Written: Saturday. May 16, 2020.
I remember. I remember something. What is it? Why is it so hard to remember it? But it’s there. I know it is? A memory. A past. Is it a past memory? Not sure. Does it matter? I don’t know that too. These memories do not concern me, I think. It concerns others. People. The ones that change their faces. Or are they more than one? Several. Several people. Small. Smaller than the common ones. A child? What is a child? Is this what a child is? How do I know this? I don’t know. I just know. One child’s events… two? Maybe more. Definitely more. There are different faces in these memories. But also the same ones. I don’t know why about. Repeats. Keeps on repeating. Endless… it’s endless. Starts over.
The spaceship flew at a pace as if as fast as a ship on water trying not to cause its passengers any motion sickness by the rowing of the sea. Only there is no sea. Just the ship flying through the air, like an airplane experiencing turbulence from time to time. The numerous dots of light from the inner walls of the ship looked similar to the scenery Toby and the others saw as the ship invisibly cruised over the town. The three boys sat together on the makeshift seats of the wall, imitating their supposed sitting positions every time they sat on their favorite stoned bench.
Toby fiddled through the workings of these makeshift seats. These were actually item compartments of various cargo, he surmised in his thoughts. Some contained mint packs similar to the ones they ate a few days ago. Toby tossed a pack to Tom as he and Drew just sat there looking at what he was doing. They didn’t really bother concerning themselves with what Toby was doing; he did this every time it’s been a quarter of an hour of silence, or whenever there’s something is sight that he could manage to touch and figure out what’s inside of it or what it does.
The compartments also contained fabrics of some kind. “Are these spacesuits?” Toby asked, mostly to himself, since he was too busy observing the design and texture of the fabric he held in his hands.
“If you mean ‘are those our form of clothing’, then yes they are, Terran Tobias.” Ervagh answered him. “I would suggest putting things back to the way they were once you’re done fumbling through our inventory.”
Toby remained as he was, fumbling through the various items the compartments had to offer. He raised up the alien fabric and sized it up over his body to see what size it was on. Immediately, the fabric morphed itself onto Toby’s torso and limbs, wearing itself over his entire body, excluding his hands and feet. The suit felt like the right fit around his body. He quickly stood up and looked at himself from different angles.
“The suit fits me pretty well.” He said. “It almost feels like I’m not wearing anything underneath anymore.”
“That’s because you’re not.” Ervagh said from the cockpit. Toby gave him a flurried look, but before he could speak, Ervagh continued. “The suit displaces all other fabric once it’s worn by any user.”
“You mean if I take this suit off right now, I’d be butt naked inside of this ship?” Toby looked to the two girls who were talking to each other minding their own business a while ago, but now looking to where he was standing. He faced his body against them and tried to cover his lower back with his bag. “This ship better have some spare clothes that don’t eat up other clothes when you wear them, or else I’m taking this suit all the way home.”
“The suit doesn’t extinguish your clothes, Terran.” Ervagh said, as if the question made no sense to even be asked. “It displaces them. I’ve said this clear enough. Or have I misused your tongue once more?”
“What do you mean by it, then? This displacing?”
“The suit has a built-in mechanic that lets other clothing worn by its user simply reappear within your overall suited-form. It shifts the size of these other foreign clothing, making it possible to fit inside of the suit’s mecha-genetic-construct-coding. Did you not notice the suit’s new design appearance?”
Toby looked through every inch of the suit. He noticed the design of his jacket was now imprinted on the suit’s fabric, and that there was a hanging hoodie around his neck and back. The zipper appeared just as immediately as when Toby thought of it. The lower part of the suit also took in the length of his shorts, and side pockets started popping out.
“Now that’s cool.” Drew said as he saw Toby’s new look.
“What the hell?” Toby said. “These weren’t here when I checked — “
“That’s because the suit registers your subconscious.” Ervagh answered. “You may not have seen your own clothing’s designs at first glance, because they weren’t there in the first place. Your mind was too busy with the infatuation of an extraterrestrial suit, that your thoughts completely blurred out the memory of there being any other clothing worn except for the suit. But at the moment when you started thinking of your clothes again, only then did they appear right in front of you. Or should I say, around you.”
“So my clothes are still there? They’ve just morphed together with the suit?”
“How many more mundane questions am I gonna have to answer during this search of ours?” Ervagh opened up the virtual map display on top of one side of the control panel. The blue dot on the map was still fairly distant to where the red dot was. That meant that however much time they’ve spent inside of the ship hasn’t proven any progress of getting nearer towards the Quadmius. “We’ll be searching for this erratic entity for how ever long we must. And assuming that it’s been three Earth hours since we’ve taken off, we’ll be stuck following the Quadmius until the sun comes up, which if you look to the side of the ship, you’ll see that it is climbing itself up into the horizon.”
Has it been that long already, everybody else in the ship thought to themselves. How long would the mission last before they come any close to the blue dot on that digital map? Toby sat down on the chair he previously seated on, and looked towards where Lady Veergha was sitting. She was asleep again, laying her head on Amanda’s lap, like he would back when his father still had a car, and would get sleepy during long trips. He would lay down on his mother’s lap, cause sleeping in a sitting position didn’t quite get him rocking himself into the dream world. He chuckled a bit at the thought, and was about to get up, when he realized the space suit he was wearing was still on him.
“Hey Ervagh,” He approached the cockpit and stood beside Mr. Reyes and Ervagh. “How do you take this thing off? Does it even do that kind of thing, by any chance?” Ervagh pressed a button, which might’ve been the auto-pilot, and looked back at him with a wrinkled eyebrows.
“Of course it does, why would it not?” Ervagh answered him. “Honestly, Terran Tobias, you’re assumptions on us Volgans and our various customs are getting quite repetitive and redundant. Might I add prejudiced.”
Toby tried registering Ervagh’s answer. “Maybe it’s cause of all the movies I’ve been watching about you people.”
“What do you mean ‘you people’?”
Toby was about to correct himself, but then he heard two voices from behind him.
“Cause Toby is a racist. He’s a damn racist.” Both Tom and Drew sang, while clapping their hands and stomping one of their feet. “Toby is a racist, for the third kind!” And they both immediately started laughing. Toby turned red and tried to stop himself, but eventually joined in on the laughing. He laughing at himself.
“No, but honestly,” Toby managed to say in-between laughs, “How do I get out of this thing?”
June woke up to the sounds of humming in the distance. It wasn’t the humming, really. It was the vibration of her room that seemed to wake her up, and even as she was awake, it seemed like an odd thing to happen in general.
She heard the humming slowly diminishing, and the vibration decreased the same time. That isn’t normal, she thought to herself. It also wasn’t a typical earthquake, where things would wobble or sway in a metronome-kind of feel. It was a constant shifting of things. But now that it stopped, the following silence only made June more curious as to what just happened. She got out of her room and went down stairs, anticipating for her mother or her brother to comment on the strange ‘earthquake’ that just happened. But when she got to the dining area, she saw a few people coming in from the front door of her house. It was her friends.
“What the heck are you guys doing here?” June asked the people who were coming in her living room. “And how did you know I lived here?”
“Ervagh located your position.” Drew answered her.
June’s mother happily took her friends in and they grabbed for her right hand, doing the gesture of respect one would do in face of an adult. It was also a common custom to signify being able to enter.
The three boys crashed on the couch, and the other two girls sat on sofas, only half-sitting on it, and carefully move so as not to unfortunately ruin anything present in the living room area.
“Again, why are you here?” June asked her friends.
“We didn’t want you to get left behind for the field trip.” Toby said, as if he’d rehearsed it on the way. He continued, facing June’s mother. “See Mrs. Capistrano, Mr. Reyes is gonna bring us to the science museum. It’s a free trip for active members of the Q.K. Club.” June looked at him, as if asking him what in the hell Q.K. meant. And surely enough, he got the telepathic message. “Q.K. by the way, stands for the ‘Quazar Kids’ Club. Me, Tom, Drew, Amanda, Mara, and June here, are some of the active members of the school science-club. I guess she just over-slept for the trip. Good thing we got John, the bus driver, to make a stop for your house.” He gave a quick wink to June.
“June, why haven’t you packed up for the trip, sweetie?” June’s mom had her hands placed on the sides of her waist. “And why am I only hearing about this now?”
“That would be my fault, Mrs. Capistrano.” Mr. Reyes just then entered the house, together with Ervagh. “This was an immediate field trip arranged by the faculty, and I was only just able to mention it yesterday to the kids. But we really must be quick in going, Mrs. Capistrano. Isn’t that right, June?”
June didn’t bother in it anymore, and just nodded to her teacher with a sigh of defeat. I can’t keep up with these liars. “Yes Mr. Rey.” She said, and immediately ran back up to the stairs.
“I don’t believe we’ve met before, dears.” Mrs. Capistrano said to the kids in the living room. “June has never really had friends over the house since she moved to Maharlika High.”
“Yeah, there’s a first time for everything, Tita.” Tom said in response. “Do you happen to have a second bathroom? I usually can’t hold it on long trips.”
“There’s one next to the bathroom upstairs, dear…” She was waiting for him to say his name, and Tom got the signal.
“Tom, Tita. Tommy Ambrosio. You can call me Tom.” He answered, as he quickly went upstairs.
“And I’m Tobias Luna, Miss.” Toby said to June’s Mom. “Toby for short. This is Drew, Amanda, and Mara.”
“Shit!” Tom yelled out from upstairs. “Wrong bathroom.”
“What in the actual fuck!” June’s screamed out. A loud banging noise of a door closing immediately followed.
I remember. I remember something. What is it? Why is it so hard to remember it? But it’s there. I know it is? A memory. A past. Is it a past memory? Not sure. Does it matter? I don’t know that too. These memories do not concern me, I think. It concerns others. People. The ones that change their faces. Or are they more than one? Several. Several people. Small. Smaller than the common ones. A child? What is a child? Is this what a child is? How do I know this? I don’t know. I just know. One child’s events… two? Maybe more. Definitely more. There are different faces in these memories. But also the same ones. I don’t know why about. Repeats. Keeps on repeating. Endless… it’s endless. Starts over.
* * *
The spaceship flew at a pace as if as fast as a ship on water trying not to cause its passengers any motion sickness by the rowing of the sea. Only there is no sea. Just the ship flying through the air, like an airplane experiencing turbulence from time to time. The numerous dots of light from the inner walls of the ship looked similar to the scenery Toby and the others saw as the ship invisibly cruised over the town. The three boys sat together on the makeshift seats of the wall, imitating their supposed sitting positions every time they sat on their favorite stoned bench.
Toby fiddled through the workings of these makeshift seats. These were actually item compartments of various cargo, he surmised in his thoughts. Some contained mint packs similar to the ones they ate a few days ago. Toby tossed a pack to Tom as he and Drew just sat there looking at what he was doing. They didn’t really bother concerning themselves with what Toby was doing; he did this every time it’s been a quarter of an hour of silence, or whenever there’s something is sight that he could manage to touch and figure out what’s inside of it or what it does.
The compartments also contained fabrics of some kind. “Are these spacesuits?” Toby asked, mostly to himself, since he was too busy observing the design and texture of the fabric he held in his hands.
“If you mean ‘are those our form of clothing’, then yes they are, Terran Tobias.” Ervagh answered him. “I would suggest putting things back to the way they were once you’re done fumbling through our inventory.”
Toby remained as he was, fumbling through the various items the compartments had to offer. He raised up the alien fabric and sized it up over his body to see what size it was on. Immediately, the fabric morphed itself onto Toby’s torso and limbs, wearing itself over his entire body, excluding his hands and feet. The suit felt like the right fit around his body. He quickly stood up and looked at himself from different angles.
“The suit fits me pretty well.” He said. “It almost feels like I’m not wearing anything underneath anymore.”
“That’s because you’re not.” Ervagh said from the cockpit. Toby gave him a flurried look, but before he could speak, Ervagh continued. “The suit displaces all other fabric once it’s worn by any user.”
“You mean if I take this suit off right now, I’d be butt naked inside of this ship?” Toby looked to the two girls who were talking to each other minding their own business a while ago, but now looking to where he was standing. He faced his body against them and tried to cover his lower back with his bag. “This ship better have some spare clothes that don’t eat up other clothes when you wear them, or else I’m taking this suit all the way home.”
“The suit doesn’t extinguish your clothes, Terran.” Ervagh said, as if the question made no sense to even be asked. “It displaces them. I’ve said this clear enough. Or have I misused your tongue once more?”
“What do you mean by it, then? This displacing?”
“The suit has a built-in mechanic that lets other clothing worn by its user simply reappear within your overall suited-form. It shifts the size of these other foreign clothing, making it possible to fit inside of the suit’s mecha-genetic-construct-coding. Did you not notice the suit’s new design appearance?”
Toby looked through every inch of the suit. He noticed the design of his jacket was now imprinted on the suit’s fabric, and that there was a hanging hoodie around his neck and back. The zipper appeared just as immediately as when Toby thought of it. The lower part of the suit also took in the length of his shorts, and side pockets started popping out.
“Now that’s cool.” Drew said as he saw Toby’s new look.
“What the hell?” Toby said. “These weren’t here when I checked — “
“That’s because the suit registers your subconscious.” Ervagh answered. “You may not have seen your own clothing’s designs at first glance, because they weren’t there in the first place. Your mind was too busy with the infatuation of an extraterrestrial suit, that your thoughts completely blurred out the memory of there being any other clothing worn except for the suit. But at the moment when you started thinking of your clothes again, only then did they appear right in front of you. Or should I say, around you.”
“So my clothes are still there? They’ve just morphed together with the suit?”
“How many more mundane questions am I gonna have to answer during this search of ours?” Ervagh opened up the virtual map display on top of one side of the control panel. The blue dot on the map was still fairly distant to where the red dot was. That meant that however much time they’ve spent inside of the ship hasn’t proven any progress of getting nearer towards the Quadmius. “We’ll be searching for this erratic entity for how ever long we must. And assuming that it’s been three Earth hours since we’ve taken off, we’ll be stuck following the Quadmius until the sun comes up, which if you look to the side of the ship, you’ll see that it is climbing itself up into the horizon.”
Has it been that long already, everybody else in the ship thought to themselves. How long would the mission last before they come any close to the blue dot on that digital map? Toby sat down on the chair he previously seated on, and looked towards where Lady Veergha was sitting. She was asleep again, laying her head on Amanda’s lap, like he would back when his father still had a car, and would get sleepy during long trips. He would lay down on his mother’s lap, cause sleeping in a sitting position didn’t quite get him rocking himself into the dream world. He chuckled a bit at the thought, and was about to get up, when he realized the space suit he was wearing was still on him.
“Hey Ervagh,” He approached the cockpit and stood beside Mr. Reyes and Ervagh. “How do you take this thing off? Does it even do that kind of thing, by any chance?” Ervagh pressed a button, which might’ve been the auto-pilot, and looked back at him with a wrinkled eyebrows.
“Of course it does, why would it not?” Ervagh answered him. “Honestly, Terran Tobias, you’re assumptions on us Volgans and our various customs are getting quite repetitive and redundant. Might I add prejudiced.”
Toby tried registering Ervagh’s answer. “Maybe it’s cause of all the movies I’ve been watching about you people.”
“What do you mean ‘you people’?”
Toby was about to correct himself, but then he heard two voices from behind him.
“Cause Toby is a racist. He’s a damn racist.” Both Tom and Drew sang, while clapping their hands and stomping one of their feet. “Toby is a racist, for the third kind!” And they both immediately started laughing. Toby turned red and tried to stop himself, but eventually joined in on the laughing. He laughing at himself.
“No, but honestly,” Toby managed to say in-between laughs, “How do I get out of this thing?”
* * *
June woke up to the sounds of humming in the distance. It wasn’t the humming, really. It was the vibration of her room that seemed to wake her up, and even as she was awake, it seemed like an odd thing to happen in general.
She heard the humming slowly diminishing, and the vibration decreased the same time. That isn’t normal, she thought to herself. It also wasn’t a typical earthquake, where things would wobble or sway in a metronome-kind of feel. It was a constant shifting of things. But now that it stopped, the following silence only made June more curious as to what just happened. She got out of her room and went down stairs, anticipating for her mother or her brother to comment on the strange ‘earthquake’ that just happened. But when she got to the dining area, she saw a few people coming in from the front door of her house. It was her friends.
“What the heck are you guys doing here?” June asked the people who were coming in her living room. “And how did you know I lived here?”
“Ervagh located your position.” Drew answered her.
June’s mother happily took her friends in and they grabbed for her right hand, doing the gesture of respect one would do in face of an adult. It was also a common custom to signify being able to enter.
The three boys crashed on the couch, and the other two girls sat on sofas, only half-sitting on it, and carefully move so as not to unfortunately ruin anything present in the living room area.
“Again, why are you here?” June asked her friends.
“We didn’t want you to get left behind for the field trip.” Toby said, as if he’d rehearsed it on the way. He continued, facing June’s mother. “See Mrs. Capistrano, Mr. Reyes is gonna bring us to the science museum. It’s a free trip for active members of the Q.K. Club.” June looked at him, as if asking him what in the hell Q.K. meant. And surely enough, he got the telepathic message. “Q.K. by the way, stands for the ‘Quazar Kids’ Club. Me, Tom, Drew, Amanda, Mara, and June here, are some of the active members of the school science-club. I guess she just over-slept for the trip. Good thing we got John, the bus driver, to make a stop for your house.” He gave a quick wink to June.
“June, why haven’t you packed up for the trip, sweetie?” June’s mom had her hands placed on the sides of her waist. “And why am I only hearing about this now?”
“That would be my fault, Mrs. Capistrano.” Mr. Reyes just then entered the house, together with Ervagh. “This was an immediate field trip arranged by the faculty, and I was only just able to mention it yesterday to the kids. But we really must be quick in going, Mrs. Capistrano. Isn’t that right, June?”
June didn’t bother in it anymore, and just nodded to her teacher with a sigh of defeat. I can’t keep up with these liars. “Yes Mr. Rey.” She said, and immediately ran back up to the stairs.
“I don’t believe we’ve met before, dears.” Mrs. Capistrano said to the kids in the living room. “June has never really had friends over the house since she moved to Maharlika High.”
“Yeah, there’s a first time for everything, Tita.” Tom said in response. “Do you happen to have a second bathroom? I usually can’t hold it on long trips.”
“There’s one next to the bathroom upstairs, dear…” She was waiting for him to say his name, and Tom got the signal.
“Tom, Tita. Tommy Ambrosio. You can call me Tom.” He answered, as he quickly went upstairs.
“And I’m Tobias Luna, Miss.” Toby said to June’s Mom. “Toby for short. This is Drew, Amanda, and Mara.”
“Shit!” Tom yelled out from upstairs. “Wrong bathroom.”
“What in the actual fuck!” June’s screamed out. A loud banging noise of a door closing immediately followed.
End of Chapter.
* * *
* * *
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