I Don't Seem So Bright in a Well-Lit Room

Chapter Two

Deep in a residential tower for the MUU (Ministry of Universe Upkeep), and deep in a broom closet, sat a small man. He was small in stature, he was small in mind. His moral compass had been stomped on by all those bigger than he, and his neck was sore from looking over his shoulder.

Not that anyone was actually out to get him, but his self-importance was out of whack and he believed himself to be a much more feared and wanted man than he was. No one on Lyme Node was after him in fact. No one on Towerscape (his missing home planet) was after him either. But he fancied that everyone wanted a piece of the infamous criminal mastermind Aye-Aye.

There was one being after him, but that being was somewhere in the vastness of space, and Aye hadn't heard any news about him in many many years. Perhaps referring to him as a "being" was a bit generous. It was his father, or rather a thing that once was his father.

To keep down the population on Towerscape, and to rid themselves of the weak and lame, it was a father's right to challenge his son to fight to the death as "rites-of-manhood". Aye's father was the famous robotics expert Mel-Aye, and Aye-Aye had been born into a no-win existence.

His father was not only a diabolical genius, but he had an army of nasty robots at his disposal. He was also revered by their society and was once seen as a hero of sorts. If Aye had survived the fight with his father and his insane murder robots, he would have definitely been killed by the people of his planet as some form of nationalistic revenge.

So before his rites-of-manhood amounted to certain death, he ran away.

In a way Aye-Aye had won. His father was shamed for allowing him to run away and he died off-planet, shunned, disgraced and alone.

Before he died though, he vowed he would find his son, painfully kill him and restore his honour and place in Towerscapian history. Death would not stop him.

So, he invented the perfect robotic killing machine and uploaded his consciousness into it before he passed away. As this new version of himself, "Mel Million Max" would hunt down Aye and kill him. Not so much of a being, as an electric ghost. An animated image of his own scowling, wrinkled head hovered above the body of the machine as a translucent bluish hologram. His own grumpy old voice was always on the ready to insult or say something old-man-racist. So much for nurture.

Aye had spent the years between Towerscape and this broom closet smuggling kitchenware, scamming the comatose, and drinking until he was almost blind. It was the drinking that landed him here on Lyme Node, working as a back-up assistant Flood Water Absorber.

Due to the planet's never-ending light drizzle of rain, mild flooding was an issue on Lyme Node and someone needed to back up the assistant to the person that cleaned it up when he, she or they got sick, vacationed or died of goddam boredom.

He literally woke up after a bender and had this job. He wasn't sure how or what he had slept with to get it. He considered himself lucky. A legitimate job for a Towerscapian, off of Towerscape, was hard to come by. Tophers (which is what they called themselves) had a reputation for being assholes and scoundrels. Their appearance, with long dark hair and small curled forehead horns often put people off. It was said that many millennia ago they crash landed on a pre-technology/mall earth and gave Earthlings all their silly devil myths.

His reasons for hiding in a broom closet had everything to do with a Squambogian Mantis Widow. After a vigorous, confusing and surprising night of drunken love making, he had sneaked out before she could bite off his head and lay eggs in his corpse. He had a feeling she'd be looking for him. She was not. Again, he really wasn't that important.