Planetary: Mercury, page 28
The old man nodded thoughtfully, “Indeed, that is how things go. Hey, how is your young one? Any better since last we spoke?”
Eli sighed deeply, “Just the same as before. She’s weak but hanging on. Soon, once this project gets going and I have enough, I’ll stop by to let her say hello and goodbye before flying off to Earth. We’ve already got a team of experts in this field picked out to help. So it’s only a matter of time and funds.”
“You’ll have to bring her again,” the old man insisted, “once you’ve got this planet growing, and I can make a proper garden for her to play in.”
Eli smiled, “Indeed I will. Speaking of which, I’d better get back. It was a pleasure as always, Mr. Henlar.”
“Always good, my boy. Tell the wife I send my greeting.”
Eli nodded. Then he took one last look at the stars before resigning himself to waiting. He turned back to the rover, and started the long trip home.
His wife found him in his work room, at a time he should have been asleep… as usual. As she walked in, the radio in the corner was saying, “In other news around the galaxy, Gagarin & Galactic is announcing a new project. They haven’t released the details of the project, but our sources are saying—”
“It’s not going to be anything compared to what Mr. Shepard will reveal!” Eli finished as he shut the radio off and give his wife a wink and big grin.
“Darling…?” She asked, rubbing her eyes and stifling a yawn, “Why are you still up?”
Eli sat at his work bench, his long back bent over an honest-to-goodness physical book laying on the table.
He saw her gawking at the book and said with some pride, “Look, aren’t they neat?” He gestured to the box with a few more books carefully cradled inside, “I forgot we had these. They were buried in the storage room, piled up with everything else.” He held up one of the ancient volumes bound in leather and flex metal. Very carefully, he cracked open the antique pages and held it out to show it to his wife, “It’s the Journals of my 7th great grandfather, Jimmithy Shepard. He was the one that pioneered the use of diamonds back in the 24th century. He was the first to use them in armor, storage, and in light speed. He has all kinds of interesting notes in these….”
Eli’s wife just blinked her sleepy eyes at him. If she was impressed, she didn’t let it show, that would only encourage him from sleeping. “Couldn’t you have read them while everyone else was awake, too?”
“Well…. I could have, but that’s not the only reason I’m up.”
Mary just frowned, waiting for him to explain.
“In fact,” Eli set his watch to the time in Seattle, Earth, “the call should be coming through any minute now. Follow me.” He carefully packed the book back in the box to be put up later, and crossed over to the room opposite, where their most powerful communicator was set up.
Mary followed, some of her sleepiness having brushed off, “What are you waiting on?”
“An update from Saren,” Eli answered as he set up the machine.
“Oh… is it a new Earth month already?”
Eli nodded, then stepped back from the box as it began wiring, “Indeed,” with another quick look at his watch he added, “It’s almost 7:00pm there, June 1, in Washington. This will be her third month there.”
“And the progress?” Mary was awake now, leaning over her husband’s elbow.
“Some,” Eli brought up two chairs for them to sit in as he talked, “Last we spoke, she’d had meetings set up with companies like SpaceMan, Bilion, and Gagarin & Galactic.”
A grimace flickered across Mary’s face, “Gagarin & Galactic, Isn’t that the one that—”
“Yes, yes,” Eli waved his hand dismissively, “But they are a good choice businesswise. Besides, the son isn’t the one in charge. It’ll be fine.”
Mary took Eli’s hand as she sat down to wait with him for the call to come through. When some time had passed and the light remained red and the line stayed void, Eli got up to send only a texted message to Saren, asking where she was.
Another hour passed.
Eli then got up and spent several minutes checking the connection, refreshing the message box and inbox. But nothing new appeared. He tried calling her himself. Once, then twice, but he dared not use any more credits. He paced the room, hands clasped behind his back, brow drawn, his heavy boots making a rhythmic scuffing sound on the floor.
Mary sat in her chair watching, too tired to help, but too anxious to sleep. She could see he was in his zone, totally focused, trying to figure it out. While she had always admired his determination, there came a point when sleep deprivation was counterproductive. So she moved next to him, the heels of her soft slipper rising off the floor as she leaned up to brush his dark hair out of his face, “Come along, dear,” she said, letting her hand fall into his, brushing against the watch, now showing 1:00am, “I don’t think it’s happening tonight.”
Eli’s features remained closed and concentrated. But when his eyes met those of his wife, he relented. He didn’t know what was happening. Saren could be in danger, or ignoring him, or simply stuck in traffic—but Eli had no way of knowing and there was nothing he could do to find out. This bothered him to no end. Yet, Mary was right, he needed some rest.
His finger was hovering over the off switch when, suddenly, an electronic bell sound startled them both. Eli had opened the message screen before Mary could recognize what the bell meant. There was one new text message from Saren. It was only a few sentences, after all that waiting they finally got an update, and it simply read:
Call center under repair. All is going well. Will call next month.
Eli wrote a quick reply, hoping the lag between satellites wasn’t too long and that he could catch her still at the communicator:
Understand. Message detailed update in the meantime.
When half an hour passed and it was clear Saren was not around, Mary was finally able to drag her husband off to bed. But Eli had trouble falling asleep. The whole event weighed oddly on his mind, like a feeling he could not place. It was only some hours later, when their day would have been beginning, that exhaustion overcame Eli, and he finally passed out into sleep.
Nearly five Earth months and three cycles of Mercury’s sun had passed since Saren had first missed their meeting. Another Mercury cycle since he’d heard anything from her at all, and a week since he’d been able to sleep.
He was too anxious… and kept obsessively checking the communicator for more messages. He spent every free moment he had tinkering in his workshop. And when he wasn’t doing that, he was looking at the news from what e-paper could be delivered this far out. He had to have an idea of what was going on outside; he had to do something. Eli had even begun doing this during the family dinner they held at a little table set up in the Venus section in Sirius’s room, which seriously disturbed his wife.
“Dear, I think you need to put that down now,” Mary said, gently lowering the screen from the eyes of her distracted husband.
Mary had been watching, as Eli steadily became a shell of the man he was. The scarce updates from Saren were stressing him out, and so he’d closed himself off and worked constantly to try and fight off the overwhelming worry and frustration. It was too painful for Mary to witness anymore.
“Your daughter is trying to tell you something,” she tried again, gently prodding him.
“Huh?” He looked up, blurry eyes barely able to focus on anything. He was too restless. Eli didn’t respond, so Mary nudged Sirius, encouraging her to show off her work.
“I drew this for you Daddy!” Sirius said, leaning forward in the chair she was strapped in, holding out a piece of her special drawing paper. It showed a lovely picture of Earth, surrounded by stars. Flying to the Earth on wings like a bird’s, were Sirius and her parents.
Eli took the paper. His face twitched, but he put on a smile for his daughter, “This is lovely Sirius, I’ll be sure to hang it up in the lab.” He folded the paper, placed it in his pocket, and then went back to searching the news.
Mary sighed deeply and stood from her place at the table. “We’ll be right back, just sit tight love,” she said to her daughter. Then taking her husband’s hand, she marched him through both doors and outside the room.
Releasing him, Mary crossed her arms, and waited. She wanted to be curt and tell him to snap out of it, that moping and obsessing wasn’t going to do any good. But she knew none of that would help the situation. If she tried, Eli would likely close even more in on himself. So Mary kept her mouth shut, and waited.
It took several attempts before he could meet her eyes, and even then he wasn’t able to hold the gaze. “What?” he asked, sticking his hands in his pockets and turning his head to the side.
“You know,” she replied.
“Do I?” he raised an eyebrow in her direction without actually looking her way.
“Stop avoiding the subject.”
“How can I avoid a subject that hasn’t been opened yet?”
His last comment made Mary press her lips into a thin, hard line, “You’ve been moping for weeks, and it’s really starting to affect not only you, but everyone around you!” She paused, bringing her voice back down and saying coldly, “You’ve been basically ignoring your daughter. Something I thought you were adamant about NOT doing.”
Eli tensed, and Mary knew she had hit a nerve, exactly as she’d meant to.
He did not say anything at first, and she watched as his face frowned and fought an array of emotions. Finally, it settled into hard and determined lines. He turned his eyes back on her and replied, “Look, I’m sorry I’m being so distant, and seemingly ignoring my daughter, but I’m not going to have a daughter to ignore if I can’t figure out what my assistant is doing with my invention and if I can sell it! At this rate we’re going to run out of money and supplies and never be able to leave! We’ll slowly die on this barren planet that I was supposed to make livable!”
Mary was silent for a long moment, looking at her husband with very heavy eyes. He was stressed, confused, and afraid. She didn’t like the way he was dealing with it, but she understood why. He’d let the whole galaxy crumble before he’d allow anything to happen to his family. If he ever failed to protect them, she knew he’d never be able to live with himself. But that didn’t excuse the way he was closing himself off.
“Sirius still needs her father,” Mary said, her voice quiet but her words firm. “I know you’re trying to protect and provide for us, but you also can’t ignore us. You’ve fallen into obsession, Eli. And obsessing over our situation isn’t doing any good.”
“No… but at least it’s doing something,” he countered, his eyes were heavy on her and his brow drown. “I can’t stand this waiting. You know that. I feel useless…”
“But there’s nothing else we can do!” Mary grabbed onto his arm. “Please, just put that stupid tablet away, come sit and eat a meal, talk to your daughter, please… stop pushing us away,” she begged, staring up at him with pleading eyes.
Her husband remained turned away, but his face was twisted with shame. When an eternity had gone by, he turned back to her, his shoulders slumped, and he set the tablet aside. Eli looked down at his wife like he was about to speak, and then his pocket started buzzing. He frowned, dug the radio out, pressed the receiver, and answered.
“Captain Shepard. Yes…?” he trailed off. And while he listened, his face turned from annoyed, to confused, and then enraged, until at last he shouted, “Wait, WHAT?” Mary could see the tension seizing his body. The look on his face as he listened was something she had never seen. He was a goodnatured man, he wasn’t supposed to look like this, and it scared her.
“Eli? Darling! What is going on?” She wrung her hands together, trying to get his attention, unsure of what to do.
He snapped his head back down to look at her, and she flinched at the fire burning in his eyes. “Gagarin & Galactic have landed on the planet!” His face settled into a mask of calm hatred, “And they have my terraformation engine.”
The rover screamed across the rock, pitching and shaking as it was pushed through the pitch black, far past its limits. The machine was designed as a transporter, not a racer, but Eli didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything besides getting there, and getting there now.
Eli couldn’t comprehend how in the galaxy they’d gotten his invention. And if they had somehow claimed it, what had happened to Saren? The idea that his assistant might have been hurt or compromised in the process only fueled his furry, and Eli pressed the rover faster.
He wanted to act. The frustration at his inability to change the situation had been building up inside him more and more over the past weeks. But now he had something clear to do. He had a cause and a focus for his frustration…. And they had made the mistake of landing themselves right on his door step.
Mary had tried to stop him, begging him to stay and wait until he’d calmed down before confronting them. But he had been as dark and unmoving as the long night that had consumed their side of the planet since the day he’d last heard from Saren.
Eli was so preoccupied in his thoughts that as he crested the curve of a crater, Eli found himself suddenly at his destination, but it took a few moments before he could process this. He slammed on the breaks, pulling the rover into a tight stop, and stared in shock at the sight. For there, at the center of a gigantic crater, bathed in a hundred spotlights, was the most epic operation Eli had ever seen.
When Rondle had called him over the radio, he had explained that while coming back from collecting a shipment at the port, he had heard the news that Gagarin & Galactic had landed and had his prototype. They even had a media crew with them to announce the news. But Rondle had not warned him on how big the operation was. The ship was ten times the normal carrier ship size. The equipment being unloaded was new and impressive, and the materials plentiful. There was not just one news bot buzzing around, but five from some of the most popular in the media.
Eli sat at the top of the hill and stared down in disbelief. This was the perfect operation, with everything that was needed and more, and with people all over the galaxy excited to tune in. It was exactly what he had been dreaming of ever since he started, it was what he had been building up to for years. And now it was laid out before him… but it was not his.
He watched as someone in a slick planet suit stood before all the cameras, glowing and showing off the prototype, presumably explaining the grand idea and what it could do. For Eli, it was like looking into someone’s life through a window; someone’s life that was supposed to be his.
With hands gripping the steering wheel and an ire in his irises burning hotter than the distant sun, Eli slammed the rover into drive and tore down the hill.
By the time he was noticed, it was too late. People screamed and dodged as Eli sped down and came sliding to a stop right in the middle of all the activity.
“What foul, stealing, no-good space-urchin is in charge around here?” he bellowed as he jumped from the rover. Everyone scattered away from the madman in the retro planet suit as he paced around the prototype, glaring death at anyone who tried to get close to it.
The tall man, the one in the shiniest suit, strode forward. He wore a tinted helmet, hiding his face. “I demand to know the meaning of this!” he said, standing with his chest puffed out as he stared down the intruder in a very posh and dominant way.
“And I demand to have my property returned to me!” Eli shot back.
Everyone was slowly gathering closer around them, talking and pushing. The news bots were sweeping in; all wanted to get a good angle on this unexpected and aggressive exchange.
The first man turned to some bigger blokes nearby and said quietly, “Shut down those cameras, and keep everyone busy while I deal with this.”
The men nodded, and Eli watched them suspiciously as they went to do as they were commanded. He continued to watch, as the workers were escorted away, and he caught a glimpse of someone in the crowd.
“Saren?” he said, flabbergasted, as he watched her stop trying to duck away, and look up.
She smiled nervously at him, “Mr. Shepard! W-what a pleasant surprise—”
“What the hell is going on?” he demanded. “Why haven’t you contacted me? Was it because of this? Why does this company have my invention without my knowing? What in the name of all that is holy have you done?!?”
Saren’s eyes went wide and she started rambling, “Well, Sir, see, I—”
“Spit it out!” he barked, and Saren jumped. She didn’t respond, she couldn’t even meet his eyes. Instead she glanced helplessly and longingly at the man in the suit, and then Eli understood.
He started forward, but the tall man stepped up and cut off Eli’s path and pushed against his chest, “Back off swine!”
Eli thought about breaking in the man’s helmet. After all, it was too shiny and decorative to be very durable, and the way the dark visor was hiding the face was cowardly. However, Eli restrained himself for the moment. Balling his fists, Eli managed to keep the murderous thoughts inside his head. But that didn’t stop it from shining through his eyes.
With every ounce of control he possessed, Eli said, very calmly, “Are you aware that this prototype for a terraformation engine on Mercury was designed and created by me?”
Dead silence fell, and Eli looked around, but found no aid. Saren stood off to the side wringing her hands, while the man loomed there with his arms crossed, looking very pleased with himself despite his hidden face. Everyone else had been ushered out of the area. Eli felt abandoned.
“It’s mine,” Eli insisted, trying to quell the panic rising in his chest. “I swear it!”
The man snorted, “No one else knows that.”
“I have proof!” Eli paced in front of them, “I have everything documented! I’ll take you to court! You’ll never get a patent—”
The man snapped his fingers. Saren reluctantly brought forward a tablet that the man proudly presented to him. Eli stopped stone cold, staring at the words. The document was a patent, signing over the terraformation engine as the intellectual property of Gagarin & Galactic.
