#galactic grunts

Just as Taphao grabbed the man by the collar of his shirt, something flashed behind her eyes. 

A memory, a memory of the old man who built her, Chayne. He was polishing her hair and humming a sweet, simple song as he did, a fond smile on his face. 

Her head twitched, an electric buzzing sound coming from her neck, as did some sparks.

Taphao’s mind spun as did seemingly the entire world around her. 

Her fingers slowly unfurled, unhooking themselves from the man’s shirt, her eyes now wide open.

The man fell to the floor.

“No…” She backed off a few steps from the injured man, shaking her head. Her metalic breaths came in short pulses as more memories came flooding into her mind. 

She backed off more, tripping on a rock and falling on her back. She scrambled into her knees, hands stirring the dirt beneath her. Black oil began to drip from her eyes, soaking into the soil. She hiccuped. “No, no no no no no no no…-” She murmured, a hand covering her mouth

Two pairs of arms grabbed her from behind, grabbing both of her arms, she began to be dragged backwards. 

As she looked behind her, she recognized the gray uniforms and blue bowl-cuts, her pupils shrunk into pinpricks.

They stole her.

“LET GO OF ME!!!” She began thrashing violently and sobbing.

But it was no use. 

The bus was only going to my hometown, but to me, it may as well have been headed to a hard, cold cell. How was I going to tell everyone what I’d done?

“Something wrong?” came a woman’s voice. Dark as it was and with my head full of thoughts, I hadn’t noticed her approaching the bus stop. It was the purple-haired woman I’d seen sometimes at my gym. I’d wanted to get one last workout done before I left Veilstone, and I was also hoping that if I came back late enough, my mom would be asleep by the time I made it.

“You could say that,” I replied.

She took a long drag on her cigarette and regarded me with piercing eyes. “Feel like telling a stranger about it?” she asked, almost sympathetically.

I took a deep breath. I wasn’t likely to live in this city again anytime soon, so why not?

“I flunked out of college,” I said bitterly. “I know that sounds like it’s not much to be upset about, but… I really like Veilstone, and living on my own, and all my new friends are here, and all my high school friends have moved out of Sandgem, and…” I swallowed hard, trying to keep my voice from breaking. “And it’s gonna break my mom’s heart. She only has a few years left where she can work, and after that, she was going to rely on me. She’s not gonna know what we’ll do.”

“Hm,” the mysterious woman said. “Y’know, I might have something that could help you. Galactic Corps is looking for temp workers. It’s six months. You wouldn’t have to apply or anything, you just get the job. It would give you an excuse to hang around Veilstone for a little longer. And who knows? Maybe it’ll lead you to bigger things.”

The bus pulled up beside me, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the woman even as the others headed for Sandgem began to line up and get on the bus. She pulled out a business card with a golden “G” logo and a phone number on it. I took it, thanked her, gathered my bags, rushed onboard the bus, and took one of the last available seats.

The opportunity I’d been given seemed too good to be true. I opened up my pokétch to do a smidge of research, see if “Galactic Corps” was the name of some sort of known scam or pyramid scheme. As it turned out, it was an energy company, it did have a lot of six-month temp positions open, and they paid a lot considering the menial stuff they’d have us do. It took a second for it to sink in that this opportunity was actually an opportunity.

This was amazing. Once I got home, I wouldn’t be telling my mom that I flunked out. I’d be telling her that an amazing job opportunity came my way, and I was going to take a semester off to do the whole six months of it. That was plenty of time to get off academic probation or find another path in life, and so my mom would never have to know how I drank and partied my last opportunity away.

-

I got home sometime in the early morning hours and let myself in with my key. The house was dark and silent, and smelled like she hadn’t cleaned up in a while. That was to be expected- work really tired her out these days. I woke up around ten the next morning and did some dishes, threw out some of the old takeout boxes on the table, and put on some tinned soup before she got up around lunchtime. 

“Hey, Hunter,” my mom greeted me, staggering into a chair. “Thanks for cleaning up here. What time did you get home last night? I wasn’t in bed that early.”

“Uh, I’m not sure,” I said.

“Fair enough. How were finals? Did you get your grades back yet?”

“Uh, yeah. They were good. Let’s see… I got a 70 in English literature, a 73 in statistics, a 62 in astronomy…”

My mom laughed. “How did you manage to score that low in a basket-weaving course like astronomy?”

“Uh… I don’t know,” I said, stirring the pot faster. I’d been picking believable-sounding numbers from a hat. I should have chosen more believable ones, I guess.

“So, did you figure out what major you’re going to declare? A general studies degree never kept anyone warm at night.”

I turned around to face her, the pot in my hand with a potholder held under it. “Uh, about that, Mom. I found a job in Veilstone. It’s with an energy company. It’s a six-month position. I’m thinking of taking next semester off so I can do the whole thing. It pays well, so if I could save money, I wouldn’t have to rely on student loans as much, and… I kind of already contacted the university about it, so…”

“Oh,” my mom said, clearly surprised. “Well, I wish you’d asked me about it first. But what’s done is done. I guess now you’ll need an apartment in Veilstone. You can’t live in student dorms if you’re not a student. I’ll help you to sort that out. But Hunter- sometime during this, I need you to make a plan for what degree you’ll get and how you’ll use it. My MS is advancing. I don’t know how much longer I can support us. Alright?”

I agreed to it. And she did help me find an apartment. Sometimes I wonder if Mom helps me so much because she thinks I can’t take care of myself, or if she does it because she knows she might only have a few years left where she can. Regardless, I know she does it because she loves me.

-

“There you go, Evie. Home sweet home,” I said, putting down my middle-aged eevee once I’d unpacked. She looked around like she was appraising the place, then skittered over for her pet bed and curled up, head on fluffy tail. I sat down next to her on the floor and stroked her. “Yeah, this is gonna be a nice place for us, isn’t it? No roommates to keep you up at night, no one to look out for but ourselves… it’ll be great.” In a crazy way, even though the place was practically unfurnished, it felt almost like I was more mature than the guys who were still living in pre-furnished dorms.

My first day at Galactic Corps was unusual but not concerning. I met up at its entrance with about twenty other temp workers, mostly people my age with some teenagers and late twenties mixed in. A few of them were from out of town and were talking about the weirdly-placed spikes on the building or staring at the secretary through the glass door and asking why she was in some space-age costume, but as a Veilstone resident, I was used to that. I didn’t know that this building was Galactic Corps, but I did know that we had a weird spiked building looming over us, and I’d seen the weird little space dudes running around on occasion. Never thought I’d end up working here, but hey, it was a job.

At 8 AM, The secretary unlocked the door for us and told us that the person responsible for training us was out sick that day, and showed us to the cleaning supplies.

“Think of it as a way to get to know the place, find out where everything is,” she said. “Try to make yourselves useful in the meantime.” 

“Seriously?” one of the female temp workers said, arms crossed. “We don’t even know our way around, and you want us to clean with no instructions because one guy called in sick? This place is too weird, and too unprofessional. I’m out.”

Two others left with her. The female grunt shrugged her shoulders and left us to our devices. I heard someone say something to the effect of “She’s right, but I need this job,” while we were grabbing supplies, but honestly I didn’t get what the big deal was. Our trainer was out sick, what was she supposed to do?

I’d never thought of what an energy company’s headquarters would be like, but this wasn’t what I expected. Even rooms that seemed to have no unusual purpose- just their weird little space dudes (and girls, there were girls, too) tapping away at computers and whatnot- made me feel like I was in some sort of space vessel, with those metal automatic doors that opened and closed like mouths swallowing us up. A lot of the doors wouldn’t open. I counted six locked doors in the chemistry department, ten in the biology department, and four in engineering before I ended up in a hallway leading to a dead end. While I was sweeping it, a permanent worker carrying a box walked past me with a sense of purpose, like she was heading somewhere. She stepped on a weird circular tile at the end of the hallway, and seemed to disappear into thin air like an abra teleporting. Driven by unthinking curiosity, I dropped my broom and stepped on the strange tile, too.

My whole body seemed to tingle, and the ground shook beneath my feet. Then, a second later, I was in some sort of break room. Two space dudes were sitting at a table, chatting and playing cards. For a moment, I was too stunned to do much of anything. The female space dude walked past them and left through a door.

I didn’t know anything except that I didn’t know where I was, so I stepped off the orange tile and stepped back on, hoping for a ride back. Nothing happened. “Uh, a little help here?” I asked the workers.

Suddenly, two pairs of eyes were on me, and one of them looked angry. “Hey! You’re not supposed to be here. This section is for grunts only,” the shorter space dude snapped, springing up. “You must’ve took someone’s keycard. Give it here or else!” 

The little man took out a pokéball and stepped towards me. I put up my hands and stepped back. The taller space dude stood up and pulled the smaller one back by his shoulder. “Cool it,” he said in a calm, authoritative tone. “Keycards let the teleportation panels open, but they stay open for a few seconds after.” He held his keycard over the panel, making it light up. Then he looked to me. “You just wandered in because you were curious, right?”

“Uh, yeah…?” I said.

He chuckled. “Don’t worry, we’ll deal with that. Why don’t I meet you down at the lobby at quitting time so you can go out with me and some buddies?”

“Sure,” I said. It didn’t seem like a good idea to say no to someone who knew I’d fucked up.

“Sounds good. I’m Titan A3, by the way,” he said, gently pushing me to face the other way and step onto the teleporter. A second later, I was back in the empty hallway. All day, I had just the broom and my thoughts, so I wondered a lot about what was going to happen. Hopefully, it was as it seemed and I had a friend. But it wouldn’t surprise me if I was walking into a hazing ritual or worse.

As Titan asked, I showed up to the lobby after I got off work. Titan came to get me a few minutes after that. He told me to follow him, and he took me through a keycard-requiring door and a couple portals.

“Don’t worry, it’s okay since you’re with me,” he assured me.

One more portal, and I was in a room full of bunk beds, many of which were occupied by… well, I guess they call themselves grunts, like Team Rocket grunts in TV shows.

“Who wants to go out to the Crafty Flask?” Titan asked. Several grunts dropped what they were doing to join him. Some of them were raising their hands like kids in a classroom. Two even had temp workers with them, so some had clearly known the plan beforehand.

“Meet us outside in ten minutes,” Titan said, turning on his heel, “If you’re late, you’re left.”

Once I got to the lobby, the grunts had shed their uniforms and some of them had shed their weird hair. As we walked to the bar, there were a lot of whispered conversations between grunts. They seemed to be having a good time, giggling away and all that, but they also seemed to be hiding their conversations from me. I looked for the other temp workers, but it looked like the two of them were planning to hook up. So I went to the front of the pack with Titan.

With a whole bunch of them, Titan stuck out even more. He was fit, he was confident, and he had an air of admirability to him that the other grunts just didn’t.

“So, you guys live in the headquarters?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Titan answered. “You take a cut in pay once you become a grunt, but since you get room and board and don’t have to worry about bills and whatnot, all your money is fun money, so it kind of evens out. And you get to be with your favourite people all the time. It’s great.”

“Yeah, sounds nice,” I said, thinking about how I still had to figure out where to pay my bills and utilities for the new apartment, and figure how much money I should spend furnishing the place. I had a lot of adulting-type stuff to figure out in a hurry.

Once we got within a couple blocks of the bar, Titan turned back to the others.

“Alright, you guys know the drill. Low ranks pull back so the rest of us don’t look like weirdos,” he said to the crowd. Then he turned to me. “You can come with us, newbie,” he said. The grunts without the weird hair kept walking as the ones with it stayed behind, and soon we were at the bar.

“I am so glad I got to A rank,” one of the male grunts said as soon as we were seated. “Pulling non-Galactic girls is impossible when you have to wear your freak flag wherever you go.”

The female grunt next to him playfully punched him. “And what exactly is the point of fucking outside people again?” She said the word ‘outside’ like it was some kind of slur.

“Variety!” he shot back. “And thrill of the chase. You Galactic girls are too easy.”

“Wait,” I cut in, “Are lower ranks not allowed to take off the bowlcuts, or…?”

“Yeah, basically,” Titan explained. “Only the higher ranks are allowed to go back to being normal people at the end of the day because we’ve proven ourselves loyal. For the rest of them, well, it’s their actual hair. But you climb the ranks pretty quick if you’re halfway competent.”

I nodded.

“And for the record? He wasn’t lying about Galactic girls being easy. You know how I offered the bar and a bunch of people sprung up? Well, the same works for, say, a game of Scrabble, someone to watch the game with, and yeah, sex. Have you seen the ‘Make sure the bed is unoccupied before getting in’ sign in the-”

My eyes had been getting wider and wider until he’d mentioned that sign and taken me out of it. “Oh my God, that’s what that’s for!?” I’d seen that sign in the Team Galactic nap room, and I’d thought the same dirty thoughts anyone would, but I hadn’t thought I was right about it.

Titan laughed. “Yep.”

The rest of the night was great. I played beer pong with a team of three grunts and the two temp workers and I learned a little more about their lives. Apparently, the grunts learn to battle as a part of their job training, and dang, who wouldn’t want that? I’d take up hobbyist battling if I didn’t have to be the one actually taking care of six pets I don’t have time for. It seemed like a fun life, and one of the grunts even invited me to visit their training center later in the week.

I woke up the next morning to a throbbing head and Evie’s rough tongue scraping against my cheek. She whined softly as I opened my eyes, eager to be fed. I picked her up and rolled over to check my digital clock.

Shit. It was 8:15, and I was already late. I returned Evie to her ball and went through the familiar routine of throwing on some clothes, throwing my toothbrush and a baggie of Evie’s food into my bag, and moving as quickly as my dehydrated body would let me. Usually a morning like this meant feeding Evie and brushing my teeth between classes. Today I’d do it on my break. I was supposed to learn the Galactic Corps methods of encryption today, I remembered as I double-timed it to the headquarters. Hopefully the lateness, plus my appearance and probably my performance today wouldn’t count too much against me. I needed this job.

I showed up about ten minutes before 9 AM, got myself to the right room, and plunked myself into the correct chair. All the other plain-clothes workers were already there. The grunt next to me greeted me professionally and began explaining stuff, but I could barely absorb any of what he was saying.

“Hey, drink this,” a passing grunt offered, handing me a disposable water bottle filled with sludge that looked like pond scum. “It’ll help with your hangover.” He handed one to my instructor as well, who thanked him. They both uncapped their bottles and started drinking.

I eyed the bottle hesitantly. The stuff had to be edible if the others were drinking it. But it looked disgusting, and my stomach wasn’t exactly in the mood for a challenge.

“It’s not as gross as it looks, I promise,” said my instructor before taking another sip.

I uncapped the bottle and drank. The murky drink tasted like if someone had blended Gatorade, energy drinks, and protein shakes, and given its texture, it wouldn’t surprise me if that’s what it was. Nasty. But the other grunts handled them with a stiff upper lip, so I kept chugging. And my headache did go away. My stomach stopped hurting. My heart rate picked up. I felt legitimately as good as new- no, better- before I’d even finished it.

From there, the morning went smoother. My mentor demonstrated the code to me one time and I picked it up immediately. I was honestly pretty surprised at myself for learning so quickly. Within an hour, he’d left me to my devices, interpreting and translating the encrypted messages. It was repetitive, mindless work, and normally I’d have daydreamed while doing it. For some reason though, when I tried to, I just couldn’t. It was like those thoughts were out of reach. I didn’t get bored with the work, either, so I didn’t mind much. It was kind of unsettling how focused I was.

“Hey, lunchtime,” one of the grunts said to me. It felt like I’d only been working an hour, but sure enough, the day was already half over. I followed the crowd of grunts and temps to what must have been their lunchroom. After I fed Evie, brushed my teeth, and straightened out my hair, I decided to try out the trick Titan had taught me last night.

“Hey,” I asked the crowd of grunts, getting some of their attention. I wasn’t exactly sure what to ask them. Sex was obviously out. I was willing to risk looking weird, but not crazy. My eyes caught on two grunts playing cards. “Anyone want to play some poker?”

A few of them shot up.

“Sure,” one of the female grunts said to me. Two others, a guy and a girl, were behind her. I couldn’t help but smile. It really was that easy, huh?