12 Purpose Addiction 1

Felt like garbage the moment I came awake. Sun was up glaring at me, damn, I hate the 'sun' of Ganymede. I feel like a hundred radiations glaring at my eyes. I crawled up out of my bed. Opened the door, saw Captain Regina about to put a bread on her mouth. She looked at me, that bread entering her mouth. She was trying to speak.

"What's up?" Her mouth was full of bread. The butter is literally making her lips so yellow. Captain Regina didn't mind my face as she just continued chewing the bread until I was able to catch a glimpse of what her PDA is projecting. I am pretty sure that she is watching 2D porn. No, it is more like she is supervising the 2D porn that she is just watching in front of me.

"What the fuck is that?" I asked.

"Never seen hentai before?" she said.

"I know that it is fucking hentai. Why are you eating bread while watching hentai?"

"It's okay, I don't mind."

Hearing her made me question the sanity of my Captain. I opened my mouth and closed it. She was still eating that butter-laced bread while watching Hentai. Not even a single embarrassment can be found to this rather Stoic Captain of mine. Is this just being shameless or just pure eccentric behavior?

"I cannot understand this," I said. "So can you give me a reason?"

"GM privileges, they are paying me to manage the content and manage the bots. It pays and I have bread to eat and money to fix the gunships we have."

She swallowed. She threw a piece of bread at me. Like a dog, I caught the bread and munched it while looking at the PDA. She was really expressionless that it was hard to understand what she's feeling or thinking. I froze. I looked around the room that we are renting. It was a mess. There were paper and trashes strewn across the room. There were also electrical parts laid around, the power cells were left unguarded. I could not help but take the power cells. I arranged the room until I asked the Captain.

"What should we do now Captain?" I asked.

"Find work. Get the Carnifex and the Fortuna up and ready. Managing a porn site is fine and all but it doesn't really cover all the costs. At best I can keep us alive."

She looked at me. "What?" I said. "You are lucky that you have a generous Captain like me." She was probably telling me kindly that I need to get working. "I'll call you if I have anything to offer us both. Also, have you ever thought of bounty hunter work?"

That was the thing that came to my mind too. Captain refocused her eyes on her PDA. She masterfully gathered her bots to delete spam and control the approval line. Hundreds of hentai were being processed. Couldn't understand it so I just garbed myself up and walked out of the room.

"Good Luck."

Captain shouted. I walked out of the room. I trotted down apartment building. The congested streets of Ganymede welcome me. There was a lot of traffic so I walked down the lane until I got on a transporter bus. After that, the bus took me through the labyrinth of alcoves and alleyways. Found myself standing on a long line of the building. Ganymede has a lot of neon lights that it makes me want to buy sunglasses. Also, there are parts of Ganymede that are literally flooded. For example, the place that I am now is considered as a flooded district. This district sits on top of the water, below the water lies an underwater community made to cultivate the corals to keep the fishes brought from earth alive. They've been adapting the environment.

I was talking to Henry Jims and chatting with the twins. They were my only friends in this vast universe. I have a complicated relationship of like and hate with the Captain. I like her for saving me out of that routine hellhole. But I hate that stoic look on her face. Every one of us has something loose inside our heads. Most of the time we are forced to screw that loose thing forcibly to adjust. The entertainment system of this century has been wonderful. Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, bionic parts, and gene improvement has been improved to such degree that we have nothing to complain other than the aliens that broke through our Milky Way galaxy.

I entered inside the bounty hunters building. This old tradition has been brought back after the united government back on mother earth realized that the police force cannot take care of the peace around the universe. Bounty hunters and paid Assassins are not rare these days.

"Hey, can I get your order?" It was fucked up that they are treating human lives as an order you can get like a meal. I was then given a tablet. I scrolled with my finger and 'booked' the guy that I wanted to kill. The person who was talking to me guided me to a place where I was given a briefing data. Then I was given a scanner that allows me to gather the biometrics of the person that I was about to kill. I would have a scanner of my own. But since I am new to the trade I was given this one.

I left the building. I stared at the underwater community below Ganymede before heading to a diner. I bought Coffee and stayed until I felt bored. I found myself in a wild plaza. The giant digital billboards and the horrendous neon lights made me strangely calm. Men and women walked along the streets. My hands were in my pocket. I heard flirting around me as well as buzzing and ringing. The people walk with their eyes strained on their PDA. Even at this age we never moved on our addiction. Men and women are now half-machine while most find this natural.

I got out of that hell. Saw hell again and yet here I am free from the brutalities of the war happening around the galaxy. Don't even remember the first people I thought I'd be friends with. I am alone in Ganymede, staring at their infamous digital billboards.

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I left those congested streets, moving at a moderate pace through the path where Captain and I live. I arrive back at the apartment, I then saw a man smoking an electric cigarette. I entered the room quietly as I could. Captain was on the couch, she was reading something on her PDA.

The header says that it's about a planet of Brent and Crude Oil. The rest of the content is blurred because Captain is reading the rest of it. I cleared my throat loudly. Captain noticed me and caught a glimpse of what I was interested in. She said, "You know how it usually goes. The army goes in and then industrialized it for the conglomerates. Universal Capitalism, what a joy isn't it?"

"Yes."

I rather not discuss politics. Thank God Ganymede is a place where there is only one government and the 'nations' are managed by a Mayor. The Governor then manages the continent so they can report the happenings to the President who handles the outer planet affairs. Ganymede is freer than the Land of The Free, which is ironic since they have a planet somewhere in Andromeda that's basically America in drugs.

"So you took a bounty?" she asks.

"I did," I held up the bounty. "I can probably kill him if I use the Carnifex. But that would mean that we would have buy fuel, so I am just going to murder him the old fashion way."

Most assassination is done with railgun or anti-material sniper rifles these days. But the best way to kill someone is by using an interceptor ship like the Carnifex. I won't do that, it takes a lot of money just by fuel and repair costs.

"Hmm, will you return alive?" said Captain.

"I will," I said. "Your lack of confidence against me is depressing, Captain."

"I don't want you to die."

"Oh."

"What? I may not look like it but I am grateful for your presence. It's hard living without anyone to rely on. So don't die suddenly, okay?"

When Captain says things like that makes me irrationally decide not to hate her 'stiff upper lip' act. I get it that it is her way of coping but still it irks me. So when she says things like this, it makes me forget that she's someone who could kill a fleet of children without batting an eye.

This century has been hard on the human race. The appearance of an alien race and the degradation of the human spirit have turned us into meaningless sacks of meat. The tragic part is that it has been this way ever since the modern age begun. There is no hope and there is no way out of this pit.

That place was salvation for anyone else. Begin-01 was a place where some followed their heart to die in the heat of battle. But in the end, they died somewhere or eaten, digested by the aliens. Among the silence of those who died, can you truly say that their names will forever echo throughout eternity?

I've friends that died without knowing what happened. I still remember my time at that battleship, meeting faces from different planets and even falling in love with someone whose face I didn't know. I don't know what happened to her. All I know is that I loved that person and when chaos broke free. We got separated by the chaos of aliens shooting up the battleship and dropping down on the strike pods.

To survive I have to blend with the dead for the month. It was at that moment that I knew how many of us are in the stars. To survive that ordeal, I had to steal the rations of the dead and ate them. I was like a rat foraging for food. There were many like me who survived that ordeal. Most of those who survived were thrown back in those worlds to die against the aliens.

I cannot fault the people that send us to those hells. They brought with them their air support and artillery. But the enemy was far superior in numbers and each month that passes mean they grow by size. It was not well for us to be in that situation. Though I must say that when I was in that place. I felt alive. I could be working on a job somewhere that pays enough and I could live safely till I die.

But I cannot. Captain and I could have stayed as civilians. But instead, we became vigilantes and bounty hunters who work for big corporations and act as gunmen for those who can pay big. We left that field of blood in hopes of getting out of that nightmare. Yet here we are in this paradise of bounty hunters and Assassins, trying to get rich by going through danger again. Are we mad? Are we insane? Why are willing to go to hell even though we know that it will put our lives in danger?

Simple, we are good at it that it's hard to get away from it. No matter how much we try to blend in this universe where humanity has reached stars. In the end, we always go and try to find meaning. We want to find some purpose that would allow us to live on in this universe.

And the meaning that we have is through fighting. By killing and endangering ourselves that we find some sort of meaning and purpose in this uncaring universe. We are addicted to the smell of danger and the rush of action. I admit that I have thoughts of living the normal life. But arriving here in Ganymede, and seeing all the congested streets and walking corpses made me think that I rather live as a bounty hunter. There was no way that I could live like that. They looked alive but in the end, they are just walking corpses who cannot even feel their heart beating.