he now finds himself in the vast Midwest. He is an avid martial artist and
a die hard fan and proponent of Mixed Martial Arts known to much of the
nation as “Ultimate Fighting.” He loves beauty in all her forms and eschews cruelty wherever it may be.
Hero’s
Homecoming
by
Ryan Priest
His luck was amazing, the chance to get the most exclusive
interview of the decade. Calvin hadn’t been able to sleep
for days leading up to it. He’d been floating on thin ice
at the station ever since his unbiased coverage of the
American/Jamaican war drew concerns about his patriotism.
There was also concern among the network heads that his
frequent flub of referring to the “country” as the
“company” was intentional.
But this was a fluff piece, well not just a fluff piece
but the
fluff piece.
There was no way for this to go wrong, it wasn’t about
politics and even more, the whole world would be watching.
This was the chance for Calvin Stevens to become a
household name.
So far the
network had gone all out. They’d set him up with a posh
hotel suite and even sent their “Eye on San Los Angeles”
hover-car to ferry him to the airfield. It was reputed to
be the fastest one in the SoCal metroplex.
Calvin couldn’t believe how silently the car ascended,
higher and higher into the sky without so much as the whirr
of an engine. The peace gave him a chance to look over his
final notes. They were planning to transmit live from the
airfield sending his high-definition, three-dimensional
facsimile into homes across the English-speaking world.
Captain Peter “Lone Wolf” Benedict had never planned on
returning to Earth. Twenty years ago, when the Nakagomi
Rocket had first been unveiled, people around the world had
cheered. The Nakagomi rocket was the first manned vessel
with the ability to exit our solar system. The only problem
had been finding someone to pilot it. The rocket could hold
only enough provisions for one passenger. There were many
volunteers--men and women willing to give their lives away
to be the first individual shot into open space--though
finding someone not only willing but also qualified to
pilot the ship and conduct the necessary maintenance wasn’t
so easy.
Benedict wasn’t technically a captain. He’d never served in
any branch of the military or even flown his own plane. He
was, however, the only volunteer with the requisite skills
to take the mission. He’d made a name for himself as a
genius in astrophysics not so much for his work but for his
personality.
In the world of
scientists and geeks he was like a rock star. Extremely
photogenic, he came off really congenial on camera. A hint
to why someone with so much going for him would throw it
all away to catapult into the galaxy alone lay in an answer
he’d given during a television interview shortly before
leaving.
It was one of probably hundreds. Five minutes on this show,
five minutes on that for Benedict to come out and make
simple small talk to the hosts explaining his upcoming
mission. They all had the same inane questions, “How do you
go to the bathroom in space?” “Have a girlfriend?” And the
never missed, “Why are you going if you know you can’t come
back?”
On this particular show the host cut Benedict off when he
gave his usual pre-composed sound bite about human endeavor
and the spirit of exploration. “Come on, don’t give me that
bull. Tell us the real reason you want to throw your life
away on a rocket to nowhere.”
Benedict could always be counted on to wear a nice black
suit and to have his fine black hair combed back to expose
his deep brown eyes. He arched his naturally curved
eyebrows, looked directly into the camera, and gave a
quick, succinct answer that he followed up with a soft,
cryptic chuckle: “What can I say? I hate people.”
Looking over the network’s file on Benedict it was no
surprise why he felt that way. As early as elementary
school he’d shown such a powerful intellect that he’d
skipped several grades. He entered college at fourteen, had
his first BA at seventeen and his first PhD by the time he
was twenty. People just couldn’t keep up with him. Calvin
had no way to verify this claim on such short notice, but
his report quoted others in the astrophysics community who
secretly considered him a freak, too smart for his own
good.
So it was twenty years ago, when Calvin was only in grade
school himself, that the Nakagomi Rocket with its singular
passenger had blasted off from U.S. Space Station Rumsfeld
never expecting to return.
The Nakagomi project turned out to be a colossal piece of
junk and the mission was a nearly immediate failure
signaling the end of non-commercial space flight. The
Nakagomi had lost all communications shortly after passing
Jupiter in its second month. The last transmission received
before complete blackout was from Benedict himself: “I’m
about to lose communications, I can’t repair them, I’m all
right. I just want everyone to know I regret nothing. This
is Peter Benedict, signing off…”
From then on he was a modern day folk hero. The astronaut
lost in space. Children were told to look for the Lone Wolf
in the stars and would invariably claim, “I think I see
him, that blinking dot there.” Statues of him popped up at
every school, city, club or organization that could claim
any affiliation with him.
As technology advanced, then advanced upon those
advancements, the propulsion system fuelling the Nakagomi
became outdated. Now interplanetary travel was a common
luxury for billionaires without the need of even a single
rocket firing. Large magnets and something to do with the
firing of neutrinos had taken the place of fuel. If a
billionaire wanted to visit the Mars Hilton, all he did now
was take a seat on a large metallic platform as a cascade
of sparkling lights sealed him in from all sides. There he
had time to possibly watch a movie on his cell phone and by
the time the movie ended the lights would slow down and
he’d find all of his atoms on a similar metal platform,
only now in the lobby of the Five Star Martian Hotel with
its catered room service, whirlpool baths and their
specially confected Godiva mints left on the pillow.
All that aside, Captain Benedict’s old friends at NASA
hadn’t forgotten about him. They’d never lost sight of his
ship even if they couldn’t communicate with it. The common
consensus was that Benedict was alive. They had evidence of
the ship making the calculated maneuvers of a pilot, though
it would never be able to turn around and come back. In
space, an object in motion tends to remain in motion, etc.
etc. The initial blast and a series of increasing blasts
thereafter had sent the ship flying at roughly 100,000
miles an hour, about 1/3600th the speed of light…point
being, there was no reverse blast to take him home or even
slow him down.
A year ago, that all changed . The plan was developed by
students at the Puerto Rico Institute of Technology funded
by a grant from soft drink conglomerate Cepsi, eager to
combat the negative publicity of yet another lawsuit over
the cocaine content of their number one drink line. Using a
specifically modulated magnet powered by atmosphere static
and a bunch of other science that made Calvin’s eyes cross,
the students were able to, in effect, lasso the Nakagomi
Rocket.
It took only a year to bring the rocket back from a
distance that had taken it twenty years to reach. Now was
the day the thing would finally land and Calvin grabbed the
first interview, an exclusive.
The crowd surrounding the airfield was enormous; tens of
thousands of people hoping to get a view of the ship that
had flown into legend. Calvin’s hover-car buzzed the top of
the crowd, crossing the fence to where only the military,
NASA and Cepsi Executives were allowed.
He got out of the hover-car and scanned his face with a
make-up box to make sure no blemishes would be seen by the
billions watching at home. The thunderous applause and
cheering from the on-lookers shook the very ground as the
beaten, space-scarred, Nakagomi suddenly descended from
behind the gray cloud coverage.
“Hi, I’m Calvin Stevens and we’re live from the Frito-Lay
airfield in California where the Nakagomi Rocket is slowly
making its final descent after a twenty year flight.”
The plan was to pop the door, and if Benedict was alive
they’d cover him in a Cepsi t-shirt and do the interview.
If he was dead then a Cepsi representative would enter
before the cameras so he could spread empty Poca cans
around the ship to create the illusion that the Lone Wolf
drank their product. They’d already made the commercials,
the landing was a formality.
“Ladies, Gentlemen and Transgenders, we are moments away
from an historic occasion. Your grandchildren will want to
know where you were the day Earth’s greatest hero came
home.” Calvin tossed his head left and right as he spoke so
his manicured hair would bounce. Sure he was hamming it up
some but that’s how reporters got ahead. The rocket slowly
touched down, gently carried those last few feet by the
magnetic tractor beam.
This is it
Cal, this is where you become a
star.
Calvin took a
deep breath and put his hand on the outer hull door. A team
of young Cepsi interns stood ready with handfuls of Cepsi
merchandise and props. Calvin waited for the cue in his ear
piece and then pressed the keypad to open the door.
A thick, stale odor immediately fled from the door,
overpowering everyone close by and even causing a few of
the interns to lose their stomachs. Calvin wasn’t going to
get sick on camera, he was a professional. He was a
professional and he really, really needed this job.
“Captain Benedict?” he asked, fighting the smell to pop his
head into the darkened craft. He heard a rustling and
banging inside. “Oh my god, he’s alive. I hear him moving
in here!”
The entire world was at the edge of its seat. In the time
he’d been gone, Peter Benedict’s legend had far surpassed
his real accomplishments. He was now considered one of the
smartest men to ever live, one of the bravest too.
Apocryphal stories about his youth, winning football games
and mixed martial arts contests, saving orphaned kittens
and teaching the racist children not to pick on the new
black girl filled the books and animated videos that an
entire generation had now been raised on.
“There he is. Captain Benedict, it is my great honor on
behalf of the entire planet to welcome… Captain?” Calvin’s
tongue swelled in his mouth as Benedict stepped out of the
spaceship and into the light.
The crowd was understanding, for the most part. He’d been
living alone in a cramped spaceship for twenty years; you
don’t come out of that looking like a fashion model. His
hair was long, uncut for many years. He was naked too, with
unkempt body hair. Had it just been the hair and clothing
he probably would have been forgiven, but the mass of fecal
matter smeared all over, stuck in with hair, that wasn’t
something that elicited compassion.
“Ooogh! Oooooooooogh!” Benedict began screaming before
coughing out phlegm and blowing his nose using neither hand
nor tissue to catch the spray, just letting even more filth
find its way to his long beard.
“Captain?” Calvin needed to retake control of this
interview. He was working without a net, no one could have
foreseen such an undignified entrance from the captain.
“Ladies and gentleman the Captain has been away a long--”
Benedict defecated into his own hand and smushed it against
Calvin’s face, smearing it into his mouth, screaming
“Ooogh! Ooooooogh!”.
Around the world a billion people were laughing. Calvin’s
eyes watered as he ran from the rocket towards a
refreshment table filled with tiny cups of complementary
Poca, Diet Poca and the unpopular Hormone Free Poca. He had
to get the taste out of his mouth, it was running down his
throat and through his nostrils.
From out of the corner of his eye as he rinsed his mouth
out with cup after cup of Poca, he could see one of the
Cepsi executives break into a dead run at the team of
interns who were now trying to get Benedict to sit still
and quit throwing his waste long enough to put a “Drink
Poca” shirt on him.
“Don’t put that shirt on him!” the executive cried out,
almost collapsing from exhaustion.
“Calvin, Calvin this is the Network,” a stern voice in his
earpiece said. “We’re changing the format of this piece
right now. No more ‘Hero Returns.’ Now the story will be
‘Lunatic Driven Mad in Space.’ You’re out. Hector, can you
do the English telecast after your Spanish.”
A new voice entered the conversation in Calvin’s ear. “Si.”
Calvin removed the earpiece and his tie. The earpiece he
threw and the tie he used to wipe his face. He couldn’t be
mad at the situation, nor at Cepsi or the network or
Captain Benedict. Companies were a lot like Captain
Benedict, sociopathic elitists driven mad by their inborn
hatred of humanity.
Calvin wondered if they were all right about him. Maybe he
was just anti-corporation. Oh well, he figured, it was just
human nature, you fear that which wants to feed on you, to
suck you up into itself and put your natural energy to its
own purposes. He wondered if Pete Benedict had been insane
before a year ago. If being pulled through the universe
against his will, knowing he was being brought back to yet
again play the part of freak to the masses he so hated, had
driven him mad.
“At least you got twenty years,” Calvin said from too far
away for Benedict to hear him. He gave one quick salute to
the long-lost pilot who was being clumsily manhandled by
interns determined to create a good photo-op. This was
going to be history and they all knew it. The loss of
dignity is the price one is asked to pay for public
recognition; Calvin understood that now more then ever. He
looked around the airfield taking it all in before pushing
through the crowd, fighting against the stream to get out
of just one more circus.
Copyright
2009 by Ryan Priest