The sun rose at five am, but as always Craig continued to sleep until seven. He would have probably slept longer, but he set an alarm most mornings to prevent exactly that from happening. When he rolled over to shut off the incessant digital beeping that roused him, the recollection of what had transpired the night before remained unmanifest at the very back of his mind. Even as a relatively well adjusted child, Craig had been reluctant to get out of bed in the mornings, but ever since the years he spent at college he had been worse than that. In fact, first thing in the morning, Craig was usually borderline suicidal – it often took a good ten or fifteen minutes of lying on his back staring at the faded shapes of the constellations on his ceiling for him to pull himself together and find the motivation to get out of bed.
The first thing he did once he sat up was reach for his pill bottle, which he kept on the shallow little windowsill next to his bed. He swallowed two Paroxetine without water and rubbed the crust of sleep from the rims of his eyes. Only after he had done all this did he spot the edge of the stretcher in his peripheral vision, and everything that had preceded came back to him with a sudden intensity.
He sat up straight and frowned, and his unbrushed hair sticking up and looking comical as he regarded the scene choreographed in front of him.
The stretcher was empty. And someone had made the effort to neatly fold and stack the spare shirt and sweatpants Craig had lent them on the end closest to Craig's bed. The door to the caravan was ajar and, much to his annoyance, a small drift of sand dust had blown inside, dirtying the floor under the stretcher and buffering fine salty red onto the door of his storage cupboard.
He swore loudly and pulled himself to his feet. The gap between the top of his head and the ceiling was two inches at best. He grabbed the tank top and shorts he had worn yesterday and swapped them out for the too-big t-shirt and sweatpants he slept in, before stumbling over the stretcher awkwardly toward the door.
"Tweek you complete shithead oh my god."
Sand crunched under his feet as he bounded down the caravan steps, and the brightness of the outdoors blinded him for a moment - the sunlight reflected of the whitewashed back of the pub made his head swim, and he gripped the handle of his caravan door tightly in disorientation. Almost passing out first thing in the morning was probably a symptom of some kind of disorder Craig didn't care to know about. He took his time adjusting, and once he knew he wasn't going to faint he let go of the door and wandered around the backside of his abode.
"Tweek?"
Not spotting him was a little disconcerting. He wondered briefly if he had gone back out into the desert to find his car or back into the pub to find some food. Perhaps he had disappeared into the great salty wasteland beyond the town, never to be seen again. He wouldn't be the first, and he wouldn't be the last, but for some reason, thinking about this made Craig a little sad. He ought to feel no great affection for someone who had single-handedly imported a sand dune into his home, but it had been such a long time since he had lain awake and listened to the restless sounds of someone else not-sleeping a few feet from him and the experience, while awkward, had been oddly comforting.
He was thinking about how long it would be before he had a conversation with someone who wasn't a local again, when he rounded the front side of the caravan and almost tripped over his guest sitting cross legged in the shade between the caravan and the building it was parked behind.
"Dude!"
He was startled, but not as startled as Tweek, who yelped and immediately leapt to his feet, brushing fine red dust off backs of his legs. Craig found he looked more like the eccentric religious sort today, in his flannel shirt and billowing khaki harem pants. He gave him a slow once over, trying not to betray too much of his distaste, but despite his best efforts Tweek was still clearly uncomfortable with being examined. He scratched the side of his nose and looked down at the scrubby patch he had flattened with his ass instead of looking at Craig's face. Perhaps he should have felt a little more self-conscious about that anyway - the area around this side of the van looked like a cyclone had passed through it. A large duffel bag Craig had never seen before sat on the cracked and faded plastic chair against the wall of the pub, and its contents spilled out onto the dirt. Craig eyed the paraphernalia; a heap of clothes; a folder of notes and papers; a Canadian passport. He figured that Tweek had probably never experienced the unpleasantness that was rubbing sand out of his shirts for days.
He was about to.
"Morning." Tweek mumbled, still staring down at his bare feet. He sounded like he had spent the whole night eating sand. "I'm still here, by the way. Sorry. I hope that's okay?"
Craig didn't really know where to start.
"... What are you doing?" he asked, studying the stack of faded newspapers next to the duffel bag on the chair. "You know you left my door open?"
"Did I? Oh God. I'm sorry. I couldn't do the lock and I just... I didn't want to overstay my welcome? I woke up early so I went out to try find my car but I couldn't move it an inch so I grabbed my stuff and brought it back and here I am." He brought his hand up to his mouth and started nibbling the corner of his thumbnail. Craig furrowed his brows, and looked back to the squashed patch in the shade of his van. How in the hell was he supposed to fix that? Not that it mattered.
"You could've woke me up and gotten my help," he said coolly. "Also, why were you sitting out here? It's a million degrees."
"Not in the shade. I was meditating." Tweek dropped his hand and started cramming his clothes and the newspapers back into his bag. “It's good for that, out here. Really quiet and clear, you know?"
Craig didn't know, although he had heard it discussed among the new-age alien hunters who buzzed about the place like a swarm of camera-waving mosquitos.
"Yeah. We have a policy about that phenomenon you know.”
The ‘official' stance was easy to find, if one knew where to look for it. Mostly, it was accessible in flyers given out at information sites, or on the lips of locals who traded on the naivety of the tourists. The story went that the Radiant Basin, if nothing else, was conducive to spiritual enlightenment and alien activities because it acted as an intersection between this universe and others. Craig, however, like most people who weren't eager to believe the superstitions of tourists, held that claims about the capabilities of a place to refract and redirect energy into a separate universal plane were dubious, at best.
“… Really?”
“Yeah. But if you want a professional opinion, it's fuckin' dumb.”
Tweek gave him a tight smile and hitched his full bag up onto his shoulder.
"You know, for an astronomer, you are kind of a sceptic."
Craig snorted and pulled his shoulder into a shrug.
"As far as I'm concerned the two things are synonymous. You want breakfast? I can walk out with you to your car later and see what I can do?"
Craig would never admit it, but he was glad that Tweek was still going to be around for a few hours longer. The other boy nodded, and they rounded the corner of the caravan, squeezing through the skinny gap between the building and the side and pausing for a moment by the door, so Tweek could drop his stuff off inside.
"Oh, and that reminds me." Craig told him, taking care to close the door again properly, "You need to clean my floor before I let you go. It's like the Sahara in there you know."
Tweek didn't say he wouldn't, so Craig assumed that meant he would be honoured.
As usual, the Hotel breakfast was eggs and toast, and for Tweek this was in addition to the largest cup of coffee Kenny could possibly provide. After the hesitance with which he had treated his beer the night before, Craig was surprised to see him eating so heartily. He shovelled egg and bread into his face with a haste that may have been shocking, if Craig had been of the easily-offended variety.
"Hungry?" he asked politely, after Tweek had polished off his second plate and chased it with a half mug of straight black Brazilian Roast. Tweek nodded, and rubbed his mouth shamelessly on the back of his hand.
"Starving."
His eyes flickered down, to Craig's crusts left sitting on the edge of his plate. Incredulous, Craig pushed the plate towards him in an invitation to go ahead and clean up after him. It took all the self-control he had to keep his expression neutral. If he allowed himself to smile, or left himself be endeared to this character any more than he was already, then it would be exponentially more difficult to watch him go.
"You know," Craig placed his hands on the table in front of him and scratched over a shallow gouge in the wood top. "You never actually told me what business you have at the compound."
Tweek cocked his head and studied him, his eyes silted like he was trying to establish whether or not it was wise to disclose his motivations.
"I dunno if I want to," he said eventually, and the words hung there in the silence for a few seconds uncontested. "Not because it's a secret or anything. But cause... hm." his lips thinned and Craig thought he saw a flicker of irritation pass over his features.
"'Cause what?"
"'Cause you'll laugh at me?"
It was kind of annoying, the way in which Tweek ended almost every sentence with a question.
Craig's eyes fluttered, and he considered telling him that if he was here for the reason Craig suspected, it wasn't funny so much as immensely unfortunate. He considered pointing out that no-one at the compound was allowed to drink coffee - it was considered abhorrent for Disciples to consume substances that might make them impure. Maybe that would deter him a little? Make him think twice about wandering out into the wastelands and becoming lost to civilization with the rest?
He chastised himself immediately for letting his not-entirely-negative feelings towards this person sway his resolve to remain impartial. Whatever spiritual journey Tweek happened to be on was his own goddamned business.
"Whatever then," he sighed, stacking their plates and making ready to leave. "But you know, whatever reason you give me, I'm certain I would have heard it before."
They set out on foot at ten am, just as the day was starting to sizzle. Craig was sure to slather on a sensible amount of well expired sun block on his forearms - purely for the sake of keeping up appearances in front of this, a man who had clearly never seen a bottle of banana boat in his lifetime.
"You want some?" he asked, offering Tweek the dusty tube of lotion as they swerved off the compacted dirt road that lead out toward the Basin rim, and into the flat sun parched void of scrub beyond. A shallow tyre trail, ravaged by winds blustering sand over the hollows left by the treads, indicated that Tweek's shitty sigma was approximately north west of Barbelo, and if it had taken him an hour and seven minutes to walk out there this morning, and fifty eight minutes to walk back, (as per his reporting's) Craig supposed the car was between two and three miles out. Not an unreasonable journey, but probably a nauseating distance to cover when it was upwards of ninety degrees outside.
Tweek declined the suntan lotion. He mumbled something about dangerous chemicals and skin cancer, but did not try and explain further. Craig slipped the tube back into his satchel, alongside the few odd spanners and rags he had dropped in there before they left, and again elected not to say anything.
Tweek scratched at the peeling skin on his upper arms and turned his face upwards, to the empty sky. For a moment Craig thought he might say something, but he didn't. The sun glinted on the shiny gold arms of his sunglasses and an unmarked and unfamiliar speck, probably a weather balloon of some persuasion, passed overhead. Not a single breeze wicked away the sweat that was starting to bead on the nape of Craig's neck.
He remembered about twenty minutes into their walk that there were particularly venomous snakes out here, in the dessert, slithering around on their bellies and going about their little snake lives. Hopefully, their humble party of two would not encounter any on their journey, because if they had the misfortune of being bitten by a poisonous one the nearest hospital was a decent three hours drive away. When Craig told him this, Tweek (who had already walked this way three times in the last twenty four hours) insisted they pick up speed so intensely that they completed the journey to the vehicle in just under fifty minutes. By the time Craig arrived he was so sweaty and exhausted that he had to sit down for a moment in the passenger side and wind down.
"Jesus Christ," he muttered, fiddling with all of the dashboard knobs and dials he could get his hands on while Tweek, terrified of snakes in a way Craig couldn't rationally comprehend, climbed into the drivers side and slammed the door. "Which one of these fuckers is the air con?"
"I don't have any," Tweek told him, checking the back of his car to make sure that either A: his coffee cup collection was still there or B: there were absolutely no snakes sitting buckled in the backseat. "Wind the window down or something?"
Craig (who had not yet closed the passenger door) looked at him in disbelief, and wondered how it was Tweek wasn't dying. He looked like he had just spent twenty four hours in a microwave - when he removed his sunglasses and dropped them onto his dash, the line distinguishing the red on his cheeks and the circles of pale white skin around his eyes was so sharp it looked drawn on, and his hair (which he hadn't bothered to tie up or brush or anything) was sticking to the side of his face in long sweaty strings. Nonetheless, Tweek seemed just as alert as usual, and his hands didn't even tremor when he patted around in his pockets for the car keys and slotted the correct one into the ignition.
"You go outside and fix it," The strange boy said shortly, eyes combing the horizon as though a large entourage of something Truly Awful was going to slither over it at any moment. "I will stay in here, if that's okay?"
Craig regretted even mentioning the words 'pit vipers', but said he could make that work if Tweek allowed him a few minutes to cool down.
"You brought the water Ken gave us right?"
Tweek nodded and slid his backpack off his shoulder, onto his lap. The large bottle of springwater he extracted was easily the most perfect thing Craig had ever seen in his life. He drunk a quarter in one go, and would have drunk more if Tweek hadn't snatched it off him and reminded him that some of it was supposed to be for the radiator, please don't ruin everything and strand us out here because no way in hell is he walking back through that snake hole.
"Jeez, alright. I'll just go ahead and die. Then you can fix your dumb car yourself."
Craig climbed out of the vehicle anyway, and dumped his satchel full of spanners on the dust. He regretted not bringing a roller board, and for the first time he felt a little uneasy about snakes himself, because gosh it was gloomy under the car and gosh, it was low to the ground.
He grit his teeth and slithered under there anyway, unleashing the limbless reptile himself, and found it to be pleasantly cool under the sigma's large rusty belly.
The sand wasted no time getting into his eyes.
"Hey, Tweek?" He called to the boy through the thin metal of the chassis, and waited for confirmation that he had been heard.
"What?"
"Do you have a torch or something? I can't see shit."
With considerable difficulty, given his refusal to step outside the safety of the vehicle, Tweek passed him a hefty hunting torch. Although the batteries were a little weak, it certainly served its purpose well. Craig was relieved to see that most of the mechanisms and do-hickeys on this particular part of the vehicle matched the sizes of equipment he had lugged along. God bless the predictability of Japanese cars. He spent a few minutes feeling around with his hands to establish if there was anything immediately wrong with the bits and pieces above him, (something he knew that anyone who valued their digits he should probably NEVER do,) and after finding nothing he sighed because that meant he was probably going to have to do something more intensive. Unscrew some stuff, oil some other stuff up, maybe replace a few valves...
Actually, before he did anything else, he should probably check under the hood of the car. This should have been an obvious first point of call, and when he crawled out and told Tweek this, Tweek looked like he didn't know whether to start laughing or crying.
"You're the actual worst mechanic who ever lived."
"I guess so."
He raised the hood of the car, and just as with the underside he found not a single fault anywhere. Not one.
This was unfortunate. Most of Craig's mechanical successes in the past were the result of the owners of the vehicles he worked on already knowing exactly what was wrong. It was hard to be confused over what needed fixing when a spark plug had ejected itself from an engine at a hundred miles an hour.
He slammed the front hatch and peered at Tweek's dark figure on the other side of the glazed windshield.
"What did you say happened to the car again?" He asked. "Exactly?"
"It uh... it stopped working? I was driving, and first the radio went out, and then steam, and then without warning the engine just stopped. It didn't even start burning."
"You still have petrol?"
"Of course, man! You filled it up yourself."
Craig chewed the inside of his cheek and looked down at the oil and grease engrained in the creases of his hands. That was weird as hell... he had never heard of a car just stopping before. Ceasing all movement with a full tank and no smoke and not a single sign to indicate it was about to do so. Admittedly, he was no expert, but the thought of such a thing happening sat weird in his brain - like he had some kind of primal aversion to it. Insofar as Craig could tell, something that adhered to all the principles of physics and mechanical engineering simply ceasing to function was impossible. Therefore, Tweek must have missed some important incident in his recollection of exact events.
He climbed back into the passenger seat, and dropped his satchel down by his feet.
"Well okay. Turn on the ignition for me?"
Tweek gave him an unreadable look, but did as he was told.
Nothing happened. Nothing. The engine didn't turn over and the starter didn't begin to growl. But this was impossible because the sparkplugs, the cables, and everything else about the car had been (according to Craig's opinion) in perfect order. Tweek turned the key back to idle, and offered to show him what had happened to the radio.
"... Okay? Sure, if you want to."
Tweek reached past him and turned the dial, and Craig wished he had given him a little warning because the sudden loud scratching noise that came out of the speakers was startling for anyone, particularly someone who had not been expecting it. The sound was halfway between static and the unholy noise that happened when someone scraped a nail over corrugated iron. Craig immediately told him to shut it off, and Tweek looked at him in despair.
"Can you imagine how horrifying that was for me?"
Craig thought he had a pretty good idea. He sighed, and said what he had started to suspect since he had first opened the hatch, and seen that not one of the spark plugs had ejected itself from the engine at no less than a hundred miles an hour.
"I have no idea what's wrong. I'm going to have to get Kenny to tow it back with the pickup so I can look at it in the shop."
He could tell before he finished saying it that Tweek didn't care for this news one bit.
"What?! How long will that take? I'm in a rush."
"Well, I dunno. A few days? It's not a big deal. I mean you've waited this long to find God or whatever, surely you can wait a bit more.” He paused a bit, noted that Tweek was still unconvinced, and decided to drive home his point a little harder. “Alternatively, you could wander the dessert until you find the compound yourself?”
This earned a better reaction – in fact, it was precisely the reaction he had been aiming for in the first place.
He was starting to figure this guy out at last.
"No. No. Definitely not. Too many snakes. Alien abductions. Not on the agenda."
Craig smiled wryly and gestured casually back in the direction they came from.
"Yeah that's what I thought. But there more bad news to come yet..." he paused for a moment, to build tension, and Tweek glared at him with bright green eyes.
"What's that?"
"We still have to walk back."
They made it back to the town in record time and with no incident, although Tweek tripped over a small cactus in his hurry to get as far away from the (as yet unseen) snakes as possible. Irritation about having to stay longer was the first expression of emotion other than fidgety and non-specific fretfulness Craig had seen from him, and so Craig found it impossible to generate any decent conversation the whole way. Not that it mattered – the heat made it too difficult to think let alone speak. Craig just trudged along and squinted at the horizon, trying to spot the clouds which had hovered over the distant ranges yesterday morning.
When they finally returned to the pub, dusty and sweaty and tired, Craig walked Tweek straight through the bar and into the kitchen at the back, where Kenny or Butters would most likely be preparing dinner for the night.
The kitchen was empty. Tweek huffed and rubbed the sweat off his brow. A pot of peeled potatoes boiling on the stove spluttered, and steam started hissing under the rim of the lid
The hotel kitchen was small and cluttered, and by the door a stack of dated newspapers offered recounts of everything that had happened in this town since time itself began. The kitchen itself predated this hypothetical start point, however – the faded linoleum on the floor was curling in the corners with age, and the windows were glued shut with layer after layer of cracked white paint. Close to the ceiling, creaking wooden shelves curved under the weight of heavy pots and pans, and in the back a large and ancient refrigerator rattled away keeping its contents cool and fresh. The only recent fitting in the space was the stove and oven, glimmering in stainless steal and highly polished, and also a Macbook left open on the bench by the sink. Clearly someone had been in here recently – Butters still had Facebook open, so presumably it was he who had started making dinner then stopped, for reasons that were yet unknown.
Craig's stomach grumbled loudly, and he realised that although his breakfast had been far from meagre, he was hungry. Not only that, but he was dehydrated, and now he was standing in the cool shady kitchen he was feeling a little light headed and sick. He wrenched open the fridge and groped around amongst Tupperware containers and cans of King Cola, and extracted a litre carton of fruit drink that had not yet been cracked open. The flavour was mango pineapple rush, although Craig suspected no mango or pineapple had been so much as near the stuff in the entire course of its existence. Drinking straight from the carton, he continued to rifle through the contents of the fridge. Tweek looked on with a faint expression of distaste on his sunburnt face.
"No clean glasses?" He asked. Craig shrugged and peeled the tinfoil off a mysterious bowl of something, which turned out to be apple cobbler from a few nights before. He was just about to swap out his drink for the dessert when a brisk clap around the ears distracted him and he fumbled the carton and the cobbler dish. The mango pineapple beverage fell to the ground with a thud, and spilled in a sugary orange pool all over the ground.
"What in the fuck do you reckon you're doing?" Kenny, who was adept at creeping in unnoticed thanks to his small stature, didn't look totally pissed, but he did look a little bit mad. Suddenly feeling quite guilty at having been caught pilfering, Craig rubbed the back of his hand over his mouth in an effort to remove any tell-tale juice moustaches from the vicinity of his face.
"My bad," he said in apology, picking up the spilled carton and tiptoeing over the spreading puddle of fruit drink to drop the emptied carton into the sink. "We just got back from checking out his car and it's hot as hell out"
"And what? You're too good to use a glass these days?" Kenny stepped back, out of the puddle stickying the floor, and groped for a cloth on the bench just behind him.
"That's what I said."
Tweek watched Craig rinse the carton, leaning against the table by Butters' laptop with his arms crossed and, Craig realised, looking much too tall and large to fit in such a cramped and chaotic kitchen. Kenny scoffed and dropped a tea towel onto the spill to sop it up.
"Yeah yeah. What about the car then? Is it back up and running?"
He gestured to Craig that he should probably take responsibility for wiping the floor, and sat down on the too-tall stool next to the back door. Tweek shook his head, and looked suitably irked about how ordeal.
"No. He couldn't figure out what was wrong. Some mechanic."
"Hey!" Craig thought that was a little bit rude, considering the effort he was making for this moody sunburned stranger, and he glared at him from where he was squatted, wiping up fruit drink to the best of his ability. "Fuck you. I'd like to see you do better."
Kenny ignored this, a shallow crease of consideration appearing between his eyebrows as he contemplated what the issue may be.
"Maybe it's the sand? He mused aloud, and Craig considered telling him that of it was sand, he would have goddamned noticed from the outset. He wasn't stupid for fucks sake. "So what then? It's still out there in the basin?"
"Mhmm. Craig said you might be able to tow it for me? Back to the township?"
Kenny's eyebrows darted up, and he looked down at Craig in annoyance.
"Did he now?" He asked lightly, and Craig sighed, erecting himself and tossing the dripping tea towel with the drink carton in the sink.
"Come on man. Don't be a dick. How am I supposed to fix it if it's out there slowly rusting to dust? Besides, I'll come with you - I gotta show you exactly where to drive."
Kenny had a deep and unexplained fear of driving off road into the Basin. Craig wasn't sure what it was, exactly, that had happened to him out there, but whatever it was it was significant enough to make him obviously unhappy at the suggestion.
This only agitated Craig's own frustration about the issue, and he tried to downplay the challenge it presented as much as possible.
Kenny sighed and shook his head.
"Fine, fine. But I won't be able to go out until after lunch now. And you will not come with me - Kevin has been waiting all morning for you to go and fix his stupid fuckin' washing machine and he won't stop riding my ass about it. You sort him out. He can show me where to go instead."
He nodded at Tweek, who straightened his back and pointed a finger at his own chest in shock.
"... Me?"
"Yes you."
"Washing machine?!" Craig was offended that Kenny would dare to even suggest he do such a thing. Concerns about how to lug Tweek's Sigma back into town fell quite suddenly onto the wayside. "What do you mean I've got to fix his washing machine? Do I look like a plumber to you?"
Kenny gave him a haughty look and folded his arms stubbornly across his chest.
"No, but someone has to. And besides, it's not just Kevin's washing machine, it's everyone's. I've had a ridiculous amount of complaints about home appliances all morning. Swear to God, people think I'm your babysitter and personal assistant or something - Kyle's fridge has stopped running, and Bebe can't work her washer, dryer or heat pump. I'm fucked if I know what's going on around here but I don't want to deal with it anymore."
Tweek coughed uncomfortably and jerked his head in the direction of Butter's computer on the table.
"Uh, is there any chance that could be related as well?"
All three pairs of eyes in the room swivelled to look at the screen in question, which had started to gutter like the video on a scratchy DVD. On the stovetop, the boiling pot of potatoes flowed over, the water hissing and turning to singed steam on the element, and with the acrid smell of sizzling water a wave of goose pimples swept up Craig's arms.
The laptop screen turned black, and the water kept on burning, and when he looked at the others he was discomforted to see that while Kenny seemed plain puzzled, Tweek looked positively stricken. As though the dead screen was displaying something only he could see, and imparting wisdom that right now, in this moment, only he might know.
Craig was glad the day was finally over.
It took two hours to disassemble Kevin Stoley's washing machine and put it back together again, and unsurprisingly in the process Craig couldn't find a thing that was wrong. He mangled his left hand pretty thoroughly when he stopped by the library to look at Kyle Broflovski's fridge, and after being reluctantly patched up to the best of Kyle's abilities (so not very well at all) Craig only had partial mobility in his left hand. If it didn't heal up in about a week… Well, he would probably have to travel out of the Basin and go to the State City hospital, but he tried not to think about that because the idea made a hot, uncomfortable bubble of dread rise in the back of his throat.
Deciding that home repairs were probably best left to those whom they directly affected, Craig headed back to his workshop at the petrol station only to find that two cars and a small motorcycle had been parked in the garage for inspection. Bizarrely enough, these particular vehicles seemed afflicted by the same unseen problem as Tweek's, although the radio on one of them was still picking up faint signals.
Abnormal meteorological activity in the east of the salt plains today, the regional news report informed him as he sat in the passenger seat of Henrietta Biggle's black Celica listening to the transmission. The car smelled like the bitter incense she burned in her stupid tourist occult shop down the road, and a glittering quartz crystal on a red string swayed from the rear-view mirror, but Craig found it very comfortable to finally sit down after a hellish afternoon and so he stayed there staring at the crystal swaying gently, his concentration trained on the weather report that seemed, as yet, unfounded in the basin skyline. Pressure drops and static activity have been reported in the area surrounding the Radiant Basin and the town of Barbelo. Environmental services have issued a strong weather warning for the upcoming weekend, and recommend all Basin residents ensure their properties and contents are secured against string winds and possible lightning storms over the Basin rim. Nevertheless! We here at State City station are keeping our fingers crossed that the skies will stay clear for viewing the blood moon on Sunday night. As our listeners doubtless know-
Craig switched off the radio, thinking it was probably nothing just as it always had been in the past, and he wondered if anyone else in Barbelo had heard the report or if the phone and internet lines were fucking out too. He wouldn't be surprised. Sometimes, communications in the basin dropped below acceptable levels of dismal and into the vicinity of cataclysmic - it had happened once or twice during his habitation, and he wouldn't be surprised if it happened again.
Craig sighed and dragged himself out of the car, just as Kenny and Tweek pulled up in Kenny's Isuzu, Tweek's dusty Mitsubishi in tow.
"I see you made it back finally," Craig told them as the vehicle stopped and clumsily, like he hadn't stood for an hour or so (he hadn't), Tweek stumbled out the passenger side into the dust.
"Yeah. Sorry we were longer than expected. We um..."
"We got lost," Kenny finished his sentence, jumping down from the vehicle cabin and slamming the door so forcibly that the pendant he had hung on the rear-view mirror, an occult looking rock bearing an engraving of a line with five short branches, swung in a wide arc and smacked against the windshield glass. His tone made it clear that he was somewhat shaken, although he would probably never admit to such a thing out loud.
“We started down the fork toward the rim by mistake. We made it half-way to Brass Ridge before I realised the GPS was fucking up," he scratched his eyebrow thoughtfully and cast his eyes to the heavens in a way that made Craig sure he had heard about the weather encroaching as well. "Maybe it's got to do with this atmosphere drama going down."
"Maybe. You've heard about it then?"
"Yeah. There was still some reception out in the desert. Although I think it's in everyone's best interest not to mention this to anyone in town."
He gave Craig a significant look, and Craig understood immediately what that implied. If anyone else knew about the report, there would be chaos. Panic and packing and possibly a mass exodus. It had happened before in Basin history, and it would happen again, but it was probably more convenient for everyone right now if status ignorance was maintained and the threat of poor weather was allowed to pass unnoticed into history. After all, the chance of the weather actually turning terrible was slim to none, and the panic that a scare would cause would probably encourage the townsfolk to run Kenny even more ragged than he was.
"I agree. But hey, look there." Craig thumbed behind himself to the vehicles parked in the garage. "His isn't the only car that's crapped out. Henrietta's has as well, and I don't know whose that is but it's in perfect condition so I have no idea why the fucker won't get up and go."
He pointed to the squareish green Avenger parked next to Henrietta's sportscar, and Kenny informed him that that particular vehicle belonged to Red the cat lady. Craig could have guessed - there was a large bumper sticker on the rear which said the more people I meet, the more I like my cat.
"And the motorbike?"
"That's Stan's. You don't know him. He's a friend of Kyle and me, but he only comes through town every once in a while."
"I see."
Craig fisted his hands on his hips and sighed, feeling far more tired than he had in a long time - like the heat and the dust today more than ever was finally starting to weary his bones. He might have stood there contemplating it all a moment longer, if he hadn't been interrupted by Tweek who addressed him, in a way that might have come across as concerned - Craig wasn't sure.
"What happened to your hand?"
Craig lifted the bruised and bandaged appendage and glanced at it. Since the incident, it had swollen to about twice its size and turned quite a glorious shade of blue-purple.
"I dropped a fridge on it," he reported honestly. "I think I split a knuckle or something, it hurts like a total bitch."
"Is that going to interfere with you fixing my car?"
Craig kicked himself, for thinking that Tweek's diluted worry could have been related to the state of his own wellbeing. He had a good mind to inform him that yes, actually, it did, but Craig was somehow too tired to be shitty and instead he just allowed himself to be discreetly hurt. He probably deserved it for letting himself warm to him in the first place.
He shook his head and dropped his hand back by his side.
"No. Fortunately for you, I'm right handed."
"Doesn't fixing a car require two hands?"
Craig wouldn't know the textbook answer for that. He gave Tweek a filthy look and decided that while he wouldn't pretend his injury would stop him fixing his car, he would not be taking another look at it tonight.
"Would you just lay off me already? I'm doing the best I damned well can."
Kenny interrupted them, as though he sensed the tension building in the toasty evening air and wanted to defuse any arguments as soon as possible.
"Hey, it's cool. I'm going back to the pub to check on dinner. Craig, you close up and park these two wherever. Tweek, come back with me and I'll introduce you to Kyle. He's got access to all these sick nerdy records and books in the library which might have just the information you want to know."
Tweek gave Kenny a small, subtle smile that didn't quite meet his guarded eyes. Craig had a sneaking suspicion that whatever information he was about to be provided with, Tweek didn't actually care to know at all. Good manners, it seemed, where a real thorn in his side.
"Sure. Okay. That sounds fine."
Craig shot the rudest gesture he could think of at Tweek's back when he walked away, and fortunately for him neither him not Kenny glanced backwards to see it. Also fortunately, with regard to Craig's need to express his frustrations in a non-destructive and non-confrontational manner, he managed to produce this gesture with the help of just one hand.
It was ten pm, and it was just getting dark. Craig was just finishing setting up his telescope and laptop when he was interrupted by a soft knocking on the caravan side.
"Hey."
"Woah! What the fuck! Way to startle me."
Tweek was standing a few feet behind him, mostly in shadow although the general details of his face were illuminated by the waxing moon overhead, and the salt-on-satin glitter of the stars in the sky.
"I thought I would find you here," Tweek told him, and Craig pressed a hand on his chest to calm himself down, because holy fuck in all the years he's lived in the basin he has never been interrupted while working before.
He didn't care for it at all.
"I live here," he responded, and if Tweek was put out by this reply he didn't show it. Instead he sighed and slid his hands into his pockets, turning his face upward to the place where the horizon met the sky.
"Sorry. I meant to say I didn't mean to interrupt. But I came to pick up my bags and stuff. There's a room free in the pub tonight apparently. The tourists are out camping in the desert tonight."
Craig nodded - this was a usual Friday night occurrence. The weekly extra-terrestrial adventure tour bus (only one of the four basin tours available to tourists during the summer seasons,) usually arrived Thursdays for a day of library and archive research and shopping in the kitschy souvenir-slash-occult shops, and camped Fridays in the desert a few miles out by brass ridge. This meant that there were often rooms with no bookings on Friday night that would promptly be picked up by weekend busybodies first thing Saturday morning, and obviously Butters had done Tweek the favour of offering one of these hotel rooms to him. For some reason, this made Craig feel a little jealous. Was the cot on the floor of his caravan not good enough?
"Well, you know where it is. Down the back.”
He waved him away with his bandaged hand and dropped his ass down into the battered plastic deck chair he had dragged over for this exact purpose. Tweek however, did not make to move or anything. He lingered in place a moment longer, watching Craig shuffle papers with complicated numerical charts on them without saying anything, until Craig found himself feeling comfortable and had to ask what else it was he wanted.
"Are you going to come in for dinner?"
Craig shook his head and informed him he had eaten a half box of muesli bars from the gas station store before he had come over. After Tweek and Kenny went back to the Hotel, Craig had spent three more hours checking Henrietta's car, and this had had the effect of lowering his mood to completely unacceptable levels. Aside from the crystals in her glove compartment, and the collected work of HP Lovecraft jammed under her seat to elevate it, the vehicle was in tip top shape. Completely fine. The only issue to speak of was that the goddamned thing simply would not go.
"I see," Tweek stood there silently for a moment longer, before asking a slightly less idiotic question. At least, in Craig's opinion.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm looking at Mars. There's a transit tonight and I've never actually seen one," he adjusted the eyepiece on his telescope and double checked the co-ordinates scribbled on a sheet of lined refill paper. It was hard to see in the low light, but he had foolishly left his torch in the caravan and couldn't be bothered getting up again to grab it.
Tweek looked at him as though he didn't know what that was. Which he probably did not.
"A transit?" He repeated. Craig nodded.
"Yup. It's like... when Phobos moves between Mars and Earth. They aren't rare so it's kind of dumb I've never seen one before. It would probably be better to see from Brass Ridge but unfortunately for me, I can't get out there to see it."
Craig had always wanted to go to Bass Ridge to look at the stars again, but he hadn't done it for ages. In fact, he was pretty sure the last time had been almost the same week he arrived. Maybe someday, when he felt kind of better about his life, he would make the effort to borrow Kenny's pickup and go.
He would be so happy.
Still a little lost, Tweek transferred his weight onto his left leg and folded his arms across his chest.
"Phobos?"
"One of Mars' moons," Craig turned to look at him fully, rather than from the corner of his eye, and saw that he had obviously just had a shower. "Do you want to know what that means astrologically as well? Because I am not the guy for that, I'm afraid."
Tweek shook his head and hooked a strand of hair back behind his ear.
"I know what it means," he said gently, "I just didn't know what it was. If that makes sense."
It didn't, but Craig didn't bother to tell him. Impatient, he jerked his head in the direction of Tweek's things.
"Stuff's there," he reminded him, and he adjusted his telescope to the correct angles. For a brief moment he regretted that he wasn't at the university any more, using the huge and expensive observatory equipment to watch this totally average and unremarkable celestial event pass him by.
He was surprised when Tweek came and stood next to him, and he carried the smell of sand and fading sweat, his arms cradled loosely around his body and his eyes fixed on the waxing moon overhead.
"Isn't it a blood moon on Sunday, too?" He observed. "I hear that kind of thing was a big deal. Or something."
"The Foundation out there have been talking about it for months, if that's what you mean," Craig ignored how close he was standing and spared a quick glance through his eyepiece. Inside, he could see the glowing orb that was the planet Mars, but the image lacked the high power details present when he was using the university machine so many years past. He couldn't even make out the ice caps with this little thing. "But they have a tendency to get worked up about any kind of cosmic phenomena they can find. If a fly lads on the telescope they would probably shit themselves in excitement about it." He sat back and stared at Tweek expectantly, wondering of he might leave soon or if he just planned to stand there all evening staring skywards. For some reason, the guy seemed just plain hypnotised by the lights blinking and glittering overhead. It wasn't until he opened his mouth and said it aloud that Craig realised why.
"You know, I've always lived in a place where it was light even in the night-time. I hadn't even realised there were this many stars."
With that, he sat down next to Craig on the dirt, and thoroughly confused by this intrusion Craig didn't even tell him to go away. Instead, he heard himself saying
"You know, there's more to a place like Barbelo than just the stars.”
“Yeah,” Tweek's expression was hard to make out in the dim, but to Craig it almost looked conflicted. A little troubled. And tired. “I think I've kinda picked up on that. Everyone here is so friendly…”
He scratched the back of his neck, like he was starting to feel guilty about liking the place, and the people, and maybe he was. It was never a good idea to make friends or connections when one was on the way to join FTUC, because friends and connections always made it harder to decide to go. Craig's heart leapt to see this, Tweek's very first display of weakened resolve, and in a split second he made a decision which he would have plenty of time to regret later.
He decided to make an effort to help him out.
Maybe, if he could convince Tweek not to go, he would find respite from all the regrets that dogged him every time he remembered Clyde.
God, Craig hadn't thought of Clyde in a long time.
“… If you don't mind waiting another day for your car, I can take you around the town tomorrow and show you what else there is to see."
Tweek didn't reject him down flat, which was a good sign. Craig could feel his cheeks warming in the cool night air, and the feeling of vulnerability that came with reaching out to a stranger was long forgotten and unfamiliar to him. If he said no, Craig was probably going to have to drive him to the Foundation himself in order to feel less naked again.
Tweek pulled his legs to his chest and wrapped his arms around them loosely instead.
"Maybe...” he said, after a significant pause. “The librarian has already offered to show me the archives tomorrow, so I was thinking about sticking around for that anyway. You know he has all this stuff about the Foundation on hand he can show me? Stuff I couldn't even find online. I mean, I had come out here thinking I was prepared, but when I was talking to Kenny on the drive to my car I realised... well."
He pulled a face, and Craig frowned.
"Well what? What were you prepared for?"
"Well, I don't really know that much about the Foundation at all."
"Were you going to join?"
Tweek shook his head and laughed, but it wasn't a particularly mirthful laugh - rather it seemed a little ashamed and self-depreciating. Like he was annoyed at himself and at the trajectory his life had recently taken.
Craig knew the feeling.
"No. No I wasn't. It's a little more stupid than that. I'm still not telling you."
Craig thought this was rather an unfair tease.
"Why not? I don't know why you think I'm going to judge you. Nothing you could say could possibly be more embarrassing than the story of why I'm here. It's not like this place is attracts the kind of people who are happy with their lives."
Tweek turned his head to look at him, his expression swimming and unreadable despite his eyes, which were sharp and bright with the silver reflection of the moon in the sky. For a moment, Craig though he was going to give in. That he would relent and impart his secrets, and the thought made Craig feel warm and squirmy because he couldn't remember the last time he had had an actual personal conversation with someone. A chat about his past, and about their hopes for the future, and those rare moments of empathy that reminded him he wasn't the only person in this world struggling with his life.
Instead, much to Craig's disappointment, Tweek shrugged and pointed to the end of the telescope closest to his face.
"Don't get distracted, man. You'll miss the transit."
Much to Craig's frustration, he was correct.
And there was evening and there was morning--the second day.