Apocalypse of New Earth (Discontinued)

Chapter 3: Tiz

The stir-fry was almost finished. As I turned away from Nova, a thought came to me. "Why are you and Vexi in Zembar," I asked. They were supposed to be on Moon Colony 5. "Why are you two on New Earth?"

Vexi Republic chose this moment to walk into the kitchen. She was out of the uniform that I had not even noticed until she got here. Right now she was wearing a white tank top some black exercising shorts. She was pretty short for someone who was supposed to be a gladiator.

"We are supposed to judge the inhabitants of Zembar," the gladiator said. "We're supposed to see if there were any candidates to be gladiators in the major cities of New Earth. Fortunately, Zembar was the place that they chose to hold the tournament. That made it so that I could use my sister's connections to find good candidates."

"A tournament? Why not just take the Council's word for who to pick," I asked. That way they would choose Olivia and someone else. I really did not want that, but hey! I was curious.

"I don't trust those idiotic geezers!"

Geezers? I had to smile at that. No one called them geezers. They were like a group made up of old men. The only woman who ever joined them died a year ago. She was thirty-two, and she was the only person who spoke up for Olivia when she talked back about halfway through her training. The men of the Council wanted to get her kicked out of the city. Not only had they wanted to kick her out, but Olivia also wanted to go. The woman convinced her to stay and the Council to waiver the charges against her.

That woman's name was Santana Republic, Nicki and Vexi's mother. That is the only reason that I do not really mind Vexi staying here other than the fact that her partner was my long lost sister. Vexi could have just gone to stay with Nicki, but no one knows where she went after lunch.

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That night, I lay on my air mattress, just thinking. I know that it meant something else centuries ago. Today, though, an air mattress was sort of like a really comfy mattress that hovered in the air. Not only that, but you would never even know that you were on a mattress if you did not see it.

I guess I should get back to before. Even Vexi had complimented my cooking earlier. She had taken one bite of the stir-fry and soon devoured three bowls of it. Then after that, the gladiator ate over half of the monkey bread I made. I had to make another, so that I could have some after the two women were done.

"Where do they put it all," I wondered aloud. My mind kept flashing to my black and chrome kitchen. We had sat at the counter and talked about anything and everything. Nova told me stories about growing up on the Moon Colony, and Vexi told me about fighting and training to become a gladiator. I had told them about growing up on a moving city, fighting to earn respect among the children whose parents killed mine, and about how I had worked to get a decent job.

I stared at the ceiling. The art that I had slowly painted all over my ceiling was nearly invisibly in the light leaking in from the street. I remember drawing the one in the far right corner. It was of a dragon. Sort of like what you would see holding a dagger in stores long ago. Next to it was of a guy I met when I was about six. I think he was my neighbor. Another picture was a couple dancing. Next to it, an engineer was fixing an aircraft in space. He flouted around it. I had drawn so many scenes along my ceiling that I had started on the wall.

It was no use. I could not sleep. Once I threw my sheets aside, I grabbed a pencil and started to draw a valley scene. It was on the wall underneath the engineer. As soon as the valley was finished, I just dropped the pencil and fell in my bed. My blankets automatically came over me. They were programmed to cover you up right before you fell to sleep. I rolled so that I could be facing my hovering clock. It was nearly midnight. I had been drawing for nearly two hours.