The Gone World

by Tom Sweterlitsch

  “How do you know?” I asked. “Who are you?”

  “I had been through medical school,” she said. “My father convinced her I could help. He wanted a life for me. I loved her the moment I met her. I was inspired by her. I wanted to go with her. She had that quality about her—people wanted to follow where she led. We wanted to follow.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Commander Remarque,” said Nicole. “Forty-seven-man crew. Libra was tasked with missions to the galaxies NGC 5055 and NGC 5194, the Sunflower and the Whirlpool. A six-year mission.”

  Nicole lit a new Parliament, flicked the smoldering butt of the old cigarette into the grass around the barn. It flared an orange arc, winked out.

  “We first transitioned to NGC 5194 and observed for two and a half years, transitioned to Earth-side IFTs for shore leave and resupply,” she said, “but the Whirlpool was barren, so Remarque ordered us to our second location, the Sunflower Galaxy, and that’s where we found the miracle.”

  “What miracle?” I asked.

  “Life,” said Nicole. “We found life.”

  QTNs would appear like disease through the future White Hole, but throughout NSC’s odysseys the universe had revealed itself as nothing but flaming gas and dead stone. The notion that Libra had discovered a planet supporting life was almost too large to grasp, a great plume swelling within me. The stars above us suddenly swarmed, it seemed—no longer the cold fires of heaven but pulsing with life like the frenetic masses of organisms contained in a droplet of water.

  “A planet in liquid,” said Nicole. “The atmosphere was a methane-and-carbon mixture. Nothing to support human life, and yet the planet was teeming. It was a small planet circling a binary star. Its surface was an ocean with crystal shapes that swam like leviathans, crystals like latticework, mammoth polyhedrons that bobbed and dived in the ink. The crystals sang when they noticed us—you know the sound when you run your finger around the rim of a wineglass? Remarque named the planet Esperance, meaning ‘Hope.’ There were landmasses, a crinkle of fjords, and I was on the exo-team, twelve of us. Three Quad-landers, we left Libra in orbit and descended through the atmosphere. The binary suns were distant, dying. Winds battered our landers, the air was full of ice. We landed, and we made camp.”

  We all trained on mock alien surfaces, pitching inflatable concrete domes to use as semipermanent houses, camping in Arizona deserts and Arctic planes of ice, using self-heating burners and smokeless chemical fires, nights spent in my space suit, limited oxygen. I never descended to the surface of a crystal island or an alien sea, but we all trained for such things. Nicole had walked on another world—I imagined her searching out constellations in an unfamiliar sky, like trying to read the braille of foreign tongues.

  “We had two SEALs—Mursult and Cobb,” she said. “Jared landed, and so did Beverly Clark, a botanist, and I was assigned as her assistant. Patricia Gonzales was with us, a geologist, and Nate Quinn, a biologist. Elric Fleece and Esco were from engineering, mechanics for the landers. Tamika Ifill, Takahashi, and Josephus Pravarti were our pilots. We were nearly four billion miles away from the planet’s suns. We called them the Pilot Lights, because they were ghostly blue. There were three moons, the largest a crater-pocked gargantua that hovered massive wherever we looked, almost like an entire second planet encircled ours. The other moons traced their own arcs, barely visible at times, the smallest circling twice before the largest had even seemed to move. We had difficulty distinguishing day from night because of the frequent eclipses, and even the strongest daylight felt like dusk. The ground was slush and soft like putty.

  “And that slush sucked at our boots and splattered our suits like a fine dust of silica, playing havoc with our electronics. Our communications with Libra were spotty, fragmented static blasts. But the beauty of those ridges, the way the oceans stained the ice blue . . . After two days we found that the land tapered, began to level off, and we descended shelves of ice and entered into swampland. This was our first physical contact with life, a band of fauna like a borderland to the ocean beyond, razors of wild grass and floppy squills with closed bulbs, their stalks more grayish than green. Things with broad leaves like lily pads and stringy moss carpeted the icy mud, and clusters of reeds as tall as trees arced above us, grew together like archways, like the entire swamp was one body that had grown in a kind of geometric architecture. It’s almost . . . like I thought there was a structure we were inside of but that I couldn’t see, that was invisible. And these plants covered the structure like ivy. Do you understand?”

  I imagined the exo-team picking their way through the swamp, traversing the fauna like tourists passing through a cathedral. “I think so.”

  “And we came out to a beach made of pebbles of metal, almost like ball bearings instead of sand, and the black ocean beyond. Beverly Clark had grown uneasy—she hadn’t wanted to land on Esperance to begin with. She had been afraid to cross the swamp, and she panicked at the sight of the ocean. She was hysterical, she told us the ocean wanted to consume us, that she thought the ocean was this planet’s mouth. Her fear spread to Quinn and Fleece, and they told us they wouldn’t carry the equipment any further, they refused. So there we were, in this abundance of life, and we fell to bickering. Cobb decided we would sleep in shifts, to get rest before heading back to our base camp and to Libra. In the meantime the rest of us gathered samples, filling tubes with the ocean, collecting soil samples, rocks, cuttings from the leaves. We tried to force those flower bulbs open, but they were clamped shut. We tried to dig up the larger plants with the root systems intact, but Beverly Clark and Quinn and even Patricia Gonzales fought with us—”

  “They were losing their minds,” I said. “Overwhelmed.”

  “Not until the moons passed together,” said Nicole, “the three moons in conjunction, an eclipse, circles in circles. You could actually feel the change in the gravity they produced together—a lightness, a lift, being pulled upward by the moons like a thread in your chest had been tugged. And the oceans responded, receding from the shore, following the moons’ pull, a waning tide. The beach elongated as the ocean retreated, and the ocean floor was covered in lichen, a luminescent carpet that grew in the furrows leading deeper into the ocean. There were glassy rocks in twisting shapes like lava as it curls through water, and farther out still we saw crystals that dazzled like diamonds. The water receded far enough to expose the body of one of the leviathans, the ringing bodies we had seen from above—or rather the crystal shape of the leviathan. It was at a distance but seemed more like a shape than a body, the same shapes the plants had grown into—or maybe it was once a body but was crystal now. I don’t know how to . . . I don’t have the words . . . A crystal shape, like interlocking diamonds or pyramids inside of pyramids. A fractal. But the most beautiful sight, all the closed buds in the swampland and the plants along the shore responded to that greater tug of gravity, and all the flowers spread open their leaves, the buds bursting, blossoming in heavy flowers with burgundy organs and long blue petals that glowed. The flowers’ blue light almost hurt to look at, you had to squint.”

  “Your necklace,” I said. “A blue leaf.”

  “Here,” said Nicole, removing her necklace and handing it to me, the pendant of luminescent blue. I received the necklace in cupped hands just as I had once received a human heart, trembling at the thought of holding an artifact of alien life. I looked closely, saw veins in the blue—a pressed petal still glowing with spectral light.

  “Oh my God,” I said. “My God,” but I was uneasy holding it. I returned the necklace to Nicole, who slipped it away into her pocket, the blue light extinguished.

  “All the flowers opened,” said Nicole. “In the swampland and all along the shore—so many flowers had grown beneath the ocean, the exposed sand was like a field of blossoming wildflowers. And as we watched, their spores, or their pollen, lifted toward the moons, fuzzy lights like blue-and-gold rain, but rain in reverse. And that’s when . . . that’s when it ha
ppened to Quinn, when Quinn began to scream. We all stared at him, standing in that field of flowers, the spores lifting around us. The spores had sunk into him—they passed through his space suit, into his body, like he was absorbing those blue lights. His face, through his mask—his eyes bulged and bled, and I saw his suit pulled from him, his helmet, but they were held in the air beside his body. And he was lifted, naked, several feet off the ground, his arms spread, his legs spread, his skin burning in the alien light. This all happened so quickly—I screamed. I thought I was screaming. His neck opened along a seam, and blood sprayed from him, filling the air with mist, and other seams opened along his arms, along his thighs, and blood rushed from him for several minutes. His body shriveled, but the droplets hung suspended like a fog around him. His skin peeled away, the skin of his hands came off like gloves, the skin of his arms like sleeves, his chest like a long coat—the skin floating like scarves caught in the wind. He was floating, a floating body, clouds of meat, white tendons, and a shape opened in his chest, opened in him like an eye, a polygon, its points connected, and I could see through that shape into another place, as though a portal had opened in him, another ice landscape and another and another. I looked through him, but I felt something look back into me. I felt as if something had reached through him and I had been touched. His body was sectioned apart, his skeleton separated, and soon he was only an outline tracing of nerves and veins, like a man made of lace. Each of his organs lined up in the air and formed a cube around him—everything was displayed.”

  Nicole moaned like a dog dreaming, and her eyes rolled to the night sky. I felt faint, thinking of the silence of the universe and the sounds of crystal bodies ringing. Nicole had seen a body opened in midair, like a cadaver opened on a table. The thrum of the circulatory system, the nervous system, ringing, the wet bellows of the lungs. I was filled with fear. Bodies stripped of skin, muscles hanging displayed in the air, zygomaticus major, depressor anguli oris, orbicularis oculi, orbicularis oris—an autopsy.

  “Beverly Clark was next—she ran and crawled but was lifted into the air and dismantled. She was a fractal, all her pieces. Her blood was a mist we ran through, and we had lost our minds. I was burning inside, like my brain and my eyes were fire, like my skin would burn from me—and Takahashi screamed, and I saw him fall on Patricia Gonzales and beat her to death, break apart her face mask and beat her as she choked on the air. And I couldn’t endure the burning anymore. I wanted to die, anything to end the pain. I wanted to run into the black ocean to drown, but Jared, my Jared, was screaming, burning, and he tried to kill me—”

  “He had changed,” I said. “That place drove him mad, turned him murderous.”

  “Only Cobb and Mursult were sane,” said Nicole. “They saved us, the SEALs. They were able to keep their minds, maybe because of their training. Cobb was able to pull Jared from me. He got through to him somehow. And Patrick lifted me from the ground, and I heard his voice like through water, but eventually his words came to me: Run, run. We left Takahashi, and I saw Esco run into the ocean, disappear into the ocean. Fleece had snapped, but he came with us—Cobb carried him. We lost Tamika Ifill at base camp, but the rest of us launched in the Quad-landers. We peeled off our clothes, scratching at ourselves—our bodies were burning. We docked with Libra, and Remarque retreated far from the planet. We heard the crystalline ringing, and the space around us turned brittle, like ice, shimmering like diamond dust. Remarque launched the B-L drive before all the space around us had gone brittle, and we transitioned, but it followed.”

  “What followed you?” I asked.

  “That white light. It traveled the negative energy the B-L drive left in our wake, the negative energy sailors call Casimir lines. Remarque transitioned again and again, but the white light was always above us, always surrounding us. And we were running low on food—”

  “And so you left for Earth,” I said, realizing that Nicole was describing the birth of the Terminus.

  “A far future,” said Nicole. “We jumped to the far future, thousands of years, hoping a civilization with technology greater than our own would be able to help us, but when we came through, the white light had appeared, that second sun. We saw the future of mankind dissolve. We saw men running to the seas to drown and saw men hanging in the air. We saw men, their mouths filled with silver. Remarque transitioned into other futures, but the white light shone above every sky, fouling every possibility.”

  I thought of something like wildfire scorching the skies of infinite Earths. I thought of the White Hole shining like a dead eye.

  “Remarque knew,” said Nicole. “She gathered us together in the enlisted men’s mess hall, the only place large enough to gather as an entire crew. She talked to us about Everett space, about how we were travelers in futures called Everett spaces that were carved from our observations, our experience. She told us that if we committed suicide, all of us, that if we all killed ourselves, then everything we had seen, everything we had discovered, would blink out. We could jump to a new future and commit mass suicide, and everything that we had seen and experienced aboard Libra would cease to exist. Terra firma would never know about Esperance—the planet would go unfound, because if we blinked, then it would be like we’d never found it. We could save humanity. She told us she would start the sequence to create a ‘cascade failure’ in the B-L drive, that the destruction of the engine would obliterate us and everything we had uncovered. She said it would be painless.”

  “But you refused,” I said.

  “Hyldekrugger didn’t want to die,” said Nicole. “Remarque had her supporters—Chloe Krauss, she was our WEPS, and there were others. But there were more people who were ready to listen to Hyldekrugger, who joined with him when Remarque ordered us to kill ourselves. He gathered people around him.”

  “Mutiny,” I said.

  “I’m innocent. I’m innocent in all this, everything that happened, everything that will happen. I hid from the fighting in the life-support room, and when I heard the fighting come near me, I hid in the brig, where I knew I could lock myself away. Don’t you remember? We met once, years ago.”

  “What?” I asked, confused. “No, that’s not possible. How could I remember?”

  “We don’t have time for your lies, Courtney,” she said, and took a long drag on her cigarette. “We need to leave here. You need to get your things—”

  “Tell me what happened to Remarque.”

  “They killed the crew loyal to Remarque,” said Nicole. “They captured her. They cut Remarque’s throat in front of everyone—they were cheering at her death. They killed her. Hyldekrugger killed her. They passed the body around, everyone involved in the mutiny despoiling her. They spared me, because I was Jared’s wife. They killed everyone else, but they spared me. I’m innocent.”

  “What happened to the ship?” I asked. “You came back here, you brought the Terminus with you. What happened to Libra?”

  Nicole’s eyes welled with emotion; a memory fluttered over her face, gone in an instant. She reached for my hand, squeezed it. She said, “I know a story, of ghosts in the forest who precede the living, like spirits born before their bodies. The spirits live life, and then their bodies live the same life, but always a few steps behind.”

  A flashlight winked in the distance, a sweep of light out near the orchard. Someone searching. Nicole said, “We should leave. Wait here until I come for you.” She retreated into the night, her white clothes like a radiant spill of moonlight before she was swallowed by the dark.

  “Nicole, wait,” I said. “Nicole—”

  Her cigarette smoke hung in the air. They killed her, she had said, and my heart quickened—a damp rag, water like diamonds. I was alone here, I realized. Twilight had deepened, the house lights were the only lights except for the red rim of the horizon. Miss Ashleigh was baking, it smelled like—the air was scented with apples, spices. Chillier now, without my jacket. I shivered, thinking of spores like rain, of autopsies in the air. I thought
of Libra. Mutiny—

  The glare of the flashlight swept closer, swept the lawn, the grass nearer the barn.

  “Who is it?” I asked.

  “Quiet.” Shauna’s voice. She killed the flashlight. “Wait,” she said.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, but she didn’t answer until she had come close enough to whisper.

  “They’re going to kill you tonight,” said Shauna. “You have to leave.”

  “Who is? What are you talking about?” But I felt adrenaline pump through me, my teeth chattered.

  “Don’t go back to the house. Run in this direction,” said Shauna, turning me toward the orchard. She flashed her light once, pointed ahead of us, at the ground. “Go straight through the row of fruit trees and you’ll hit the road, right where we walked earlier today. Head away from the house and get to the road—”

  “Tell me what’s going on.”

  “Shannon Moss,” said Shauna. “NCIS.”

  The shock at hearing my real name, my cover wiped away. I thought of Shauna’s face—her dark eyes—but no, there was no recognition. How would she know?

  “I don’t—”

  “They ID’d you,” said Shauna. “When Cobb and Nicole left this afternoon, they must have met up with Hyldekrugger. They have names of agents who’ve investigated them, stretching years back. Cobb checked. They ID’d the name Courtney Gimm, but I know who you really are. You have to go. I’ll have transportation once you hit the road.”

  “Are they Libra?” I asked. “Who else is involved?”

  “I don’t know what Libra is,” said Shauna. “I don’t know what angle you’re working. I’m working domestic terrorism.”

  “Who are you?”

  “FBI,” she said. “Go.”

  The hovering thought that I might die here beat like wings around my skull. When Shauna turned toward the house, I ran for the orchard. I tried to control my breathing like I’d been trained, tried to keep my wits despite my fear, tried to think. Cold sweat damp on my forehead, my back. I had crossed in front of the house, through the spill of light on the lawn, and had made it down the rise into the longer grass when I heard a scream. I lost my footing and fell, looked back toward the house. The gabled house and gabled barn crested the rise, silhouetted black against the hellfire-red sunset glow of the horizon. The screaming continued, the piercing shriek of utter shock, of death.