Pirate King, Chapter 1, Wine of the Gods

Chapter 1: Wine of the Gods



Hello Dear Reader. Are you the one I seek? I'm writing this account of my life just for you. I realize there are plenty of other folk out there also reading this story, but they are not really important. I only got this story published so that you would find it. You are the one I want to read my tale. Why, you ask? Well, when you are done reading this story, I'm hoping it will inspire you to join my gang of renegade space pirates. I realize you probably don't really want to pillage defenseless ships, or do any of the other horrible things that pirates do, but don't worry. we're space pirates, it's true, but we're good guys too. Read my story, I bet you'll want to join us after you do. As for the rest of you, the nice folk out there who are mere bystanders, reading this story for fun. Well, I hope you enjoy it, even if you are not destined to join our crew.



Are you wondering if I'm psychotic now? Well, I'm not really psycho, I just seem that way, a bit. I take great pleasure in mentally tormenting my enemies, it's true, but that's only because they deserve it.



Here's an example: Just the other day, I tied up a Garzid space pirate and forced him to listen to a recording of me singing, in falsetto, for five hours. Trust me, if you every heard my singing you would think it should be banned by the Geneva Convention's rules against torture.



I was hanging out near Proxima Centauri, in my seriously tricked out pirate spaceship, when another pirate ship decided to attack me and my crew. So, we had an awesome space battle, which I won, and then i captured this grossly overweight Garzid pirate. I wanted him to tell me the location of his pirate hoard, but he seemed reluctant to tell me. So... well, that is when the endless serenade of doom began. In Falsetto. Heh, I love that part.



This probably makes no sense at all does it? Tell ya what, I will start at the beginning. That might explain how I got here. Hopefully, if you are the one I seek, it might persuade you to join me.



Peace, Love, and Megablasters,



Jack





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My name is Jack Liberastrum. I always thought my last name was really goofy, but it turns out that my name is connected to my family history. Liberastrum is Latin for 'Child of the Stars.' One of my ancestors was a Byzantine soldier who had a strange encounter with an alien of some sort. The secret family history doesn’t really describe the alien, just that the alien altered my ancestor's genes so that all of his descendants would possess latent abilities - abilities that could only manifest in unusual circumstances. The idea was to create an extended family that could be used to protect humanity in times of great crisis. Normally, members of this extended family have no idea how to access their abilities, and most believe the family story is just a fable or faerie tale. My abilities were manifested when I was four. Two things stand out from that day: Dad getting attacked by a goose, and me being abducted by faeries.



I was camping with Mom, Dad, and my older sister. I had a second sister who was even older, but she was away at college that night. We rented a camp site on Lake Lanier, a large manmade lake in Georgia. I remember Dad constantly chasing after me to keep me on the campsite. I was quite the wanderer and climber.



"Jack, get your little monkey butt out of that tree and come back here!" he laughed and yelled at me. I didn't come. "Jack, I'm counting to three. If you let me get to three before you get back, I'm gonna come get you and put you in time out!"



That worked. I was terrified of my father counting. If he got to three, I was sure to spend a whole 20 minutes sitting in a chair doing nothing. It was horrible. Actually, though, my parents were great at parenting. They were loving and supportive, and very patient. I was probably the world's most difficult child, and yet they mostly stayed calm and gently guided me to stay on track.



"Good boy," Dad praised me. "You've got to stay on the campsite. We'd be crushed if you ran off and something happened to you. Will you stay with me? If you can’t stay with me, I won’t be able to take you in the canoe to go exploring that island over there.” Dad pointed to an island across from the camp site.



"Yes," I said with a pouty face.



I really meant to stay, too. I didn't run off again for the rest of the day.



Dad made sure that my older sister and I were wearing our life jackets, then loaded us into the canoe and paddled away from shore. We were heading to a nearby island full of nesting geese. Mom threw a small loaf of bread to us from the shore. It landed perfectly in my lap and Mom called out “So you can feed the geese, Munchkin.”



We landed and walked to the other end of the island. The geese were going nuts. They must have thought we were there to take their eggs. I thought they were pretty scary, but Dad assured me we would be fine. On the way back to the canoe, one of the geese had clearly had enough of us. It ran up to confront us and my dad waved his paddle to ward it off. This goose was feeling very macho and the paddle didn’t scare it at all. It jumped up in the air towards Dad’s face, honking as loud as it could. I didn’t speak Goose at the time, but, looking back, I can tell you exactly what the goose was saying. Every moment from that day is forever etched in my mind. I remember every goose honk.



This particular dialect of Goose is a bit tricky to translate. Primitive Goose is a peculiar language with little nuance. It’s mostly emotional. I have to add in a few words, like ‘me,’ to properly translate it into English. When the goose attacked him, it was saying “Big thing go! Big thing go!” Then it jumped up towards Dad’s face and honked out “Me mighty goose. Big thing go!”



Dad fell onto his back and kicked up into the air to scare the goose away. He didn't know that, when he fell onto his back, I thought the goose killed him and was going to kill me next. He didn't understand why I was crying so much. Sometimes, it's hard for parents to understand how four-year-olds think.



After we escaped the island, the same goose started proclaiming to the whole gaggle “I’m the Goose! I rule the Nest! I’m the Goose!” Basically, he was bragging about his goose mojo. The other geese wouldn’t accept any of that, and they started honking about how they were the Goose. The honking argument about the size of their goosehood never stopped.



When night came, my parents built a nice camp fire and spit roasted a chicken. I sat near the fire, looking at how the flames blossomed every time fat dripped from the chicken onto the burning wood. Dad was still bragging about how he had been attacked by a goose and fought it off. He wanted to call himself “Lord of the Geese” because he had protected us from this avian terror (by falling on his back, what a stud!)



I started crying about it, and said it was a “bad goose.” Dad thought the goose attack was a great experience. He tried hard to reassure me that the goose was just protecting its mate and its eggs. He told me the goose was doing what it was supposed to do, and that it wasn’t a bad goose.



After my parents were done laughing about the horrible goose attack, they became deeply involved in a discussion about their favorite movies and actors. "Sean Connery will always be the hottest man on the planet. He could be a hundred years old and he would still be beautiful," Mom said.



"Even hotter than me?" Dad replied.



"No honey, no one is hotter than you. You're the hottest man ever, in the entire history of the human race. You are so hot, you make me melt" my mom said with just a trace of sarcasm.



To my four-year-old mind, I couldn't understand why Dad was so hot. It was cold outside. If he was so hot, why didn't he just back away from the fire?



Dad countered by saying how hot Jessica Alba was, but that Sophia Loren was the all-time queen of classic beauty.



While my parents blathered on, I heard another voice, haunting and mischievous, calling out from the woods.



"Jack, look here."



I turned my head and looked around. All I could see was a strand of trees and fireflies flying around.



"Jack, look closer" the voice whispered.



I stared at the small copse of woods and then stared at the fireflies. As I stared closer, I realized they weren't bugs at all. The world shimmered for a second, and then they looked like little faeries made of fire. Faeries were strictly for girls, of course, so I wasn't interested in them at first.



They persisted. "Jack, come with us." Their voices were tempting, hypnotic. It was as if I heard their voices throughout my body and inside my head, not just in my ears.



"Jack, we have grape juice for you. It’s yummy and sweet. Don't you want some? You love grape juice."



“Mommy, can I go have grape juice with the faeries?” I asked. Looking back, I realize Mom didn’t understand what I was asking. All she heard was ‘grape juice.’



“Sure honey, go ahead and get some.“



I imagine she meant for me to get a bottle of grape juice out of the cooler. It was my favorite drink as a child, and my parents always brought some when we went camping. To my four-year-old ears, it sounded like my mother said it was okay to go have a drink with the faeries. So, with Mom’s permission, I trotted off into the woods.



“Good boy, Jack,” the faeries whispered on. I followed them, but couldn’t catch them. It was dark and I kept falling and scraping my hands. “Get up, Jack, it’s just a little blood,” they said. “Get up, Jack, we have the best grape juice. Don’t you want some? Your mommy told you to come with us.” I was crying, but I was determined to catch them.



At one point the world shimmered again, then the trees looked different. They were gigantic now, and the vines hanging from the trees seemed to twist and lash out. Shining eyes looked at me from the trees. Glowing red rain pelted the ground around me.



“You’re safe, Jack,” the faeries told me. Their voices resonated inside my body even more than before. I should have been terrified. A part of me knew that I was going to die. A part of me knew that this was horribly wrong, and that they were going to do something terrible to me. That part of me couldn’t voice its fears. I was entranced now, fighting through lashing thorns, bleeding and crying. Little animals, but not Earth animals, began crawling up to me and biting my legs through my pants. Blood was dripping down into my shoes. A thorn scratched my left eye. I collapsed onto the ground in pain, and the little six-legged animals began biting my face.



The faerie voices whispered to me more urgently to get up and run. I was only four, terrified, overwhelmed by pain. A stronger, more commanding voice gave me an order inside my head. “Get up Now! I am counting to three. If I get to three, I will be very upset with you. GET UP NOW!”



I wasn’t sure if it was my father’s voice. It seemed too high-pitched, but it was male and had the same sense of command and gentle discipline as Dad’s voice when I misbehaved. Something clicked inside my head, and I stood up. The pain was just horrible. My whole face was a bloody mess. The pain didn’t matter, though. I understood that now. All that mattered was walking forward, following the fire faeries.



Other voices started whispering evil things.



“We’re going to eat you, Jack. We’re going to suck your brain through your eyeballs. Jack, you’re parents hate you. They just wanted to get rid of you. That’s why they let you come here. Mommy hates you because you run off all the time. Just lie down and die, Jack. Let us eat you. That's what Mommy and Daddy want.”



The voices were horrible, but they failed. My parents never let me forget they loved me. I remembered Mom and Dad hugging me that afternoon while we stood by the lake, looking at the sunset. The voices were nothing, compared to the intensity of my parent’s love.



I grew angry. I yelled back at the voices. “No. No. No.” Not terribly witty, but pretty good for a terrified four-year-old. I kicked at the little animals. I ran faster, jumping over logs without falling. I saw a clearing in the woods before me. A figure, the size of a young child, stood before the fire in the clearing. Flying animals, like vampire bats with extra legs and glowing eyes began flying at me. I picked up a stick and swatted at them. My parents had let me watch fairly violent cartoons, so I knew about sword fighting. I swung the stick hard and wild. I was so close to the clearing, and I knew I would be safe there. The figure would protect me.



I almost made it, but vines wrapped around my throat and yanked me to a stop. They were strangling me. I was almost unconscious. I lost hope at that moment, a terrible thing for a small child. But my hope rebounded when I heard the same commanding voice I had heard before call out into the woods.



“You use your vines? You would dare break the rules of our agreement? The boy made it. He is within the range of my influence, almost within the clearing. Release the boy or I will declare war on this world. Release the boy, or I will burn your sacred evil jungle to ashes. Release the boy, or I will summon forces of destruction upon your world like it has not seen since its second moon lost its orbit. Release the boy, NOW, or I will open a gateway to the Aether Wolves, and all of you will be nothing but fodder!”



A swirling circle began forming in the air above the clearing. Something purple and gross oozed through the swirls and congealed into a purple tentacle with a toothy mouth at its tip.



“We relent,” said the evil voices, "for the moment." They sounded almost petulant, like a child being punished by a parent. The tentacle reaching through the circle in the air pulled back, and the circle shrunk to nothing



The vines released my throat, and I stumbled into the clearing.



Through my good eye, I saw a dark red squirrel standing before me. He was huge for a squirrel, maybe two feet tall. He wore a long blue coat with strange red and green symbols. A fire roared behind him. A blanket lay on the ground before him. You might think a squirrel is silly, or cute and harmless. You might be inclined to not take a mere squirrel seriously. Don’t be. This mere squirrel was majestic. If you met him, you would think you were meeting someone divine, and I promise you, you would take him seriously.



“Lie down, Jack,” he said with the same tone he used before. “Lie down and close your eyes, I will heal you.”



I lay down, shut my eyes, and curled up into a fetal position. He bit my leg, but it didn’t hurt. I felt warmth spread through my body and the pain floated away. My thoughts slowed down and the panic disappeared. I should have broken down and cried, but I instinctively knew I was safe, that he would protect me. He spoke to me with that same slightly high-pitched, commanding, and soothing voice.



“I’m so sorry, Jack. I am so desperately sorry to have done this to you. You won’t understand a thing I'm saying to you right now, but you won’t forget a word of it. In fact, you'll never again forget a word that anyone tells you. When you are older, this will make sense. I had to summon you to this world. It would have been too dangerous for your family for me to come to your world. This realm is a place of nightmares, where reality is uncertain, where fantasies become manifest from our minds. It is the only place where the juice will work fully. I have an agreement with the residents of this place. They would only allow you here if they at least had a chance to eat you. I knew you would make it, though. I know the strength in you, just as I knew the strength in your mother, father, and grandfather.”



My vision began to clear in my left eye, and my thoughts became focused. “Juice?” I asked.



The squirrel pulled me up into a sitting position and handed me a cup. I stared down into the contents of the cup. It was purple, and it smelled like grape juice, but I was a little scared because the juice seemed to move around inside the cup on its own, almost as if it were trying to escape.



“Drink it quick, Jack, we don’t have much time. Something very old and very bad lives at the core of this world. If it wakes up, it would be… very difficult for me.”



So I drank it. I instinctively trusted this strange squirrel, and I drank it. It didn’t taste like grape juice at all. It was foul, like drinking the juice from the bottom of an old garbage bag. I drank it though. It slithered down my throat like a liquid snake...



And everything changed, forever.



An electric warmth spread from my stomach, down to my toes and up to my head. It was utterly painful. The squirrel spoke to me while I sobbed and twisted with the pain.



"The juice comes from an unnatural grape, fermented in a broth of genetically engineered bacteria and highly specialized nanobots. It's the wine of the gods, Jack. It's activating latent genes in your body and brain, opening pathways in your mind, liberating and accelerating your thoughts and giving you the brain capacity to tame and direct the storm of ideas that will grow in your mind. You will be able to perceive possibilities like no other human. This is an enormous gift Jack. If you misuse it, I will hunt you down and take it away. I can do that."



I heard his words through the pain. As he spoke, a wind began to blow through the woods. It felt as if the wind caressed the darker side of my soul.



"We can't have that," the red squirrel said. "Sorry, Jack, the old one is waking up. I have to send you back now. I will do battle with it, distract it so that it cannot reach out to you while the wine takes hold. Its influence would not be welcome. A few words of advice before you go: Listen to your conscience, Jack, and listen to your parents. Always strive to do good, it is the only path to true joy. Care about the world around you. Find the moral in every story. Do all things with love. One other thing,” and his voice grew more ominous, “beware my brothers. Beware the Earth Squirrels of Doom. They bring destruction and rebirth. Tread cautiously when you walk within the spheres of their influence."



The wind rose to a roar. It tried to blow through me, but a shield of swirling air deflected the wind. The shield grew denser, and I felt myself withdrawing from the dark realm. I could no longer see the evil forest. I closed my eyes, and slept to retreat from the electric pain.



When I woke, the morning sun was bright through my closed eyelids. I heard Mom frantically calling to Dad.



“Honey, he’s here. I see him lying in the ground over here. Oh my god, he’s covered in blood. He’s breathing. Oh my god, there’s blood everywhere. Honey, get over here.” She sounded so desperate, like she was certain I must be dying.



“Katrina, where are you?” Dad called back.



“Here, in the little woods by the camp.”



As Mom cradled me, I heard Dad running over to us. He sounded panicked. I didn’t think my father was afraid of anything. “How could he be here? We already searched this area. The sheriff’s men combed every inch. “



Dad got to where we are, and uttered a very bad word, then said “He’s soaked in blood. Where is he bleeding from, we have to stop him from bleeding out.”



“He’s not bleeding honey. He doesn’t have any wounds at all.”



“Uh, did he vomit blood?” Dad put his hand on my forehead. “He’s really hot. Maybe he has some kind of hemorrhagic fever? It’s too early for ticks isn’t it? Let’s get him to the hospital.”



I was still disoriented, but every sound I heard, every flicker of light I saw through heavy eyelids, every touch, and even every smell was being stored in my brain. I could feel the input from all of my senses running through me, like a phantom stream, pouring into a tiny but bottomless bottle in the middle of my head. I am describing the experience as I look back at it. At the time, I didn’t have the words to describe it. To be honest, I’m not sure I could adequately put it into words even now. I looked more closely at the stream of sensory data and the memory bottle.



“What is that?” I wondered inside my head.



“I am your Memory Max, Jack.”



“What?”



“I’m a structured crystal sensory memory matrix, with a subsentient personality guide.”



“Huh?”



“I’m a friend, Jack. I help you remember things. I’m in your head. Just call me Max.”



“Oh.”



While this strange friend spoke to me from inside my head, I was distantly aware of my parents putting me and my 7-year-old sister, Chloe, into our car seats. They drove me to the nearest hospital. My eyelids briefly opened and I saw they were following a sheriff’s car. My sister was crying and asking if I would be okay.



“We think he’ll be okay, Punkin,” my mother said.



“We can’t be sure,” Dad chimed in, “but this hospital has some very good doctors. Try to stay calm, Punkin. If you get too worked up, it might scare Jack.”



“Okay, Daddy,” my sister sobbed.



I felt very distant from my body, and couldn’t manage to move my mouth to talk. I could talk inside my head, though.



“I’m scared.”



“The entity who put me inside your head knows what he is doing, Jack. You’ll be fine. He loaded me up with some immersive movies. You can watch them, if you want. I have an excellent episode of Snargit and Doopsy, if you like?”



“Huh?”



“Right, you’re four, and Snargit and Doopsy have never been shown on this Earth. Sorry Jack, I’m not very bright. They don’t put real intelligences inside of people, because that would be a form of slavery. So, bear with me, I am activating an adult-to-four-year-old translation program. Okay, here it goes… Hiya Jack! Would you like to be part of a cartoon? It’s really funny.”



“Okay.”



Max put me in the single stupidest cartoon ever created. Immersive cartoons are like realistic dreaming. That part was cool, but the cartoon was awful. Even at four, I could tell good ‘toons from bad ones. I feel sorry for whichever Earth this cartoon came from, if that’s what passes for good kiddie shows in their world. I tried to change things in the cartoon, like you sometimes can in dreams, but Max said that wasn’t allowed.



“Sorry Jack, can’t do that. That would be something called a virtual reality. Can you say ‘virtual reality?’”



“Virtual Reality”



“Very good. That’s like living in a magic world inside your head. It’s so much fun that kids would only want to do that and nothing else. They would ignore the real world. You’ll have to live in the real world, Jack. I can only put you in virtual realities for learning exercises.”



“Okay.”



I wasn’t very talkative at that age. My language skills were nowhere near as developed, at age four, as my sister’s language skills had been at the same age. Max tried a few other cartoons, but I wasn’t interested. I pulled out and returned to the outer world. Even while I was focused on my conversation with Max, all of my sensory inputs were still being recorded.



When we arrived at the hospital, they rushed me into the emergency department and explained what happened to the doctors. They hooked me up to an IV fluid line, took blood for tests, studied the test results, then tried to sound knowledgeable as they explained to my parents that they had no idea what was wrong. They said I should stay in the hospital while they ran more tests. I wound up staying there for three weeks. During most of that time I was feverish and barely able to respond. Finally, my fever broke and I could talk again.



“Mommy, I got stolen by faeries.”



“Honey, he’s talking!”



My dad was outside my room talking with the doctor. He ran back to my bedside. My sister was at school.



“Hi Daddy. I saw fairies.”



“He must have been hallucinating,” Dad said to Mom.



The doctor took my temperature and said, “His fever’s coming down. This is an excellent sign.”



“Daddy, I saw a squirrel. He said he knows you.” My language skills were vastly improved. Max explained that the entity had changed a few things inside my brain, including my ability to express myself.



My dad replied, “Doctor, please leave us alone for a few minutes.”



“We really should take some blood to see if we can find any changes that correspond with his improvement. We still have not been able to identify any infectious, cancerous, or toxicological etiology for his illness.”



“That’s fine, but I need five minutes first. Just go order the tests and give us a bit.”



The doctor left and Dad gave me and Mom a serious look. “I don’t know any squirrels, Jack. But, there is a story passed down through the generations of the Liberastrum family. Part of that story is that a magical squirrel watches over us and sometimes recruits us to do special things. My dad said it was just a fable, but that he always kept up the family tradition. We’re supposed to pass the story onto our children when they turn ten. It’s a funny thing, even though Grandpa only told me the story once, I can remember every single word of it.”



“Tell me, Daddy.”



“Um, I really don’t think I’m supposed to. Sorry son, you’ll have to wait until you’re ten. But, what’s up with your speech?”



“I’m talking better now, Daddy. Max says the squirrel did something to my brain.”



“Who’s Max?”



“Max is my new friend inside my head.”



“Aw heck. Maybe that story isn’t totally a fable. What did the squirrel look like, son?”



“He was big and red. He was really cute and seemed very nice.”



“If he did something to you, Jack, it’s because he needs your help. The family story tells us that he only uses our family to do good things. He abducted you, though. I am definitely not okay with that.”



“Doesn’t work for me either, Honey.” Mom said. “If I ever see him, I’ll turn him into squirrel sushi.”



“Mommy, what’s a sushi?”



“Raw fish”



“But he’s a squirrel, Mommy.”



“For now, maybe. He won’t even be a ‘he’ when I’m done with him.”



“What are sushis for, Mommy?”



“You eat it.”



“Yuck, not me!”



“That’s just ‘cause you’re young, Jack. I’m sure when you get older you’ll like the taste of sushi.”



“Yuck. I don’t ever wanna get older.”



Mom turned to Dad. “This is crazy. A magical squirrel? Faeries? No way. And why haven’t you ever told me this family story of yours.”



“I don’t know. I guess it never occurred to me that I should. That’s weird, isn’t it?”



“Yes, that’s weird. Really hard to believe.”



“Honey, listen to the way he’s talking. It’s like he’s two years older. Explain that?”



“I can’t, but I’m still really skeptical.”



Her skepticism wasn’t destined to last very long. After the hospital staff had taken more blood, I told them more about Max. My dad gave me all kinds of impromptu memory tests, and I proved to him that I could recall everything. He followed that by directly asking Max a question.



My dad was a medical journalist and knew lots of medical terms. “Max, you must know some things that my son has never heard about before. Please tell us what a telomere is?”



I listed to Max, then passed the answer on to Dad.



“It’s like the end part of a shoelace, but it goes onto a gnomosome.”



“My dad smiled. Max is like a little gnome in your head, isn’t he? The word is actually ‘chromosome’. There is no way you could have known about telomeres on your own.”



Mom was astonished by the results of Dad’s tests. She was convinced now. She held up a pair of medical scissors that she found in a drawer in the hospital room and cut upwards into the air while she spoke with a sinister grimace.



“Seriously, Honey. That’s gonna be a girly squirrel when I’m done.”