Swimming Pool of the Universe

by Nick Cole

     “The last thing you remember ...” Private Dexter Keith asked himself, “is what?”

      The question is important.  At least Sergeant Collins had once said it would be.  But that had been back in a Georgia now flooding his temporarily scrambled neural pathways.  A Georgia of Basic infantry training, last year, 2147.  A living memory of events and training complete with the smells of magnolia and tar mixed with the turkey from the chow hall coming back at him. Turkey and grease. Then time began to echo. Time echoes?

     “Damn straight grunt!” yells Sergeant Collins. “Time can echo, reverberate, cavitate all kinds of crazy things. One of them phase grenades goes off and 'POW' things get hazy for a moment or two. Yo’ mind is dancing, for want of a better word, between the past and the present because of the effects of that grenade that just went off.  So you got to ask yourself something?  Something important I once taught ya.” It’s a hot Sunday in Georgia when Sergeant Collins tells him this.

     “But that’s the past,” Dexter Keith struggles to remind himself.

    “A phase grenade messes with you grunt, with your memory. But you just remember everything I tell you, you associate concepts in times of crisis and stress and I’ll be there for you and you'll live.” Private Keith bangs on the side of his combat helmet and tries to focus on the present situation. What’s happening on Nomad 247?

    “Johnson, what the hell are you doing?” yells Sergeant Collins back in Georgia on that hot morning of turkey and tar.

Zip Rifle bursts sizzle and crack across nearspace as Nomad 246 tumbles drunkenly through the star field above.

     “I am on Nomad 247, that's where I’m at now,” confesses Private Keith to himself.  He drops to the ice as micro-gravity begins to loosen its too loving, motherly grasp. A wave of phase-nausea sweeps over his cold sweating skin.

     Memories overrun his mind; his mother is holding him in her arms while they swim at the community pool on a hot Saturday in August.  Swimming in the pool with his mother was the only place he would let her hold his rigid little-boy body.  He was too strong-willed to let it happen in any other time or place. But in the pool, frightened of the water and the chaos of bigger children splashing, he clung to his mother as she held him closely.

     “I am on Nomad 247,” chants Dexter Keith to himself.  “An asteroid in orbit around another asteroid identified as Nomad 246, experiencing brief periods of micro-gravity brought on by their close orbiting bodies.”

     “Damn straight again Keith,” calls out Sergeant Collins. “You’re some kind of brain?  Now all you got to do is figure out why you are there?”  Another wave of phase-nausea, and Sergeant Collins turns away from him to direct verbal fire onto the nearby, perpetually slacking, Johnson.  “Johnson, get down and start knocking out push-ups till I get tired.” In the red dirt of Georgia a year ago, Private Johnson drops to the ground and begins to execute the exercise, counting them out with forced enthusiasm.

     And back on Nomad 247, The Spiders, the mortal enemies of Private Dexter Keith and his squad, alien invaders come to destroy humanity, are advancing.  In the background noise of Keith’s helmet, the rest of the squad scream like children splashing in the waters of a long-forgotten collection of chlorine and water; cackling with calls of delight.  His mother—this asteroid—pulls him closer, below the technological mayhem that is cutting both sides to shreds without prejudice.  In the swimming pool of the universe, gravity also is love.

     “Yeah, you’re some kind of super genius Private Keith,” begins Sergeant Collins. “Your parents must of paid good money for them genes. Now the big question is what’re you gonna do now that you got knocked senseless with that phase grenade and your mind is wobbling back and forth between Nomad 247 and the past. Seems like an important question, especially now that the enemy is advancing on your position. Might be time to fight back or something, don't you think?” 

    “Yeah,” thinks Private Dexter, “fight back, let them know who’s boss.” Gravity begins to let go ever so softly and Private Keith sticks his head up above a black outcrop of deep space-hardened ice. An edge of the squash-like shape that is Nomad 247, tracks in his Heads Up Display, graphing and calculating the lip and contours ahead. Beyond the lip begins the gentle fall towards the waist of the squash and the enemy.

     “Damn Spiders must of thrown a grenade up here trying to dislodge our position. Looks like we're going to have to repel an assault,” says Sergeant Collins.

     “Trooper Keith, this is Doghouse, do you read me? Repeat ...” The command net operator sounds distracted, bored, uninterested in the fate of Private Dexter Keith.

    “Roger, roger, I read you crystal,” replies Keith in transmission voice. The helmet’s software recognizing the tone of his voice, broadcasts the reply on an authorized net.

     “Private Keith, I show you as the only active friendly on Nomad two-four-seven, can you confirm?” Again the tone bored, uninterested.

     For a moment Keith lays his helmeted head down on the rock and ice. He closes his eyes and concentrates on breathing. He knows he’s supposed to do this as gravity begins to disappear. But even the sound of his breath fades away as his stomach begins to float while he clings to the rocky surface of the pitching piece of nickel and ice that is Nomad 247. Johnson, Ferengetti, Reeves, Markowitz, gone. The entire scout platoon gone within moments of jumping onto Nomad 247. And Sergeant Collins? Gone.

     “I'm not gone, knucklehead. I'm still here you stupid grunt,” roared Sergeant Collins.

     “No you’re dead too,” whispers Keith to a vast universe with a gift for loneliness.

     “Listen up grunt, how about I crawl over to your position and show you how dead I am. You got to get back in the game soldier, your Airborne, we’re Airborne, we don't just roll up and die when those Spiders toss a grenade at us. We're death from above and now it’s time to start killing, grunt, or are you just some ‘leg’, waitin' for orders? If so, why don't you just dig in and make yourself comfortable.”

     “I ain't no leg,” whispers Keith, gritting his teeth as he dismisses the worst insult an Airborne Trooper can be called; a leg: A regular infantrymen.

     “Good, Private Keith, Airborne! Right now your the only one of us Command can talk to. You're also about to get overrun by Spiders. Here's what we’re going to do. I'll flank to their right and try to get them to shift fire. I want you to lob some chaff grenades past the lip, those thing will mess with their commo for a moment or two, and then, when gravity resumes, I want you to assault their position. Roger?”    

    “Roger,” toned Private Keith blotting out thoughts of death on a tumbling ball of ice and nickel, alone and far from home.

    “Say again Private Keith; your transmission seems to be coming in broken and distorted.” It was Doghouse, the comm operator aboard The Lexington.

     “Command, I have a status update for our team,” Private Keith reached back along his web gear, searching for the magnetic clip dispenser that would release two of his six chaff grenades. “I have contact with Sergeant Collins. His communication and telemetry equipment seem to be malfunctioning but he assures me he’s combat ready.”

     “Be advised, Private Keith, that we are tracking multiple Spiders converging on your AO; fire mission upon request.”

     “Don’t let them use those damn cannons,” hisses Collins. “They’ll kill you Keith. One of them heavy caliber depleted uranium rounds from the main guns will turn this whole rock to powder.”

     “Negative, negative, Doghouse, do not, repeat, do not fire on our position. We are engaging the enemy.”

     “Damn straight, now on my command pick your butt up and attack, and make sure to use them grenades first, Super-Brain.  Just like training back in Georgia.”

    Private Keith hurls the two chaff grenades forward into the rising lip of the Nomad 247 as the gentle hug of gravity returns. Forty five seconds worth of gravity before Zero G again, mumbles Keith to himself, information from the Operations Order that had survived the effects of the Phase-Grenade.

     The chaff grenades seem to hang for a moment as he retinally cues his HUD to track them.  Then with a deft flick of his eye reticule, he directs the grenades downward beyond the rapidly ascending ledge of the asteroid. A second later they disappear over the lip of his temporary horizon and a second after that, the silent crumple of aluminum foil can be heard in his ears as the comm channel picks up traces of their explosion.

     He leaps up and leans forward, running towards the tumbling lip. Above him Nomad 246 falls towards the horizon, its scarred face in even more violent revolutions than that of Nomad 247.

     Bounding over the lip he encounters two Spiders picking their way forward; one cautiously holding a heavy zip gun between its two forearms while the other carries a pistol and another phase grenade. The one with the heavy weapon had probably been watching the lip as they made their approached, but the suddenness of Keith bounding over the ledge has taken it completely by surprise. Keith's HUD highlights the chaff grenades’ explosion radius farther down the slope.

     For a brief moment the two Spiders and Private Keith do nothing while Nomad 246 sinks queasily below the horizon of midnight ice. Then the spider with the pistol begins to fire, rearing up on its back legs. The first shot goes wild, sizzling off into the void and the next will surely tear a gaping hole in Keith’s Battle Gear and body.

     But even as the Spider aimed for its next shot, depleted uranium rounds spat forth from Keith’s auto rifle in a brutal sewing machine of bright fury, ripping the two spiders to shreds, flinging their various parts along with torn suit fragments out into the void at the edge of the solar system. 

     Seconds later, gravity has disappeared as Keith grapples with disintegrating ice and crumbling rock.  He is clutching frantically at the brittle surface of the pitching asteroid. In front of him, at the far end of the rising landscape, a full cohort of Spiders, ignoring the loss of planetary embrace, is scrambling forward, their four major limbs grappling with rock and ice effortlessly.

     “Damn Spiders everywhere,” shouts Sergeant Collins.

     “Damn Spiders everywhere,” thinks Keith. And now the Phase nausea rushes at him again, intense like a swarm of softly buzzing bees.  Turkey and grease in the air, Johnson doing push-ups at the pool’s edge on the hottest day of summer at the city pool in Oakland, California.  Thoughts from back in the heart of the solar system, far beyond the edge where The Lexington holds her ground engaging three Spider Hulks that twist and roll crazily above the spinning microcosm that is the life and death struggle on Nomad 247.

     Time bends like a reed and snaps as the single-mindedness of warfare commences. Was there a time before this? Will there be an ‘after’? The scout platoon, just like the Spider cohort, had deployed onto Nomad 247 only forty five minutes earlier, sent in to secure the spinning piece of rock and ice for the tactical advantage it might prove itself to be. 

     If gravity is love in the swimming pool of the universe, then what is time?  A tender mercy of things past, or the relentless melancholy of unending hell.

     Sergeant Collins screamed, exhorted, cursed, and urged Keith on, who fought the Spiders, first using up all his depleted uranium ammo, then his remaining grenades and finally deploying the spring-loaded, industrial, diamond bayonet in the bottom of his rifle. He slashed and hacked at the physically weaker Spiders, removing limbs and antennae, gouging out endless eyes and feeling the rifle find purchase in the pulp beneath the mesh of their fibershell environment suits.

    Chaos.

    Anger.

    Red Murder.

    Nomad 246 said “hello” and “hello” again like some jolly, ageless uncle as it galloped above the battlefield.  The Spider Hulks erupted in blue fire as their once impenetrable point defense networks collapsed beneath the onslaught of The Lexington’s Main Guns and Multiple Launch System Turrets.  Beyond that, the stars swam like children in a pool, laughing and beckoning on a hot summer day that promised to never end.  “Damn straight,” said Sergeant Collins to the universe, and then he too was gone.

     “What you’re experiencing,” said the Psych Officer during his last session at the VA, “is association fatigue.” Private Dexter Keith, now an UberMarket Manager, focuses on those words as wave after wave of housewives, trailing screaming children, wave their PDA’s in coupon mode at the harried checkers. 

     The store telemetry system has fritzed out due to solar activity and now the Transactors aren’t recognizing the PDA’s coupon signals.  Beautiful women, bronzed and reinforced with all the offerings of the latest in cosmetic efficiency, snort and cackle as Dexter Keith works on the Telecomm box, sweat streaming down in rivulets across his jowly face.  He has gained more than a little weight since leaving the Expeditionary Corps. Lately he hears Sergeant Collins cajoling and cursing at him in crisis situations, which now seem to be the norm for the newly promoted manager of UberMart, New Las Vegas. At first it bothered him. 

     He never wanted to be reminded of the horror of Nomad 247.  He didn’t want to hear the screaming of that day anymore.  The cries and other pulpier sounds of both friend and foe had plagued him for the first six months back on Earth. As always there was Sergeant Collins reminding him to hang tough, to gut it out, and in time, someday, he Dexter Keith would get better.  But ten years later he was beginning to hear the voice of Sergeant Collins more and more often. 

     “It’s a minor side effect,” the kind young Psych officer had assured him at the Veterans’ Hospital, “of your training.”  The way the Psych officer used the word ‘training’, made it seem as though his long lost instruction in basic infantry training had consisted of fighting with sticks and heavy rocks.  “But nowadays it’s better.  The ‘Sergeant Collins’ program has been removed from service.  The tendency for soldiers to hold onto Sergeant Collins caused some unexpected adjustment problems once they were returned from active duty.”  Sorrowful warmth painted the smile he offered Dexter.  “He saved my life,” mumbled Dexter in reply.

     “If it helps, there never was a Sergeant Collins.  He was just a program written at WonderSoft to teach trainees, like yourself, how to fight and survive in space. 

     “From the day you first entered basic training you were inundated with all kinds of subconscious programming to respond to him.  His African American straight talk and Mississippi mud accent were all contrived to make him both familiar and terrifying.  When you sim’d in Virtual he was always there, punishing you when you did wrong and rewarding you when you accomplished a task. 

     “It was thought, that if soldiers were ever isolated on the battlefield, overwhelmed as it were, the Sergeant Collins program would kick in and give the soldier the illusion of help, a form of ‘security’ as it were. 

     “I know events that day were horrible and that you feel ‘bad’, but there are things to feel ‘good’ about.  Those days were a fight for our lives.  I mean, I was still in elementary school, but I remember the war.  It was a fight for the very existence of the human race.  We were that close to going over the hill and into history.  But what you did that day, along with then entire crew of The Lexington and the whole effort of the human race turned the tide. That’s something to be proud of.  You did that, not Sergeant Collins. 

     “So just remember, when Sergeant Collins starts talking, It’s just Association Cavitation produced in a time of crisis or stress—a harmless medical condition, the result of programming that we didn’t have the time to test back in the early days of the war.  It’s just a minor side effect.  Ignore it and in time it will go away.”

    Now, back at the store, petulant housewives are starting to mock him.  He sees what they see, and in a way he agrees with them.  A fat man scrambling to meet their insatiable needs on one of the hottest days of the year with everything he does going wrong, exploding in his face like gags in a silent film.  It’s almost laughable.  It could be something from the early days of cinema if it just weren’t happening to him.  It’s a comedy of errors and sadly, it’s his life.

    “Now stop that talk, Private Brain.  You're going break my heart with all your belly aching.  Put it in gear son and get it done.  Time's a wasting,” barks Sergeant Collins from across the folds of Dexter Keith’s combat-fried brain and antique faulty programming.   

   “Excuse me,” says one platinum-blond, BlueChem-eyed housewife over her monstrous breasts.  “Is there someone else in charge?  Someone who knows what they’re doing?  I really have a lot of very important things to do besides sit here and watch you fumble with what seems to be a very simple procedure.”

     “Tell her to eat depleted Uranium and die, Private Keith,” hisses Sergeant Collins.

     No can do, Sergeant.  Customer service is critical at UberMart, whispers Keith.

     “Damn me, Private Keith, I never thought I’d see the day when one of my grunts ended up like this. Running an UberMart. I bet you think you're something and all.”

     No Sergeant.  Not at all.

     “Well Keith, we’ll see what we’ll see, but first you’d better extricate yourself from this mess you seem to be in. What are going to do?”

    “Excuse me,” says Monster Breasts. “What’s your name and employee ID number? My husband grav golf's with the regional head of this crappy little store and ...”

     “Smack her around, Keith.”

     No can do Sarge.

     “Alright then. Ignore her. She’s harmless. The most important thing right now is that you work the problem. Not the equipment. You know what I mean, young trooper.  Just like a rifle malfunction. The equipment works, it’s just that there’s a problem somewhere in the system and once you fix that problem the equipment will work. Roger?”

     Roger, Sergeant.

     Keith finds the problem and seconds later the Transactors go online.  Housewives clap for themselves and say things like “Honestly,” and “It’s about time!” Keith smiles his fat man’s smile and mops the sweat from his forehead. Delora, the head checker, smiles sadly at him. An honest smile, a good smile. A smile he thinks about late at night when he sits on his back porch in the cool breeze of the Martian dark and thinks about not being alone so much.

     Later, on the loading dock out back, Dexter Keith smokes a cigarette and leans against the red sandstone wall.

     “It’s days like today ...” he thinks, but doesn’t finish.

     “It’s days like today,” whispers Sergeant Collins out of the silence, “that make me proud to have trained such a fine troop as yourself.  You’ve done good, son, you’ve just been too hard on yourself lately.  Just don’t let it mess with your head.”

     I won’t, Sergeant Collins.

     “Damn straight. I won’t let you and I won’t let them.  Now what about that pretty young thing up front, what’s her name?”

     Delora, Sergeant Collins.

     “Ah, Delora.  Sounds nice when you say it like that.  I think yer in love, Private Keith.”

     Maybe, Sergeant Collins.

     “Well tomorrow we gonna start training. Oh-dark-hundred we’re going to run, Private Keith. We’re going get back into fighting shape and show Delora what an airborne trooper looks like. And what are you doing smoking, Private Keith? Crush that thing out and start knocking out some push-ups.”

     Push-ups, Sergeant Collins?

     "Did I stutter Private Keith?  Count off so I can hear you.”  Dexter Keith lowers himself to the hot grit of the Martian stone and for the first time in a long time, begins to exercise. It feels good.

     If gravity is love in the swimming pool of the universe and time a tender mercy or an unrelenting hell, then what is Sergeant Collins?

     One, two, three, one, one, two, three, two ... Sergeant Collins?

     “Yeah, Keith?”

     “Thanks.”

     Maybe a voice in the dark. A friend in the deep end of the swimming pool of the universe.

Nick Cole is a full time writer living and working in Southern California.  Occasionally he can be found masquerading as a Patricidal guard for King Phillip the XVI in the opera Don Carlo, a drunken sailor in Otello, even a grimy stevedore in Il Tabarro or any other number of productions being performed by Los Angeles Opera.