Starstuff

by Kaylim

extra research? Single me out and paint with me and…kiss me?”

  She opens her eyes, she wants, needs to see Yallie’s expression.

  “I saw…possibilities. Possibilities others don’t see or understand. I felt like we were…kindred to one another.”

  And Ajita can remember thinking of the stars, of Yallie among them and feeling lonely, and she tries to imagine Yallie feeling similarly. She slides closer to Yallie, slowly, and can see the light from the observation window in her eyes, the gleam of silver and blue. Like the dance of stars across her eyes. Like their handprints linked together.

  “I think we are,” Ajita admits.

  And yet. They remain separated by a small span of air, and Ajita can’t force herself to close it, to bridge the distance.

  “I passed my Assessment. I made the cut,” Yallie says, nervously, gulping and looking away.

  “I remember,” Ajita says.

  Yallie looks down at her hands, “I thought it would be a moment of celebration, but considering what you think it means, and that it will be a separation…it doesn’t feel like victory.”

  Ajita breaks all over, like her heart is too small and squeezed to pump blood through her body, because even though she’s enslaved, she’d rather be enslaved with Yallie than without her.

  “At least one of us will escape,” Ajita says through numb lips.

  Yallie looks up at her, and dares to break the space between them, with one finger underneath Ajita’s chin, and her eyes burn, alight with some inner fire, “I’ll find a way to get you out.”

  Ajita accepts the promise silently, though she doesn’t plan to hold her to it. In many ways, it was enough that she got to know Yallie, become her friend, and bequeath her a name.

  “I have until tonight,” Yallie says.

  “That’s not a lot of time.”

  “I’ll figure something out.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” and Ajita is the one to initiate eye contact, “I meant…you’ll be leaving so soon.”

  Yallie leans down and…they kiss. They pass air back and forth between them and it feels safe and forbidden and too much like goodbye.

  Her mouth is dry and her tongue flicks against her lips and she can remember different tastes from Earth’s past, spicy red and fluffy brown; she knows the bland taste of the food from the dispenser, stale packets and tangy tubes. But she has never tasted skin like she wants to now.

  Ajita closes her eyes, colors bursting on the dark of her eyelids and it feels she has been flung out of the observation window, falling and falling and falling. Everything is static noise and loss of gravity, floating and falling

  It is as if she and Yallie have shared souls and the ticking of their hearts. They came together on a different plane of existence, one of starstuff. She wraps her arms around Yallie, feels Yallie return the gesture, and never wants to let go.

  Ajita didn’t sleep, but her eyes don’t droop. She can’t doze. Not even as she stares at her screen, watching the answer boxes blink. She doesn’t feel tired at all, she feels wide awake, her heart heavy in her chest, as if it is a block of ice, and has frozen her entire body, including her face, her eyes, her feelings.

  “Student, you are not answering the questions,” the Instructor says, and he sounds so far away.

  “They don’t matter,” Ajita says.

  She feels like she has all the answers anyway, as if everything is inside her, a part of her.

  The Instructor doesn’t hear her quiet reply, and Ajita flicks her eyes over to the Student next to her, back again. The Student absently scratches behind her ear, before continuing to key in answers. Ajita, with a single finger, taps her shoulder. Immediately, her eyes snap to Ajita, shoulder twitching at the contact. She leans away a bit, and Ajita leans closer in response.

  “Student, I have a question for you,” she says.

  The Student’s eyes nervously slide away and she grasps her kiosk tightly, “Instructors are the ones who ask questions; Students are supposed to answer.”

  Ajita feels her lips curve, “Since you are a Student then, answering my question shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “You are not an Instructor,” the Student says, her voice tight.

  She turns back to her kiosk, quickly keying in an answer to a blinking question.

  “Student, do you think that knowing answers is a priority?”

  “Of course, they are necessary for completing the Lesson, for learning.”

  “What is the point of learning?”

  The Student doesn’t answer and Ajita continues, “You don’t know? Then you really should ask, or not be doing it. Why would you do something if you cannot discern the purpose of doing it?”

  The Student resists looking at her.

  “Student, why are we in School? Why do we do Tasks? What is our purpose?”

  “The Instructors tell us to do so.”

  “Why do we listen to what they say?”

  “They are in a position of authority.”

  “Why did we give them authority? Why not give ourselves authority?”

  “Because we are still learning, we are still Students.”

  “But we will never become Instructors, so we will never have any authority over ourselves.”

  The Student freezes, glances over at her with just her eyes, and then says out of the corner of her mouth, “You’re the one who likes to paint.”

  “You remembered,” and Ajita feels ridiculously, incredibly, free.

  The Student quickly looks around, using minimal head movement, and Ajita feels slightly hunted again, like prey.

  “We will never become Instructors?”

  “Never,” Ajita whispers, “we will be Students forever, always doing what the Instructors tell us, always doing the same Tasks.”

  “But,” the Students starts, falters, and then starts again, “I do not like our Lessons, I do not like our Tasks, sometimes I do not like learning at all.”

  “Then maybe we should stop doing it.”

  And they sit there for the rest of the Lesson, watching the blinking answer boxes, ignoring the Instructor who tells them to answer the questions.

  Like usual, Ajita goes to her Task, and stands in the room full of scanners. She strides in and surveys them all with their gleaming shells and little traitorous eyes, and this doesn’t feel routine at all. Because Yallie is leaving tonight, barely a few hours, not long at all, and Ajita sees everything for what it is now. She watches time fade, and when she feels like she has waited long enough, she gets out her supplies, stolen tubes and packets. She rips them open, relishing the sound as they burst open, body alight with fire and a light buzz, because they’re watching her do this. And then it’s all over the floor, and she’s mixing it together, a grand spread, a big mess, of red paint.

  Wiping her hands in it, she goes up to every scanner and presses her thumbprint against each eye. The paint drips down, obscures the little scanner eyes, marks them and changes them, and now they see through her thumbprints.

  She leaves the room without a backward glance, and her tag is flashing, and she wonders if the Instructors just don’t care, or if they’ve given in to the inevitable. She doesn’t think about it for too long before she’s in the side corridors and going down the stairs because she’s not missing the ships leaving for anything in the world.

  She enters the blue observatory with its large reflective window, and it feels cold and more abandoned than ever before. But it’s not empty. She’s not so surprised.

  Yallie isn’t in blue; she’s in silver, a wonderful suit with pockets and wires and the smell of rockets. Yallie doesn’t turn at the clink of the door and so Ajita joins her at her side, watching the rockets huff and puff below, filling the room with steam. The lights of the cavern look different now, yellow blotches against seas of black, and she thinks of a countdown.

  “They don’t launch from here,” Yallie says, “but they’re being readied for transportation to the launching pad.”

 
Ajita nods and feels the roar of the ships in her feet, sees it in the shaking glass, and can’t keep her heart from racing and her blood from singing. Her body is tight with anticipation. A soft touch at a her arm makes her turn and she faces Yallie, her face so serious, and Ajita can see the worlds and stars and galaxies she is going to explore, stretched out between them, shining in Yallie’s eyes, locked in Ajita’s heart.

  Yallie suddenly grabs her cheeks, hands so cold, eyes so wide she can see the delicate veins, “There are thousands of stars out there Ajita. Thousands of stars in thousands of galaxies. I wish I could show you them all.”

  You don’t have to, Ajita thinks, they are inside of me.

  “I will be lost among them,” Yallie adds quietly, and the pressure of her hands increases even though her voice grows softer.

  Ajita raises her hands and places them over Yallie’s. Warm against cold. She can feel the roughness of the skin where Yallie’s knuckles are, the tiny soft hairs on fingers, all the details she will never have again.

  “I’ll always remember the name you gave me. Maybe one day, I’ll be able to change my Designation to Yallie.”

  Ajita imagines Yallie asking other Trainees to call her by her name, imagines Yallie bestowing names upon her peers...sharing what it means to be human.

  “We will meet again,” Yallie whispers fiercely, with a light in her eyes Ajita has never seen before, “maybe not in this form, but we will see each other again somewhere, somehow. It is not a matter of if, but when.”

  Ajita can imagine it now, how they will be thrown together sometime in the future, colliding and meeting like they collided and met here at School. Perhaps they would both be in a newborn star, together for billions of years, creating a bright shining light such that the Universe has never seen. They would spin across the dark landscape of space, seeing so many different stars, becoming part of so many constellations. Dozens of planets would orbit around them, and they would provide light and life for them for as long as their core burned. Then they would supernova, be flung far from each other, only to find each other years and years later, and do it all over again.

  “I would like that,” Ajita responds, lips curving.

  Yallie’s lips curve too, aching and sweet, and Ajita finally has a word for it. A smile.

  Yallie leans down and Ajita pushes up to meet her, their lips connecting softly and slowly, smile to smile. Ajita feels a strange breath enter her and she breathes back, pushing her breath into Yallie’s mouth as they kiss. She hopes Yallie will take this piece of her to the stars, like she’s taking her name, art, star bears and kissing.

  Ajita holds her breath long after they part, tasting Yallie’s breath and swallowing it and consuming it, never wanting to breathe it out.

  “When Students die,” Yallie says softly, and her voice sounds low and full of promise like the roar of the ships, “we deactivate their tags.”

  She reaches forward with two hands and presses her tag, which lights up bright and sudden.

  “Only Instructors are supposed to know how,” she continues, “but I did some research.”

  Ajita smiles, wide and blazing. She can just picture Yallie going through the databases, those of the humans and those of the Instructors. And just as sudden, the light on her tag goes out, and it falls from her wrist with a clatter.

  “You can walk through the halls unmonitored. You can walk out the door, and they wouldn’t know.”

  “Which door?” Ajita asks.

  Yallie shrugs, “Pick one.”

  Ajita frowns, tangles their fingers together, and doesn’t understand. Yallie smiles, its one tinged with sympathy, sadness, guilt. Ajita smoothes it away with a finger.

  “There are exits everywhere. In every single room. You just weren’t able to see them before.”

  She had believed they didn’t exist and she looks around, as if expecting a dozen doors to appear. But then they’re hugging, and Yallie’s curls brush against the bridge of her nose and she was never able to