"CMDR. BRICK TURGID AND THE CORPSE CORPS"

a space pulp mis-adventure

by:  R.R.L. Buck

1.

Brain Richard Turgid was born on Earth.  He lived a moderately mundane existence there and eked out a living as a clerk in a small failing bookshop.  No one ever expected much from him, and he expected even less of himself.  He never managed to make his mark on the world.  The world didn't seem to notice.  He wasn't slow or dumb as his nickname might suggest, but he wasn't an extraordinary intelligence either.  He also wasn't athletic or abnormally strong as another possible interpretation of his abridged moniker might conjure up.  "Brick" was simply what the kids in elementary school had cut his name down to.  He was neither Brian nor Richard, just simply "Brick".  He kept and relished the tag like a badge of honor, feeling some kind of specialness in this miniscule amount of attention.  That would be the only thing to set him apart from the monotonous multitudes of other children no one ever bothered about.  He felt a certain distinction that at least he wouldn't be simply forgotten.  Yet he was.
His life was uneventful not from a lack of trying, only a lack of succeeding.  When he was a young boy  he had dreams of far off places and adventures beyond the small life that seemed to constrict about everyone not blessed with money or applaudable abilities.  He enjoyed reading and in a youthful spurt of exuberance as a teenager he stated to his parents that he would one day become a writer.  His parents didn't discourage him, but neither did they encourage.  So with no one paying attention and with no challenges or critiques of his progress, he wrote but did not improve.  This did not last long against the unrelenting pressure of  mundane existence and by the time he finished high school the dream had faded.
Some people have reserves of determination that carry them through such times of un-interest, usually provided by environment or some unrecognized stimuli.  Brick Turgid did not have this reserve.  The fire within him did not burn bright, it merely smoldered.  There was nothing singular about him, save for his name, and the world was just fine with that.  Life progressed for Brick in an unremarkable way and as the years crawled by he was carried along with the rest of society's jetsam by the tides of mediocracy.  His value to his society was in his valuelessness.  He and the millions of other unregarded individuals existed only in statistics.  They were the nameless numbers by which society's elite compared themselves above.  Over all an existence with little thrust.
However it is sometimes to such men that the weird finds a place to cultivate, like a crop field lain fallow.  When the rain comes new life may spring forth with exuberant effort.  The metaphorical rain in Brick Trugid's life was a rocket ship from outer space.  Or at least that's what he thought it was at the time.