It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Do you want to hear some more?
Cleaving to infants’ knowledge in the jaw of a vast
hunger, seeking to unfurl their bellies again.
Well-seasoned by their own gluttonies,
sure to delight the tongue of the shape within the star.
It’s . . . so lovely, Mari. I don’t know what it means yet, but it’s—
[shuffling, muffled screams]
Oh, goddammit. Hold on.
[an audible scream]—
* * *
Blue, 66100LM:
Hurray for us! We lasted this long!
I know it’s nothing special, Mari, but we decided since we’ve been outside the Seirēnes system for more than six hundred whole hours, we might as well celebrate, right? So we made cake—I didn’t know we had friggin’ cake mix around here! That was cake mix, wasn’t it?—and the rest of them drank, but I decided I wouldn’t since you’d be such a stickler about it.
Good thing I didn’t, too. Zoe and one of the techs got in a fight over, like, a bottle of beer or something, and e stabbed the guy in the eye for it. Julian, I think his name was? Nice people. Shame about the eye, o’ course, but what can you do?
Well, sure enough, that kinda soured the mood right up, so we just took our cakes and drinks and shit back to our quarters and got back to work. I’m about to get back into my observations right now, actually.
It’s just . . . we were having so much fun. Why’d Julian have to ruin it? It’s not like we didn’t have more beer.
* * *
Blue, 80146LM:
Mari, you have to send someone to get us, now.
I don’t know what the fuck is going . . . what?
It says here you got a recording from me at 661 hours?
Blue, 80335LM:
[crying] I . . . I don’t get it.
Mari . . . you have to come get us. You have to send someone.
I don’t remember ever making that recording. I just got up. I don’t remember . . . any of these recordings after 25025LM. I just woke up on the floor of the mess hall . . . I don’t know if . . . I don’t know!
First, it’s the fucking signal or whatever, lingering all over the place, then it’s the dreams getting worse . . . and these notes . . . I was, what, trying to translate the sun? What’s . . . what’s happening, Mari? I’m scared.
[crying, followed by a long, deep breath]
Think. Think, Percy. You can . . . you can make sense of this . . .
[another breath]
My . . . m-my notes say . . . I was looking at the . . . time signature of the sun? What the . . . that SRN227 seemed to place all of their systems in the . . . rhythm of the sun’s flares. I was working on what I thought was calendars at some point? And I noticed a vague similarity—I guess that’s it. Right. Calendars. That were in tune with the general motions of the sun. They had calculated even down to the probability of its flares.
And a group of inhabitants—according to the texts—had apparently observed a “day of devouring.” A large ritual orgy, all of their pleasure rituals at once, set to close on the day of a . . . massive coronal ejection or something. I may have to check that with . . . Zoe, maybe? But e’s still out cold.
I was working on a poem here, too? What is this?
Wait.
Some of these texts . . . they’re . . . they’re, um, pictograms. Some entire phrases line up with these. Parts of these . . . are the same poem. It closes the same, repeats some words in the same order in the middle . . . what is this?
You know what, fuck it. I don’t care—tell EEC-Carmel they have to come pick us up. Abandon the whole business in the Seirēnes system. Fuck SRN227, fuck Aglaope, fuck this entire clump of space. Just bring us back.
Please.
Please, Marielle.
I . . . I’m scared.
I don’t know what happened to us, but . . . I really don’t want to find out. I’m losing it.
Please.
* * *
Blue, 82631LM:
Marielle?
Marielllllllllllle?
I really wish you could have come, you know. I had my doubts, but it was so. Much. Fun! And I really wanted to share it with you. So we could have our own little kinds of fun together? You know what I mean. And I’m sure the rest of the crew would have loved you too! They love me. Well, most of them. But everyone who’s still here . . . mostly loves me! Loves me so, so much . . .
And speaking of love: SRN227’s people wrote some truly endearing poetry. The . . . depth at which they dug to show love for their god, even to the point of wanting to offer their entire world . . . God, don’t you wish you had something you cared about so deeply that you’d lose your entire self in it? Literally be swallowed by it, feel its slick, cruel, longing tongue wrap around you, slowly, until you know it loves you back? That’s . . . that’s all they wanted.
Well, they also wanted to be fat and rich—but they wanted that because Aglaope gave it to them! They wanted to show Aglaope something back! Their appreciation for each and every thing they had gotten! So they danced and drank and loved and spent themselves sick, hoping Aglaope would notice.
And she did, she did! She held them so close, opened her whole jaw up for them.
Marielle?
Mari?
Mari, Mari, Mari. Marielle? Come on, Marielle . . . don’t you want to be here, too?
Don’t you want to have fun?
Don’t you want to be loved?
It’s a shame you’re missing it. We decided we wanted to keep going. Wanted to see what’s on the other side of Aglaope . . . we’ll even throw a party there! We have so much wine to share, after all . . . Zinfandel, you know. Zoe brought it with em. It’s so good . . . how long’s it been? God, I wish I could finish this poem for you, tell you all the awesome things it says. But the rest of the crew, they’re sure in a hurry!
So we told Aglaope we loved her. And we’re hoping that she’ll take us into her arms now.
I want to tell you all about it when I come back. But if I don’t, if Aglaope says she loves us back, I just want you to know that I love you, too.
I love you, Marielle. I love you, I love you, IloveyouIloveyouIlo—
Brandon O’Brien is a performance poet and writer from Trinidad. His work has been shortlisted for the 2014 Alice Yard Prize for Art Writing and the 2014 and 2015 Small Axe Literary Competitions and is published in Uncanny, Strange Horizons, Reckoning, and New Worlds, Old Ways: Speculative Tales from the Caribbean, among others. He is also the poetry editor of FIYAH Literary Magazine.
* * *
1. Note on transmission protocols—Orange: EEC non-urgent authorized-personnel-only delivery protocol; Red: urgent authorized-personnel-only deliveries; Blue: private deliveries to SRN227 Envoy Rescue Process Supervisor Dr. Marielle Katz.
2. For visual comparison, see “SRN227GodPhrase1.png” and “SRN227GodPhrase2.png” in the Appendices folder.
3. See “Aglaope_Recording_002.mp4” in the Appendices folder.
4. See “PreliminaryTranslationsSRN227.pdf” in the Appendices folder.
The Pillars of Creation
Heather Terry
Illustrated by Dave Felton
Jonesy’s breath washes over me as he glowers in my face. “I am being perfectly nice about this. You understand that I don’t have to be?” He leans in, waiting.
“Get the fuck outta here, Jonesy. I have work to do.” I shove away from him, spinning in my chair to face the other console. He stands there chewing on the inside of his lip for a few minutes more before stalking off. “Pompous asshat.”
Being some hotshot navy scientist don’t mean shit here. It’s not as if he’s in a different boat than we are. Same ship to run, same shit to deal.
An alert light engages on the console, and I punch in the coding to redirect. The light disengages.
My commbadge buzzes, indicating that I am now off duty. Turning away from the display, I narrow my eyes at the do
or. Undoubtedly, he’s in the mess hall barking orders at anyone who crosses his path as if this were a damn military vessel. Eating at home it is, then.
I begin making my way to the main deck. What the ship lacks in aesthetics herself, she more than makes up for with the landscape, and the main deck is the perfect place to see it.
Climbing into the deck portal at the end of the narrow hall, I wait for the dizzying surge to end before clambering out onto the main expanse. The rest of the ship may be cramped, cold, and grey, but here? Here the universe opens up to you.
God himself don’t have a better view than this.
Main deck is situated at the top of the ship, and its dome is made of some silica-based glass blend. Jonesy could probably tell everyone all about it, but no one gives a fuck about what it’s made of. Fucking Jonesy.
Beyond it, the inky blackness of space beckons. Impossible dustings of light, tiny pinpricks and pulsating orbs, dance in swirls and eddies that draw us along like currents in a river. In the distance ahead, maybe ten days out, our destination looms. Sea-green clouds swaddled around masses of dark matter in which no starlight penetrates. The majesty floors me.
Dubbed the Pillars of Creation by the twenty-first century scientists who first identified them, the columns had once been assumed to be little more than space dust and hydrogen.
The past few hundred years taught us a lot. Most particularly that we don’t actually know a fucking goddamn thing.
“Wheatley! You out here stargazing again?” Bill Grafner’s gruff voice bellows across the floor at me. Grizzled and built like a tank, Bill’s outward appearance alone commands the respect of the other men. Despite an injury that left him with a slight limp, he works the ship with as much skill as any and more skill than most.
“Ah, well. You know me, Bill. A real fuckin’ romantic. You off-shift tonight?”
“Just ended. You were working nav today, weren’t you? Any excitement?” Bill had worked nav for scavenging vessels before he got dumped here.
“Dodged a stray asteroid. Nothing to get antsy about. Where you headed tonight?” I ask, adding, “I’d skip the mess hall.”
“Jonesy at it again, then?” His eyes tighten, and he furrows his brow. “What’s he on about this time?”
“Same shit he’s always on. Thinks he’s better than the rest of us, like he’s some agent from ops. Like he ain’t in the same fucking boat we are. I shouldn’t let him get under my skin,” I say, shrugging. “I know it, but it don’t matter. Arrogant asshole.”
Bill doesn’t push it. He knows Jonesy. “How’s about we head down to low level? Get some rounds in and head back over to mess after he’s burned himself out?”
Low level, where Gallivant’s range and hydroponics are housed. We all have free access to target practice, if not the greens. Heading there was as good a plan as any and better than skulking about in my quarters. Nodding, I turn back toward the deck portals. Saying, “Down it is,” I step inside.
At the range, some joker had posted printouts of Martians in place of the targets. Grafner, after unloading a series of plasma bursts into one, turns and asks, “You ever wonder why they came and found us?”
“I always just figured they were hungry.”
“Nah, I don’t buy that. Why just three, then? No, I think we were being reminded of somethin’ we’d lost sight of. That we got too much ahead of ourselves, so we needed taking down a few notches.” He reloads. “Maybe we deserved it.”
His commbadge buzzes, drawing his attention to a nearby console and sparing me from having to respond. Christ all-fucking-mighty. Lots of folks turned to religion in a big way after the attacks—but damn.
Returning, he growls, “Some fuckhead is dicking around up there. Gotta cut it short.” He checks his firearm back into the munitions cabinet and climbs into the lift. “Catch ya later, Wheatley.”
I wait a few minutes before following suit. To hell with dinner. After that cheery visit, my quarters sound like a damn good idea.
* * *
I ignore my alarm for a few minutes before rolling out of bed. The quarters are so normal, it’s easy to forget where you are. Or at least make believe that you can.
We’re all supposed to be grateful to be here. Like the government’s done us some grand fucking favor by stuffing us on this shithole mission. When we were first given the option, I suppose we all were. We did choose to be here. But we are expendable, and we know it. Injected with an implant programmed to self-destruct at the touch of a button—killing its host—tossed on a ship with no official return plan, and headed off to fiend central? Well. If we survive, at least our life back home will be better than the colony cleanup we’d faced before this. If we survive.
At least we get our own rooms, even if they are small. Only room for a closet, a bed, and a desk. One shared bathroom per quad.
Stepping on the platform outside of my quarters, I try not to look out the window stretching the length of the internal walkways as I head toward mess hall. It doesn’t do much good.
You can’t help but appreciate the simple genius behind the Gallivant’s build. The command center, where the brains are kept, hangs suspended in the midst of the ship’s center ring. Like a big fucking courtyard in the middle of the ship, only with no access points, just hanging in the middle. Unless you want to take a nice long spacewalk on a moving ship, you aren’t getting near the hub and the folks who can access your implant. But they can see you, and you can see them. A constant reminder of just where exactly you stand.
Taking a seat at one of the mess panels, I insert my ration card and wait for the light to turn green. A fully functioning hydroponics bay and protein cloning center, and we still get rations with no menu options. Just a blended gruel with cloned mystery meat.
“Enjoying today’s selection?” Vance Kreel, specs and ops specialist, slides onto the bench opposite me and jams his ration card into a slot. He might be brilliant at specs, but his school-boy optimism wears on my nerves. Not waiting for a response, he eyes me for a second and says, “I heard you dodged an asteroid yesterday.”
I frown. Things get pretty dull around here, but asteroids are hardly lunchtime gossip material. I shrug and spoon up another mouthful.
Kreel is not easily put off. “Come on, Wheatley. We were less than two weeks outside of the Pillars, and a stray asteroid just happened to find its way onto our path?” Bouncing with excitement, he continues, “Whatever it was they sent out at us, it shoved us quite a bit farther down our trajectory. We’re no more than a day out now. That asteroid was them, man. I’m telling you!”
I suppress a sigh. “Kreel, if it were them, why would they send an asteroid out at us? Are you fucking dense enough to think that these creatures, who got within a few hundred thousand kilometers of Earth without being spotted and, with only three units, devastated five of the world’s best-defended cities before being destroyed themselves, would not only respond to our presence by shooting an asteroid at us but also miss?”
Kreel’s smile grew larger. Fucking school boy. “Who says they missed? Anyhow, did you hear the external sensors got all trippy last night? Jonesy had to go in and reset them manually. Got himself zapped!” He slams his hand on the metal table, the resounding clang made the other crew jump. He grins wolfishly. “Don’t tell me you aren’t excited to get back at them, man.”
“Not that I don’t appreciate the chat, Kreel, but is there a reason you’re here right now?”
“Well, Jonesy is still in med bay, so that means you pick up his shift in thirty. It’s you an’ me, bud!” He claps me on the shoulder.
It’s going to be a long fucking day. “Fabulous.” I stand up, dumping my tray into a bin. “Shift starts in thirty? See you there.”
So Jonesy gets a little zap and holes up in med bay. And now I have to deal with Kreel wetting his pants over a lousy asteroid. I head back up to main and get a closer look at the Pillars. If the school boy is right about our ETA—and he almost certainly was—we made
excellent time in the past twenty-four hours.
Leaning back on a central loft rail, I look out through the dome. The Pillars seem to stretch toward the ship like a massive, bony hand blindly grasping for us. They are undoubtedly far closer than they ought to have been. I decide the view isn’t so grand any more.
Seeing Philips, a med bay hand, exit a port with a stack of documents, I shove off the rail and stride across to fall in step alongside him. “You see the Pillars today? Must have caught a faster current than we had expected.”
Philips jumps, pulling his nose out of a file and glancing around in surprise. “Oh. Yes. Yes, we must have.” He licks his lips. “H-how are you tonight, Wheatley?”
“Me? Fine. Hey, how’s good ol’ Jonesy doing?”
He blanches, eyes going wide. “Jonesy? W-why do you ask? What have you heard?”
I turn and face him full on. “Only that he got a shock off of a console and got himself put up in med bay.”
“Right. Yes, that’s true. Well. Be seeing you.” Turning abruptly, he enters a portal and closes it behind him.
I stare at the closed lift gate. Philips is always twitchy, but damn. The Pillars must be really spooking him. Regardless, Jonesy clearly won’t be out in time to free me from specs duty with Kreel. I enter an open lift and check the time on my commbadge. Specs lab time.
Level three forward, home to the specs lab, is where we perform our primary function on this assignment. Once we’d figured out from the creatures’ autopsies where the fuckers’d come from, a specialized team had to be put together. But running a ship this far out takes more than a skeleton crew, and so came the unique opportunity they offered us lifers. Listed as skilled prisoners from the war, we had nothing to lose, everything to gain, and a fuckload to offer.
Ride the Star Wind: Cthulhu, Space Opera, and the Cosmic Weird Page 28