I must be quite frank with you on something. Something upon which the author of The Starchild had never touched based on: My own battle with drug addiction.
While I am going to tell you what happened with my brother Trell, first, I must tell you something about me. Something so personal and painful, I had completely shut it out of my mind.
In the world you live in, you have to constantly battle with all kinds of problems stemming from substance abuse. And it can take so many forms. Some of it more obvious than others.
For myself...? My world is a much more dangerous place. And it's not just the perps and thugs which I have to deal with on a monthly basis. There are days when I have to deal with the local drug runners, spacers, and e-dicts (those people who are so hopelessly addicted to the E-Net, that nothing can bring them around to the reality in which they live in).
When I walked in on Trell--to get him to come to dinner--I didn't know what kind of a deadly secret he had been keeping from both mom and me. And while I love my brother to pieces sometimes, his recent choice in snacks had me floored.
E-rations!
And not just the type which is made for the civilian sector of the planet, but ones that pilots like me were conditioned for!
And the fucking idiot had to eat one case after another--while almost starving himself to death doing it! I was furious!
But it also brought back fleeting memories of an earlier time--almost five years ago--when I had gone with Calis to a place called Rock Point. It was supposed to be a pilot's hangout/staging area.
But all it was, was a large mesa area full of sand, hazards, and plenty of rocky protrusions which had been sheltered so nicely
At least that's what Calis told me.
Here, he said, "Isis. This is where you will be testing your skills early on--in a Seacord T-5."
I was ten back then--so full of vim and vinegar--eager to prove myself as an apprentice pilot.
And that's where I met Snake Eyes.
The local drug runner for this area of Plaines Bluff. Of course, he didn't care who his customers were. To him, money was money.
(And if I had the ability to go back in time, I would've shot the fucking sleazeball for doing what he did to me that day.
It made me feel so horrible, dirty, and ashamed of myself, I still wanted to run away from home and hide myself from the world in general!)
Calis didn't introduce me to him--which is what I suspected pissed off Snake Eyes. Instead, we went straight to one of the racing coordinators for Rock Point and signed up for some training exercises on the old Seacord.
I did fairly well--for a beginner--which I suspected caught the attention of ol' Snake Eyes.
Of course--while I was being congratulated for a good start--Calis had only seperated from me for only a moment or two to get me something to drink.
One minute he was there, and the next...? He was gone.
Naturally, I didn't think too much of it. I was too much engrossed in the after-race adrenalish; the moment all pilots speak of when the world opens up and reveals itself to you in just a few fleeting seconds.
Where the open skies above and the whispering sands below come together in harmony and speak softly to you in a singular voice.
I remember thinking then: 'This is what I wanted to do.'
Become a legendary pilot in my own right.
I felt a tap on my shoulder then and turned--thinking it was Calis; coming back with my drink.
But it wasn't.
It was Snake Eyes.
The man's pasty oily sheen complexion reflected brightly in the hot desert sun--that much I can remember.
He handed me something--which I thought was a drink.
"Here." He sneered to me. "You need this."
Not knowing completely right from wrong, I took the proferred bottle.
And sipped.
Almost immediately, whatever was in the bottle hit my young system immediately. The alcohol I could taste, but there was something else, something...I could not identify. It had a bitter taste. Much like the aspirin you take to get rid of a headache.
Within a minute of ingesting, I started to feel weirded out. (To borrow a phrase.) The world about me spun lazily around. For awhile, I believed it to be just the heat finally getting to me, but it wasn't the heat.
It was what was inside the bottle!
"Stupid little girl." I heard Snake Eye's voice chide me hautily. "You should know better than to take something from complete strangers. Didn't your parents teach you anything?"
The world went nuts then; colors swirling around me.
Even Snake Eyes form started to distort, started to change. And that's when I really, really, really started to panic!
I remember screaming. Screaming because I was scared, screaming because I didn't know what was happening to me.
People were running towards me then, while Snake Eyes stood there and laughed his head off at my reaction.
"Good?" He asked me. "Here: Drink some more." And with that, he ripped the bottle out of my hand and then forced the rest of the drink down my throat.
I had no choice but to drink the concoction down on a reflexive level. I thought I was going to die...
***
I remember the trip back--hours later--after Snake Eyes had been arrested for assaulting a minor with an illegally-laced sports drink. (Some kind of LSD-type inhibitor with a shot of a Kaon-3 mental enhancer. The type which is used to condition oneself in the hard grip of vacuum.)
Calis was trying to apologize to me for had happened. The whole affair had left him deeply shaken and tramautized. Even to this day, I had never seen him like this.
All I know is that I told him it was, "Okay. I'm okay." But the old man wouldn't accept that as an answer from me.
In the end, it took me six months for the powerful drugs to run their course. I had the shakes and the "bloosies"--as my mother called them; reality-altering phantasms that only existed in the depths of my own consciousness.
And what I saw...?
Let's just say that I was a terrified little girl for some of those long six months. And the others-?
I just didn't want to talk about it--despite Calis's best efforts. I didn't want to relive the nightmares I saw.
I just didn't.
But seeing my brother the way he was...?
It just brought back all the pain, all the anguish. And everything that I had left dead and buried from so long ago. From my perspective anyways.
I wanted to hurt him--because all it did was resurrect ghosts from my own past. But hell or high water, I was going to teach the little vermin a lesson in humility.
Isis
