The Lost Stories: A Series of CoSmic Adventures

Lost Everything

I descended to Eden alone, despite Winston's head-shaking, and retraced my steps from months before. But where I expected to find the large bush, I saw instead a middle-aged man sitting on a wooden chair painted white.

“Can I help you?” he said, turning to look at me.

My scanner showed no signs of Gamma Bamma radiation. “Have you seen a bush?” I said.

“A few,” he said with a smile, waving his arms at the vegetation around us.

“This is a special bush,” I said. “It emits a lot of radiation and speaks to you if you touch it.”

“Why would you touch it?”

“Because a coward would fear touching it,” I said, and couldn't help but puff out my chest a little, “and I'm brave.”

The man nodded. “Have a seat, James.”

For the first time I noticed a chair across from him. I took it.

“Are you Lord?” I said.

He nodded again.

“But you're human. And you're talking just fine.”

“You've never really read the Bible, have you?”

I looked down. Tiny images of fish were etched into the wooden arm of the chair. “It's very long,” I said, finally looking back at Lord. “I skimmed quite a lot of it. I read all the important bits.” After a pause, I said, “Most of the important bits. Some of the letters at the back are tough going, they're hard to skim so I skipped them. Because I figured: who puts the important information at the back of a book? Right?”

“Did you come here to ask for eternal life again?”

I shook my head, knowing he wouldn't grant it to me anyway. “If you are anything like the Lord of the Bible,” I said, “you know why I came here. So why do you ask?”

He smiled again. “You want me to heal Ken Treme so he can keep making new Captain Courageous episodes.”

I leaned forward in my chair and placed my hand in my pocket where I ran my finger over the Captain Courageous figurine. “Will you?”

A darkness swept across his face. “I can't help you. I'm sorry to tell you that Ken Treme is dead.”

“You can bring him back.” I saw the dark look in his eyes. “But you won't, will you? Maybe you have no power at all.”

He was silent.

“If you have power, prove it! Bring him back!”

He just stared at me. Above us, beams of sunlight struggled to pierce through the tall, leafy branches of the surrounding trees.

“Is it that you won't,” I said, “or that you can't?” Ken Treme was dead. No more Captain Courageous ever again, at least not the same Captain Courageous I'd always known. “Why don't you say something?” No more Captain Courageous, ever. The reality of the statement was only slowly taking solid shape in my mind, but its weight was already threatening to crush me. “Please,” I said, changing my tone. “I only want this. Please—I'm a good person, I deserve it.”

Instantly, the man was out of his chair and over to mine, his right hand gripping my neck and his knee pressing onto my leg, holding me down. It happened so fast that I didn't have a chance to react.

“You're a good person?” he said, speaking through clenched teeth. “You destroyed an entire colony simply because you were ordered to do so, without a single pang of conscience or guilt.”