THE JOINING: The Cycle of the Shards Book One
Chapter 17

The last bell was still ringing as the last students left the school, Critock and Tom among them, but where most of them were heading towards home or the buses, the aliens among them were heading off, around and behind the school where few other kids were. As they stopped at a particular spot, right up against the back of the school under a window, Tom investigated a patch of freshly packed dirt while Critock glanced in the window and looked around, checking for any curious onlookers. As everyone else was uncaring about anything regarding the school at this point, nobody noticed a sudden cloud of dust appear and dirt flying through the air, though the boy standing nearest it wasn’t interacting with the ground at all. If there had been any onlookers, they would have eventually seen a small hilt slowly be revealed in the ground, and then move up in the sky before eventually ending up in the outstretched hand of the boy.

“Pretty good hiding spot.” Critock remarked, as the sword activated in his hand. He swung the sword around, re-accustoming himself to the lack of weight of the weapon.

“Quit swinging that thing around!” Tom hissed, swirling around Critock nervously and glancing around.

“Relax, no one is looking at us. Everyone’s getting as far away from this place as possible.”

“Which is exactly what we should be doing. You need to replace a place to hide it. Someplace respectable, this time. It isn’t right for the Sword of Kon to be buried in the ground.”

“Isn’t that where it was for a billion cycles before the Qua’roti found it?” Critock held the sword straight out in front of him.

“Well, yeah, and that was long enough, just undignified. How are you going to use it without anyone noticing?”

Critock chuckled. “All that learning about what it is and you never found out what it can do.” He arranged his fingers specifically, and twisted his wrist. Suddenly the electricity stopped flowing, and the two blades moved together. Quickly, the blade retracted into the hilt, and within a few moments instead of an ancient sword, all it appeared to be was a metal cylinder. Smiling, Critock tossed the cylinder in the air, and then dropped it into his backpack. “And as an actual bonus, I doubt it’d set off the metal detectors. Whatever this thing is made out of, I don’t think it’s anything that Earth has any idea about.” Whistling a Marconian tune, he turned in the direction of Kyle’s home and began walking, almost leaving a stunned Tom behind him before he remembered to follow him.

It was about ten minutes before the pair arrived, Critock having led the way and reached it without a problem as if he had done it a million times before. He opened the door wordlessly, the two moved inside. Both stopped as they entered, Critock closing the door behind them, and Tom whistled.

“Classic Earth home. There’s so much space!” He moved around from room to room quickly, wanting to see everything. Critock just sighed as he placed his backpack on the table. It was easy to get to the house now that he had nothing blocking Kyle’s memories of treading the path so many times, but for some reason he had never thought to see what his house looked like. Now that he was there, despite how alien everything was he felt a sense of familiarity. Every sight and smell in here had a particular memory. The table where the meals were eaten had a slight tinge of regret and anger, and he noted looking at the pictures scattered around that his father still lived with him. No sign of anything to do with the mother, he realized, and thought that it was interesting that the pair may have something in common. Checking within Kyle, he was relieved to replace that his father would not be home for some time tonight still, and that would give him ample time to get the information he needed from Shanna. He knew there was at least a couple hours before even she would arrive, so he started to walk around, taking it in though at a slightly less excited rate than Tom.

“Most humans live in places like this, it’s really not that big of a deal.” Critock said, mostly to himself, but was still impressed. He hadn’t had a real home in a long time, having made his now-destroyed Hopper his residence. Even before that he had drifted since his Military days, and before that…

“My dormitory with the Qua’roti was the size of their bathrooms. Even their bedrooms are larger than that!” Tom rushed down from the second floor. “There’s two of them up there! Both of them have a bathing area!”

“What an excess. I bet they probably think of themselves as poor.” Critock shook his head. All the space being taken up by all this nonsense could easily have served a second family. Growing pains of a young society, he supposed. In a few thousand years, maybe they would advance in their thinking. On Marconia, this kind of opulence typically was reserved to palaces. His thoughts turned bitter. Royalty. Still, right now he thought he deserved a little reward for everything that he had gone through. He crossed to their refrigerator, and pulled out a red fruit. Apple, he realized from Kyle’s memory, it was an Apple. Earth did have a lot of indigenous fruits that weren’t found elsewhere, thanks to the efforts of a population that spread like a virus and liked to take their favorite foods with them. Again, not unheard of for a species of this age. He took a crunchy, cold bite, and was startled at a sudden rumbling sound coming from the counter. As Tom zoomed over to investigate, Critock moved to the small black device with a curious eye. It had stopped, then started again, and the front of it lit up with numbers. Tom looked at Critock, who simply said, “Phone.”

“Ah. Yours?”

He looked at Kyle’s mind. “Yeah, but working it probably isn’t going to happen. Some things are easier to replace than others.” He picked it up as it rumbled one more time, considered it, then put it back down. “If I’m going to figure out how to work anything, it’s going to be that.” He turned, and pointed at Kyle’s computer, sitting against the wall with a printer next to it.

“Think you can get this one to turn on without your girlfriend?” Critock ignored the wisp, assessing the blank screen and the grey box it was attached to. After a moment, he pressed in a round button that seemed similar to the one that activated the device at school. With a flurry of beeps and whirring, the machine started to come to life.

“Huzzah! He can be taught! I always had faith in you.” Tom joked, as Critock continued to pretend that he had never met the soul, and sat in the computer chair that was only slightly more comfortable than the school’s seating. He sat and stared at the screen as it went through the motions of booting up.

“I have absolutely no idea what this is doing.” Critock remarked. “I don’t understand why the user experience is always the last thing these species work on. I should be able to tell the computer exactly what I want to do and have it be done, and instead I’m watching floating colored squares.”

“Perfect voice and motion control of these systems are closer than a lot of things if all holds. Probably another fifty years? Maybe less? It’s going to be a tight race with AI.”

“If they don’t nuke themselves, and AI doesn’t realize it’s the right choice to lead Earth.” Critock saw a cursor appear on the screen, resisted an urge to start moving his arms around, and accessed as much knowledge as he could replace in Kyle’s brain. Because of not knowing where to look exactly, all Critock figured out how to do was to move the mouse around. As sad as it seems, he did get a small thrill out of doing that. “I was on a bounty once. Sarokian, lots of feathers. Chased him to the closest planet, and it was one where they nuked a world right when their AI came online. So lots of radioactive technology on a world that wasn’t going to be alive again for another million years. Weird place.”

“You don’t have a lot of faith in people being able to do anything by themselves, do you Critock?”

Critock stopped moving the mouse, happy with his accomplishment. “I’ve seen a hundred planets like this one, and the contact division of the Military probably have seen a million more. It’s just a matter of odds, Tom. Young race plus technology that they don’t understand and can’t control. Mix in stuff like religion and a dependence on weaponry and you have a nice little recipe for the end of a race. One more set of lights going dark in the universe. I don’t have time to be worried or sad about every one that can’t quite make it.”

“A little harsh when you’re living among them, don’t you think?”

Critock rolled his eyes as the computer screen came on fully, and programs began to open. “I’d say it to their faces. It’s their very nature that allowed Pt’ron to hide so easily here. No other race in the universe wants to get caught in the crossfire of a doomed planet. The resources will be here after humans aren’t. So he comes, blends in, goes native. If they were more settled then Earth would have been on the radar, and he would’ve been stuck. Earth’s devotion to their primitivity may have just destroyed half the universe.” The cursor had switched to an arrow, and the computer had seemed to have stopped making grinding loading noises. He looked at the screen strangely. “I have no idea what to do here.”

“Um…” Tom floated closer to the monitor. “Down there, that one’s flashing.”

Out of habit, Critock tapped the screen with a finger. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, remembering what he was supposed to do, and grabbed the mouse, moving it over it’s pad. He watched the cursor move down to the flashing block along the bottom of the screen.

“They have a game here where they do this to try and contact the dead.” Tom noted as the cursor reached it’s destination.

“This place gets more charming as time goes on.” Critock took his hand off the cursor. “Nothing’s happening.”

Tom sighed. “I think you have to click it? Like this.” The wisp moved down and prodded the top of the mouse. New windows opened then, and started to fill the screen, surprising Tom and causing him to jump backwards. “I didn’t do it! I just touched it!”

“I think that’s supposed to happen.” Critock studied the screen, reading the text in the windows that were opening. “Fifty seven new messages. Who knew Kyle was such a popular kid.” He read through them slightly slower than Kyle would have, but still at a fairly quick clip considering he had not encountered the English language until a few hours earlier. All of the messages seemed to be along the same lines. People congratulating him and saying hello like they had known him all his life. He wasn’t too surprised. People wanting to be part of someone’s sudden fame came with the territory. He could still remember back to his first major victories that eventually traced to the War of the Shards. Everyone wanted to know the great Critock at that point, which he knew led to the eventual quick promotions that gave him the title of General but the responsibility of someone of much less rank. Hopefully his experience would teach Kyle something, if Kyle ever decided to crawl out of whatever corner of his mind he had been pushed to after his attempted takeover. Tired of what he considered to be empty platitudes from a host of children that he didn’t care to know, he stood up and walked away from the computer, and glanced around the room.

“Anything interesting?” Tom asked, the sheer number of messages overwhelming his senses. He also had figured out how to read the language, he just chose not to.

“Not a thing. Lot of people want to jump on a bandwagon.” He again looked at pictures, someone that was obviously Kyle’s mom was prominent in one. He walked over and looked at it closer. He decided he didn’t want to pry into Kyle’s memory on this one subject. There was no way it was germane to the mission, and he could see no way it could help them. He glanced around the room, taking in the ambience, and decided to walk upstairs. Most non-royalty residences throughout the Marconian Empire only had one large room that had all the necessities of living and family life, and if there was a second story there would be a complete other family living up there. Most entertainment was done at communal locations, in the interest of preserving space and energy. He found it was mostly the same at most developed planets. As opposed to his general feelings on the primitive nature of Earth, he could see the appeal of both ways, and if he made it back to Marconia he would look into maybe getting a bit more space, and to hell with anyone who would look at him with scorn. Or maybe just a larger ship. With his rank restored, he should be able to score a higher rate of compensation, especially if he pressed for a thousand cycles of past due payments.

As Critock reached the second floor landing, he took a closer look at the pictures on the wall. Some were family pictures, and still others were still pictures of art. Paintings of flowers and fruits, and some pictures of starry landscapes, most of which he noted were not anywhere close to accurate astrologically speaking. Much like entertainment had moved on beyond passively watching, so had photography. Most photos were either still holograms or ‘active’ moving holograms meant to capture a specific event or moment. There was only so many pictures of food that could be done before scientists had to develop a new way to display them, he thought, as he moved into Kyle’s room.

Kid’s not even ten cycles old, and his room has more stuff than a level 4 worker. Critock thought, looking at the amount of personal items that Kyle had. TV, video games, various unrecognizable electronics that Critock wasn’t sure even Kyle remembered what they were, he had it all. And a window outside, to boot. On his planet, this was a dream, on Earth, the average child doesn’t have half of this. He doubted that Kyle even knew how lucky he was. He glanced around and thought about the memories he was getting automatically fed to him connected from everything he was looking at. These ‘stolen memories’ of familiar family actions, or just things that he had no frame of reference for, made him uneasy, and he wondered why he was getting them. He wasn’t searching for them, Kyle was lost in his own mind somewhere, so why was he getting all of this added in to everything else that was on his mind, including having to plan for the complicated eventual arrival of Shanna? Almost as if on autopilot when he started thinking about Shanna and how he was going to approach this evening, he navigated to Kyle’s closet and began looking through it for a change of clothes. Somehow her seeing him in the same clothes that he wore to school that day just felt wrong. He didn’t stop to think about it, just found a different shirt and pant set and set upon changing into it. He had just finished getting into the white shirt and black pants, almost a suit without the jacket and extra accouterments but even he thought that might be going a bit over the top, when he decided that he needed to make sure his hair was as good as it could be. He gave no thought of why he was doing this as he crossed to the bathroom, and immediately picked up a comb and started straightening his normally messy hair. As he was doing this, Tom floated into the room, and stopped, momentarily at a loss for words.

“…What are you doing?”

Without looking at the wisp, Critock answered while continuing to comb. “Well, I wanted to make the best impression on Shanna. The better she feels about me, the better chance that she’s going to do exactly what we need her to do.”

“…Best impression? Critock, don’t you think you’re going a little overboard here? You don’t need to dress to the nines for….for a playdate?”

“It’s just a better shirt and pants, Tom, stop being dramatic.” He stopped coming for a moment, and assessed himself in the mirror. Targeting a particularly rough tuft of hair in the back, he ran the comb under the water for a moment before aggressively targeting the cowlick.

“Shirt, pants, hair, you going to put on some cologne next?”

“I don’t think he has any, but I haven’t checked yet.” Critock absent-mindedly answered, opening his mouth to assess if needed to brush his teeth. Thinking that he had better be safe lest he be sorry, he sat the comb down and prepared Kyle’s toothbrush.

“For the love of…Critock, what are you doing? This isn’t a date! We’re here to save this world and a hundred others, we’re here to stop another interstellar war, we are not here to pick up chicks!”

“You keep saying things that you know I’m already aware of, and I’ve already told you, it’s for the mission. I’m fine.” Critock brushed past the wisp, who only floated back slightly to allow him to pass.

Tom sighed, and followed him. “You’re not the one I’m worried about.”

Critock was just about to head downstairs, thinking that he might possibly still have time to pick up the house a little bit before she arrived, and stopped at the top step. “And what is that supposed to mean?”

“I mean that you, Critock, think you’re in complete control and you can handle everything. But the you that is Kyle might be working the system.”

Critock started walking down the stairs again. “I am in complete control.”

“I don’t think so. I haven’t known you personally for long, but you tell me, but when in the two thousand cycles of his life has General Critock of the Marconian Military Corps ever dressed up and combed for a woman, let alone a girl barely out of their puberty stage? Once? For Bakkara?”

Critock wheeled and advanced on Tom, only stopping when he reached the wisp. “You do not get to bring her up.”

“I’m trying to wake you up, Critock! You’re acting exactly like the teenager you’re pretending to be.” Critock angrily scoffed, and turned and moved down the stairs, with Tom following all the way. Reaching the bottom floor again, he began picking up and moving random items from one place to the next, somehow knowing exactly where their proper locations should be. Tom continued to try and get through to the stubborn Marconian. “It’s not unheard of for a joinee to still have an influence on the joiner’s mind. Especially one that is fighting the joining in the first place.”

Critock shook his head, rearranging a DVD case that had been left on the table. “I told you, he’s not an issue any more. He tried to fight me for control, I shut him down. I haven’t so much as heard a whisper from him since.”

“But he’s still there, that much is obvious. He’s still trying to wage a war against you, he’s just doing it silently. And doing a hell of a job at it. You’re getting memories that you’re not looking for? Images you can’t place? Being compelled to do things that you have no reason to do?” Critock stopped, and looked at the paper towel in his hand, and the bottle of cleaner in the other. He allowed himself to consider the possibility for a moment. He searched his mind, but again noted he couldn’t so much as hear Kyle fighting him, and any memory he cared to access was open to him.

“…How would you know anything about it. You’ve never joined.” It came out more angry than Critock had intended, but as far as he knew it was true, considering his outburst earlier.

Tom was silent for a moment, then spoke quietly. “I didn’t say I had never joined. I just asked you not to ask me about it.”

Critock turned around and stared at his partner. “So you have then. Tom, a joining would be probably the best thing that you can do right now. You could join with Shanna, and instantly have access to everything we need to get on the computer!” He felt a slight twitch when he mentioned that idea, but ignored it. “Or hell, you can go with the original plan and we can go replace Phelps right now!”

“I said NO!” Tom roared, and Critock was shocked into silence. Hard breathing sounds came from the wisp, who eventually recovered. “No. Just no. You want to know why? You should. You’re going through pretty much the same thing I did.”

Critock moved to a chair, and sat down, suddenly confused and curious enough that any thoughts of cleaning or straightening up had disappeared from his mind. “Tom, I’m sorry…But please, I need to know what happened.”

Tom sighed, and floated back and forth in a pacing motion. “Fine. If you have to know. I wasn’t always in the Qua’roti council.” He stopped, trying to assemble his words further, replaceing it difficult to speak. “I joined the military when I was young, probably same as you. Just a greenhorn from a farm planet, you know? Wanted to make a difference to the Empire, even though I later found out that the Empire hadn’t fought any wars amounting to anything in regards to freedom and saving the universe since…well since you did what you did.” Critock put his head down, and Tom continued. “So we found out I had a particular aptitude to working with the problem children. I was a pretty good therapist, would’ve been a fine career. Instead they had me try out a new method. So I joined with them. Every person that wasn’t quite getting the military lifestyle, everyone with PTSD, everyone that made any kind of mistake I got to meet, and get to know them from the inside out.”

“…Wait…Hold on. You joined with…”

“Dozens of people. Maybe over a hundred, you lose count after a while. Most of the time it was just a quick join, get their memories, get their side of it, and jump back out. Couple of days to recover, then right back in it. It wasn’t a bad idea, to be honest. We always got the joinee’s permission, and we did help quite a few people. I think they still do it today.”

“But it is extremely harmful to join with more than one individual that often! Hell, you shouldn’t be joining with more than one person a cycle!” Critock furiously snapped at Tom, even though Tom was not upset at the situation, nor had he anything to do with it.

“I know the official line all too well. I know what’s happened to other Marconians before. I had to do a lot of tests on my mental capacity before they would even consider me for the project. It wasn’t like it was a widely done thing.”

Critock got up, and paced back and forth for a moment. “They should have known better. What the hell happened to the Military since I got out of it?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if they had been experimenting with this or things like this even back when you were involved with them. I’m fine, Critock, what happened to me had nothing to do with that, really. It still seems like a pretty good idea, if not for the side effect we found out.”

Critock stopped pacing. “What side effect?”

“I’m getting there, if you’ll stop interrupting. I appreciate the concern, though.” Tom stopped as Critock sat back down, leaning back in the chair. “Thank you. So, this went on for some time. Eventually I got a good reputation in the community, and my role expanded. They started branching out to more messed up individuals. People that had been sent through military tribunals and were in danger of getting tossed into a cobalt mine, like you almost were once.” Critock nodded, and Tom started floating in a pacing motion. “So eventually, they hooked me up with this one guy. Real messed up guy, had snapped one day and killed a lot of prisoners that had surrendered after that thing in Yotop, remember that? Bad all around. He was a pretty good officer up until then and they wanted to see if he could be saved. So they hooked him up, got me in there. And he was fine! His mind wasn’t messed up, he was personable. There wasn’t any hints of danger or evil about him. So we had a bit of therapy. We decided to extend the joinings on a regular basis, we’d actually go out on workouts, I’d monitor him, and he and I would have pretty nice conversations within his mind.

“So one day top brass came to me and said that they wanted to give him a trial mission. They wanted me to keep control of the body and make sure his mind wasn’t going to try and supercede his orders or want to go completely crazy. Not an unheard of prospect, and there were a ton of safeguards to make sure I wasn’t going to end up stuck in him. So off we go, different planet that at this point I can’t even remember the name of. Pretty quick mission, get in, get some intel, no one gets hurt. So off we go. Into the city. Meet with their guy, and start talking. Right away I get a real bad feeling with the guy, I don’t like him at all. As we keep talking I just start raging at him. I’ve never been so angry at anyone, hell, I’ve never been that angry at anything. But at that moment, I wanted that guy dead. And I acted on it. I had a knife, and lunged across the table and put it at the guy’s throat.”

Critock was silent, and looked at Tom with new eyes, never thinking that his partner that seemed so against any kind of military type thinking would be involved in something like this.

“I don’t know why I hesitated. It was still me in control, maybe some part of me still realized this was wrong. When I stopped, knife ready to cut, I heard laughing. I was doing exactly what that evil bastard wanted me to do without him having to say a word.”

“So what you’re saying is...”

“What I’m saying is that even though I had full control of mind and body that guy was still there, still able to influence me behind the scenes without me knowing it and making sure I was doing exactly what he wanted without even realizing it. I almost killed a person, Critock. I got into the part of the military I did because I didn’t want to hurt anyone but I still wanted to serve the Empire.

“So I backed off, got back with my unit, and resigned. I didn’t understand what had happened to me yet, this wasn’t exactly on the brochure for standard joining procedure. I thought I was damaged myself, and eventually called in some favors and got joined with myself. You ever had someone join into your body, Critock?”

Critock shook his head. “No, military only required being taught on joining, not being a joinee. We got taught some defenses if someone got in our head, though.”

“Makes sense. It’s a rare situation. But it should be done in every branch of the Military. Hell, with what I know now, it should be taught in schools. When you’re joined with, you are trapped in your own mind. You can see everything that’s happening, but the invader has full control of your body and thoughts. You can talk to them, you can fight for control, but typically they’re going to have the upper hand.”

“I know all that.”

“But what you don’t know is that your minds are still linked even though you’re not the one in control. If you push for something, think about something hard enough that you can’t stop thinking about it, you can mold the joiner’s mind into thinking something is a very good idea when in fact it is the farthest thing from it. Given enough time and familiarity, you can push someone to killing, and they’d think it’s their own idea.”

Critock stood up, running a hand through his hair. “So you’re telling me....You think that Kyle is pushing for Shanna for me?”

“I think so. Getting all pretty for her? Making it all clean? You’re acting exactly like the kid you’re pretending to be. Just like I was acting like a killer once he figured out he could twist my head around. Once I figured that out, I knew I couldn’t join with anyone else ever again. My very idea of myself and body were kind of shattered. What’s the point of a body when someone can just come into it? But what’s the point of changing a mind when it’s owner can still control it? I eventually turned to the Qua’roti for answers...”

“And they led you to think that staying a soul and serving them was the best thing for you.”

Tom shook. “Critock, it’s not like they...”

“I know, I know, I’m not saying they brainwashed you or anything, I’m just telling you that in my experience, the Qua’roti are very good at telling you exactly what they think you should hear and making it sound like something you should do. Being a soul is a noble pursuit and I can’t think of any arguments against it, and it’s pretty helpful in our current state.” Critock walked closer to Tom. “You might be right, Tom. Kyle might be messing with my head right now. I typically wouldn’t put on clothes like this...” He picked at his shirt. “Or bother cleaning up the kid’s house. But I’m still waiting on a better idea than using her. We’ll never figure out this computer thing without her. Breaking in is a bad idea. Burning down the school is unacceptable. What’s our other option? For all we know the kid is right and she should be involved! You think I want to get a fifteen-year-old involved in the fate of the galaxy?”

Tom was silent, and Critock softened. “I know you’ve been through a lot. I’m sorry for what was done, and when I get back where I’m supposed to be I’ll do everything I can to put things in place where things like what you went through can’t happen to anyone else. But for me to do that we have to be prepared to do things we’re not happy about, and if that means I have to go along with a child’s manipulations so he can eventually hook up with the girl of his dreams, then so be it. He gets his reward, we get ours, and everyone stays alive.”

Tom sunk a bit, wishing he could sit down despite not having any body to do it with. “Thing is, he is a child. He doesn’t understand the war we could be getting into. Once we replace Pt’ron, you know he’s not going to come quietly.”

“I know.”

“Is he prepared to put his girlfriend in the crosshairs of one of the worst criminals in the universe just for a chance to hook up with her? Me and you are used to this kind of thing, even though I don’t much care for it. I know what he’s done to you, and that means you know that if he somehow gets wind of this before we replace him, Shanna and every human that Kyle is friends with is dead. Is he ready for that?”

Critock sighed. “Then we’ll just have to make sure that she’s as out of the way as possible and he doesn’t get wind of anything. If he isn’t prepared, if he is ignorant to that, then we’ll have to be on guard to protect her too.”

“This is exactly what I am talking about, Critock! We shouldn’t have to protect anyone that’s not ourselves! One girl, or trillions! You can be the savior of the Marconian Empire and Earth and everything else that we know about, or you can be the good guy and protect the girl, and doom the whole damn universe while you’re doing it. Which do you want to be, Critock? General? Savior? Or do you want to have your name put down in history forever as someone trying to play good guy?”

Critock was silent as he again faced the repeated inquiry. He knew what he should answer, and he was just about to when a bell rang and both of them turned towards the door to see a feminine shape behind the curtain, illuminated by the light from the setting sun. Critock turned back to Tom, nodded, and moved toward the door, taking a deep breath as he did so.

Shanna Ewing had arrived.