job, Glendora seemed fascinated the entire time as the boring and painful details spilled forth.

“I’ve just had the most wonderful idea.”
“Where do you want to go now? This is the only place I have a key to and everything else is closed.”
“No, no, no . . . I want to stay here but let’s have a little fun.”
“Fun, eh?”
“Yeah, let’s have a little fun by messing this place up a little.”
“…Mess it up? I don’t know, I mean I’ve had a great time with you but this seems a little much.”
“Then why did you come here? To do more work?

Everett knew why he was there and it definitely had nothing to do with work. Glendora was already hacking into a nearby computer by the time Everett had made his decision.
That night all the computers had devastating viruses that would take months to repair, copiers were tossed down stairwells, keyboards broken in half, boxes with years worth of receipts burnt to ash, and cubicle walls were pushed over like dominoes. This destruction went on all night until the two were even too tired to mess with the bowling trophies in the bosses’ office. Since it was the weekend, they decided to spend the night since no one comes in on Saturday or Sunday.

“What now Everett Johansson?”

Everett rubbed his eyes and realized he didn’t have his glasses on. A blurry figure handed them to him and a much disheveled looking girl came into view.

“Where am I and who are you?”

Anger and fear had taken him over and Glendora explained the entire night. He looked around and noticed that a tornado like force had swept through his office and panic began to infect his voice.

“This . . . this . . . this didn’t just happen. I’m so fired. You. You. YOU! You are no good. Ahhhh . . . I’ll be fired; I’ll have to move back to Earth with my parents. 25 and living with my parents!? I have to get out of here.”
“Exactly, except you forgot one thing.”
“I’ll stop by an ATM and take out all my money now, before they can take it, good thinking.”
“Not the money Everett. What about me?
“You got me into this! I can’t take you with me. They’ll hang us for sure if we’re caught together. Do they hang people on the moon? I don’t even know what all is entailed in the moons death penalty system . . .”
“Listen, I know you’re upset but can’t you remember how good it felt to trash this place, get all your frustration out?”
“But there are consequences for this type of thing. They’ll find our DNA and fingerprints in no time. I can’t go to jail.”
“You won’t have to if you come with me.”
“Where to? Another building you’ve always wanted to destroy?”
”Trust me and I can take you somewhere safe.”

Everett knew that trust was something was always hard for him to do but he considered his options. 1) Get arrested, 2) Hide at home and get arrested or 3) Run off with a woman he hardly knows to who knows where and slimmer chance of being arrested.
He went home and packed a few essentials and met Glendora at her private spaceship. He rushed aboard while she prepped to leave, and once settled in he immediately dozed off as the adrenaline rush he had been on for the last 24 hours wore off.
During his extended nap, he didn’t get to see the tens of thousands of hostile spaceships hurtling toward the moon, each one firing deadly lasers and dropping bombs that took out entire cities and eventually leaving the moon nothing but dust.
The two arrived on a planet Everett had never heard of and stayed in a hotel the first night. While Glendora was out getting dinner, he turned on the television and switched to the news channels to see if he had missed anything. What was on every channel was shaky amateur footage of the moon exploding. Everett was shaken to his core and began to worry if his sister had made it back to Earth that night. Yet something inside of him told him to be happy, he would get another chance to start a new life and this time he had a girl at his side, Glendora. This voice distracted him from a getting a real good look at the side of the attacking spaceships or he would have recognized the emblem it bore. The emblem was the same intertwined snakes eating one another, identical to the pendant that hung from the girls’ neck.