t had been almost a week that the Sparrow was heading towards the planet of Sugen. King Thickett was an ancient ruler that had a sanctuary built into the center of a the giant city called “Loors” it was a city with 7 million citizens all ranging from poverty to the distinguished aristocrats of Thicketts court that lived in a deeper residency of the city that had clean water and green plants. Most of the citizens who didn’t live on the farms scattering the planet of Sugen, they worked either in the mines of Sugen under the southside of the city or they worked in centers that researched human ailments and attempted to heal the Cancer that plagued their planet, but they also had a lot of body modification where they changed out limbs that were destroyed by the rampant Cancer. Solomon had left early enough to where he was mostly unscathed and never abstained from a tumor that took any of his limbs, however he did have the Sugens chip that was inserted into all of the populace of the planet at birth through a needle in their eye. The chip would read the health of the Sugeinen, there was a conspiracy among the population that the chip was all knowing and that it would lead to the government spying on them. Thickett would lean into this fear making his court stay in line. But truthfully the chip wasn’t that advanced, it was literally just for vitals to make it easier for the medical professionals to give treatment. Solomon at one point did take his chip out though, Arias actually had helped with that, Arias using information he found in a book on how to lobotomize. Solomon actually wore the chip around his neck as a symbol that he would never bend to a king ever again. Lord V wasn’t sure how they’d infiltrate Sugens inner court, Lord V tired of being silent about the destination.

  “Solomon, come here I need to pick your brain” Solomon stood up from the chair he was playing a game to pass the time.

  “Yes Lord V” he sat down next to him in the cockpit, swiveling the chair to face Lord V’s direction.

  “How deep were you in that Sugen military?”

  “I was in a special forces unit that focused on telekinetic phenomena, and I was essentially a field test subject to weaponize something no one understands.”

  “Hm, ever been in King Thicketts castle?” Lord V said begging to cut to the meat of what he needed to know.“No, no one sees him much other than his broadcasts on the state of the planet, I never got closer than maybe some of the ships and nicer areas near the castle..but I’d never even been allowed to pass the bridge to go into his solitude” Solomon said beginning to wonder what the hell Lord V was getting at.

  “Well my dear boy, word in the galaxy is that Thickett isn’t real and that he’s a construct”

  “A construct? Like..what do you mean?” Solomon pushed himself up from his stool.

  “Well Sugen is a very advanced planet, despite what it might look like. A very long time ago Sugen had access to technology that was..dangerous to the fragility of the human condition.”

  “Okay, so what does that have to do with Thickett being a fucking construct?” Arias barged in getting frustrated with Lord V not just asking or proclaiming the thought he was trying to convey.

  “Well the Church isn’t sure if Thickett is…what might be considered a collective tulpa, where everyone believes he’s real but he’s not. Or his essence was transported into technology long lost to the never ending war, so I’m not even sure what Sugens almost 350 year old king is alive, he would be the oldest living thing in the universe. That we know of.” Lord V finally letting his thoughts rise to the party.

  “A collective tulpa? Seems unlikely, but I did read in a transcript a long time ago that there were computers that were so advance on Sugen that they could take a humans thoughts and transfer them and store them like a picture or text” Amelia spoke up and swiveling her chair to join the boys conversation.

  “I read something like that too, but I read a story that a battle ravaged an area of Sugen and destroyed a very specific test base that had a lot of technology that was rumored to house Thickett, and that was the last time his likeness was updated.” Arias added.

  “Well he broadcasts on screens in the fields of Sugen with giant floating machines that show a picture of him sitting in his throne with his skeleton like face, hooked nose and sickly grey eyes..but it plays his voice, but it’s obviously a picture and not a video..” Solomon starting to recall that he never actually saw Thickett or any sign that he was…alive? Solomon thought to himself how did the entire planet not question it…we all just blindly followed whatever was said.

  “Well, we need to get into Thickett’s solitude and we need to steal…” Lord V paused for a second.

  “We need to borrow with no intention of returning information about Avenj and the Dark Messiah Prophecies and anything that has Howards or Emu’s real names.” Lord V said with a crooked smile.

  “I think I can get in with Arias, but you would need to drop us off kinda near where the slave camps are…Arias should be able to point it out…I have never returned before so I really wouldn’t be sure where we’d need to go from the atmosphere” Solomon said gesturing at Arias to come to the control console to start getting ready to let the two jump out into the root fields of Sugen. Arias several buttons on the deck that Lord V had been sitting in front of and the Sparrow began to descend lower into Sugen’s atmosphere, one the Sparrow was flying close enough to the ground Arias grabbed both his and Solomons backpacks, he shoved the energy staff into the backpack, and he threw Solomons energy rifle over to him.

  “Alright, this is us” Arias said walking to the back of the ship and hitting a button to open the rear hatch.

  Arias jumped out of the back. Solomon looked over and began to tighten his backpack and then he turned to the door and he realized that Arias jumped out of the ship.

  “Damn it…” Solomon dreading a free fall

  Solomon jumped shortly after Arias, and down into the fields of Sugen they landed.

  —--------------------------

  Arias and Solomon both floated down onto the ground like they had gilded with parachutes.

  Sugen did not have the massive amount of Gravity like other worlds do, so they were able to dive onto Sugen with little to no detection from surrounding citizens of the fields, not that they much care because they were all starving and trying to make it to the next day, most Sugenians were not unfamiliar with indifference to things around them. Arias landed in the middle of a root field and he began to walk toward a mud and stick hut that he knew was Solomon's family's old hut, and should be deserted. Solomon landed on an heirloom root cart, he smashed it into several pieces.

  “Fucking hate those things!” Solomon said with a hoarse voice as a broken wheel went flying that he had kicked. Solomon could recall like it was yesterday when he would pull those carts from the fields to the collection houses, where Sugen officers would whip you and leave with welts if you didn’t bring enough Root to satisfy the quota.

  Solomon walked toward the Shack seeing Arias’ short head bobbing in the distance.

  They both entered the Shack, it was dry and dusty and filled with old dilapidated furniture.

  Solomon walked towards a bookshelf to pick up a burned book that he was hoping was an old recipe book his Mom used to cook from, but almost to the moment Solomons hand touched the book Arias screamed “Fuck! Get down!” Arias ended up jumping on Solomon and they both landed on the dirt floor of the shack. A creepy blue light gleamed into one of the broken windows, a floating metal monster, it was square and had several exhausts on it that made horrible clunking sounds. It had two spotlights on the top of the contraption and it began to play some sort of recording in a broken language Arias could barely recognize. After the robot floated around the Shack for several minutes and shining the spotlights into the dark shack. It floated away.

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  “Fuck that was close..” Solomon said peeking over the window seal watching the robot float off into the dark fields.

  “What the hell was it saying?” Arias asked Solomon hoping he knew.

  “Yeah, the robot was proclaiming that all non-citizens will be burned in an internment camp or killed on the spot if arrest was resisted..” Solomon said still worried there was more guards about.

  “Thickett did not like outsiders...or I assume not…one time there was a few years was a planet close to us would have people come visit us and the robot sentries would gun down their ships” Solomon said remembering the pointy ship falling out of the sky into the fields and the sentries scouting the wreckage and burning any survivors alive with the flame throwers that were equipped with the Sentires.

  “We need to blend in Solomon, I thought you’d have old Sugen Spec Op drabs from when you were in the spec forces…” Arias said looking at the destroyed shack.

  “Why would I have anything in my childhood home where my family was murdered? I haven’t been here since I was kidnapped from here.” Solomon said finally reaching for that book he hadn’t got a chance.He thumbed through the pages of a book that had nothing legible except for little pieces of measurement of ingredients that didn’t matter since the rest of the recipe was ineligible. Solomon threw it at the wall with full force, and then Solomons misery bubbled up and everything in the shack, old dishware, books, chair began to levitate, Solomon punched the bookshelf and everything fell back. Everything looked as though that it had been disturbed for the first time in decades and dust filled the shack, Arias began to cough violently/

  “Fuck *cough cough* fucking calm down! You’re going to give us away and we’re going to get fried by those sentires” Arias said, slapping Solomon on the shoulder.

  “We need to make our way to Loors. I know there’s a training camp close to us, and I think we need to…”borrow” some drabs and some skin chips from a couple of commanding officers” Solomon peeking out the window trying to recall which way to walk into the dark.

  “Skin chips?”

  “Yeah, they grant access to Solitude and we can get into Thicketts court. But either way I think we should follow that Sentry bot closely, he’s got to be heading back to that base, is my guess” Solomon said, opening the door to the shack and gesturing to Arias to walk out into the dark desert. There were two full moons and the entire desert was lit very well and that made it easy to see where the Sentry bot was going. The two of them crouched behind dunes and would try to minimize the size of their shadows to not accidentally give their location away to a low flying ship or another sentry that they maybe weren’t aware of. The sentry was floating at a very intermediate pace that Arias and Solomon could stalk it without having to move too fast. They tracked the bot to a camp that had what looked like several limestone monoliths that had a red sheet of force that connected each monolith that surrounded what looked like large tents. A fire was burning in the center of the camp but it was hard to make out anything through the refraction of the red energy field. The sentry bot floated directly into it and passed on the other side no visible stoppage or barrier.

  “Shit, that’s the camp. I was dragged here when I was barely a man and forced to do my little party tricks for the decorated assholes.” Solomon said staring at the camp through the scope of his energy rifle

  “I have a feeling that if we touch that red energy fence we’ll be sliced in half…I’m not sure how that sentry made it through it.” Arias whispered to Solomon.

  “All the sentry's can do that, I don’t know what engineering goes into making that sort of thing happening” Solomon trying to think about what to do.

  “I wish Howard could be here…I bet he could just use his powers to rip the monoliths apart”

  A blue dim light creeped behind Arias and Solomon

  “Yeah that might be a good idea” chimed into their minds with Howards monotone voice.

  Arias jumped up and grabbed his chest and started to breath in and out shallowly

  “Fuuuuck” Arias said, looking at Howard.

  “It is so good to see, but god damn it you shouldn’t be here..you need to be traveling in space so it’s hard for Emus to find you…”

  Howard then chimed into their minds “I cannot let you guys have all the fun without me, besides Amelia just keeps talking about some encyclopedia she encrypted from an old mainframe of some planet, and Lord V keeps talking about fishing trips he’s been on…so I teleported here”

  “Teleported?” Solomon said

  “Yes, I moved my body from one place to another…ever heard of it?” Howard snidely said.

  Solomon exchanged a look with Arias, Arias shook his head and shrugged his shoulders.

  The three of them sat prone in the desert in a dark spot where they were covered by a shadow of a dune. Wind started to blow beside them and kicked up dust. The dust started to pass through the red energy wall, which seemed to Arias.

  “It’s not supposed to do that…it should be burning it or at least collecting it. I wonder if it’s even engaged, that would explain why the sentry just passed through it…”

  The three slowly approached the wall, Arias pressed his hand against it and it went straight through.

  “Oh..yeah they don’t have it engaged I guess” Arias said confused.

  They all walked past through the red wall, as soon as all three cleared the wall they heard a sound and then the walls glowed a darker red and then the field connected above them and created a darker red energy wall trapping them inside of a large dome.

  “Oh fucking damn it…it wasn’t a wall to keep us out…it was a trap..” Arias said resting his face in his hand. Solomon tried to touch the wall, but it was hot to the touch and he jerked his hand back from the wall after touching it.

  They could hear the whining of several engines coming towards them.

  Howard gave up his secret of how he arrived out of nowhere, by disappearing. Howard made a portal and floated into, abandoning Arias and Solomon.

  “Wait! Wait! What the hell Howard!?” Arias said, running towards him and waving his arms in frustration as the portal disappeared.

  The whining of the floating robots had grown near that they saw several robots were coming towards them, the robots passed through the trap walls and one of the robots screen face turned inside of the mechanical monstrosity to show a giant light that blinded Arias and Solomon, going blind both Arias and Solomon fell onto the sand.

  ____

  “Flash them again” a gravelly voice said in a rather unpleasant demanding way. Arias and Solomon's eyesight began to burn back into them like they watched a piece of paper burn and then after the film was gone their vision was restored.

  “What the hell is that? How’d you blind us?” Arias said in a panicked tone

  The man with the voice of a rock came up to Arias.

  Both Arias and Solomon were stuck against a metal wall bound by energy and they couldn’t move anything except their eyes.

  “How did we blind you?” the man said.

  He was wearing a green suit that was skin tight against his yoked frame. He was taller than Solomon and was completely bald with no eyebrows. He punched Arias right in his gut. Arias let out a scream of pain.

  “Hey get your fucking hands off of him!” Solomon said through gritted teeth

  “Oh I’m sorry Traitor, you don’t like it when I touch your boyfriend?”

  The man then also punched Solomon in his gut, but Solomon didn’t let out a scream because this was a part of their training to get into special forces that he endured when they were kidnapped.

  “The GFA wasn’t good enough for you?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Arias with tears streaming down his face

  “Grand Force Army, shut the fuck up Bevmar!” Solomon said

  “You know who he is?”

  Bevmar punched Solomon in the gut again.

  “That's Master Bevmar, you will call me by rank you traitor bitch, you might have thought you escaped your commitments,but you have no idea! You’ll have to answer to King Thickett! You two will meet your new beginnings here. I can’t believe you brought a monk here. He might not survive” Bevmar said, almost bursting out laughing.

  The dark background turned the entire room into a sharp red hue. There was a tank not dissimilar to what Howard has. There were tubes pumping a red fluid through the room with a contraption of tubes, other reservoirs of the fluid. There was a skeleton and several organ freely floating in the main tank. A broken robotic voice emitted into the room that was whispered but at a deafening volume.

  “My child…you’ve returned…youre thoughts press into me, your gifts are ours…you took an oath child of the west most fields of our root empire…S..Solomon, why have you left and more importantly…why have you R-R-Return?”

  “Who the fuck are you?” Solomon said, scared at the events unfolding around them.

  “My child, you know who I am. I have been your king beyond your comprehension of time.”

  Arias and Solomon both had the same feeling of dread and fascination from the giant room that was horrific.

  “He’s…he’s dead, that makes sense…but what the fuck he’s literally a tube of organs and bones..” Arias said, trying to wrap his head around this.

  “Well…I guess if Howard can preserve himself…I guess it’s naive of us to think no one else has or can” Solomon said.

  A floating glass bowl with a long tube connected to one of the tanks, it had a brain inside of it. It floated up, dragging the long tube behind it, approaching Arias and Solomon, and stopping next to Bevmar.

  “My child, explain yourself or you will share a grave with you…what did you call him Bevmar….m..monk? B…b..boyfriend?”

  “Monk Boyfreind yes…” Bevmar said bowing.