Gnaw By Mike Smithwick

It was almost a holy calling.

The hunger that chewed away at their insides day and night, churning and never blessing them with peace. Not even for a moment.

He was a pilot. One of the few. One of the few who could see the sun and know what it was, smell the ground and feel the wind on his face and remember the stars.

He had many brothers. Few were at his level though. The rest were closer to the purity of their existence. Almost innocent. Although more common in numbers they were the blessed ones. Blinded by their complete hunger, unpolluted by the memories of the past. They were closer to the vessels and tendons and muscles that formed their bodies. They were primal energy taken physical form. They were as wolves. And as wolves they had to go out and feed.

His brothers were the harvesters. Kept locked up in the hold, their time would come shortly when the prey was within their grasp. Only then would they be freed.

The Pax was quick to destroy the barriers that separated the human from the animalistic. And as with most drugs, it affected people differently and in different proportions. The few tens-of-thousands who were freed from their cages of civilization were likewise affected differently. Most would become as the harvesters. All limits were removed. There was no more remorse, memory, or meaning. Except for one thing: that ever present hunger.

A few were not nearly so lucky. They were higher level operators. Some would coordinate the harvesters. Others remembered just enough to repair their boats and prepare them for the next hunt. And the highest few were able to remember how to fly.

They became pilots.

They envied the harvesters.

It had been a few days out from their home. He never quite knew. Their time was measured relative to that gap between meals. Little more.

They had no names for each other. Except for some of the high operators, few spoke in little more than sounds so names were useless. Late at night in the few moments of silence in his own mind he might hear sounds of a time gone by. Belonging to someone else that may have once owned his body; he heard something that sounded like “jim”. He wasn’t sure what a “jim” was. He caught snatches of other sounds. He might hear the distant noises of the young, (whatever they were) or a rumble of long forgotten conversations. Dancing in front of his eyes would be splintered images of others sitting around a table, also eating. But the meals were entirely different. And they spoke and drank. One in particular showed him special attention. This one called him “jim”.

Their quarry managed to escape. As he and his brothers pushed out further year after year, the prey learned and adapted. Well so shall he. He is a pilot after all. This time they must have hid in one of the debris fields they passed. Well, there were others. There were always others.

He directed them towards a small moon. He heard his brothers down below getting noisy and eager for the hunt to begin. He was too.

The hunts were always exciting for him. But one thing he never felt was joy. Joy was something he did sense from before the Pax. Odd it was. The Time Before was a time of being in their prison. “Jim” he heard again. It was a soft voice. Something he would never hear from any of the others. Weak it was. Weak.

“Jim, what’s happening to us?” echoed through his mind. The noise from the harvesters was growing louder. “It won’t be long my brothers” he thought. “Just be patient.”

“Daddy….won’t wake up!” It was almost like a garbled wave message on the edge nothing’s private abyss. He was curious now, as this story was playing out in his mind. Repeating over and over as a puzzle, each time a new piece is uncovered. Since he had to spend long hours on the bridge, he was a pilot after all, he had to play these games to distract himself from his hunger. The others had few such problems such was the nature of their short carefree lives.

“Daddy, Mommy won’t wake up!”

What did that mean? He sensed that at his own rebirth, those might have been the last words ever spoken toward him.

Some alarms snapped him out of this wonderment. He had no time to think about what had been. All that mattered was fulfilling the hunger and their destiny. There it was; a small ship they had passed some time before. They always made note of secondary targets just in case, and had dropped a hidden transponder on its hull. The boat was small, wouldn’t provide much for the brothers except as a trifle of an offering to pacify them for a short while.

He brought their ship tearing in low over the ground. The target was agile, getting a fast start. But they would catch up in no time. He knew that soon he would fire the grapple and haul it in, as he had done many times before. It was exciting, but he shouldn’t consider anything in the past. He was in fact one of the few who had a “past” to consider, one of the penalties for being a high-operator.

The target would be no match for them. Without the radiation shields their engines were considerably more powerful.

He wondered about their pilot. Was he a “Jim” also? Did he have someone who called him by name? Was he a “high-operator” in his clan? It was so inefficient and so wasteful and so impure.

They were now nearly within grappling distance.

“Joy” is something he thought he should feel at these times, by being successful at his mission. By satisfying his own hunger. But it never came upon him.

He wondered if this other pilot ever felt joy. If he did, he was lucky.

The hunger struck again reminding him of his first goal.

He focused on the little boat ahead. Ready to pounce.

He jerked up in surprise, watching as suddenly one of its engines flipped around! And then the other! With an astonishing swiftness it swept right under his belly, forcing him to make a turn that was slow and sluggish by comparison. “Good flying ‘Jim’!” he shouted to the other pilot, surprised at hearing the sound of his own voice now harsh and confused.

Then there was the flash, and his boat shuddered as it was slammed off its course. He saw the ground weaving through the window, then the sun, then the ground yet again, as a chorus of alarms joined in the chaos. A large piece of debris spun by his cockpit window. He recognized one of the engines as it was shredded loose. The big ship spun madly out of control. He heard his brothers screaming. No longer for food but instead from shock as their nature would never allow them the luxury of contemplating their own death. He could, it was his failing. They were the lucky ones. The didn’t know the ship was tearing itself apart. The cockpit began to split open, at first letting a small jet of air pour through the hole. Fresh sweet air. For an ephemeral moment he felt the breeze brush across his face, he smelled its familiar scent. The puzzle was now complete. For one fleeting moment before him stood his wife and children. They beckoned him to follow, as they turned to run up a gently sloping grassy hill in some long forgotten park. That is what joy was! He understood. He remembered. He no longer cared that the ground swiftly approaching.

“Thank you ‘Jim’” he whispered to the other pilot.

“Thank you.”