by James Welsh
“What about me?” Nash asked, the nervousness returning.
“What made you come here? What pulled you to the colony?”
“It’s more like what pushed me,” Nash said. “I tried to make the world a better place, and I got pushed out like a body pushes out a splinter.”
“I’m sure not everyone was against you. Surely, there must have been someone who loved you.”
Nash flinched a little. “There was, but I lost her, like I’ve lost everything else.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that,” Chaser said, her words trickling with genuine sympathy. “What’s her name?”
“I’d rather not say,” Nash said hesitatingly. “I just don’t know how I’d react hearing her name out loud. Sometimes saying it calms me down – other times, though, it just winds me up. I’m sorry – I must sound so strange to you right now.”
“You’re talking to someone who works in dreams,” Chaser said softly. “I’ve seen things I can’t find the words to explain. But there is one thing I can put in words, and that’s Shakespeare. Do you know who that is?”
“I’ve heard the name.”
“That’s good, because not many people have. I only had the pleasure of meeting him because I used to be a nightingale back on Earth today, and I had access to the occasional library owned by a charter official. Books that aren’t technical manuals are a hard thing to come by these days, and so I held those books like gold when I found them. Here, this room will work.”
Chaser suddenly halted in front of a door down the hallway. As she opened the door and flicked on the lights, Nash found that they were in the clinic’s laundry room. The room itself was skinny, with shelves of sheets pressing in from left and right. Up ahead was what Nash could only imagine was the sanitizing machine – the metal box was humming as it cleaned yesterday’s laundry.
As Chaser led Nash inside, she closed the door behind her. Nash watched as Chaser pulled down some sheets from the shelf and arranged them into a makeshift mattress on the floor. As Chaser did this, she continued, “Like I was saying, Shakespeare was a writer from centuries back, but his words are getting louder every day. His most famous play was Romeo and Juliet, which I read one night after one of my clients fell asleep. It’s a story of two lovers who can’t be together because their families are at war. At one point, Romeo is exiled, and Juliet is about to be married off to a man she doesn’t love. Seeing no other option, she takes a potion that makes her appear dead, but she is actually in a deep sleep. She sounds out word for Romeo to rescue her from the crypt that her grieving family will bury her in. But the message is delayed, and Romeo finds out that she had died. And so he buys poison and dies at her side. Juliet later wakes up, finds her dead Romeo next to her, and kills herself as well.”
“That sounds like a happy ending, if there ever was one,” Nash said dryly. In reality, the story hit a little too close to home, and it touched one of his electric nerves. But Nash hid the pain as best as he could.
“It got me thinking, though – what would have happened if Romeo had bought a bottle of whiskey instead of poison? It wouldn’t be the first time someone tried to self-medicate through the drink. But where would that have left Romeo? He would have gotten lost in drinking, and he would have died slowly and away from his Juliet. How sad would that ending have been? Here, lie down – make yourself comfortable.”
Chaser motioned towards the bed of sheets on the floor. Not sure what exactly was going to happen next, Nash did as requested, and he wriggled in the sheets until he found home. “But Shakespeare knew better than to make Romeo build a prison in his mind and torture himself. No, Shakespeare let him die in Juliet’s arms, as free as the word itself. That’s why the story has lived on for so long: Shakespeare was the first to figure out the secret of life. The whole point of living is to find someone you can die with. And I can only imagine how trapped you must feel right now: you were rejected by Earth, and coming here must feel like exile. But you’ll be free the second you find love.”
“I told you, though, I lost the woman I loved,” Nash said, his voice crackling.
Chaser looked at Nash with pity, because he didn’t understand yet. She walked over to the light switch and turned off the lights. A few seconds later, Nash felt Chaser lie down next to him. Her words were a blanket thrown on his ear as she whispered, “You never lost your love because you haven’t found it yet. But I’ll help you find it.”
CHAPTER 5
Nash woke up the next morning to find himself in a dark laundry room. He thought that the night before was just a strange dream, but the linens around him felt very real. He reached over, expecting to feel Chaser’s arm, but felt nothing. She had vanished, leaving him alone. He felt a moment of betrayal that she would abandon him. The logical sphere of his mind reasoned that she had a busy schedule – insomnia was a plague in the colony, after all. But the thought of her keeping so many clients only made him jealous.
But, he had more important things to worry about. For one, he realized that he was in a place he shouldn’t be. It would be odd at the very least for him to be sleeping in the laundry room, criminal at the worst. He had to leave without being seen somehow. Nash wasn’t sure of many things, but he was confident that he didn’t want to visit the Sanctions two times in two days. As well, he realized that breaking out of the clinic just meant that he would be entering another jail: his first day of work. His heart sank as he realized that he was about to start a job that he hated more than anything else, and he had no other choice. It was tempting to stay in the laundry room forever, but he knew that couldn’t be an option.
Unfortunately, escaping the clinic was much easier than Nash thought it would be. He carefully opened the door and peeked down the hallway. There was no one else around but him. Going by the illuminated clock on the wall nearby, Nash saw that he had only been asleep for a few hours. It was still early morning according to the colony – more than likely the receptionist hadn’t arrived yet for another day’s work. His hopes were confirmed as he walked through the lobby and saw the front desk empty. There was no need for her to be there at any time, really – the patients’ vitals were transmitted wirelessly to a tablet computer that Bends kept, and everyone knew where the mad doctor lived if heaven forbid they needed him.
And so Nash stepped out of the clinic and into the darkness of a new day. The overhead lights rained down like a poor man’s nighttime sky, showing a colony that was going to become all too familiar for Nash. There were a handful of the colony’s hundreds walking around, either going to or leaving work – it was impossible to tell by the tired looks on their faces. Nash made his way towards the longhouse where the other miners slept, hoping to find a sanctuary there.
A few minutes later, Nash found himself back in the longhouse. He was about to unlock his little apartment when the door suddenly swung open, revealing a shadow against the apartment’s single light. Startled, Nash took a step back before he recognized the silhouette as being Stratos.
“You scared the daylights out of me,” Nash hissed, catching his breath. He stepped into the apartment. “How did you get in here anyway?”
Stratos smirked and held up a keycard. “Being a charter official has its perks, although I guess that could go without saying. Now it’s my turn to ask a question: where were you?”
Unable to look Stratos in the eye, Nash instead rummaged through a cabinet for the leftovers from yesterday’s food ration. “I went out for a walk.”
“After what happened to you last night? That’s either brave or stupid.”
“Why not both?” Nash asked. “And how did you hear about the attack?”
Stratos rolled his eyes. “I put a cup to Latch’s office door and listened in. What do you think? I’m here to audit the colony – they’re feeding me the daily reports. They’re saying that Khunrath fellow might be responsible – you know, the guy who vanished here a few years ago.”
“So I’ve heard,” Nash said.
“You know,
I’ve only received two reports so far, and already I know that this is the backwash of the universe. These people are little more than dust that’s learned how to breed.”
This made Nash turn and look Stratos in the face. “You know, that would sound like a miracle to some people.”
Stratos snorted as he sat down. “Don’t tell me that you’re defending them.”
“I can’t defend them because I’m as weak as them. This colony depends on the charter for everything from medical supplies to food to clothing to ship parts. The charter has these poor people fitted with a collar, and they can strangle the colonists all at once if they wanted. I’ve only been here since yesterday, but I saw how hungry the people were for the supplies we brought. This colony’s one missed shipment away from dying out.”
“These people should be lucky that they’re getting anything at all,” Stratos pointed out. “They’re here because they didn’t deserve to stay on Earth. Some are here for crimes they’ve committed, others are here for debts they owe, and others are here so that they can finally be useful in something. If this planet were to vanish, no one back on Earth would even notice.”
“They’ll notice when their lights go out,” Nash retorted. “That’s one thing that Earth depends on the colony for – the most important thing.”
It was true: the miners of Volans provided Earth with virtually every drop of electricity. If it wasn’t for the colony, then home would go dark. Stratos seemed to understand this too, because he sneered. “You’ve got me there. Just don’t go telling the colonists that. I don’t want them getting the wrong idea about where they fall in society.”
Nash suddenly realized that it would be best to change the subject – it was dangerous to argue this with a charter official. Desperate for anything else to talk about, Nash suddenly noticed that Stratos was wearing an epione glove on his right hand. He realized that the glove he saw the day before in Bends’ office was for a left hand. The doctor must have given the glove to him. Nash pointed at Stratos’ hand. “So, did you hurt your hand?”
“What?” Stratos asked, confused. He then looked down at the glove. “Oh! Yes, I hurt my hand before we left Earth. My hand got cut up pretty bad from a piece of machinery I was inspecting. Some nerve in my hand got slashed, and it’s taking forever to heal, if it ever does. The doctors back home gave me an epione glove to take the edge off the pain. I had to pick up a fresh glove yesterday from that doctor.”
“I never knew your hand was hurt,” Nash said, surprised, although not surprised enough to stop picking at the leftover food in front of him. He had gotten to know Stratos over the past month, and at no point did Stratos reveal his injury. Nash didn’t think he could be that oblivious.
Stratos just laughed. “Well, that’s what I was hoping for. I don’t like people seeing my pain. It just gives them the wrong impression of me. I’ve even learned to do everything with just my left hand. I control my body – my body doesn’t control me.”
Stratos suddenly stood up, stretching. “Come on, let’s get going. The next launch to Harbor will be leaving within the hour. We can’t miss it.”
Nash rushed the rest of the leftovers into his mouth and walked with Stratos towards the door. Before Stratos opened the door, he abruptly stopped and glared at Nash. “Oh, and be careful about who you stand up for. Otherwise, don’t be surprised if you get stepped on like these worms.”
***
The next launch to Harbor was a crowded one. Each launch was built to hold only a pilot and a handful of passengers – anything more was a safety violation. Pilot Joyce tried pointing this out to Stratos on the dock before they boarded the waiting ship.
“I’d think you, of all people, would appreciate following the rules,” Joyce snarled sweetly.
Stratos wasn’t the slightest embarrassed, although the pilot was knocking him down on a dock brimming with workers. If anything, it didn’t even faze him. “If you don’t want to fly me, that’s fine. I hear that the technicians are looking for a new worker. I’m sure they’ll appreciate someone who actually knows their way around one of these ships.”
Joyce looked as if she was going to hit Stratos, but then she thought better of it. Instead, she cracked a compromise with the auditor: Stratos and Nash were able to stowaway on the flight to the space station. The price was that two unlucky passengers were going to have to strap themselves down in the cargo hold at the back of the launch. Charter regulation said that no one could be floating when a ship was in motion, a rule everyone suddenly remembered in the presence of a charter official.
And so the passengers chose numbers and had a computer randomly generate digits to see who would be chosen, because drawing straws had not survived the apocalypse years before. Nash was dismayed to find that, like most games in life, he lost. Even worse, a few moments later, he learned that the chronic worrier Dart would be joining him in the cargo hold. As Nash strapped himself down to his jump seat, he looked over to see Dart fumbling with the harness for his seat. Dart was sick with worry, wondering out loud if he could buckle himself in before the ship took off. As the launch throttled out of the pit and into the reach of space, Nash realized that Dart was going to make the trip longer than it had to be.
“This is the first time I’ve sat back here,” Dart said, feeling the need to apologize for his harness.
“Don’t worry,” Nash said dryly. “It’s my first time sitting back here too.”
“If it’s this hard to buckle ourselves in, how hard must it be to unbuckle?” Dart wondered out loud.
“Probably pretty hard, I’d imagine,” Nash said, managing a shrug through the choking harness. “I’m sure someone up front will remember to help us if we need to abandon ship.”
Dart paled, as he wondered if he could trust anyone onboard the ship with saving his life.
For this trip, the launch was hauling more than just passengers. It was also bringing the newest quantum drill into orbit around the star. As a result, the launch was fused with one of its fellow ships at their hulls, with the drill held between them. The drill had been built back on Earth by humanity’s greatest minds, who essentially had plagiarized the master engineer Wesley Chroma’s blueprints. There was one key modification to the design: an exhaust port that ran through the entire marrow of the drill and emptied heat through the drill bit. The engineers back home had insisted that this was necessary, in order to prevent the drill from overheating on the strands of sunlight it wove. Although Chroma consulted on the construction, the engineers had not told him of the change beforehand – even across the galaxy, Chroma’s genius was still intimidating.
As they flew, Nash could only wish he had a window to look through. All he had to look at on the wall was a twist of cables, which funneled the sunlight to every electronic device onboard. Staring into the hypnotism of colors triggered shots of memory: he remembered the glide of artwork as he walked down the hallway of his old gallery back home. It was an old memory, one that he thought had died years before, one that he wanted to stay dead. The memory of what he had lost was still too painful, and it hurt to watch.
He tried to clear his mind and follow the advice that Chaser had given him, to break free from the chains of the past. And so he thought only of the memories he would have in the future. He did this, thinking that he would have memories full of hope and joy. But, with his eyes closed, all he saw was darkness. Nash was disappointed by this, not realizing yet that all life is born in the darkness.
Nash wasn’t sure if he had fallen asleep or not at this time. All he knew was that one second he was closing his eyes, the next he was opening them to see Wales floating in front of him.
“It’s time,” Wales said quietly, pointing towards the hatch. Nash was amazed at how quickly Wales had recovered overnight. The cuts and bruises from the assault were gone, and Wales looked as whole as he ever had. But, a look into the old man’s eyes showed that there were still things that modern medicine could not heal. It would take time for him to forget the
hooded man, if he ever could.
Nash had so completely disconnected himself from reality during the trip, he almost forgot where they had been heading. It wasn’t until they had disembarked from the ship and Nash found himself in a long hallway that curved downhill that he remembered. He was standing in Harbor, the gyroscope-shaped space installation where the miners operated the quantum drills. The massive disc that spun in the middle of Harbor was what blessed the space station with its gravity. Here, Nash could feel again the lover’s touch of gravity.
He looked up and saw the single pane of glass that ran the entire ceiling of Harbor. The glass was so clear that the starscape looked fake to some, but artwork to Nash. That was because the nighttime sky was the first art, a painting that humanity has tried to copy over the centuries through art and literature and music but has beautifully failed every time. Nash held his breath as he drank in the skies beyond the glass.
He only found his breath when the fused launches sailed across the portrait of space, causing him to lose his focus. Nash looked around and, realizing that the others were already well down the hallway, ran after them. He wasn’t sure why he was afraid of getting lost – after all, Harbor was nothing more than a looping hallway. It was the height of tomorrow’s technology, and it was still as pure and simple as a circle.
He caught up with the group just as the claustrophobic walls on either side began to open up. The walls stretched out so elegantly, Nash almost didn’t realize that they were stepping onto the bridge of the station. But there they were, in a room fashioned like a bubble and two stories tall with computer terminals. Seated in front of the computer monitors were the miners themselves, their eyes glazed over from staring at a screen for hours a day. The only controls they had were the water panels in front of them, like those on the launches. The miners wore their magnetized gloves, and drew out the instructions on the screens in front of them. It looked as if they were writing in foreign languages, and Nash remembered with a sinking feeling how much of his training he had forgotten. His early wakeup from the cryostasis had seen to that. Nash was confident that he was about to fail, just like he did in everything else.