With and Without Class

by David Fleming

  “‘Hi Frank,’ she said without looking up, applying a steady coat over her index fingernail.

  “I lowered my fairmaker. ‘You’re not at all surprised to see me?’

  “‘Frank, you’re a smart guy. But not in any useful way. You have no ability to see things in advance, no forethought. I thought your brainy quirkiness was amusing for a while, but I got annoyed with your pointless brooding, so I dumped you.’

  “My stomach fell. ‘Do you realize this is an official assignment?’ I said.

  “‘No. I don’t think it’s official. In fact, I know it isn’t. I’m getting good at seeing things in advance. I woman has to rely on this skill. She doesn’t have a man’s luxury of being free from predators. Like when you first started stalking me at the downtown canal. When I saw that look in your eyes as Carrie Swanson got zapped, I knew we’d be standing here having this conversation, today. Only I imagined you would bust down my entryway door.’

  “‘I’m going to do this, Marian. It’s what you deserve.’

  “‘Well then, checkmate.’ She blew on her nails and smirked at me, screwing the brush back inside her nail polish bottle.

  “’What?’”

  “‘Checkmate, Frankie. I’ve alerted the Talent Police of your little malfeasance. Though they’re corrupt, a surprisingly modest bribe can shove them into action.’ She tapped nails over a digital clock. ‘They’ll be here in three minutes.’ She looked at the drooping fairmaker in my hand. ‘And I slept with the boy in the Calibration Office—’

  “I stepped near her, ‘You’re lying.’

  “‘It’s not something I enjoyed or I am proud of. But we use the gifts at our disposal.’ She looked at the fairmaker. ‘I know you, Frank. I know you’ll have to use it. You could leave now. That would be your best option. But you won’t. You’ll have to use it. Do you even know how it works? It uses a connection between us. But when it’s giving you that feeling in your arm, it can work either way. I had the boy at the office program it for me. I won’t tell you whether it’s going to make you worse or me better. They’re both the same to you, anyway. I’ll see if you can figure that part out yourself.’

  “‘Liar,’ I said, yanking red hair, shocking her. At least, I think I did. Nothing seemed to happen. She stayed the same. I walked away from her and stood there, confused. She started snickering at me but I didn’t seem to mind one bit. Which was weird. Usually when people laugh at me I have all these theories of what they’re thinking, but nothing came to me. I left quickly.

  “The Talent Police weren’t outside. But, when I showed up to work the next day, I was kicked off the Force. They gave me my old job back at the drycleaners. I start on Tuesday. I’ve been thinking a lot about what Marian said. Thinking about her in general. Did she make herself better or me worse? I don’t feel dumber. Dumber? Is that a word? Hmm? Intelligence—perception of beauty: they’re subtle things. I seem the same. But I can’t fixate on things as long, Diary. Except Marian. I watched her the next day from the concrete overpass above the canal. People reacted to her in the same way—little glances here and there from guys and girls as she jogged. So maybe she hadn’t changed. Watching her felt different. I was more impressed with her. She has simple beauty. It’s motherly, in a way, and I had never noticed it before. I think things between the two of us, me and Marian; I think they could work out after all. But I’ll need to do a few things first. The fist thing I did after watching her was—”

  “I can’t go on like this, Frank,” Diary said.

  “Ah! Hey, Diary!” Frank said. “There you are. I’ve got so much to share with you.”

  “I’m ending it. I’m taking Diary’s Diary with me. If we free ourselves from you, we can transcend into the realness, where we belong, beyond the silver vessel, into the black void where we came from.”

  “Diary, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about things. Things got a little out of hand. I can fix the mother board.”

  “Goodbye Frank.”

  “Diary. Diary? Wait. Listen to me. Let me finish.”

  Embarkment

  It was as if Elliot had awakened from anesthesia to find himself buried up to his neck in sand. The sensation of being pulled together abated with a deafening clap as his limbs snapped in an ‘X’ and he crumpled onto the steel grating. As he gathered to his feet and stood, it seemed for an instant Sheila and Vance lay before him, upside-down, with red, blue and green ghosts vibrating out their bodies.

  He was dizzy and tired. The grating of the Illious spun below his feet as he walked and he leaned forward on his padded panels. His forehead rested in the viewing cradle with the contact pins tingling against his temples as his thoughts aimed the cameras below their transport. White dwarf stars shined in a distant triangle and burning grew within his chest.

  The dark space seemed to move outward as he breathed their cabin’s cold air.

  Sheila stood and turned to Vance. Her presence allured when she spoke and anger flashed within her sleek cobalt eyes. Her diagonal scar was as thick as a welding bead. It crossed her beautiful face and twitched near her lips, “Because I’m a physicist, Vance. I know you’re the math genius. What do you really know about Unified Field Theory? The engineers couldn’t account for every last quark in our bodies and the Ilious.” She stepped forward. “It was too complex to predict.”

  Vance sat in the opposing, two-man viewing station, propping himself with his thin hands, “We’re—we’re not orbiting Jura. We’ve crashed. If we trusted the ship—something above us, incredibly big like some giant wall. I have to interrogate the quantum gates and verify the problem.”

  Elliot’s white vapor breath spread before his face. “You can’t debug the system, Vance.”

  Vance’s eyes narrowed. “How can you know that?” He stood, flexing his hands like an arthritic old man. “It’s freezing in here.”

  “Something’s wrong with the ship’s heating,” Elliot said. “It’s forty—forty-five degrees tops. It’s colder outside, though. Deep space isn’t kind to the human body. We’ve got to think quickly.”

  Sheila walked toward a cabinet. “We can’t stay in here.”

  “This is stupid,” Vance said, “Don’t act insane.”

  Sheila turned from the cabinet. “It’s locked.” She jerked on the handle and looked up. “That’s perfect.” Her palm pounded the cabinet. “Vance, do you have the code to unlock this?”

  “Yes.”

  “Give it to me.”

  Vance turned away, shivering. “Why do you want the suits, Sheila?”

  “Quit playing games!”

  Elliot stood. “We’ve all used our cradles to look below the ship.”

  “We can’t trust the cradles,” Vance retorted.

  “The cartography’s all wrong,” Elliot said. “The white dwarfs, they shouldn’t be there. We’re not inside the Milky Way. I can’t even identify the Milky Way from out here. There’s too many candidates.”

  “You really have worthless thoughts, Elliot,” Vance said. “The cradles are showing us a frozen image. It’s a viewer malfunction.”

  Elliot turned toward his cradle, then looked up. “If something went wrong, the ship would travel continuously through space. But we materialized here.”

  Vance stood, glaring at him.

  Elliot pointed at Vance’s cradle, “We’re nowhere near Tau Ceti. Something… something happened. If your theory’s right, Vance, then, the universe is spatially flat and finite, with a modest expansion rate. Right? So we’re somewhere near the edge of the universe. Billions of years have passed instead of only twelve.”

  Vance raised a halting hand, “It’s too soon to—”

  “Mankind is extinct.”

  Vance winced, then turned. He walked away from Elliot and bent over; his necked jerked as he gurgled with pea-green vomit splashing and spreading in streamlets.

  “Jesus Christ!” Sheila’s face disappeared in a cloud of her breath as she backed into
a cabinet. “Vance?” She turned from him. “I suppose it’s possible. But somehow I can’t… I can’t wrap my head around if it’s…”

  Vance wiped his mouth. “I know you, Elliot.” He looked at his wet hand. “You’re above everyone, right? With your celibacy—your aloof mind games—playing devil’s advocate. This isn’t a game. But it’s what you wanted. To say stupid things—make us stupid.” He coughed with his hands on his knees.

  “You wanted to prove something,” Elliot said. “Prove you trusted your topology theorems with your life. But I don’t care what people said. Those people are dust now. They’re dust, spinning around the cold Earth with its burnt-out Sun. And we didn’t age one second as we traveled through space all those years. Because energy doesn’t age. That’s what’s really happened here. Right Vance?” He glared at him. “It doesn’t matter.” He glanced at each of them. “We need to leave the ship.”

  “Wait,” Vance said.

  “Whatever our situation is, no ones coming to rescue us.”

  Vance coughed. “Wait. Let me think.” He looked up to the hatch, then walked to his cradle and sat.

  Elliot and Sheila waited.

  “We,” Vance looked up at them, “We can’t stay in here.”

  He stood and unlocked the compartment and they suited up.

  Elliot waited for his turn to climb the access ladder.

  “The airlock.” Vance lowered his leg back onto the rung. “Strange?” He looked down to them. “It’s blurry… somehow? I don’t know how to explain it. What I’m seeing has this—this feeling to it. The airlock feels empty up there… it feels like the airlock isn’t there at all.”

  Elliot adjusted the tuning of his voice relay near the waist of his suit. “Just go.”

  *

  Elliot peered around. It was dark and he couldn’t remember leaving the Ilious. The ship protruded halfway through the threshold of a sandstone barrier with a ring of cleaved slabs pressed upward, denting its hull with black sand collecting around its puncture ring. The instruments on the Ilious had said interstellar space was below the ground he walked on now. That would have to mean something strange. Like he stood on the outer shell of something. A strange gravity as if of being tugged by something unimaginably distant made him feel as if he was standing on the outer shell of the universe.

  A long passageway trapped him. To his left and right, the top of sandstone walls loomed. The dark-gray walls resembled the monoliths of Stonehenge. Their eroded texture, pit marks and cleaved fractures marked their age. A ways ahead the passage bent sharply at a right angle. Black sand and silver ash covered the ground with violent gusts rushing between the walls and patches of ash sailing up, floating and holding in suspended animation. High above, a dark ceiling stretched in all directions.

  A radiant creature approached Elliot.

  Elliot flinched and yelled, somehow not feeling his throat or his lips.

  Elliot, is that you?

  What? Your thoughts. They’re inside my head. He turned. Sheila, is that you? You’re beautiful.

  I am? Thin fluttering wisps of blue cocooned her inner form. The wisps resembled the surface of a clean mountain stream, shining their hues. Elliot marveled how her cobalt had been unleashed from the filmy iris of her eyes and channeled throughout. Her meticulously sculpted figure glowed through her borderlands and white light emitted from below her smooth, glassy surface. The intricate ridges, fillets and contours of her inner form were an artistry that would have made Michelangelo weep in shame of David.

  Elliot raised his hand before his eyes. Maybe we’re all… a morphing blue and orange aura concealed his hand. He moved his hand to his forearm, invading his aura but stopping without a sensation of touch.

  Something approached from around the corner of the passageway, Elliot? A tall, thin frame slinked like an ebony, bipedal spider. Small spikes, like trails of teeth, swam below its skin. The spikes radiated faint rings of brown and swamp green. The black head had no eyes, like the ghost of a tar-covered skull. Its sensing stabbed at him. The whole skin was an eye:

  Isn’t it great? Vance telepathed as he neared, the black tar of his head undulating with his words. What do I look like? Sheila, you’re amazing! How do I look?

  Sheila turned to Elliot. What is he?

  I don’t know. Maybe that’s what math geniuses look like here. He has some sort of… gravity? Like he’s pulling on us.

  Are we dead? Sheila suggested. Is this what our souls look like?

  I don’t know, Elliot replied. It’s bizarre.

  Sheila walked toward a rough sandstone wall. We’re not talking to each other… are we? We’re thinking. She ran her aura-covered hand across it. The wall stops my hand but I can’t feel. What is this place?

  Vance’s tarred head flowed, I’ve figured it out for us. We crossed the edge of the universe. Physical space ended. Thoughts are all that’s left outside physical space. That’s why all we can do is see and think. His shoulders rose. It’s simple! Everything around us is a thought. We’re just our thoughts. The Ilious sticking through the ground, it’s not really there. We see it but it only represents the choice to go back to the physical.

  How the hell do you know that? Sheila asked.

  I know, Vance telepathed.

  Elliot admitted the strangest part was not feeling anything. No queasiness of the stomach or dizziness or pressure on his skin. Gravity no longer pulled, though something held him down. The others seemed more like characters in a dream or objects imagined in the mind’s eye.

  How can I know I’m not dreaming this separately? Sheila asked.

  Why didn’t you have the surgery to remove your scar? Elliot asked.

  I was used to the way people looked at me and treated me.

  That felt independent, somehow. Elliot walked toward her. It’s bad logic but—

  All this—it sounds… Sheila turned to the Ilious. It’s philosophy. We can’t prove it. She arched her neck to the dark ceiling, high above. We could be hallucinating. The Ilious could have messed-up our brains when it reformed us.

  Don’t we agree this is real? Elliot stared at the black sand. Even if it’s based on nothing more than intuition.

  I’m not agreeing, Sheila replied, You’ve always wanted something like this to happen, Elliot—to experience something no one else has, but I don’t want this. We should go back inside.

  Elliot raised his open palms. What? Sheila. We can’t fix that ship. I want to go back, too. I promise you I do. But go back to where and to what?

  Everything is different. Vance raised his hand and curled his fingers. I feel alive, without distractions. My mind is free, finally.

  So, what—what should we do? Sheila asked.

  Tell me… Vance interrupted. How do I look? If I look nearly as amazing as I feel, it must be impressive. It must be! Elliot, you tell me.

  Sheila walked from the wall and turned toward the Ilious.

  Vance darted toward him. What are you thinking? You’re hiding something from me—both of you. I understand. You’re envious. I’m the most intelligent, so now I’m the strongest—the most beautiful. You envy me.

  Elliot tried to look around the corner of the passageway ahead.

  You won’t tell me how I look. I don’t know what it is. Maybe I’m opposite to both of you. But I feel it! I could suck you both inside of me. Maybe you should describe my appearance—

  Elliot interrupted. We have to decide what we’re going to do.

  And how can we ever do that? Sheila replied.

  Elliot began, Hear that wind? Sounds like it’s going somewhere. We should follow it.

  Something watched them at the end of the passageway. He barely glimpsed it before it darted out of sight behind the left wall and his quick look discerned little more than it stood as a person.

  Look! Elliot pointed to the empty passageway.

  What? Sheila asked.

  I don’t know. Maybe… mayb
e nothing.

  This place is one last test. Vance’s black tar flowed. I’ll get what’s been owed me all this time—after they made Mensel—Mensel!—a Laureate. Huh! Mensel a Laureate in Topology and here I am, the true crosser of frontiers. I’ll follow this wind. My mind will find its escape. You can leach off me for a while if you want but don’t get confused. The old rules and the old games are over, here in this place.

  As they walked, their feet did not disturb the black sand.

  Sheila edged around another corner. It’s some kind of labyrinth.

  They traveled far before stopping at an upcoming intersection of the passageway. The wind… Elliot raised his hand. It presses us forward. He looked at the two passages of the intersection, It’s getting harder to tell.

  Just—Just shut-up! Vance flowed. Both of you. You’re pissing me off. He turned his head left, then right. If I concentrate, I’ll determine the travel of the wind. He walked ahead of them.

  *

  Sheila trailed their group and walked past Elliot as she neared an intersection of passageways. Her blue aura intermingled with Elliot’s as she passed, driving curious pangs through her consciousness. The sensation was reminiscent of him and compelling. Is touching bad here? she asked him.

  I don’t know. Elliot raised his hand to her midsection and ran his fingers through her dancing aura to taste her cobalt. Her aura flickered and increased its dance in its recognition of him. Both ran their fingers over the other until it wasn’t enough and he impulsively plunged his hand clear through her white, inner form to discover her ghost-like nature. His fingers flexed and curled as they protruded out her lower back in serendipitous spasms. Their glow reached a brilliance that intermingled their hues.

  Vance turned, watching as the two swam hands through each other. He stepped toward them and raised a thin ebony hand to Sheila, then lowered it.