by J. N. Chaney
YES. RIGHT THERE.
The shovel was barely eight centimeters long, but could be extended with the press of a button near its center. John touched it, but nothing happened. He tried a few more times with no success. At last he clasped both ends and attempted to manually extend it. Nothing worked.
Mei began typing a message to him, but stopped when she saw him drop to his knees and begin digging with the tiny shovel. He flung clumps of soil to his side, one after the next, never slowing. Thunder cackled as the rain beat down on him. Flashes of yellow and white ignited the ground as lightning flashed overhead, reflecting off the hilt of the shovel as well as his silver gloves. Mei fought the urge to close her eyes. It’s okay, she told herself. Nothing can hurt him. She repeated the words in her mind, mouthing them a few times. Nothing can hurt him. Nothing can hurt him. Nothing can hurt him…
She didn’t care if it was a self-imposed delusion. Sometimes lies were better than the truth.
John dug a hole half a meter deep before stopping. He tossed the little shovel at the freshly made pile of earth and glanced at the coil at his side. Pressing his hand against his knee, he pushed himself to his feet, stumbling a few steps in the process.
He wavered there a moment, doing nothing.
JOHN ARE YOU ALRIGHT?
He raised his hand, giving her a thumb-up. The glove glistened in the rain, shaking slightly as he kept it there. Why was he trembling? Could it be the wind? Maybe the rain was too cold.
John lifted the Fever Killer and set it gently in the ground. Several clumps of mud slid from the peak of the hole like chocolate pudding, dripping into a soup of brown slime and shredded blue grass.
He tossed shovel loads of dirt back into the tiny pit. By the time he had finished, a small puddle was already forming at the base of the coil.
Bart touched Mei on the shoulder. “Don’t forget the switch. He needs to activate it.”
She nodded, and typed the message to him. John gave her another thumb-up. This time, his hand was noticeably slow. He flipped the coil’s latch open, revealing a control pad. Every Framling Coil required a digital numerical code in order to activate. This was a remnant of the original design, created for obvious security purposes that were now obsolete. Bart intended to get rid of them in the future, but right now there was no time.
The activation code was simple. Mei had requested it herself, knowing John would remember it. She watched as he typed the numbers in, nodding each time the glowing green digit appeared on the screen.
04-14-2332
The day they’d been born.
John took a step back, and the Fever Killer rattled with a loud hum as it roared to life. A moment later, the casing shuddered, and the drill inside plummeted into the ground, letting loose a wild CRACK and securing its place.
Lightning ignited the northern sky like a spider’s web. The flash was so bright it could have been a sunrise.
John turned and headed back toward the dirt cab. When he reached the front of the vehicle, he touched the hood and stopped. He bent forward, bobbing his head, like he was out of breath. Mei was about to ask if something was wrong when he let go and got into the driver’s seat.
He pressed the ignition button, and the dashboard lights came on. As he pulled around and began the drive back, Mei noticed his gloves sliding, almost drooping, as he loosely gripped the steering wheel.
When he finally arrived, she was already outside, standing in the rain, dripping wet and waiting to greet him. The cab slowed, but didn’t stop. Instead, it plowed directly into the nearby fence, bowling the hood to reveal the engine inside. The metal warped instantly. Steam filled the air around the guts of the cab as the cold rain hit the exposed engine. Mei ran to the door. The rainwater was flowing over the window, too thick for her to see. Panic took hold as she quickly opened the door.
Inside, John was hugging the wheel, his face against the visor. There was a rip in his suit where the shoulder met the neck, and his face had turned a bright red.
Bart and the others came running from the tent. “Holy shit, did he crash the cab?” he asked.
Mei wanted nothing more than to scream, but she tried to stay composed. “John?” She touched his shoulder. “Are you alright?”
He didn’t answer.
Her eyes swelled and her throat closed. “John?” She shook him. “Say something, please.”
He let out a soft groan. “…Mei?”
“Oh, God!” she shouted, clutching his sleeves with both her hands.
“Sorry.” He raised his head, his strained eyes blinking and half-opened. He had the look of exhaustion on him, like he’d been sleeping for days. He smiled, but his lips were shaking. “Hope I didn’t worry you.”
She hugged him close, wrapping her arms around his chest. “John, you idiot,” she said, and all at once she was crying, warm tears mixing with the cold rain.
PART 2
Facing it, always facing it,
that’s the way to get through.
–Joseph Conrad
Everything is theoretically impossible,
until it is done.
–Robert A. Heinlein
Chapter 11
Documents of Historical, Scientific, and Cultural Significance
Open Transcript 616
Subtitled: The Memoirs of S. E. Pepper – Chapter 5
March 19, 2185
PEPPER: There is something to be said about the stars, I think, which doesn’t get mentioned as much these days. Most of the people living in this city were born sometime after the Great Calamity, but still a few of us attempt to pull the images out whenever the mood strikes, and we surrender ourselves to nostalgia. I often lay awake at night, immersed in mental slideshows, recalling the night sky…twinkling dots amid the dark, begging me to dream. We used to give them stories, playing connect-the-dots with the cosmos. “There goes Orion, the hunter, chasing Taurus with his mighty steel. Look at how proudly he stands.”
Little did we know how truly mighty our blinking specks could be. If only we could see their true beauty, these mammoth balls of burning plasma a billion times the size of Earth, floating gently in a vacuum, igniting the fabric of existence. Among them, orbiting planets, as varied and complex as any our imaginations could conceive. What would we have said to justify such wonders? This is common knowledge now, of course, but at the time it remained a distant realization.
Studying the stars is a humbling experience, many astronomers used to say. Sadly, they’re all dead now. All are gone and forgotten, their collective knowledge a lost and unusable truth. After all, what good are the stars when we cannot even look at them? What’s the point?
I do not know the answer to those questions, and I am certain someone will say it is a waste of time…a valid argument, I suppose, when one considers our current predicament.
Still, I know the stars exist. Our ignorance about them will never change this fact. They will go on, regardless of whether or not we acknowledge them. They will live, expand, explode, and shatter across time and space until all the void is black again, and we are nothing but a shadow of a thought.
Perhaps in this sea of endless possibilities there exists another world like ours, capable of supporting life. Such a place may be far removed from us. For all we know, it may very well be outside of what we call existence. But on that rock, wherever it is, floating in the light of another sun, perhaps there is a thinking thing with eyes and wonder in its heart, staring at its own sky, naming dots of lights, and dreaming. Like so many things, I do not know if this is true.
But I hope.
End Audio File
Unknown
October 21, 2350
Terry raised his head from the river, taking a deep breath of the fresh Variant air. The suns drifted high above him, and the midday heat blazed against the cool, rapid water as it collided gently with his cheeks. He took a deep breath and sighed, not to indicate his frustration or boredom but rather h
is content. He could not imagine himself in any better place. Not on this planet anyway.
It had been six months since Terry found the farm and the family who lived there. Since then, he’d moved into the cliffs beyond the valley and made a home for himself near the place where the river met the sea. With Ludo’s help, he’d built a small house into the side of the rock-face, using the flattened stones as the back wall and crafting the rest from the bark of over a dozen trees. As it turned out, Ludo was a man of many talents, including farming, hunting, cooking, and carpentry. He offered these skills freely to Terry, asking nothing in return. The man was the kindest person Terry had ever met, with John perhaps being the rare exception. Someone who gave his devotion freely without reservation. A true friend.
In their eagerness, both Terry and Ludo had made learning the other’s language a priority. Much to his disappointment, Terry quickly discovered he had no talent for linguistics, so his progress was slow and clumsy. He’d managed to learn a great deal, however, fumbling through sentences and conversations, determined to improve. By contrast, Ludo went from knowing nothing of English to speaking with some impressive adequacy. Terry only had to tell him a word once or twice for Ludo to memorize it. Within the first week, he had already mastered basic phrases and most of the common nouns. By the second month, he spoke with the fluency of a small child, knowing many of the words while struggling with proper grammar. After six months, he’d mastered the bulk of the language in the time it took Terry to ask where the bathroom was.
Still, Terry had looked forward to learning how to speak to Ludo and his family in their native language, so he forced himself to work on it and adapt. He’d need the skill if he were to ever encounter more people like this quaint little family, and he imagined he would, given what Ludo had told him. “The world is big,” Ludo explained, motioning to the space around him. “Many people live here. You’ll see soon. I’ll show you.”
It was through these conversations that Terry learned a great many things. For starters, the name of the planet was Kant, while the region—or country, depending on how Ludo chose to talk about it—was called Greenwater. Kant rarely came up in conversation, except when Ludo needed to compare Greenwater to something bigger. “Not many live in Greenwater, but it borders Xel and Everlasting.”
“Xel and Everlasting?” asked Terry.
“Other countries. Xel is smaller. Everlasting is much bigger.” Ludo scratched his ear.
“Who lives there?”
“Xel is a lot like Greenwater, but more villages. The men you saw in the jungle were probably from there. We’re close to the border.”
The way Ludo had talked about them, the four strangers from the woods had likely been slavers. There was a prison near the Xel border, and they would often send small groups out in search of new people. “And Everlasting?” asked Terry.
Ludo’s eyes lit up, and he grinned. “Big place,” he said, spreading his arms out. “The people are all beautiful and everyone flies very high. Much higher than us. I’ve never gone but others say so.”
More nonsense about flying, thought Terry. Ludo often talked about people flying, including his own family, but the context never made any sense. None of them had wings. But Terry was still learning the language, and mistranslations were bound to happen. Maybe Ludo was talking about something else, and there simply wasn’t a word for it, so he called it flying. There was no way he really believed they all had wings, right?
Terry needed to learn how to communicate better so he could discover more about Kant. It was tempting to leave right now and see what else was out there, but he couldn’t go running off, even with an adequate knowledge of the language. There was always time for more adventures later. For now, he was content, perhaps even happy living under a cliff by the sea.
He decided to eat lunch alone today. Ludo had given him some fishing supplies, which he quickly learned to use in an effort to become as self-sufficient as possible. While he enjoyed the meals he ate on the farm, he always felt like he was imposing. Ludo never seemed to mind. In fact, as far as his friend had explained it, the simple act of eating someone else’s food was a sign of great respect, bringing honor to the household. Terry didn’t know if the sentiment were true or if Ludo was simply being kind, but he certainly appreciated the gesture.
For the most part, Terry found the differences in his and Ludo’s cultures to be far less than expected, though there were a few things which he found strange and at times truly alien. For example, Ludo’s son Talo did most of the cooking and cleaning, which he attended to throughout the afternoon. In the morning, the boy would study under his father’s tutelage, though as far as Terry could tell, they mostly focused on family history, botany, and an hour of meditation. The last one appeared to be the same sort of meditation the scarred man had used in the middle of the night while the others slept. Like the other men had done, Ludo and his son sat on the floor with their eyes open, slowing their heart rate as well as their breathing to the point where they hardly seemed alive. The practice must have been a widespread one, probably part of the culture, but he still didn’t understand the purpose of it.
Terry remembered learning in history class how some civilizations once used meditation as a form of emotional management or spiritual fulfillment. Those people sought a sense of stillness, humility, and oneness. Throughout the millennia, a variety of groups had adopted the practice and integrated it into their religions, while many more used it as a means of relaxation. Plenty of people back home still used meditation as a relaxation technique. As far as Ludo’s people were concerned, this could have gone either way. When Terry had asked his friend about the meditation sessions, the answer only brought more questions. “We do this so we may fly,” he had said. “You must touch chakka. Chakka is very important. One day I will show you.”
Terry had no idea who or what chakka was, or what flying had to do with any of it. When asked, Ludo simply grinned and said, “Don’t worry! I will teach you soon.”
Finally, there was Ludo’s wife Ysa, who never spoke. For a while, Terry thought this was because she didn’t approve of him, but the more time he spent in the house, the more convinced he became that it was part of her demeanor. Aside from this, Terry still didn’t understand the meaning of her tattoos or why she was bald, or her complete lack of general responsibilities, but he was certain he would discover those answers in time. What he found truly fascinating was how she appeared to have complete and utter authority over the other two males. Whenever Ludo wished to leave the house, he asked his wife for permission, usually with his head bowed. It was as though she were some kind of farmhouse royalty, worshiped only by her son and husband, never required to lift a finger. When Terry tried to ask why his wife acted in such a fashion, Ludo dropped his head, closed his eyes for a moment, and said, “We do not speak badly of Ysa. She…” he paused, searching for the words. “She flies the highest. Yes! High above to Everlasting.” He hugged himself, smiling. “Ysa does so much.”
Perhaps what Ludo had said made sense to him, but it left Terry with only more questions.
Still, he was certain he’d understand eventually. Given enough time, he had to figure it out. For now, he’d try to relax. He’d swim in the river, eat with his new friends, and maybe catch a nap if time allowed.
This place was good for him.
More than anything, however, the voice in his head was gone—the little girl pretending to be his sister. He hadn’t heard her in all the time he’d spent with Ludo, and perhaps it was a good thing. She had asked him to run, he remembered, months ago in the field at the edge of the woods. Leave, she’d begged, but he refused her, and in an instant she was lost. In exchange, however, he’d found another friend, and surely it was better to talk with someone real, a person made of flesh and bone, than a thing of make-believe trapped inside his brain.
Because Janice wasn’t real, he reminded himself.
She never was.
******
Ludo’s Farm, Kant
October 30, 2350
Terry sat between Ludo and Talo, eating dinner after a long day in the fields. Ysa sat across from him, saying nothing. He had tried on several occasions to make conversation with her, but found she wasn’t one for small talk. The most he’d ever gotten were short and to the point responses. In the beginning, he’d taken this as a sign of hostility, but after some months had gone by, he came to understand it was simply her way.
Ludo motioned for Talo to retrieve the Sacred Vessel, which he did immediately. Talo handed the box to his father, who opened it and presented the knife to the family. “We ask for protection. We ask for guidance. May the Eye watch over us that we might fly together someday.” He put the blade back in the box and handed it to Talo.
It had taken Terry several months to understand the words Ludo spoke each night before dinner, let alone the deeper meaning behind them. From what he’d gleaned, the knife held some sort of religious significance and had been acquired by Ludo in the years before he became a simple farmer, around the time he met his wife. The prayer itself was a request to someone called the Eye, undoubtedly the local god. The Eye watched over every living thing on Kant, according to Ludo, and only through it could a person learn to fly. But of course Terry had never seen anyone flying on this planet, so he took it as a metaphor.
Indeed, Ludo and his family meditated daily, always at the exact same time. This occurred no matter what, even at the cost of other activities, including eating and sleeping. They never missed a session. They often stopped in the middle of a task to go meditate, sometimes without a word. Terry would be standing there with Ludo one moment, only to turn around and find the man gone the next. The meditation hour was the highest priority of their lives, Terry found, but he still barely understood it.