Oh!
What d’Jang then witnessed, in footage which lasted only minutes but never ended, was terror beyond imagining and left him ruined. The last screams merged with the water’s roar as the last tide ran out. The Ocean drained. Even the echoes of his loved ones were silent.
She was gone.
d'Jang’s heart cherished suicide in the tideless time that followed, as visions from the probe invaded his dreams and when he replayed the footage for no reason other than to torture himself with loss. This desire went unrequited, for who was he to put an end to the last remnant of being remaining from their world?
“d'Jang. What about the others?”
“d'Song?”
At that moment, the pardoned feed ventured out from behind the console and hung in the water before d’Jang, fearless. It was beautiful.
“The others.”
“The others?”
This last thought d’Song had given him, and which the feed had seconded, slowly built in d’Jang’s mind and would not leave. Was it possible that in the short time left he might redeem a small fragment of who they had been and could have become?
“What about the others?”
The others out there in the endless thin waters, others like their kind. Even the ones who sent the message. Perhaps there was still time to warn them. The conviction grew. No one else should EVER experience this tragedy, this bottomless pain.
He would send them a final mneme from his people to theirs, a warning, and more, an embrace.
It was almost too late.
Great urgency flowed into him. His computer contained a reflection of most of the knowledge from the Surge. d'Jang searched frantically as the void pulled him into it. The transmission would need to occur before the insatiable appetite of the black hole captured even his radio waves.
What could he send in the short time left? The probe footage. The last moments of his Reef. Only that would show the true horror of the thing. No one could watch that and contemplate ever creating a Star Channel. He queued it for broadcast.
How could people make sense of what was being warned against? He needed to tie the warning to the wormhole technology. Then d'Jang happened upon the original transmission from the aliens to his people containing the instructions for building the Channel Between Worlds. What better way to explain to other aliens the intricate technology he was warning them about? It had already been packaged for that purpose. Of course, he had to take out the explicit instructions for building it, otherwise he might only be exposing others to a horrible fate. Scanning the mneme file d’Jang was confused by the complexity of the Star Channel transmission. The complex physics and engineering, expressed in the unfamiliar notation of the aliens, would have been impossible for him to decode even if he had the time. When it had first arrived, unravelling the alien message had taken the best minds of the Mother Ocean months. d’Jang struggled to find a separation between the description of the technology, and the specifications for building it. Frustrated, d’Jang decided to delete random chunks only to find out that a security setting on the file rendered it un-editable.
His ship shook violently, a loud crack echoing through the cabin. The water envelope in the cockpit began to retract, indicating a breech. Alarms were flashing. Time was the one thing he didn’t have. d’Jang queued the whole aliem mneme. Surely, having seen it’s distructive capability, no thinking being would seek to build it. Surely. Anyway, there was no going back on his decision.
The ship buckled again. The Tide was running out. It was almost too late. One final thing left to do. d'Jang faced the recorder and flowed his whole being out to the people of the other worlds. They would need to absorb the fullness of the tragedy and, although this was a selfish motive, perhaps something of his kids might yet survive. Of d'Song, his beautiful girl. All his faces cried out as he transmitted the last record of his people out into the fabric of the Universe.
An uneasy sense of fulfilment grew in d'Jang - a feeling that in acting on his responsibility to the cosmos he had connected himself to everything - a bittersweet compassion for all who had come before them and all who remained.
His beloved feed swam up beside d’Jang and waited with him.
All channels joined in the one Ocean. d’Jang glowed. And then his light was swallowed, and he became no more.
ONE HALF OF KNOWING
‘My children, your toys ,... bullock-carts, goat-carts, deer-carts, which are so pretty, nice, dear, and precious to you, have all been put by me outside the house-door for you to play with. Come, run out, leave the house; to each of you I shall give what he wants.... And the boys, on hearing the names mentioned of such playthings as they like and desire, so agreeable to their taste, so pretty, dear, and delightful, quickly rush out from the burning house, with eager effort and great alacrity.’
~Shakyamuni Buddha, Lotus Sutra
2141a.d. – The planet Earth
Suffering through escalating ecological and economic systems collapses, the citizens of planet Earth eventually became serious. The Ecolution occurred.
Instigated by activist Revs and emanating from South Asia, where climate change posed the most existential threat, a new world order emerged based on united local community Hubs and their Nets, social business networks, which empowered them. Money was replaced by Ecos, a universal currency based on the intrinsic shared value of repairing Gaia, the living Earth. Ecos were estimated and validated by new global scientific institutions, the Sys, who matched local projects to natural planetary cycles. The guiding political philosophy for this revolution was Parnarchy, where each citizen’s loyalty to Hub and Net jurisdictions is a free choice liberated from geography, but where local loyalties are balanced by sacred oaths sworn to protect Gaia.
The Ecolution was fiercely resisted by the declining world-order of transnational corporation Coms and the Govs, their client nation states, and eventually these battles ground to a détente, the Peace. The Panarchists now rule the Earth, while the Capitalist Coms are free to develop the Heavens. This deal has not turned out as well for the Coms as they had hoped. Despite a century of concerted effort, known as The Second Wave, only a handful of humans live elsewhere in the Solar System, far fewer than the Coms had envisioned.
Chapter 2 - August
What variety of demon chases the soul of a man out from his own private eternity?
Is it the echo of unformed pain resounding within the flesh of his ambition? The ticking clock of incremental regrets counting out the remainder of his days? The shattering of darkness complicating even the grandest oblivion? Or the involuntary cry for help unanswered?
All of these and none, wearing his own face, looking back though his own eyes with an inescapable vacuity present in even the most steadied outward gaze. The daily competing crises, the unending task of personal resurrection, the monotony of intoxication, the confining shallows of narcissism. The man, once confident striding out upon the familiar shifting of this terrain, is now uncertain. He senses something watching him from beneath this ceaseless swamp, a familiar presence without a name. The demon waits for him patiently, outside the passage of hours. It stalks him relentlessly, immune to distance or circumstance. It may destroy him in an instant, although lacking the force of the slightest breeze.
The man spends his days not hearing this faint whisper he cannot afford to ignore, becoming a constant refugee from the omnipresence of an unrecognized foe. He may conquer the universe, yet this will not deliver him. For, though as insubstantial as a dream within a dream, the demon holds a devastating advantage. It is this.
The demon is only as real as the man is false.
Only in these morning hours of interrupted dreams, rare moments of wakefulness, exposed nerves played by a ragged wind - only now can the man hear the demon call his name.
This time the man answers back.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
“Illya!”
The man’s cry, which could not travel through the vacuum beyond his h
elmet, felt as though it travelled all the long way back home to an intimate place on the vivid blue world balanced above the horizon. Mesmerised by the planet’s beauty, he had been drawn out here, sleepwalking out of a morning dream, yet in some way more awake than he had been in a long time. The contrast between the living Earth and the strange country of light and darkness, which he currently inhabited, mirrored this inner dichotomy. Shadows retreating from the merciless brilliance of the rising Sun on the surrounding regolith plains were jet black. The man padded himself through his suit for reassurance that he was still alive against the evidence of his eyes that life, in this place, was never intended.
The man’s name was August Bridges, but the fact of this name and the history of circumstance attaching it to the wealthiest person in the solar system were irrelevant at the moment. At the moment he was simply a man in pain, as he had been long before the name had outgrown its owner. The dream, which had inspired this morning’s exodus, was from that time. From before his ambition had replaced friendships. From before isolation and loneliness had become his last refuge.
The indicator blinking in August’s neuroview told him that his oxygen was running low. How long had he been out here? He reluctantly turned back, and then panicked when he realised how far he had walked away from the station. He must be kilometers away from safety. Puffing as he bounded back, steadily sucking in the remaining air in his tanks, August realised this time he had gone too far. As his stride fell into a slow trudge, and his lungs shrunk, August tripped and fell on his side, staring back at the angelic Earth and praying for deliverance. His eyelids began to narrow, focusing on a path homewards into the safety offered by his dream.
He struggled against their fall. Unwilling to surrender his life with all his sacrifices, feeling its fragility in each labored breath. It was impossible that August Bridges, the legend he had become, could die so easily and so stupidly. Like a moth lured into a flame. It simply was not possible.
There had to be another way. There must be. It was to this flicker of possibility that August committed his survival. Having decided to continue at this moment only one thing was sure. It was time for August Bridges to wake up.
“August. August. Respond to me please.”
“I’m here Dmitri,” August thought back to the voice in his mind.
“I’m here.”
Even his thoughts became whispers. Was answering a mistake? Surely it was better to just let go.
“I hear you my friend. Thank God. I have locked on your coordinates.”
August attempted to stand, but his muscles demanded too much oxygen and he swooned again, falling back into his dream, promising himself it was only for a moment.
“Illya.”
The alarm in his helmet, a mosquito’s buzz, pried its way into the recurring dream until he could ignore it no more. August swatted it away. The action rolled him off his side onto his back. He lapped at the residual air in his suit, extracting what life was left in it.
Where was he? August wasn’t sure anymore. His eyes rested on the cooling blue and white circle hanging alone in a field of infinite blackness above.
“Mom? Is that where you are?”
“Who are you talking to August? Is there someone with you?”
Then August remembered. They had chased him away from there. His own people. All he had wanted to do was save them. Ignoring Dmitri’s question, August closed his eyes and did not answer, leaving the pain to burrow back into another time when he had been happy. To the point where Anya’s eyes had first left his.
Was this where it had all begun to go wrong?
“August. This is Dmitri. You’ve gone Out okay? Don’t do anything stupid. Your head is screwed up. I’m on your trail - I’m coming for you.”
Dmitri’s voice forced August’s eyes back open. Why wouldn’t they just leave him alone? August rolled off the mound where he had fallen and onto his stomach. He groggily lifted his helmet out of the talcum soil and suspiciously regarded twin lights rolling towards his location. Sweat dripped into his eyes, turning the view into mirage. The indicator panel floating in his mind’s eye warned him that the cooling system circulation in his suit was beginning to slow. If he didn’t get back inside soon he would fry like an egg out here if he didn’t suffocate first. The lights winked out as the rover went down into some riffle in the terrain; August panicked for a moment at the thought that his pursuer had disappeared.
Couldn’t they hurry up and catch him? He was too exhausted to run, and he wasn’t sure anymore who he had run from, only that he had crimes enough to answer for. And then he wasn’t sure even of that. Nothing made sense. August huddled into himself, clinging to all that was left to him, his dream, his future, his past.
“Augustus Mishen’ka, I see you. I see you. I’m coming.”
August reacted to Dmitri’s entreaty by curling tighter into himself. Whatever they did to him when they caught him, whatever uncertain terrors had driven him from the protection of the station to certain death where he lay - for a short while more he had a hiding place they could not reach.
This was the place in his dream August wanted to stay in, a place far away from the exposed conscious part of his mind, which was busy ignoring the red blinking indicators that his neurovisor projected into it.
“August? August? Can you hear me? Shit. Please don’t be dead.”
“Give me some sign. Move.”
Insistent tugging jerked August up to his feet and back into what was left of his life. A familiar presence linked into the unsecured part of his mind, flipping through the life support monitors floating in his imagination. They quickly changed color from red through yellow towards green as energy and oxygen were injected into his suit.
“Thank God you are still alive. You lucky shit. You stupid, stupid ass of a man.”
Dmitri was weeping. Such a good friend.
Energised by the injection of oxygen, August flailed his arms, kicking, twisting, and offering what resistance he was able offer, kicking up a cloud of dust that launched away into the vacuum with unbroken momentum.
“Leave me be,” he whimpered.
“Slow down idiot. I’m trying to save you.”
The infusion of energy quickly exhausted, August went limp and felt his body being lifted, feather-light, off the ground and over a shoulder. A spasm of paranoia tightened his heart. This was it. They had caught up with him, and he was even grateful it would soon all be over. August fell once more into sleep, protected by the truth that there was nothing real in his fear.
His dream ran out into darkness.
Later, out of a fog and unsure where he was, August wrestled to pull a tube out from his nose. Achieving his purpose, he rubbed his nosebleed across his face and wondered why he was here in the infirmary. The acrid smell of burnt charcoal reminded him that he was still on the Moon. When he reached for the bed rail he was given another reminder as a painful jolt of static electricity fired through his body. August leaned over the railing and puked, watching the vomit arc lackadaisically out across the room and skid lightly across the floor into a corner where it began to evaporate into the parched artificial atmosphere. Hanging over the rail, August noticed where the ground wire on the bed had not been attached. There was the source of his nausea. Not only that, the therapeutic vibrator in the bed base that helped bones and flesh retain their mass in lunar gravity wasn’t even hooked up. Someone was going to lose their job over that.
At that point, August recovered himself and who and where he was. He remembered he had fired almost everyone. Damn Gudanko and his pedantic pencil sharpening. August had sent them home to make a point. As if the safety of the Mirtopik Com CEO was as luxury. No unnecessary expense would be needed to support his exile on the Moon, and Gudanko could go shove that up his tight ass.
That was basically what he said at the time, although the other reason, which August wouldn’t admit to, was that he felt safer without so many potential assassins wandering about. With numbers down
to a very short list of people he still believed he could trust, and the crater walls of Plato separating him from the shift workers in the helium-3 mines down South in the Sea of Rains, August felt almost safe. Almost.
Except that he didn’t. And time was running out.
Which brought him back to the question of why he was wasting time here in the infirmary. August coughed uncontrollably as he attempted to leave the bed. He reflexively reached for the vaporizer that simultaneously countered a litany of symptoms of living on the Moon: sinus passages continually overfilled with gravitationally liberated body fluids, constant heartburn as stomach acids lifted off into his oesophagus, throat and mouth lining scalded away by a parsimonious atmospheric pressure, and a host of other irritations. At least this was working. After a few drags he was able to settle himself enough to climb out of bed. His dehydrated body ached as he made his way to the sink for a drink.
There he was confronted by an army of Augusts reflected endlessly in wrap around mirrors, each reflection as dishevelled as the rest, only from a slightly different angle.
“My God,” August recoiled, “the hair.”
The static standoff occurring on his scalp exaggerated the one aspect of August’s appearance with which he felt wholly unsatisfied. An exploded fault line of a cowlick jagged across his head from mid-brow to the crest of his spine. Hair fell indiscriminately about the rift like a forest knocked down in a windstorm. The condition could be easily corrected, if only he had not let it become his signature. In earlier days the “hair bomb,” as Gregori had named it, had given August a rangy, boyish appearance that endeared him to others and encouraged trust. So, August had kept it, cultivated it in truth, cutting it jagged, scrambling his fingers through the golden thatch, letting it fly in the wind.
Ten Directions Page 2
