The living space they were in was dark. It was something that brought her relief. To be shrouded by the darkness like this. It was as if the person beside her couldn’t see the face that she would be making. Illuminated only by the dim flicker of candlelight, this served as one of her few ‘safe spots’. Honestly, it was funny how they had met. It would be a pairing that one wouldn’t expect, something to take them aback if told.

  It had been in the weeks after her Father’s death. At times, she would be hit by his loss more than others. At times, she would sit somewhere, oftentimes on the floor, to ground herself and slow things down a touch. It was at this time that she would run into Neil. The first words they would exchange would be Neil bumping into her while she was seated on the floor, and him calling her a “pain in the ass.” He was a much older gentleman, somewhere in his 60’s.

  With a skin-bald head and a stained tank top, Neil was the absolute vision of a ‘dead-end old man’. Yet for some reason, April enjoyed his matter-of-fact approach to discussion. And so, she would find herself wandering towards his direction when things got tough. At first, he actually tried to keep her out of his life. She was able to whittle him down, though. And soon, Neil wouldn’t even lock his door anymore, just in case April wanted to swing by.

  Neil was one of the “inbetweens”, as one could infer from his age being somewhere in the 60’s. He had spent about a decade on the blue marble known as Earth, and as such, though as closed off as he was, she would occasionally get to hear bits and pieces about what life was like on the planet they originated from. He was awfully cagey about the details of his life on this container, but he would sometimes lose himself when it came to reminiscing about Earth.

  Today was one of the days when April would find herself drawn to Neil’s down-to-earth, direct nature. She entered his living space, and just like usual, he was sitting atop his recliner. Cans of various alcoholic drinks are scattered about. TV dinners left untossed. He glanced over his shoulder, and obviously noticed the derelict state she was in. Instead of rushing over to her, making sure she was okay, or asking what happened. All he did was turn back around. Something like that made her feel comfortable.

  She took a seat beside him, just like always. He offered her a drink, and just like always, she would decline. They sat side by side, as Neil’s old TV played the same reruns he had been cycling through for decades. The sound of the TV was the only thing filling the room. And thus, she went for it. “They killed my Mom.” She was surprised that she was able to state it so matter-of-factly. No hesitation, no voice quivering. Just gentle acceptance. The sound of Neil inhaling through his nose could be heard, and when she looked over, his eyes were looking in her direction.

  “Sorry to hear that.” With no excessive judgement, or attempt to save her heart, he exchanged those simple pleasantries.

  “The last thing she said… was that something, I don’t know what, but something was mine.” She added on, giving this prized information to someone who, by all accounts, seemed completely uninterested in this encounter. “Do you have any idea what she could have possibly meant by that?” Looking straight at him, she asked him this. The purpose of her visit was revealed right then. She wanted someone to corroborate her prior conclusion.

  ? He turned his face away from her and back to the TV, before asking her a question of his own. “What do you think it means?” After he finished speaking, he lifted up another can beside him to his mouth, taking a sip of whatever beer he had been drinking in excess. She followed his guidance, and also looked away from him so that both were now just mindlessly watching the TV. She racked her brain on how to phrase what she was to say next.

  “I think… She wanted me to remember them. Because nobody else can.” As she spat out that response, the action on the TV unfolded. In black and white, she watched as the soldiers, wherever they were, were blown up in their trenches. Frankly, she had garnered much of her knowledge of Earth from these random shows, movies, or other games that were aboard the ship. The Earth that she saw was not a welcoming one. A planet of war, annihilation, and trepidation. It was comfortable to sit here, where she was, instead. It didn’t require much extra.

  ? Neil exhaled through his nose rapidly. She looked back over at him. Had she answered wrong? Did Neil know what she had meant, even though the two of them had never met? “How the hell am I supposed to know, then? You’re the one who knew her, not me. Sounds like you got it figured out.” He responded in a somewhat annoyed tone and continued to drink from the can beside him. It was a response that was very Neil-like. He wasn’t really wrong, either.

  “Everything I do feels like it’s wrong. So why not everything I think, too?” Chuckling to herself, she reclined back in her chair even more. The creaking sounds of the chair overpower the TV for just a brief moment.

  “Here you go with the woe-is-me bullshit again. Never make up your own fucking mind, can you?” Letting out yet another sigh of frustration, Neil responds so. To an outside observer, it would be unclear if this were banter, a genuine complaint, or who knows what else.

  ? He stutters a bit over his words before continuing. “Always the same shit, different day. ‘I can’t do anything’, or ‘Nobody loves me.’ You wanna know what it’s like to be a miserable fuck? Try being this miserable fuck in the chair.” He gestures his hands around, one holding a beer can, which he then aggressively points in his own direction.

  “Did you forget, Neil? I’m in the chair too.” She smirked, chuckling to herself. At that response, all Neil did was groan and wave his hand through the air, as if telling her to cut it off.

  “You’re young, you know? What are you, 20? You got plenty of life ahead of you. Then you’ll turn 30, and guess what? You still got plenty of fucking life ahead of you. Don’t be so god damn ridiculous.” Keeping her smirk, she listened to that barking from Neil. Genuinely, she appreciated the man here who would tell her these things, with no regard to how she would feel, just because they are his true, honest feelings. She truly had no idea what made her feel so safe, or understood with Neil.

  They both sat there. Watching TV. The bickering had come to an end, and now they watched ‘his stories’, as he put it. She would make fun of him for that, much to his chagrin, saying that’s how old people talk. He would always say that he’s the oldest fucker around, and she would laugh. Something uncharacteristic would happen as she reminisced, though. Neil would begin to talk about something.

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  ? “Have you ever heard of… Tanabata?” He looked a little embarrassed, as if he knew that he had thrown off the dynamic of April saying something self-loathing, and him impugning her about it.

  “Tana…bata?” She inquired. She had never heard of the concept before. At least, it wasn’t in her memory.

  “An old Japanese thing. Fuck, if you even know what Japan is. It’s about… Jesus, nevermind. Just forget it.” Midway through his sentence, he seemingly got flustered, realizing just how much April might not know, and started drinking from his can again. This time, though, it was empty.

  “No, no, Neil. I wanna know now.” She leaned over towards him, her chair tilting to the side. He took in a deep breath, and let out a deep sigh.

  “It was… this old legend. You know the Milky Way at least, right? God, let’s hope you at least know that. Well, back on Earth, it probably isn’t fucking like this anymore, considering how far we’ve gone; there were a couple of stars. Vega, and Altair.” He started to struggle at this part, like he was looking for the point, and he started to rub his bald head.

  “They were separated by the Milky Way. When you were on Earth, it was this beautiful slash through the sky. It was fucking unbelievable. But Vega and Altair sat on opposite sides, and in these old legends and shit, they thought they were lovers who were forced apart. But on the 7th day of the 7th month, they could cross the Milky Way and reunite.” Looking towards her as he finished this story, she sported quite a puzzled look, so he continued. “Basically, what I’m trying to say, is sometimes, shit just is the way it is. Stars aren’t lovers. They’re balls of plasma, or whatever the fuck. People will look too deep into all kinds of shit. Your Mom’s last words included.”

  It was a perspective that she hadn’t considered. At first, she thought they were words meant for someone else, or for herself, and only then did she come to the conclusion they signaled something deeper than that. Was she being too arrogant in her assumptions? She considered Neil’s perspective. But still, she wanted to be sure that her Mother, someone who was so much smarter, and wiser than her, wouldn’t truly blurt out something arbitrary at the very end of it all.

  ? Still, she was grateful that he could offer an alternative angle to look at it from. That is truly what coming to Neil was best for. An angle that nobody else would have the guts to say, because it would make people look at them differently. So, she didn’t push him any further. He had already gone out of his comfort zone to explain the concept of Tanabata to her. And she got a kick out of how he wasn’t sure if she knew what Japan was, so she sat back in her chair.

  “Something big is going to happen. I’m not exactly sure what, but you shouldn’t leave this place for a bit.” She told him something he already had a feeling about. Even though he was a recluse, he, too, could hear the ongoings outside of his living space, as the U.S.S. Starlight Hope descended into mass protest.

  “Like I ever fucking leave anyway.” He chuckled as he said this, before cracking open a new beer can. Thus, the status quo of their meeting, was restored.

  △▼△▼△▼△

  Protests broke out in multiple districts of the U.S.S. Starlight Hope. One in Residential District 3, two in Commercial Districts 1 and 2, and finally, the most lively of the bunch, one in Common Area 1. A location where an execution had just taken place. 100 arrests had already been made. The Enforcer’s resources were dwindling. They began to run into issues storing all of the detainees, and so, they stopped aiming for arrests.

  Commanding officers began authorizing the use of rubber bullets and pepper spray. Tear gas was still available, but in a location like the Starlight Hope, it was seen as more of a last-ditch effort. As the violence escalated, the Administration, alongside sympathetic members of Congress, used the noise to drown out their own movements. They met in the ‘Capitol Building’. An homage to the old Capitol building of the United States proper, but here, it was just a gigantic room where the legislative branch met, with no bells and whistles or fancy rotundas.

  The President had already hopped on the intercom to ‘denounce’ the violence. Not of the Enforcers attacking the protestors, nor the public execution that had started this, but to decry the act of protesting itself, escalating the rhetoric and turning up the temperature. Rapidly, opposition Liberals moved. They did not move to make political gains. They moved to virtue signal, and to court the opposition that would never even look in their direction.

  Truly, that had been the biggest flaw of the Liberal. The inability to exist within context. Each fascistic act, each act of encouraging violence, each rejection of the hand they extended, was simply treated as if it were in a vacuum. Completely and utterly incapable of pattern recognition. Over and over, the acts of their opponents were legitimized. Their very existence was legitimized, normalized, and treated as just a difference of opinion.

  The Administration was fully aware of this failing of the Liberals. It was something that they counted on. They knew that realistically there would be no push back to the agenda they snuck into the wee hours of the night. The Liberals would simply wax poetic about how it was ‘against the rules.’ They counted on the Liberals’ inability to detect patterns, and would utilize the dead cat strategy to draw attention away from what they were really after.

  ? Immediately, the Administration moved to feed its pundits the next narrative. “Focus on the protests. Gather any act of violence you can, and signal boost it.” And as they nodded their heads and collected their cheques, the Administration moved. Supported by sympathetic forces in Congress, the President initiated executive order after executive order. After all, by the time experts and analytics tear down one of them, you’ll already have another six to research.

  ‘The Return to Traditional Values Act’. Even though it wasn’t a proper act that went through both chambers of Congress, that was how it was billed. Contained inside was a string of executive orders that dictated national direction and policy. There was, of course, a limit to the extent of executive orders. But they would act now, and worry about the consequences later in court.

  Order one, life would begin at conception, regardless of Supreme Court precedent. Order two, education must prioritize instilling a nationalistic spirit. Order three, pornography would be deemed immoral, as it promoted sexual deviance. Order four, the executive branch would now be under direct control of the President. Order five, expansion of the use of the death penalty. Order six, a temporary suspension of elections until the nation is secure. Order seven, an overruling of Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down sodomy laws, a ruling that protected same sex couples.

  These new executive orders would be the basis for a large swathe of arrests. The President had ordered that protestors were engaging in “anti-American violence”, and thus, justified violence against them. Openly gay couples or LGBT activists were black bagged by federal Enforcers. Order 3 would be interpreted extraordinarily liberally to go after the most vocal, progressive opposition. In total, hundreds of people were now detained across the ship.

  ? Included among them, was her. It had been a few hours now since she had heard of her capture. She had no idea what she could even do. Nothing came to mind. But as word spread, as people spoke, it came to her. If she were to carry these painful reveries, then she would follow in her footsteps. Or maybe, it was like Neil said. None of it really meant anything at all. In the room with nary a sound, it made it all that much louder. That final click as she heads out to her destination.