An Earthian's Aspirations
Jan. 23rd, 2011 07:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
manicdakTitle: An Earthian's Aspirations
Prompt: Time Travel
Rating: PG
Series: Inter-Galactic Action Squad, Go!
Content Summary/Notes/Warnings: Flashback to Ehren deciding to join the Action Squad.
Ehrenfried Behrendt stood beside his his friend, Hilda as they waited for the public transport stop on the outskirts of the wooden town where they resided. Ehren kicked nervously at the pebbles and dirt that littered the desert floor at his feet. He didn’t particularly want to be there at the moment, sneaking out of town to go to the city.
It wasn’t that his parents had any problems with the city as some did. It was more like they had a problem with their 14 year old boy striking out on his own without their permission on a school night.
“Hilda,” he murmured at the ground, barely managing to pique her attention.
“We should just go home,” he said. “We have homework and...”
She interrupted him with a shove and a laugh.
“Come on, Ehre! Where’s your sense of adventure!,” she said.
“I left it at home,” he muttered. “Let’s go back and get it.”
She pouted at him, but he had no time for further protest as the transport arrived. Hilda grabbed him by the arm and dragged him into the vehicle. They were on their way to Cedar City whether Ehren wanted to go or not.
****
Past the wooden towns, and past the modular suburb, there was the city. Ehren tried his best to steer Hilda towards the library. He tried to visit every time he had a chance. It was his favorite place on Earth. Hilda wasn’t having any of that, though.
“You don’t read books with friends.” She had told him, and then promptly dragged him off to the city centre so they could browse the shops there and covet trinkets that they could only hope to one day possess.
“You know,” Ehren said after hours had passed and they found themselves wandering along a stone paved street with a cone of frozen cream from the agrolab storefront in their hands. It didn’t taste bad for engineered cream, but Ehren couldn’t help but wonder what it would taste like from a real cow.
He paused their forward moment for a moment to look up at the sky. The sun was low, late in the afternoon.
“What?” Hilda tapped her foot impatiently. It had been her idea to sneak out for the day, but she still didn’t like the idea of being late for curfew. Her parents would kill her.
“One day I’m going to see the Universe,” he said as he pointed upward.
“That’s nice.” She paused, seemingly unimpressed with his declaration. “How are you going to do that?”
“Mom and Dad are saving up,” he said. “I’ll go to CCU and study...something that will involve a lot of travel or something. I will see the Amarantian roses one day, Hilda. I’ll bring one back for you.”
She beamed at him then, but he didn’t notice, so wrapped up was he in his plans for the future. They both continued along, Ehren talking about otherworldly humanoids, and Hilda trying her best to repress any feelings she had for him. He was the boy next door after all, and she wasn’t going to fall into that trope.
Hilda looked around their surroundings. She was unsure of where they had found themselves, and it was making her uneasy. Not every street in Cedar City was a safe one.
Ehren was oblivious as she stopped walking beside him and instead stood and stared at the stranger she had spotted from yards away. He forged ahead despite her timid protest and soon found himself in the shadow of a tall man in military dress who was leaning against a gateway pillar.
Ehren’s heart lurched into his throat and he clutched his hands together at the sight of the man as a haze of teenage lust washed over him.
The man eventually noticed Ehren swooning over him as Hilda tentatively approached them.
“C’mon, Ehre,” she whispered at him. Once she’d reached her destination she tugged gently at his sleeve, but Ehren wasn’t moving.
“Stop staring at the guy...weirdo.” She poked him in the arm and finally managed to get his attention.
“Uh, sorry, was I?” He glanced at Hilda then up at the stranger, who was looking amused. Amused and attractive. Ehren grinned up at him.
Hilda sighed in exasperation. If his behavior was any indication, she was starting to get the idea that she just wouldn’t be the boy next door’s type anyway.
“Sorry about my friend,” she said. She squinted at the name tag the man wore. “Mr. Scott. I think he’s in love with you.”
Ehren’s beatific smile evaporated as his head swung around to glare at her.
“HILDA!”, he nearly shrieked out her name.
“Petty Officer Scott,” he correcter her then held out a hand for her to shake. She grabbed it and enthusiastically pumped his arm up and down.
“I’m Hilda, and this weirdo is Ehrenfried,” she said. “He likes books, and seeing the universe and stuff.”
“Is that so?” Scott smiled down at him. “So, you here to join up with Action Squad? I’m afraid you’re a little too young for our cut-off age.”
Ehren shook his head, unable to form words lest he become tongue tied and embarrass himself. He didn’t need to when he had Hilda to do it for him.
“Oooo!” Hilda marveled at Sargent Scott and glanced around him at the innocuous building behind the gates. She reached over and pushed Ehren in excitement harder than she intended. He stumbled to the side and cried out her name instead.
“This is the new I-GAS building!” She exclaimed. She stood at attention and gave the PO a salute while repeating the tag line that she’d heard on holovision.
“Inter-Galactic Action Squad: The first line of defense against galaxies full of the worst criminals!”
Scott chuckled at her enthusiasm, gave her a short salute in return.
“At Ease, Soldier,” he said.
She jumped up and down and clapped her hands.
“This is so exciting, Ehre.” She turned to look at her companion and found him sulking not far away.
She made a disapproving clucking noise in the back of her throat, stepped to Ehren and placed an arm around him, herding him back towards the friendly soldier, and that was where her arm remained.
“Don’t mind him. He’s shy,” she said.
“I am not shy,” Ehren said. He tried to scoot away, but Hilda held fast.
He glanced down at his shoes then up at Scott, who was still smiling at him. He knew that Hilda obviously couldn’t tell as she stood there and encouraged the man to tell her stories of the galaxies, that Petty Officer Scott was an otherworlder.
Ehren observed him as he talked to Hilda. He was tall, with an unearthly pallor, blue eyes and ginger hair, if what was peeking out from beneath his hat was any indication. He just wasn’t like any Earthian that Ehren had ever seen. Outward appearance aside, he had an accent that Ehren couldn’t place in the Milky Way. His Earthian was good, but wasn’t quite up to native standards.
“Where are you from!” Ehren blurted out an interruption then clapped his hands tightly over his mouth as if he were surprised by his own outburst.
“Ahh, you noticed.” Scott looked bemused as he rubbed the back of his head and chuckled. “Is it the accent? I’m going to be stationed here for a while, best learn the native tongue, right?”
Ehren nodded sheepishly and was prepared to forget all about his question until Hilda reiterated it in a more loud and demandingly impatient manner.
“Golden Utopia, young lady,” he said.
“Where’s that?” She said.
Before Scott could reply, Ehren cut in with the information.
“It’s in the Zahran Galaxy. Where they shit diamonds and gold, I heard.”
Petty Officer Scott couldn’t hold back the loud guffaw that escaped him at Ehren’s declaration. Ehren only glared at him with his arms crossed.
“What?” He said.
“Nothing.” Scott chuckled. “It’s just...it would be rather painful to shit diamonds I would think.”
Ehren could feel himself redden with embarrassment. He could think of no other response than to huff, and pout at them.
“Well, I ought to get back to it,” Scott said after a moment. “It was nice meeting you kids. If you’re interested in a couple of years...”
He gestured to the building behind him. “Come and see me, alright?”
“Definitely!” Hilda replied enthusiastically.
Ehren nodded and glanced down at his feet. When he looked up he was faced with the Scott’s retreating back.
“Wait!” Ehren shouted at him, and he turned around, arching a curious eyebrow.
“Can you...um...” He took a deep breath and stood up straight, facing Scott.
“Can you give us directions to the transport depot? We’re kind of lost and it’s getting late.”
****
Ehren didn’t find his way back to that particular Cedar City street for almost nine years. He thought back on the week he’d had since he made the final decision to join the Inter-Galactic Action Squad. It certainly counted as one of the worst weeks of his life, but he couldn’t see any other way off that solitary desert rock known as Earth.
He was two years out of school; a master in linguistics with nobody but other Earthians to talk to. Sure, he’d met the occasional Naturian or Amarantian; the only other life bearing planets in the entire Milky Way Galaxy, but they were hardly enough to satisfy his curiosity about the Universe at large. On top of that there were no jobs to be had, at least not for Ehren. He’d been beaten out by someone with more experience for the only government translation job that was likely to open up in Cedar City in the foreseeable future. He was stuck in retail, selling shoes to the city folks and the people who lived in the polished, modular suburbs.
That wasn’t what he had wanted at all. He had but one regret in his decision to go into intergalactic law enforcement. That was Jan. Ehren had tried his best for a compromise, but there was no talking to Jan when it came to a military that he thought was useless, unnecessary, and barbaric. It had never been Ehren’s intent to stay in the Action Squad forever. It was merely a stepping stone. Jan was from the city though, and would never understand Ehren’s need to get away from Earth through any means necessary.
Ehren had been handed an ultimatum by his lover only two days prior and had been unceremoniously dumped when he’d tried to argue his point of view once again instead of choosing Jan outright. He honestly hadn’t thought Jan would have thrown out everything they’d had over some moral disagreement about the need for an intergalactic military. He had though, and Ehren found himself back in the wooden town in the desert outskirts of Cedar City with his parents, who were far more supportive of his decision. It was no consolation after losing the man he had loved for three years though.
If Jan thought he was going to go crawling back, begging forgiveness, he was sorely mistaken, Ehren thought to himself as he stood nervously outside the gates of the I-GAS recruitment center. He took a deep breath to settle the butterflies in his stomach, straightened his suit tie and marched past the gates into the front office of the building.
He asked for Petty Officer Scott at the desk of the first recruiter he came across. She was an older woman with snowy white hair, blue eyes, and she spoke in an intergalactic standard language instead of Earthian.
“Please have a seat!” She gestured to the chair in front of the desk. Ehren did as he was told.
“Roc Scott! Now there’s a name I haven’t heard that years. I’m afraid his moved on from this place.”
“He’s dead?” Ehren blurted out his first worried thought, easily slipping into the Intergalactic standard with which she had spoken. He was well familiar with all three of them.
She blinked in shock then burst out laughing.
“Oh, dear, no,” she said through her giggles. “He was transferred out to Andromeda a few years ago, and who knows from there.”
“Oh.” Ehren looked down at his hands in his lap feeling embarrassed.
“Well,” he said. “He told me to come and see him if I was interested in joining the Action Squad.”
“Ah.” She nodded with a smile and reached into her desk. A folder materialized in front of her which she handed over to Ehren.
“You’ll need to fill those out before your next appointment,” she said. “We can go ahead and set you up with that right now and get a reading on your infoplant.”
It took only five minutes for her to retrieve the information she was after and set him up for a more in depth interview later in the week.
“That’s it?” He asked. “I’m in?”
“Pending the physical, and pshyce evaluation.” She nodded.
“That was...fast.” He frowned.
“Second thoughts already?” She mused. Her voice was thoughtfully kind and not at all judgmental. For that Ehren was grateful.
“Oh, no,” he said. “It’s all part of my five year plan. I’ve just never finished a plan before. Never really started one either. This is all really new, and really exciting. I’ve never even been extragalactic before.”
“Well, it’s not all glitz and glamour,” she said.
“I know,” Ehren replied. “It’s not only about that. I want to see the Universe. I want to do good while I’m out there even if it’s only in some small way. Ultimately though, a tour or two with the Action Squad is what I need on my CV if I want the Time Academy to even notice me.”
“Oh?” She arched and eyebrow at him and placed her chin in her hands.
“Yep.” Ehren nodded. “Former Action Squad recruits have an almost ninety percent acceptance rate when applying to the Agency.”
“So, you’re aiming to be one of those cocky time jocks huh?” She smiled at him.
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied with an affirmative nod.
“Good luck to you then, Son,” she said; the smile never leaving her lips.
“Thank you,” he replied as he offered his hand for a departing shake. “I’m going to need it.”
Ehren left the recruitment center that afternoon with a renewed sense of purpose in the world. He knew he had made the right choice then as he walked along the stones of the Cedar City street. It was as if the Universe was his for the taking.
And he couldn’t wait to get started.
Prompt: Time Travel
Rating: PG
Series: Inter-Galactic Action Squad, Go!
Content Summary/Notes/Warnings: Flashback to Ehren deciding to join the Action Squad.
Ehrenfried Behrendt stood beside his his friend, Hilda as they waited for the public transport stop on the outskirts of the wooden town where they resided. Ehren kicked nervously at the pebbles and dirt that littered the desert floor at his feet. He didn’t particularly want to be there at the moment, sneaking out of town to go to the city.
It wasn’t that his parents had any problems with the city as some did. It was more like they had a problem with their 14 year old boy striking out on his own without their permission on a school night.
“Hilda,” he murmured at the ground, barely managing to pique her attention.
“We should just go home,” he said. “We have homework and...”
She interrupted him with a shove and a laugh.
“Come on, Ehre! Where’s your sense of adventure!,” she said.
“I left it at home,” he muttered. “Let’s go back and get it.”
She pouted at him, but he had no time for further protest as the transport arrived. Hilda grabbed him by the arm and dragged him into the vehicle. They were on their way to Cedar City whether Ehren wanted to go or not.
****
Past the wooden towns, and past the modular suburb, there was the city. Ehren tried his best to steer Hilda towards the library. He tried to visit every time he had a chance. It was his favorite place on Earth. Hilda wasn’t having any of that, though.
“You don’t read books with friends.” She had told him, and then promptly dragged him off to the city centre so they could browse the shops there and covet trinkets that they could only hope to one day possess.
“You know,” Ehren said after hours had passed and they found themselves wandering along a stone paved street with a cone of frozen cream from the agrolab storefront in their hands. It didn’t taste bad for engineered cream, but Ehren couldn’t help but wonder what it would taste like from a real cow.
He paused their forward moment for a moment to look up at the sky. The sun was low, late in the afternoon.
“What?” Hilda tapped her foot impatiently. It had been her idea to sneak out for the day, but she still didn’t like the idea of being late for curfew. Her parents would kill her.
“One day I’m going to see the Universe,” he said as he pointed upward.
“That’s nice.” She paused, seemingly unimpressed with his declaration. “How are you going to do that?”
“Mom and Dad are saving up,” he said. “I’ll go to CCU and study...something that will involve a lot of travel or something. I will see the Amarantian roses one day, Hilda. I’ll bring one back for you.”
She beamed at him then, but he didn’t notice, so wrapped up was he in his plans for the future. They both continued along, Ehren talking about otherworldly humanoids, and Hilda trying her best to repress any feelings she had for him. He was the boy next door after all, and she wasn’t going to fall into that trope.
Hilda looked around their surroundings. She was unsure of where they had found themselves, and it was making her uneasy. Not every street in Cedar City was a safe one.
Ehren was oblivious as she stopped walking beside him and instead stood and stared at the stranger she had spotted from yards away. He forged ahead despite her timid protest and soon found himself in the shadow of a tall man in military dress who was leaning against a gateway pillar.
Ehren’s heart lurched into his throat and he clutched his hands together at the sight of the man as a haze of teenage lust washed over him.
The man eventually noticed Ehren swooning over him as Hilda tentatively approached them.
“C’mon, Ehre,” she whispered at him. Once she’d reached her destination she tugged gently at his sleeve, but Ehren wasn’t moving.
“Stop staring at the guy...weirdo.” She poked him in the arm and finally managed to get his attention.
“Uh, sorry, was I?” He glanced at Hilda then up at the stranger, who was looking amused. Amused and attractive. Ehren grinned up at him.
Hilda sighed in exasperation. If his behavior was any indication, she was starting to get the idea that she just wouldn’t be the boy next door’s type anyway.
“Sorry about my friend,” she said. She squinted at the name tag the man wore. “Mr. Scott. I think he’s in love with you.”
Ehren’s beatific smile evaporated as his head swung around to glare at her.
“HILDA!”, he nearly shrieked out her name.
“Petty Officer Scott,” he correcter her then held out a hand for her to shake. She grabbed it and enthusiastically pumped his arm up and down.
“I’m Hilda, and this weirdo is Ehrenfried,” she said. “He likes books, and seeing the universe and stuff.”
“Is that so?” Scott smiled down at him. “So, you here to join up with Action Squad? I’m afraid you’re a little too young for our cut-off age.”
Ehren shook his head, unable to form words lest he become tongue tied and embarrass himself. He didn’t need to when he had Hilda to do it for him.
“Oooo!” Hilda marveled at Sargent Scott and glanced around him at the innocuous building behind the gates. She reached over and pushed Ehren in excitement harder than she intended. He stumbled to the side and cried out her name instead.
“This is the new I-GAS building!” She exclaimed. She stood at attention and gave the PO a salute while repeating the tag line that she’d heard on holovision.
“Inter-Galactic Action Squad: The first line of defense against galaxies full of the worst criminals!”
Scott chuckled at her enthusiasm, gave her a short salute in return.
“At Ease, Soldier,” he said.
She jumped up and down and clapped her hands.
“This is so exciting, Ehre.” She turned to look at her companion and found him sulking not far away.
She made a disapproving clucking noise in the back of her throat, stepped to Ehren and placed an arm around him, herding him back towards the friendly soldier, and that was where her arm remained.
“Don’t mind him. He’s shy,” she said.
“I am not shy,” Ehren said. He tried to scoot away, but Hilda held fast.
He glanced down at his shoes then up at Scott, who was still smiling at him. He knew that Hilda obviously couldn’t tell as she stood there and encouraged the man to tell her stories of the galaxies, that Petty Officer Scott was an otherworlder.
Ehren observed him as he talked to Hilda. He was tall, with an unearthly pallor, blue eyes and ginger hair, if what was peeking out from beneath his hat was any indication. He just wasn’t like any Earthian that Ehren had ever seen. Outward appearance aside, he had an accent that Ehren couldn’t place in the Milky Way. His Earthian was good, but wasn’t quite up to native standards.
“Where are you from!” Ehren blurted out an interruption then clapped his hands tightly over his mouth as if he were surprised by his own outburst.
“Ahh, you noticed.” Scott looked bemused as he rubbed the back of his head and chuckled. “Is it the accent? I’m going to be stationed here for a while, best learn the native tongue, right?”
Ehren nodded sheepishly and was prepared to forget all about his question until Hilda reiterated it in a more loud and demandingly impatient manner.
“Golden Utopia, young lady,” he said.
“Where’s that?” She said.
Before Scott could reply, Ehren cut in with the information.
“It’s in the Zahran Galaxy. Where they shit diamonds and gold, I heard.”
Petty Officer Scott couldn’t hold back the loud guffaw that escaped him at Ehren’s declaration. Ehren only glared at him with his arms crossed.
“What?” He said.
“Nothing.” Scott chuckled. “It’s just...it would be rather painful to shit diamonds I would think.”
Ehren could feel himself redden with embarrassment. He could think of no other response than to huff, and pout at them.
“Well, I ought to get back to it,” Scott said after a moment. “It was nice meeting you kids. If you’re interested in a couple of years...”
He gestured to the building behind him. “Come and see me, alright?”
“Definitely!” Hilda replied enthusiastically.
Ehren nodded and glanced down at his feet. When he looked up he was faced with the Scott’s retreating back.
“Wait!” Ehren shouted at him, and he turned around, arching a curious eyebrow.
“Can you...um...” He took a deep breath and stood up straight, facing Scott.
“Can you give us directions to the transport depot? We’re kind of lost and it’s getting late.”
****
Ehren didn’t find his way back to that particular Cedar City street for almost nine years. He thought back on the week he’d had since he made the final decision to join the Inter-Galactic Action Squad. It certainly counted as one of the worst weeks of his life, but he couldn’t see any other way off that solitary desert rock known as Earth.
He was two years out of school; a master in linguistics with nobody but other Earthians to talk to. Sure, he’d met the occasional Naturian or Amarantian; the only other life bearing planets in the entire Milky Way Galaxy, but they were hardly enough to satisfy his curiosity about the Universe at large. On top of that there were no jobs to be had, at least not for Ehren. He’d been beaten out by someone with more experience for the only government translation job that was likely to open up in Cedar City in the foreseeable future. He was stuck in retail, selling shoes to the city folks and the people who lived in the polished, modular suburbs.
That wasn’t what he had wanted at all. He had but one regret in his decision to go into intergalactic law enforcement. That was Jan. Ehren had tried his best for a compromise, but there was no talking to Jan when it came to a military that he thought was useless, unnecessary, and barbaric. It had never been Ehren’s intent to stay in the Action Squad forever. It was merely a stepping stone. Jan was from the city though, and would never understand Ehren’s need to get away from Earth through any means necessary.
Ehren had been handed an ultimatum by his lover only two days prior and had been unceremoniously dumped when he’d tried to argue his point of view once again instead of choosing Jan outright. He honestly hadn’t thought Jan would have thrown out everything they’d had over some moral disagreement about the need for an intergalactic military. He had though, and Ehren found himself back in the wooden town in the desert outskirts of Cedar City with his parents, who were far more supportive of his decision. It was no consolation after losing the man he had loved for three years though.
If Jan thought he was going to go crawling back, begging forgiveness, he was sorely mistaken, Ehren thought to himself as he stood nervously outside the gates of the I-GAS recruitment center. He took a deep breath to settle the butterflies in his stomach, straightened his suit tie and marched past the gates into the front office of the building.
He asked for Petty Officer Scott at the desk of the first recruiter he came across. She was an older woman with snowy white hair, blue eyes, and she spoke in an intergalactic standard language instead of Earthian.
“Please have a seat!” She gestured to the chair in front of the desk. Ehren did as he was told.
“Roc Scott! Now there’s a name I haven’t heard that years. I’m afraid his moved on from this place.”
“He’s dead?” Ehren blurted out his first worried thought, easily slipping into the Intergalactic standard with which she had spoken. He was well familiar with all three of them.
She blinked in shock then burst out laughing.
“Oh, dear, no,” she said through her giggles. “He was transferred out to Andromeda a few years ago, and who knows from there.”
“Oh.” Ehren looked down at his hands in his lap feeling embarrassed.
“Well,” he said. “He told me to come and see him if I was interested in joining the Action Squad.”
“Ah.” She nodded with a smile and reached into her desk. A folder materialized in front of her which she handed over to Ehren.
“You’ll need to fill those out before your next appointment,” she said. “We can go ahead and set you up with that right now and get a reading on your infoplant.”
It took only five minutes for her to retrieve the information she was after and set him up for a more in depth interview later in the week.
“That’s it?” He asked. “I’m in?”
“Pending the physical, and pshyce evaluation.” She nodded.
“That was...fast.” He frowned.
“Second thoughts already?” She mused. Her voice was thoughtfully kind and not at all judgmental. For that Ehren was grateful.
“Oh, no,” he said. “It’s all part of my five year plan. I’ve just never finished a plan before. Never really started one either. This is all really new, and really exciting. I’ve never even been extragalactic before.”
“Well, it’s not all glitz and glamour,” she said.
“I know,” Ehren replied. “It’s not only about that. I want to see the Universe. I want to do good while I’m out there even if it’s only in some small way. Ultimately though, a tour or two with the Action Squad is what I need on my CV if I want the Time Academy to even notice me.”
“Oh?” She arched and eyebrow at him and placed her chin in her hands.
“Yep.” Ehren nodded. “Former Action Squad recruits have an almost ninety percent acceptance rate when applying to the Agency.”
“So, you’re aiming to be one of those cocky time jocks huh?” She smiled at him.
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied with an affirmative nod.
“Good luck to you then, Son,” she said; the smile never leaving her lips.
“Thank you,” he replied as he offered his hand for a departing shake. “I’m going to need it.”
Ehren left the recruitment center that afternoon with a renewed sense of purpose in the world. He knew he had made the right choice then as he walked along the stones of the Cedar City street. It was as if the Universe was his for the taking.
And he couldn’t wait to get started.
