Endeavors Run: Chapter One

Alexus, the protagonist is now a young man.At first without direction, then he finds the two things that will help to guide him through to adult hood. Martial arts, and his best friend: Baseball

Chapter One: 3182 AD �" Earth - Finding the Arts and Baseball

 

After his mother’s tragic death during the pandemic that had devastated the Koryak region, and his subsequent move to the Scottish Gaelic Enclave where his father had originated from, Alexus had nothing in his life that even remotely resembled his first ten years in Koryak. He had no direction and little ambition to find one. Finally, one day, three years after coming to Gaelic, he walked past the gymnasium at his school and heard the sounds of struggle, loss, victory, and dedication. For the first time since leaving Koryak a longing in his spirit was awakened as he felt the allure of this discipline. As soon as he entered the gym and watched the practice, he knew that this was what would finally help him find a direction in his life. A life not dominated by his grief.

    He immediately joined, embraced, and became totally immersed into the extreme discipline of martial arts. It was an outlet where he could channel both his grief-stimulated frustrations and attempt to achieve the ever-elevating goals that the physicality of martial arts demanded of him. His extreme athleticism and mental discipline ensured that he was also a natural. He quickly excelled and rose in rank and stature so that by the time he was eighteen he had no local equal.

     Between school, studying, and martial arts training, he spent countless hours running in the steep Scottish Highlands. Unlike the martial arts competition, where mental focus was an absolute necessity, running provided an outlet to channel his restless spirit. It also became the prime medium he used to channel his conscious soul to places far beyond his physical being. It was through running that he was finally able to access his family’s unique ability of astral projection.

    During the grueling pain of running in the mountains, he could project his mind to another plane of existence, and with a clarity that bordered on the preternatural.  While his body was being pushed to its maximum pain threshold, his mind would be able to go to another place altogether where all physical pain was eliminated. When he would finally come back to his body, he would be kilometers away, and his thought process would be so clear that he began to reserve any difficult decision to be made only while running.

    It was a common practice of his mother’s family in Koryak that many of their women could simply slip into the out-of-body state by inner mediation alone. With Alexus, however, he had to achieve an extreme physical state of duress, change his body chemistry, and use the overt pain in order to achieve his form of astral projection. Once achieved, he found that his ability to go anywhere or anytime was well within his grasp. As much as he tried however, he simply couldn’t achieve astral projection any other way. It became a source of frustration to him, and no amount of meditation could produce the results that he knew he should be able access.

    Now at eighteen, after the death of his father, Alexus was alone in the world, but the intense dedication and strength to succeed instilled by his mother ensured that Alexander Preston Porter would never take a step back and would strive to become the type of man he knew she would have wanted him to become, and who she would be proud of.

 

***

   

There were many things that Alexus had contemplated doing with his life, and in spite of his family of physicians wanting him to follow his mother into the medical field, he knew it wasn’t for him. In fact, the most consuming, and eventually the most influential motivation in young his life, was an extension of his love for martial arts, and that meant the acquisition of a true Samurai Katana sword. His overwhelming need to own one became all consuming, and intuitively it led Alexus with a way to find one, and find the exact right one. One day an opportunity presented itself, and he didn’t hesitate to use it.

     Alexus had only consciously done one thing in his entire life that was even remotely deceptive: he joined the Edinburgh archeological school. He had no interest in archeology, but knew that somehow it would be through this school that he would find his young life’s passion. In his first year, he conned his way into becoming part of an excavation team in the far away, totally devastated, and still nuclear hot zone of the Fukuoka dig, in Kyushu, Japan.

    It was rumored that it was here in Fukuoka; the famed physicist Dr. Haru Mizushima utilized the hundred-year-old Reed-Ebe theory to invent the Enhanced Magnetic Drive, or EMD. Since almost no records survived World War Extinction, also known as WWE, most rumored sites had to be physically investigated. This site was simply one of many, and since it was considered one of the hottest, it had been left alone for a thousand years. Now however, the radiation levels had depleted to what was considered a marginal safe zone; hence, the dig.

    Alexus had almost no interest in finding the origin of the EMD. His sole purpose for going was simply a ruse in order to get him to achieve his real ambition. He became the junior member, which pretty much meant that any crap job the professors needed to be done, he got to do. However, it also left him on his own for hours a day, ostensibly doing some menial task that no one else wanted to do.

    During one of these days of being shunted off to the side, he left the dig site, and went exploring on his own. There was one site of particular interest to him. It had relatively little damage since it was on the far outskirts of Fukuoka, which had otherwise been obliterated by the nuclear bombardment.

    One of the former residents of the tiny hamlet of Shijiki was none other than Dr. Mizushima’s mother. She lived alone in the house that her son had bought for her after the death of his father. She had wanted to be near him, but couldn’t stand the thought of living in the fast paced city of Fukuoka. It was also the place where Dr. Mizushima had kept a steel safe sealed with his most prized possessions: his collection of Samurai swords, including the famed Fujiwara Kanenaga Katana.

    To get there, Alexus had to borrow, or rather steal, as it was later called, a hover car, and make the trip by himself. Since records were rare or non-existent, he had to use his powerful intuitive ability, and yet he still had to go to almost each ruined former residence before he finally found the completely collapsed and almost unrecognizable building that had once belonged to Dr. Mizushima’s mother.

    He had taken a metal detector, pick, shovel, and some high thermal detonation cord, and set about trying to find the steel safe. Once again using his intuition, it took him only twenty minutes before he was able to find it. Although it was over one thousand years old and was in a deplorable state, it still didn’t easily yield to his initial attempts to gain entry. He finally had to resort to using a laser cutter, and although he was very concerned about what it would do to the contents inside, he simply saw no other way in. Luckily, the laser cutter took out only a small section of the safe, a section just barely big enough for Alexus to reach in. He put his hand in and grabbed something wrapped in a protective resin plastic cloth that was about one and a half meters long. When he pulled it out of the safe and cleaned off the protective coating, he knew he had what he wanted: the Fujiwara Kanenaga Katana. From that point on, it never again left his possession.

    Upon return to the digs main camp, he was thoroughly reprimanded, thrown off the team, and sent home in disgrace. He couldn’t have been happier. He finally had what he knew would become part and parcel to his very being: his Samurai Katana.

 

***

 

After his ejection from the archeology dig, he aimlessly began looking for something else, so that when, on a whim, he took and passed the aptitude test for Space Command, he immediately quit the Edinburgh University archeology school and applied his full abilities to make the most of the opportunity that Space Command could offer.

    While attending his first year at the space academy near the Space Command headquarter facility at the Cheyenne Mountain complex in the Colorado Enclave, Alexus met an overweight introverted young genius named Basil Jonathon Hartley. They first met while cadet Hartley was in the middle of losing an a*s-kicking contest with an upper classman known to bully anyone who couldn’t fight back. While it was considered a breach of cadet conduct to intervene while an upperclassman taught a younger cadet his or her place in the food chain. Conduct breach or not, cadet Porter had seen enough, especially when cadet Hartley was unable to recover enough wind to get off the ground after a particularly viscous kick to his stomach. While he was still lying there painfully emptying the contents of his lunch on the ground, he got kicked in the stomach again. At this point, cadet Porter simply placed himself between Hartley and the bully who was again advancing to inflict yet more punishment. Since the upperclassman didn’t much care whose a*s he kicked, he decided that teaching two first year cadets their place in the food chain would be a good days work.

    It was later determined that the loss of two teeth and the broken jaw that the upperclassman suffered were the result of accidently falling into some unfortunately placed granite benches near the entrance to the first year cadets dormitory. All the witnesses, including several other upperclassmen, told the same story during the subsequent investigation. No upperclassman ever tried to teach either cadet Hartley or Porter their place in the food chain again.

 

***

 

The day after Alexus had stopped the pudgy first year cadet from his beating, he found cadet Harley sitting alone in the cafeteria eating lunch. Alexus walked over and stood across from him, holding his lunch tray and waiting for the badly bruised black-eyed cadet to invite him to sit with him. No invitation was forthcoming, so Alexus simply found another table to eat at. The next day the exact same scenario played out again, with both cadets, once again, eating their lunches alone. On the third day, Alexus simply sat down across from the cadet without an invitation and began eating his lunch in silence.

    The still black and blue cadet looked over at his unwanted table companion and testily said, “You don’t take hints very well do you?”

    Alexus had learned infinite patience from his mother and simply smiled, took another bite of his sandwich, and casually reflected on the first comment his tablemate had ever said to him, “Hint? There has to be something actually said, as in a verbal communication, in order for there to be something construed as a hint. So far, the only hint that you’ve given me is that you do actually know how to speak, gasp for air, and of course, puke on the ground.” Alexus took another bite.

    Cadet Basil Jonathon Hartley had learned what condensation meant from his two athletically gifted but cerebrally average older brothers, and he hated it. He was not about to be condescended to by this funny accented, obviously athletic brute, whether he saved him from a beating or not, “Why exactly are you here? Do you want thanks for the other day? Fine. Thanks. Anything more you want?” Basil’s ire was rising, and getting into a verbal contest was something he never lost at, so he was prepared to blow his uninvited tablemate out of the water if it came to a verbal joust.

    Alexus gave this obviously proud but lonely boy his best smile, and tried to disarm him with kindness. “Why yes. There is something I want.”

    “Yeah? What?” Hartley suspiciously demanded.

    “I’d like a friend. I don’t really have any, and I noticed that since both of us always seem to eat our lunches alone, I thought that maybe we could find a common ground.” Alexus kept his voice steady.

    Basil was having none of it. He was a local boy, whose military family had come from the Cheyenne Mountain Enclave, and his father, a Colonel in the Space Command, prized physical prowess more than anything else; Basil was anything but an example of physicality. He was, however, one of the most cerebrally gifted humans on the planet. Unfortunately, in his family, being the smartest in a family of athletes was an affront to the family legacy instead of an asset. Both his father and brothers treated him with distain. Even when he scored the highest possible score on the Space Command entrance exam, his father barely recognized this extraordinary accomplishment. In spite of, or probably because of, his intellectual superiority, and the massive chip on his shoulder, he was shunned, shamed, and an outcast wherever he went. The well-established emotional and social walls he had erected over a life of self-inflicted exile didn’t help him win many friends either. As far as Basil was concerned, the sooner he got off this shithole of a planet and among the stars, the better. He hated this world and its apparent disdain for anything intelligent.

    At the academy Basil was finally happy for the first time in his life, because now he was able to leave the pain of being in a family who saw him not as a gifted child, but as legacy disgrace. Unfortunately for Basil however, the academy was like having hundreds of brothers just like the two he had left at home. He began to hate life here as well. Then Alexus Porter beat his way into his life.

    Being a slow, fat genius meant that his social life was zero, and any attempt by this tall, handsome, athletically built cadet with the funny accent to befriend him seemed like a pathetic joke; the same type of cruel joke that he had experienced more than once. He was extremely wary of any attempts by anyone who tried to convince him of their sincerity, because every time he had given in and attempted to find friendship, it had always turned out to either be a cruel joke, or someone simply using him for his academic skills.

    Being lonely hurt. Being hurt by someone who he wanted to trust, but who only used him instead, hurt even worse. Basil was wary of being used and hurt once again, but what he didn’t know, what he couldn’t possibly have known, was that this boy sitting across from him, asking to be his friend, knew exactly why Basil was angry, hurt, and lonely. He couldn’t have possibly known that this boy had an instinctive, intuitive altruistic nature, and would use it to tear off the coat of emotional armor that Basil had erected over a lifetime of failed trust. So, not knowing his adversaries gift, Basil was ready for battle.

    “I scored 100 percent on the entrance exam. What common ground could we possibly have?” Basil was sure he had just set himself up to wipe the mental chessboard with this obviously barely-able-to-think-past-his-jock-strap guy. Rook takes Knight.

    Undeterred, Alexus volleyed back. “That’s really a fantastic score. You beat me by two percent. I didn’t think that that was possible. I am thoroughly impressed by your superiority “ Alexus looked at his opponent as if to say: Pawn takes Rook.

    As much as that bit of news surprised Basil, he would never become the fat hanger on kid for some obviously smart popular handsome guy, and he made his case crystal clear. “You say that you don’t have any friends; I find that hard to believe. I’ve seen the way the girl cadet’s fawn all over you, the way they act around you to get your attention. Do you think I’m blind and stupid?” Knight takes Queen.

    Alexus just leaned back in his chair with a contemplative look on his face, and said the most unnerving comment that Basil had ever heard in his life. “And here all this time I thought you were the undisputed genius in this academy. That’s what everybody says anyway, but that can’t possibly be right. Not even close to being right. How could everyone be so utterly wrong about you?” Pawn takes Queen.

    Basil was back on his heels, because he had never in his life been referred to as anything less than the smartest kid wherever he went. “As if! What…what do you mean by that?” King now threatened.

    Alexus had him now, and he knew it. “What do I mean? You just sat there and said to a guy, who has just extended his hand in genuine friendship, that you don’t want it because a few girls have shown me some banality laced superficial attention, and therefore I must have a lot of friends,” Pawns moves to dominate position. Check.

    “So, by virtue of that paranoid logic, and totally based on your stated contention about my supposed plethora of friends, I have no alternative but to believe that your reputation as the smartest cadet in the history of the Space Command academy is total, and complete bullshit!”

    Basil opened his mouth in rebuttal, but found that he had nothing. His game now seemed an obvious bluff, and it had just been called. King now trapped by pawn.

    Alexus, however, had yet to deliver the decisive move. “And furthermore, I’ll go one step further, and conclude the following with utter conviction�"and you really need to hear this�"because cadet Basil Jonathon Hartley, your opening statement, that because a girl flirts with you that that makes her a friend, has got to be the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my life!”  Pawn takes King. Checkmate.

    Instead of becoming infuriated at his first intellectual loss, the opposite happened. Basil gave Alexus a look of sincere scrutiny that he had never before given anyone else in his life, for the simple reason that no one had ever earned his respect before, and certainly, no one had ever successfully bested him in a verbal contest. He knew, as much as he hated to admit it, this boy had just pants him at his own game. That, in and of its self, spoke volumes about the guy sitting across from him.

    Maybe this guy wasn’t just wanting to briefly use him for some test he needed passing, and he really didn’t seem the type to engage in a fat boy hazing that a few other jock types had done to him. And, on top of all this, he had voluntarily defended a perfect stranger and easily kicked the crap out of that Neanderthal upperclassman bully.

    Slowly, an epiphany began to take root in Basil’s bitter lonely soul: Maybe there were actually people in the world who were worth a chance at friendship. God knew that Basil had always wanted a friend, a real friend; someone who cared about his feelings, his opinions, and someone who he could, in turn, give his real friendship to without fear of ending up being played a fool yet again. Basil knew better than anyone else, that no matter how smart you were or how much success a superior intellect brought, it was no substitute for happiness. He’d done the math all his life, so he was well aware that the hardest equation of all was the easiest to figure out: loneliness equaled unhappiness. Looking across that cafeteria table, a life decision finally formulated. Maybe it was time he gave the world another chance.

 

***

 

Cadets Hartley and Porter became best friends soon after that, which proved to be mutually beneficial. Basil was never made to feel like the tag along fat kid; he was treated with respect, and his opinions about things besides what the answers were on some physics test finally mattered to someone. Through Alexus, the chip on his shoulder began to crumble away, and he began to actually learn some positive social skills. He began to find that in a few cases at least, others were as genuine as Alexus. Sometimes other cadets would come by his room and just want him to come hang out. That had never happened before. When he mentioned this to Alexus, the answer he got was not quite what expected. He expected Alexus to take some kind of credit for introducing him to a world without loneliness. Instead Alexus simply used one of those flip, yet philosophically deep phrases he was so fond of using.

    “Basil, it was always there inside you. You just needed it kicked the hell out of you.”

    To Basil, Alexus was a complete dichotomy. He was, in addition to being a genuine and kind person, the most physically dangerous cadet at the academy. What he did the day they first met, and the casual ease with which he did it, had become an academy legend. A legend that only grew when he was able to routinely, not only defeat, but also totally dismantle every student, and even every instructor, on the academy Judo team. On a few rare occasions he had been clandestinely observed at day break someplace secluded where he could be alone, practicing with what Basil later found out was called a Katana Samurai sword. It was rumored that the velocity with which he utilized the physics and geometry of that sword were done with such speed that it rendered the sword almost invisible. When Basil finally asked him about the sword, which for some reason was stored unseen; Alexus simply shrugged and told him, “It’s just a hobby.” Case closed.

    No one but Basil understood the Porter dichotomy. Alexus was viewed with suspicion by some cadets for his martial prowess, but if a stranger met Alexus for the first time, they would never even suspect that he had the ability to easily physically dominate and even kill with his bare hands, because Alexus Porter never talked about it. Alexus would always either duck questions concerning his passion for blood sport or answer it with as little information as possible. Basil finally came to understand that his friend’s real skill lay not in his extreme ability to physically dominate anyone and everyone, but in his extreme ability to show compassion and empathy for the needs of others. While Basil could never even contemplate learning Alexus’ fighting skills, he did learn respect for others, and most important of all, he learned how empathy and altruism actually made him feel good about himself. Before he had met Alexus, feeling good about him self was an absolute enigma, and he knew more than anyone that feeling superior and good about ones self is not necessarily the same thing.

 

***

 

Alexus knew that Basil had tremendous potential to be a true friend, and his loyal friendship would be unconditional and unpretentious. The extreme intuitive nature inherited from his family gave him an insight that almost no one on the planet had.

    For Basil’s part, he never minced words with Alexus, and if he didn’t agree with this deadly friend, he never hesitated to tell him. Basil was always leery about the reasons that Alexus was so enamored with martial arts. It seemed to him to be too much of a risk to constantly put oneself in danger of permanent injury, or worse, for the sole purpose of beating the other guy senseless. Alexus tried to explain that it wasn’t about the fight; it was about the mental discipline and spiritual focus. All opponents were defeated by the mind. The body was only the tool the mind used to win. To Basil, this seemed somewhat inane, but he knew Alexus all too well by now to know that he was utterly sincere in this belief.

    One other aspect about his friend that thoroughly befuddled the rarely confused Cadet Hartley: girls. While Basil’s history with girls was short and painful he pretty much was resigned to the fact that when he finally met the one, it would be years removed from school when women were more prone to accept a man for career qualities that school girls simply didn’t care about. However, his friend attracted girls like moths to a flame.  But Alexus, while polite and sincere, never returned their obvious advances. One weekend while they were at a party and Alexus had yet again spurned a pretty girl’s overtures, Basil approached him and, with alcohol-induced bravery, asked Alexus if he just liked men instead.

    Alexus dropped his head and gave Basil such a withering look that Basil took a step backwards. “Why would you ask me that? Is that what you think?”

    “Look, you get girls falling all over themselves just to get your attention, all the time, but you always just blow them off. Politely, but a blow off is still a blow off.” Basil had finally opened Pandora’s box, but wasn’t about to back down now.

    Alexus softened his glare, and finally confided to his friend one of his most closely guarded secrets. “I like girls, Basil, but I see no need to play the field. What I really want in a woman is something I’ve never seen and probably will never see in any of these cadet girls.”

    This was the first time they had ever spoken about this. Basil pressed on. “Then just what are you looking for in a girlfriend, Alexus?”

    Alexus just looked away, and became distant, but answered his friend anyway. “I don’t just want a girl. I want a woman whose intelligence and strength of character outshines everyone wherever she goes. A woman willing to always do the right thing, no matter the cost. A woman who puts others first and who I’ll know will raise her children the same way. Frankly Basil, I’ve never met a girl even remotely like that, and until I do, all the flirtation in the world means nothing to me. To be truthful: she probably doesn’t even exist on this planet.” He sighed and made a heartfelt request of his friend, “Can we please drop this forever now?” Alexus then gripped his friend’s shoulder, turned, and left the party.

 

***

 

They both graduated with honors on the same day and were both accepted into the coveted Interstellar Flight School based at Fleet Commands base of Olympus Mons near the Martian equator on the Tharsis Bulge. It was here that newly promoted First Lieutenants Porter and Hartley graduated number one and two in their class respectfully, and received their pilot wings with honors. Together, they were first invited to, and then eagerly accepted their first deep space mission aboard the ESS Endeavor commanded by the legendary Major Richard Jennings.

    It was rumored that the Endeavor was heading out on a historic rescue mission farther than any star ship had ever gone before. The mission parameters included a nine-year duration, rescuing a sister star ship, the possible discovery of a Class M Exo-planet, and barring a major mishap during the flight, a probable promotion upon completion of the mission.

   As for Alexus: with absolute resolve he was convinced that whatever happened during this coming mission, First Lieutenant Alexander Porter knew his life would never be the same.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Author's Note

The beginning of who the protagonist eventually becomes