Over the 21st century, genetic engineering received a variety of criticisms.  In short, it endured four eras of development, including two "dark ages" and two periods of "renaissance." The first era was the disposal of late 20th century fears as the demand for healthy offspring, free of life threatening DNA, overrode the suspicions of trying to create the perfect race. Betimes, genetic counseling was commercialized by pioneering investors, making a billion dollar a year profit into a sociological norm. It became easily accessible and affordable. Not having your child screened was even brought to the Supreme Court as an act of child negligence. The proposal passed, and stockholders smiled. Genetic counseling had moved from the accusation of neo-fascism to capital gain to the right for a child's life, and now it was a law enforced by every industrialized nation.
    This was the first renaissance.
    By the mid 21st century, news hit the headlines of an underground movement attempting to breed a "physiologically aligned specimen." "It was a genetic fiasco Mary Shelly would have deja-voo witnessing," a New York Times reporter later wrote. The operation was created and run by brilliant engineers with a psychological profile far less appealing than their academic record. They were arrested, and their work was destroyed, but their behavior revived old fears in the public regarding genetic research. All this led to embarrassing Senate hearings, strict amendments that slowed progress, and cuts in all available funds.
    This was the first dark age.
    Eventually, time itself and the competitiveness of the Western world removed most, if not all, judicial chains on genetic research. Space exploration had been commercialized now. The same free market ingenuity that brought genetic counseling into everyday life was now making galactic travel the next cultural fad. Colonization on the moon and dozens of orbiting space stations still in construction meant many things to the human imagination, but only one thing to the economist: Jobs.
    Work in space was dangerous and difficult. It took NASA decades to train a single individual for the intellectual and physical challenges he or she was to face. Beyond the atmosphere of Earth, you had to be both the brainiac and the brawn, and not one or the other. You had to be fit, strong, and sharp witted. The more knowledge you possessed meant fewer mistakes. The more stamina you possessed meant a longer duration on the job and more work accomplished. Translated through the mentality of a businessman, that meant less money being spent and more profit to rake in for promotions and golf trips. In other words, time meant money, and the less time it took to train a person and have that person in space, the better it was. Therefore, these healthy, intellectual, outstanding... superior people were in high demand. Genetic engineering, without a doubt, answered that call quite well.
    This was the second renaissance.
    It seemed as if the sudden outgrowth of genetic engineering went unnoticed by society. Perhaps, people had been exposed to it, and accustomed to it, for so long that they felt little need to be concerned by it, anymore. "Besides," one space colony CEO was quoted as saying, "we are not trying to create a better race of people, but rather a better applicant for the job."
    And so the job was done. The influx, however, of genetically engineered people could not be isolated to just space colonization alone. As their population grew, they expanded from their original career field and began mingling with other societies back on Earth. This dramatically altered the competition in the job market, of course.
    Needless to say, genetically engineered people began to obtain rather prestigious positions in society because of their preordained advantages. Those who didn't have the biological enhancements began to complain. Soon, complaints led to protests, and protests led to persecution. Once again, the judicial system tried to intervene and solve the matter like they had solved every other problem in the past, but this matter eluded them. Too many unanswered--perhaps unanswerable--questions floated through every courtroom and judge's mind: Is it right to put limits on these engineered people? Are they even people? If so, is it not a violation of their rights to limit their freedom?
    The problem never solved. In fact, the genetically engineered seemed to always have the law on their side. They were so good at everything else, being a lawyer or a judge was just another area of expertise. As well, since the problem never solved, eventually persecution between the two factions led to an abrupt separation within society itself. They each had a name for the other, many names in fact, but two were the most popular, coining a term used long ago: the Aligned and the Unaligned.
    Everything, but war occurred, and even that wasn't far off. The genetically engineered, the Aligned, had used their superior abilities to gain everything, but acceptance. Apparently, it took more than engineered intelligence to overcome an ancient human instinct: preservation of the species. In fact, the Unaligned, began to display their inferior genetics like badges of authenticity. They considered themselves pure because they were not engineered. The Aligned, on the other hand, considered themselves superior because of their engineered characteristics. It was turbulent, if not dangerous, circular reasoning.
    Then a plague hit. At first, it only afflicted the third world nations, but easily found new victims in an Age where distance was diminished by the push of a button. The Earth was indeed a small world with 21st century transportation and communication. The disease used this advanced system as a futuristic railway where human hosts played the railcars. People died alarmingly fast, and at times, whole cities had to be evacuated. There was no cure to be found soon enough; no antidote invented that could free the suffering. As well, no one suffered more from this mysterious disease than the Aligned.
    The genetically engineered had a fatal flaw to them. Yes, maybe they were superior to others because of their designed nature, but as the same space economists that prompted their creation would say, it brought them an opportunity cost. The Aligned had to sacrifice diversity for superior DNA. In fact, it was obviously true. Most of them looked alike, talked much alike, and acted almost predictably. They were good at what they did, but they were more or less a mass of clones than unique individuals. Whatever the disease was that had caused the plague on Earth, the Aligned had not the right cocktail of genes to fight it. And because of their lack of diversity, if one died that meant they all would die.
    Ironically, the plague had accomplished for the Unaligned what the judicial system could not find the justice to do: "ship 'em back home." The Aligned could not stay on Earth with the risk of being afflicted by the deadly disease, so they fled to the space colonies and stations sifting through the cold void above. They claimed it all as their own, sometimes legally and honestly and sometimes violently. They did whatever they could to survive as a species and shunned all but supplies, hoping someday a cure could be found that would free them of their predicament.
    This was the second dark age...
 

     April 30, 2099...
 
 

    "Okay, okay," Harold cut in. "Here's a good one: A man and his wife decide they aren't making enough money, so the man says to his wife, 'Honey, go out and sell your body, so we can have some extra cash.'"
    Barnes looked across the room at the other technicians, seeing his own boredom in their rolling eyes.
    Harold remained absorbed in the data pad at his lap and oblivious to the disinterest in his joke.
    "She says, 'Okay dear,'" he told on with a smirk, "and then heads out the door in a tight skirt and high heels. The following morning she comes home, and her husband asks her how much she made."
    One of the technicians left down the hall. Barnes amused himself with a subtle thought: Take me with you!
    "She tells him she made two hundred dollars and two cents," Harold adds, almost ready to burst. "Then-then he asks, 'Who gave you the two cents?'"
    Barnes scratched his mustache and then took a sip at his coffee. Suddenly, the brew seemed alot colder and less stimulating than it was a minute ago.
    "And she says..." Harold struggled to say over a spasm of giggles. His skinny body bobbed with each chuckle. "And she says, 'Everyone!'"
    Finally, he collapsed against the table and exploded with laughter.
    The technicians rolled their eyes some more, and then turned to leave as the call over the intercom asked for their assistance in a separate laboratory.
    Barnes smiled. He had to admit that one was funny.
    Harold slipped from the table and fell to his knees. "Oh, God, that was great!" he exclaimed with tears running from his eyes. More of his laughter split the air like a chain saw in a synagogue.
    Amused more by his friend's reaction to the joke than the joke itself, Barnes shook his head as his smile turned into a voluptuous grin.
    "Shit!" Harold said. "I haven't laughed that hard since the Aligned flew their perfect asses back into space."
    Barnes lost his smile. The statement reminded him of his duties, and he strolled over to the gauges on the east wall, recording their readings on a palm sized computer. "Relax, will ya?" he spoke back to his friend.
    "Yeah, okay," Harold answered. He was sitting back up now. "How's the meter reading?"
    "Fine," Barnes responded. His voice was full of tired apathy as he trudged to another side of the room to check more gauges. "Pump fifty is three drips below norm, but I think she'll hang."
    Harold's high from the joke had worn off. He now shifted to a more mellow mood, and his mind's eye trailed into a less positive domain of thought. "You know what I think, Barn?" he asked not really expecting an answer.
    He didn't get one.
    "I think--"
    "I know what you think," Barnes interrupted, never taking his eyes away from the metered gauges. "You tell me what you think every day. I wouldn't mind it half the time, but the problem is you think the same shit all the time."
    Harold looked down at his right arm and studied it. He clenched a fist and watched his hand curl and tighten without the slightest muscle spasm. "Fucking enhancements," he murmured.
    Barnes passed his friend a glance. "Weather screwing with your implant, again?" he asked.
    "Nah," Harold answered, gritting his teeth. "More like my implant is screwing with me. I should've gone for broke and got the upgrade."
    Barnes smiled. He knew no one who worked alongside him had the salary to pay for a state-of-the-art bio alteration.
    "If we all went on strike now," Harold blabbered on almost reading his friend's thoughts, "we could raise our salaries and stop the shipments to those surreal bastards in space."
    It was the same story every day. "This company only does what it has to do," Barnes replied with the same reply he always gave. "I don't like the super freaks anymore than you, but if our nation says we got to feed the dragon in the cave, we feed the dragon in the cave. It doesn't matter if that dragon could burn us alive and shit on our entrails when it gets a chance to escape. We just do what we're told. We get our paycheck, and we shut up."
    "Let the gauges rise and blow... When the supply ships lose their fuel, when the pipelines burst and peel... Let the gauges rise and flow, until the Aligned die above and fall below... In a fiery tail."
    Barnes gave Harold a hard glare. He knew that song well from back during the early years of the plague. After the disease had sent the Aligned fleeing into space, a variety of fanatical groups attempted to cut them off from the supply line. If that wasn't enough, some even tried rallying enough supporters to just go to war with the Aligned and kill them off.
    Even then, Barnes didn't like the song. Fanaticism was something for the history books. It didn't belong in the future where ignorance was supposed to be lost to an age of open-minded tolerance.
    He took his sight away from the computer in his hand and looked out the window nearby. He let his gaze peer into the blue above as if he could actually see the lonesome stations orbiting beyond the atmosphere. He thought to himself how much he didn't like the Aligned anymore then Harold. He had lost a well paying job many years ago to an Aligned, and he half believed some of the stories that said the plague was brought onto the Earth on purpose to get rid of them. It didn't matter, though. Unlike his friend, he held compassion even for his enemies.  He didn't believe in starving a whole species to death. Maybe the Aligned were people and maybe they weren't, but goddamn it if they didn't have feelings and possibly a soul, too!
    "Oh, I almost forgot," Harold said.
    Besides, the plague was the real enemy now.
    "Operations wants you upstairs at 1400 hours," Harold added.
    "Huh?" Barnes asked, breaking free from his inner thoughts.
    "Operations..." Harold repeated.
    Barnes looked at the time on the computer in his hand. It was 1:45.
    "Shit, Harold!" he yelled as he dropped the computer on a table and raced towards the door.
    Harold watched his friend take off, noticing the disgust on Barnes' face quite well in the lab's dim lighting.
    "Well, sorry. They told me to pass on the message, while I was ordering lunch today. It's hard for me to remember things on an empty stomach!"
 
 

    "Barnes!" Jefferson called out at the sight of his employee and friend of ten years. The skinny black man gestured towards the empty seat next to him.
    Barnes let the door shut behind him and walked across the cavernous meeting room towards the oval business table. Immediately, Barnes eyes focused on the strange female sitting across from Jefferson. She was a brunette. A black corporate uniform complete with insignias above an assertive display of ivory cleavage told him that she was not here just to chat and have coffee. The leather brief case spilling out data disks and the laptop open for business also alerted Barnes to a serious exchange.
    "Have a seat, dummy," Jefferson voiced.
    Barnes seated himself as the woman finally met his curious stare. Her eyes were kind in their blue luster. Perhaps, even teasing with interest if Barnes had the time or opportunity to find out.
    "Barnes," Jefferson spoke up, "this is Cleo Anderson, vice secretary of ARISO."
    "ARISO?," Barnes asked not taking his eyes away from the woman.
    "Cleo, this is Barnes," Jefferson finished, "our top liquid fuels operator here in the company."
    A tilted smile now joined her pleasing sight. "Pleased to meet you, Barnes," she said.
    "ARISO is a space construction firm isn't it?" Barnes asked.
    "Not quite," Cleo answered. "It's more of a humanitarian organization." Her gaze pulled away to something on the laptop. She pushed a few buttons and said, "Intergalactic rights and safety was a primary interest before the plague." Then she looked back. "But, of course, change in times have caused changes in interests."
    "Which brings you here," Jefferson added. "ARISO is the primary shareholder for this company, and that grants them certain privileges. One of which is to ask favors of our employees. Especially, employees with rusty talents."
    Barnes looked at his boss. "I'm not getting you, sir."
    "You're familiar with the AL-46 cargo carrier?" Cleo asked.
    Barnes blinked a few times. "Um, yeah," he replied. "I flew them for an aeronautic supply depot back in the 80s."
    "And you were trained by NASA executives and later promoted to CO of human factors astrophysics in San Francisco, California?" Cleo inquired further.
    "I wish," Barnes answered.
    Cleo lifted an eyebrow. "I beg your pardon?" she asked.
    "I was supervisor of pilot training for an intergalactic supply depot," Barnes replied. "I think NASA partially owned the frickin' place, but I don't ever remember them blessing me with their insiders."
    Suddenly the room went quiet. Jefferson and Ms. Anderson shared an enigmatic look.
    "Our file system isn't the best," Jefferson finally admitted. "Sometimes a few don't get updated properly."
    Cleo frowned.
    "What is this all about, anyway?" Barnes felt forced to ask.
    Cleo responded before Jefferson could open his mouth. "It's really only a need to know basis sort of thing," Cleo answered. "I originally thought you were perfect for the job, but due to unforeseen circumstances..." She passed a quick glance at Jefferson. "It doesn't really matter," she admitted. "I don't have time for another applicant search."
    Jefferson sunk in his seat.
    "Huh?" Barnes threw out.
    Cleo got to the point. "Do you remember Delvue Seven?" she asked.
    "The moon base?" Barnes replied.
    "Yes," Cleo answered. "As everyone knows today, the Aligned claim it. In fact, they have a very large colony up there. Everything was going fine, until yesterday."
    "What happened?"
    "A distress call," Cleo replied. "It was a code red distress signal, the highest level rating, which usually means anything from biosphere hull breach to reactor explosions. Attempts were made by the other Aligned to contact the base members, but they got no response."
    "Code red, huh?" Barnes spoke as he brooded on the thought. He looked at Cleo and could see the same suspicion behind those blue eyes.
    "No," Cleo replied, reading Barnes' mind and refuting what she saw. "The virus didn't get them. Not even the plague works so fast that a simple communication can't be made."
    "So what then?"
    Jefferson finally broke his silence. "That's what you're going to find out."
    Barnes looked at his boss who looked at him with dead seriousness. "An AL-46 is sending in a search crew, and you need a pilot?" Barnes asked already knowing the answer.
    Cleo's business talents came out in full. "Even the closest orbiting space station isn't as close as an Earth bound AL-46. Especially, where we are on the globe," she responded. "You have the know how. We have the technology. Fly down there, drop off your cargo, pick up your cargo when the job is done, and fly back to get your due pay."
    "Which is?" Barnes inquired.
    Cleo typed away on her laptop and then turned it around for everyone to see.
    Barnes' eyes grew huge, and he looked to Jefferson who still carried that serious visage.
    "Time is ticking," Cleo pushed. "People are probably dying."
    Barnes took a deep breath. "Where's the ship?" he asked.
 
 

    "Time is humankind's worst enemy," Cleo explained as she showed Barnes his way to the ship he would be flying. "It's especially true when you are talking about the quality of a person's abilities."
    Barnes smirked. "Maybe so, but some things are stainless steel against the rust of time," he answered coyly.
    Cleo returned his smile, and they shared a momentous eye kiss. She liked his quick witted, if not slightly adolescent, humor, and found their conversations abnormally relaxed. "So some talents never get old, huh?" she asked, holding back the urge to laugh. "No matter how long they're left unused?" She then looked down at his crotch.
    Barnes chuckled. "I update my software regularly," he joked.
    "That can be a pretty messy business," Cleo responded, now laughing herself.
    Barnes liked the way she laughed. Seeing such a beautiful woman enjoy herself was like watching a Double Mint Gum commercial. "Ok-ok," he replied. "Why do I feel like I'm back in junior high?"
    Cleo regained herself and reduced her amusement to a timid smile. "Sometimes it's nice to feel like a kid again," she responded.
    Barnes agreed. "Tell me, Cleo," he asked, going back to that subtle eye kiss between them. "Are you the woman of my dreams or the sister I never had?"
    "Hmmm," Cleo played along. "Can I be both?" she asked, jokingly.
    "Only if we live in Arkansas," Barnes replied.
    The two practically collapsed on each other with laughter.
    "Barnes, baby!" a voice suddenly shouted from down the hall.
    Barnes and Cleo broke away from their shared laughter to see who the third party was. Down the hall they could see a tall white male covered in engine oil and wearing a maintenance workers' uniform.
    "I'm sorry..." Barnes admitted to the man.
    "I'll give ya a hint," Desmond answered. "I'm giving her all she's got, captain! If I give her anymore, she'll BLOW!" he said with a fake Scottish accent, mimicking Scotty on the old Star Trek shows.
    "Des?" Barnes asked. Only one person could ever fake Scottish like that.
    "Has been and always will be, old friend," Desmond answered.
    The two shook hands. Dirty grease spread all over Barnes' hand, but he seemed oblivious to it.
    "Holy shit!" Barnes said still shaking his friend's hand. "What has it been? Seven, eight, maybe ten years?"
    "Try fifteen," Desmond replied.
    "Fif--" Barnes tried to repeat, but he cut himself short with a sudden thought: it had been fifteen years!
    "Hah!" Desmond shouted out, and he slapped Barnes on the shoulder. "Were you gonna show this old fly boy to the Neptune, ma'am?" he asked Cleo.
    "Yes, I was," Cleo replied.
    "Mind if I take over?" Desmond asked.
    Cleo looked at Barnes who still seemed befuddled by the re-acquaintance with his friend. "Don't mind at all," she answered.
    Finally, Barnes snapped back to reality and looked over to Cleo.
    "I'll see you again when you leave tonight," Cleo told Barnes. They shared a third and final flirtatious glance, and she walked away down the hall.
    Desmond cleared his throat. "Did I--"
    "No," Barnes interrupted his friend, knowing what he was gonna ask.
    "I mean, if I did..." Desmond went on, anyway, feeling somewhat guilty about his timing.
    Barnes shook his head and chuckled. "No-no," he said again. "Come on. We've got alot of catching up to do."
    "Right," Desmond replied, and the two headed for the nearest port: port 11-B.
 
 

    "They're always modifying these fuckers," Desmond scorned. "You think the pilots have a hard time keeping up..." He shook his head and spit. "We maintenance guys have to practically have a blueprint to our assholes just to take a shit, anymore."
    Barnes continued to listen as he looked the carrier over. It was a good sized ship, and had a wing span twice the length of the body. Of course, the wings retracted on take off and on atmosphere penetrations, and the tail folded out against the top of the hull. Still, though... big ship... and a tough mother, too. There was no wonder to why they stayed in circulation for so long, while other models came and went like kleenex in a bathroom without toilet paper.
     Desmond followed his friend along the rear of the ship. "Hmmm," he murmured.
    "What?" Barnes asked.
    "No gold ribbon on the fourth dip stick," came the reply.
    "Huh?" Barnes said, admitting his confusion. But it quickly struck him what his greasy friend meant. "Yeah, I know," Barnes said, looking his ring finger over and seeing only a naked knuckle. "You think I'm the kind of guy that would flirt with a woman like Cleo if I were still married?"
    Desmond only smiled, but it looked more like a strip of red licorice on a bowl of dirt.
    "Ok, spiffy," Barnes confessed. "Maybe I am, but it's over. Trust me. It was over five years ago."
    Desmond kept smiling.
    Barnes rolled his eyes. "Don't say it!" he warned half mockingly.
    "Me?" Desmond joked. "I wouldn't think of it. I wouldn't think of saying I told youuuu sooooo... Hahahaha!"
    Barnes shook his head. "Yeah, ok," he replied.
    The two of them came around to the ramp and went into the cargo hold of the Neptune Six. Desmond kept giggling occasionally, while Barnes ignored him.
    "So how is the litter back on your ranch?" Barnes finally asked almost hoping for bad news to play on.
    Desmond's humor vanished, and he was quiet at first. "Difficult," he answered.
    Barnes caught the discontent in that short reply with relative ease. "Is it the wife or the kids? How many kids you got now, anyway?" he asked.
    "Three," Desmond gave in short answer. "Two are still in secondary education, and a third is hitting the higher education books."
    "Law? Science? Psychology?"
    "Philosophy," Desmond answered. "The kid wants to be another Socrates, I guess. But the kids aren't the problem, and the wife is...well..."
    Barnes looked at his friend, not liking at all the suspense in those words.
    "Sick," Desmond admitted.
    "Oh, sweet Jesus," Barnes replied, hearing what he feared.
    Desmond scooted down and seated himself against a utility box. "The fucking plague is torturing her," he said.
    Barnes could almost sense tears in each syllable.
    "First were the usual symptoms," Desmond tried to continue. "Oh, she had the bronchitis and the rashes, but I kept saying to myself it wasn't the worse. I kept saying it was just an allergy or maybe a case of the flu. Then the bleeding started, and I couldn't ignore my fears any longer. I took her to the doctors. They quarantined her and shot her up with treatment cocktails that were almost as bad as the goddamn disease, itself.
    "From that point on the kids and I could only visit her in a plastic space suit, looking at her boiled face through a sheet of Plexiglas. Many times I considered just pulling the plug, but I kept thinking that soon a cure would be found. I mean, shit, everyday you read about some miracle in the labs with those nerdy researchers and their white rats. I figured hope was just around the corner. All I had to do was wait.
    "But things just got worse. The disease fucked up her lungs so bad that the doctors had to give her artificials. Eventually they had to remove her spleen because the shit had contaminated her blood so bad. I said, 'Honey, if you want to die just say you want to die. I'll tell the doctors to let you go. Just tell me and all this pain can stop'...
    "But damn it if she didn't have a will to live... to see me... to see the kids... to spend another day hoping..."
    Desmond couldn't continue. He curled down into his hands and sobbed lightly.
    Barnes wanted to comfort his friend, but felt inadequate for such a thing and even lost for words.
    Suddenly, Desmond shifted away from his sorrow and into a completely different frame of mind, almost catching his friend off guard. "You really think this trip to Delvue Seven is a rescue operation?" he asked with blood shot eyes.
    Barnes tried to think if he had missed something. "It's more of an attempt to re-establish contact than a search and rescue," he replied.
    Desmond shook his head. "You haven't been reading the news have you?" he asked.
    Barnes just looked at him. It was true. He had been too busy these last few weeks to surf the daily paper on his palm PC.
    "Delvue Seven was a research lab before the Aligned assumed control over it," Desmond explained. He then got back on his feet and blew his nose into a handkerchief that he had retrieved from his back pocket.
    "So?" Barnes replied.
    Desmond put the handkerchief back in his pocket. "You ain't going there to say 'Hey, what's the problem folks?'" he said. "You're going there to keep the status quo, and the Department of Defense is your baggage on this special forces mission."
    "You're freakin' me out, Des," Barnes confessed.
    "Oh, you ain't gonna be half as freaked now as you will be when you land on that ball of dust up there," Desmond replied. "First, the headlines report of 'odd and questionable activity' on the old base. Then the press starts getting a flood of conspiracies involving lost supply ships, missing military personnel, and suddenly there just so happens to be a few medical specialists with a few security clearances."
    "So what are you saying, Des?" Barnes had to ask. "Are you saying the United States government thinks the Aligned have found a cure for the plague?"
    "That, my friend," Desmond answered with stern clarity, "is exactly what I mean. It's not impossible. They're a genetically engineered race, for God's sake."
    "So why the sudden communication loss?" Barnes asked. "We blow 'em up?"
    "Maybe," Desmond answered. "Maybe we did, and this little trip of yours is just to make sure there aren't any survivors."
    "It doesn't make sense, Des."
    "It," Desmond quickly made clear, "makes perfect sense. If the Aligned get a hold of a cure, think of what will happen. We'll be right back to persecution and competition like we were fifteen to twenty years ago. People will lose their jobs, the threat of war will be all the more real, and the president will lose his precious re-election votes. Interests are at stake, in other words, Barnes. Our government would rather have sick, suffering people like my wife die than change the status quo."
    "That's insane," Barnes replied, feeling very insecure all of a sudden.
    "That's politics," Desmond countered.
    Barnes struggled for something that could rebuild his sense of security. "Only one problem, though," he said, thinking he might have found something. "This whole operation is run by ARISO. It's a humanitarian organization, for crying out loud. Why would a humanitarian organization work with the Department of Defense. It doesn't make any sense. In fact, it's ludicrous."
    Desmond shrugged. "Since when did a humanitarian organization use an AL-46 for carrying a simple research team?" he asked. He then scratched his chin and studied the ship they were in. "Let's see, that's about 1,000 pounds of cargo for a ship that is designed to carry 100,000 cubic tons of shipment. Hmmmm. I may not be a mathematician, but I'll say your little party either likes their space or they plan to fill it with something more than just walkie-talkies and cans of Spaghetti O's."
    Barnes began to feel a headache coming on. "I still don't buy it," he said with a sigh.
    Desmond walked over to the cockpit. "You wanna finish the tour?" he asked as if he began to realize the whole conversation was a waste of breath.
    "Please," Barnes both answered and pleaded.
 
 

    Barnes didn't even get a chance to meet his passengers. He spent so long in the cockpit, getting the systems checked and keeping tabs with the refueler, that everything was already loaded by the time he was done. Plus, he was reviewing the hardware in the cockpit to refresh his memory and mentally prepare himself for the flight. Piloting an AL-46 was not like driving a Buick. It took years of training to overcome escape velocity disorientation and master zero gravity maneuverability. You also had to consider the most difficult responsibility of all intergalactic pilots: landing the ship. Even 20th century passenger liner cadets struggled with putting their jet back on solid ground. In space, with the toying effect of zero to light gravity, you could land a craft onto a planet's surface slowly like a sinker dropping to the bottom of a lake bed, or you could crash and burn. All it took was a slight miscalculation to have your own private armageddon.
    Barnes was radioed for a systems check. He reported everything A-OK and then waited for take off clearance.
    "Okay, Barnes, old pal," Desmond could be heard on the other end of the receiver.
    "Desmond?" Barnes asked a bit surprised.
    "I've been here long enough to sit in for any job," Desmond joked. "Besides, I want to say good-bye. I have to make it quick, though. I'm supposed to cover a fellow mechanic's lunch break."
    Barnes smiled as he started the propulsion engines. "It was good to see ya again, Des," he said.
    "Yeah," Desmond replied, "well, I don't want a long good-bye, so here it goes..."
    Barnes checked the engine temperature. It was good.
    "Five," Desmond spoke through the receiver.
    The first three exit gates opened.
    "Four."
    Barnes started the magnetic lifters, and the ship hovered above the floor of the bay.
    "Three."
    The last three exit gates opened, and brilliant sunlight showered the chamber and the cockpit of the ship.
    "Two."
    Barnes set his hand on the take off lever and waited. His mind raced with a thousand final thoughts.
    "Get the hell out of here, you bum," Desmond finally said, ending the countdown.
    "Until next time, old chum," Barnes replied, and he shifted the lever forward. The ship's propulsion engines vomited a cataclysm of heat and clear energy as the vessel shot through the open exit gates like a bullet catapulting from the barrel of a gun. Inside the cockpit, Barnes sunk in his seat, but was amazed to discover absolutely no reverberations. It was the cleanest take off he had ever experienced on an AL-46 or any ship for that matter.
    In a manner of seconds, the sunlit clouds of a setting sun surrounded the large ship. Droplets of vapor decorated the view port in a sparkling scatter. Then, gradually, the white brilliance of the clouds was replaced by a deep orange sky, hiding faint embers of the brightest stars. Ten seconds later, the atmosphere was abandoned, and the setting sun could be seen on the edge of the rotating Earth. Billions of stars, with the flare of a distant sunlit Jupiter, occupied what the blue home planet did not.
    Barnes took a moment to capture the beauty. He had forgotten how gorgeous space could be, and the experience rekindled an old spirituality within him. It had been too many years since he escaped the comfort of his rock soil home and entered the womb of the Heavens. For Barnes, it was never space. The Greeks were right all along: it was the Heavens through and through.
    The whole mission was ironic. He had lost his favored intergalactic job to a race of genetically engineered people. Now, he was momentarily back, but only to help the very same people that caused him to lose all he had worked for and earned in the first place. Maybe this little sojourn would win him back his place in pilot country.
    Which reminded him...
    There it was.
    "Neptune Six," someone radioed over the receiver. It wasn't Desmond's voice, but instead the words of some routine traffic controller. "Any problems on the planetary exit?"
    "Negative," Barnes answered. "Everything went great. I have the moon in sight now. I'll radio you when I get there."
    "Affirmative, Neptune Six," the reply came. "We'll hear from you then."
    "Ten four," Barnes copied. He then piloted the ship towards its pale, cratered destination.
 
 
 
 
     "Shit!" Barnes shouted as the craft jolted. The top side hover bursts for landing gave him more force than he had anticipated. Quickly, he reached for the rear engine switches as the surface of the moon grew larger and larger outside the view port. Sweat began to bead on his forehead, and he made a subconscious hope to God that there was enough battery power to start what he needed and still maintain life support.
    "Shit! Shit! Shit!" Barnes screamed. There were too many damn switches, and he knew that by the time the ship did what he wanted it to do the vessel would already be one second away from debris on the desert moon. He had to think of something.
    Almost instinctively, Barnes reached over and put all the ship's systems on stall. As he watched, the vessel went dark and paused about ten to fifteen feet away from the ridge of a dark crater. He could feel himself lifting out of his seat from the loss of artificial gravity, and only then did he wonder how his crew in back were handling the ride. Then, slowly, he sank back down, and with him so did the ship as it plumped softly into the moon's dusty surface. About that time, the systems restarted and the artificial gravity kicked back in. Lights in the cockpit frightened away the shadow of space and the hum of warm, re-awakened engines ended the momentary stillness.
    Barnes checked all the gauges, but it appeared no damage occurred during the rather abrupt landing. The next concern for him was his crew. "Everything all right back there?" he spoke aloud as he pressed an intercom switch on the side of his helmet.
    "You're lucky I don't--" a voice answered back, but it was cut off by someone else wishing to speak.
    "We're fine," the other person said. "Now keep yourself busy for awhile."
    That last voice sounded muffled. Barnes wondered if maybe the brief loss in power might have affected some of the communication wiring. Something else nagged him, too. Although the words of that last crew member were hard to hear, he could swear he recognized something. "Are you sure?" he asked. "Do you need any help unloading?"
    At that moment, Barnes jumped as something hard and metallic hit against the cockpit door.
    "We're fine," the same person repeated. Then a hollow 'click' sounded as the intercom was shut off.
    Barnes brooded for a bit. The idea of just sitting in the cockpit like some kind of space cab driver didn't appeal to him. He wanted to be in back helping out the crew or checking the hull of the ship for any abrasions. This sitting and waiting was bullshit!
    Lifting from his seat, Barnes walked over to the door and pressed his ear against it. He could hear alot of commotion as the equipment the crew brought was being unloaded, but although he knew they were talking, he couldn't make any of their words out. Next, he tried the view port. He looked out to see an empty, pale landscape wrinkled with ivory dunes and pocketed with dark craters. Squeezing himself onto the dashboard, he could catch the edge of the base, Delvue Seven.
    "I guess I landed closer than I had thought," Barnes told himself. From what he could see of the lonesome place, it was intact and appeared all right. Apparently, he thought, our Department of Defense hadn't blown it up. "Frickin' Desmond," he said as he shook his head.
    Jesus! He had only been in the cockpit alone for ten minutes and already he was talking to himself! I got to get out of here, Barnes reasoned with himself. He then reached for the door handle, but hesitated as his conscience reminded him of what Cleo had said: Do what you're told.
    That's when Barnes noticed it was quiet now on the other side of the door. Apparently, the crew had finished unloading their equipment and had headed for the moon base. He looked over at the exit monitors on the pilot's meter arrays. Sure enough, all outer doors had been sealed. Plus, too, the weight of the ship had dropped considerably, according to the cargo hold
indicator.
    Barnes turned the door handle... "What the fu--" he said as the door itself wouldn't budge. He pushed and eventually slammed his body against it, but it wouldn't waver the slightest inch. First, he thought maybe a storage crate or a utility box was set in front of the door, but scratched that theory when he pounded on the door's center... It made a hard, dull thud, suggesting that something was sealed across the width of the exit. Something like a lock.
    But why? he thought.
    Barnes didn't have the patience for mysteries, right now. He opened a storage locker nearby and pulled out a pilots' space walk suit. After dressing himself in it, he reached for an I-wrench and unscrewed a maintenance panel in the floor of the cockpit. Immediately, the oxygen atmosphere was sucked out as the panel was removed.
    In a matter of a few minutes, Barnes was touching down on martian soil. The only sound he could hear was his own breathing through the helmet's apparatus, and in time, the only thing he could see was naked, unadulterated alien landscape. His conscience still plagued him with Cleo's subtle warning and compassionate suggestion: Do what you're told.
    Heading for the only destination he knew, Barnes trekked the lonely dunes. He thought to himself how much those dunes resembled the color of chiseled bone, and shortly thereafter, he wondered why he chose such a morbid analogy.
 
 

    The path of his mysterious crew was easy enough to follow. In the eternal stillness of the moon's surface, Barnes could see a centipede of boot prints leading up to the Delvue Seven. He could also see something else. There was a strange linear pattern in the moon dust that was divided into a series of irregular segments. The only other time he had ever seen anything leave a pattern like that was from his high school years when he used to drive a snowmobile for a ski resort. Shrugging it off, he assumed it was a path left by a loader carrying large amounts of food or medical supplies.
    Reaching the first entrance to the moon base, Barnes finally asked himself what excuse he would use for leaving the ship. Only then did he consider the consequences of his actions. He could get into serious trouble for disobeying the wishes of his crew, and he could probably blow the chance to re-establish himself as a full time carrier pilot. If it wasn't for his burning curiosity, he would have turned right around and sat back in the cockpit.
    Fuck the excuses, Barnes thought. He would figure them out as he went along. He then pressed the access button that opened the door and entered the decontamination chamber on the other side. One phrase replaced the monotony of Cleo's warning as the chamber sprayed his suit with some kind of sterilization fluid: curiosity killed the cat and it was satisfaction that brought him back.
    The spraying stopped, and Barnes began removing his space suit. He noticed that the floor of the chamber was littered with other suits that displayed the Neptune Six logo. In fact, they were scattered about like their occupants were in a tremendous hurry to get out of them. One space helmet had its front smashed in. Upon closer look, the same track mark that lay imprinted in the martian soil outside could be seen on the plastic fragments of the helmet's visor.
    Curiosity killed the cat...
    "Oh shut up," Barnes told himself.
    Impatient now, he flipped the mechanism that opened the thick doors between the decontamination chamber and the first level of the base. The gears to the door roared to life, and stale air swished in from the maw appearing before him. On the other side, Barnes could see a dark hallway branching off to the left and the right. It was so dark, in fact, that the only illumination was what came from the spinning, yellow police light in the decontam. room.
    The smell was awful. That was the first thing Barnes noticed after the door opened. It was a terrible reeking odor like something had...
    Barnes shook his head. No, he thought.
    Curiosity--
    "Arrr!" he growled. "Filters," he told himself. "They haven't changed the air filters in awhile. I mean, why would you if re-establishing contact and getting rescued were more important, right?"
    Only the cold, barren hallway answered him as more of that stench filled Barnes' nostrils.
    "Maybe the plague had hit here," he wondered, finally acknowledging that the smell may in fact be that of the dead. Barnes had never personally been around someone who was dying from infection by the deadly Earth virus, but he was smart enough to figure out a person doesn't smell anything like caramel popcorn who has boils and bleeding pores.
    He thought of Desmond's wife.
    "Jesus," Barnes asked himself, "what the hell is going on here? Where is everybody?" He knew his presence in the base should have sent Christmas lights off in the security office... but there was nobody... not a goddamn thing.
    Except that smell.
    Barnes quickly stepped out into the hall before that curiosity killed the cat shit started up again in his head. He looked down both ends, but could still see only darkness staring back at him. He walked a little ways to his right. The smell seemed stronger that way, but he wasn't sure if that necessarily justified that direction as the best choice for exploration.
    Fuck it.
    Using his hands as his eyes now, Barnes strolled down the hall. His breathing was loud. Too loud, in fact. The only other sound was the distant rumbling of an air conditioning unit on the fritz. At least, he assumed that's what it was.
    He noticed he was sweating now. He kept thinking that he would find his foot bumping into a corpse, or some plagued ridden lunatic would jump out and grab him in the darkness. He could just imagine the poor creature's bloody form collapsing against him as it tried to speak for the mercy of death through a guttered voice clogged with thick vomit and oozing throat
sores.
    STOP IT! he screamed at himself.
    It was then that Barnes discovered a closed door at the end of the hall. He searched around for a switch, but hesitated once he found it. He wanted to prepare himself for whatever awaited him on the other side. The stench was overbearing now. A vent must have been above the door because the smell was emanating from up there like an irresponsible demon had left the gate of Hell itself open.
    He flipped the switch.
    The door quickly slid apart, and Barnes repelled at what he saw. The scene had far exceeded any morbid image he could have conjured up in his own mind. As he stared into the faintly lit chamber on the other side, his sight scanned a floor littered with body parts and intestines. The walls and ceiling were also splattered with blood, one light fixture so consumed by the crimson sap that it made a clear 'spat' on the floor with each stringing drip.
    "Lord God in heaven!" he exclaimed, and his voice echoed off the silent walls like a blasphemy in the house of the Antichrist.
    Regaining his composure, Barnes took a closer look at the carnage. He noticed that there were weapons strewn about with the mutilated bodies. Some of the blood covered semi-automatics still claimed its owner's severed hand on the trigger, and Barnes recoiled at the horrid discovery. Looking closer at the walls, he could also see bullet holes beyond the censorship of skull fragments and grey matter. And there was something else: a tattered machine. With twisted machine gun barrels and a smashed RPG, it looked like the robot was once some kind of an assassin droid. He also looked down at what the machine used for mobility... a tank track.
    "Oh, sweet Jesus!" Barnes shouted once he realized what he was seeing: This was his crew.
    Suddenly, from the hall he had come from, Barnes could hear something moving. In the darkness he couldn't tell what it was, but it sounded big, pissed, and dangerous. Practically shitting his pants, he rushed over and shut the door, but failed to lock it upon realizing he needed a security code to do it. He thinked fast. On the other side of the room he could see a stairwell ascending up to another door. He raced over there, hurried up the stairs, opened the door, and rushed into the room on the other side just as... as... that thing entered the chamber behind him.
    Barnes found a light switch and flipped it, but the fixtures must have been busted, or perhaps the power was disconnected. Fortunately, the room had a door that didn't require a security code to lock it. That fact, and considering the limited space available around him, Barnes assumed he had entered a storage facility of some kind. Once his eyes adjusted, crates and shelves of utilities could vaguely be seen.
    Then the door rattled. Barnes' heart skipped a beat as he turned and saw a huge lump in the surface of the door. On the other side, he could hear a chorus of growls and profanity. Whatever was on the other side was once human, but nothing suggested it was that anymore.
    The thing pounded against the door a second time, and another large lump appeared next to the first.
    Barnes looked around him for an exit. Luckily, his hands came across a ventilation shaft, but it had a grate across it.
    A third pound struck the door, and the thing screamed out an ear piercing chant of meaningless syllables and half pronounced promises of pain and torture.
    Barnes rummaged through a utility box and found a hefty screwdriver. He then slammed the end of it into the edge of the grate's frame and pried with all his might.
    A fourth pound hit the door, this time cracking the metal. A strip of pale light shot through the crack, illuminating Barnes and his precious ventilation shaft. "Fuck!" he screamed and then pried so hard he thought he might have pulled a back muscle. It was worth the effort, though, because the grate came loose.
    Just as the thing ripped through what remained of the door, Barnes disappeared down the shaft. The exit began to decline considerably, though, and the sides, top, and bottom were slick with moisture. He slipped and kept sliding for sometime before he slammed side first into another grate.
    Barnes listened.
    But there was no sign of his pursuer.
    Now what? he thought. In his haste, he had dropped the screw driver, and there sure as hell wasn't any chance of him going back even if he could scale the slick shaft. He looked through the grate. He could see a large, cavernous room on the other side that was well lit. The floor was a good thirty feet down.
    "Great!" Barnes bitched. Thirty feet wasn't good, but it could have easily been worse. He figured he had brought himself over a space vehicle maintenance shop. If he could stomp the grate open, maybe he could just drop down to the floor and hope he didn't sprang an ankle.
    He rose to his feet and commenced stomping. The grate gave way, and he plummeted to the floor, falling into a roll that sent a shelf full of tools crashing onto him. Swiftly, he cleared himself of the rubble and looked around, but was relieved to find only an empty room with two clear exits: a door and a ship lifter that ascended to a launch pad.
    He chose the door and hoped for the best.
 
 

    Could Desmond have been right? Apparently he was, but the question still remained: how right was he? Barnes wondered if the Aligned had obtained a cure for the plague, and his crew was, in fact, a special forces unit with orders to destroy the place. The use of the AL-46, and the disguise as a rescue team was all a cover-up. But what about Cleo?
    "I told you to play it safe," a familiar voice rang out from nearby.
    Barnes spun around and looked down the lighted hall he had entered shortly after leaving the repair shop. "Cleo!" he shouted after recognizing the person.
    It was Cleo all right. She was dressed in some kind of dark jump suit, the tight cloth rounding her elegant curves with smooth precision. This, however, was a much different Cleo from the one Barnes had met back on Earth. In her right hand was a double barreled shotgun, and a splatter of blood freckled her soft cheeks and dampened her long, wavy hair. All wrapped up into a single human shape, she was a symbol of sensual death.
    "What the fucking hell is going on here?" Barnes had to ask.
    Cleo opened her shotgun and reloaded it with two more shells. "What the fucking hell are you doing here, Barnes?" she asked somewhat perturbed.
    Having a woman you liked pissed off at you was bad enough, but having that same pissed off woman load a double barreled shotgun in front of you was almost too much. Actually, in Barnes mind this wasn't Cleo. This was a mistake. Not just her, but everything that had happened so far, too.
    "I suppose that was you who came in through the east entrance," Cleo remarked. She then began to stroll down the hall. "Not smart, fly boy," she added as she came up next to Barnes. Her eyes scanned him briefly, and then she asked, "Did it hurt you?"
    "Did what hurt me?" Barnes asked, still more confused by Cleo's complete shift in personality than the conversation taking place.
    A demonic screech echoed throughout the base. The inhuman cry sounded uncomfortably close.
    Barnes' spine tingled with a death chill. "Christ!" he yelled. "What is that!?"
    Cleo brought her shotgun up and peered down the hall. "A failure," she answered.
    "A what?"
    Assuming Barnes would follow, Cleo headed towards a door, opened it, and disappeared into its shadowed depths on the other side. Not wishing to be alone, Barnes did trail along, but had considerable difficulty navigating through a completely dark room filled with numerous, unseen obstacles. He tried to figure out why his female guide didn't have the same problem. The woman was like an aborigine in her own Australian woods as she trekked gracefully from one room to another with hardly the slightest sound.
    Eventually, in trying to keep up, Barnes rammed into a metal table. The edge racked him squarely in the nuts. "Damn it!" he cried out as he scrunched down onto the floor, holding his crotch. "Can't we turn on the lights or something, for Christ's
sake?!"
    "Shut up," Cleo answered as she stopped about twenty paces away from him. She then walked back to find out what was keeping her companion. "Turning on the lights only makes us easier targets," she replied. "It has the place monitored." She then realized what had happened as she watched Barnes writhe in pain. She smirked and helped him to his feet. "So much for that great software, eh?" she joked.
    Barnes leaned against the table and caught his breath. "Cleo," he pleaded, "what is going on?"
    Looking around the place, Cleo figured they were safe for awhile. If there was anytime for a break it was now. She strolled over to another table nearby and seated herself on its edge, her feet tangling above the floor. "I'm not Cleo," she made clear first and foremost. "I'm birth replicant number 66-558." She then looked at Barnes who stared back at her in dumb silence. "I used to work here. In fact, in a way, I still do, but mostly to just protect the place... and its contents."
    "You're one of the Aligned?" Barnes asked, still consumed by disbelief.
    "Yes," Cleo answered. Noticing her friend's bewilderment, she shook her head and sighed. Unengineered humans were always too slow to figure out things. "Listen," she explained, "your crew was never a research team to help anybody. They were a collection of professional, job hungry bounty hunters being privately paid off to do a job no military politician wants to get his hands dirty with."
    "So who do you work for?" Barnes asked. "If you're a vice secretary for a humanitarian organization, I'm Queen Elizabeth."
    Cleo frowned. "I'm a spy, Barnes," she told him. "I could use alot of terminology like double agent and corporate security personnel, but basically I'm just a spy. It's that simple."
    The stench from Cleo's blood soaked body reminded Barnes of the room full of carnage. "So what happened to the hunters?" he asked.
    Cleo brushed her hair out of her face. "They were quickly terminated," she answered bluntly.
    "By you?"
    She laughed. "Some," she replied.
    "So who got the rest?" Barnes asked not liking this verbal waltz at all.
    "Not who," Cleo answered. "You mean it."
    "Huh?"
    If Barnes was going to fail to understand anything, Cleo rationalized, it would be what she was about to tell him. She considered the consequences of just splurging rather confidential information, but liked the guy too much to give a serious shit about it. Besides, they were running out of time. "Why do you think the bounty hunters were sent here?" she asked.
    Barnes was completely surprised by the question, but took a shot at it, anyway. "You discovered a cure for the plague," he replied, reflecting on Desmond's theory.
    Cleo controlled the urge to laugh herself into a frenzy. A few chuckles did manage to escape her, though.
    "What?" Barnes asked.
    Regaining her composure, Cleo replied with a hearty smile. "You Unaligned can be cute sometimes," she said.
    "Cute, my ass," Barnes snapped. This was no time for comedy. "What's so damn funny?"
    Cleo's smile vanished. "You think we really have any desire to go back to that piece of rock shit, called Earth?" she replied, now pissed herself. "You Unaligned can keep your breeding cesspool and your damn plague. Up here, we are more concerned with progressing beyond ourselves than struggling to survive on a planet we weren't welcome on in the first place."
    Barnes shifted in his seat, feeling suddenly very warm.
    "Oh, we found a cure, all right," Cleo went on. "We found a cure for your plague and just about every plague in existence. We found a cure for ignorance and war. We found a cure for greed and laziness. We found a cure for weak mindedness and over breeding. We found a cure for the ultimate plague in this space and time: 21st century Man."
    The air in the room grew thick with apprehension. Cleo's eyes could be seen as two flaring specks in the darkness, and Barnes began to fear for his life. He was in a hostile environment with the company of an insane woman.
    Cleo finally relaxed and let her sight fall to the floor. "Look at yourself," she said. "Like all Unaligned humans, you still harbor a prehistoric psychology. Even now, I'm explaining to you the next step in human evolution, and all you can do is worry about your own survival. Your selfishness and immense concern for self preservation clouds your ability to attain higher states of understanding.
    "I like you, Barnes. You are the first Unaligned human I have met that actually made me feel less a super computer and more of a person with a heart. Originally, the bounty hunters were to have an expendable pilot for the AL-46. I was able to con them into believing I was both a fellow hunter and the right person to find that disposable cosmonaut. I mean, I conjured up a pretty good story to get you out here didn't I? After we landed here on the moon, though, I managed to convince them to just put a lock on the cockpit door, rather than blow your brains out. By then, I admired too much of you to see you die so senselessly.
    "But you're still just the lesser Man. Your people created us, the Aligned, and later hated us for who we are. And why? Because we're better at everything? Because we can think more rationally and act more precisely? Your people created the next step in their evolution and then tried to force it away with the same fear of progress that put Galileo on trial."
    "What have the Aligned done, Cleo?" Barnes asked, skipping to the point of the matter.
    Cleo straightened up. "We've discovered the next crucial step in human evolution," she answered.
    Another monstrous scream shook the air. Something could be heard lumbering through the next room.
    "So tell me," Barnes asked as he followed Cleo towards the nearest exit, "is that your crucial step in human evolution I'm hearing?"
    "No," Cleo answered. "That's the Keeper of the Gate, and the consequence of an inexact science."
    "You've lost me," Barnes admitted.
    "That seems to be the case alot of the time," Cleo answered.
    Barnes frowned.
    "Like all experiments, we had to first go through a series of trial and error," Cleo explained. "What you're hearing is the worst error from our experimentations. Basically, it's a mutated super human; a genetically engineered freak. It killed off everyone in the base about the same time our work paid off. It is also the creature that finished off the bounty hunters. In fact, it's such a good killing machine that it has been kept here to guard our interests."
    Barnes followed his female companion down a stretch of hallway and then into another darkened room at its end. There they stood quietly in the camouflage of the surrounding shadow.
    "The thing nearly killed me, too," she whispered. "I was on my way out of here when I noticed you had entered the base."
    Barnes suddenly felt like a fool. "I guess I should done what I was told, huh?" he said, realizing both his senseless curiosity and Cleo's tremendous compassion for his life. He never knew an Aligned could harbor such care. Although, he always suspected it, he never consciously accepted it, until now.
    "Shhhhh," Cleo answered. Her eyes peered through the cover of the room's darkness and into the hallway. Some of the light from the hall reflected off the barrel of her shotgun in an ebony glare.
    Minutes went by and the hall still remained empty. The depth of the silence was so great it left a faint ringing sound in Barnes ears.
    Then, like a clap of thunder, pieces of metallic furniture and fragments of door, wall, and ceiling exploded into the hall. Next, an all too familiar screech and scream split the air. Pure hatred filled that cry. The breathing was the worse. The thing breathed like a hellish furnace about to erupt into an expanse of raw pain and torture.
    "It smells us," Cleo noted, still whispering.
    Barnes could have been happy not ever knowing that.
    Then something moved against the battered frame of a door. At first, Barnes thought it was another piece of debris, but then realized to his horror it was actually a massive hand curling around splintered steel wall and broken hinges. After the hand, came a grotesque face decorated with oozing lesions and deep crimson eyes with black pupils. Something like a tongue whipped out of its mouth and spread across its ghastly face.
    The most frightening aspect of the creature was its human qualities. It was bipedal just like any other man with even a large bush of blood soaked pubes and the shaft of a dangling penis between its legs. Its chest cavity rose and sank with each breath of air, and its mannerisms were a perverted imitation of any typical human being.
    Barnes experienced both a feeling of dread and sympathy for the creature. "Kill it," he whispered.
    Cleo looked at him with abrupt horror. She motioned for him to keep quiet.
    "Kill it," he whispered again, only this time a little louder.
    The creature turned and stared towards them with those blood red eyes.
    Cleo was stunned.
    "You created it," Barnes now spoke quite clearly. He then pulled the shotgun from Cleo's hand and aimed it down the hall. "Now you must undo what you've done."
    "Barnes!" Cleo shouted. "No!"
    The creature grinned at the discovery of its elusive prey. It screamed and charged with reptilian agility and inhuman ferocity. Death pounded into the floor with each advancing step.
    Death... Death... Death... Death...
    Barnes suddenly realized the error in his haste: he had a short range weapon. If he was going to kill this thing quickly he would have to wait... until it got much closer... dangerously close.
    Death... Death... Death... Death...
    The creature was almost upon its prey, now. It could feel it. It could smell it. And soon it would be tasting it and writhing in
it.
    "You've killed us both!" Cleo screamed.
    Barnes couldn't hear what his friend was saying. All he could hear was that monstrous stomping growing louder and louder.
    Death... Death... DEATH... D-E-A-T-H!!!...
    Cleo shrieked and ducked.
    Barnes pulled the trigger and fell back on his butt with the force of the blast. His ears went deaf and his eyes clogged with blood. A sharp pain struck throughout his chest.
     "Barnes!" Cleo cried out as she rushed to his side.
    It was then Barnes realized it wasn't his blood that blinded his sight... or that now decorated the hall in velvet drapes. The pain in his chest, he was relieved to discover, was from the kick of the shotgun's blast. He looked down. He could see a silent creature cut in two. The scene reminded him of a quote he had read concerning the suicide of Hitler: the Beast was dead.
    Cleo was kneeling over him with tears streaming down her cheeks. "I thought for sure we were both done for," she commented.
    Barnes struggled to his feet. He looked down at the motionless creature one last time. "It seems morality has its limits with the superior Aligned," he criticized.
    Cleo wiped at her tears, but really only created a series of bloody smears across her cheeks. She stared down at the thing she had always feared and what Barnes had managed to kill in a matter of seconds. Inside, she struggled between praising him for his bravery or slapping him for risking their lives needlessly.
    "Here," Barnes said, handing her back the shotgun.
    Cleo took it. It was still warm from its last exhaust.
    Picking a random direction, Barnes proceeded to leave. "Now, let's go home," he said. "Let's go back to Earth."
    Cleo stood her ground. "No," she answered.
    Barnes gave her a sharp glare, but could see there was no room for debate.
    "I want to show you something," Cleo said. "There is something you should see here."
 
 
 

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