Perseus and the Pursuit of Altruism

A 17-year-old Perseus looks up from the mechanical organs of the vehicle in front of him, the nano carburetor still warm in his hands. He looks across the massive hangar bay to where his father was working on a star freighter, fitting false panels into the back and bottom so that Gaius’s smuggling business could continue smoothly. 

Perseus calls out to his father, “Seems like it was the gas recycler, in trying to make it faster, i didn’t think about purity of the fuel or quantity needed. Sorry, I didn’t make it in time.”

As he drums his fingers on his leg and walks around the hangar, stealing glances at his father, who had been furious not hours ago, he begins grabbing all the various items needed to fix the problem he had caused. Perseus works on his speeder in the oppressive silence, replacing piece after piece of this machine. Once everything has been tightened and locked in place, Perseus slides into the driver’s seat and turns the key. The vehicle whirs to life, the onboard display booting up, and an image of Perseus and his mother in front of this speeder comes up. 

This young Perseus is wearing an infectiously wide grin and a large white helmet that doesn’t quite seem to fit. His shirt is a royal blue polo shirt, and around his neck is a bright rose ascot. His mother stands beside him, her blonde hair waving behind her in the wind as she sports a glamorous smile. Her stellar blue eyes pierce the image and look into Perseus, who slumps into the seat and turns off the car. His mother’s words echo in his mind for a second, the image bringing back a wisp of a memory. 

“I love you, sweet bean, this is just the start! Your dad is finally turning into an honest fella. There are some real joyous days ahead, kiddo.” She had said to him with that dazzling smile. He really had believed her.

He throws a glance over at the ship his father is working on, the interstellar craft dwarfing Perseus’s speeder. Perseus approaches it, the humiliation of what happened growing in his gut as he approaches. 

He boards this would-be smuggling ship, looking for his father. He eventually finds the old man, hunkered below the engine, installing a hidden storage compartment. Perseus leans in to look at what he’s doing, only to be met with a wrench shoved in his face. 

“Hand me the 9 & 3/4s wrench, this one doesn’t have the torque I need,” Gaius says in a gravelly voice. 

Perseus takes it from his father and grabs him the correct wrench, and hands it to the awaiting hand, which retracts into the heart of the ship. 

“So, have you eaten anything yet?” Perseus says, eyeing the interior of the ship’s hold. He thought to himself We’re gonna load this piece of shit with twenty-two thousand pounds of Dragontail powder and send it into space? He’s lost his mind. 

“Nah, not hungry. Go get food, why not cost me a bit more money? One day, I might just charge ya for the total. You’re not cheap, ya know?” Gaius says without even coming out of the rigid mechanical heart of this flying machine to look his son in the eyes. 

“Fuck dude I just asked if you were hungry. I’m well aware of the money you supply for me because I work as a smuggler for you. Ass.” Perseus spits at the empty mechanical heart of the ship as he turns around to leave this cold room, devoid of human nor machine warmth. 

Perseus leaves the room and goes to his speeder, starting up the engine once more. The quiet thrum of the car turning over calms his ruffled feathers. He activates the gravitator control and the car lifts off the ground, ready to roam the streets once more. He pulls out of the hangar, pulls a smoke out, and holds it gently between his lips. He lights it with one hand while keeping an eye on the road, and exhales the shimmering smoke into the cab of the car. Perseus comes up to an intersection in the lower areas of the city and looks around, he sees somebody waving their hand at him. 

Perseus rolls down his window and looks at this woman, who is wearing a blue cocktail dress and a matching blue hat. 

Perseus eyes her warily before saying, “Evening, can I help you with something?” 

She looks back at him with a cautious glance, “Um, I hate to ask this, but would you mind giving me a ride? I just need to get to the hospital to visit my brother, but the self-driving car co-op I’m a part of doesn’t have any available, and I really need to get there.” 

Perseus looks her up and down, noting the stilettos and handbag, “Really? The Hospital? In that?” 

She glances down and laughs a bit, “Yeah, I suppose it’s not quite the outfit for the hospital, I’m coming from a date. They said he took a turn for the worse, so I ran out here.” 

Perseus softens at this, sighs, and nods, “Yeah, hop in. What hospital?”

She gets in the car and says, “Buneri Hospital in South District? You familiar?” 

Perseus grips the wheel and takes another drag, exhales out the open window, and says, “Yeah, I’m familiar. I can getcha there.” 

She smiles at him kindly and they drive in silence for a while, Perseus taking back streets and hidden drives that he had become familiar with over all of those days they had gone to visit his mother in the hospital. He thinks back to the times with his mom in the hospital district, their walks, and time spent in the South District. Pushing her around the hospital gardens, spouting all sorts of mechanical facts at her as she listened with a mother’s patience, enjoying the .peace of the garden and the exuberance of her child. As they come to a turn in an alley, she reaches into her purse and pulls out a plasma pistol and puts it to Perseus’s head.

“Give me the car, and any money you have, now.” She said in a deadly serious tone. 

Perseus feels the gun pressed up against his temple and tightens his grip on the wheel. His heart racing, he looks at her through his peripheral vision and says, “Seriously? After I kindly picked you up and was willing to drive you somewhere out of my way?” 

She gives him a devilishly beautiful smile and says, “Yep, seriously, kiddo. Get out or I’ll be cleaning your brains off my new car.” 

Perseus says, “Fine, I’m gonna unbuckle my seat belt and open the door, ok?” She looks at him but doesn’t respond. He does so and gets out of the car. She gets out as well and moves to the driver’s seat, all the while keeping Perseus at gunpoint. 

She gets into the driver’s side, looks at Perseus once more, and says, “Later, handsome, sorry you’re a nice guy. You’ll make someone happy one day.” She floors it, leaving Perseus alone, in the dark & a cloud of dust, a long, long way from home.

Perseus makes his way home on these dark streets, pulling his oversized duster closer to him. His journey is relatively calm except for a gaggle of drunk people walking past him and saying, “Hey, dusterman, you’re looking pretty tough, wanna go a few rounds, c’mon.” 

Perseus just kept his head down, walking past the group, taking a long drag of the smoke in his hand, the ember falling off as it hit the filter and flickering away on the street. He pulls another and continues his trek, his old lighter not igniting the first few times. After a slap and a few shakes, it sparks to life, and the ember is once again relit. 

He makes it back to the hangar, the cold steel mocking him as he walks through the automatic doors after scanning his hand and looks around. His father’s music plays hauntingly from the freighter he has yet to cease his work on. The notes of Für Elise played as he walked down the corridor to the main bay, towards the music, towards his awaiting father. His stomach grumbles pitifully as he approaches the hulking freighter. The music grows around him as he enters the Brobdingnagian freighter, the notes mixing with the sweat coming from his brow and the pain mounting in his chest. 

Perseus enters the engine room, metallic and cold to him, and the music resounds in this cavernous chamber. He reaches the speaker and turns it down. 

“Back already, punk? Whatcha get to eat?” Gaius says, finally coming out of the heart of the engine, his pushbroom moustache shivering as he speaks. 

“Dad, I don’t know how to say this, but I was going to get food and I picked up a lady who said she needed to get to the hospital for her brother and-” Perseus stops for a breath, the sweat rolling down his brow as his heart thuds against his ribs. “She looked nice and I thought she was telling the truth, but as we got there, she pulled a gun on me and took the car and my wallet, as well as my datapad.” 

His father looks at him for a second, brow furrowed, and looks down. He shakes his head and looks back at his son. 

“You fucked up kid. You tried to do something good, free of charge, and you got burned. When they realize you can give, they will take everything. Always. Name. A. Price.” Gaius spells out for him, standing with his arms crossed near the heart of this machine. “So what are you gonna do about it?” 

Perseus puzzled, looked at his father in his hazel eyes, “Get it back?” 

Gaius nods, rolls his hand, and looks at Perseus as if to say And? 

“I don’t know what to do past that, do I go to the cops?” Perseus says. At this, Gaius walks over and slaps Perseus across the face, leaving a hot red handprint. 

“We never, never, go to the cops, Percy. Not in any situation do people like us ever go to the cops. The damn Silverlights do not care about us or our problems. No, we track the car. Once we find it, we deliver some true justice upon them.” He says as he motions for Perseus to follow him, they leave the freighter and go to a wall of the main hangar. 

Gaius puts his hand on a segment of wall, and it scans it. The wall retracts, and a menagerie of guns appears from beneath it. He picks up an L-472 Laser Rifle and hands it to Perseus. 

“We’re gonna teach them a lesson about messing with the Clouds. Perseus, look at me, remember this. This blood is on your hands. If you had minded your own business, kept your head down, and gone to get some food, none of this would have happened. Altruism only serves to cripple us. This world is not for the kind nor the altruistic. They get mulched by all the problems they try to solve.” 

Perseus nods at this and holds the gun awkwardly, and walks to the scanner to see where the car’s GPS last reported in. He finds the address and slowly walks over to his father, who is readying a set of armor for himself. 

“Good man, wait a minute, and we’ll take my car,” Gaius says to him as he slips on a gauntlet with a screen on it over his forearm.

“Alright,” Perseus says and sits in the car. He fiddles with the laser rifle handed to him and looks around the cab of his father’s car. Littered with trash and cigarette butts, the car stank horribly, Percy ignores it and pushes the mountain of trash off the seat. The smell of rotting food and marinated in age old cigarette smoke was enough to make his eyes water as he waited for his dad to get in the car. 

When Gaius finally gets into the driver’s seat, he slides an information disc into the console of the car, the screen projecting a small hologram of a lowdown bunker-like building with five huge garages for stripping cars, and a myriad of hallways connecting a couple of rooms onto the dashboard. 

He smiles at Perseus and says, “Well, this is where your car is. You’re lucky, I pulled a few favors to get the architectural plans for this building from the city. Tell me, boy, have you killed anybody before?” 

Perseus looks at his father incredulously, “No, Gaius, I have not ended anybody’s life. Nor do I want to, can’t we just steal the car back?” 

Gaius’s smile vanishes and his eyes glare at Perseus, “Listen to me you fuck, if someone steps on your territory, gets in your way, threatens your life, you kill them. You save and preserve your own life above all others, ok? You show people you aren’t to be fucked with, you don’t get fucked with.” 

Perseus sinks into the seat and studies the hologram, pulling out a smoke and offering one to his dad. Gaius takes it, lights the smoke on the hologram projection, and exhales into the car. Perseus does the same, rolling down a window for some level of ventilation. 

“Alrighty kiddo, I’ll take the front in the tank, you go around through this service entrance on the roof, use your boosters to get up there. Once you hear the ruckus start out front, you come in, guns blazing. The tank won’t take much damage, I don’t think, it’s a pretty small outfit we’re taking on, so you’re the one really in danger here.” Gaius says as he points at the hologram, which shimmers in the smoke-filled car. 

“Ok,” Perseus says, taking a long drag and looking at the weapon settled and quiet between his knees. Could I do it? Look at someone in the eyes and take their life from them without pause? To slaughter people because they stole my car? His grip tightens on the laser rifle, he casts a fast glance at his father as he turns on this hulking monstrosity of a car, the engine rumbling to life like a leviathan from his storybooks, and pulls out of the hangar bay. Fuck, too late now. He’s not gonna let this one go. 

They drove through the silent city, it being about three in the morning now. The street lights and fluorescent signs glistened around his vision as they drove through the city, taking shortcuts as possible. They drive for about twenty minutes in this suddenly alien and threatening city, and come to a halt on a corner, looking at a towering apartment building in front of them. 

“Alrighty kiddo, it’s around the corner. Hop on out and I’ll see you in a minute.” Gaius says, unlocking the doors for him. Perseus pulls the handle and lets himself out, the gun still looking much too big for him. He nods at his father and boosts up to the roof of the first building, hopping from one to the next, towards this service entrance on the roof. 

Perseus gets about a roof away and is preparing for battle as he watches his father’s heavily armored car pull around the corner and approach the bunker-like garage. As Gaius approaches, Perseus sees someone come out of the service hatch. The woman, still in her blue cocktail dress. She pulls a smoke and looks around, lighting it in the supposed loneliness of the roof. Perseus hears the lasers gatling on the car begin to go off below him, and he launches himself at the woman with his boosters. 

They crash into each other, the woman barely able to react to the flurry of senses that stun her. She is knocked to the ground and sees Perseus with his gun trained on her, the stock not fitting his arms yet. The rifle wavers and shakes before her face, the sounds of guns and screaming coming from below them. 

“You had to take the fucking car. You couldn’t just appreciate the gesture and be really in need of help, could you?” Perseus spits at her and his index finger presses slowly onto the trigger. 

“Oh, sweetie, you’re not gonna pull that trigger. I’m sorry for taking your car, but money is money, I don’t regret using you.” She says back at him, taking a drag from her smoke on the ground. “Just shoot me then, kid. Fast is best, aim for the head or the heart.” 

The gun shakes as Perseus’s finger settles on the trigger. Her brown hair and blue eyes look at him piercingly, trying to decide if he’ll pull the trigger or not. Perseus squeezes his eyes shut and pulls the trigger; his mother’s eyes flashing before his eyes as he shuts them, the loud ZZZING of the rifle firing, the sound of something wet hitting the floor assaults his ears. The smell of blood fills his nose as he slowly opens his eyes and looks at what is left. The shaking of the laser rifle had carved a Z-shaped mark across her body, and what wasn’t burned away was falling out and onto the ground. Her head was completely gone, the blue scraps of her dress soaking into a deep black as it absorbed the blood gushing about the roof. Her cigarette lies on the roof, the ember extinguished by blood. 

Perseus vomits bile up, his empty stomach growling at having to give up what little is left in it. What else is there to do? The weight of his actions crashes into him and overloads both his senses and his conscience. Things get foggy, and the adrenaline screams in rage within his system. He pulls open the service entrance and jumps into the bunker. 

He is greeted by a chaotic scene. Blood is splattered on the stairwell here, coming from the garage below. As Perseus descends the stairs, he looks around, sees the remains of a group of people, torn apart by his father’s lasers. The tank is growling patiently outside, waiting for Perseus. A painful quiet settles over this turf war, as Perseus sees the blood he has spilled. What have his actions… his altruism… caused these people? 

He sees the speeder and checks it out, the numbness of his mind and hands moving through the motions. All still there, they were fast enough to stop them from stripping it. Who cares? Perseus thinks to himself as he looks into the mechanical heart of his car, feeling as cold and lonely as his own did. 

“Wait the fuck are you waiting for? The Silverlights will be here soon, if your car is working, we have to go, kid!” Gaius yells from his window, backing up his car and going back down the street it came, activating the localised cloaking device. 

Perseus gets into his car, the seat having been adjusted for that woman in the blue dress. Perseus turns the car on, pulls out of the garage, and finds an alley close to the hangar, not moving the seat back to his original position. What even was her name? Why was she out here stealing cars? Why did I have to pick her up? Perseus ponders these questions, and he rests his head against the steering wheel, the ash from his cigarette falling to his feet. Always get paid, nothing good comes without a price, no good deed goes unpunished. Their lives weren’t in vain if they taught you that lesson. Gaius may be a tough, grouchy son of a bitch but he’s right. There are no benefits to being kind, to being altruistic. 

He pulls out of the alley and goes back to the hangar, his stomach growling. He parks, puts his seat back to the original position, and gets out. He goes to the bathroom to get a shower. His face is splattered with her blood, his sneakers stained a permanent red. He showers, washing his deeds off of him, but not truly feeling clean afterwards. He goes to his room and takes his picture of his mom from the shelf,

I wish you were here. Death is just a part of life, whether by our hands or others. I miss you. I want to be your smiling, happy boy, Mama, but I don’t think I can anymore. I have to figure out who I am in this cosmos, given my skills and my deeds. I have to free myself from Gaius, I have to find my path. I love you, and I’m sorry I can’t be who you want me to be.

Perseus collapses into his bed, holding her picture close to his chest, so that he may feel the unrepentant and pure love they had shared once again.