A Listening Ear

Zarcon tilted his chin up and looked around at the immense fields of wheat. Planetary systems were compartmentalized by industry, and wheat fields seemed to grow best from the light of blue star systems. The Frazan Sector had five planets producing massive amounts of wheat for distribution across each planetary system. The urban systems functioned the most chaotically yet also demanded the most control among the Unified Federation of Systems (UFS), including the establishment of predefined planetary resource zoning. The Frazan Sector was the agricultural one.

Zarcon held a hoe in his gloved hands. Two Ex-5 starships flew through the atmosphere in the distance. Their gold-gilded wings gleamed, and they darted around the planet out of sight from Zarcon and the other slaves.

Zarcon got back to work. He moseyed about, but he tilled his portion of the fields with some efficiency. Surrounding harvesters manned their devices and trudged through their work. Life had merely been. Zarcon thought of more fields, though the greenest forests and city centers still crystallized in his mind as a means of escape.

Then a crash. Then the ground shook. Then something arrived across the fields he stood hidden in. Zarcon witnessed a bright explosion in the distance and, instead of walking away, proceeded to walk towards it. Smoke rose through the air, and he and several other harvesters approached the wreckage a couple miles away.

As they arrived, the body of a decimated man crawled out from the clamped down pilot’s seat. His face had turned to charcoal and fire, and he looked at the harvesters as they arrived. Zarcon looked down as his eyes began to water, though he did not shed a tear.

“Th-th-they aren’t real,” stuttered the dying pilot. They were surrounded closely by stalks of wheat. “They aren’t go-going to stop.”

Zarcon took initiative and replied, “Who’s not real? What’s going on?”

But before the pilot could speak, his face fell against the soil surface as his last breath left him. His body laid motionless halfway inside the destroyed Ex-5, and the gilded gold wings the fighter ships are known for burned dark blue.

“Hey Zarcon, what’s going on?” Asked Ward. He dropped the wheat stalks he had picked from earlier, though he would have to remember to pick them up before they went back to work.

“This pilot’s ship just crashed. He’s dead unfortunately,” Said Zarcon. He looked down at the ground and kicked some dirt around. The smoke continued to rise.

“Man, that’s just… harsh,” Replied Ward. Ward grabbed the wheat stalks again, “Well, I gotta go back to this.”

“Yeah.”

Zarcon looked around at the fields again. He centered his focus on his portion of the fields and walked back.

—

The rest of the day went as it mostly had before, though this time Zarcon felt uneasy about the future. He reminisced about his life and felt the cold tendrils of time wrap around his arms, legs, and torso just as the stalks of wheat began to do the same to his real body. He tripped and stumbled as he tried desperately to hold onto the crop yield, then let it go and collapsed and laid on his back in the field immovable.

He looked up at the sky. An entourage of five ships sped away overhead from the fields he sat in. A tear fell down from his left cheek. He wiped it away and continued to stare. The last time he had left for the neon city of Pink on the planet Tengril was ten years ago, and he had become no wiser in the time since. If anything he felt worse off.

He dreamed of the city away from this planet, he dreamed of Pink. Pink in and of itself wasn’t actually a pink city, but it was a city richer in vibrant color than the beige sea of landmass agriculture he slaved away on. Pink was a stormy and neon city, and that meant bright lights, fervent flavors, and all varieties of spacers colliding together in a rambunctious mishmash of life. Humans that had evolved along different strains came together and brought all their peculiarities. Pink was the ecumenopolis of lights and oddities.

However, it was not like the Las Vegas of mythology in several regards; it was a city that made no reason for people to “sin”. When the year 2100 had passed, people quickly lost interest in occult gambling and instead replaced them with cubed schemes, a divide-and-conquer psychology. The other, and perhaps more obvious reason, was that it was not named Las Vegas. It was named Pink. It was named after a color that exuded cute. The name was voted on by a council of unicorns, so it just seemed to fit.

There was, of course, also the Pink Cafe, a place known for having the greatest eggs and bacon in the entire breadth of the galaxy. Ordering them and stacking them on the equally savory toast brought Zarcon the greatest joy. It had been ten years since his greatest joy had been realized. A simple cafe meal could change how he felt about the future.

“What the hell are you doing?!” Yelled a distant voice from where he laid.

Zarcon closed his eyes, took a deep breath in-and-out of his nose, and got up achingly. He opened his eyes. The fields blew in a sudden soft breeze, and the man at the other side stomped towards him.

“Zarcon, get your ass back to work! Those crops ain’t gonna ship themselves!”

Zarcon opened his eyes and replied, “Alright. Give me a second.”

He took a few seconds to retrieve the wheat stalks he had already picked. He loaded them onto a nearby walled platform and sludged back to work.

He made brief eye contact with the man in charge of this agricultural subsector, then looked back at the fields and his work. In truth, the fields he gazed into were immensely more comforting than the man in charge. This, of course, was obvious; the man in charge held no weight over his mind aside from barking orders, and the fields were the closest thing to galactic freedom that Zarcon could get.

The wheat fields paled in comparison to the galactic horizon, but the supervisor paled in comparison to the wheat fields. The galaxy around him spun in blue sunlight amidst a lack of artificial lighting. A prism of colors of stars and nebulae were sprinkled and spread around.