A New World (Part 1)

It was my first day on earth, and so far so standard. The sky was blue the ground was solid and the intelligent spices was bi pedal and civilized, for the most part anyway. I looked back at my second, Alex, who was trudging along behind me, resigned to our new existence on a back-water no-name world that had been thrust upon him after he refused to let me leave our home world on my own.

I was excited to see the place that Alex had scouted to be our new home and cover story. It had been a bar and restaurant for a long time. Then one of the sons took it over and drove it into the ground as his gambling problem had gotten worse. His brother now owned it and seemed eager to get it sold off, bad memories or some such.

I saw the man and waved as we walked up, ignoring Alex glare of disapprove at my obvious excitement.  The old man shook my hand and offered to show me around the inside of the building, but I declined, saying that I thought better when I was on my own, asking Alex to collect the details on the place while I did an in-depth scan of the underlying plumbing and structure.

The door opened, and I saw the place was in more disrepair then I had thought, the tile was cracked and missing in places, the 3rd floor apartment had nothing on the ground save sub-flooring, and all of the dry walling was cracked in one place or another, but that was mostly due to a leak in one of the corners and ground settling. The small device in my ear told me that while it wasn’t pretty to look at, the underlying building was safe, and the facilities were in order, if a touch out of date.

I went back up to the two men after looking at the basement to check the foundation. Alex had “this place is a dump.” Written all over his face, but the older gentleman didn’t notice or didn’t care, as he seemed to know that I was the one with the wallet.

“Is all of the pluming in order? Dose the fridge still work?” I played dumb, knowing that this planet hadn’t quite gotten as far as we had. The old man gave me a kind smile before casting his eyes around.

“Yup, checked it all my self after you called. Everything works, just needs a little life to get it back on its feet again. Jeff didn’t know what he was doing, ran the place like he ran a black jack table, so not very well. But I get the feeling you know what you’re getting into.”

I smiled back. “I worked at my godmother’s bar for years. Started as a dishwasher and moved on up as I got older. I can’t believe this place has been on the market for so long.”

He shrugged “this town has had a few bumps, only recently started to get on the up and up. Some youngster started a big tech thing, now we are famous. Lot of new family’s coming in, lot of kids too. Wife and I gonna move out, too much noise now, gonna go closer to the grandkids.”

“Kids?” I ask and the old man rubbed his neck

“Young people, like you. Oak Harbor is changing, I know I’m old, too set in my ways. I see my town changing, and I’m happy, but it’s not the place I wanna be no more.”

I nod, it was a feeling I knew all too well. “Well, I think I know everything I need to. Alex, if you would handle the numbers, I am going to take another look at the apartment.” I gave him a smile, but he just nodded, his face still stuck in a sulk.

The old man stopped me before I could take off “were did you say you were from again?”

“A small town on the boarder of Canada, in North Dakota.” I replied
His eyes narrowed “anyplace I might have herd of?”

I smiled “unlikely, used to be a lumber town, but now its slowly dying. No one wants to stay, save for the people who are too set to leave, and that’s not many.” I added a little something to my voice, and the man’s eyes went cloudy for a second.

“Yeah, sounds nice, too bad our daughter don’t live out there.” He then looked at Alex, and the two of them started to talk numbers while I skipped to stairs.
I took them two at a time until I got to the apartment floor, which had its own door and key. The best part of it was the large windows that went the length of the space, one of them sporting a window seat, all of them with a view of down town Oak Harbor. I sat on the down on the seat and looked out, taking in the small town feeling, and the people running, walking, biking to and fro along the main street, none of them looking up all concentrated on their own small lives on this small planet.  It reminded me of home, in a small way, and for a second I could forget it had taken almost two years to get here.

Then, the door clicked open and I looked at Alex, who slowly walked over to join me, putting a knee down on the window seat to get a better view. “Nice huh?” I ask, too which he just shrugged.

“It’s not home. Not as big, not as nice…”

“Not as mired in people trying to get me to be someone and something I’m not, no one trying to tell me I should kill my brother and best friend to assure my right to rule.”

“You could have fixed that.” His tone was dismissive, and it was my turn to roll my eyes.

“Only bad guys kill everyone in parliament to start over.” He looked at me, and I looked back down on the streets below us.

“We didn’t have to come this far.” His voice soft, like a child trying to goad a parent out of being angry at a sibling.

“You didn’t have to come.” An old augment, done to the point we had boiled it down to a few sentences before it was over. He couldn’t talk me into going back, and he wouldn’t leave me on my own, so here he was.

“Come on, let’s go back to the ship.” He put a hand on my shoulder, but I don’t look at him.

“All locked up?”

“Yup, old man thinks we left with him.”

“Good.” I press a hand to the dragon skull that hung off of my woven leather and velvet chocker. The room ran like a chalk drawing in a monsoon, and when the colors cleared, we stood in the transporter bay in our space ship, the Crimson Reign.

Alex started towards the living quarters to start packing, and I walked to my privet chamber to start my name practice.

I went into the clean room, and stood in front of the mirror. “Kyrin, Kyrin Smithkin, hello, my name is Kyrin Smithkin, Please, call me Kyrin …” when starting a new life in a place, you need a new name, one that fallowed naming conventions of the planet. While the one I had chosen had seemed odd at first, it worked well enough that I could pass it off as a quirk of my parents.

It had been the second name that had been the hardest. On Koden, I had just been me, and as head of my family everyone had been addressed in correlation to me. “Ray was Ray, brother of Sareyah, Alex had been Alex, second to Sareyah, and so on. Now, now I had two names, and it sounded off in my mind. But I had to get used to it, and fast.

The thing about names is that they are the foundation of relationships no matter where you go. A name is how you know someone, the file that you go to for information on that person. You slip with what you are called, and on most planets people start second guessing everything you do. They lied about their name, what else is a lie? So every day, I did this. “Please, call me Kyrin, my name is Kyrin…” until my brain hurt, and I felt somehow odd.