Starstuff

by Kaylim

round surface of the planet. Of Earth. It’s watery blue, with spans of brown and green and swatches of white. What color, she thinks, and desires to paint, to splash that beautiful dot of color over an expanse of space-black.

  Something looms in her periphery, and with shock, she realizes it’s a machine. Her lips curve as it moves around the Earth, a large cylinder of white and grey and black. A gasp chokes her breath when a figure, white and seemingly engorged, exits the machine and begins to float around the cylinder. Floating among the stars.

  From there it’s a whirlwind, and woosh woosh woosh a line of rockets fire off from the Earth, and then from the cylinder, and then from the pale white satellite, and before her rise a line of planets, extending from Earth: one ruddy brown, and another a beautiful giant with delicate looking rings. Beyond that…the stars shine back at her and she reaches for them. Rockets, white and black, shoot off for the distant stars and she watches as they disappear into the depths of unexplored space. A giant leap for mankind, whispers the static voice.

  She wakes, covered in sweat, gasping with exhilaration, and she stares at her hands and pulls at her hair, because how and why and when? Leaping off her bunk, she paces in the room, and her skin itches, and she feels too big for her body. Her feet clip and clop against the floor, causing her bunk mates to stir and she feels like she could float to the ceiling and beyond.

  She leans her forehead against the wall, presses her skin hard against the smooth grey, and lets the cold of it permeate her body. She attempts to shake off her shivers, and she stays in that position until the Instructor comes to wake them up.

  She ignores the questions, her thoughts with the white and black rockets, and those thoughts give her goose bumps. She imagines where they could be now and if she could possibly ever find them. The Instructor jostles her out of her daydreams, and she resents him for it; but she follows him when he leads her to the room from yesterday. The three Instructors sit at a white table, waiting for her. She slides into the seat provided for her, aware she is in the middle of the room, being watched by three pairs of eyes.

  “Student, we will continue your Placement Assessment,” the woman announces.

  She gives a pointed look at the male Instructor beside her and he brings out something from behind the table. Ajita cranes her neck, but can’t see what it is because it’s laying flat on the table.

  “I want you to explain this image to me.”

  Ajita doesn’t nod, but instead waits on the edge of her seat, hands gripping the edge. Something is sinking in her stomach, heavy like the bar from the training room. The woman Instructor lifts the image up…and Ajita is faced with her own dried red handprints.

  She feels like she is small again, when she used to wet the bed after scary dreams and all the Instructors and all the Students knew. She thought she would never see the image again. She had given it to Yallie; Ajita had no place for it. Yallie considered it part of her research. Why had Yallie given it to the Instructors? Had they taken it from her? She bitterly recalls the way their last conversation had ended, in a solid sounding clink of finality. But perhaps there had been more to it?

  “Student?” the woman asks crisply.

  Ajita wets her lips, and considers how to explain the messy smears of paint, the rather juvenile display of handprints. Hers and Yallie’s. Like a thundercloud, foreboding, dark and heavy, rolls through her body. Had Yallie gotten in trouble for this?

  The Instructor breathes out heavily through her nose, but Ajita still hasn’t compiled a coherent answer. So far the Instructors have been tight-lipped about their thoughts on the painting. Perhaps, since they have not yet reprimanded her, they are truly considering it part of her new Task placement?

  “It is a painting,” she says.

  The dream snags at her memory, villages swamped by desert sands, rockets leaving the Earth, cave paintings that haunt the walls, and beautiful hands linked for all eternity. Forever sharing a bond. A history.

  “It is history,” she adds.

  The other two Instructors swivel their heads at the same time, staring at the woman Instructor expectantly. The woman Instructor lowers the image and carefully places it on the table. She stares at it for a fraction of a second, before meeting Ajita’s eyes.

  “And what, Student, is your history?”

  She hears the other Instructors’ quick intake of breath, and her eyes narrow.

  “The School.”

  “And what was the purpose of this…painting?” she hesitates over the word.

  “Research.”

  “What type of research?”

  “The viscosity of different substances and the replication of thumbprints and handprints.”

  “In other words: what is unique to each individual.”

  “Unique, just like every Numerical Designation.”

  This time, all of the Instructors glance at each other. They can’t seem to form any more questions, and let her go.

  She snakes through the corridors, feet following the path she had taken several times before, holding her breath every time her tag blinks. She holds her head down, walking with purpose, feeling fear tingle down her spine every time she passes someone in the hallway. The grey corridors just start to turn blue when her tag starts blinking like crazy, and her arm is caught in a vice-like grip.

  She is dragged from the hallway and pressed into a side corridor.

  “You can’t be here!”

  She hears Yallie’s hiss in her ear, feels her hot breath on her cheek. She digs her heels in.

  “I wanted to see you.”

  Yallie makes a noise of frustration and lets go with a dramatic flair. She crosses her arms and glares at her. Ajita makes a show of straightening her sleeves, rubbing tenderly where Yallie had clamped down on her arm.

  “The Instructors asked me more questions about painting today.”

  Yallie’s expression doesn’t change. Ajita decides to go for more of a direct hit.

  “Why did you give them the painting we made together? The one with the handprints?”

  Ajita tries not to feel too victorious when Yallie flinches.

  “So it is not a good thing they are asking me all these questions, is it?”

  “Why would you think that?” Yallie snaps.

  Ajita raises an eyebrow at her outburst and Yallie flushes, looking away. Her arms hug her body in a gesture of insecurity.

  “Why did you give them the painting?”

  “They asked for it.”

  “How did they know to ask for it?”

  Yallie stares at a point far down the hall, and Ajita feels something start to crawl in her belly.

  “Have they known all along?” Ajita asks.

  “I may have informed them that you were artistically inclined after our initial meeting,” Yallie elaborates delicately.

  Ajita blinks rapidly, trying to dispel the sudden wet heat gathering in her eyes, “Why?”

  Yallie shrugs stiffly, “I had never seen it happen before. I was sure they’d be interested in such a unique development in one of their Students.”

  Ajita feels like the man floating outside of the space ship, un-tethered and consumed by the surrounding darkness.

  “They asked you to do the research?” she asks.

  “I always have unrestricted access to the databases,” Yallie glares at her, “I choose to research what I want.”

  “But they allowed you to…show me the knowledge inside the databases?”

  Yallie nods.

  “Why?”

  “It was an…Assessment.”

  “What were they assessing?”

  “Your artistic ability,” Yallie stresses, as if she’s said this again and again.

  Ajita backs up, shaking her head, because something doesn’t feel right about the answer. She itches her palms in agitation, because the answer is in her head, she knows it.

  “It’s the truth,” Yallie whispers, and she looks so broken, that Ajita feels sorry.

  “I don�
��t like not knowing when I’m going to see you,” Ajita says, because the previous subject is suffocating her.

  Yallie blinks at the change of subject, and asks rather dumbly, “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I can never see you when I want to, and I don’t know when you next want to see me.”

  By Yallie’s dumbfounded expression, Ajita guesses that Yallie has never thought about this before. But why would she? She could see Ajita whenever she felt like it. Could pull her out of Lessons on a whim. Ajita narrows her eyes.

  “The Instructors…they let you change my schedule whenever you wanted.”

  Yallie wrinkles her nose incredulously, “Within reason. You still had to do your Lessons and Tasks. I never had complete control. The visit had to serve a purpose.”

  “Had to benefit the research you were conducting,” Ajita feels a bitter taste in the back of her throat.

  “Obviously,” Yallie says, eyebrows raised.

  “So you never saw me just because…you wanted to?” Ajita hates how fragile her voice sounds.

  And then Yallie gets it. Her eyes light up and her arms drop loosely to her side.

  “Ajita,” she breathes.

  Shivers go up and down her arms, and heat boils in her body. She can’t ever remember anyone saying her name before.

  “Our meetings served two purposes,” she confides quietly, “both professional and personal. But it had to serve at least the first purpose in order for me to take you out of your schedule.”

  Its Yallie’s way of saying she wasn’t allowed to see Ajita whenever she wanted to. The thought makes Ajita feel a little consoled, and suddenly she wants Yallie to go on those silver blue ships, to get far away from here, to be among the stars. Yallie’s corridors are blue, and Ajita’s corridors are grey, but they’re still walls. Ajita hates them more every day.

  “Can I watch you Train?” Ajita asks.

  She’s pleading with her eyes make it work, make it work. Yallie nods slowly, finds a reason to excuse Ajita of her Tasks, so that Ajita can watch Yallie works towards a goal, train for freedom, and pretend that she’s going to be free too.

  The floor of the training room is flat and hard and cold and uncomfortable, but they sit on it anyway. Ajita’s arms are draped over her knees and Yallie is stretching, touching her toes and putting her forehead to the floor. She watches Yallie’s curves and curls and itches for a screen and pen, so she can draw them. Little streams of sweat glide down the gentle slopes of Yallie’s cheeks and arms and shoulders and while she’s breathing deep and stretching her body so beautifully, Ajita leans over and places her lips against one shoulder. Yallie’s sweat clings to her lips. She feels more than hears Yallie’s breathing hitch, but she continues her stretching and Ajita licks the sweat a little, presses a kiss against that shoulder, and then licks up that little stream. Drinks it all.

  She moves with Yallie, continuing to taste her neck, behind her ear, her elbow, all while Yallie stretches and bends, her breathing coming faster and faster until they’re breathing at the same rate, and Ajita feels as if the Universe would fall apart if she lifted her mouth away from Yallie’s skin.

  Yallie stands in one swoop, but she doesn’t leave Ajita behind; she grabs her forearms, tight and strong, and lifts them both up. She walks them backwards and then the bar appears, hovering in the air and Yallie, meeting her eyes, grabs it. Ajita glides her hands down Yallie’s arms as Yallie holds the bar and the numbers on the screen increase. She feels her muscles shake and tense, and catches the drops of sweat on the hairs of her arms. Then Yallie begins to lift her arms, lips pursing until they’re white, jaw clenching so hard the bones jut powerfully against her skin. Ajita keeps her touch light, not intending to help or hinder. But she feels the strength as Yallie lifts and lifts and lifts.

  She can feel the weakness too, the weakness that makes Yallie gasp in pain and struggle, the weakness that makes her want to drop the bar because her arms are frail and shaking as she tries to not be defeated by