Division: A Collection of Science Fiction Fairytales
Page 8
I feel like a child. “No I’m not.”
Something breaks in her, brittle and gentle. She walks back, crouches back down so our eyes meet. “Yes you are,” she says. “And you should go see the doctors. Maybe they can help.”
I look away first, trying to find the words to unblock my tongue. They come out colder than I wanted them to. “Grief isn’t a science, honey.”
She pushes away from me. Stands up. “Fine,” she says. “Be that way. I’m going to work.”
* * *
I think about what I’ve said. Grief isn’t a science, at least not one that I know. I can’t reduce this down to neurotransmitters or hormone levels. I don’t even want to begin. No. Grief is a division of the soul. Each moment it hangs on me like a shroud, I lose another part of myself.
I get out of bed eventually. My feet take me back to Demeter’s bay. I’m on leave but my pass still works. Nobody’s there, the routine checks must have already been done. Feeling naked without my screen, I sit with my back against the wall, curled up like a child, enjoying the heat and thrum of the engine. I settle into the womb of The Mary Shelley and eventually fall asleep. I don’t remember my dreams, but when I reach up to rub my eyes I feel that my cheeks are wet.
* * *
Fern moves on.
“How can you say that?” she asks, when I bring it up. Her voice is a gasp, like I’ve punched her in the stomach. Maybe I did sound a bit accusing. But it’s true.
“You have,” I say, like we’re discussing engine specs. It’s there, in front of me, on the manual of her face. “Look at you. You’re just… going on. Every day. As if she never existed.”
It’s a testimony to how far I’ve gone that I don’t see it coming. The rage coils around her like a snake. “And how should I be, Dayani?” Fern asks quietly. Her voice trembles and begins to build. “Should I be like you? So wrapped up in yourself that you’re useless? Do you think we can measure Julie by how long you spend catatonic? How do you think it’s been for me?” She doesn’t cry, and somehow the tearlessness of it makes her voice hoarser, more violent. “I lost Julie and then I lost you. All in the same day.”
The venom nails me to the wall. I stand there, transfixed, as Fern walks away from me.
* * *
I’m a butterfly pinned to a board. I’m a collection of misfiring circuits. I don’t move from the empty wall of our cabin. It’s such a small space, but I stare at it and all I can feel is its emptiness. Julie gone. Fern gone.
No. Fern’s not gone. Not yet, at least. She’s just not here.
Something in me stirs. The words drop out before I can capture them, flowing from some silent place. “I’m sorry about the hospital,” I tell the empty air. “I didn’t know what to do.”
The words fall flat, useless, on metal ears.
* * *
Fern avoids me. I have to track her down. She’s turned off her locator, but she and I, we’ve been part of the same whole for so long that I know where she’ll be.
The Mary Shelley’s Reel theatre is near the Golden Goose. I take strength from the familiar thrum of the engine in the walls as I walk, tracing my way through the ship. I know this labyrinth, each twist and turn. Yet somehow this feels like a new journey, a newborn blindly fighting its way out of the womb.
She’s standing just outside the theatre, in the corridor. Her eyes are still tearless, she stares at the sign and at ghosts that I can’t see, only feel. My footsteps are loud in the silence of the afterworld. She spins around and we stare at each other. Across an abyss. Before she can say anything she’ll regret, I start.
“I’m sorry about the hospital,” I tell her. The words come out easier this time. Easier and harder. Each syllable rolls off my shoulders, I straighten under the lightening load. “I didn’t know what to do.”
Her face is a mask. I swallow hard. “I’m sorry, Fern.”
The abyss gapes between us. I hold my breath. But we’re still the same person; her face crumples and we fling ourselves off the edge at the same time. Two steps together, and the distance closes and we crash into each other like colliding atoms. She’s crying now. So am I. Our tears mix together and I taste the salt. “I’m sorry, Fern,” I gasp, over and over again. It’s like we’re underwater, the ripple and the kick of the current drags the air from my mouth. “I’m so, so sorry.”
She says nothing. She’s been talking all this while, talking at me. But now the rest of my words come out like wounds, seeping blood. Words about how much I loved her, how angry I was, how much it burned. Useless words. Meaningless words. Words that won’t bring Julie back, that won’t erase the last few agonising months. But words that get us somewhere, at least. I’m not quite sure where.
* * *
The Mary Shelley flies on. I still see Julie’s face everywhere in her passages, her corridors, her screens. But as the weeks pass, the grief drags further and further behind me, a faithful shadow, instead of howling around my ears and drowning out the world.
Fern suggests that I try to distract myself. So I flick through The Mary Shelley’s manuals. She was built in 3076, cobbled out of the pieces of The Prometheus, Proserpine, and The Galileo. I hit the wrong link and suddenly I’m reading about the lady herself, who lost three children and gave birth to an enduring story. I sit back, struck. And soon I’m reading her other stories, feeling the ghostly echo of her grief reach out to meet mine across thousands of years. And when Fern finds me crying over the screen, she pauses in her remonstrations when she realises that I’m smiling.
* * *
I don’t see anyone. I don’t see how talking can do anything, since it won’t bring Julie back. But I go to the viewing deck every day until I’m back at work, and once, Fern even comes with me. We lie on the floor and she clings to my neck and hides her face in my shoulder and I’m okay with that. I watch the space between the stars and feel small, and feel everything else about me receding until I approach something that resembles peace.
* * *
I go back to work and I don’t screw up again.
I always wanted to be an engineer. I was one of those single-minded kids who refused all other toys and concentrated on the chemistry sets and models. I wanted to build, and I wanted to fix, and I wanted things to make sense.
It hurt when I dragged out the old sets, years later, and Julie didn’t even give them a passing glance. She was a kid who knew her own mind as well. One that followed after Fern like a puppy. One that still managed to shower me with kisses when I came back from work, grimy and sweaty. One that I learned to love beyond the strategic bursts of hormones and neurotransmitters that my body released when I first picked her up, still bloody and bawling.
I can’t fix this. I can’t ever fix this. I work on Demeter and the Blue Fairy, and I breathe in and out and think of their stories, and I learn to live with it day by day.
* * *
One morning, I wake up, and I realise that it’s hurting a little less to take that first morning breath, that gulp of consciousness when I re-enter a world where my daughter is dead.
* * *
The next week, I laugh at a really, really bad joke.
* * *
One month later, heat draws up in me at the same time it draws up in Fern. We lie together on the bed again, limbs entangled, forming a rough, human-shaped eternity symbol.
* * *
And before I know it, it’s been a year. I’m doing a routine check of the Engine Demeter when I call Fern.
“Love?” she says, surprised. “What is it?”
It takes me a while to swallow. “It’s Julie,” I say. “I… I thought maybe we could go to the Reel tonight. Pay our respects. Watch something together.”
There is a pause. This time it’s my staggered breaths echoing down the line, as I try not to let the anxiety and the grief overwhelm me. Fern would be well within her rights to say no. I couldn’t face the hospital. And neither of us have stepped into the damn theatre since. And maybe this was a bad idea, b
ecause if I still see Julie’s ghost in The Mary Shelley’s hallways, then she will be there in the Reel. Yes. This was a bad idea and…
“Okay,” she says.
I hear the sharpness of my indrawn breath. “Thank you,” I say, and I kill the connection and look down at Demeter, whirring away contentedly in front of me.
And I’m not at peace. I won’t ever be at peace, because my daughter is dead. But if division is infinite, then so is probability. So I can go to the Reel with Fern, and we can watch some stupid sci-fi love story, and maybe, one day, we can be one again.
Dear Reader
Thank you for reading and bringing these stories to life for a little while. I hope you enjoyed them. They came from a childhood devouring dark fairytales, an adulthood discovering the joys of science fiction, and the dream, always, of making up stories and sharing them.
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Yours
- Lee S. Hawke
Coming Soon
Medical lab rat or research data monkey, that’s what most people end up as when they’re licenced to ANRON Corporation. But Madeline Anron’s about to discover a far more sinister fate. Because her licence to exist just got revoked.
Sign up now to get LICENCE REVOKED for free when it launches April 2015.
About the Author
Hi. I’m Lee S. Hawke and I write science fiction and fantasy storytales. Because I can’t make up my mind, this can be anything from novellas to novels to short stories and poetry. I’d love to hear from you, so give me a yell! You can also find me on Goodreads, Google+, and the Facebook NaNoWriMo Group.
@LeeSHawke
Lee S Hawke
www.leeshawke.com
contact@leeshawke.com
Acknowledgements
This collection is indebted to a number of people.
Firstly, I have to thank my amazing beta readers: Amber Batey, Stephanie Rebours-Smith, Edward Nagul, Carey M Rulo, Matthew Chan, Amelia Tracey, Elizabeth Hall, Michaela Proper, Sami Rovtar, Bob Lim, Dixie Miller Goode, Yik-Xiang Hue, Daniel Ho, Kragen Darkstripe, and Natsui Vogt. Aside from helping me become a better writer and storyteller, this collection would be very different and far less polished without them.
Secondly, this list would be incomplete without thanking some of my literary idols, including Neil Gaiman, Margaret Atwood, David & Leigh Eddings, Kurt Vonnegut, Garth Nix, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Susan Nance Carhart, and JK Rowling.
On that note, a special shout out to the Facebook NaNoWriMo Group (you know who you are)! Your endless support, suggestions, and hijinks are incredible, and I’m proud to be a member.
Also special thanks to my science advisor, the soon to be Dr. Aaron Mitchell Brice. (If there’s anything that didn’t make sense in here, you can blame him).
Last but not least, I am incredibly honoured to be a member of not one, but two families. Thank you both for your love and support. Thank you.