Close Your Eyes

by Paul Jessup

  The heart felt itself break. It shattered and burst into a thousand rays of light. And just when it thought that all was hopeless, that all was pointless and empty, it heard a voice sing a solitary song in that beautiful and haunting language.

  And then Iuski’s brother’s lips moved, eyes moved, and words came out barely formed. Translations. The song, translated by the half-eaten head. A war song from so long ago, about the glory of those who rode in silver ships through the moons and the planet bridges.

  The song became muffled. Distant. The voice stopped translating, stopped repeating. The song fell flat, trailed off, disintegrated. A whisper, nothing more.

  The dolls’ heads lifted up, spoke again with the heart of the ship, chanting, summoning. “What have you done? What is that thing you hold? Why have you quieted it?”

  Itsasu smiled. Her mouth felt like broken glass, her lips like burning paper. “This is the heart of the port. It is infected with the sakre. I figured you would want this for your research—unlike human minds, it does not seem to be driven to destruction after being infected. It is a key. A key for your grim experiments. Combined with that puppet you have there, this is a Rosetta Stone that you have been waiting for.”

  The chorus chanted again. “Make it talk. Let it speak. Please.”

  Itsasu rolled her shoulders back, the feeling less like comfort and more like setting fire to her neck. Still, it eased some of the pain. Not all, but some. “Do you think it’s that easy? After all you’ve put me through? I want us to leave this place. Now. Resume the quest of bringing my husband back to life.”

  The chorus spoke. How odd it was for Itsasu to hear them near, up close, next to her, breathing and speaking. “No,” they said. “That was a fool’s errand. To get you to acquire the Ortzadar engine. There is no way to bring him back to life. Now, let’s stop this foolishness and continue.”

  Itsasu reached down to the floor and pulled up a small laser scalpel, its edge reflecting the harsh, rose light from the beating heart. She pushed in the ruby-red button and ignited the thin beam of light, holding it close to the port’s eye. She nicked it, sending small sparks burning across the back of her hand.

  “NO!” the chorus yelled. “STOP!”

  She let the light back into the scalpel, the blade sucking back in with the sound of a candle being blown out. “If that is true, if I really can’t bring him back to life, then I want to leave with my husband. To get on one of the lesser pods. They have enough juice for a few jumps, enough to get us to a space port where we can start the search over again. You do that, and you can have this precious thing.”

  Hodei’s eyes blinked, his mouth moved; his lips tried out each word, each vowel of fear. Itsasu read his lips: take me with you, take us with you. His eyes looked over at the girl. Not enough room, Itsasu thought. Sorry little boy, not enough room.

  The heart quickened in beat, about to respond, when the brother’s head lifted up, eyes open. No longer translating, no longer conversing, he began to shake. The chorus shouted, “Not yet, not yet,” and moved forward to perform more surgery on him, to preserve him for a little while longer. Too late, their movements were too late. The patuek had burned away, destroyed, and the brain was starting to change, to smoke, to become mist and fumes.

  The lips peeled back. Hodei closed his eyes, braced his body against the words. Itsasu could see that he knew what was going to happen, what was happening already, the world changing, the storm inside of the room building up, a quiet thunder of emotions churning and burning. The brother’s words were a whisper at first, then louder, a chant. His lips moved quickly, chapped and breaking apart with each syllable. “Shazarttta tatta tat haratta,” he said, his voice like a rapid fire machine gun. “Shazarttta tatta tat haratta.”

  Each mind in the room dwelled on the phrase, each mind took in the words, the words that danced along the edges of reality. Their thoughts focused on unwrapping the package of sounds, unpacking the secret that hid inside the depths of the language. The I took over, the new I, the language. It went through them, overwriting thoughts, erasing memories, replacing words, burning away ideas. With the new language came a new being, a hive mind that commanded each and every one of them, took them over, controlled them, turned them toward the glowing box of the Ortzadar engine as the brother’s head slouched forward and his mind leaked milk all over the floor, splattering it into chaotic patterns.

  The eyes looked at the blinking light in the center of the engine, watched it. The ship’s heart, the port’s heart, Hodei and Itsasu. They all watched, together, thinking as one, the language the only world they knew.

  The door behind them opened, washing their bodies in electric-blue light, turning them into two-dimensional things, cardboard cutouts, shadows.

  50

  I awaken on the floor of a ship, surrounded by bones and meat, claustrophobic and trapped within this land made of steel, collapsing tiny places pushing away all blinding light that I have become. I am the dreams of humanity, the lands of the stars. I am the coupling between all and everything. I float, I am free.

  I am Arigia.

  I float toward the heart, feeling the other stars calling to me, knowing that they are in trouble. I will find you, I think. I will take you under my wing, I will burn out the devilthings with my light, with my holy aura of a thousand suns collapsing.

  I am the sky that wraps around the stars. I am the land of a thousand planets, bursting into flames, torn down by the terraforming hands of man. I am a child on a moon, sleeping against the breast of my mother.

  I am Arigia.

  I float to the door, the closed door, leading to the centerhome of the ship. Metal cannot stop me, cannot hold me in. You cannot cage me in your steel, cannot trap me in your girderbones. I burst it open, blinding, electric light, exploding nova hands. My skin is night and inside of me are the ghosts of galaxies, burning.

  I am Arigia.

  I see them, the shallow things. The weak minds floating in the prisons of flesh. I sing to them, cry to them in the unmaking tongue. I burn with my electric blue light all of the sakre that has infected them, taking the demons back in time, back to the extinction it should have experienced when its hosts died off so long ago. I sing of the endless space, of the silver ships in so many seas and stars and the ruins and lives of humanity.

  I sing their memories back to them, sing those slain back to life. My words are the last songs of the exploding birth of galaxies, making them whole out of materials nascent in the air. I awaken those sleeping in preservation tanks, and reunite the loved ones with those who have passed on. I do not bring back ghosts, but real things with beating hearts and brittle bones.

  I sing the unwinding song of the ship’s heart, healing the misery that corrupted it, singing its love, its creator, back from the stars themselves, turning it into flesh for its friend. I sing the Ortzadar engine, sing back to life the memories that were stored inside of it, forgotten for millennia, the worlds destroyed before they had time to meet mankind, to greet him and set him free.

  I am Arigia.

  And I sing this ship to life. The port to life. I sing the sorrow song at the end of the universe, at the end of time. I sing and I sing and I sing.

  But I am still empty, for I cannot sing them back to life. Mother, father. Dead, now inside of me, a part of me. I sing and weep, for I will never know either of them and yet will always know both of them. I will know their memories and their thoughts, but I will not know what it is like to be held, to be rocked to sleep, to be kissed on the forehead. I will never know what it is like to be kept safe, to have a home, to have someone to run to when I am scared of the midnight hours.

  I will never know what it is like to be loved, to have a family, to be anything more than a shadow of my parents gone nova. I am Arigia. I am an orphan, doomed to travel the stars in solitude.

  I am Arigia.

  I am alone.

  And I sing.

  Intermission

  A Dissected Heart,
Displayed Under Glass

  Darkness here, constant darkness, and then an assault of colors in the shadows, and then, I think, I can feel again. That I can be real again. I don’t know how long I’ve been drifting, don’t know how much longer I have, but still, still. I’ve survived. That’s more than I can say for my wife, for my mother, for all the others on the space port behind me.

  Will they let me back into orbit again, back onto a planet again? Ah, to sink my feet into terraformed soil, to breathe the air built from a hundred nanomachines’ wheezing. That is life; that is love. That is soil in my hand; that is manufactured sky over my head.

  Will they let me back in? After all I have seen? Probably not, probably not. But there is always a chance I can fly in, fly low, sneak in and land without them knowing. This is my hope. This is my dream.

  I float. A coffin on the black waves of space. I am like Perseus and his mother, cast into the ocean, coffin-bound, left for dead because of prophecies, portents, signs in animal entrails, things whispered in mountain paths and inhaled from craters of lore.

  Like them, I survive. Maybe someday I will return to destiny, return to live and love again. I hope I am not infected. I hope I am not dying. Death, death. Who would’ve thought such a thing would last at the end of time? Who would’ve thought we would still fear it, coming for us in a milky white splendor, devouring who we are, transforming who we are?

  The words they spoke were not our words. Their patuek had been devoured.

  How much longer do I have? I transmit my thoughts, my souls, across wires. Across wireless stations hung in the void between planets, relaying signals across the stars. I dream in flashes of color. I dream of stars eating me, loving me, devouring me. Farther stars swallow; I succumb, I am taken in whole to be reborn when vomited up.

  Stars are time. Stars are sky. Death is the hand of my father, winding the watch of my resurrection. The hands are watch hands, brittle hands. My hands. There is death out there, waiting for us. A death we all thought we had escaped. Father death, howling mad. Giant death with hands around my neck, then my legs dangling, kicking out of his mouth. Come for me. Unwind me. Break the alphabet inside of me. Take me apart with scissors, scalpels, the voice of language that grows hollow and distant inside of me.

  * * *

  When I wake to the sound of waves I’m excited, yet cautious. I can feel myself sinking, syncing, falling and expanding. Something inside of me is frightened, wants to scratch its way out of the coffin. Break free, break free.

  No, not yet. Not here. Not now.

  Wait.

  Ages of waiting, hours of waiting, and then the onrush of air, the onrush of thunder in my lungs, of fire in my bones. Awake, awake, gasping for breath. Reborn, alive, haunted by everything I’ve seen. I am alive and awake on the shores of a new world. Far away from the homeland, from any land. The sky is purple. It reminds me of the flowers my mother used to wear in her hair.

  Before her death. Before her mind left her, her soul left her. When she tried to tear me apart and eat me, rip me to shreds and cannibalize me. I will never forget. I can’t help but remember.

  There is a city on the hill. Dunes of glass litter the sky with neon lights, glow blue and green against the purple sky. I see it, calling to me. Neon love, neon glory. Far away, distanced.

  For a moment, I can forget. For a moment, I can shove this into my undermind and just run, grasping, grabbing at the world. Out of breath, out of mind. Scrambling. I can’t remember now. Can’t remember my wife shaking and screaming. Can’t remember the words trying to pierce my mind.

  I am not infected. I am fine.

  * * *

  The city is hollow. It is a shell the size of a moon. I have never been inside any place more beautiful, more amazing, more alarming. I thought I could understand it, thought I could fit right in. But so much is different, planet to planet. Even though we are human, even though we share blood and bone and meat, it is all different somehow. We are connected by species only.

  I can never understand them, the people in this city. They took me in, bathed me, loved me, showed me their ways. But I could never figure out how to read the water flowing in the pipes. I could never figure out how to speak the fishlanguage, or dream in the sali tanks.

  Four days. Barely an hour’s worth of sleep. Civilization is not my salvation. It is another tomb, this one with water, with words I cannot understand. I wish to be back in my coffin, back in my tomb, back floating and diving through endless space with only my thoughts to comfort me.

  But the coffin is broken. Dead. And my home, my home, the port I’d spent years on is now a graveyard, is now a tomb for the mad, the cannibals, for those broken and infected. I only barely escaped. Thankfully, I am not infected. I am fine.

  * * *

  I’ve been living here for a month now. A month. They won’t let me leave, won’t let me ride in their silver airships, to float to the skies. They mock me for being closer to human than they are; they mock me for being one who has traveled the stars.

  There are men in orange coats who have taken an interest in me. I see them following me, watching me, like some sort of specimen. I try to dodge them, drive them away, but I see them, all the time, watching. Pale, porcelain skin, straw wire hair and glass eyes that roll around in their heads, clinking and clacking.

  Every once in a while someone will come to port. Travelers from afar bring shipments from other worlds. Sometimes I sneak in past the border guards and talk to these travelers, these truckers of the stars. I ask them about the world beyond my shallow tomb. I ask them about the places I have seen, the planets I have visited.

  News travels slowly through the universe. Planet to planet, mouth to mouth. It travels by the speed of ships jumping from star to star, from faded suns to billowing blue gas giants. The travelers know nothing. Most of them haven’t even heard of my port, my home, and what happened to it.

  There are whispers of the disease, of the sakre that infected the others. Talks of whole worlds wiped out. Talks of giant glass creatures shining in the glittering starseas, searching for the hearts of suns. Talks of a woman who had taken a star as lover, and talks of the end of the universe; talks of the great clockwork of stars winding down, cooling down, spinning out.

  I don’t believe such nonsense. None of it is true. I am here, I am solid, I am real. I am human.

  * * *

  I met a traveler who reminded me of my first wife. She had blue hair, curly like little springs tied to her head. Just like my first wife. She had a lovely body and eyes like jewels planted into her skull. Just like my first wife.

  Was she a clone? Was she created from my patuek, fashioned from my memories? I could not tell. But seeing her erased the memories of the port from my mind. It was as if someone had gone into my thoughts with a scalpel and then cut out the whole of the sakre, of the port, of my home being devoured by a disease. Gone was my wife screaming, white fluid pouring out of her ears. Gone was her spitting, her head twisting, her mouth biting down and tearing flesh.

  Gone were the memories of her mother being burned alive, screaming, running as the heart of the port tried to get things under control, tried to stop the spread of the disease. Soon the heart itself became infected. Even computers were not immune to the madness that spread.

  These memories were replaced by a soft buzzing sound, like bees, and a white space in my mind. A static of the soul. All I can see now is my first wife, brought back to life, shimmering life in the darkest hours of my existence.

  * * *

  She decided not to leave. She decided to stay with me.

  She had my first wife’s name: Arigia. Beautiful, meandering. I took her out to dinner; we wandered the fishlands, watched the city shimmer behind us as we swam through the salt lakes and burned in the light of the triple suns. It was as if the horror of my life had been purged, replaced with a new facsimile of life, a new replication of reality. But, but, but. There is always a but. My patuek did not forget.

  I ha
d nightmares. Of people turning purple, biting each other and screaming out k’nap. I had dreams of being cornered in a mushroom hut, of potions and elixirs that could not save me, could only destroy me, surrounded by madness, by broken gears and a dead old man lying on the floor.

  I would wake from the dreams upside down, bed nailed to the wall, my new wife lying next to me. I’d curl up around her, sweating, shaking, the ghosts of the memories fluttering around in my head. I think I spoke while I slept.

  I remember what I said, but will not listen to it. I will not focus on it. That way leads to infection, to madness, to memories of the damned. Shazarttta tatta tat haratta.

  * * *

  They still follow me, the men in the orange jackets. I ignore them as best I can. They seem to be studying me, to be watching with a careful eye, jotting down everything I do into lightbooks, carving out words with pens made from shadows.

  I want to scream and yell at them. Give them something to write about in exchange for destroying the few spare moments of my life when I was happy. When I was human again. I’ve died so many times I’d almost forgotten what it was like to love. The cold void of space ate away at my soul.

  But now my soul is here, my soul is reborn. And I won’t let any scientist in an orange coat destroy that.

  I won’t lie, though. These moments are mostly happy, but they are still tainted with the memories of before. Even though I forgot what happened, my mind feels the desire and the need to remind me, over and over again. In little ways, here and there.