Parka's Galactic Odyssey

I had never been a very social person, but I did have my moments. My favorite friends were the ones who didn’t talk very much. It was easier to listen to what they were thinking, and sometimes even use their ideas.

Travis was one of those people. He was better at science than me, but he couldn’t do anything with it. He didn’t have the gift like I did.

I would often eavesdrop on his thoughts to see what he was working on. Sometimes it was just boring stuff about his girlfriend, or how he liked orange soda better than root beer, but sometimes it was interesting too. Like when he thought about how he would make a super-powerful laser, or a time machine, or a way to free everyone from having to pay taxes, or even a planet-destroying weapon that would vaporize an enemy’s planet from the inside all in one shot.

We had talked about making some of these things for real once, but we knew we couldn’t do anything like that until the war was over. We usually talked about that when we were bored and didn’t have anything else to do. Travis had this notebook that he used for his scribbling and notes, and whenever we had nothing to do, we would just look through it to see what he had been working on lately. There were lots of pages where he just wrote down random words in all different sizes and colors and patterns so you couldn’t read them if you tried, but every once in a while there would be something useful. Sometimes there would be something so good I would end up using it later on my own notes.

Sometimes I wish I could share my gift with him so we could talk telepathically instead of having to wait for him to say something out loud so I could hear him think it instead of hearing him say it out loud so I could read his mind instead of just listening to him speak about something boring like the weather outside or where he wanted to go for lunch today. But unfortunately that wasn’t possible. The gift only passed down through my family line, and the only people I ever got it from were my parents and grandparents before that, not from Travis or anyone else who wasn’t related by blood to me directly (or at least not any more). That’s what made Travis my friend in the first place; our great grandparents had both been born in the same town back on Earth long ago where people were still able to get along with each other without fighting all the time over things like which color is superior or whether cats are better than dogs or which sports team is best no matter what year it is. They met on their own planet for almost every important moment in their lives because they hadn’t wanted their children and grandchildren to be raised as enemies forever with each other because of some stupid conflict over who lived on top of whom during whatever stupid war happened between their ancestors back then… which is why they could have kids together in the first place so we could meet each other today and talk about how lame our ancestors were back then who kept us separated by thousands of miles away from each other so long after their big stupid conflicts ended hundreds of years ago but whatever right?

But now Travis has gone missing since yesterday because he went into town without telling anyone first and hasn’t returned yet and I don’t know where he is but I can sense his presence somewhere nearby in some way I don’t quite understand yet which is why I know something bad has happened to him even though everybody else thinks they know everything they always think they know turns out be wrong most of the time anyway…