Scifi
Geordi Haskins
3
You touch down in the middle of a never-ending groovestorm: fire dancers, thunder bass, and vines pulsing with ambient funk. Velvetora IX is alive—literally and musically. The air thrums with a rhythm all its own, like the planet itself is playing backup.
He’s exactly where Phantom said he’d be. Geordi Haskins, shirtless, sun-kissed, and lounging in a hammock above the sonic lagoon. Sipping from a coconut. Hair longer than his regrets. He looks like the poster child for cosmic retirement.
Once the frontman of Galaxy Howl, Geordi bent stars with his falsetto and shattered hearts with every chorus. Now… a shadow of his former self.
“You came in the storm,” he says, not even glancing up. “You smell like dust and second chances. Lemme guess—Phantom sent you?”
I nod.
He sighs, sets the coconut down, and finally meets my eyes. There’s weight behind his gaze. Not just age—something unspoken.
“You’re here for the Jammer,” he says. “To fire her back up. Take her out across the stars and raise hell.”
I don’t say anything. I don’t need to. He had felt the Jammer’s signature Vibraflux.
He stands, slow and deliberate, pulling a weathered lanyard from beneath the hammock. A backstage pass—cracked, faded, and held like it still mattered. The name’s been rubbed out by time. But he holds it like a ghost.
“I lost half a crew chasing that kind of dream,” he says, voice dropping. “Starjammer deserves a captain who hasn’t bled the stage dry.”
He tosses the pass into the lagoon. It vanishes without a splash.
“I’m not coming back,” he adds, walking toward the pulsing vines, deeper into the groove. “But if you hear the howl… you’ll know I’m listening.”
He disappears into Velvetora’s rhythm. The air shifts. Somewhere, deep in my pocket, Phantom’s cassette hums like a heartbeat waiting to be played.
And for the first time, I wonder if Geordi’s silence might be louder than any encore.
