Morning
Vunak is Transported to Planet Antares to Train Gladiators Snatched from Earth’s Violent History.
The Universe reached out and grabbed him, not his body, but the quivering inhabitant trapped within its crumbling temple, its fleshy walls rent, the drapery of workaday care burned to ash in an instant.
Not sensation.
Yawning, dawning, Beginning.
Not feeling, but soul revealing.
Paul—no, Paul was dead, but VU, VU-NAK, Guru of the Vunakers, his ego restored from the shattered stardust of Infinity, returned to being. It was no joyful return to a familiar place, but a wary rebirth into an intense pathos space.
He came to life looking up at two titanic suns, massive compared to the sun he was accustomed to seeing, just risen in tandem, dominating an entire half of the azure sky. He was holding hands with someone.
Bringing his gaze down from the mesmerizing suns, beneath the vast arch of the stadium walls, dizzy with an inability to focus on the teaming and weird occupants of the stands, VU’s sense of balance and of self, threatened to dissolve in an eddy of doubt. But the baleful glare of the twin Suns and the impatient rustle and murmur of the alien audience animated him, he looked down at the hand he held, naked, in the nude.
‘What?’
Paul—he could be Paul for a horrified moment here—was standing in the geriatric raw, naked except for an unfortunate erection, holding hands with a 33 year old Bruce Lee, also naked. Paul could not help but notice that he was still old and Bruce remained a paragon of sleek youth. They stood between two lines of men, mostly big, grim, scared men, of various races.
Bruce grinned, “The erection is a normal response the first few times one transmogrifies from a harvest world to Antares, the Seed World. Welcome home, VU, to the ultimate birthplace of us all.”
With that, VU snarled, “You said I’d be young again!”
“Not exactly,” retorted Bruce. “You do have a chance to be young again, if your team defeats ours.”
“Wait,” VU answered, pulling his hand free, “You said we would train gladiators together. I assumed…”
Bruce wagged his finger, “Never assume, VU. Gladiators you will train,” and the graceful stagemanship of the movie star indicated with one sweep of the right hand a line of mostly older men, men of cruel to rough aspect, standing behind a blue line chalked in the sand.
Standing out the most, closest to Paul’s left hand where the line began, were two white bearded hillbillies, a runt like himself with shaven head, and a bigger version.
Bruce’s voice narrated his inner monologue for him, “Two self-made, and little known, and little missed coaches to assist you. The little one has quite a knowledge of history and was tasked with his large, thug fellow there with selecting your team.”
The two men nodded to him, the little, in a weak mumble, “Hey, man,” and the big one, in a British accent, “Mornin’ mate.”
The men in line with them were all impressively frightening, but most seemed old, like Paul. They were all dressed in blue kilts and sleeveless shirts.
He turned to see Bruce stepping back with a sparkling grin, to stand next to some Chinese Sifu of obvious distinction, and a rough looking man he recognized as a young Carl Cestari. Bruce, was then revealed as not even being the lead instructor of the Red Team, for the men, in that line, all in their vigor and prime, not a gray hair on chin or head, stood behind a crimson chalk in the sand, wearing red kilts and sleeveless red tunics.
“Sifu,” Bruce bowed to the other Chinese, “I have retrieved your opponent, Paul VU-NAK.”
Now standing behind the red line, VU still the only man in the middle, Bruce smiled smugly as he stepped into red kilt and shirt, igniting a curse on VU’s lips, “What the fuck!”
A silence held here, on the sands, and in the center of the unthinkably vast stadium. The floor of the stadium was a mere fifty paces across, shaped in an elipse, and 30 paces wide. Yet the stands on either end were a quarter mile apart, sweeping well over 500 feet into the gleaming azure sky, the occupants still glinting and indistinct.
Bruce returned a salute to VU who had given none and indicated his master, who spoke in Chinese while looking at Paul, Bruce interpreting, “Wong Fei Hung, 1847 to 1925, chief medical officer and martial arts instructor to Black Flag Army 1860s, chosen by the Lords of Scorpio, Gods of Antares, in the prime and vigor of my earthly form, to face you, Honorable VU, in your decline, as a hymnal of Fate. Most sorry we do not both meet in our vigor. But, if you prevail, you will be nourished with my very blood and returned to youth, otherwise, to this dust hungrily clutching our feet you return.”
“Why?” hissed VU.
Bruce smiled, “You could have taken the red straw, VU, but you took the one your enemy offered.”
Paul was pissed—Paul again—and turned to the bearded gutter gnome, “Why didn’t you pick Chuck Norris to kick his ass!”
The little man winced and the big one opined, “Well, Coach, we like old Chuck. No sense in letting Bruce have the movie win and then beat Chuck for real with fifty years between them.”
“Fuck you!” snarled VU to the big oaf of some fifty years, “and you too, whoever the fuck you are!” to the gnome, who responded to the big fellow, seeming pleased, “Yep, we picked the right old man. Eddie Futch would still be asking to see the athletic commission. Emmanuel Steward would be wrangling a transfer to the Reds.”
VU stalked angrily over to stand next to the only man that seemed less fit then he, the white trash ‘talent scout’ of this nightmare, and stood behind the blue line.
As his feet settled in the sand and he thankfully lost his woody, the gutter gnome handed him a blue kilt and shirt and said, “Welcome aboard the good Ship Styx, Sir,” and turned away to preserve VU’s fictional modesty.
VU liked the feel of the kilt that had an under jock groin protector, the shirt itself of some kind of silk, “What is this stuff made of?”
The little man whispered, “The jock is made of the skins of virgins, our uniforms of the blue hair of the Mob Hussies. The Reds’ jocks are of the skins of our predecessors, uniforms of the hair of the red headed slut princesses of Antares.”
It felt good, then he realized, “You mean?”
The big man cut in, “Yes, VU, if they win, they wear jocks made of our flayed hides in next year’s set-to.”
These words filled him with resolve so that he stood at attention and saluted the enemy Sifu, “Sifu!”
And the crowd roared, a mob of millions it must have been, voices big and small, horns of brass glinting in the sun, the thunder of thousands of drums roiling, the form of the persons there coming into focus, as if by some trick of optics he had been denied to see the audience for what they were until he had placed his honor on the line.
“Wow, this is cool,” he yelled, only the man next to him able to hear. The second man over, the little one having a weak voice, answered what he must have intuited, “We are the crowd favorites—the Slave Races of Antares love us! The Reds fight for the Lords of this Galaxy, The Scorpion Kings; the very gods of this buggered world!”
He asked the little guy, yelling in his ear as the roar eased, “How did I get transported?”
“You didn’t. You are a copy, like me. My original was found dead of exposure in an unheated garage in Portland.”
The crowd quieted as VU understood and narrated the plight of his former self, “And I was found dead of a heart attack with a straw in my nose and a line on the sink?”
The creep shrugged and consoled, “That was the mold—you are the cast image forged in the fires of Eternity.”
VU went with the best brand he could hold and raised his right hand to the mob, his left pointing to HIS line of heroes, as the millions roared like some vast caged beast!
