Stars

55555's:

I pushed the lever to the off position, another star mined. I'm a space mineral gatherer, we still go by the archaic moniker of miners here in the Far Arm of Andromeda.

Long ago all the stars anywhere remotely near Earth-Home were mined for their energy and materials, their lights extinguished as they joined the nothingness of the void. Polaris, Alpha Centauri, Betelgeuse even, and many, many more. Indeed, the whole Milky Way Galaxy is devoid of any significant stars, stripped of its gems like a stolen crown. The heat and the matter, the light and the atoms. Now that we're getting farther and farther from base our profit margins have been getting lower and lower. Our over-speed engines are of course super-luminal, but the energy needed to get from Point A to Point B is almost as much as we get from a load of stars.

After the sun was consumed by our harvester, I set the coordinates back to Earth-Home. This got tedious, but it was worth our while to ride the beam of each star back to earth, consuming the light that was en route while delivering our load.

I hit a few well chosen button, selecting and beginning the seemingly short journey to the next of God's beacons. I looked down at the energy meter, we had to use the power derived from the last sun. We made a bit of a profit, but we'd have to darken many more before the shift was over.

I sighed as we slowed and wrapped our slaying limbs around the latest sun. It was only numbered, no real name, but who knows how many times it has been seen from Earth-Home, bringing its faint light of the lightyears. The beams spilled through the gaps in the sun's encasement, flickering, thrashing, and dying.

Lloyd's:

The stars gleamed in the black sky as Chantry Adepts went about their solemn work. Their successful defense of the fortress had left thousands dead, and the army which had tried to destroy them was not in a good position to collect its own dead. Up above, several disintegrating meteors flashed through the sky.

“Even the sky weeps for the dead tonight.” Brother-Captain Vandar murmured to himself. He turned to look at the map laid out across he large oaken table which occupied the center of his office. It was a disposition of known or surmised Akkadian forces in a hundred mile radius of the Chantry’s bastion. Across the table stood his Brother-Lieutenant Kent, on loan from a foreign Chantry outpost.

“No one deserves to have their life thrown away in some other man’s mad bid for power.” Kent said, his accent rather noticeable but his grammar flawless. “Why did the king do this?”

“Only God above knows why, Kent.” Vandar said, “but I can surmise. He has resented our influence for some time, but something has changed recently that caused him to believe himself capable of taking us on. The question is, what?”

“If you wish, I can take a squadron to the capital to investigate, Brother-Captain.”

“Do that. And while you are at it, recover Brother-Adept Lucius’ body. We must give him a proper burial.”

“As you command, Brother-Captain.” Kent saluted and removed himself from the room.

Vandar turned and looked back out the window, musing on the stars. What can you see? What is behind this heinous slaughter?

Below, the beginnings of a graveyard for the bodies was being laid. Soon families would be arriving to attempt to find their relatives, and none of them would take it kindly if their loved ones had been dumped into mass graves. Some would never get an answer, but most would find confirmation of their worst fears when they spoke to the Adepts who buried the dead. A lucky few would find their loved ones back at home, fled from the battlefield.

Grant's:

A Good Night

“So I’m in town for just a little while, but my dad and I figured while we’re here, heh, let’s have some fun you know?”

“Uh huh,” I say, eating some wings at the bar. It’s close to midnight, and they stopped serving food about thirty minutes ago. I haven’t been able to completely enjoy them though.

“See, it’s my dad’s birthday, so I figure we should do something special this week. We’ll be hitting all the top spots, but for right now, I’m trying to decide whether or not I want to give a call to this girl or not.”

Trying to eat my wings is more what I mean. The gentleman beside me is a tourist in our town, and our town gets the tourists often. This is a local bar, and despite the cheep food, mediocre to decent service and heavy smell of cigarette smoke, this place has the best wings for miles. And I like them spicy.

With a hint of alcohol, this guy’s breath is all over my face. He’s slightly drunk, but really he just won’t, stop, talking! He keeps going on and on about how his life is and was as a kid, because he thinks I am. I’m twenty one and he’s twenty four, and he’s giving me “advice”. Though he has a girlfriend back home, Boston, he’s going to hit on this one girl who’s given him her phone number. His father is up at the hotel, he’s told me, so for the rest of the night, he’s got nothing else to do.

Being honest, I’m not the kind of guy to get into the personal affairs of others, but this guy is really bugging me.

“So I say, ‘Yeah sure, why not take that job with my best friend?’, the problem is kid, you never expect your pal to end up stabbing you in the back, you know? It only lasted a month, and that’s when I learned to never work with friends. Can’t trust him, can you believe he did that? Guy is a moron. Remember that kid.”

He only calls me “kid”, and he constantly uses the term, “You know?”

The whole bar suddenly is in an uproar. The local hockey team has won the match.

“Yeah!” he’s shouting and hooting with his baseball cap on and his cigarette being pounded into his ash tray. “What a shot man, what a shot!”

“That was pretty sweet,” I comment, taking another bite of my spicy wings.

“Yeah it was. Did I tell you I used to play hockey? I wasn’t good at it, but I was awight, you know?”

So here goes again on a long story, that I try to take in, but find that’s so phony… He’s ALWAYS right, and never wrong and he always gets screwed in the end by family, or friends.

I’ve gotten off work, and only meant to stay here an hour, which has now turned into two. I really, really want to get home.

“So, what do you think huh?”

I suddenly snap back to the present. “W-what do you mean?” I ask.

“About the girl, kid, about the girl. I mean, you know as a guy, I got desires and all. And what happens here, stays here, you know? So you think I should call her back, or you think she’s got some boyfriend or somethin?”

“Look, to be honest man, I dunno what you should do. But you were just talking about how your friends screwed you over on that job, and that party and such. Are you really gonna do that with your girlfriend yourself?”

He got offended. But I got him to leave, after I get a couple of speeches about how I don’t get it, and that situation was different and such, he leaves moving chairs toward the other part of the bar, where some other late night drinkers are yelling and talking it all up.

Sighing in relief, I go back to my wings and ask the bartender for a refill.

It’s about ten minutes later, when the whole bar goes quiet. I glance around, trying to figure out what’s happened. Then the whole place goes crazy with laughter and shouts of praise and shouts of anger.

The guy I was talking to is on the floor, with some guy over him, fist out and all. There’s a big red mark on my companion’s cheek. I stare for a long moment, and know he had it coming. When he wakes up, he’ll be seeing stars.

 Kakaru's:

 http://supergoggles.wordpress.com/2012/05/02/needless/

Evan's:

http://ashardofdream.wordpress.com/2012/05/03/557/