Book One - Chapter Two: ii
Thirty minutes later, Cillian was playing another game of Twenty-Five. This time, however, he was playing in a small storage room. He had originally tried to set himself up in the mess hall to play, however, Aislinn had shooed him right back out the door. She had explained in no uncertain terms, with hands on hips and brow furrowed, that the other crew members were eating their breakfasts at the main table and were not to be disturbed.
There were currently ten human crew members aboard the ship, although the ship’s full complement was normally eleven crew members. They were down one crew member due to the recent retirement of one of the crew members. Most of the present crew members, except for Fiadh and Aislinn who did not drink, were all quite hung over and were in no mood for the inevitable raucous bantering that would accompany a card game. Aislinn had known that the peaceful atmosphere would have been irreparably disrupted had the game been permitted to proceed in the mess hall. She had therefore preemptively barred Cillian from setting up in the mess hall, much to his chagrin.
Nevertheless, Cillian had managed to steal away three of the crew members prior to being ejected. Two of the crew members, Toal and Fiadh, had not required much convincing, however, the fourth crew member, a fellow by the name of Eoin O’Tagh, had not been a willing participant. Eoin had tried to explain that he was not in any way interested in playing the game — the phrase “I would rather be torn apart by Atoph than waste my time playing a game designed for simpletons and drunkards” was proclaimed loudly and repeatedly during the altercation — but Cillian would have none of it and had simply pulled a distraught Eoin from his seat, dragged him by his coat out the door, down the corridor and into the storage room.
The four of them now sat within the cramped space of the room. A fluorescent light set in the ceiling flickered fitfully for a few seconds, and four sets of eyes swivelled up to stare at the single fluorescent bulb.
Cillian reflected to himself that it looked like the final death dance of a sputtering candle flame. Pleased with the poeticism of the thought, he decided to share it with the others in the room.
“I have just reflected that it looks like the final death dance of a sputtering candle flame,” he said whilst bringing his hands up before him to mimic a flame’s motion. This was, of course, for added dramatic effect. Pleased with his delivery, he felt compelled to continue his poetic narration. “Refusing to relinquish its life even in the face of its own imminent demise, the flame raged against the coming darkness. Loathe to go into the night quietly, our beloved, brave fluorescent light fought valiantly and through sheer willpower alone was able to prevail.”
By this time, Cillian had stepped up on to the table, his arms outstretched towards the flickering tube, and he yelled shrilly, “By the power bestowed upon me by the Gods of old, I demand that the light be preserved!”
All at once, the beleaguered light released a hissing death cry of spent gas, and plunged the room into darkness. For the other three seated crew members, starkly bright afterimages of their eccentric Captain in his dramatically heroic pose of absurdity were etched like electric-neon drawings upon their retinas. For a few moments, they did not know if the room was dark or light. Slowly the images disappeared and an impenetrable darkness consumed their sight. They were, after all, crammed into a small storage room, which had, until very recently, only one functioning light.
“Damnable fickle light Gods have snatched one of our allies from us,” mumbled Cillian. Fumbling his way in the darkness, Cillian clambered off the table and resumed his seat at the tiny table.
“Actually, the Gods have nothing to do with it,” said Eoin. Eoin was the individual that Cillian had earlier dragged away from the mess hall to fill out the minimum complement of four players. He was a male human in his early fifties, of medium build, nondescript features, very pale skin, slate-grey eyes and thin shoulder-length greying black hair. He was wearing a white-collared shirt, which was buttoned all the way up to his throat, perfectly pressed grey pants with no sign of any creases and a long grey wool coat. A purple silk scarf was tucked into his shirt pocket, and this appeared to be his only concession to anything remotely resembling fashion.
Eoin was the Science Officer on board Ádh. He also happened to have Asperger’s syndrome, and it was for this reason that he frequently struggled with Cillian’s eccentricities, especially in delineating when Cillian was joking and when he was serious. As the Science Officer aboard the ship, Eoin was responsible for manning the Scanner Array, as well as serving as the ship’s computer technician, hacker, cybersecurity expert and software engineer. He was extremely competent at all of these roles due to the combination of his powerful faculties of deductive reasoning, naturally high IQ, and his autism. But it also meant that he struggled with the nuances of light-hearted conversation and humour.
“I am not even convinced the Gods exist at all,” continued Eoin.
Upon hearing this blasphemous statement, Cillian’s eyes bulged and his face began to redden as if he were about to have a conniption. Anticipating an imminent heated argument over religion, many of which had previously occurred between the two, Fiadh quickly interrupted.
“So, then, ugh, please enlighten us then as to what caused the disappearance of the light,” she said brightly, doing her best to feign genuine interest in the topic.
“The most probable cause would be due to the inevitable deterioration process of the phosphor coating inside the bulb, which ultimately led to a catastrophic failure within the appliance. This would have resulted in it being unable to perform its intended function; producing light. You must understand that over time, the phosphor coating gradually breaks down due to the repeated interaction with the electrified ionized gas within —“
“Okay, okay, mister smarty pants. No one actually cares,” said Cillian, rolling his eyes as he pulled a hip flask from a voluminous sleeve of his red sleeping gown. He proceeded to take a quick swig. “So we agree that the Celtic Gods of bygone times messed around with the phosphor gas —“
“Phosphor coating!” interjected Eoin.
“— and that led to the light’s early demise.”
“Another untrue statement,” said Ádh, her tinny voice coming through a small speaker in the wall.
“My gods. What is with this day? Is it official Logician personality type day or something?”
“No. There is no official Logician personality type day,” said Eoin and Ádh in perfect unison.
“Well,” said Fiadh. “I guess that is the end of that game.”
Up to this point they had all been sitting and conversing in darkness, but now Fiadh turned on her torch, and stark white light blossomed in the room. The torch was positioned just beneath her face, light shining upwards. The blood red fang tattoos beneath each of her eyes were illuminated in a flash of brilliant radiance. Fiadh had many tattoos scattered across her body and was actually something of an amateur tattoo artist herself. Mostly self-taught. The tattoos beneath her eyes were inspired by the main character in the ancient anime called Mononoke. She loved anime. In fact, she loved many things from the old world, including manga, comics, dungeons and dragons, old school table top games, card games and some old video games. Sometimes, she was able to convince Cillian or Toal to play a game other than Twenty-Five, but for the most part they tended to overrule her. And, unfortunately, the other crew members did not share the same passion that she, Cillian, or Toal did for games.
“Let us call it a draw, shall we?” said Cillian with a wide smile as he stood up and extended his right hand towards Toal.