by Paul Jessup
Like a light she maybe dreamt about and then woke up feeling both sad and happy at the same time. Happy because she’d had that dream and it felt whole and right. Sad because she woke and the dream was over and there was nothing she could do about it anymore.
And the rooms and the halls became less angular and jutted and grimy. As they walked the world spread out away from them. Like flowers blossoming and blooming and then welcoming them inside. No longer endless. No longer infinite. No. This now all became a singular path and the singular path led them onward, onward ...
Bear paw in her double’s hand. As her ear slid away. And then her nose. Teeth fell out one plink at a time. And yes. Harder. To breathe. Their heartbeats lined up. Together. Connected. As they continued onward.
No, she did not fear death now. She feared the pain maybe for a moment. And she feared them taking her patuek and putting it in another body. And then she would go through this all again. The surgeries. The experiments. The glowing insides. Over and over and over again ...
She didn’t want that anymore. She was exhausted. She needed it to end.
After this. After he shows her this secret. Then she would end it all for all of them. Static electricity would be how she would do it. That would be the spark. So simple. So pure. And then they would inhale explosions and exhale light.
* * *
She wanted to hate everything but she could not. Not at this moment. A large picture window giving them full view of the world outside the ship. Even in her own egia, she had piloted by cameras and screens and holofluid. She had not seen the brutal emptiness of space in so long. She forgot how breathtaking it was. That endless vacuum that surrounded them all.
She was caught now. Caught in that moment. As the labyrinth turned a little, a little.
And he still held her hand. Paw in palm and everything. Her eye began to slip and slide away. No, no. Not yet! She still had to see this. She needed to. She knew what was coming now. What had to be coming now. As the labyrinth turned some more. Tilting in the infinite emptiness of space.
A soft blue light. And then. The sunrise on the ship. As it tilted, tilted, tilted some more. Blue light, but not a ghostly sick light but something stronger. That holy blue and oh and oh and oh she knew that light. And there it was. The sun, so big and brilliant. The sun the size of a million planets devouring the sky. The sun the color of Arigia, yes, Arigia!
Was that her? One eye slid off down to the floor. Then the other. So she used her double’s sight instead of her own. And yes, yes. There it was. That was Arigia now. She had become a sun of her own. Child of a supernova. There she was, warming them and giving them life even now. Arigia.
In the center of the brilliant blue sun she saw the outline of Arigia’s body. Still childlike. Surrounded by fire and light. Her mouth open in a half smile. And her eyes locked on Itsasu’s. Oh. She felt her whole body shiver and there went some of her hair falling out. Yes, even that was falling out, too. She heard the whisper of the sakre in her blood and ignored it. As Arigia burned that out of her again.
So beautiful in that sea of blue light. Still a child, yes. But a child unlike any child who had ever lived before. She was surrounded by all these skulls. All these burning up skulls of the dead. Surrounded in her sun body. She touched them each, kissed them each. Victims she could not save. Haunting her. Even here, even now, even to this very moment.
And Itsasu wept in that moment. Tears floating around her eye sockets. Holes in her face, wet now, damp now. She wanted to reach out and shatter that window and float through space and hug her and say thank you a million times over. And then. And then. Arigia parted her lips. And mouthed these words.
I love you. You need to live. I can’t keep saving you, okay? Just live and keep on living. For me, okay?
She can’t hear you. She can’t. Not through the glass, through space, through all of that.
Yet, her doubles still spoke for her.
“But it hurts so much and we’ve been alive for so long ... Why do we keep on suffering?”
Arigia floated now, larger than entire worlds in the center of her sun. Yet still a child. You could tell. Even from here. Still a child.
“Never mind that, never you mind that at all. Just keep on going for me. Okay? For me. Keep going and remembering everything. And then someday, yes. Yes. Even you, oh infinite Itsasu will see the end of it all and die. But before you go, when you are on your death bed? I need you to come to me. I need you to come here to me and let me take your memories. Take everything of all the millions of years you’ve lived and everything you’ve seen. Can you do that for me? Can you?”
A weary nod. And her head fell from her body. Yet she was still alive somehow. Even though everything fell apart and there was nothing left. She was still alive somehow ...
* * *
She looked out through her double’s eyes. Even though her original body was dead and busted up and broken down, she still thought and moved in these multiplex bodies. She did not need that old falling apart body anymore. That body was just a stupid, ugly shell. So. This was it. She would no longer know what it was like to be anchored in the world.
And she was okay with that.
Doubles’ eyes are now all she saw. through As Basa walked up to her severed head and grabbed it. Muttering thank you to her. As if this had been a gift. As if it had been something she’d freely given up and not somehow part of the plan, after all. She turned back and looked, but the ship had already tilted and moved. The sun was gone. A sunset over in a flash. Just as quick as the sunrise. And then nothing, nothing but blue reflections on the wall.
She had seen the sun and the sun was Arigia. Finally. After so long. So very very long.
And a thrum in the blood. A hum and a whisper in the doubles. As if they sensed something in the air that’s changed. An air that became different. Broken air full of explosive oxygen.
“Do you still want to do it?” Basa asked. Holding her head in his hands. Lifeless. Tumbled and shattered. It looked like a stranger’s head. Like the head of some strange, familiar person who she had memories of but couldn’t quite recall. Not when she wanted to. A prevailing sickness of deja vu. “Do you still want to end this all and set us free in a blaze of brightness?”
“No,” doubles with words weak and whisperstrong. “No, Basa. You were right.”
“Hmm.” That melancholy bear hummed these next words. “You go and do what you need to do. I’ll go and do what I need to do. Have to fix up your head and all of that, and bury old La in the depths of space. Oh. How I’ll miss that little bastard.”
A nod of her head. And then he was gone. Moving back into the well-lit corners of the ship. The egia opening up and folding around him. Flower petals of concrete, metal, and clay.
* * *
“No fair, no fair.” Mari was in the double’s hair. Bird beak against her scalp. She felt it. Sharp. As Itsasu commanded the other doubles to remove her. Pulling her out. Flapping wings and all.
“What do you mean?”
“You won’t become a bird, will you? Now that you dwell in the doubles. I had to become a stupid bird and none of this makes any goddamned sense at all. What were they even doing? What are you even doing? What does any of this even mean?”
A shrug of four shoulders. “Does it matter? Should it even matter, I wonder? Isn’t it better if we provide the meanings ourselves? Why look for some sign of some universe or another controlling everything when we can look inside, and define all this stuff ourselves?”
Ortzi now. Clatter talk. “And what, my love, is your definition for all this? How do you give any of our lives meaning? Please, do tell.”
A double held the skull up to the other double. Eye level now. Face to face. Skull crashed and cracked and everything. So sad to see him like this. So broken down and busted up like this. She didn’t want to cry so she did it with another double. One just out of sight. Where no one could see her sadness that still lived. Even after seeing the sun.
&n
bsp; Maybe somehow that made it worse.
(And yet the beauty was there.)
“I’m not your love, not anymore. I haven’t been for so long, Ortzi. Even if you weren’t just a whisper or a reflection, I haven’t been Itsasu for so long. I am certainly not her now, not anymore. I’m floating and changed, no longer trapped into one body.”
Oh and Ortzi laughed. How he laughed. That little skull kept chuckling. And then when he spoke he spoke with a different voice. Like the voice of another. “I know. Don’t think I don’t know. And yet ... this is not the first time you lived in a million different bodies, is it? How are you different? How is any of this any different ...”
Double finger on skull nose.
“It is different, very different. I no longer have any body at all, not a singular place, not an anchor for my identity. I am no longer grounded in the physical. And you, you’re different, too. Don’t tell me you don’t feel it, the way you talk ... that’s not how I coded you to talk. You don’t sound like him ... you sound changed. And. Well. I think I’m okay with that.”
A sad voice now. “I still love you, I do. A million times over I love you.”
“I know. I know and I wish I could say I love you, too, but I can’t, anymore. Not in these bodies and not like this.”
“Oh.” Voice so sad in that skull. “So. What’s next?”
“Next? Next we go and get into that escape pod I saw and get the hell out of here.”
The bodies all moved in sync. Walking through those endless changing halls. With their broken gravity and everything else. As they searched and searched. Looking for that escape pod they had seen so long ago. Now missing and lost in those various halls and rooms, all surrounding them. The spinal walls claustrophobic in their flickering amber glow.
* * *
They listened to their bones and their blood. The room called to the doubles, sought them out. Told them stories of their birth. How they were grown and harvested in that gigantic tank. She remembered, yes. Fluid, fluid. Always swimming in fluid. A mermaid. Filled with mermaid bones. Watching a collapse of suns. Yes. Talking to the skull collector in the heart of the dead universe. This was her home, this was where her new bodies were created.
And this. Yes. This was where the escape pod sat in wait. There it was. In that dark damp corner of the room. The corrupted wires calling out to her. She reached through their hungry nest. And felt it in her bones. There wasn’t enough room for all her doubles. She would have to split herself apart. And let a few stay here. By themselves. Living out a separate life. Cut off and severed from her. Such a strange thought. Yet it was necessary.
And in the tangle of fingers the wires woke. You could feel them waking just like that. A violent shudder and then a howl of electrical life. She turned to her other doubles. Hugged and said goodbye. Only three could fit. Yup. Only three. Carrying Ortzi and climbing inside. And then a glance back at Mari.
“You coming with us?”
A cluck of anger. “It’s not fair! It’s not fair, it’s not. I don’t want to be like this. I am so sick of being a bird, I just hate it. And it’s not fair that you get to stay in all those stupid bodies.”
“Oh.” The doubles were almost all in the egia now. One lone head still poking out. “There’s still room, you know? You can still just come along and it will all be okay. Won’t you please come with us? Please?”
Sulky bird body. It hopped about and flapped its wings. “No. I’m sorry, but I can’t. I just can’t right now. This is all I know, okay? This is all I know anymore and I can’t give it up. Not like this. Not in this body.”
Double head nod. She understood. “I’m going to miss the shit out of you.”
“I know. I’m going to miss the shit out of you, too.”
The pod began to close around her. Like a dying flower. Petals closing in. Thorns encasing them in prickly darkness.
And the only response was the flutter flap of wings and bird beak pecking on the ceiling as the escape pod completely closed. And then dropped out like a dead leaf from a gnarled branch. Lazily floating off into that empty, infinite darkness of space. Dotted here and there by the tiny lamps of blue stars. As the entanglement engine kicked in. And they started to hop between galaxies.
Looking for a new sun. For a new planet. A new universe to call their home away from home.
Acknowledgments
Like all massive undertakings, this book couldn’t exist without the help of awesome first readers, fellow writers, critiquers, artists, family, and word ninjas. Special thanks goes out to Forrest Aguire, Natania Barron, Jason Blair, Georgina Bruce, Darin Bradley, MG Ellington, Selena Chambers, Julia C. Day, Jeff Ford, Jaym Gates, Nin Harris, Alethea Kontis, Jay Lake, Nick Mamatas, Anya Martin, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Michelle Muenzler, Eric Orchard, Rebecca Onyx, Erica Satifka, Ekaterina Sedia, Cheryl Shortridge, Jason Sizemore, Mark Teppo, Lavie Tidhar, Casey Tingle, Jeff VanderMeer, Sean Wallace, Gloria Weber, Jonathan Wood, and to my parents, my grandparents, my sisters (Kim, Pam, Hi!), my brother (heya Thom), and my awesome kids (yes, Ash and Liam, I’m looking at you).
About the Author
Paul Jessup is a critically acclaimed, award-winning weird writer. For over twenty years now he’s taunted magazines with words in short story format, getting into such luminous places as Apex Magazine, Fantasy Magazine, PostScripts, Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, Interzone, Nightmare and a host of others. He has some books out, here and there. Creeping among the shadows. Waiting to trap wary searchers. This book is the worst trap of them all. A beast of a thing, with iron jaws and a hungry maw.
Copyright © 2018 by Paul Jessup.
Cover by Daniele Cascone.
Jacket design by Mikio Murikami.
All rights reserved.
ISBN 978-1-937009-69-4 (TPB)
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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