I wrote this for a competition on a video game website. The game is Star Citizen if you follow those kinds of things, the game is still in development, but many of us followers have found we have a bit of an addiction to buying ships for this in production game. A video blogger was looking for entries to read for her videos about said addiction, sort of a confessional like one might make in an AA meeting. I decided my entry would be fictionalized within the game universe.
I wasn’t a ship guy. I’d never been drawn to the ship sales lots, not like my dad was. When I was a kid he would drag me along on Sundays to look at whatever ship had caught his eye most recently. But here I was looking at the Avenger he always wanted, this was for him.
He’d been an Advocacy agent for years before he taken a bullet in his knee and he’d been forced to retire. When the Avengers started to hit the consumer markets that was the ship he would always look for first on the lot. I’m not sure if it was missing the ship or missing the job, but the yearning was obvious. Still he never bought one, there was always something else that needed the money and he wouldn’t treat himself.
We got the news about a year ago, he had cancer and it was likely to be terminal. He was a fighter though, that’s how he’d lived his whole life. He took on in system jobs hauling cargo between Pike, Terra and Gen in his little Aurora to help pay for the treatments. A few months in and he had lost his hair and a substantial amount of weight. He would joke with my mom that he’d never been better looking.
About a month ago, he was leaving the contracting office with his pay and headed back home to my parents new flat in the Block when he stumbled upon a mugging. Maybe it was his instincts from years on the job or maybe it was knowing he was a dead man walking, but he jumped into action and tried to subdue the suspect. In the ensuing scuffle, the gun went off; he was shot in the chest through his lung. The doctors were able to save his life, but his weakened immune system couldn’t keep up the fight, he died in the hospital a few days later. Unbeknownst to my mother and I he had invested in a very large life insurance policy. That’s why he’d never bought that Avenger for himself; he was putting the money elsewhere.
Now here I was looking at the Avenger he had always wanted. I had to admit, she was a beautiful little ship, sleek but powerful. The sales man was in luck, I wasn’t here to haggle, I was here to buy. The salesman did his speech about the benefits of Avenger ownership that’s when the Cutlass on the lot caught my eye. I absent mindedly walked away while the salesman spoke. I walked up the cargo ramp through the hold and into the cockpit. I sat down in the pilot seat. I felt a hand on my shoulder and I heard my father say, “Do it son, and treat yourself”. I turned back to see the salesman hurrying up the ramp.
“Are you still interested in the Avenger?” He asked.
“I’ll take them both”
I wasn’t a ship guy, but then again maybe I was. That’s when it all started.
(A note: This was inspired a little by my father. He died three years ago of cancer and left me a Mustang convertible. He was an avid car guy and the Mustang was his baby. I had never been a car guy, but I am every time I get in that car.)
