Road to Arcadia: the Path East

Chapter Twelve: First Supper

Kai wasn't sure how normal nights were spent on the road in the R&R, but everyone seemed pretty satisfied to get this night off. They pulled out dinner from their food stash, some prepackaged meals made from Arcadian goods while others were leftover rations that could be picked up at any outpost on the ground. Kai was familiar with the latter, grateful to have the former. There was a lot of movement, squad members taking walks around the checkpoint, inside and outside, tracing a path down to the road before returning. Kai was able to get formerly introduced to Deon, Irene, and Ziggy. Jey, the quiet transfer, preferred to hang back and observe. Kai silently cursed that his former position he held during training had been filled only a couple months prior to his arrival.

Once the food was properly prepared, they all circled up once more around the bare lightbulb at the center of the shack. Alayna and Deon were absent, opting to get a head start collaborating on tomorrow's assignment instead of engaging with dinner conversation.

The remaining six took their squad leader's word to heart, turning the casual dinner talk into a conversation pointed directly at Kai.

"So, Gilling," Carsten started, name rolling around his thick jaw in a way Kai would have to get used to. "You said you spent a lot of time out on the road before getting on Arcadia. What kind of travel did you do?"

Kai hesitated. He wasn't sure how much tragic backstory to wade through in order to explain his time out of the road, where he was, and how he got there. "Better question is, where didn't I go?" He quick cursed himself, trying to undo the air of cockiness. "I mean, I didn't have a set agenda or a map so I just kind of went wherever I felt like. Spent most of my time in the desert out west. It was a good spot to hang out for the winter and it's easier to avoid trouble since there's hardly anyone else out there."

"Were you by yourself?" Carsten asked.

"Ah, for most of it, yeah. I mean, I set out by myself but towards the end I met my friends, which is how I end up finding Arcadia."

"Found Arcadia?" Ziggy repeated, skepticism dripping from this voice.

Kai nodded. "Uh, yeah. We found it. We had a map--well, okay so the first map didn't work--but then we got a second one because--" he stopped himself, words building into a lump at the base of his throat. "Long story, but yeah. We were able to find it."

"I thought no one was able to find it," Ziggy commented to Carsten. "That's like our claim to fame."

"It's not impossible," the larger one answered. "We cover our tracks but we have the right to extend an open invitation to anyone we wish. If someone initially refused but then changed their mind, they'd have more knowledge than the average desert walker to find us."

"Plus, it's a giant, miles-wide city in the sky," Irene added.

"How'd you get your hands on a map?" Yulia asked with genuine curiosity. Her attention had voided the bickering squad members, now fully trained on Kai.

The sudden attention made him uncomfortable. "Well, technically, the map was never in my hands. It belonged to my friend. Uh, Dani Hofstra-Martin?" He tried out the name on the off-chance anyone had encountered her within the past three months. For as big as Arcadia was, it was still a small world.

"I know of a Racquel Hofstra-Martin," Irene spoke carefully, taking her time to recall any details.

"Why does that name sound familiar?" Yulia half-whispered to her. "What is she, a doctor? A therapist?"

"A counselor," she corrected. "She works in transitions, I think. She's on the referral list."

"That's Dani's wife," Kai noted.

"But she's been here longer than you have. You've only been on Arcadia, what did you say, three months? And you were traveling with her wife?"

He nodded. "They were separated. I mean, physically separated. Not maritally separated--as far as I know they are very happy together--but when they got picked up by the R&R--" he trailed off. It was a hard story for a myriad of reasons. Besides the gravity of the scene and the long-lasting effect it had on not just Dani, but her entire family, he wasn't sure if it was appropriate to describe the event as a failure of the organization he had just joined.

"You know," he picked back up hurriedly. "Sometimes mistakes happen. She was able to get her hands on a map, though. Some time after that we met, along with a pair of siblings I'd picked up in the desert and the rest is history."

Yulia didn't break. "I can tell that there is so much you're leaving out of that story."

He shrugged. "I can't give it all away on the first night, can I?"

Carsten sat back in his seat as far as he could while still maintaining his balance. "So you haven't been on the receiving end of the R&R service? You don't really know what it's like to be on the other side of it, just on the rescuing side."

Kai hesitated.

"Don't give him a hard time for it," Yulia chastised. "Irene got picked up in that big city clear out. Not all of us get to Arcadia by throwing our boxes in the back of a bus in a mad dash for safety. It doesn't make anyone else's spots less earned."

"You and I did," he pointed out.

She nodded. "Sure. Zigs and Deon, too. And then there're folks that have been working with the Arc since we were kids. We all get there different ways but we got there."

Largo grumbled something to himself and looked down.

Kai tried to make eye contact with Jey once he noticed his name suspiciously absent from Yulia's tongue, trying to see if he could gauge any hints of what circumstances led him to Arcadia. No luck. Jey's eyes remained deeply entrenched in the remnants of an old rations pouch.

Kai didn't know he was looking for a project, but he might just have found one.

Ziggy spoke up. "Personally, I think it's way cooler to stumble upon the Arc than go through what we did. Really, what's so exciting about that? A guy in a white suit pops out and says 'Hey, I know everything you own just got buried six feet under, so you wanna fuck off out of here into my white van?' Then we said, 'Gee willikers, sir, we sure would.' And that was it. Very anticlimactic. Not as sexy as Largo described it."

"You sound not at all traumatized by that," Irene observed.

Zigs shrugged. "Already processed that trauma. Now it's just something that happened. Doesn't make for that great of a story, especially when compared to some of what you all got."

Yulia kissed her teeth. "Zigs, please, no Arcadian despair spirals on our first night on the road. Save that for the bunks."

He scoffed. "I don't despair spiral. I have never despair spiraled. You all just don't understand my sense of humor."

"Is that a known phenomena?" Kai ventured to ask.

"What, Zig's bad jokes? Unfortunately."

"He's talking about the trademark Arcadia despair spiral," Zigs drawled. "And, yeah, it's a whole thing."

"Not, like, officially," Irene clarified. "Or else they would talk about it more."

"You're right, they'd make a point of talking about it in training and everything." He exaggerated a gagging motion.

"It just happens to some people who go in between the Arc and the ground a lot. It's the--" she searched for the word, "--juxtaposition between how shitty the world is and how not-shitty Arcadia is. Good news is you haven't been on the Arc for long so you probably didn't even get used to how things were there before coming back down here."

Kai wasn't sure how to react. "Well, I guess you're the first person to tell me that like it's a good thing so I'm guessing I'm in the right place."

Carsten raised a bota bag of water. "In that case, welcome to the team."