5 weeks ago 64 months ago

  “Vertan, dear! Your friend Hilgo is downstairs waiting for you!”

  “In a second, mother!”

  Vertan Zviedal is an ordinary, common man, tanned by years in the sun with skin toughened by the seawater. As a fisherman like Hilgo and his father before him, he lives out a laborious but simple life on his homeworld Ulminh. Though capable of moving elsewhere on Ulminh, he chooses to stay and support his aging mother, much to the woman’s ire as she despises the implication that she is anything but strong and able. Nonetheless, with her husband having not returned for sixteen years, she loves and cares for her only son very deeply.

  “Vertan! You lazy slob! Get downstairs and about your day already!”

  “I’m not deaf and I heard you!”

  Almost tripping down the small steps, Vertan pulls together his boots, coat, and hat. Like his mother had told him, Hilgo was waiting by the open door, leaning against the open frame with his arms crossed as he flips through a holobook. Glancing up and noticing his friend, he smiles, and with a tap on his eye lens, the holobook disappears with nothing more than a flicker.

  “You forgot your lunch! Grown man now, and yet what would you be doing without me?” Mother Zviedal nags on.

  “I was about to grab it!” Vertan almost shouts back. “Let me be on my way now, I’m—”

  “You’re not going to kiss your mother on the way out?”

  “Would it kill you if I don’t?”

  “I’m old, what if I drop dead when you’re out?”

  “Alright, fine, here. I’m going now!”

  “You keep an eye on my boy, Hilgo! You know how he is.”

  Vertan and Hilgo wave the old woman goodbye as they head down to the docks down below to begin about their morning, the latter holding a teasing grin. As usual, a long and hard day awaited them on their small fishing vessel. It was an old, rusted vehicle of peeling paint whose name unfortunately came about to be “Boaty” after a rather unproductive debate between the two, despite it not even being a boat. The sun was shining just over the horizon now, creating wondrously beautiful streaks of gold across the sky. The interstellar gateway appeared a little closer this morning, and the two could make it out the same way one would make out the moons during the day as they sped through the air, a few metres above the ocean water.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” said Vertan, finally awake and calmed from the morning’s earlier hassle.

  “Always is,” replies Hilgo. “There’s something about nature that’s seemed to captivate me, how sunrises across any world and galaxy could look so beautiful.”

  “Oh, that too. I was talking about the gateway.”

  “The gateway?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Really? Why that, of all things?”

  “What? You don’t like it?”

  “Personally, I think it’s an eyesore. Also, aren’t we there yet?” Hilgo glances at the tracking screen.

  “Almost, it’s a little bit more ways out,” Vertan slightly adjusts course and lowers the speed. “Also, no way you think it’s an eyesore! I think it’s amazing.”

  “It’s yet another man-made thing and it has to take up the otherwise untainted sky.”

  “Oh come on, we have three moons here that are much bigger, and you complain about that tiny ring up there!”

  “That’s different man, it was all natural. They look better, anyhow!”

  “The way I see it, it’s a provider of opportunity. It connects us to the rest of the universe. And it’s something amazing that we humans came together to create to make something of ourselves against this vastness.”

  “I’m not even human, man.”

  “Well, you’re close enough.”

  “Yeah, if you pry me open, you’ll see that I look real different on the inside.”

  “Okay, we ‘people’, you get my point.”

  “You can just tell me you hate fishing, you know,” Hilgo chuckles.

  Vertan squints and raises an eyebrow at this.

  “Hold on now, what? What do you mean by that? Why would I be here, then?” he asks.

  “You’re always talking about going off to do something else off-world,” Hilgo says. Eyeing the tracker, he brings Boaty to a halt, and lowers them closer to the water. “Get those nets out and ready, won’t you?”

  “Well, yeah, doesn’t any of that excite you at least one bit?” Vertan asks as he casts out the nets he has been untangling the past few minutes. “To, you know, seek something out bigger and better for us?”

  “What’s wrong with fishing, man?”

  “I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with it, but do you want to be doing this your whole life?”

  “Well yeah, I’m fine with that, actually. And also, you complain about how hard and smelly it is all the time.”

  “Yeah, exactly! Do you want to keep up with smelling of fish with all this hard labor your whole life?”

  “It’s an honest living, Vertan,” Hilgo rolling his eyes now. “I’ve told you before, I think I’m doing fine enough bringing food back to our local community and working with what I’m good at.”

  “That’s your whole plan?”

  “Well what’s your plan then?”

  “I’m looking to get off-world and pursue a greater opportunity out there.”

  “Yeah, like that time you tried to sell your own homemade sashimi and poisoned half the class?”

  “You promised me you would stop bringing that up.”

  “Gahn and I had to step in and carry you out of your whupping.”

  “I could’ve handled that fight on my own.”

  “No, you were up against ten guys and got your ass handed to you, we were always getting you out of trouble back then.”

  “It was down from twenty!”

  Hilgo rolls his eyes again, holding in a chuckle.

  “Look man, my point is I’ve known you long enough to see that you try and go for a lot of things that don’t work out for you.”

  “The point is to keep trying, life doesn’t reward quitters.”

  “I think the point is to be grateful for what we have. Look around, Vertan! We live a simple, peaceful life. Plenty of people don’t get that. Don’t throw it out for a gamble.”

  “I wouldn’t call it a gamble,” Vertan grumbles. “I don’t think you get that I want to make something more of myself than just being a fisherman. People go on holiday between galaxies these days, and we’re still here using nets to catch fish!”

  “I’d say we have a pretty good tracking system that finds the fish for us though—”

  “Come on, man.”

  “Okay I get it man, I interrupted you earlier, so what exactly is your plan, Mister Opportunity?”

  “I’ve been thinking about the Special Expeditions.”

  “Yeah, right, other than that. What’s your plan?”

  “I said, that’s what I’ve been thinking about!”

  “No you’re not, and I think it’s all nuts.”

  “Haven’t you read anything about it?”

  “No, because that’s stupid!”

  “Okay, well, how come?”

  “Well your father left for that and he still hasn’t come back. And—I don’t know, man! That’s too far, I’m not dragging myself across—I don’t know how many—galaxies for that shit! Of all the other million things you can do, why that?”

  “Aside from my father. Really? That’s it?”

  “Yes! It’s far, I’d be homesick, and I wouldn’t know anyone.”

  “You can’t keep going through life without taking risks, you know. And about my father—”

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “You lost your monthly pay that one time you ‘took the risk’ trading on the Coalition stock exchange.”

  “You said you wouldn’t bring that up again either.”

  “My point is, I don’t know, what if things go wrong, huh? And now you’re gonna be stuck in another galaxy, and you don’t know the laws, system, and language there? For what, so you can chase more money?”

  “Okay let me ask you exactly what do you think is going to go wrong? You’re so opposed to the idea as if quadrillions of people aren’t signing up for it.”

  “Look at the name man. It’s an Expedition. You’re going somewhere completely unknown and uncharted—”

  “—Which is why the Coalition, the big guys, know how to go about it competently and with real safety standards!”

  “We’re not even from the Coalition man.”

  “Okay, and? How many people have been able to lift themselves out of poverty with this opportunity? It’s not going to be there forever! It’s started decades ago and who knows how many artifacts left they can recover or how many more demons there are left if we even have to fight those at all. They’re getting really close to being done. The research and development in those areas is a career goldmine!”

  “Are you calling us poor?”

  “You can’t be serious right now, are you?”

  “I think you measure success too much with how much money you have or how much you’ve accomplished. It’s a farce to me. I’m happy and peaceful here, that’s what matters to me. I don’t care how rich people can get over there in Alpharion, as long as I’m not caught up worrying about all those things, I’m wealthier than them.”

  “You sound just like Gahn, honestly.”

  “You should take some more notes, in my opinion.”

  The rest of the day was spent mostly on Boaty. The conversation shifted away from aspirations for the future, and returned to the mundane. Talk revolved around Gahn and his family. Talk shifted to Mohya and Tilko. Tilko was especially made fun of; what girl is he talking with now?

  The day wore on, but Vertan’s mind continued to fly back to his aspirations with the Expeditions. Hilgo was always the “better safe than sorry” type of person. Shy, timid, responsible and upstanding. Except within the group, of course. He always argued that “the stars are always brighter in the other sky”, to which Vertan would counter with “because they develop theirs better over there.”

  Vertan lamented the slow and unambitious pace of life here that his friends seem to embrace. He had read, researched, and tried out all sorts of different things and projects, some of which failed, some of which saw limited success, most of which were lackluster.

  The Expeditions to him felt enticing because they had a proven system that offered many potential doors to new opportunities that his homeworld couldn’t come close to providing. And what’s more, the exciting adventurousness of it! To see the gargantuan headworlds of Alpharion, to experience the cuisines of Betarius, or the pleasure-worlds of Gamici’a. The shining cities on the hill that is the Coalition! Everyone across the Myriad Worlds dreams or works towards moving there to create a better life. Why the likes of Hilgo and Gahn seemed to be content with their simple lives and mindsets here on Ulminh, Vertan couldn’t understand. Vertan yearned to travel off-world at least once in his life.

  How exciting it would be, to be part of the one-in-a-millions to join such a noble cause as the Expeditions. Even as dangerous as some of it sounds, the idea of the adventure excited Vertan. What kind of new, unknown anomalies lie out there that he could bring stories back to? What heroics could he commit so that greater safety and development could be brought to everyone across the Worlds? To think that it’s a pre-Cataclysm finding! There must be so much to still find considering that they’re still out there decades later.

  But what’s more, he missed his father. Having left for the expeditions when Vertan was but a small child, his father hasn’t returned since. No message, no closure, nothing. Perhaps this is one of the factors keeping Vertan from having gone out sooner, but it ironically drove him to pursue it, also. Vertan often wondered if his old man was still up there somewhere amongst the stars, working hard to someday come back and bring the fruits of his labor to his family. And who knows, perhaps take them with him as well.

  His memories with him seemed to fade over time, despite his best efforts to remember. His father’s smell has long faded away from the clothes he left behind, which now fit Vertan. There were only a few photographs that existed of them together. The ball they used to throw at each other down on the coast sat deflated in the back corner of his closet. The more specific details of his father’s stories before he met his mother seemed to elude him. Did he come here as an adult immigrant, or child refugee? Vertan never got to know his grandparents on that side, if he had any.

  His mind flew back to the lessons his father taught him, to hold a strong drive to achieve a greater purpose in his life. Fishing seemed only to be a temporary phase before the next chapter to him, already a huge step up from his homeworld of which he emigrated, told to have been ridden with crime and poverty. His mother on the other hand, a native of Ulminh, has only been resentful of this mindset since his departure and extended absence. It seemed to be proof to her that nothing would ever be enough for that kind of man, and she lamented that Vertan thought the same way, who in return found it suffocating.

  The wind picked up as the sun set, and his eyes wandered off to the gateway far off beyond the sky. Hilgo seemed to be trying to say something, but surely that can wait. Vertan dreamt of finding his old man to bring him home for many years, as he is doing so again now. Surely, he’d be able to track him down somehow, even as difficult as the ordeal might be. And what’s more—

  “Hey!” Hilgo snaps his fingers at Vertan. “Storm’s coming, we’re heading in.”

  Vertan shakes out of his daze and looks confusedly over to Hilgo.

  “What are you talking about?” he asks. “Sky’s clear—”

  “Behind you, idiot.”

  Turning around, Vertan gets to see in all its glory that indeed, very dark storm clouds were rumbling in, beginning to take over the bright sunset in front of them. Lightning flickered far inside the clouds, and rain was visibly pouring off in the distance.

  “Oh, right. Let’s get home.”

  *****

  After returning to port, Vertan and Hilgo sold their catch to the wholesale buyers who typically whisk it away to the local markets. Having saved some of the catch, Vertan brought it home for dinner, storing the rest that could last them the week. As usual, Hilgo is joining them for dinner before his departure home. For their hard work that day, mother Zviedal made for the two homestyle soup with an aroma that left Vertan and Hilgo’s mouths watering by the time it was served.

  The faint roll of thunder rumbles outside as raindrops patter down the rooftop.

  “You two boys must be so tired, working hard today,” said Mother Zviedal. “How was the catch today?”

  “It was alright, just the usual,” Vertan answered. “Nothing fancy.”

  “Beautiful sunrise and sunset before the storm set in, though,” Hilgo added.

  “I might consider taking a day off tomorrow,” Vertan continued.

  Swallowing a bit of his soup, Hilgo wipes his mouth with a napkin and considers this for a moment.

  “Why? It’s the last bit before it cools next month. It’s just a little longer before we work less and the fish swim elsewhere.”

  “God forbid a man wants to rest for a day.”

  “Don’t give me that ‘rest’ thing again, son,” Mother Zviedal scolds. “I don’t take excuses for laziness in this house especially when you’re under my roof.”

  “It’s not about that mum,” Vertan replies, a slight hint of annoyance in his tone of voice now. He takes a sip of water. “I would just like a change from the mundaneness is all.”

  “So you have even less of an excuse! What, you can’t put up with getting your responsibilities done even—”

  “Mum, it’s not—”

  “Alright, that’s enough, you two!” Hilgo hurriedly shushes them both. “Missus Zviedal, I get what you mean, but please understand we don’t take weekends off. A day off wouldn’t hurt, I’ll cover for him.”

  “Wish mum could listen to me the same way she does for you,” Vertan mutters under his breath. Mother Zviedal glares at him between spoonfuls of soup, and Hilgo kicks Vertan’s foot under the table. An awkward silence follows.

  “Well, what do you plan on doing tomorrow, then?” Mother Zviedal asks.

  “He doesn’t need to have a plan, ma’am, that’s what taking a rest is for—,” says Hilgo.

  “I’m going to look into signing for the Expeditions,” Vertan answers.

  Mother Zviedal is visibly upset and agitated now. Hilgo could only expel a deep breath from his nose and make an expression that said, “you’re on your own this time”, and continued to finish the rest of his soup in silence, his patience wearing thinner.

  “Really, now? You keep bringing this up when I’ve told you I don’t—”

  “I know mum, I know, and I’m going through with it.”

  “You know and yet—”

  “And yet I’m still choosing to go through with what I believe in. Finished it for you.”

  “You realize how big of a change this would be? It’s not like you’re going on vacation! Who knows if you’d even come back—”

  “Look, mum, I promise I’m going to find a way back and message you. It’s not forever! It might not be as long as we think—”

  “That’s what your father said too, son.”

  “Maybe I can at least do something to bring him back instead of just sitting here!”

  “Hey Vertan,” Hilgo interrupts.

  “Hm?”

  “You gonna finish your bowl?”

  “Oh, no, you can have it.”

  “Thanks,” Hilgo says, finishing the last bit before taking the two bowls to wash in the sink.

  “Hilgo, has he really still thought about it this much?” Mother Zviedal asks.

  “He’s talked about it quite a bit this morning,” Hilgo answers across the room.

  “You should listen to your friends more,” she turns back to Vertan. “Follow their example. They seem to know it better than you do, I don’t think these Expeditions would do you any good, it’s a waste of time.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re listening to Tilko—”

  “Except Tilko, not him! I don’t like how much of a conspiracy theorist he is.”

  “How is it a waste of time if there’s still so many doing it? Are you to tell me that—”

  “If everyone ran to jump off a cliff, would you do it too?”

  “Oh don’t give me that argument now—”

  “Answer me, Vertan! Would you?”

  “I mean, depends, what are we running from? And are we jumping into the water?”

  “Don’t talk back to me!”

  “I’m not! I’m just answering your question—”

  “I don’t care how trendy or ‘righteous’ it is, it’s outside of our means right now, we don’t have the time or money, and you’d be dragging your butt all the way to another galaxy for it. I don’t want to hear about it anymore!”

  “I’ve done my research and saved for a ticket and lodging there.”

  Mother Zviedal was silent at this and Hilgo paused his dishwashing. He continued slower and more deliberately, absorbing that thought.

  “Wait, you didn’t tell me about this,” said Hilgo, edging on exasperation.

  “Yeah, I have,” replied Vertan.

  “No you haven’t!”

  “I have!”

  “Oh really, how so?”

  “I’ve been telling you I’ve been thinking about joining the Special Expeditions the past months!”

  “You didn’t tell me you planned and saved up enough to get an extragalactic ticket! That’s not the same!”

  “Alright, well now you know! I’ve saved enough and am looking to purchase a ticket and book for lodging ahead of time soon. That clear enough for you?”

  “Sure, whatever you say man,” Hilgo is agitated now. “Go ahead and do it, Gahn and I got you out of so much trouble growing up, just so you can jump back into it and make your widow mother lose more sleep. Give us that thanks if that’s how you see it!”

  “Excuse me? I’m not asking you to intervene, and I never have! Just let me do my thing. At least I’m trying to make something of my life rather than sit here like the rest of you—”

  “Alright, that’s enough,” says Mother Zviedal, pushing her chair in to head upstairs. “I’m going to bed. You two boys don’t be too loud, now.”

  “Oh. Night missus Zviedal.”

  Vertan and Hilgo stood still in silent confusion for a moment, watching as she headed up the steps and closed the door to her room. The rumbling storm outside seemed to have faded into a whisper now.

  “She seemed awfully quiet for a moment,” said Vertan.