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There are monsters in the sky.
Maxwell Pearson saw one the year he submitted his application for The Academy.
From where he was, still on earth at the time, it looked like a cluster of three red stars, drowning the sky in an awful, bloody light. It was only for a few minutes, he was told afterwards, but during those vicious seconds, time came apart at the seams. The ground softened underfoot, making the concrete feel like quicksand and Pearson’s feet feel like rocks that were begging to sink into it. It was a surprise that when he looked down, his feet weren’t touching the ground at all. He was *floating* at least two full feet off of it. He would have fought if he could have, he would have kicked, screamed and panicked as he begged for release, but he couldn’t move; not a finger twitch, not even a blink. His eyes began to sting and tears streamed down his cheeks as his heart pounded in his ear. Cell by cell, beat by beat, he could feel the air deflating from his lungs as the sky above tore open with a grotesque scatter of small black holes.Then a voice that he felt reverberate in the marrow of his bones told him simply:
“Give in to me.”
He was sure the world was ending.
But then a Star-Pilot had fired at the creature and it had burst, almost like a firework in the gathering darkness of the evening, turning the terrifying into the terrific. As long as those moments had seemed to stretch on, when they came to a crashing halt, it was as though nothing had happened. Pearson had expected to fall to the ground and possibly even be hurt by the impact that he had no chance to brace for, but in truth he hadn’t even left it. He stumbled, that was all. He could have tripped on a crack in the sidewalk or on an untied shoelace, that was how inconsequential the motion was. He rebounded in no time, his lungs took in and gave out air in an easy, relieved rhythm and when he went to his knees, it was of his own accord. He lowered himself gently down and stared up at the sky.The pilot was gone by then, a jetstream of air in the wake of their starcraft was the only sign that anything had ever even happened.
It could have been worse. It *had* been worse in the past, thousands had died. It was all on record, they taught about in school; The Scarlet Celestial Massacres, they were called. Still, it hadn’t ever been something Pearson could say he understood as well as he did that day. Some who had encountered the monsters and lived to tell the tale claimed that they couldn’t remember anything after looking up into the cluster of lights. Pearson was inclined to believe them too, until of course he had seen it for himself. From then on, he was convinced that it wasn’t so much that one *forgot*, no, it was more accurate to say that they never wanted to speak of the experience as long as they should live. Even describing the change in the sky was to feel the air pressed out of you, trying to recall the fracture of reality was to draw up the primal fear of being frozen in place, of feeling *digested* by the environment that kept you tethered to what was left of your mind.
It was better just to say you didn’t remember.
He got asked plenty of times, of course. He got asked by kids at school, by concerned teachers, and even by a news reporter at one point. He’d just scratched his head and told them all the same thing. But really, all he could do was remember. It kept him from focusing on anything else, thinking of it all the time, seeing it when he closed his eyes, waking up in the middle of the night to look out the window and check to make sure he was still safe.
And the pilot, of course. He always came back to the pilot. The pilot and the starcraft both, really- because they were one whole when they flew together like that. He recounted over and over and over the sight of the red firecracker corpse of the monster, dispersing and fading away, carrying with it the voice that had called to him in that disquieting echo.
In the months that followed, Pearson’s life changed directions. He always thought that he’d finish school and - if he was dedicated and lucky enough- get a scholarship to go to a university, which was why he was so adamant about keeping his grades, not only up, but among the highest in his class. It wasn’t just a point of pride, up until recently, he had regarded it as a means of survival, one of the only ones he had certain control of. Maybe he couldn’t do anything about the deteriorating state of the nation, the bullies in the hallway, or the exorbitant rise in the prices of essentials, but he could do *this*, he could make himself exceptional and maybe even into an exception, *the exception*. All he had to do was keep at it, study long and hard, apply for every scrap of financial assistance he could and show as many times as it took that he had it in him to go the distance, to make something great of himself.
But *great* meant something different now. *Survival* meant something different now.
He had come face to face with both and it had seeded something inside whose roots were so deep and stubborn, that none of his former ambitions felt real anymore. His hobbies, too, fell away as his last year of high school carried on. He stopped going to debate club meetings and the only books he picked up for fun were biographies of famous Star-Pilots. He flipped through them in the library, reading them so fast that he didn’t even need to take them home to finish, although he did anyway, if only to restart them the moment he was finished with his homework.
Of course, he still needed to do his homework.
It would look better on his Academy application if he kept his grades up.
His acceptance letter came a week before two different acceptance letters, ones to what had once been his top university picks. He didn’t even open them, or properly register their existence if he was being perfectly honest with himself. It wasn’t that they didn’t mean anything to him anymore, it was just that the first letter was his ticket to The Academy, his chance at being a pilot, his *destiny*- he was sure of it. He’d never been more sure of anything else in his life.
This was it.
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It had been just a few weeks into training when Pearson found himself by pure chance, sitting across the table from one of his new brothers-in-arms; a boy named Keziah Tressler who carried around a seemingly useless portable radio with him wherever he went.
Not particularly close at that point, neither seemed to want to be the first to speak and so they merely picked at the eggs on their plate. Pearson could tell they'd been made from powder and aside from the texture being offputting, they had already gone cold. There was also a piece of white bread that had been toasted at one point but then left to sit too long under a heat lamp and now merely felt stiff, as well as a tube of pasty concentrate which- according to the label, was supposed to contain all the nutrition that was missing from the rest of the meal and boost energy. The label on the tube boasted that the contents tasted just like bacon, but Pearson had seen all kinds of flavors on different days at different meal times and while, yes, they all could be said to taste different, none of them tasted exactly like what they claimed to. He didn’t much care for those, either.
Tressler fiddled with his radio, his own tube uncapped and in his mouth. As Pearson watched him extend and adjust the antenna for the umpteenth time, he gave in to his curiosity.
“What are you trying to do with that?” he asked.
Tressler’s head snapped up as though he’d been shaken from a daze. He shook his head and put the concentrate back on to his tray.
“Fuck, man.” he said, “I don’t even know anymore. It just feels good to be doing something with it. Reminds me of home.”
Pearson nodded, “Where’d you get it?”
“My girl.” Tressler said. “My ex, I mean- well, whatever- this was hers, I got it for her and we kinda shared it. She let me keep it as a goodbye present.”
“What’s her name?”
“Simone.” Tressler’s eyes misted over, “Like Nina.”
“Like who?”
“Nevermind.”
“You still miss her bad, huh?”
“Man, if it were up to me, I never would’ve left.”
“Seriously?” Admittedly, this is a surprise to Pearson.
He knew that for some, this was a way out and not a life goal, that was just reality. Times were tough on earth and it was rough all over, had been- for a while now, long before he or Keziah were even born. Still, even if it wasn’t an active ambition, didn’t Tressler still know what an honor it was to be here? Hadn’t he seen the posters in the hallway of his own school? Or the commercials on TV? Didn’t that radio of his use to pick up signals and carry the words that reminded anyone at any given moment what a promising future could be found if they were to just *look up*?
He can’t help himself.
“So…what made you decide to come then?”
“I needed to, that’s all. I was in a corner and there wasn’t another way out.”
“Were you in trouble or something?”
“Just the same kind of trouble everyone is in these days.”
Tressler’s brow furrowed as he reassessed Pearson, he looked him up and down as though trying to find some kind of tell, some kind of obvious flaw.When he couldn’t pin one down though, he relented and asked.
“I mean, think about it. Why are *you* here?”
Pearson didn’t even have to think about his answer.
“I’m just a big fan of the Star-Pilot Corps, I have been for a while, I guess. It feels like forever. Like I’ve wanted it for as long as I could want anything.”