Author: Angela Hawn
“Ready to sing for your supper?” The head honcho in the antique army helmet flashes a toothy smile at our little group before acknowledging the wider audience. Applause ensues.
“Of course”, I say, channeling my storytelling grandmother whose entertaining melodrama once served multiple purposes: convincing me to sleep, to eat my vegetables, as a distraction from the sorry universe around us falling to pieces.
Helmet Head looks slightly rabid, a guy spoiling for a fight, clearly interested in wringing out the maximum without yielding much in return, someone who might view the spilling of blood not his own as fun.
“I understand you’re from the BH.77 system.”
Helmet’s eyes light up. I’ve hit the sweet spot. He’s perhaps a traveler himself, though likely a reluctant one. BH.77 has been at war for years; most residents with means fled long ago, leaving only the less fortunate to suffer yet another tyrant foolishly installed as leader.
“You’ve been?” He purrs.
“Just the Lypides sector, by moon 11.” Confidence in information secured via Helmet-hating spies blooms. I’m sure I’ve just described his old neighborhood.
Eyes widening with shock and pleasure, the sociopathic sheen dims a little. Is Helmet simply some ordinary Joe gone round the bend, courtesy of years spent in a war zone? Or perhaps even sociopaths need to hear of hearth and home occasionally.
“In fact, I’ve got a message from a Merdecia,” I continue, gently dropping the name of Helmet’s supposed soul mate into the mix, steadfastly ignoring the second lieutenant’s pet rat, scampering in stage left, up Helmet’s pant leg, straight onto his jacket lapel. Incredible how twinned microchips inserted in both the master’s and rat’s brains make these tricks routine. I have personally witnessed this rat steer a ship right through a meteor field, though I assume, of course, that the lieutenant was doing the bulk of the critical thinking.
Gripping Helmet’s collar daintily within tiny paws, the rat proceeds to nibble at the cord around his neck. So gentle, barely a tickle, safely hidden from the crowd. The goal: Helmet’s all-access keycard. My sole job: distraction, a task seized with a passion my story-telling grandmother would applaud.
“Merdecia sends her love, and naturally… her regrets.”
Helmet’s narrow, wolfish face above the rat’s urgent efforts pales. I smile sympathetically, rubbing my empty belly before glancing sorrowfully downwards.
“But I’m feeling faint with hunger, friend, could we not eat while I tell you more?”
One of the crew members collapses, swooning dramatically as per the previously discussed choreography, clutching my sleeve as he plummets. The woman on the other side catches him and throws him over her shoulder in an old-fashioned fireman’s carry, sprinting for the door behind us. This one needs a bed more than a dinner table, she shouts to the gaping crowd, and they can only nod and smile, paralyzed by the sight of their leader nonplussed.
With the prize gripped tightly between strong little jaws, the rat has already danced ahead. We need only surge through the dining hall entrance backward en masse, like the singular pod we’ve become, while Helmet remains lost, transfixed by memories of his beloved Merdecia.
The solitary cyborg among us, an obliging chap, will sacrifice an arm to jam the doors, knowing an engineer onboard will make him another from scrap collected along the way. As one who talks with his hands when he’s got both, he might one day wave them about as we relish in this new narrative, or even retrieve our latest storied escape to save us all again, should we encounter another entertainment-seeking Helmet Head, somewhere down the road.