What are stars? No, I don’t mean the giant spherical thermonuclear furnaces of gases and plasma that radiate energy and light and fill the cosmic expanse all around us. I know what they are.
I mean, what are stars, the little dots of light, pinpoint dots visible against the darkness?
Each tiny dot of light that I see, as I gaze into the deep, is ancient light. It has travelled untold distances across the universe from some giant incandescent sphere to reach the lens of my eye, over hundreds, thousands, millions of years. . . .
Each tiny photon traveling from there to here, from then to now, has spanned so much that there is no human way to comprehend it. It has crossed everything, even while its original source has long since transformed, dissipated, possibly died in a supernova, and is now only a lost memory.
And yet, it is not. It has been preserved, and taken along for the most incredible ride, as part of a seemingly infinite string of starlight, moving through space and time, and arriving inside my eye, becoming a tiny part of me—even if only as a single photon hitting my cornea.
The ancient star and I are now connected on a physical level.
For a split second of being, we are together, literally. So much so, as if I had reached out with my hand into the past, across billions of miles, and touched its ancient, fiery surface—as it had been, millions of years ago.
We are entangled.
And all because I looked up and chose to glance at a tiny dot of ancient light, recognizing it out of countless others. By doing so, I also changed its quantum state—and it changed mine.
The most fundamental network of connection of all, spanning everything, is starlight.
But the real act of connection is a choice. Because while each one of us might be constantly bombarded with trillions of photons and other particles from all sources—since we’re all a part of a quantum cosmic soup that is the world—entanglement happens when we choose to acknowledge it.
To do that, I must focus on the smallest quantum level of being.
Dive deep into the fundamental world, the micro-world . . . down, down, down.
I must choose to focus on an entity—a single node on the universal network.
I must claim it.
By that example, all I have to do is reach out to anything around me—regardless of time and distance—by a mere act of shifting my focus, allocating a thought—and I can make contact with it.
Suddenly, just like that, I understand the fundamental Principle of the Yellow Quadrant, which rules Nets and Cords.
Universal networks and cosmic strings.
A universal system, a “Theory of Everything,” based on Starlight.
I blink, filled with clarity of thought, knowing with one part of my mind that, just in that instant alone, I just blinked away the quantum residue of a billion ancient stars. . . .
The stream of universal data rushes through me like a great flood.
“I think I begin to understand,” I say to Arion in my mind.
I am glad, he replies, shimmering with color before me. Now, act on your understanding, quickly. It is very ephemeral in your 3D reality, and will elude you easily if you let it, since it is a higher-dimensional concept. Act quickly to retain it.
And I do.
You entangle with love. You claim with song.
It really is that simple.
And it cuts through everything, inter-dimensionally—across space and time and everything else unnamed and unnamable in 3D.
I can make rifts all around me, as easily as reaching out with my hand to pass my fingers through vapor.
Rifts to cross the divide in any direction. Rifts to negate time and distance.
Simply, focus my intent with my Logos voice of creation.
I take a deep breath of what little canned air remains in my space suit helmet. And looking out across the stars, regardless of actual direction, I think of Aeson, my love.
And I sing a single, pure note.
My go-to note, a middle F.
It is not particularly powerful or loud.
It could be a child’s effort at song, a breathy whisper. . . .
But it is true.
I hold the note, a random sound frequency, but I imbue it with Starlight.
And then, out of nowhere before me, a Fleet ship appears, hanging in space.
There are no fancy special effects, no flashes of light or blinding supernovae to herald its coming.
The velo-cruiser simply wasn’t there before, but now is. It stills, coming to a sudden stop from its previous state of hyper-motion, to float about a hundred meters away.
The rift which “brought” it to me is neither tangible nor recognizable, as space folds upon itself to accommodate my entanglement, and then unfurls again, closing up on itself naturally.
Aeson is here.
Inside my helmet, I chortle with joy, like a little kid.
How do I know? I just do.
After all, I brought him to me.
Starlight Sorceress.
What happens next is an emotional whirlwind. A hatch on the velo-cruiser opens, and im amrevu, in a space suit, comes floating out toward me, propelled by passion and a propulsion pack.
I laugh, and wave awkwardly, seeing him approach, choking on old snot and tears that I cannot wipe away. Nebulous Arion pulses next to me and transmits sympathetic joy in the pegasei language of images.
Seconds later, Aeson has me, strong gloved hands clasping my arms then attaching a cable to my waist, and I see the raw, awed expression on his face through his helmet.
“Gwen! My Gwen!” he shouts, his voice coming through on local comms, blasting my ears with the energy of his joy. “What is going on? You are okay! How did I get here?”
I laugh and laugh, as he reels me in, and we enter the velo-cruiser through the airlock hatch. “I did something, and here you are!” I say, chortling as if I’m drunk.
“Whatever you did—”
“Weird, I know!” I interrupt. “But first, we must get Erita!”
And I hastily explain what happened, how Arion and the pegasei are keeping her alive.
“Phoebos? Bashtooh! Is that you?” Xelio’s incredulous voice sounds on our comms just then, and Aeson replies.
“Stay here!” he tells me meanwhile, and launches himself back outside, even as the distant rainbow cloud of pegasei approach, towing Erita toward us.
Xelio, Command Pilot Uru Onophris, Consul Denu, Manala, George—suddenly it seems that everyone is on the interstellar comms at once, animated voices talking at us across a billion miles on the opposite side of Helios.
“Did you get her? Did you get Erita?” Xel asks anxiously.
“Yes! I have her,” Aeson replies, lifting up Erita’s motionless suited body and pulling her inside.
We seal the ship, move Erita out of the airlock into the main hull space and Aeson re-pressurizes and enables Minimum Fundamental Gravity. It makes me stagger initially as I re-establish my footing after three days of zero-g.
Oh, my God, I can take my helmet off!
Just for a moment, I pause, shell-shocked. First, I pull off my gloves, slowly, feeling cool air wash over my skin. Then I remove the helmet with shaking hands, barely managing the twist, revealing my messy, dirty face and head, as I breathe deeply.
And then I turn to help Erita.
Aeson is already on it, his own gloves and helmet off, and he gives me a quick, intense glance that has a world of meaning, as he gets back to carefully removing Erita’s head gear.
Erita appears sickly and unconscious, her head lolling to the side, and Aeson administers CPR with a medical device as I watch, ready to assist.
The pegasei float in clouds around us, having rematerialized in the cabin.
She is alive, Arion tells us.
And just then Erita shudders and takes a deep breath, then opens her eyes.
Both Aeson and I exhale in relief. And then the two of us start laughing.
It’s a ridiculous moment of
all things coming together into a perfect resolution, when just for a moment all is well with the universe.
Aeson and I reach for each other without words, and his large warm fingers stroke my messy cheeks as he kisses me roughly, desperately, not bothered by my snot and dried tears.
“How did you—” Erita groans just then, squinting at us weakly. “Bashtooh, am I dead or what? Kass?”
“I am so profoundly grateful to you, daimon,” Aeson says, letting go of me to lean back over her. “You have done everything to keep my beloved safe, and there is no amount of honor I can give that would come close to repaying your sacrifice—”
Erita shakes her head and coughs, while a slow smile comes to her exhausted face.
And then we begin to talk all at once, breathless, since there is so much to tell, including the rescue of Earth from the asteroid—Aeson stares with raised brows, hearing about it.
While Erita and I recuperate in the small bathroom facilities and gulp down water, Aeson contacts Manala’s side of things, still using the interstellar linkup on my suit which seems to be the only thing that works reliably to connect us to the other survivors.
“Any word when our rescue is coming?” Xelio asks.
“According to Quoni, they still have at least four and a half hours inside the Quantum Stream before they get to your coordinates,” Aeson says, giving me a curious glance. “Then another half hour to do the global position sensor sweep for your beacon.”
“How did you manage to trim so much time, Commander?” Command Pilot Onophris asks.
“Still not sure,” Aeson replies, with another look at me.
“Aeson! Oh, so glad to hear your voice,” Manala comes on the line suddenly.
“And I yours. How do you feel?” Aeson smiles.
Manala launches on an emotional explanation, and then says, “And so I wish we could be rescued, but first, Hasmik should be rescued, since she’s been outside for so long!”
“Hasmik, they are coming soon for you,” I add. “Please hang in there.”
“Not soon enough,” Xel says. “She is priority one right now.”
“Hasmik!” I say, “How are you doing?”
There’s no answer.
I frown. It occurs to me suddenly: Hasmik has been really quiet for some time now.
Aeson looks from Erita to me with a newly tense expression.
Meanwhile, over on the comms, I hear Xelio calling Hasmik’s name.
“The tablet!” I say, fumbling for the reliable tablet still attached to my suit. “We can try seeing through her helmet camera!”
The tablet screen loads and the window shows nothing but empty space and stars. Hasmik is motionless and appears to be drifting somewhere.
There’s no sign of the depet transport or the wreckage nearby, no debris floating.
Wherever she is, in whatever condition, she is all alone now.
And then I notice a lacework pattern of frost starting to build at the edges of the camera lens, indicating the likelihood that power is no longer present in the suit itself.
No power, no life support.
Hasmik!
I cry out with a new surge of despair. And then I focus all of my self, my core of being, on that frost—a tiny crystalline structure, infinitely fine, infinitely precise. . . .
Aeson and Erita stare at me with wonder and confusion, as I part my lips and sing a gentle, clear, equally crystalline note.
For an instant, the world blinks around us.
And then it reconnects.
Aeson makes a small sound of awe as he notices a velo-cruiser suddenly appear on the tablet’s screen where previously it has been nothing but space and starlight.
“Whoa. That’s one of our ships,” Aeson remarks. “But—it can’t be Quoni yet. Another velo-cruiser? Who?”
And then he comprehends.
Hasmik’s helmet camera is seeing us—just now, we’ve somehow jumped across several billion miles and landed a tiny, visible distance away from her space-suit.
Chapter 101
Remember, this knowledge is ephemeral, Arion had told me. You must act quickly.
Right now, I’ve no idea what I just did.
How did I manage to focus sufficiently on some long-distance icicle . . . and suddenly, there we are?
Things are happening too quickly for me, but in this moment it doesn’t matter how.
We’re here, and Hasmik needs our help if she is still alive.
“Arion!” I exclaim again in my mind. “Please go to help her!”
Yes, it is why I am still here, the quantum being says.
And suddenly he disappears from the velo-cruiser cabin, and reappears in place where Hasmik floats, so that suddenly an iridescent glow surrounds the lens of the helmet camera and space itself takes on the colors of the rainbow.
I watch this on the tablet, even as I hear Arion in my mind.
She too will survive.
“Oh, thank God!” I exclaim. “Thank you, Arion, thank you so much for helping yet again!”
This is the last time, Arion says. She is in my embrace . . . but you must hurry and take her inside your ship and its environment.
“Yes, of course, on my way now!” This time it’s Aeson who replies, as he must be hearing Arion’s mind-speech also.
Aeson quickly dons the helmet and gloves and goes out through the airlock. Erita and I watch the tablet screen, and see Aeson’s suited form propel forward. Moments later, he is at Hasmik’s side, tethering her and bringing her in.
“On your way where? What kind of shar-ta-haak shebet is going on there?” Xelio’s voice comes in on the local comms. “Phoebos! Where are you now? Why are you on my local comms and not interstellar?”
“He is getting Hasmik!” I exclaim. “Don’t ask how just yet, but we are here!”
Aeson returns just then, carrying Hasmik’s limp form through the airlock.
“Here where? At our coordinates? That’s insane!” Xelio persists. “Did he use the stationary Jump to cross the system and somehow you all survived reentry? I don’t understand!”
But we don’t answer, too busy reviving Hasmik, who looks pale, bloodless, and frankly, dead. When her suit helmet is removed, she is cold to the touch, with frost in places on the greyish skin of her face and her matted, dark brown hair.
We implement CPR, and it takes longer to revive her than Erita. But eventually she does come back to us, breathing faintly, and opening her fluttering eyelids. Seeing us and where she is, she looks even more amazed than we are.
“Hasmik!” I exclaim.
“Gwen . . . how?” the girl barely whispers. “What day is it? How did I—”
“She is alive!” Xelio’s frantic voice breaks in.
“Yes, yes, she is,” Aeson responds firmly with relief.
“Hasmik,” I say. “What happened to you there?”
Aeson glances over Hasmik’s space suit. “I believe her suit was depressurized due to a slow leak.”
Hasmik nods. “Yes, it’s been leaking for some time now. There was a lot of sharp metal when I made the net—”
“Oh, but you should’ve said something!” I exclaim with reproach.
Hasmik shakes her head tiredly. “There was nothing you or I could do, so I said nothing.”
“You saved this depet,” Xelio says softly.
“It still doesn’t explain how any of you are here,” Command Pilot Onophris’s voice sounds.
“I’m not sure I can even begin to explain,” I say. “A little later. Maybe.”
I take a deep breath, then smile down at Hasmik and smooth back her dark hair. “But we must thank Arion and the pegasei for all they’ve done. And now that we’re here, we can go pick up the rest of you, Xelio, Manala, George—”
It is time now, Arion interrupts me suddenly. We must go and finish it. You have achieved Starlight, Gwen Lark who is Kassiopei. Strive not to forget it. And if you do, remember—it is within reach but will require constant effort to maintain compr
ehension of its trans-dimensional nature for a 3D-locked entity such as your species. To regain your understanding, look at the stars, as Arlenari did and it will return to you.
“I will try,” I say. “Carry her well. May the ancient dead finally have peace.”
We will carry her. She who wields Starlight is ancient by your reckoning. But she is not dead.
“What?” I exclaim with a jolt. “Arlenari Kassiopei is alive?”
Arion’s laughter fills my mind. Our Tears and Blood have encased her for eons, and she travels on a Ship of Eternity.
I am stunned. What does that even mean?
But Arion’s final words now echo inside me.
At last, we go to close and silence the rift on Earth. Once we pass through the Rim of Ae-Leiterra, we may not return.
“I—understand,” I say with a thickness in the back of my throat. “Goodbye, my friend.”
Goodbye, Gwen Lark who is Kassiopei who wields Starlight. We leave your species now, to finish what we promised. And now—They are coming.
Like vapor, the rainbow plasma being disappears gently, fades away like smoke, and so do the others of its kind in the cabin. Aurora borealis is no more.
“Arion. . . .” My voice ends on a whisper.
Aeson blinks. “Wait—did he say ‘they’ are coming?”
Just in that moment of utter befuddlement, we hear a crackle on the local comms. Voices of Xelio, George, and the others on the depet transport start to fade in and out . . . and then, there’s an impossible binding flare of light without a known source, that comes from inside the ship.
I squeeze my eyes closed, reminded momentarily of being in the interior of the solar jet column of light.
When I open them next, the light has dimmed to a bearable radiance. But the hologram view of the velo-cruiser is suddenly enabled, showing us what is in deep space outside.
The blackness of space is filled with great four-point stars in three dimensions. Hundreds of them, hanging like garish holiday ornaments against the cosmic black velvet.
They are astroctadra shapes of blinding golden light.
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