“I didn’t mean anything by it,” I pleaded.
“Find your way.”
I wanted to escape, to find someone who could help, to float away into the sky on a cloud. I had to stall until the next station, to keep myself present at this of all moments. I couldn’t remember how far it was; panic infiltrated my perception like black—water drops running down a window with cascading intensity blurring my vision. The train car got smaller as the man got closer. I wondered how much was my fault.
I shouldn’t have looked at him at the laundromat.
I shouldn’t have giggled.
I shouldn’t have gotten out of bed today.
I pretended like I was in control by hiding secret power in my soul, waiting, waiting, waiting for Chad to notice me and see that every day— most days for no reason at all— I live, and it is due only to my secret difference from everyone else, this uniqueness in my soul. That I could, at any moment of my choosing, release my power. I looked the creeper in the eyes, the eyes reminded me I had no power but more of a hope that, because I’m alone, I struggle to hold on to.
He stopped his advance and struggled to express: “…because it’s donut day,”
“I forgive you,” for being a beat—brain. It wasn’t his fault for being that way; broken and lost in his own mind. I was almost happy to be there beside him, but that’s only because I realized how much alike he was to anyone else, really, lost in the weird world of mental states covered in dirt and grime with no clean perch to rest on. “…so please don’t hurt me.”
He lunged at me. In an awkward arc, he fell forward as if he were defying gravity and stayed there impossibly for several moments. The train was slowing. It allowed him to hold an absurd stance before tripping over my duffel and falling on his back. His long messy hair covering his sunken eyes, he cried. I left the train. Left my DS on the seat. I’d got off several stops too early. Some stranger would find out that Yoshi’s Island was my escape, and they’ll steal it for themselves: that wonderful island, shiny and clean, where I actually had my hidden power. I ran away from the station. My mind was blank. I didn’t realize I was running until a raw taste filled my mouth then faded away. I shook in that inside part of me that knows reality and keeps me there even when I most want to go crazy. I try to escape and live in a butterfly world with old world foods because this is a place where nobody cares and we all grow fat and live happily. It could be a place where nothing decayed and all day and night was sunny.
The wind blew flecks of rust, as it often had, that danced like I’d imagined ballerinas did. I ducked into the museum to wait out the storm. Faneuil Hall was all but abandoned, two elderly creatures prowled the building to dust off the artifacts they’d collected there. Most of it was tech that no longer functioned, but stacked in piles that looked artistic. A pile of television guts here, the screens over there, black and gray cases and whatnots on whatnots. Rome, I’ve seen in pictures, had marble statues and we have these.
I went back to the crowded station an hour later to catch the 6pm train the rest of the way to my parent’s neighborhood. A malodorous emanation lingered in the train that may or may not have been real.
62/4—9;
Three of the senior staff woke up from stasis today. Three! The system has been and continues to experience errors— only 5 Ly from port— faster than I can get ahead of them. This technology was highly experimental to begin with, we have no idea the long term consequences these errors will have on the bodies that are continually forced back and forth. These issues should have all been worked on more before we left. There is not much point if we arrive with a ship full of corpses. We do not have half enough supplies to ride out of stasis for the remaining journey.
Our ship, The Great Reeves leaves much to be desired as we watch our home—star shrink behind us, luckily for me and everyone aboard this ship À¥ÐŁŒ has endless enthusiasm for her job and never seems to sleep. Picking her for my second—in—command has been most beneficial.
— ∂ϞϞ¥Ƙ
Announcements:
It has come to my attention that several system errors have occurred in the past few cycles. Even my own stasis has malfunctioned several times. Things are under control now thanks to the hard work of ϞϞÐOE¥ and his team. Things are bound to go wrong from time to time considering the size of the flotilla and the population in stasis, operations are essentially nominal.
Have you been wondering how things are back home? Lately, I’ve been experiencing headaches and miss the tea made by my grandmother that always quelled the pain.
Have they completely adjusted to our departure? I hope that everything is settled back home, that passions have died down and that peace exists again. Many of our crew have messages to send to their families back home and we can only hope they will accept them. Please contact À¥ÐŁŒ if you have a message to add to the stream.
We’ve managed to maintain a steady velocity at roughly 1/4c for several… for 20 years now. The 232—year trip, we still believe it to be worth it. The lings of Earth do not pose any threat to our species, our religion, or our culture. Our two species are not mutually exclusive of each other, as some believe. They may have their own ideas, but together we can forge a stronger future. I hope we all see that. I want something like that written for my epitaph.
I hope my daughter, ϞϞÐOE¥, is doing well with her mother and uncles— that all those we love and left behind experienced no undue hardship because of us. Ok, let’s end the message there. Thank you, back to work everyone.
— Zeal Prime
“George,23 wake up,” the nature all around me seemed to say, but waking up is merely a process by which ones’ consciousness resumes; lightening to scare the gerbils back to work. The world cannot speak. Blinking, my eyes had to readjust to solar illumination.
Spending several hours in a tenebrific imagination and subconscious world eaten up by nothing is nice, stuck with a billion beveled thoughts, but knowing that here I’m supposed to be alone is how I keep moving. It is more difficult to be alone when I’m awake, where I’m just George and am always stuck here. I enjoy dreams, even if they are scary because they take me to other places and I can meet all kinds of people.
So I rolled over and back to reverie for a few months.
I woke up to a gradient brown welkin as the sun rose amongst low hanging billowing shapes that looked like cooking pans and cats, for a while, then the wind started, and all the white was streaked across the browns—on—brown sky leaving me cloudless on my journey. “George,” pa’d said, “the whole world is change.” I instantly knew he meant it, but didn’t know how so until years later.
The rhythmic repeats of the world became plain to us after so much walking— cold then warm happens during a day but over a course of days as well— then alone I returned to the city where I was born feeling like I could die at any moment. I met mom and pa here for the first time. My baggage was so heavy I was forced to gently place it on the ground and rest at least a week before picking it back up. There is a tree, I remember it from child times, behind the gray, tall walls that pa spent all that time patching. When I found it that morning, I knew. I was home.
The tree had grown, as I had, and now is several devrons tall and sprawling like a Hindu goddess with her arms stretching in all directions. The beauty of the tree I had long missed was a deep, almost emerald, green abundant with the reddest pomaceous fruit. I couldn’t be sure if it had all been just a dream until then. It was the only thing left in all the yard. The house became like bones in a pile picked of all their meat. While devouring countless apples, I had a discussion with Vishnu.
“Haven’t you missed me?”
“I… recognize you.”
“Yes, absolutely. You’ll talk!”
“It has been a long time, boy, since anybody has come around here, hugging a commode and coughing up blood, and seeing the blood spurt everywhere was a fly gasping out of fear while perched within my branches.”
I ate, and a
s I did I became a man. A human one. Something I had been struggling to remember how to be.
“You will mend some with time, but never gone, nor should you desire such, will the past be.”
“I didn’t meet many of your kind while I’ve been gone… none were quite like you.”
“Staying alone without the woods, with the whispers of the trees as your only company, the lonesome nights come end to end, the shallow moon as your only light to find your way out of the dark. Look for the now. As your self is your friend. Your lostness will soon come to an end.”
The Essence and I had found a sort of companionship over so long a time that my hair stopped growing. Through long lectures she sagaciously taught me about biology, astronomy, philosophy, along with reason and logic. She taught me how unwise I was and continued to be, and gave me the perspective to understand, to know the correct direction to pursue. She reminded me of many memories— through discussion, meditation, and the eating of apples.
Long ago during the time I was small, when mom and pa were still around, I had a vastly different life. We lived in a pleasant home, in Jamaica Plain with bay windows built above its garage into a small hill, all painted white. The front yard was filled with brick and cement sidewalk and stairway to the house. Mom would be inside cooking while overlooking me from the window while I played in the backyard within the tree’s grasp. I had no friends as no others lived in the neighborhood. Pa scavenged what we needed. It always scared me when he’d come back with his rifle, smelling of the world the way I do now. My entire world was that walled in yard. Mom almost never left the house.
When I was seven, others came while pa was away. I had climbed the highest I could get in the tree, my record height, before I knew her name: Saraswati; nearly two devrons up. I tried to see as far as I could but long ago someone built the wall to keep them safe, it hadn’t, and I was too frightened to climb any higher and never could see over the top. I didn’t know anything was wrong until the scream. Three men had broken through the front door, lured by the smell of something she had cooked, stabbed her, took the food. Pa came home late, after the setting sun, and I had stayed in the tree too scared to move, after too long unable to move, unwilling. He found me and we left.
We walked forever. We never found the men, if that’s even what we were trying to do. We walked all over the brown, devoid coast, pa and I, always looking for something we could never find. That’s what I thought at least, since he never said anything, probably there never was a search.
“Sometimes we just lose our anchor and drift,” mom once told me, but pa would just tell her that the ships are all gone.
Pa never spoke about mom, about where we’d go, about anything at all for a long time. When he did start talking again, it was not at all like before. He was crooked, he told me that mom was pregnant when she was killed and that was only after we found a cache of something called Loch Lamond. I made a face each sip causing him to call me “Anacoluthon.” He never took the time to heal, he was brokenhearted. I was 27 when I stopped wandering and finally found this home, and Saraswati, again.
I can’t remember mom’s name. Her face.
“At least for a time we had each other. The years pulled us onward and eventually pulled pa down to his last breath. I wasn’t certain, but I figured pa was glad he could finally stop walking. He could go into the ground like mom. He told me I had to cover him with ground. He didn’t spend those last years being my father, but he did teach me how to do what he did, how to clean the rifle that’s now long broken, how to kill and clean an animal, how to cook it, how to make water drinkable. He taught me our family’s name and how to write it. After a time, I tried to re—trace our wanderous path back. My only semblance of a goal, the only image in my mind, was you. When pa died I carried him back and put him into the hole like he wanted, next to mom’s, then I was truly alone and didn’t know what to do. It took me three months to travel from the hole in the front—yard to you in the back—yard.”
It was just empty buildings. Everywhere I went. No people, few trees. I saw a few birds fly through the void we call the sky. Essentially alone, all the world pretended it was more than a faded ghost.
“You are not alone. We look at the same sky each night George, together or not, and we feel the warmth of the same sun.”
I wanted to find another person. A companion or a friend. A sister or brother.
“The city hasn’t changed much since you left, yet it has changed a lot.”
“As long as there are people.”
Forbearer—
During my downtime I’ve been watching a cataloged Refulgent program about an alien that has been orphaned on their planet. They have wonderful imaginations. Their image and exploration of alien life forms is intriguing if somewhat self—centered and flawed. We don’t look exactly alike, nor did we assume we would, yet this interpretation they’ve devised has introduced me to a new concept. It seems that the alien is imbued with traits the Earthlings value most. Strength, resolute conviction, notions of upholding justice, protection of the weak. Mostly ideas we have parallels with, but curiously this Steel Man is willing to allow his own destruction and endure enormous pain to do what he believes is Right and to save people with no known value. For people he doesn’t even know.
Refulgents certainly have much to teach us, to open us to, and I hope we can do the same for them. I fear we have no culture of significant value to them, but perhaps that is merely my own bias.
I’ve taken to a character from the show called Lois Lane. The superman is not very much like us, but I feel that this Lois embodies a curiosity much like we started this mission with. We don’t operate through strength and power, but explore with truth trying to discover the new and interesting. When we finally meet the Refulgents I will use the name to help facilitate our friendship; Lois Lane.
— À¥ÐŁŒ
People always asked me: “Liz, where do you sit?” but I kept my options open.
I hate couches. When sitting on a couch I feel like it sucks me in, like into the crease in the back. If I sit on one for too long it feels like I’m folding in on myself and eventually I’ll fold down to nothing, or something near to that. It isn’t fear. I know what I’m afraid of: rats, tetanus, mold spores, high fructose corn syrup, pigeons. Whenever I watched movies with my friends I would opt to sit on the floor, or a chair of some type, but never the couch. I think that is why I got invited. My friends always rushed to the couch, they fought over it, but like Switzerland I stayed out of it. My grandpa taught me about Switzerland, always neutral, they kept their hands clean. I don’t distrust couches; I’m not a crazy person. I even owned a couch, back in my apartment, but I used it more like a shelf, it was always full of life clutter while I made the effort to keep the rest of my apartment clean. I could sit, for example, on the breakfast bar. I sometimes perched there like a cat when no one was around. It might have been nice to get a cat, but I couldn’t handle the fur all around, I’m not allergic I just don’t like the messiness, or the smell of cat poop. Or the thought of it. Just poop laying around, just under a thin layer of sandy stuff that makes the cat feel better about itself, just no thank you.
The doorbell rang earlier. It seemed like the ring of a funeral bell. I’m not sure if it changed after I moved out or because of the person who rang.
Dad and Grandpa prepped that house, they found and rebuilt damaged solar arrays, attached two small wind turbines to the roof, even devised their own rain water filtration and had a good sized garden growing all before the big mess. Grandpa would say be prepared for anything. Even the yard had a 1.5 devron24 tall fence around it, the windows made of bullet proof glass, rebar—reinforced concrete walls.
Chad seemed permanently aloof after his dad died. He often came over to my parent’s place for dinner. I liked Chad, he was this link between me and my parents because when he was around it was easier to talk with them. He would show me the best movies from the far past that I wouldn’t otherwise get to se
e. He collected them, often scavenging the city, because he loved the history and the stories they contained. His favorites? Into the Wild, Tideland, The Man Who Fell to Earth. When I answered the door, Chad was standing there in a slump. Mom invited him over, but he just wanted to talk with dad.
Dad was a friend of Chad’s father, so they could bond over him since he died when Chad was still a teenager. He called my dad Uncle Frank sometimes, but he called mom Iola even though she says he can just call her mom. We hung out for an hour before he left, right before dad got home from work, just the two of us. He asked when I got here and I told him I took the train last night, but I didn’t tell him what happened with that beat—brain stalker.
Chad talked about a girl he met a few days ago, but she was strange and he was curious about her more than anything else. We chatted about how I like living alone for the first time and how work was going.
“Did you watch that documentary I gave you?”
It was CSM,25 piecemeal and loose, a documentary on Vishnu stated to be the creator of unlimited universes.
“The content was interesting. Not sure I understood it all, but I loved the art pieces they showed. Everything was sort of jarring how it was put together.”
“I’ve never seen a CSM I liked,” Chad said, “but I love the idea of it.”
“You mean how people can put together something so big?”
“The pure passion it takes— these people are total stranger getting together over something they love. Is that even possible anymore?”
He continued talking like a man on a rushed walk without a particular destination. It’s not that he liked the sound of his own voice so much as just investigating his own ideas aloud, and I loved being there to listen even if most of the time I’d just distracted by my own thoughts and delve into my own ideas. Chad knew it happened and would smile when he noticed how far apart our mind’s drifted.
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