Benjamin brought three mugs to the cafeteria table, placed them down in a tight triangle, then sat. Dave reached for his mug, then passed the third mug to John, who sat a little ways down the long-table.
“Thanks", John said, only looking up from the device in his hands for a moment.
"Your welcome", Benjamin said, taking the first sip of his second cup of coffee that morning.
Benjamin loved coffee. He loved cigarettes as-well, but mostly, he loved coffee.
In the early 2100's, it had become near-impossible to find cigarettes for sale anywhere – even in gas-stations, which had became equally as antique, though for separate and unrelated reasons. Cigarettes hadn't finally been made illegal; all the tobacco plants on Earth hadn't dried-up because of some new, unexplainable virus, and shrivelled away to rot; people had simply stopped smoking. There had been no protests, no fuss; demand just disappeared. If Benjamin were to pull his own pack out of his pocket now, and show it to Dave, he didn’t think Dave wouldn't have the slightest idea what he was looking at. Yet coffee, on the other-hand, had never fallen into obscurity; it was still as ubiquitous as it had ever been.
Benjamin sipped his coffee again, and remembered how infinitely thankful he was for that fact.
"Where were you earlier?" John pocketed his device, then scooted down the table toward Ben and Dave. "You were late to the briefing."
Benjamin decided to test his theory, right now.
"I went out-side, down the corridor" – Ben motioned to the door-way of the cafeteria – "through the air-locks."
John opened his mouth to speak, but Dave was quicker: "What the fuck's out there? Beside space." John closed his mouth, then nodded.
Benjamin reconsidered briefly, then continued: "I was having a smoke." He pulled the pack from his front-pocket, and held it in the air for a moment. "I had a rough sleep last night. Thought I'd go out-side for a cigarette to clear my head before the briefing; then, I lost track of time, I guess."
John looked at the pack of cigarettes; puzzled, just as Benjamin had theorized. Dave, how-ever, didn't even glance at them.
"I don't know how you do that", Dave said. "Lose track your-self, I mean."
John leaned forward, elbows pressed down on the table. "What are those?"
Benjamin opened his mouth, but again, Dave was quicker: "They are imported from Earth, and sold to nostalgics at space-ports. My Dad used to sell them from his store on EC-I, but they were never very popular. People couldn't seem to figure out what to do with them without instructions." Dave laughed, then spoke directly to Benjamin. "Can I have one?"
"Sure", Ben said, wishing now that he had been brave enough to test his theory sooner.
"Wait", John said, still leaning forward. "What do you do with those?"
Dave stood from the cafeteria table, coffee in hand. "Come with us. I'll show you."
Benjamin stood. "Just let me re-fill my mug first."
Dave handed his mug to Ben, said: "mine too", then looked down at John. "Are you coming?"
- - -
The three men walked out of the air-lock together, and onto the exterior of the TARSAC-VII; twenty-five feet above their heads, completely surrounding the ship like a soap-bubble, was the deflector-shield. Beneath the shield, oxygen and gravity were both strictly maintained. Above it, was chaotic space.
Benjamin thought that in one of the many science-fiction films he'd seen as a child, a force-field like this would have been made to look electric, blue-tinged – just so the movie’s audience would know it's there. In real-life, the deflector-shield was completely invisible; that had an unsettling effect, Ben thought, of making it seem as if there was really nothing there to protect him from being sucked upward by the vacuum of space, and crushed.
"You are honestly the only person I've ever seen do that", Dave said. "Except for babies and small children."
"Sorry". Ben laughed nervously, suddenly aware he had been somewhere else for a moment. "I have an absent mind sometimes." He fished his pack out of his pocket, handed a cigarette to Dave, hesitated, then gave one to John, too.
"Sure", John said. "Thanks."
Ben returned the pack, then grabbed his lighter from the same pocket. He lit Dave's cigarette, his own, then passed the lighter to John.
"Like this", Dave said, demonstrating for John.
John imitated his motions, unsure of himself. The lighter was clearly a foreign object to him.
"You'll get the hang of it", Dave said.
"So, what's this about an expedition?", Ben said.
Dave took a drag from his cigarette, then he began to brief Benjamin: "A week ago, somewhere in the desert, about fifty miles away from a ghost-town named Khronos, there was a tremor in the planet's surface; fairly slight, no-body on the other-side of the planet felt it, but it was enough to open a crack in the ground nearly a mile wide." Dave took another drag. "The costumer, as you called him – his name is Haymitch – he's the leader of the expedition going under the surface; the expedition we are 'escorting'. He sent probes down the chasm first, of course; they made it two and a half miles down, before they lost their connection to the surface. Dr. Haymitch said some electromagnetic-force down there must have fried them. Hence, a human-expedition." John started to cough. Dave waited a moment for John to stop, then continued: “We're meeting Haymitch on Sector-Seven; because of the electromagnetic activity, we get new equipment. New weapons, too." Dave smiled.
"Why do they–"
"–do they need to hire mercenaries for an expedition?"
"Yeah." That had been Benjamin's question exactly.
"I don't know. I don't think Chief knows, either; I also don't think he cares – the pay for this job is absurd. But most importantly, I don't think Haymitch even knows why he's hiring mercenaries for what could of just as easily been a perfectly legal scientific expedition."
“It sounds like Haymitch knows there’s going to be something down there that his team will need protection from, and he doesn’t think we’ll take the job if he tells us what that is”, Benjamin said. "That doesn't worry you, Dave?"
"Fuck yes, it does." Dave took a last drag from his cigarette, then stomped it out on the haul of the TARSAC. "So does not working."
Benjamin stomped his cigarette, then turned with Dave toward the air-lock. John followed a short distance behind, now knowingly excluded from the other's conversation.
Dave leaned in toward Ben, and said: "You know, the rest of us smoke in the engine room; Zenry, Tso, and I."
Benjamin stopped suddenly. "What?"
Dave laughed. "I'll tell you one thing that hasn't changed in four-hundred years, Ben: the criminal class still smokes. You'd know that was still true if you spent some time out of your quarters."
Benjamin felt his cheeks flush. "Really? I didn't know that."
“Try coming out of your shell a bit, Ben; the crew’s not so bad. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you out of your quarters past eight.”
Benjamin opened his mouth to reply, but John interrupted him: "Look; up there." Ben turned around, then followed John's gaze.
Hanging directly above them, looming over the TARSAC like a giant, was Jupiter – a name only Benjamin knew her by; and silhouetted against her orange atmosphere, he saw another old God: Mars.
“Home sweet home”, Dave said, then walked through the air-lock with Benjamin close behind him.
- - -
To be continued...
