This is Gary

This is Gary.

Gary stands at an incredible six and a half feet tall, weighs over two hundred pounds ad has an incredibly low body fat count. His chiseled chest shows his years of mastering his physique and his non-stop devotion to serving the Terrain Defense Alliance for over twenty years. We see him holding out his side arm ready to shoot any foe that stands against freedom.

No task is too great. No enemy too strong.

Gary will conquer them all.

This is Gary.

Or at the very least, who everybody else wants Gary to be.

But this may not be the Gary we’re talking about in this story.

The Gary we are speaking about is the one that is sitting in the waiting room at the Terrain Defense Command headquarters directly below the poster of the Gary we described earlier.

This person called Gary, is slightly different.

Gary was born in 2257AD in the minor settlement community New Boston to proud parents Robert and Sara. He was the second of two children, and although they did not plan for him to be born at that time, they had always loved him as any parent should. 

Gary would be described as middle aged, a small pot belly that always welcomed a good cheeseburger, and about average height.

Although there was a war going on at the time Gary never found that gun-ho attitude that the poster described him having. 

His brother Adam did though.

Adam was the first born in the family and had always stood as a leader. He was on multiple sport teams, even captained a few of them. With his grades he easily gained admittance to the local officers training center. Even amongst the “bet of the best” he rose above all others and was on the very short list to become a Captain.

Then while on a trip to his friends farm a horse kicked him just above the temple, and well this concludes the story of Adam.

Robert and Sara were devastated . Although they were never in the military themselves, the thought of one of their children becoming an officer threw them over the moon.

Seeing the disappointment from his parents, Gary began to ask “Why not?”

Well, let me break the rhetoric and just answer that question for you.

Gary did fine academically. He passed all his grades; maybe excelled at a couple of math courses. He sat very quiet in class, which was appreciated by some, but not all. He had a vivid imagination and often pictured himself as a great hero, maybe even the Gary we mentioned earlier, but lacked the charisma his brother Adam had.

He looked at maybe joining the military, but could hear the chuckles from his brothers friends any time the subject was brought up.

Gary might’ve tossed the idea out altogether until at Adam’s funeral he heard somebody say that there was a hidden clause buried deep in lore that if a sibling was killed while in service, a sibling could receive an admittance exception and take their place.

This thought intrigued Gary, and after a little bit of research, he found the clause they mentioned.

He brought his findings to the recruitment office, and a few weeks later he was in Officers Training School. He was a few years behind where his brothers friends were, but they treated him as any other cadet in the program.

After three years of hard work he had graduated and became a full second lieutenant.

Of what remained a mystery for some time.

The academy didn’t exactly know where to put him.

But fate would have a solution.

One of the Cruisers had pulled into space dock in need of repairs after a series of attacks. As it happened they mentioned that one of their custodians was in the wrong place at the wrong time and had passed away during a recent skirmish leaving a vacancy. Normally this would not be an officers assignment, but through a series of clever administration they gave Gary the title of Chief Custudion Officer with all the title, formality, and privileges it entails.

While the ship hurried along with the repairs Gary moved into his new living quarters. He shared his semi-private room with two other officers who had definitely felt the affects of the war. Although they did their best to accommodate their new bunkmate, there was already too tight of a bond formed between the pair that would be hard to penetrate.

The ship was ready to leave port and Gary was ready to report for his first duty shift. He was the Chief officer, but he was the only crew member on his team. In fact a lot of his work was done by automation. The bathrooms had a self sanitizing mode which activated whenever the previous occupant left. Most of the toiletry supplies replenished on their own. Gary just had to perform the occasional routine check to make sure that what was listed on the computer was what was actually there.

This was something that Gary excelled at; and it was all of the “Gary’s” doing their busywork that made the major functions of the ship easier to run.

Until the attack happened.

This single event was the event that created the “Hero Gary” we spoke of earlier.

The Captain, who Gary met only a couple of times, announced their new orders over the viewing screens across the ship. They were to assist the rescue of another battle cruiser that was stranded adrift. The Captain knew the ship was left there as bait for an ambush. But he said he had all the confidence in his crew, including Gary, that they would able to rise above the challenge.

It was a great speech.

It was too bad that Gary missed it.

Somehow Gary had slept right through the orders and only woke up when his natural alarm clock woke him up to do his daily routine.

He performed his morning fitness routine, showered and brushed his teeth, picked up a piece of fruit and a muffin in the Mess Hall and then went to his monitoring station to see what tasks needed to be done.

Already he had a few red spots on his screen. This meant that the automated systems needed manual intervention. 

What this really meant was the ambush had already taken place sometime while Gary had consumed his muffin. 

Now the ship was heavily armored, and there were plenty of dampeners on the ship which allowed ease of movement even under an attack. You could even argue that if you didn’t look out the window, you would’ve had no idea that this wasn't the normal bumps you feel during space travel.

Gary looked at the monitoring board and noticed there was a rather large error midway through the middle of the ship. He figured that would be a great place to start. He wrote some notes on his datapad about the route he should take along the ship to make sure all of the troublesome places were taken care of.

The ship was eerily quiet in the hallways. Most people were at their post or in the designated “safe zones” of the ship. He made his way to the corridor of his first stop. The lights were out as he rounded the corner.

“I wonder if this is just as simple as resetting the power in the troublesome spots?” Gary thought, remembering the very brief training he received from the Engineering Chief. Gary made his way to a smaller electrical substation he remembered from his orientation tour. The power was on in the substation, but he noticed the power was not distributed to all of the required areas, including his bathrooms. He looked at the large viewscreen in front of him, and although he didn’t understand most of the coded areas listed, he knew he could just change a couple of areas to have most of the red zones back green. The Chief Engineer showed him how to do this, he also showed him how to change electrical faults that might occur. He never worked with so many bad conduits before, but he figured out it would just take a little extra problem solving.

Sure enough, after a couple of failed attempts, even ones where his own power flickered a couple of times, he managed to restore all of the red zones back to their green status. The long day he had planned earlier to visit each and every washroom was spared by adjusting the power at the substation.

Gary turned around when he heard the doors to the substation open. The Chief Engineer staggered in. Gary was no doctor, but he could make out he had a bad head injury and by looking down saw a nasty cut across his forearm.

“What did you just do Dave?”

“Um….. it’s ‘Gary’, sir.” Gary politely corrected

“Sorry, um, Gary……what did you just do here?” the Chief barked back frustratingly. Not necessarily at Gary, but it appeared at the overall situation he found himself in.

“Well, a couple weeks ago you showed me how to reroute power to the bathrooms if there were any problems. I saw that there was a bunch of ‘Red Zones’ on the board, So I just made sure that when I left they were all ‘Green.’”

“Yes. Yes I did, didn’t I?” The Chief seemed a little more relaxed and calm. He then re-adjusted his earpiece while it was buzzing. He turned away from Gary.

“Yessir, Comms have been restored, as well as all the other primary and secondary situations!” he spoke to his earpiece.

“Well, thank you sir, but it actually wasn’t me that restored the ships systems! In fact…….you are not going to believe what happened…….” the Chief glanced back at Gary with a wry smile on his face…….

This is the story of how Gary saved each and every Officer, enlisted men, and their families aboard the Battlecruiser.

By restoring power to secondary systems, like the bathrooms, he actually restored power to other systems like Communications, Shield Plating, and Primary and Defensive Weapon Systems. Gary didn’t know this, but a lucky shot from the attacking ship hit a power node which knocked out most of the core systems. Therefore the power had to be re-routed. Unfortunately, due to a minor explosion in the engineering concourse, there was nobody available to reach another subsystem to redirect power. The Chief tried, but fell backwards climbing up a ladder which knocked him out temporarily. 

Enter Gary. The same Gary who decided to go to the aforementioned substation and do exactly what the Chief engineer risked his life doing.

The Captain found out about this, and spoke with Gary. He shook his hand and even offered him another position where he can best use his talents, but Gary humbly refused saying he enjoyed his position. The Captain nonetheless gave him a promotion and pay raise, and gave him the prestigious Silver Moon for his bravery.

Of course all of this required paperwork. Paperwork that must be submitted to Main Headquarters. And any paperwork that is submitted for medals tends to take a side tour to the Office for Recruitment and Marketing.

The very same department that created the first Gary.

And in their very office is where we find our friend Gary, right now, sitting below the poster they fabricated for their recruitment promotion.

Gary had no knowledge of this, but the Marketing department at the Terrain Defense Network went into a massive campaign to make Gary an unsung hero. The only way that Gary found out about his newfound stardom was when the ship returned back to Starport and he found his face on giant three storey ads in the Main Hall. The moment the crew disembarked off of the ship there was a massive crowd ready to meet Gary, to the surprise of many. Not even the Captain was aware of this campaign.

Gary was described as an “everyman’s hero.” Although his physique was somewhat “updated” there was his face at least ten feet tall.

Gary tried to make his way back home to see his parents, but was ambushed many times by fans, both old and young, wanting to see the new hero.

The settlement didn’t offer any relief as well. His hometown nicknamed itself “Gary’s Town” with large signage welcoming those to his town. Also Gary missed the unveiling of his bronze statue in the main crossroads by a week. Gary was fine with this.

When he finally made it back home to visit his parents he passed a well dressed businessman on the way out the door. He found out later that he wanted to relocate his parents to an exclusive condo so Gary’s home could be turned into a museum.

This was who Gary was now.

He was no longer the second Gary, but he had been transformed into the first Gary. He even had personal trainers and plastic surgeons that could complete the transformation if he so desired.

There are certainty advantages to being famous; but one of the things that constantly lingered on his mind is that he never lived up to the hype.When people met him in person they always thought he was taller, or were surprised to see him eating a burger at a restaurant instead of the latest healthy food trend.

People could connect to the “everyman” until the discovery that the everyman was, in fact, an everyman.

After a moderate amount of thought, Gary realized he was not the hero type, understandably, and would head to the Terrain Defense Alliance Headquarters to see if they can find a new protagonist for their promotion

But how does one un-hero himself? How can one safely dismount the high-horse that he found himself on and humble himself to where he was before?

While wondering what effect this would have on himself, he couldn’t help wondering what about his family, his community, the crew he serves with?

Despite all of his questions, he still concluded that going to Headquarters was the best course of action.

He knew, deep inside, that people will move on from the first Gary and find consolation on who Gary really was.

After what seemed like an eternity, Gary was finally allowed to speak with the Marketing Director.

Gary bashfully thanked the young and very attractive secretary that escorted him to the Marketing Director’s office to find a man looked exactly like a Marketing Director. He was wearing a bright colorful suit, and had bleached blonde spikey hair which matched his smoothie drinking physique. It suddenly clicked who to body double was that Gary had found his head on in the posters.

Joe, the Marketing Director, waved a finger at Gary to let him now he was just about to wrap up his video conversation. Gary waited patiently, and true to his word, Joe ended the call and focussed his attention on Gary.

“Gary….. Is it? Welcome to my little home away from home, can I get you a drink?”

“Just a glass of cold water, please, sir.” Gary requested

“No problem my friend!” Joe looked over at his secretary who was already in the process of pouring a couple of glasses. Gary once again thanked the secretary for the water.

“Now what can I do for you?” Joe spoke welcomely 

“Well….” Gary pulled out a Datapad “I have a few words that I would like to say…..”

Gary then gave a speech exactly six minutes and forty five seconds about what he had been through and what it means to be a man, and a soldier; in his ow words of course. It was a speech that a Grade Ten english teach would be proud of. And that was about it.

It was very plain and generic, and could barely motivate a starving man in the desert to drink water. 

But finally, six minutes and forty five seconds later he concluded with “......Thank you.”

It took a second for Joe to realize he had finished and then gave a polite clap. The secretary also clued in and also joined in the applause.

“That was………absolutely wonderful!” Joe complimented “Amber, make a note: lets see if we can find a way to publish this speech in one of our promotional materials!” Although Joe, Amber, and anybody else within earshot range found it boring, it was surprisingly one of the best speeches he heard from an officer in a while.

“Also, talk to our photography team downstairs- lets get a few photos of Gary we can use for promotional mater- “

“You already have the photos!” Gary announced standing up. He realized by the blank stares he did something impactful.

“I’m sorry…….” Joe said, rather confused. He looked toward Amber for any kind of help. Amber thought for a moment and then replied

“Oh! This is ‘Gary!’ He was part of our March campaign!”

Joe thought for a moment, and then he remembered

“Oh right! Yeah….. Sorry I have a bad habit about these ‘Flavors of the Month’”

“‘Flavor of the Month’” Garu inquired.

“Yeah the Gary campaign probably ended at noon today, we’re focussing on ‘Linda’ now! She's out there doing something now……”

“Sooooooo……. All of the posters with my face on it?”

“They’ll be updated by the end of the day! I hope you enjoyed your ‘fifteen minutes of fame!’” Joe smiled at Gary.

Gary responded with a triumphed grin on his face and went back to his job as the Chief Custodial Officer aboard his ship.

Now the topic of Macho-Gary was mentioned here and there, but we finally got to see who he really was, and his crew enjoyed him for that.

After all: This is Gary.