The Space Between Her Thoughts (The Space in Time Book 1)

by Marie Curuchet

  I’m sickened by it, sickened by your stupidity. Your greed. Your competitiveness over consideration. Didn’t you think, you jerks, didn’t you think that the risk outweighed by far the reward? How confused were you by what you saw on TV, by your own lives, by all the stuff that surrounded you and confused your every day? Your desire to get ahead of others. This greed of commerce and personal wealth and fame, this ego that caused you to move ahead so wildly, so recklessly, without controls, without consideration for all possible consequences, no matter how remote.

  Were we ants? Did we blindly follow the path that others led, simply because it was the known, the accepted? Did you assholes ever think about whether it was right to do it? You never did, you never did, I know it, because look at the result. But others are doing it too? I know, I know. Just because others do it doesn’t make it right. Mom would say that to me. Mom, the great teacher of norms and values.

  Just because all the asshole builders were tearing apart my beautiful desert, it doesn’t make it right. They could have cared. They could have walked out among the creosotes on a hot summer evening and smelled the air, watched the life that was in my desert. You see, assholes, this was my desert. Isda asked me if the earth was mine. The desert surely was. It wasn’t yours, you violent California developer scum who stripped the land naked and replanted a sterile Disney desert. It wasn’t yours, but you ruined it forever in one day with your bulldozers and earth movers. Didn’t you know that your ownership was only temporary? God, didn’t you think that this desert had been that way for thousands of years until you came with your large yellow blade? Did your greed blur your vision so badly, so loudly, that you couldn’t possibly follow the few sensible builders who built with the land instead of stripping it naked?

  It was wrong. It was wrong. You were wrong for doing it. You were part of the problem, part of the inconsideration. And I should have said something, damn it, even attended one of those distorted city council meetings that were rigged in the first place in your favor. At least I could have tried. Greedy scum. You didn’t know this was a system. No, no, you did know, you just didn’t care. The profit was too immediate. Too immaculate. You didn’t see the fucking connection that your prickly little Lexus life had with the rest of the world. Why couldn’t they have created a virus that just killed the assholes like you?

  Margot looked up in a daze at Isda who was still standing, waving his wing slowly back and forth. “I gotta go,” she said obliquely. “I gotta get out of here now. I didn’t need to hear this. What was the purpose?”

  Isda replied, “I would have told you this sometime.”

  “No, no I don’t want to hear your reason or rationale. Do you like to see me in pain? Is it some sick pleasure Das get out of tormenting other races? Would you pull the wings off flies, too?” she asked disgustedly as she made her way to the area of the door.

  “If you’d wait, I’ll tell you both of my intentions.”

  “No thanks, you screamingly ugly bug. I don’t want to hear any more from you. I don’t want to have to hear this again, not from you, not from Rovada, not from your damn council. I don’t care about the truth or your synopses of societies and why they die. You can’t place the blame of humanity on me. It’s not my fault. I was innocent. It was their fault. But now it doesn’t matter to me because I’m dead too, at least as a human. How can there be humans as a race if there are only five? A race means more than five, much more. I’m just a protoplasmic oddity, out here in space with my zookeepers. A prisoner in a brown hell, especially now.”

  Chapter 14

  THE WALL OPENED AND Margot felt herself falling through and stumbling down the dimly lit passages toward what she thought was the direction of her room.

  “Margot!” Sergio screamed as he ran up to her to give her a hug.

  “Don’t touch me,” she warned him, her hands stretched out in front of her to block him. “I’m in no mood.”

  “What’s the matter? Are you crying?”

  “No, damn it!” she stammered.

  Sergio reeled back, his brown cheek twitching as his eyes watered.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, as she fell to her knees and grabbed him around the waist. “I’m sorry,” she began sobbing. She buried her head in Sergio’s shirt and cried uncontrollably, a shaking, rigid cry.

  “I’m scared,” Sergio pleaded. “What’s wrong? What happened? Did I do anything? I’m sorry.”

  “No, Sergio, no honey, not you,” she mumbled. “It’s us, it was us. You don’t understand. It’s too hard for you. I’ll tell you when you’re older. Right now, I just want you to stay here and let me cry.”

  “But isn’t there anything I can do? Who did this to you? Was it Penny? Did you two get into another argument?”

  “No,” Margot drew back and felt a sad, amusing guilt at Sergio’s watering eyes. “No, no, no, it wasn’t Penny. She couldn’t make me cry if she wanted to. It wasn’t her. It was Isda, honey. Isda said horrible things.”

  “Isda?” Sergio responded, looking puzzled as the first tear dropped on his brown cheeks. “Can I go talk to him and tell him not to do that anymore? What did he say?”

  “Oh, my Sergio, just forget it,” she said, wiping her eyes. “We must forget it. What’s past is past. We can’t relive it, we can only regret it, for what we didn’t do.”

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind,” she said, shaking her head and drying her eyes with the back of her hands. The Wall immediately ejected a tissue and offered it to her.

  “Oh, Wall, you’re always there,” she said with a slight laugh.

  A funny thing, a Wall that cares enough to give me a Kleenex right when my nose is running. Right when I was thinking I needed one. However, this Wall is just reacting to my thoughts. It can’t really care about me, not like Sergio.

  She was lightly patting Sergio on the head, as he sat quietly, happier now that Margot had calmed down.

  “Wall,” Margot blurted out, “do you have any feelings? You’re always so nice and polite to me.”

  “The Wall can feel to a limited extent, to the extent that a machine can feel or know what is right and wrong.”

  “But these things are given to you by those who programmed you.”

  “True,” the Wall responded. “The Wall has learned right and wrong as defined by the Das. It can evaluate their behavior and their attitudes, their culture. It can evaluate these things in comparison with the millions of other cultures. If right and wrong has as one of its basic features a direct connection to longevity, then indeed the Das are the few among the unchanged.”

  Margot looked up when she talked to the Wall, almost the way she’d look up and talk to the cactus wrens that would frequent her backyard’s saguaros, chattering from the holes in the high limbs. “Unchanged?”

  “Yes, the Das and the three other known societies have lived relatively unchanged for one to three billion years, depending on which of the four you observe.”

  “But what do you mean ‘unchanged’? Surely they must have evolved?”

  “Physically is your question, Margot. Of course, they have changed physically. In fact, there are Das who have evolved into physical forms rather different from what you see here. Not all Das choose to live within the Wall. The Wall is just a convenient substitute for the Das’ planet, or whatever their individual liking may be. But many Das prefer to adapt to planets with a wide range of living conditions. Yes, over time, there is some evolving, as the individuals’ own cellular growth mutates through time and adapts to the different environments.”

  “But then they are not Das, right?”

  “Margot,” Sergio pleaded, “let’s go play. I’m bored.”

  “Hold on, hold on Sergio. I’m talking here. Just a second.” Sergio quietly slipped away, bothered by her lack of attention.

  “No, Margot. They are still Das,” the Wall said.

  “Well, how can they be Das if they look so different over millions and billions of years?”

&nb
sp; “They follow the same rules.”

  “What?” she asked.

  “Yes, it is as you are thinking, Margot. They are bound together as Das by their commitment to Interlocking Effects.”

  “Not you too, Wall, with this rattle, not you too,” she frowned, as if the Wall were watching her facial expressions. “You can’t believe how tired I am of this crap. I am so tired. If that Isda couldn’t explain to me why he let us all die, I’m sure you can’t. All I hear is this Interlocking Effects crap. I’m brainwashed by it. I am so sick of this place you cannot believe. I am so sick, I just wish that I could go home and never come back here. I’d just like to have my old life back, God, even in a dream.”

  “The Wall was not aware until now that you were not aware. You can have that life again as in a dream.”

  “What?” Margot said, stunned at these words. She sat back on her legs and took a deep breath.

  “The Wall sees nearly all that occurs here. You have not been told that you cannot go back, have you?”

  “Back, are you saying back to earth?”

  “Well, yes, in a way. But please answer the question. You see, your mind is clouded now and it is hard to read your answer.”

  “What? What question? About going back? No. No. No way in hell did anyone tell me I could go back.”

  “Margot, stop in your thinking. Perhaps you need clarity. Here it is. It is possible for you to recreate your earth, as you remember it, as the Wall has recorded it. The act is as simple as entering this life in your Viewing room.”

  “My Viewing room? What? What the hell can my Viewing room do? It’s nothing more than three-dimensional video!”

  “True, this it true in as sense. But the Viewing room is the Wall, and the Wall can shape matter as required by the thinker. The Wall can shape matter around you.”

  “Christ, you’re not talking sense. Look, you know how much time I’ve spent in the Viewing room. I know this isn’t real, so what does it matter? How can it?”

  “The difference is in your thoughts, filling in the space between your thoughts. While you are watching, you are separated from the activities you see because of your knowledge that it is the Wall, not something real. The societies and worlds you have seen are too far from the realm of your own world for you to become indelibly connected to them. You don’t get immersed in them because you are not naturally a part of them.”

  What space in between my thoughts?

  “You’re ahead of me, Wall. What does ‘a part of them’ mean?”

  “You are not ‘one’ with them, you might say."

  “Nuts!” she rolled her eyes. “That’s freaking nuts.”

  “Again, the Wall will explain. You are what you are. A human. When you see recreations of Das-inhabited worlds or other worlds with other beings, you can look within your own self and know that you are not connected. The differences in your mind will remind you of your separation from them. This is not necessarily true if you were enmeshed in the Wall’s version of your own world.”

  “I don’t get it,” Margot said, her heart racing.

  My mind is working on this, Margot. Shut yourself up. What is he saying? It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t but it does. I’m impatient, damn it, too impatient. Calm down. Okay, that’s better, but just calm down.

  “It’s not clear what you are thinking, but the Wall continues. “If it is the Viewing room of your own world, the world you’ve known, you can become permanently connected to it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That you are human. You can re-create humanity in your mind. The Wall will facilitate your creation.”

  “No. No. That’s a lie if I understand what you are suggesting,” she stammered. “You know that’s a lie. I have been there. I have walked through the desert. I have. But I haven’t asked to see anyone I knew. No one. No, that would hurt too much. It takes too much for me to see them. I only see them bloated with flies dancing around on their noses, or drying skin in the sun. Horrible thoughts. Horrible.”

  “But you remain deliberately separate in your mind. While you have this separation, you will remain so non-aligned.”

  “I still don’t understand,” she said, her voice quivering with excitement. “I don’t.”

  “This has been done many times for beings who had difficulty adjusting to the life within the Wall or elsewhere. Indeed, the Das do this regularly to have the experience of familiar surroundings. Such a Das can live that life for considerable lengths of time – sometimes never to return. If you can forget this existence, and block it out of your mind, even for the slightest moment, and you can do this while you are on the re-created earth within the Wall, you can be on earth, and the Wall will make it real to you from that point on.”

  “Real to me? Real to me?” she screamed. “How in the hell does that make me feel? Real to me? What does it matter if it’s real to me? It’s you! You, damn it! It’s you with your damn brown rotten Wall. It’s you, and it could never be real to me. Don’t you see, even my desert is dead? You think you can re-create that? You think that your poor excuse for the saguaros in my back yard are real to me in the least bit? You think I don’t know that all of this is some magical damn advanced manipulation of matter run by you, and all you are is some computer that enables it? It never is the same. It never can be. You can’t put my Mom’s bread pudding before me and make it taste the same as hers. I know you can’t. I’ve tasted the puke that you make. It’s not even close to hers. It’s not even close!” Margot felt the tears stream down her cheeks in equal proportion to the sweat percolating down her armpits.

  “But it is different because you think it so, in most cases. Your saguaro is the real thing when the Wall makes it, as retrieved by our landing party in their cataloguing of your earth’s biology. If your mother’s bread pudding is not the same, it is because the recipe is different or because you want to think it is different, but not because the ingredients are not real.”

  “No,” she said, erratically shaking her head. “It is because you can’t make it right! You can’t!” she cried, her hands shaking as she wiped her tears.

  Margot, you are losing it! You have lost it! You are getting upset far too many times! And remember the Wall, what you did to the Wall! You are an accountant, remember? Accountants are boring, non-emotional. They don’t cuss – at least not much. What’s happened to you? Remember Spock? Remember him? Remember watching the old Star Trek videos with Dad? He loved those. Logic beats emotion. Logic! Control your emotions. Stop. Think like Spock for a minute! Think like Spock. What would he say? How would he get beyond this? What wisdom would he evoke from his extensive teachings, from that logic that was impressed within him from such a young age? I know what he’d say, I know. ‘The Wall is your friend. It’s offering you advice, alternatives. Analyze the alternatives. Don’t jump at the emotion. It’s far too easy to let the emotion carry you into the easy, yet we all know that easy is always the worst path, and that difficult is always the best, so that’s the one to follow’. That truth rarely deviates. So what’s easy here and what’s difficult? What did the Wall just present to you?

  Think, Margot, think! You haven’t been a happy camper here, and normally you are a happy person. Happy with life. But this is not life, not the one you knew. This is a bug-created hell. You are having a terrible time adjusting. You have not come out of this well. Blame is all around you, it blankets you, follows you as a pathetically sad shadow. It pervades your thoughts. You can’t get over this blame of the Das. I still don’t understand, despite their best efforts to tell me why they couldn’t help my planet. Maybe I won’t ever understand. And I hold within me a morose blame, blame and shame, for humanity. Margot, you are what’s left of a dead race of beings. The burden is terribly great, and my shoulders were not sculpted to bear it.

  I guess some people, beings, just don’t make it. The adjustment is too tough. Too much for their minds to handle. It’s not just a challenge. I can take a challenge. I can take what life
swings at me. But this is not life. Life for me was on earth. Life was all the people I knew, my desert, my hiking paths, my Subie, my family and friends, my iPhone. I defined myself by that. What am I now? I watch a Viewing room all day. That is now Margot. A virtual reality show in which I am only an observer. Less than that, I’m an observer of history. Of these things I see, most no longer exist in time. I can do nothing about them. I can take no action. Nearly all are long dead. I aced archaeology, yes, but found it terminally boring. And I’m getting bored now, just like I was after 4 months of that class. I don’t want to dig up old bones and imagine their lives, or have the Wall do that for me! I need to move forward. I must move forward.

  Growth is the all, and I can’t possibly grow here. I can’t find my challenge. I have no comparisons to other people, and somehow those comparisons defined me and helped me know who I was. Was I succeeding, progressing? The challenge of the world was me, it’s hardness was me. Its pain was me. This is too soft. The Wall is too soft. Their Interlocking Effects is too soft. It provides no room for improvement. You begin with it all, all knowledge, all teachings, all understandings of the ways to act and be and get along and create a lasting society, from your earliest days. Then you live forever. What happened to growth in all that? I don’t see how they grow. I don’t see how I grow! This world is too alien, too constructed by the Wall, too monotone. These Das, they can do it, it’s their world, they created it. I can’t make it mine.