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  Déjà Vu

  A Spaceman’s Story

  Guerin Zand

  Déjà Vu Copyright © 2018 by Guerin Zand. All Rights Reserved.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  Cover designed by Keith A. Johnston

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Guerin Zand

  Website: guerinzand.wordpress.com

  Facebook: www.facebook.com/guerin.zand.5

  Goodreads: www.goodreads.com/author/show/16948548.Guerin_Zand

  Contents

  Introduction

  My Official List of Complaints

  Chapter 1

  Mutiny on the Ryvius

  Chapter 2

  Hell

  Chapter 3

  Just Another Day on Hell

  Chapter 4

  Another Fine Mess

  Chapter 5

  Trixy

  Chapter 6

  Another Stupid Idea

  Chapter 7

  Back to Hell

  Chapter 8

  Desterio

  Chapter 9

  Adversaries and Allies

  Chapter 10

  Another Breakfast with Julie

  Chapter 11

  Hurry Up and Wait

  Chapter 12

  Stealing Desterio

  Chapter 13

  Family Matters

  Chapter 14

  Another Science Experiment

  Chapter 15

  A Visit to Milly’s Station

  Chapter 16

  Back to Earth

  Chapter 17

  The Cousins

  Epilogue

  The Ladies of Space Force

  Acknowledgments

  Author Notes

  Introduction

  My Official List of Complaints

  I guess writing down all of my complaints about this universe isn’t really going to help matters much, but I’m pretty much at a loss for new pithy introductions to my books. I guess you could count that as my first complaint. It’s not like I complain a lot, I mean, if you were to compare the amount of time I spend complaining against the number of things worth complaining about, I actually let a lot of shit slide. So, for this cathartic little exercise in page stuffing, I’ll try to limit the number of complaints to five or less, not counting the first one in this paragraph. It was more of a gripe than a complaint anyways. In case I may be repeating a few things from my earlier books, remember, the title of this book is Déjà Vu, which sort of implies a bit of repetition.

  Let’s start with Julie. I know she’s an easy target. Maybe I should include the Bree in this complaint. I do like a few Bree, but most of them are like Julie, so I’ll just stick to her and you can extrapolate how I feel about the Bree in general. If it hadn’t been for her though, I’d already be dead and thus complaint free, at least in this reality. She reminds me of the nuns in Sunday school, always looking for some reason to wrap your knuckles with their hardwood rulers, the ones they always had in their hands as they walked the rows of desks.

  I had a great-aunt who was once a nun. She left the church to marry a divorced man. Back then, that meant ex-communication from the Catholic church. Oh, how the mighty had fallen. As most women realize a few years after getting married, marriage isn’t really all that it's cracked up to be. See, the man she married wasn’t exactly the righteous sort of man you’d expect a nun to fall for. This uncle thought taking his 13-year-old nephew to a strip club on the beach was a totally acceptable alternative to taking him to Disney World when he visited them in Florida. Yea, he was way cool. Having been disowned by God, and the rest of His family for marrying this guy, and realizing what sort of guy he really was, made her really regret that decision I think. This also made her a lot meaner than all the non-ex-nuns, especially where little boys were concerned. When my aunt died, my mother and her sisters believed that this uncle had, how shall we say, helped her on her way? Then he ran off with his gay lover. Don’t you just love these types of heart-wrenching family stories?

  Back to Julie. Whenever I’m around Julie, I can’t help but think of that aunt. Ok, Julie is one hot little piece to look at, my aunt wasn’t, but that just makes thinking about my aunt when Julie’s around even that much sicker. Her condescending and arrogant tone just brings back memories of that aunt saying, “Children should be seen, and not heard!” I don’t think it fair to say that I don’t give Julie a fair break. Not after Gitmo, or how about leaving out that little detail on how shit worked which led to a knife in my kidney? I think my not constantly thinking about ways to kill her is fair enough. I’m at least trying. That doesn’t matter though. I could probably link all the pain, sorrow, tragedy, and just plain all-around bad shit in my life back to Julie, even most of the shit that happened before we met. Of course, Julie would always deny that she was responsible for any of it. Whenever I’d confront her, she’d pull the same shit the monks would pull on “grasshopper” in the TV series Kung Fu. You know, when one of the monks would bitch-slap him silly with a bamboo pole, then explain that it wasn’t really him or the pole that were causing him this pain. It was his choices that caused him the pain. Basically a load of fortune cookie bullshit! So, yea. Julie is my number one thing to complain about in the universe. I’m sure it wouldn’t take that much effort to tie all my other complaints to her if I tried.

  One of my more recent complaints has been the whole two wife situation. Ok, I know a lot of guys think that’s not really something to complain about, but you need to stop thinking about sex to see the truth. Besides, ask any married man how much sex matters compared to all the other bullshit that comes with marriage. Now I love Scirla and Prima, that’s not an issue, it’s just not that simple. Imagine actually getting your wife to agree with something you said, to actually admit you’re right, and then have the second wife jump in and ruin that. Go ahead, try and get two wives to say you’re right at the same time, I dare you. Just imagine every issue a man might have with his wife, then double it. Now, they both may say they’re fine with me having two wives, and they may actually be. That doesn’t mean they’re going to let ME be fine with it. They are always competing with each other, and yes, they deny it. I have a feeling they enjoy coming up with these little events to compete over, and there most probably is some sort of wagering going on to see who can get me to do whatever it is. Hell, there was probably a ship-wide gambling network revolving around these two women’s competitions. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out there is actually a team Prima and a team Scirla division among the rest of the crew.

  But what really pisses me off about the polygamous life I’m leading is that I feel guilty about it. I’m sure that makes my wives happy. It’s hard to know what to say or how to act when I’m around either of them, whether it’s just two of us, or the whole gang of three. Imagine all the lines you ever came up with are all of a sudden no good, even worse. How do you tell one of your wives when you're alone with her just how much she means to you? If you say she’s the only one, well, right off she’s not going to buy that, but even worse, she’s going to mention it to the other wife. Then you have to explain yourself, and if you try to explain you only said that to make the other wife feel better, then guess what? That’s right. She’s going to tell the other wife you said that. As I've explained before, it’s hard enough not saying the wrong thing when only one woman is involved.
It’s impossible when you have two wives. You’re pretty much left with just nodding and trying not to say anything. It’s like walking through a densely packed minefield with no area that is free of mines. Sooner or later you’re going to step into it, and that’s that. If you can ignore all of that though, I guess having two wives isn’t really all that bad.

  Next, we have daughters. Sugar and spice, and everything nice? My ass! Think about it for a second. Yea, they’re cute and fun, especially when they’re still little, before puberty and the teen years, but they are still women. They’re guaranteed by birth your unconditional love and forgiveness, and they know that. In other words, they’re a special class of women who can get away with anything, I mean anything, and you have no option other than to accept it, period! You can divorce your wives, or dump your girlfriends, but your daughters you’re stuck with. The fact that they know this makes them infinitely more dangerous than all other women in the universe, that includes Julie. The fact that having daughters is so unfair to men is just one more piece of evidence for God actually being a woman.

  Maria is the worst of my two daughters. I’m still not convinced that Julie didn’t mess with my seed in order to inject a little Bree into my progeny. If I hadn’t actually been at her birth, I’d be sure she was a Bree plant. She is like Julie’s mini-me. I try to never tell Maria much more than what I want Julie to know, because I’m sure she tells Julie everything. She has always enjoyed seeing me in trouble. Just like Julie, she finds my suffering entertaining. That’s not to say that Gamma doesn’t find my suffering entertaining as well. She just doesn’t find it necessary to be the cause of that suffering. Since they’re both women, they naturally have that instinctual rivalry with all other women including each other. While Maria almost never sides with me, Gamma usually does just to get back at Maria for whatever the issue of the day might be. It’s a bit of a toss-up between two wives and two daughters as to which is actually worse. Just trust me when I say a knife in the kidney is no big deal in comparison. At least you get a recovery period after being mortally wounded.

  This leads me to my next complaint. Why is it that everyone wants me dead, or captured so they can brutalize me in whatever method strikes their fancy? What makes this worse is even the people I consider my friends, seem to find this entertaining. Take the game Rebellion for instance. What started out as a fun little game a couple of children came up with turned into a galactic, if not universal blockbuster that mainly revolves around my antics. Now I love Nancy to death, but that girl loves planting ideas in my head that she thinks will up the ratings for the game. While some say she’s a very talented statistician who is able to predict events, I think that she’s probably more skilled than even Julie at orchestrating those events. I often get the feeling my life is more like The Truman Show. For those not up on classic twentieth-century art, that was a show where the main character, Truman, was raised living in a TV show where everyone else were just actors in that TV show. There are a lot of times that I believe that God has created this universe for Her own entertainment, and just like Truman, has put me into this little show where everyone else is just an extra. Still, to this date, I have found no evidence that would disprove this theory.

  Finally, my last complaint is about this thing we call happiness. Why is it that happiness seems to be a random event? I have found making myself unhappy is no real challenge. I can do that blindfolded and with both hands tied behind my back. In fact, there have been a few times that I was very unhappy when bound in that fashion and it took no effort on my part. But try making yourself happy. It’s impossible if you ask me. Happiness just sort of happens, and you better recognize it when it does, because it rarely lasts very long. You can work towards making yourself happy, and the truth is, that is how most of us spend our lives. But the fact is, while you’re busy trying to make yourself happy, you’re usually not that happy.

  How many people go off to work every day and deal with someone else’s problem, just so they can support and provide for the family that they love? The majority of their life is spent being miserable so hopefully it will somehow make them happy. When you get off work, you come home to find out the food replicator is on the fritz, the kids are driving your spouse crazy, and your family expects you to fix all of that. Finally, after you’ve fixed all of the family problems of the day, you sit back in your favorite chair with a nice beverage and the dog hops up on your lap and licks your face. That makes you smile, well, that is until you realize that the dog is hungry because no one bother to feed it. So, you get up and feed the dog and the dog doesn’t even bother to thank you. That’s not so bad though. See, unlike your family, the dog doesn’t pretend to care if you’re happy or not, and the dog can’t actually say, “Thank you.” While your family is capable of speech, those two words are rarely uttered in your presence.

  Still, sometimes after all of that, there is a moment when everything seems right, and you feel happy about your life. Then you realize you need to get to bed so you can get up early and make yourself miserable again. Like I said, happiness is a random event that rarely lasts very long. Somehow though, those brief and fleeting moments of happiness are so precious that we subject ourselves to all the other bullshit in life in the hope that it will happen again. It’s almost like happiness is the teaser for life. If you’re lucky, your life will contain just enough happiness to make you stick around to see how the show ends.

  Chapter 1

  Mutiny on the Ryvius

  I woke up that morning next to my second wife Scirla. The Earth date was July 10, 2272. The whole two-wives thing was still bothering me. The truth be told, even after a couple of years, it was even tougher than it was originally. Now I’m sure there are a lot of men out there who think they’d know exactly how to deal with the situation, but they’d be wrong. I now had to try and not piss off two wives. See, if I pissed one off, the other one was sure to be pissed off at me as well. With women, as with a lot of other things in nature, two women pissed off at you is not double the trouble, no, it’s one of those exponential things. Every day was like walking through a minefield. I constantly needed to watch my step and try to say as little as possible, because we all know whatever you say WILL be used against you. I didn’t really even have a say in who I slept with on any given night, and the nights I got to sleep on my own were usually the most peaceful. If I were to actually pick one wife over the other, well, not only would that mean I’d be sleeping alone that night, but I’d have to put up with two pissed off wives for a good long while on top of that.

  It didn’t take me too long to figure out the best way to avoid the issue was to simply go off to bed on my own. If one of my wives was waiting for me, or came to my room later in the night, I’d perform my husbandly duties. Of course, sex was only one of my husbandly duties and it wasn’t even a major portion of those duties. Since I lived on a starship, I wasn’t required to take out the trash or mow the lawn. Again, some men might see this as a good thing, but trust me, it’s not. At least when you were doing these duties, the women would generally leave you to your own. Not having such duties meant I had to spend more time performing one of the more dangerous husbandly duties, listening. Don’t be mistaken, you can get into a lot more trouble if you’re perceived to not be listening properly than if you were to say the wrong thing. One inappropriate eye roll, or shrugging of the shoulders, and you are dead meat. Now each woman is different when it comes to what are the do’s and don’ts of listening, which of course made it exponentially more difficult when more than one woman was involved. It was difficult to remember which rules applied to which woman, and if they were both talking, I was pretty much screwed. Sometimes my wives were considerate of that fact and would start my day out slowly by only talking to me one at a time.

  “Guerin, I had another naissarance with the Guides last night. The best I can interpret this dream, as you call it, is that they want us to return to Taes.”

  I noticed that she didn’t suggest we actually g
o to Taes. I’m sure she was waiting for me to come up with the correct reply.

  “Did it seem urgent?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then let’s wait and see if they try to communicate with you or me again on the subject. Their messages that you receive in these naissarance dreams are never all that specific. Besides, we have been monitoring the system and there doesn’t appear to be any problems.”

  “You don’t trust the Guides, do you, Guerin? Do you think they’re evil?”

  “No, I don’t trust them totally, but I wouldn’t say they’re evil. I think that they’re probably a lot like the Bree. I’m pretty sure I know why they sent you to me, but I can’t be sure.”

  “Why do you think they sent me to you, Guerin?”

  “To influence me and my actions regarding Taes. Also, by taking you with me, you have the opportunity to learn more about the Collective for them. I think they’re interested in the Collective just as the Collective is interested in them. They used me already to bypass the Collective policies on the Taes system. There will probably be more instances in the future where the Guides’ and the Collective’s goals are not the same. I don’t think they see the Collective as enemies, but I also don’t think they see themselves bound by the Collective’s rules.”

  “But for what reason, Guerin? What are the Guides trying to accomplish by influencing you?”

  “It’s hard to say, Scirla, but it could be the same thing the Collective is trying to accomplish by using me. What if the Guides want to advance the Taesrin people just like the Collective helped advance the people of Earth? It might make sense. If you figure with the Bayru and Maricindi being so much more advanced than your people, they might want to advance Taesrin society to reduce the threat from the others. With all that you’re learning, you could act as I did on Earth, as their emissary of sorts.”