shock to your system

Dewie would not have picked the S.S. Drake to carry them through deep space. He pored over the ship’s blueprints night after sleepless night, spent hours out of each day down in the engineering lab to study its internal components in person, melted the brains of its engineers with his endless questions and laundry list of concerns. He seemed insatiable, even feverish, trying to get to the root of a problem that no one else apparently saw.

He could tell you in plain Koppaian what was wrong, but he might as well have been speaking a foreign language to the engineers and his colleagues. The ship wasn’t ready to fly, plain as that! It had only been completed a few months ago, with no major takeoff or landing tests, its electrical systems often failed, and its software was extremely buggy. Nothing worked in synchronicity. And they wanted to fly this thing in six weeks?

“We’ll fix it, it’s part of the process,” the engineers calmly assured him ad nauseam.

No, Dewie often thought in reply. No, you won’t.

His two other crewmembers were far too valuable, far too experienced, to be flying such a mediocre spacecraft. In the seven years he’d been exploring space as part of the Koppai military, he had the privilege of flying much more worthy craft; tested and true pieces of machinery, majestic ships that proudly wore the scars of frequent space travel in the same way a decorated soldier wore his medals.

This infant ship smelled like a new baby. The tangy, metallic odor of freshly-soldered metal and paint turned the nose. Its soft, spotless skin shone almost as brightly as the fluorescent lighting in the engineering lab where it lazily slumbered.

The S.S. Drake. The ship of choice.

At least, the government’s choice.

A knock on the door pulled Dewie out of deep concentration and made him realize he’d been blankly staring at a stack of reports for over ten minutes. His heart leapt at the sound. He shoved three or four note-covered pages of the Drake’s blueprints under one of his hefty binders.

Before he could protest and turn the visitor away, the door opened and Captain Charlie poked his head into the dimly-lit room.

“Studying is good, but you do it too often,” Charlie gruffly spoke from the doorway. So far, he hadn’t stepped in.

Dewie leaned back in his chair and swiveled around to face the captain. “Someone’s gotta know how this piece of shit works.”

Charlie cleared his throat. “May I come in?”

Dewie squirmed. No.

“Yeah, sure.”

There was an empty seat in the office that Charlie slid over to the desk overflowing with binders and loose paper. The sound of the metal legs scraping the floor made Dewie cringe.

“Take a break, Dewie. Go get a coffee or something,” Charlie insisted. Dewie smartly pointed to a half-empty coffee cup on the desk that had left hazelnut-colored rings on some of the papers. “You can’t fool me. That’s been cold for hours. Go get a hot coffee.”

Dewie ignored him and turned back to the reports, grabbing a pencil from behind his ear as he began to thumb through the pages.

“I just sat down. Don’t make me get up again to get you a cup of coffee,” Charlie continued. Dewie caught the playful air in his tone of voice. He never looked up to face his captain. Eventually, Charlie leaned forward to grab the coffee cup and slid the chair back to leave.

He meant it. Dewie watched him exit the room out of the corner of his eye.

Charlie knew exactly how Dewie liked his coffee. He brought some over almost every time Dewie’s ass was glued to that chair. Dewie still couldn’t thank him; he wasn’t sure why. It meant more to him than Charlie knew.

The captain was quiet upon returning with a fresh cup for his weary crewmember. Dewie busied himself in paperwork, intentionally drowning himself in the sea of contingency plans and mission objectives. Charlie remained silent for quite some time, letting Dewie ignore him, but gingerly placed a small object on the desk in Dewie’s range of vision, right in the middle of the minefield of paper. Their happy, yellow rubber ducky. Their war companion. The only thing that often anchored them in peace and hope in the midst of turmoil.

When Dewie didn’t respond for one minute, two minutes, Charlie shattered the glass wall of silence between them.

“Talk to me.”

The words lacerated Dewie’s stomach. His breath hitched.

No.

“Dewie. Talk to me.”

“They can’t fly this damn ship,” Dewie eventually spat, throwing the pencil down. “They know they can’t fly it, especially not after I’ve pointed out all of its obvious problems. It’s like an open wound they’re not bandaging. It’s ugly, it’s disgusting.” He looked up at Charlie, his jaw taut. “You should know, Captain. You should understand! You, of all people, should be able to smell this shit a mile away! Why haven’t you brought it up with them? Why can’t you suggest we fly another ship?”

“Calm down for a minute,” Charlie firmly replied, leaning forward in his seat. “There’s a much bigger picture here, Dewie. Number one: our people are starving, and time isn’t really on our side right now. If it were any other circumstance, I’d be on their case about the ship’s readiness, too. Number two: every other ship is out of commission right now. The only other one we would have been able to fly is still being repaired from the war damages.”

Dewie silently fumed. It was hopeless.

In the silence, Charlie became acutely aware of the heaviness in the atmosphere. Something haunted the shadowy corners of Dewie’s office, reeking of bitter, anguishing familiarity. It took up residence in the office and silently screamed for attention. It smothered Charlie; he couldn’t ignore it, and he knew Dewie couldn’t, either.

That moment haunted them both and sought to eat them alive.

A weighty breath of air seeped out of Charlie’s mouth. “You can’t let it get to you. It wasn’t our fault. You know that.”

Dewie quickly found it difficult to breathe.

“You can’t take it with you on this mission,” Charlie continued, forcing the words out. “You can’t let it make you afraid of moving forward. Liam would be kicking you in the ass right now for thinking that way.”

Liam. The image of Liam’s charred body in a twisted pile of metal and flaming rubble blasted to the forefront of Dewie’s mind all over again, just as gruesome and vomit-inducing as it was when it happened.

He shut his eyes, but it only made the picture more vivid. His chest constricted. Panic threatened to flood every nerve and neuron of his body, but he drew in one sharp breath as if to stop the valves from turning.

NO!

He shot to his feet, palms firmly planted on the table, struggling to catch his breath for a few moments before gradually pulling his head up. Another panic attack narrowly avoided. That made three times in a row. A new record.

Charlie stood up at the same time, prepared to offer some form of comfort as he’d done countless times before, but Dewie seemed to snap right out of it.

“I’m gonna… I’ll be down in the engineering lab,” Dewie managed, scrambling for his binder and a handful of blueprints, inching away from the desk. He edged towards the door with his things, then bolted down the hallway.

Charlie found that his fists were clenched and his upper body tense, as if he anticipated an unpleasant surprise. As he relaxed the wound-up muscles in his body, he glanced down at the coffee cup still steaming on the desk and noticed it was sitting atop a piece of scratch paper, where Dewie had scribbled a messy note in smudged pencil. Something about it caught Charlie’s eye, and he moved the cup aside to peer closer.

Panel 17, box 2: They need to cut that one dumb-ass wire. It’s fucking up the whole electrical system.

—

Alph snuck another donut when no one was around. The tiny engineer knew nothing about the fine art of subtlety, however, and walked around, grinning, with powdered sugar and jelly at the corners of his mouth. He was blissfully unaware of this as he happily marched back to his computer, settling down to play a game while the lab was still empty.

Only, it wasn’t empty.

“Kid.” The voice from behind startled Alph, and he frantically closed the game window he had open on the computer, then whirled around in his seat to face the intruder.

It was him. Dewie. The green-haired, long-faced crewmember who never stopped complaining or telling the engineers how to do their jobs. Alph’s fear dissolved into annoyance and he raised an eyebrow.

“What do you want now?” he sighed.

“A donut,” Dewie flatly replied. Alph’s eyes shot to the other side of the room, where the donuts were hidden under Xavier’s desk. There’s no way Dewie would have seen them when he walked in.

“Wh… what are you talking about?” Alph sputtered. “There’s no donuts in here!”

“Oh, give me a break, kid… you’ve got powdered sugar and jelly all over your face.”

Alph’s cheeks turned bright red, and he lifted the back of his hand to the corner of his mouth to find that Dewie was telling the truth. Darn it!

“Can I look at the ship again?” Dewie continued. He lifted the binder and papers and waved them in the air. “I made a few notes. Just wanna take a closer look.”

Alph rolled his eyes. “Whatever. It’s not like you haven’t looked it over a million times already. You’re not gonna find anything new.” As Dewie sauntered off towards the Drake, Alph leaned forward in his seat and peered over the computer monitor. “There’s nothing wrong with it. My grandfather didn’t design a piece of junk!”

Dewie didn’t reply. He pried a panel away from the aft of the ship and grabbed a metal tool from the floor, spreading the blueprints out on the ground with his feet. About that time, the other engineers returned from their lunch break and pooled back into the lab, robotically heading back to their desks or workstations. Xavier, in particular, reached for the box of donuts under his desk, but let out an annoyed moan when he realized the box was empty.

Alph closely eyed Dewie for a few moments, eventually concluding that the idiot was staring foolishly at the same wiring panel he’d whined about for months.

Stupid panel 17, box 2.

The empty box of donuts snapped into Alph’s field of vision, and he realized that Xavier had angrily thrown it down on the desk in front of him.

“You little thief!” Xavier hollered, shaking his fist in Alph’s face. “I haven’t had a donut in months, and you had to go and eat mine! Who do you think you are?! Most people are starving and we get donuts, and YOU had the NERVE to take not one, but TWO?! Shame on you!”

“C’mon, Alph,” Olan groaned from his workstation. “Really?”

“Are we really going to argue about this again?” Freddy sighed, leaning on Alph’s console to look Xavier in the eye. “Leave Alph alone, all right?”

“Oh, you’re gonna defend the little thief?” Xavier scoffed. “What, ‘cuz he’s Drake’s grandson, it gives him a special pass to get away with stupid stuff… like stealing other peoples’ food? Is that what this ridiculous division has come to? It’s not like he doesn’t get away with a bunch of other crap as it is!”

Alph’s face burned. He couldn’t find the words to defend himself. It was a freaking donut, for crying out loud!

“Clearly, everyone here is bored out of their minds,” Wayne interjected. “It’s pretty bad when we’ve resorted to losing our cool over a donut.”

“Well, you know, if the government would actually get those stupid astronauts off the ground and not leave us here to babysit an idle ship for six weeks, we wouldn’t be bored!” Xavier carried on. “And we wouldn’t be hungry, either! My God… if I were running this division, I’d–!”

A bright flash of light burst in everyone’s peripheral, and the hiss and CRACK! of an electrical surge caused their ears to prick forward. Every head snapped to the Drake, where the sound had come from. A cloud of black smoke hung in the air at the aft of the ship, and almost immediately the smell of electrical fire overwhelmed their olfactory glands. The engineers came to life and ran to the ship to inspect it, and Alph slid out of his seat to join them.

“Back, back, back!” Olan shouted, holding out his arms to keep the other engineers at a safe distance. “Live wire! There’s a live wire.”

Alph stood on his toes to peer over the shoulders of his colleagues and get a better look, and sure enough, he saw the live wire Olan was talking about, spitting out a steady stream of white hot electricity. The whole panel, as well as the skin of the ship around it, was completely black. His eyes were drawn to a screwdriver on the floor just by Olan’s foot, also entirely black.

His breath caught.

That was the tool Dewie had picked up.

At the sickening realization of what had just happened, Alph broke from the group and ran out of the lab as fast as his tiny legs allowed.

—

Charlie was nearly flushed out of the hallway by an onslaught of people who raced past him towards the engineering lab where he was headed. The buzz of their blended, frantic speech pulsed with fear and panic and seemed to be the force propelling them forward. Charlie furrowed his brow.

“What’s going on?” he yelled as they slipped by, but no one turned around to give him their attention. “Hey, what’s happening?!”

Once the initial wave had rushed through the hallway and crashed into the lab, Charlie warily followed them and peeked into the room to see what was causing such an upheaval. A swarm of people congregated at one side of the room like flies to a carcass, another group was sectioning off the entire perimeter of the ship so no one could go near it. Charlie immediately noticed the fried, blackened panel and smelled the lingering, smoky stench in the air. Cautiously, hesitantly, he stepped into the lab, and his attention was arrested by the presence of three paramedics. Two lowered a gurney to the ground, and one peeled a limp, soot-covered body from the floor.

Charlie felt every drop of blood in his body rush to his feet. His heart twisted.

Dewie.

A surge of panic compelled him forward, caused words to spill from his mouth that he couldn’t control.

“What happened to him?” he cried, his voice unusually strained. He directed his words at the paramedic holding Dewie. “What happened?!”

The paramedic didn’t respond as he lowered Dewie’s body onto the gurney. Charlie whipped around to face one of the engineers and tried the question again. He needed an answer. Any kind of answer. Even if no one else was sure, he just needed to hear something. Anything.

Xavier finally cleared his throat. “From what we can see, he cut a live wire and was holding a metal screwdriver that happened to make contact with it.” He paused. His eyes darted to the floor. “The paramedics said he was dead long before they got here.”

“No fault of ours,” Freddy interjected, holding up his hands. “We didn’t see him. We didn’t even know he was here or what he was doing. We would have warned him about the live wires in that box.”

That scribbled note left on Dewie’s desk flashed in Charlie’s mind.

“Where? Which box?” Charlie demanded. He refused to acknowledge the sound of the polyester body bag crunching and folding over Dewie behind him.

Freddy pointed toward the blackened area of the ship. “Over there. It’s the only electrical box that stays powered at all times.”

Charlie knew which one it was.

Panel 17, box 2.

The reality of the situation crushed him. Dewie would have known that box was live. He knew the ship by heart. This wasn’t an accident.

Charlie’s mouth went dry as the paramedics stealthily slipped out of the room with Dewie’s body, as if no one would notice them taking their leave. He should have seen it coming. He was well aware of the anguish and anger that Dewie dealt with after they saw Liam crash to his death, and tried the best he could to help Dewie muscle through the pain, but somewhere in the pit of his gut, he worried that it wasn’t enough; that there was more he should have done.

He could have stopped him. Could have saved him.

He felt the inky devastation of a familiar demon creeping upon him. The moment grief and anger and remorse reared its triune head and bared its teeth and threatened to latch onto him, he internally drew back and steeled himself; held up his shield, battened down the hatches.

Grief wasn’t winning this war. Charlie intended to insure its defeat and remind it that he was in charge. He’d fought this battle more times than he cared to count and had an impressive track record of winning. He had other things to worry about now.

Particularly the fact that a two-man crew wasn’t suitable for a mission of this magnitude.

He needed to find a replacement. Move on, and find a replacement.

Dewie would have insisted they replace him.

—

“The accident”, as the incident was referred to, shook up the entire division and threatened to postpone the mission up to three months. Repairs to the ship would eat up precious time, and mission planners insisted that Charlie and his other crewmember, Brittany, learn the Drake as thoroughly as Dewie did in order for them to prevent additional problems in flight. In theory, a good idea, but the weight of the world’s starvation put the pressure on them to get off the ground sooner rather than later. There was no time for this mission to be polished to perfection. Especially not in light of “the accident”.

They needed a replacement, and Charlie already had a candidate in mind.

He marched into the engineering lab a week after the incident with an executive at his side and a huge binder under his arm, determined to keep his eyes on the group of engineers mulling about in a loose circle. If he deviated his gaze even a degree to the right, it would put the Drake in view. He was almost afraid that if he glanced over there, he’d see the paramedics and Dewie and the body bag all over again.

He grabbed the executive’s arm and pointed toward the group of engineers. “Him. Over there. Little guy with the blue hair. That’s Drake’s grandson, right?”

“Yes, it is,” the executive replied. He cleared his throat, straightened his shoulders. “Alph. Come here.”

Immediately, the tiny engineer’s ears perked up, and he hopped out of his seat and ran to stand in front of Charlie and the executive that called his name.

“Sirs,” he politely addressed them, giving a slight bow. “You called me?”

“Captain Charlie has been giving some thought to replacing the crewmember killed in the accident,” the executive began.

The words clenched Charlie’s heart. It still didn’t feel real.

“You were his first choice. You know the ship better than anyone and would be a vital asset to have on the mission. There may be situations where great knowledge of the ship is needed.”

Charlie watched as Alph’s face softened and his eyes grew wide. It almost made him feel like chuckling. He’d seen that look on the faces of many a young soldier or explorer being asked to go on their very first mission. It was hilarious every time.

“R-really?” Alph stammered. “Me? I’m not a trained astronaut!”

“Neither is Brittany,” Charlie interjected. “She’s a botanist. We didn’t pick her because she knew anything about space travel; we picked her for her expertise. It’s the very same reason why I – I mean, why we – are choosing you to uh, replace Dewie.”

No one could ever replace him. Charlie felt a dry lump hang in his throat as he spoke Dewie’s name for the first time since “the accident”.

Alph’s eyes sparkled, a dimple poked at his cheeks. Charlie half expected him to start floating. “I’m absolutely honored! I accept!”

Charlie felt peace settle deep in his gut. One less thing he had to worry about now. He took the binder under his arm and held it out for Alph to grab. The thing was almost as big as Alph was.

“Well, this’ll get you started, kid,” Charlie replied. He turned to the executive and folded his arms, clearing his throat loudly. “So uh, we can get back on track with our original six week schedule under these circumstances, right?”

The executive standing beside Charlie slid his hands into his deep pockets. “That was the agreement, right?”

“It damn sure was,” Charlie affirmed. “I don’t care what else comes up. In six weeks, we’re gone. We’ve got work to do.” He waved a hand at Alph, who had danced back to his console and already had his nose in the binder. “That kid will have learned everything he needs to know by the end of the week, most likely. I’m not worried about his readiness. He’ll do fine.”

“Of course,” the executive agreed. “He’s Drake’s grandson, after all.”

Alph’s lineage. The automatic qualifier. At least the kid had been lucky enough to inherit not just the bloodline of his grandfather, but more importantly, his brains.

—

That rubber ducky sat atop the glossy, marble stone in the ground that bore Dewie’s name, his birth and death date, his military ranking. It seemed to give off its own light source; the only smattering of sunshine in the bleary, hazy atmosphere of the cemetery, the only warmth of hope in the chill of despair and hints of autumn. The only person beside Charlie who ever visited this spot was Dewie’s mother, and she always left flowers. Fresh flowers. Not the silk, artificial flowers that gave off the false appearance of artificial love. There was nothing artificial about the love that poured out of a grieving mother’s wounded heart.

Charlie made sure that Dewie was buried only a few feet away from Liam. Though both young men served in the military and fought in one of the greatest intergalactic wars of their generation, only one was considered a war hero. Only one would be remembered in history textbooks, or memorialized in the form of bronze statues. Only one was given a proper military funeral.

Liam, who was killed in action. But not Dewie, who took his own life because he couldn’t handle the pain of losing his best friend to war.

A soldier who committed suicide was not deemed worthy to be remembered as a hero.

Charlie didn’t visit Dewie’s grave often. He was too busy and it hurt too much. Even still, he felt he had to stop by every so often, just to remind Dewie that he was missed. This would be his third visit, and it still didn’t register seeing two identical headstones in the ground only feet away from each other, one with Liam’s name and now the other with Dewie’s. Charlie trusted that the two had been joyfully, tearfully reunited in whatever sort of afterlife existed beyond the confines of physical bodies and the ticking clock. The only thing that could justify Dewie’s death in Charlie’s mind was the hope that he was now with Liam.

The unexpected shock of Dewie’s suicide was still shaking his innards and frying his emotions. Anguish was a live wire that yet licked at his heart and electrocuted every raw nerve. He had to manually switch off the current; push it to the back of his mind and try to numb the pain.

It wasn’t his fault. He couldn’t take it with him on this mission. He couldn’t let it prevent him from moving forward.

Dewie would be kicking him in the ass for thinking that way.