Darkness Between the Stars
J Edward Neill
Cover Art ‘War for Jupiter’ by Amanda Makepeace
Tessera Guild Publishing
Copyright © 2017 J Edward Neill
All rights reserved.
I remember when I saw it for the first time.
I was standing in my father's field. The moon was out and the night was clear. I counted the stars the same as I had a hundred times before.
And they were fewer. So many fewer. The darkness between them had grown. The lights once so beautiful...swallowed by the void.
I stood and I counted.
And I understood what I had to do.
Contents
Earthbound
Split Screen
Fewer
Admissions
The Visitor
The Darkness is Real
No More Roads
Callista
The Only Kid in Class
How to Silence a Star
New Clothes
Trading Places with God
One Last Count
A Single Shot
Ignition
Floating
Intermission
Binary
Ebes
Night Falls
Follow the Green Fire
Frost
The Web
Dreaming of the Dead
When Death had no Name
More Will Come
At Dawn They Sleep
Twilight
Climbing Olympus
Shadows and Dust
Break the Silence
The Last Earthling
Humanity’s End
Dirt
Earthbound
Many years before they selected me to save humanity, I knew who their choice would be.
Maybe that’s why they picked me. Maybe they planted the idea in my head when I was only a little boy. Or perhaps it was a simple matter of me guessing right. But somehow I knew.
I’m meant for something else, I remember thinking.
I’m not destined to be earthbound.
Those were strange thoughts for a six-year old boy. No, they were beyond strange. They were surreal. It was the year 4901, and I had no concept of what those feelings meant. I didn’t know anything about deep space travel, the Thousand-Year War, or humanity’s exodus from Earth. Everyone else in the world knew about these things, but not me. Not little Joff.
All I really knew were my father’s wheat fields, my mother’s love for me and my sister, and my teddy bear, Alpo, who was missing his right arm.
Alpo’s story was a funny one. He was named after an aluminum can. And it wasn’t just any can, but a three-thousand year-old one I found in the dirt in one of Dad’s fields. ‘Alpo,’ it said in faded yellow print. Maybe that’s why Dad used to say our fields were the most fertile of all. Something about being on a landfill. Something about wheat growing better on top of thirty-century old garbage.
Whatever.
I didn’t care. I was six years old. The same night I found the ancient can, I sprinted home and renamed my teddy bear. Everything in the world seemed right.
Those were the best of days. We were happy, all of us. We lived in a valley with mountains on three sides. Our fields of golden wheat swayed to breezes that never stopped. All around our little stone house, pale streams tickled the earth, clean and crisp as anything. Life wasn’t always easy, but it was quiet. Our family was untouchable, a last island floating on an ocean of technology.
Although we weren’t entirely isolated.
A city lay just outside our valley.
By modern standards, Donva was a small town. To a six-year old boy who’d rarely been beyond his valley, it was awe-inspiring. They’d named Donva after the woman who’d first suggested a settlement there. Like most cities back then, it was all blacks and whites. Not the people, mind you. The buildings. Skinny dark towers jutted skyward from its heart, while warrens of pale, impossibly clean dwellings sprawled in the towers’ shadows. People lived in the little white houses and worked in the big black spires. Donva was so tight-knit that almost everyone walked everywhere. The only time anyone took a train or a hover-truck was to leave the city entirely, which most people rarely did.
I often remembered one of my earliest visits.
We were in the car on a warm, sunny morning. It was Mom, my sister Aly, and me. We weren’t piloting one of those fancy, matte-grey hover-trucks, but instead we rode in a combustion engine car. Yes, those. The same kind they say fouled the air centuries ago. And so rare in 4901 that only a dozen or so existed, while even fewer actually worked.
So when we rolled into town on a shiny white road everyone else used for walking, we got the best looks from people. They smiled, waved, and stopped to say hello to Mom. They didn’t begrudge our pretty chrome prize, but instead welcomed the sight. It was the way things were in Donva. It wasn’t like the big cities, the scary cities.
I’d have had more fun that morning if not for Aly. She always made it a point to start little wars every time we were in the car. That day was no exception.
“You’ll never get to sit up front,” she told me for the thousandth time.
“Yes I will,” I argued. “I’ll be bigger than you someday. Dad says so.”
“But I’ll always be older.” She made a face. “Which means the front is mine. Forever.”
I felt myself getting angrier. If there was one thing I hated, it was injustice. Aly saw me grinding my teeth and grinned. I waited for Mom to stop our brewing battle, but she didn’t. I think she wanted us to fight it out without her help.
“We’ll run out of gas someday,” I told Aly. “Dad’s big tank will go dry. Then we’ll have to walk. There won’t be any front seats. You’ll see.”
She laughed at me. “It’ll be funny, you on your skinny legs. You’ll get half a kilo, and Mom will have to carry you. Isn’t that right, Mom?”
In her fancy black shades and wide-brimmed white hat, Mom didn’t say a word. She turned the wheel and drove down a side road. I thought I saw her shake her head, but from the back seat it was hard to tell.
“I’ll break your dolls.” I decided to fight dirty.
“I’ll tear Alpo’s other arm off,” Aly shot back.
“I’ll steal your books,” I huffed.
“I’ll chop off your hair while you’re sleeping.” She smirked.
“Oh yeah…well…I’ll steal your skypad,” I dared.
Aly’s mouth fell open. Mom slowed the car and took off her sunglasses. I knew right away I’d gone too far.
“What did I tell you about the skypad, Aly?” Mom stared at my sister, calm as a cloud before a storm.
Aly glared at me. If she’d have turned any redder, her head might’ve burst.
“If your father catches you with it, he won’t even bother to sell it,” Mom continued. “He’ll throw it in the combine and grind it into powder. You know how he feels about those things.”
“But Mom—” Aly tried.
“Tomorrow we’re coming back here,” Mom cut her off. “You bring the pad. We’ll sell it, and you can use the money for whatever you want. But no tech. No vids, no sprites, and no dream-makers.”
“Mom—”
“Non-negotiable,” said Mom.
And that was the end of it.
We kept driving. Aly hated me, and I didn’t say another word. I hadn’t meant to get her into trouble. I’d just blurted out the thing I knew would win the argument. I’d always been good at winning. Not so much at surviving the aftermath.
If Aly was heartbroken, she had every right to be. Our father’s disdain for technology was legendary. He didn’t like vids, which usually just s
pouted ads for other tech. He really didn’t like sprites, which floated around people’s heads and played whatever media their users wanted them to. And he really, really disliked dream-makers, which were known to be addictive, so much that some people never slept again after just a few days of using them.
But above all those things, Dad didn’t like skypads. Skypads were like pieces of almost indestructible paper. You cold bend them, stick them to walls, wear them, whatever you liked. And using a skypad, with the right hacks, you could connect to and view everything. If you wanted to watch a signal from a satellite on the far side of Earth, you could do it. If you fancied eavesdropping on feeds from near-orbit space stations, it was easy to make happen. But worse than anything, if you wanted live video of world news, which Dad despised, all you had to do was click a button, and every channel in the world opened up beneath your fingertips.
I was sure all Aly used her skypad for was to vid-chat with her friends, but that wouldn’t matter to Dad. He assumed the worst of most technology. And therefore he’d banned it from our household.
That night at dinner, Aly and I sat in silence at the table. Dad heaped potatoes and greens on our plate, and both of us nibbled. It didn’t take long before Dad noticed our quietness.
“What’s on your mind, Joff?” he asked me.
“Nothing,” I fibbed.
“Aly?” he pried.
“Nothing.”
Dad took another bite. He knew something was up. But as was ever his way, he didn’t get angry.
“Nothing?” he said while he chewed. “The funny thing about nothing is that it’s always something. You went to Donva today. That’s something. You brought home salt, spices, and a new kettle. That’s something more. And I’m sure you both saw your mother’s new hat. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? That’s definitely something.”
Aly dropped her gaze to the floor. I knew what she was thinking. And I also knew our father.
He knew about the skypad.
He’d already found it.
“Just tell him, Aly,” I whispered.
“Tell him what?” She stared a hole through me.
“You know…”
Dad gave both of us The Look. We knew what it meant. Whenever he broke The Look out, it meant he wasn’t going to say another word. No one at the table, Mom included, was allowed to speak, eat, or leave until The Look was answered.
And on that night, the only right answer was for Aly to admit she’d been hiding a skypad in her room for almost three months.
I wanted to answer for her. My sense of justice told me that the sooner we fessed up, the better. But The Look that night was less for me and more for Aly. Dad wanted her to fess up, not for me to protect her.
I wasn’t sure how long we sat there and waited. The steam stopped rising from our potatoes and our greens got cold. Aly looked to Mom for an escape, but Mom just sat there with her hands folded in her lap. She and Dad were a wall. There was no getting around them, no climbing over. The only way to get through was to tell the truth.
“I…” Aly’s voice cracked. “I have a skypad. I know what you’re going to say, but it’s not what you think. I don’t care about watching the fights in the wasteland. I don’t hack into the space stations. I just talk to Sara and Melina. That’s all.”
“And?” Dad still wore The Look.
“…and sometimes steal a show from the satellites. But nothing gory, Dad. No war feeds.”
I knew she’d told the truth. Not because I believed her, but because Dad lifted his cup and took a deep swig of warm milk. He wouldn’t have done it had Aly lied. It would’ve gotten a lot worse.
“So…does that mean I can keep it?” Aly asked.
Our father let out a great gust of air. I sensed he was just a little sad.
“No,” he said.
“But why?” Aly pleaded. “I’m not using it for bad stuff.”
“I know you’re not. But the answer’s the same. It’s done, Aly. It’s gone.”
She looked angry at first, then stunned. I think her plan had been to blame me for everything. But it was obvious Dad had known all along. He’d destroyed the skypad while we’d been in the car arguing about it.
Which meant it wasn’t my fault.
* * *
The next months were a strange time.
The same as every day, we worked in the fields. It was summer, which meant keeping up the irrigation trenches, feeding the chickens, and doing lots of maintenance on our aging machines. Dad was teaching me to be a blackthumb, which meant I had to learn all about machinery, and that I came home every night with oily hands and dirty clothes. At six years old I probably should’ve been attending school in Donva with Aly, but Dad didn’t want that for me, and I didn’t mind.
“We’ve got enough tech designers and programmers to last ten generations,” he’d say. “So here you’ll work, learning machines. And if ever you need a job in one of the cities, you’ll be the best damn blackthumb they could hope for. You’ll be a master, and you’ll command whatever salary you want.”
And so I watched, worked, and learned all the things my father wanted, even though being a blackthumb wasn’t what I cared about. I did it because Dad wished it and I loved him, though in my heart I wanted something else. I didn’t know exactly what that something else was. But I felt it inside me, a dream smoldering in my head, a hot thumping in my chest that wouldn’t go away.
If I’d understood it better, I would’ve tried to snuff it out.
I wasn’t sure if my life would’ve been different. Maybe they’d have picked someone else.
Maybe not.
It wasn’t until winter, on a frigid eve after a long day’s work hauling wood down from the mountains, I learned something about why my father was the way he was. I wasn’t sure why I decided to go to the storage barn instead of rushing home to dinner. Tired as dirt, I wandered off the path and dropped my last stack of firewood against the barn’s outer wall.
And then I pushed the sliding door open and walked inside.
The barn interior was dark. We didn’t have any animals in it; the cattle were in a different barn. I slid inside to escape the howling wind, and I pushed the door shut behind me. The smells of old wood, of tools that hadn’t been used since summer, and of cold, hard soil drifted through the air. I reached out for the old bench that sat just to the door’s left, and I sank onto it, limp as a dishrag.
If I’d had a blanket, I might’ve slept the night in the barn. I was that tired.
Yet no sooner did I lean back against the creaky old bench than I smelled something else. It wasn’t wood or rusty tools or dirt.
Smoke, I knew.
What’s that old saying Dad made up? About smoke and fire?
I stood back up. I didn’t know why I did it so quietly. Most of me knew no one else could possibly be in the barn with me.
Or could there be? I wondered.
I followed my nose. Soundless as a falling star, I crept through the darkness. I’d been in the barn a thousand times in my life. I knew where the door to the tool room was.
Ten steps forward.
Turn right.
Seven steps through the narrow hall.
Now touch the door.
I reached out and touched the planks to the tool room’s door. They were warmer than I expected, and the smells wafting between the cracks caught me right in the nose. I put my ear to the door and listened. A voice, so far away, made its way to me. It wasn’t Dad or Mom, or even Aly. The voice was too small, almost like it came from…
…a skypad.
I couldn’t recall just when I’d learned to be so stealthy. Maybe it was part of having an older sister and knowing how to sneak past her bedroom without her coming out to chase me. But somehow, someway, I pulled the door open enough to see inside.
And Dad didn’t hear me.
In the little room, in the quiet heart of the old barn, he sat there on a stool, his workbench laid out before him. An old-world cigarette dangled be
tween his fingers, but he wasn’t smoking it. Nor was he working. He had his back to me, and over his shoulder I saw the skypad’s soft blue glow. He’d stuck it to the side of our red toolbox. I saw it plain as the sun shining, a crown of wrenches standing just behind it.
I stood there and watched. My shock at seeing Dad so absorbed in the very thing he’d always said he hated didn’t last. I guess I wasn’t really surprised. Maybe I’d known all along.
The program he’d found, The Dusktime Dispatch, flickered on the skypad’s screen. It was a blurry image, doubtless stripped from a satellite thousands of miles away. To hear the voices talking, I had to tune out the entire world, which was easier than I expected.
“What we’re looking at is all that remains of the city they used to call Lun-dun,” announced a man in a flak-jacket and a black beanie hat.
“Yes, Lukas. We know that,” said the newsman.
The two men appeared in separate frames on the skypad. On the right, the newsman sat in a clean office somewhere in a vast city. Meanwhile the man in the black beanie, Lukas, occupied the left frame, its edges burning bright red from the approaching sunrise. Lukas looked brawny and a bit dangerous. The skeletal remains of a vast city, which must’ve been a thousand times the size of Donva, stretched out behind him. The sight scared me more than a little.
Lukas adjusted his black beanie and continued:
“Now, as we’ve talked before, today’s the day we’re sending a team into Lun-dun to test the Exodus craters for radioactivity. It’s our hope, after all this time, the levels of poisoning might’ve dropped well below critical toxicity.”
Me being not quite seven years old, I shouldn’t have understood all those fancy words. But I did. I’d read all of Aly’s school books a dozen times, probably while she was hiding and watching the very same skypad Dad and I were watching now.
“When does your team depart?” the newscaster asked.
“In one hour,” said Lukas. “They’re suiting up in their safety gear now.”
“Well…” The newscaster looked concerned. “We’ve talked about this before, about the ERM, the Exodus Reclaiming Mission. But what we’ve never really discussed, Lukas, is exactly what you and your team hope to reclaim. Now that you’re there, and now that we’ve got every skypad in the world tuned to this feed, what can you tell us? Can you say what it is you’re looking for?”
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