Satellite Love

by Genki Ferguson

  “Anna, do you have any parents?”

  She cast a sidelong glance at me, as though annoyed I was getting off topic. “Yeah, a mom,” she answered dismissively. “Don’t worry about her, she’s almost as imaginary as you.”

  “Is that normal?”

  She looked at me, puzzled. “What do you mean by that? What counts as ‘normal’?”

  “I mean, not just your mom, but…” I regretted speaking in the first place.

  “Say it.” Anna stared at me, unblinking, knowing full well that I was too afraid to go further.

  I said nothing in response.

  “Don’t ask questions about things you’ll never understand,” she said, breaking the silence. “Besides, I called you here for a reason. I want you to see something. Do you remember what life was like up in space?”

  “Kind of. It already feels like a lifetime ago.”

  “I bet you didn’t realize how beautiful it was. I don’t blame you. You didn’t understand how hideous things are down on Earth.”

  I wasn’t sure what specifically she found so “hideous.”

  “Look. Do you see that?” She pointed to the sky. I couldn’t see anything in particular. “Look closer. There’s a satellite flying above us right now.”

  I tried to focus, but the sky was motionless, staring back at me with impartial silence. All I could see was a handful of stars, the true spectre of space washed out by light pollution down below.

  “Do you know who that satellite is?”

  “No.”

  “It’s you, Leo.”

  Anna was now lying on her back, her figure drowning in a sea of asphalt and melting snow. I lay down beside her, trying to line up my perspective with hers. I realized I was lying on her hair, but she was too distracted to notice.

  “Your soul used to be in that machine, an A-347 titanium alloy satellite. Then I brought you down to Earth. I wanted you all to myself. I made you human. Whatever’s up there in space now is just an empty shell.”

  “Thank you,” I said, unsure if I meant it.

  “No, you don’t understand. What I did was wrong.”

  “Oh?”

  “The world down here is rotten. I had no right to try to make you a part of it.”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I opted for nothing at all. The metallic smell coming from Anna was growing increasingly unbearable. I tried sitting up to escape it, but succeeded only in making myself light-headed.

  “What I should have done is gone up there to you,” she said.

  The satellite that was supposedly me wasn’t visible at all, and perhaps it never existed to begin with. I could feel my eyes straining as they searched for satellites either as real as her, or as imaginary as me. Floating above was the waning moon, a reflection of the sun.

  “We’re going to escape, Leo, just the two of us. We won’t have to worry about anyone else ever, ever again. It will be just you and me.”

  Was Anna aware she had made me in Soki’s image? That in the end, I was nothing more than a proxy for someone she barely knew?

  There comes a day when you realize that your creators are imperfect. I had seen this time and time again, from far up in the comfort of space. I saw it in children who watch their parents fall out of love, in sons who inherit their father’s tempers, in students who outgrow their masters. The Anna lying beside me was different than the Anna I’d first imagined, even if the body was still the same. This Anna was capable of breaking my heart.

  “Don’t worry, Leo, I’ll make it right. You can rely on me.”

  That noxious smell was growing more intense, yet Anna didn’t seem to notice. It clung to her clothes and pooled out with her breath. At the time, I was too exhausted to question it, too exhausted to even bring up my visit with The General. My movements felt slow, as though I had been struck by a solar flare, as though I were brushing against a psychedelic state.

  I wonder now, if I had noticed in time that the smell was gasoline, whether I could have stopped her.

  Anna’s image warped in front of me, twitching and pulling as she continued her rants towards the sky. I had lost the thread of what she was saying, but it no longer mattered; simply watching her was enough. It wasn’t that I found her attractive—with every passing day her physical form was growing more indistinct, her actions more neurotic. Rather, there was something deep within her manic core pulling me into her orbit. A thousand micrometeoroids had knocked us off path, had changed who was holding on to who.

  I felt sleep, mixed with gasoline, compel me from the outer edges of consciousness. I was weightless, a dream floating within a dream, and as I lay back down beside her, I saw a figure on horseback approach from the distance. His long, angular body was set against the horse’s dynamic form, dark against its owner’s pale skin. The contrast between the two would have made a beautiful ink painting, I thought, as I slowly gave myself up to sleep.

  The end was coming. I could feel it. The only problem was, I didn’t know what that meant.

  ANNA

  THE PRINCE ARRIVED SHORTLY after Leo fell asleep. Somehow, I wasn’t surprised. His return was only inevitable, was one of the few pieces of closure I needed before launch. I would have been disappointed if the last time The Prince and I were together was the day I betrayed him.

  I chose not to watch The Prince advance towards me. Instead, I continued staring at the millions of satellites flying above. I was amazed that Leo could sleep at a time like this—the combined light they emitted was almost blinding. They writhed and twisted under their own weight, pulsating with the breath of life. What I was watching no longer felt like space. It was as though I was gazing upon the reflection of Sakita’s skyline in the waters that surrounded it. If I were to just reach a little farther, I might fall up into it…

  The Prince dismounted and took his time approaching me on foot. Even from the corner of my eye, I noticed that he was limping. His steed was unfamiliar, and I wondered how The Prince had managed to survive after I had ridden away on his Tengu. Once he reached me, he turned his attention to the sky, straining to see what I was looking at, before stepping over Leo to sit down beside me.

  “How many years has it been?” he asked.

  “I can’t recall,” I lied.

  “Time has a funny way of stretching,” he said, taking great care with each word. His voice had lost the youthful quality I’d so loved, and now came out as coarse as sand. “What’s been five years for you has probably been twenty for me.”

  I then took my first look at The Prince in years, and was alarmed at his condition. The trim, gracious warrior I had created so long ago had withered into an anemic husk and lost the healthy colour earned from a lifetime in the sun. This must be how the imagination decays. It was difficult to believe I’d ever modelled the dying man in front of me after the hero from Lawrence of Arabia. Still, he sat with his back straight, head raised with a defiant dignity. And his eyes, completely clouded, lazily met mine.

  “I’m going blind, you know. My eyes are being eaten from the inside out. Losing my hearing, too.”

  “Cataracts? You can’t be that old.”

  Our hands brushed each other’s as I sat up, and I was surprised when he smiled.

  “No, something worse. You seem healthy, though. How have you been? Still going on adventures?”

  “I get out from time to time.”

  I can hardly be held accountable for decisions I made as a child, not least abandoning this old warrior so long ago. Yet seeing the translucent skin taut over the bones of his atrophied arms reminded me—no matter how hard I tried to forget—of how they had once hoisted me atop Tengu in search of adventure. I was just as capable of betrayal as everyone else, was by virtue just as weak. To make matters worse, The Prince seemed to hold no resentment whatsoever towards me. He had made peace with himself, was maybe even making peace with me. If
only people were less quick to forgive, then my anger would be easier to justify.

  It was the dead of night, yet in the distance, a lone cicada began to chirp. It cried out alone, somehow still alive this deep into winter, somehow still awake at this time. I had assumed its sounds were echoing from within my mind when The Prince turned his head to listen as well.

  “What happened to you?” I asked.

  “Well, I survived the ambush you left me in, surprisingly. That’s not the reason I look like death.” He laughed a little too loudly at this, as if trying to prove his health, before continuing. “I spent some time on my own, thinking. Actually, all I could do was think. If I had stayed in that desert any longer, I probably would have conjured up an imaginary friend too. Wouldn’t that be peculiar, an imaginary friend having an imaginary friend.”

  He stopped for a moment and took a breath, his shoulders moving in a full-body effort, as if attempting to free the last bits of air still trapped in his chest. He was missing a few fingers on his left hand, which he held in a fist so as to hide their absence from me.

  What pained me most were his blind eyes; there was no way he’d be able to appreciate the spectacle of the satellites above. Had The Prince come back to me in order to die? I suddenly felt so, so small, sitting next to this phantom from my childhood.

  “Most of what I thought about was you,” he said. The clouds of air he exhaled were much thinner, much more strained, than mine. “I’ll spare you the details, but I figured it would be the best course of action to forgive you and move on.”

  “So why do you look like you’re dying?”

  He chuckled. “I ate something I shouldn’t have, just because I was homesick. Don’t worry about it.”

  The soft, dying timbre of his voice struck a chord of guilt within me, returning me to those simpler, less lonesome days we had once shared. I found myself struggling to know what to say.

  “I miss you sometimes too, you know,” I whispered.

  “I don’t doubt it. We used to have fun together. Lots of adventures between the two of us.”

  “Like that time in Baghdad?”

  “That whole deal with the bandits?”

  “They all involved bandits.”

  He laughed again, a bittersweet sound to be sure. I was surprised that I could dredge him up from the depths of my consciousness after all this time. I imagine the gasoline fumes played some part in it.

  “Remember how you used to make me disappear whenever we argued? God, I hated that.” He was smiling, somewhat forced, reminiscing with an edge. “Whenever you did that to me it felt like I was weightless, flying through the air.”

  I watched him struggle with his words, suffering from some sort of internal pain. Beneath the skin on his forearms I saw movement, engorged like a varicose vein. Too slow to be a spasm, too sudden to be natural. He noticed this and closed his eyes, as if willing with all his strength to make it stop.

  “It hardly matters now, I suppose,” he said.

  We spoke like this for hours, until light started to break through the horizon line, softly stirring Leo from his sleep. I wondered what satellites saw in their dreams.

  “It’s great that you made a friend your age,” The Prince said, motioning to Leo. “Especially a boy.”

  I smiled, letting my guard down without even noticing. “He’s a little clueless, but he means well.”

  “Is he kind to you?” he asked.

  “He’s kind.”

  “Good. That’s all that matters.” The Prince leaned back and placed a four-fingered hand into my own. “You deserve to be happy.”

  I looked down at our hands, stared at the stub where his index finger should have been. Noticed how our grasps didn’t quite fit into each other anymore. I thought then how arbitrary the notion of “deserving” is. Did I deserve my digits any more than he did?

  “Do you want to know how Leo and I met?” I asked.

  “Was it at school?”

  “No, actually. It was about a week ago. He came down to meet me. He’s from outer space.”

  I paused to make sure The Prince knew what I was getting at. He paused to ensure he’d heard correctly.

  “Anna, is that boy real, or imaginary?”

  “Oh, he’s imaginary. One hundred per cent made up.”

  “You created another non-existent person. After everything that happened with me, you still thought that was a good idea? Does he know?”

  “About you or that he isn’t real?”

  “Either. Both.”

  “No, and yes.”

  The Prince’s face betrayed no sign of emotion. He closed his blind eyes once more, and attempted to centre himself. While he was lost in meditation, I saw movements similar to those beneath the skin of his arms crawl through his neck. It was as though he had worms swimming just under the skin.

  “Does he hate himself as much as I did?” A dwindling hope clung to his voice.

  “I wouldn’t really know. We haven’t spoken about it much.”

  “What about this do you not understand? It’s horrible, being brought into this world half-complete. I was only one aspect of your life, Anna, but you were all of mine. Do you realize how terrifying that is?”

  “No, can’t say I do.”

  “There was an entire world just beyond my grasp, a full life that I could almost taste. I’m only here now because you chose to remember me. I have no idea what will happen when you forget about me for good. Will I just evaporate? Or do I just get absorbed back into you? And what about him? Does he know that one lapse of memory on your part and his entire life is gone? He would not sleep so peacefully if he knew.”

  The Prince attempted to stand, but a spasm of pain pulsed through his body, forcing him to buckle weakly to the ground. His breathing, agitated out of exertion or anger, was the only sound to be heard in that cool night. I felt his stare upon me—he was searching for eye contact, which I denied by turning my gaze upward. His aggression, combined with the lights of the satellites, was overwhelming.

  “You don’t really attach any importance to our lives, do you? Just because we don’t bleed.” He gathered his strength for one final push. “Anna, why do you want me to hate you so much?”

  Everyone gets what they deserve. I didn’t have anything more to say, and instead continued watching the sky.

  “It’s a shame you can’t see,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. “There’s a fantastic light show going on right above your head.”

  At this he curled into himself, then let out a slow, deep moan. The flesh on his back began to move in delicate waves, gradually multiplying. It reminded me of ripples spreading across a still pool. There was a certain beauty in the manner The Prince was meeting his demise, and I felt a familiar sadness work its way through my soul. I leaned forward and let out a sympathetic moan as well, originating from the growing void in my chest. For a brief instant, our voices harmonized. I hadn’t planned on The Prince dying today. All I could offer was my companionship, to be his comrade one last time.

  And then, just like that, The Prince was gone. His final cry had been cut short, and I was left singing someone else’s coda. There were no death throes to signal The Prince’s passing; I simply looked beside me to find his body already half decayed, consumed soundlessly by thousands of fine white parasites. I wondered if these were what had killed the old warrior, if this is what it meant to forget.

  The worms worked through his body with a malicious efficiency, as though they were one organism instead of an army of smaller ones. It took the span of only a few minutes for the parasites to finish their job, phasing into nothingness after completion.

  Once The Prince had become nothing more than a shadow, I watched with astonishment as a dark blue ball of light emerged from the ground, hovering over where he last lay. A hitodama, small enough to fit in the palm of my hand.
I had heard of how the souls of the dead separated from their bodies, but I’d never actually seen a hitodama before. According to legend, The Prince’s hitodama would not only signal his death, but the birth of a child somewhere else as well. I looked out to the skyline, knowing that under one of those roofs, a life was being brought into the world.

  The blue orb began slowly increasing in size, losing its colour and brightness as it did so. It spread itself thinner and thinner, enveloping all of Lucky Ginseng itself, bathing me in its cool glow. A short while later, the hitodama disappeared, nothing more than a murmur from the heart.

  Dawn light made way for morning, compelling Leo to gradually wake, shielding his eyes from the sun.

  “How long was I asleep?”

  I sat watching the damp spot on the asphalt that was once my only real childhood friend. His final words appeared to sing from somewhere beyond, mixed with the call of the cicada. I was afraid to make a serious attempt at crying; if I couldn’t produce any tears I would never be able to forgive myself. Instead, I remained completely still, poising myself on the brink of emotion.

  Anna, why do you want me to hate you so much?

  Part 3

  SATELLITE

  WHEN I FIRST MET Anna, I wasn’t sure if she was a comedy or a tragedy. I rarely saw her laugh, I never saw her cry, and I had no idea how to classify her. She acted so at odds with humankind, it was hard to believe she was from Earth and I was the one from outer space.

  Let’s be clear: after that night at Lucky Ginseng, Anna became pure tragedy. Indulge me, then, and let me describe my final happy day with her. No matter how carefully I comb through the past, no matter how thoroughly I sift through it, I can’t find a moment of relief with her past this. This is the most precious memory I have of her, and I would wage war against time herself to keep from forgetting it. This brief interlude took place just before I discovered what kind of machine Anna was building, just as the first month of the new millennium came to a close.