chapter five: Only Connect

There is hunger in the eyes of Noakes, too – Jayne can see that plain enough… but hunger for what, though?…

Something we don’t want, I’ll lay coin on that…

Cobb stands suspicious behind the crouching man - the old timer feeling the walls, swooping like a vulture as his red edged eyes catch sight of a near invisible seal. Still ain’t stopped yammering to his self… Never something to make a man like Jayne feel easy minded. Catches another half sentence as Noakes turns from inspecting the seal. The old coot is beckoning to Jayne to pry the seal apart – but there’s no connection with what Cobb hears – and Noakes ain’t looking him in the eye neither.

...called ourselves the Shakespeare Boys…

“What?” Jayne’s question provokes only a scowl.

“What ‘what’? – I say something?” Noakes spits. “Gorram ear snoops! Tchah!” waves his fingers as if warding off a sudden cloud of gnats. Truth is he’s fending off unexpected memories – the ghosts of times gone.

Looks around again at the gleaming vista around him – hell, no wonder he’s reminded of…that he sees...that he hears...

“...and a Shakespeare fan, right?”

“Sure am.”

That breaks the hostility of the crowded room around him - a little. Since the formation – the gathering – of those in the development unit, it had been almost a case-study in power-relations, the in-fighting for dominance – the fast and fickle allegiances and the hierarchies, the hates. The Shakespeare group was meant to be a way around that as well as a pressure valve against the Military and those Corporations running with them. More and more and midnight oil or no - seemed everything jumping off the drawing board just made their masters mad – fury was expressed with threats to funding, closure of projects, redundancy… shame.

Unsurprising maybe… this enormous facility hid out on the blue moon of Circe 451 and nick-named Prospero, at first – then simply The Island. Yeah, this was the factory alright, housing all th