Hard Luck Hermit

“Okay, I’m done with the polishing shit,” Corey said. He stepped into the cockpit and found only Tooley waiting for him. She had her feet up on the empty copilots seat and was staring intently at the beige wall of FTL travel.

“Good for you,” she said, without taking her eyes off the cockpit. “You need something?”

“Just thought Kamak might want to know his ship was all shiny again.”

“There’s only like twelve rooms in the ship, and he doesn’t even hang out in most of them,” Tooley said. “You’ll find him eventually.”

“I don’t really want to look that hard,” Corey said, as he took a seat in the back of the cockpit. His admission of laziness drew a smile from Tooley.

“Like hearing my own words,” Tooley said. Then she returned to her single-minded focus on the wall of beige light above them. Corey endured the silence for a while before curiosity got the better of him.

“You like seeing the, uh, beige?”

“I guess? It’s, what do you call it, meditative, I think,” Tooley said. “And occasionally it’s not beige.”

“What?”

“It’s not beige.”

“I heard you, what do you mean it isn’t beige? Does it change colors?”

“Oh, yeah, not completely, I guess? There’s just like, streaks of color sometimes. It’s hard to describe because it’s like, blue and yellow at the same time, but also purple.”

Corey didn’t bother pressing for a better description. It sounded like an optical illusion causing an impossible color, making it hard to describe for even the most poetic. Tooley was pretty far from a poet on her best day.

“Okay. When does that happen?”

“Randomly. And not very often. But it’s pretty neat when it does happen.”

“What causes it?”

Tooley shrugged. She hadn’t taken her eyes off the cockpit glass yet.

“Nobody knows. Could be a ship going faster than light the other direction, could be some streak of random cosmic radiation, could be a brief glimpse of an alternate reality as our ship shudders through relativistic barriers.”

“I think I like the second explanation best,” Corey said.

“Pussy,” Tooley said, as she reached down to her side and retrieved a previously unseen bottle of space booze. She stared at the monochrome expanse of lightspeed and did not blink. “Stare cosmic oblivion in the face like the rest of us.”

“I’ve been here for like two days, I’m working on staring at cosmic anything.”

Tooley shrugged and took another drink. She then rattled the bottle and was displeased with how little sloshing she heard.

“Be a gem and get me another drink, would you Corey?”

“Only if you get your feet out of the copilots chair so I can sit there.”

“You drive a hard bargain, human,” Tooley said, as she removed her feet from the chair. Corey went back to the common area to fetch some space beer. He had to kick the table a few times to get it to dispense right, but he succeeded in fetching a matching set of bottles. Tooley took one of the bottles and reached out to take the other, but Corey kept it for himself.

“Fine, be that way.”

“Hey, I like this stuff too,” Corey said. He hadn’t had much time to appreciate the flavors of the cosmic booze during their drinking contest, but it had a very unique flavor profile he had taken a quick liking to. It was slightly more viscous than most earth beverages, which took some getting used to, but it had an acidic, sweet flavor that burned his throat in a good way. “What do you call this stuff, anyway? I’ve just been thinking of it as ‘space beer’.”

“We got beer, but this ain’t it,” Tooley said. “It’s called shiiv.”

“Shiiv,” Corey said. “What’s it made out of?”

“Shi,” Tooley said, before taking a sip of her shiiv.

“I don’t know what shi is.”

“I figured, but I wanted to drink more than I wanted to explain,” Tooley said. “It’s some animal with a lot of sugar in it’s body. They make it from the leftovers after they butcher and prep the rest of the animal.”

“From an animal? Shit, that’s weird.”

Tooley drank, and Corey drank in turn. Now that he focused on it, he could sense a slight aftertaste of iron, like a little bit of blood in the mix. That might’ve just been his mind playing tricks on him, though. Tooley, who had no reason to contemplate the flavors of her shiiv, simply chugged it down.

“Hmm. What do I got to bribe you with to make you get me another shiiv?”

“I don’t know,” Corey said. “This chair is a pretty powerful bargaining chip and you already lost it.”

“I knew I should’ve started at one foot,” Tooley said. “What if I put my feet back up on you and don’t take em off unless you get me another shiiv?”

Tooley kicked up her booted heels and rested them both on Corey’s lap. Her attempted negotiation for another drink came to a screeching halt as she pressed her heel against Corey’s thigh.

“Damn. You humans got some muscular thighs.”

“I work out sometimes,” Corey said. He grabbed Tooley by the feet and swung her legs off his lap. “I also thought of something you can do for me.”

“What you got, Corvash?”

“Can you explain how the clock works up here?” Corey asked. “Like, people keep saying ‘tick’, ‘drop’, ‘swap’ and stuff like they’re units of time, but I have zero frame of reference.”

“Shit, is that all? I would’ve done that for free,” Tooley said. “Too late now, though, you’re getting me a shiiv. Buckle up, Corvash.”

Tooley spun her chair towards Corey’s and held her hands out.

“Alright, so obviously us spacers have to have our own clock, since we don’t have any suns or anything to go by,” Tooley said. “So our clock is based on the breakdown of the hydrogen cells used as fuels. A ‘tick’ is the shortest unit, based on how fast one atom of hydrogen is burned. It goes by fast as hell, like this.”

Tooley raised her hand and started snapping her fingers at regular intervals. Corey couldn’t tell exactly, but he felt like it was slightly longer than a second.

“Then you got about fifty of those to a drop,” Tooley continued. “Then two-hundred drops to a cycle, and fifteen cycles to a swap.”

“Neat. Can I borrow your tablet for a second? I need to do math.”

“Do math while you’re getting me another shiiv,” Tooley said, as she passed off the plastic device to Corey. He did some calculations while he fetched another round of drinks. If a tick was a little longer than a second, then a ‘drop’ was roughly a minute, making a ‘cycle’ a little less than two hours, and a ‘swap’ about twenty-nine hours long.

“You look pissed off,” Tooley noted, as Corey re-entered the room. She snatched her fresh shiiv away from him without waiting to hear his concerns.

“I don’t think I’m ever going to get used to this,” Corey sighed. He didn’t even want to ask what their version of weeks, months, or years was.

“Not too late to try and find your way back to Earf.”

“Earth.”

“Whatever. If you’re lucky, Doprel might even talk Kamak into flying you there.”

“Nah. You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

“Get rid of you? Why Corvash, I would never,” Tooley said. “You’re the only person other than Doprel who ever gets me shiivs. You’re already my second favorite person on this ship. Learn how to give a good foot rub and you might unseat Doprel as my number one someday.”

“I think I’ll manage as number two,” Corey said. Tooley shrugged and continued drinking.