The Dark Side of Saturn: Weird Alien Temptation (Adventures in Space)

The Dark Side of Saturn

Jordan Jones

CHAPTER ONE

Twitch Kills

I was told to never doubt myself in space. The legacy of my father was huge enough to carry me far ahead of the other cadets. My pilot scores were low, but the Captain said it wasn't for lack of enthusiasm. Using blasters to cut through Saturn's rings was inspired, he told me. Trying to land my ship on the dark side of the planet, however, would have gotten me killed. That's off-limits according to certain domestic limitations followed without enthusiasm since the start of the Weird Invasion.

The Weird Invasion was named after the funky grooves of the aliens invading us. Our planets were taken over, starting with Neptune. The aliens themselves were responsible for the psychedelic movement on Earth. Many Earthlings had been abducted and taken to occupy outer regions of our own solar system. The aliens barely had to intervene, simply channeling dissident humans and showing them a new life on the dark side of another planet. Millions of our own people left by their own choice.

I had never taken the psychotropic chemicals and wanted to survive the war as a hero, not some freaky space hippie. I loaded up the test program, and volunteered myself to run the simulation again. The queue was five hours. I set up my dinner date reservation with the restaurant and groomed myself in the meantime. The test itself would take only ten minutes, or shorter if I lost.

The Captain called while I was shaving to give me some man advice.

"Don't break any interplanetary codes, and you'll be fine. Use the environment to your advantage: most of these hippie-hating space cadets just want twitch kills. You'll score high for low casualties and diplomatic resolutions."

I thanked him and said I needed time to shower and think his advice over. "Whatever you do, don't break any laws! Diplomacy is important with the Weird Aliens. They're experts in bureaucracy because they hate it so much. It's a real time-sink for the commanders."

In the shower, I looked at myself in the reflection of my beauty bar and thought I was doing great from all the physical training. The G-force exercises were my only weak point, but they made you shrink. Unfortunately, the more I failed the G tests, the more I had to take them. I checked again. No shrinkage yet!

Arne called when I was in the shower, and I told her to wait just a moment. She was going to meet a total warrior. I toweled off and re-initialized the phone communicator. "Hey babe."

"Hey, baby. Are you almost ready? I double-checked our appointment. Thanks for making the reservation for me."

"A man should be prepared. I even have a surprise for you," I said.

"Is it cultured Weird Alien fingers?" she asked.

"Oh man, how did you guess? You rascal."

"I'm feeling frisky tonight," she said. My attention spiked. "Maybe I can come home with you again?" Her voice was cosmic and sweet.

"Sure babe. Let me clean the place. I have to run a test, but it should take just a few minutes."

"Oh! Good luck, lover-boy," she said. I shut off the phone. Luck wasn't going to be my problem. My problem was the stupid laws that forbade sex-enhancing drugs in the dorm room.

***

We met in orbit at the station restaurant. Since we were enlistees, the ticket to space was discounted. I paid for Arne's. It was morning in the eastern hemisphere below us. I was joking when I asked if she wanted breakfast, but she didn't pick up on it.

"I thought this was a dinner date," she said. "I didn't dress for breakfast." She wore a reflective gown. I could see my face, shattered by the myriad folds covering her breasts.

"Trust me, you're dressed fine," I said. "I've ordered Weird Alien fingers and that's what we'll be eating." My own military garb was crisp, brown, and neat.

She looked at the menu, mentioning she wanted appetizers. "How did the test go?"

"A personal best," I said.

The orbit of the building was super elliptical. Jets sent it to the dark side of the moon, which wasn't occupied by the drug-freaks. The moon was the only object besides Earth whose ass-end wasn't covered in weirdos. Even Venus and Mercury were half-covered in converts.

"My brother went to Saturn," she said. "I asked him what he did in sunlight, and he said he followed the shadows. The real dark side was a carnie's dream."

"So the dark side changes?" I asked. "With the rotation of the planet?"

"Yeah, they live in ships that hover them over to the night life of Saturn."

"They must really hate the sun," I said.

"They're vampires, now. It makes me so upset, thinking of how my brother can't stand our star."

"They say it interferes with their insanity."

The purple lights of the space station restaurant flickered and dimmed. The piano was going to play.

"I love this place," she said.

The trickling rhythm of high-notes came upon us. Then a spacey racking of the lower keys (the piano drop) gave me a strong sense of Terran honor. The hippies weren't going to bring me down tonight, unless some of the assholes showed up. In that case, I could always kick their tripping ass.

"My brother told me he sometimes regrets the first hit of acid he dosed. Then he corrected himself and said he wishes it had been a stronger hit," she said. "The converts are all very strange."

"What do you expect? Their society is based on psychedelic drugs," I said. The alcoholic drink I had ordered for us to share was nearly depleted. I motioned to the robo-waiter to bring us another. It fetched it without me saying a word.

"Yes," she said. "Very strange. But what other drugs do you think they--" She stopped herself. "I mean, what other things do you think keep them together?" She turned her face down.

"What do you mean what other drugs do they do? That's what you meant to say, isn't it?"

"No! It was misspoken."

I smiled knowingly. "I know they don't have sex-enhancing drugs." Here came my signature wink. Gotcha, girl!

"I'm serious! How come they don't fall apart as a society?" she asked.

"They're slaves to the Weird Aliens. Speaking of which, here are our Fingers."

We rarely killed Weird Aliens and definitely didn't eat their actual fingers, as was the law. Our dish was actually a fried crustacean that had been around for ages known as soft-shell crab. The name was chosen by a television chef who lost his children to psychedelics, and it stuck. They were the perfect, crispy space meal. Freeze-dried Weird Alien Fingers were excellent, too.

"Can you imagine what it must be like to have a religion based on psychedelic drugs?" she asked. "I mean, think of how delusional they must be."

"The Weird Aliens make it seem fun to converts like your brother," I said. "Why are you thinking about all of this? Thinking about the war is not recommended by the commanders."

"I don't know," she said, popping a Finger into her mouth. "It's just a natural curiosity."

"Your interest in the solar system's wildlife is far-fetched, at best."

She scowled and dipped another finger in the accompanying Weird Alien Blood (21st century ketchup, a rare sauce).

"Maybe you should take an interest in the hippies you plan to carelessly shoot down." She stopped eating. "What if you killed my brother?" Her voice was shrill and annoying.

"Just remember, he's not in contact with reality."

"I grew up with him!"

"He'd kill me first if I let him," I said.

"But the hippies are peace-loving!" Her shoulders squeezed together in panic. "They think of the Party Foul as a sin! Can you imagine why they fight? They're trying to protect their way of life!"

My night of love-making was slipping away. "Hey, I wouldn't kill your brother, okay?"

She stopped freaking out. "How do you know?"

"I didn't score very high on the test tonight. I can't even kill a simulation hippie." It was my turn to gather pity.

She wiped her teary eyes. "Darling, I'm sure you could kill a hippie. They're terrible at war."

"The Weird Alien ship flies for them. The artificial intelligence is highly advanced. I'm no good at it. I could outfly just a hippie, sure. But they have advantages in space."

"I think maybe I'd let you kill my brother." She smiled.

"Thank you."

The rotating space restaurant undimmed its lights and I could see her red, ketchupy tongue wiggling at me. The meal was a bit disgusting, but she made what remained of the planetary food supply worth eating.

"Tomorrow I'm going to call him again to advocate for his return to Earth," she said. "You can conference the call if you want. Just don't say anything."

That sounded like a good idea. I was curious, even though her brother was an idiot. I knew little about the Weird Aliens themselves. Maybe through Richard, her brother, I could learn something to help with test scores.

"I will, doll."

"Great."

The music had switched to smooth jazz. It didn't have the piano drop like I liked, but it was relaxing and turned me on. I hinted at her that I was feeling frisky, too. I told her I felt like a sexual warrior.

Just call me Samuel.

CHAPTER TWO

Old Kentucky

I broke free from formation to pick on a squad of weakling hippies at Alpha Niner Alpha. Captain shouted at me afterward. I imagined myself lancing her brother with my big ray, because I had already lost the mission by damaging my robotic copilot. The extra points I lost by going rogue were so worth it.

From the chewing out I got over the line it was pretty easy to detach myself.

"Just because it's a simulation doesn't mean you can go off on a twitch-kill spree. Samuel, are you paying attention? Your father's legacy of reducing the violence of the war is a legacy I expect you to uphold. . .!" He droned on and I didn't catch much of the rest of it. I couldn't stop thinking about killing Richard.

My mates and I were going to have a night-cap, with tons of Old Kentucky liquor. I was trying to impress them with the shooting spree. Maybe we'd all have something else to talk about besides my father.

Later that night, cleaning my dorm, a call from Arne came through the line.

"Have you thought about the conference call at all? I expect you to listen in on my brother and I discussing his conversion back to Human." This nagging was getting old.

I folded my flight jacket. "I'll be on the line. Why can't we just calm down over there?"

"Are you going to hang out with your flatmates tonight?" she asked.

How could I lie to her? I could picture her shiny, wet breasts pushed up against the shower door. I couldn't lie to someone I had such feelings for.

"No."

Well, I suppose it was too hard to lie to her after all.

"Good," she said with certainty. "I'll be dialing him with the supervision of the Captain at 2100."

"Okay, doll."

The flatmates and I shared the same domestic building, which was inhabited entirely by other pilots like us. If I wanted to go to the Space Restaurant, I could take the elevator to the dining hangar. If I needed to visit an old trainer across the globe: travel hangar. And for launching in times of war: battle hangar. There was a legend that my father stole one of the combat ships with my mom and blew a crater into the moon in the shape of his giant cock, but I've been to the moon and couldn't recognize anything. It was almost definitely a legend.

The ones who tried to tell me he tripped acid on Io were even worse. Apparently, psychedelics didn't immediately convert people back in the day. They must have gotten stronger since then.

If my dad tripped acid, then I was going to come out of the closet and join a gay circus on the dark side of Neptune.

I asked Taylor when I made it to his dorm if I could link my lines to his system. He asked why, and I told him to just wait for it. He tossed me the Old Kentucky liquor and said, "Yes, I can link your line."

I checked the liquor bottle's label:

"
This whiskey was drawn out of the stomachs of homeless hippies who lost their lives to cadets on the way to the outer planetoids. Don't be a leaky-assed hippie! Drink Old Kentucky Whisky
!
" The label included a planet mooning the sun.

"Are you checking out the branding, there, Samuel?"

"You know what, I'm checking out the curvy edges of the bottle. It reminds me of your mother and gran," I said.

"My mother and grandmother?" he asked.

"Well, your grandmother first," I said. "By her request."

"Just shoot down another space hippie, and I'll let that one go. By the way, are we running a game tonight at all?" Greg said.

I told them I had something better planned.

Taylor's dorm was exactly like mine. It was clean, expensive, dark gray and brown (like our uniforms) and wired to help us budding cadets train. The game system was linked to the testing simulator, which connected to the phone line. The phone line connected straight to Captain's quarters, and through that fiber-optic tube was funneled every aspect of our budding cadet lives. There was a large, round table bordered by a sectioned couch. We all sat at it and poured our first round of shots.

"Thank god liquor can't convert a cadet, because it makes him want to kill," Greg said. "Totally against the space-hippie agenda. If not for that, we'd be teetotalers."

We were sitting around the table, Greg, Taylor, me, and two liters of Old Kentucky. I told them about Arne's brother, after the first couple of shots.

"He's been converted for over six months now," I said. Punishment to Arne's family for the gay uncle they used to let babysit them. Did you know her brother was gay now, too? On Saturn, everyone's either bi- or gay. Anyway, we're going to get to talk to him tonight."

"They aren't all just bi- or gay. Some are trans-," Taylor said.

"Well, yes, bi-, gay, or trans-. Yeah. Did you even hear me?" I asked.

"Sure, I just didn't believe you. Like we'd all be allowed on the line with a space hippie," Taylor said.

"Unless?" I kicked Greg under the table.

"Unless supervised by Captain," Greg said. He was reading the bottle. "I'm trying to find any reference to your Dad on here."

"He's not on Old Kentucky. He's on Westfordshire Wine," I said.

"It's going to be supervised?" Taylor asked, digging through his pockets, probably searching for an inhalant.

Not all drugs were psycho-subverting. The stimulants almost never were dangerous, except for their affect on our health. It was meaningless to us because of the high-level med treatment we received. The three of us were addicted to all kinds of stimulants.

I didn't think they were nearly curious enough for me to be satisfied, so I dropped a bomb on them. "He got converted by a different drug than other space hippies."

Greg turned his face from the bottle, and Taylor apparently found the inhaler.

"What drug?" Greg asked.

"Hormones," I said.

Their budding cadet jaws dropped.

"But he does other drugs, too, right?" Greg asked.

"He does now. But he loaded up to go to Saturn a dope virgin."

"What kind of hippie converts without being totally brainwashed?" Greg asked.

"And what kind of funky cow hormones did he have to shoot up to decide to go to the dark side of a planet?" Taylor said, forgetting the inhaler. He set it on the table and put his head in his lap. "Don't tell me it was Weird Alien hormones! I didn't know that was a thing. . . oh, I'm going to be sick."

I smiled. "It was just Oxytocin. A totally human hormone. It's sort of a girl hormone, but Arne said he got totally wired on the shit and fell in love with the Weird Aliens or something."

"That's the shit that's released when you hug someone," Greg said, wide-eyed. "Or breastfeeding."

"It's a bonding chemical," I said. "So, do you want to conference the call, now?"

Taylor rose from his fetal position and said, "We have to now. It's too fucked up."

"Tie-in my lines, then, my friend. We have about ten minutes until she calls him," I said. "You can't say anything. I'll mute the microphones, but don't be tempted to undo it and start talking to him. That could be a PR disaster and Captain would absolutely raze our asses."

We each took two shots and slammed our glasses on the table. If alcohol could convert us, we'd be long gone.

"Honey, I'm here," I delicately spoke into the air.

Arne came through talking fast. She was nervous. "I'm about to call. I've got the okay from the Captain. Please don't say anything! It wouldn't exactly be illegal, but I'm trying to get him back to Earth. I miss him."

"It's okay, doll. I'm muting the microphone. Is it alright if I have a drink?"

The other cadets grinned and gave me the thumbs up.

"That's fine. Mute the microphone now. He's waiting at the edge of the sunrise in some kind of Weird Alien pay phone. Not like they have any money. Anyway I don't think they could organize themselves well enough to save any up to make a phone call," she said. "I suppose I should just nerve up and call, right?"

"I'm ready whenever," I said. "With any luck, he'll be on a spaceship home in the morning."

The line clicked. The pairing atoms of our quantum communicator identified each other. One atom; Earth. One atom; Saturn. We could imagine the vast distance of our solar system being synchronized in one atomic spot in the line, which vibrated with the frequency of Richard's voice. We leaned towards the table to hear the ceiling speaker better, and definitely picked up somebody breathing. It may as well have been a Weird Alien.

Microphones muted, I gave the okay signal to the other cadets that we could finally speak.

"Is he being supervised on the other end?" Taylor asked.

"The Weird Aliens constantly monitor all converts," Greg said. "Not a thought enters their head or word uttered from their mouth that isn't filtered through a Weird Alien."

I strained my head toward the speakers. "I think I hear humans in the background, at least." There was quiet, joyful laughing behind the sound of the breathing. "Be quiet."

"Richard? Brother?" Arne said.

"Arne. Hi."

"Oh, it's so lovely to hear your voice," she said.

A pause, long and painful, and then Richard delivered his speech.

"Arne, I don't think you'll be surprised to learn that my voice is the voice of what you know as a Weird Alien. I have become one with that race, and plan to die in the womb of the ancients," he said.

Taylor covered his mouth and tried to keep from laughing.

"What you don't know is that you are in grave danger. The Weird Aliens are warning us that something dreadful will be happening to you, who choose to live in the light of the terrible sun. I suspect the sun itself is going to launch spaceships from within and cast a bright fire down upon the sun-side of our solar system. Please, remain in the dark," he said.

"Remain in the dark?! You're delusional, man," Taylor said.

"Quiet," I said.

"I also request of you to begin to ingest small amounts of LSD daily, as soon as possible," Richard said. "If the illegal status of LSD on earth forbids you, then please try a larger quantity of morning-glory seeds, or possibly even dried psilocybin mushrooms. Any psychotropic chemical which alters the brain will help, really. Please, for your own sake, go to your nearest chemical supplier and take some of these drugs. I've been on a dose of dextromethorph-"

Arne interrupted him. "Richard! Richard! What you're doing now is called Convertee Solicitation," she said. Her words were of mixed volumes and syncopations. "You're. . . you're in a very bad place! Stop it!"

We could hear heavier breathing on the other line. "The light of my life has compelled me to stop with this solicitation as you call it. It is simply imperative that I spread the word of the ancients. My life on Earth was completely inverted. I wasn't who I was. I wanted nothing I really needed. I was stuck, inside the brain of a boy who also needed something he didn't want. I was brainwashed, Arne."

"Stop it!" she said. I had to turn the volume down because she was beginning to lose it. "You're a total lunatic now! We really need you to come to Earth without any drugs -- and take some classes at the community college in Ranchboro, where Mom and Dad live. You do remember Ranchboro?"

"I admit, it is like a dream to me now."

"Listen, Richard. Convertee Solicitation is illegal here on Earth, and when you come tomorrow, we will not tolerate it!"

Greg and Taylor said, "Tomorrow?"

I opened my mouth and closed it, pointing up at nothing. "Uh," I said. It was the only sound I could manage.

"Alright, Arne. I will try my best to comply with your Earth laws."

"Thank you so much. I have to go now. But please, try to be normal. It's for peace, Richard. I know how much you presume to want that."

"I do not presume," Richard said. "You have insulted me, now. I will forgive you in forty-five seconds. I hope you feel the shame I have felt during that time."

"Richard?"

"I haven't forgiven you, yet."