Starstuff

by Kaylim

streak across the sky. They land on the black and grey planet, the planet Earth, and survey the dead world. The invaders with their alien faces examine the stragglers that survive with wild eyes and bared teeth…and build a School. Commanders with silver uniforms begin construction on the highest mountain, the closest to the sky. Trainees with blue suits begin to train, and Instructors in black structure curriculum and productive Tasks. The natives are dressed in grey and go to Lessons forever and forever, until they are done existing, never to walk the Earth again or see the stars.

  “Knowledge,” the woman murmurs.

  Ajita shakes her head violently. She didn’t want knowledge like this. With a distressed breath she is transported from the site of the new School back to the sands of the abandoned village. She shivers as she looks around…realizing that all of this doesn’t exist now.

  “This isn’t right,” she shouts at the woman beside her.

  The village woman doesn’t react to her anger. Instead, she puts her hands on her shoulders and draws her close.

  “What should I do?” Ajita asks, letting her forehead drop to the other woman’s shoulder.

  “Oh Ajita,” she sighs, “you will always be a part of the Earth. The important thing is that you shared what it is to be human. You are no longer alone, no longer the only one with a name.”

  Ajita draws back in horror. Does the woman mean Ajita will never leave the Earth? Or just that she will always have her human memories? Her throat closes tight at the thought of never leaving, never escaping the dead planet. Her earlier jealousy of Yallie washes over her, tinged now with disbelief and anger.

  “Do not let your love be corrupted Ajita, don’t lose sight of it. You have seen what happens when we forget,” the woman says.

  Ajita grits her teeth, her frame shaking, and the woman hums, something like a lullaby. All it does it make Ajita sad, and she feels hollow when the woman melts away and the village around her fades.

  She wakes, face wet with tears and her own sweat, and the words incerta et occulta sapientiae tuae manifestasti mihi ring through her mind, loud, so loud. Her feet hit the floor as she leaps out of bed; she startles awake a few Students, but she doesn’t care, because she’s running out the door, down the hallways which are lit even now so early in the morning. They seem grey and dull as always, unchanging. Her tag starts to flash.

  Her feet follow a familiar pattern, so familiar it’s etched into her brain, as the grey corridors become blue, and she follows some ingrained instinct, like her kiss with Yallie connected them somehow. The kiss that betrayed. She hits the corner of a corridor hard, and slips into the side hallway Yallie had shown her, jumping over machines and flying down staircases until she’s in the room, the abandoned blue room, and her tag isn’t flashing anymore.

  Yallie stands, facing the silver and blue ships and turns around when she hears the door open with a clink. Her mouth drops open, shock and joy racing over her features.

  “Ajita,” she says.

  She cringes when she hears her name upon those lips, because those are the same that took away her name, and gave her a Designation.

  “I remember,” she says.

  Yallie comes forward, breathless with excitement, with hope.

  “I was so afraid that—“ Yallie stops herself and Ajita snarls in her direction.

  “Afraid they’d wipe my memory for good?”

  Yallie takes an abrupt step back; face frozen and turning red as if she had been slapped.

  “I remember…everything,” she reveals loudly, eyes narrowed on Yallie’s expression, relishing in her flinches.

  “No thanks to you, of course. You helped them, telling them all about my art!”

  “I also helped you get it back,” Yallie says stiffly, and her walls are coming up, and her body is slinking into a defensive position.

  “Why?” Ajita demands, “Weren’t you satisfied with your handiwork?”

  “No,” Yallie says quietly.

  “Then why the change of heart? Don’t you believe in enslaving humans anymore? Whether I remember or not, I’ll still be trapped here.”

  Yallie wets her lips, and then she steels herself again, “I think what we did was necessary.”

  “But? Why am I the exception to the rule?”

  “You have…,” Yallie falters, “something different.”

  Ajita rolls her eyes, “That was specific.”

  Yallie clenches her fist, “I didn’t have to do anything to help you. I didn’t have to help you do research, or paint.”

  “You did for the Instructors!”

  “Most of what I did was out of my own curiosity, out of the…connection I felt we had.”

  “Connection!” Ajita can’t believe her ears, “Yet in the end, you betrayed me anyway.”

  “I didn’t have a choice; the Instructors already decided from the first Rasjaurom painting that they were going to wipe your memory. They wanted me to explore this human curiosity a bit more, see why and how you started to remember, so they could….”

  Yallie looks away guiltily.

  “So they could stop it from reoccurring or developing in other human Students.”

  Yallie nods, “Yes, but understand that it has never happened before. Not to any Student we’ve ever had, human or otherwise.”

  “You’ve enslaved other planets?” Ajita shrieks, and can’t believe it.

  The lines and dots are connecting in her mind, like the lines connecting the stars into constellations; she can see shapes form, and soon a distinct picture, like that of the entire night sky. It is like her mind has expanded, and she can see this now for what it really is.

  “Why?” she chokes.

  Yallie’s eyes slide to the side uneasily, “My planet, which is part of a vast alliance, is engaged in warfare. We needed other claims, other bases.”

  “So you invaded Earth.”

  “We’re not invaders! We’re…colonists.”

  Ajita can’t breathe, and feels closed in, feels trapped and hunted and hounded, “What was Earth like when you first ‘colonized’ it? Tell me.”

  Yallie brings her eyes up to meet hers, and her gaze is hard and vicious, “Your cities were flattened, your food and water poisoned; humans lived as scavengers or in tiny groups, isolated from the world at large.”

  “So that made it right for you to take over? Involve us in your own war?”

  “You humans were killing yourselves. Your entire race was halfway to dead; we found a species putting itself to extinction. You could say—“

  She stops, panting, cheeks red and glistening with sweat. She reaches out with a clammy hand and cups Ajita’s cheek, “You could say we saved you.”

  Ajita takes a step backwards, reaching out with a hand for the wall. Yallie’s grip slips from her cheek.

  “Wait,” Yallie calls, but she is already out the door and up the stairs.

  She takes them two at a time and bursts into the hallway. She runs without thinking, down tiny little nooks and crannies, each corridor folding in on itself, until she feels like she’s run the world over, but it looks like she hasn’t moved. Round and round, everything looks the same, like she’s trapped in a fractal. Repeating the same steps over and over and over. She limps down a staircase, winded and wary, and finds herself back at the door to the abandoned blue observatory.

  With a clink she enters.

  Yallie is still there, turned to face the rockets again. Her frame is shaking, her fingers held tightly behind her back.

  “I remembered our handprints too,” Ajita says.

  She ignores Yallie’s stifled sniffle. Ajita feels like it should be her who is crying, instead.

  “That’s one of the events that made my perception of…what we do…change,” Yallie confides softly, voice raw, “that, and when we were standing in all of those stars and constellations. I realized that…we’re the same, deep down. We’re all made of the same stuff…starstuff. It didn’t make sense any longer that you were….”

 
; “Enslaved?” Ajita says dryly.

  Yallie jerks.

  “How does it work? Why do I see you as human? Why has my memory always been so unclear and muddled? ”

  “It’s the tag, and the drug that we inject here,” Yallie points to the back of her ears vaguely, “the drug changes your perception and induces complacency. It alters your mind, muddling your memory. The tag keeps track of your whereabouts.”

  Ajita fingers the tag on her body, almost afraid to touch it, as if it can sense her, as if she can feel its malevolent presence.

  “I couldn’t figure out why you had memories of human existence, so the Instructors went ahead and injected you with the drug. It wasn’t until after…that you mentioned your dreams. I never thought your subconscious could be so powerful.”

  But Ajita doesn’t think this is her subconscious. She is a collection of Earth’s history. She’s almost like a planet, a galaxy, a universe unto herself. She knows of things she has never seen herself, she is a collection of millions of people and creatures and languages and art.

  “I don’t think your mind can truly be erased,” Yallie confides, “your dreams will always show you the truth. They’ll always come back.”

  Like leaves rising in a pool of water. Surfacing slowly.

  “And the databases, the knowledge of Earth…where did that come from?”

  “We took what was left from your data banks, what survived the destruction. There were some humans,” and she has difficulty admitting this, “that gathered and saved information, protecting the databases, that knowledge, with their lives.”

  “So we weren’t all scavengers and heathens.”

  “But you were still on the brink of extinction. There was no hope,” Yallie defends.

  The and yet lingers between them, unspoken.

  “Do you think the knowledge of Earth’s history was implanted in me?” Ajita asks.

  Yallie can only shrug, “Where your dreams come from…we can only guess.”

  Ajita wonders if it has anything to do with the fact that they’re all made of the same stuff…and that she is made from the Earth and the stars and if somehow the pieces left a living memory inside of her.

  “And you’ve been training to become part of this war,” Ajita says, “I helped you train to take over other civilizations.”

  “No!” Yallie says, “I was training to fly the ships, to explore. And yes, defend our species, but also to explore.”

  “To escape?” Ajita asks softly.

  Yallie looks around helplessly, and they both realize and acknowledge the dimness, the dullness of the School. The cage it really is.

  “Why not destroy us, though? Why are we in School?”

  “You are in School to…be Students,” she cringes.

  And Ajita gets it, remembers the Assessments and the Tasks and the Lessons in order to do Tasks.

  “You need us,” Ajita whispers, “to do Tasks that help run the School and help run your war.”

  She thinks of the wires and calculations other Students slave over, thinks of her own pathetic Task to clean machines.

  “We do it on all the planets we take over,” Yallie says defensively, “and the planets we take over are all past rehabilitation. We take it over, keep your species going, and put the planet to use.”

  “It’s not for you to decide!”

  “Your species wasn’t being responsible,” she shrugs, but her voice is getting weaker.

  “And what about yours?” Ajita sneers, “Do you think you’re going to end up as anything better? You’re in a constant war that stretches beyond your planet, encompassing other aliens and star systems. Our own self-destruction is nothing compared to yours.”

  “And yet my species has already lasted longer than yours,” Yallie snaps, “we’ve outlived and outrun dozens of other species.”

  Ajita closes her eyes, and thinks of the brown people and the chapel and the monastery and the handprints. How all of it is ash, and yet it exists inside of her. Still living. Part of her and part of everything. Even part of Yallie, because they’re all made of starstuff.

  “Why did you do all that