Homecoming

    “Tabitha?” a far off voice sounded.  “Wake up.”
    Tabitha could feel something shaking her, she could also feel her eyes flutter open to see Jane’s face slip into focus in front of her.
    “Tabitha?” she said.  “We’re home.”
    The darkness faded, and feeling returned to Tabitha’s limbs, she unbuckled herself from her seat and scanned her environment to discover the truth for herself.  Tabitha was still in the Loki, but the small amount of outside she could see from her place within the cockpit, she could definitely see the surface of an unfamiliar planet, it was Earth.
    “We’re safe for now Tabitha,” Jane said.  “Attack ships can’t land by themselves, they would’ve needed to return to the frigate.”
    “Where are we?” Tabitha asked.
    “I told you,” Jane said.  “Earth.”
    “Can you narrow it down for me?” Tabitha said.
    “I don’t think so,” Jane said.  “The onboard computer won’t be much of a help, the entire ship was rendered useless in the crash.  We’ll have to get out and walk.”
    “C’mon then,” Tabitha as Jane helped her to stand up.  The first thing they did was put on shoes, they sensibly decided that bare feet would no longer be appropriate now that they were back among the ‘cultured’ half of humanity.
    They had left the gravity setting on the ship on what it had been when they originally stole it from the Outer Circle.  This had been the same strength as the surface gravity of Mercury, presumably so the Indigo Guardians would have been used to the gravity before staging their escape, so they were not hindered by an unfamiliar environment.
    The structure of the ship consisted of the graviton panels underneath the floor.  Below that was an interior shell of ablative plating, which completely negated gravitons, insulating the vessel so the people inside are not affected by outside gravitational conditions while none of the artificial gravitons from within leak out.  After this was the hull of the ship, along with any heat shielding or solar panels that it needed.
    When Jane and Tabitha disembarked, leaving behind the lower gravity generated by the layer of gravitone, they were caught off guard by how heavy they felt once they were off the Loki.  Tabitha would’ve fallen if Jane hadn’t been supporting her, but unfortunately Jane fell, which meant Tabitha was forced to copy.
    The two rolled down the access ramp and crashed to the ground, it was embarrassing but it happened to every person in the immediate area so, rather than doubling the humiliation, it was simply cancelled out with a laugh.
    They both lay there, giggling like children.  Eventually, they remembered that they were still technically in the middle of their escape attempt.  Tabitha picked herself up and looked around, at first she believed that they’d taken a wrong turn and ended up at the Sun because it was so bright.
    When the overload of light passed as her eyes adjusted, she could fully see where they had landed.  There were some clouds in the air, but none were blocking the Sun.  Jane and Tabitha felt the warm cloak wrapped around them.
    The Sun was so bright that Tabitha had to shield her eyes, while Jane was forced to close them as she still lay on the ground.  She had spent the last four years of her life at Jotnar, where she either saw the interior of a dark mine or inside her cell where no natural light reached.
    The few minutes of time a day when she did see the Sun, it had always been behind the polarisation dome, which block nearly all of the light from the Sun.  Jane found it funny that she had spent almost four years on Mercury, and yet at this point on time, with her feet planted on the Earth, the Sun seemed brighter than ever.
    “Getup off the ground Jane,” Tabitha said.  “You’re going to get those new clothes dirty.”
    “Dirt is just something you have to put up with for the opportunity to live in a world so wonderful,” Jane said with her eyes still dreamily shut as she continued to doze under the Sun.
    Eventually, Tabitha managed to pull Jane to her feet and forced her to continue escaping with her.
Exploring the sliver of their home world they found themselves in, Tabitha and Jane realised that, ironically, their surroundings were completely unknown to them.  Jane and Tabitha wandered in a random direction, they appeared to be in the countryside of some continent, at the moment the only one they could eliminate was Antarctica…probably.
    “It feels so strange to be wearing shoes again,” Jane said as she inspected them.  “It just doesn’t seem natural any longer.”
    “You’ll get used to it again,” Tabitha said.  “Just as you did as a child.”
    As Tabitha and Jane walked underneath the much more forgiving Sun, Tabitha breathed in the real air and felt better than she had done in years.  It was an undeniable fact that there was very little around in terms of both people and geographical features, but Tabitha could still see a breathtaking mountain range against the clear blue skyline, and she thought it was one of the best sights she had ever seen.
    “After being on Jotnar, it’s made me appreciate how beautiful this place is,” Tabitha said as her eyes took in the light from the mountains and their friend the sky.
    “You don’t know what beauty is Tabitha,” Jane remarked while examining her feet as they paced along the ground.  “It’s not perfection, like most people think, it’s contradiction.  It’s simple and complex at the same time.  It’s confusing and enlightening, it gives you both new questions as it answers the old ones.  It’s something so intangible, it’s impossible to imagine, it can only be remembered…” Jane then picked up her head to the heavens, “…and I had almost forgot the beauty of this place.  It’s amazing, no matter how much humans have harmed this world, they still haven’t removed all of its beauty.  There’s just so much of it, I doubt it to even be possible.  I love this planet.”
    “I really love this world too,” Tabitha said.  “I just can’t stand its inhabitants.”
“I know what you mean,” Jane said.  “And the Devil stole all the beauty of the Earth and brought it to be in one place where only the few could admire it.  But for those who did stand in its presence, they began to weep uncontrollably now that they could finally see what true wonder their world had been crafted from.”
“What?” Tabitha said.
“It was just something I remember hearing from my childhood,” Jane said.  “It’s not important.”
Jane and Tabitha began to wander across this wasteland of absence.  Neither of the two had been further from another human their entire life.  They had both spent their youths in congested settlements, being constantly surrounded by people.  The only knowledge that they were not the last two humans on the planet was present in the several airships currently passing by far overhead, leaving contrails to show where they had come from as they passed over this desolate oasis of largely untouched Earth.
Tabitha wasn’t sure how long they’d been walking before they arrived at the first sign of Terran-based civilisation, but it had seemed like most of the day since the Sun was significantly lower in the sky.  On the horizon was a house, shack might’ve been a more accurate word, and she wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that it was the only house for miles in the other direction.
    They crept up to the lone domicile and snuck in through a window.  When they were in, the window fell shut behind them.  It didn’t make a loud noise, it wasn’t even stuck.  All Jane had to do was open it again and position the latch from keeping it closing, just in case they needed to escape quickly through it.
After a brief search of the house, an old man was found asleep on the settee with an empty whiskey bottle on the floor nearby.  Jane and Tabitha did nothing, they just watched his sleeping, and did so until Jane noticed some car keys sticking out of his jacket pocket.  Jane silently shared this knowledge with Tabitha and stealthily reached for them.  She was almost there when he rolled over in his sleep, trapping Jane’s arm and causing him to stir.  As he began to wake up, Tabitha panicked and grabbed the nearest thing she could find, which turned out to be an old fashioned lamp, and broke the probably quite valuable antique over the old man’s skull.
    The impact sent the old man into the back of the settee and then a worrying stillness followed a couple of violent twitches.  Tabitha leaned over to see a blood pool begin to form around the old drunk’s shattered head and Tabitha realised that she hit him slightly harder than intended.  He hadn’t seen their faces so it would’ve been sufficient just to knock him unconscious.
    “Good work Tabby,” Jane said and swiped the car keys.  “Let’s check the house for anything else we can use.”
    Jane and Tabitha proceeded to thoroughly search the upstairs of the house.  While Jane checked the bedroom, Tabitha entered the bathroom, locking the door behind her.
    She looked around to see a filthy cramped bathroom.  Tabitha wasn’t really here to search the place, she just needed to be somewhere, anywhere she could take a moment.  
    That man was the first person she’d killed without wanting to, it was escalating, she was losing control.  She didn’t know anything about the man, was the world better without him?
    Tabitha looked out through the frosted glass window next to the shower, the Sun was low enough to shine directly through it.  She was captivated by the blurred orange light that seemed to be coming for her like a spotlight.
    She had been staring without even blinking for well over a minute her attention was broken by a knocking at the door.  As she stared at the door, there were black spots in her vision, where the sunlight had photo bleached her rhodopsin, leaving only a glowing green and yellow blotch surrounded by an orange border with hidden purple pulsations.
    “Tabitha?” Jane called out from behind the wooden door.  “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
    “I’m coming,” Tabitha said, took a couple of breaths and opened the door.
    “Hi,” Jane greeted her.  “I found a box of money in his closet.  I think he was a hermit or something, you should see his bedroom.  Oh, look what else I found.”  Jane held up a full whiskey bottle.  “You want a drink?”
    “No thanks,” Tabitha said.  “I don’t drink.  I’ve never even take any strong narcotics before Jotnar.”
    “Really?” Jane said.  “Why?”
    “I don’t think I need them yet,” Tabitha shrugged.
    “Well I haven’t had a proper drink in ages,” Jane said and took a swig and then looked at the bottle.  “I’m keeping the rest of this for later.  I’ll save it for when I get some real food again.  The rations from inside the Loki were a welcome change from the broth but I really want some better food.  I do miss the ichor though, I even started putting sugar in my water when we on our way home.”
    “It’s time to leave,” Tabitha said.
    The stamped down the stairs and found what car the keys they now possessed were for, it was an old car but perfectly operational.  Jane pressed a button on the key chain and the old doors creaked as they slid open, allowing them to enter.
    As they sped off down the dirt road, Tabitha accessed the Satellite Navigation system to find out both where they were and where they were going.
    “We’re in America,” Tabitha said.
    “North or South?” Jane asked.
    “North,” Tabitha said.
    “Which way are we headed?” Jane said.
    “West,” Tabitha said.
    “And which coast are we closer to?” Jane asked.
    “East,” Tabitha said, followed by a swift U-turn by Jane.  “Why do you want to head to the coast?”
    “When the war ended eleven years ago, Olympus had plenty of surplus military equipment left,” Jane said.  “They didn’t need nearly as much now their competitors had been obliterated, so they sold a lot of it off.  They didn’t sell off any weapons, that would be far too irresponsible, but they did have a lot of non-dangerous equipment they decided to make some money off them while disposing of them.  This mostly consisted of vehicles, such as unarmed dropships.  These ships were bought up by private citizens and bands of civilians soon began to work and live on them.  Mostly, they do honest jobs, like low level transport that is beneath the Company.  It’s strange, isn’t it?  In the aftermath of the Corporate Wars, where Olympus was meant to monopolise the world, it actually created more private occupations for people.  They even went so far as to start up small businesses that the Company tolerates.  These ships can be found in many places, along with their crews, but especially in port towns.  We should be able to find some less reputable captains of these private airships and then we can use the money to charter passage to wherever we want.”
    “Alright,” Tabitha said from the passenger seat, it reminded her of being on board the Loki.  
    Tabitha looked in the box of money Jane had collected, she was fascinated because she had never seen so much paper money in one place.  Most money transactions occurred electronically between banks, but paper money still existed to retain a sense of tangibility to wealth, and so not all money became invisible and distant to people.  Most civilians just carried around plastic cards, which contained all their financial information.  When someone wanted to buy something, all they needed was their monetary card, their security number and their biometric data.  This data consisted of fingerprints, retinal scans and facial node structure, which is taken when you open the account.  All but DNA is used, because it is still against the law, and then they could use their funds in whatever way they wanted.
    Tabitha guessed that the old man probably didn’t trust this way of banking, and chose a more traditional way of keeping his money.  Normally, the only place you would see paper money was in bank vaults to maintain a solid foundation of wealth, a role that gold bullion once fulfilled.  Paper money was available to private citizens, it was just rare, so they were fortunate to come across someone who owned some.  This would work out well for Jane and Tabitha when they wanted to buy the services of an airship captain and his crew because they would prefer something that didn’t leave a trail.
“Slow down, will you?” Tabitha said.  “We can’t attract any attention from the Enforcers.”
    All cars on the road and everywhere else had been constantly monitored by their own Satnav systems since an Olympus post-war directive was issued.  The Global Navigation system was mostly used to remotely monitor the speeds of all licensed vehicles at all time, but could also be used to locate people with warrants out for their arrest.  They had originally tried to fit speed limiters on all new manufactured cars, which meant it was impossible to go over the speed limit in whichever area you found yourself in.  This policy was scrapped quite quickly after outcry from citizens, which didn’t change anything, but when people began to doctor their cars, Olympus noticed and changed its mind to a strategy of control that was more difficult to prevent.
    “So where should we go?” Tabitha said.
    “What do you mean?” Jane said.  “You know we can’t go to the same place?  We’ll have a much greater chance of evading capture if we split up.  Find the nearest coast town from the Satnav and we‘ll head there, divide up the money and go our separate ways.”
    “Oh,” Tabitha said.  It did make sense, she should have thought of it really.  She didn’t need Jane anymore, she was back on Earth and no longer required her meat shield.  It was so strange that she hadn’t considered what Jane had just suggested.
    “It’s for the best Tabitha,” Jane reassured as she drove onwards to the coast.
    “I know,” Tabitha said.  “So where will you go?”
    “I’m not sure yet,” Jane said.  “It would be nice to see my sister again, but I know that’s impossible.”
    “Because she lives in an Olympus controlled facility?” Tabitha asked.
    “Not really,” Jane said.
    “What do you mean?” Tabitha questioned further.
    “Naomi would probably send me back to Jotnar if I tried to contact her,” Jane said.
    “Really?” Tabitha said incredulously.  “Your own sister would do that?”
    “I know,” Jane said.  “It’s not very loyal, is it?”
    “Why would you want to see her?” Tabitha asked.  “She doesn’t sound like a very nice person.”
    “I suppose that depends on your perspective,” Jane commented.  “Some might say that we’re not very nice people.  I do miss her quite a bit, but just because I love her doesn’t mean I like her.”
    “So do you have any idea where you’ll go?” Tabitha asked as they went over a bump.
    “I’m not sure if it’s even a good idea to tell you,” Jane said.  “But honestly, I just haven’t decided yet.  Maybe I’ll go home, maybe I’ll go as far away from home as possible.  It’ll probably be somewhere in between the two.”