by Allan Kaster
But the drive to pass on something of the self is in life’s nature, evolved or otherwise.
Some sing songs of giant fins that swam through seas of methane, made of impossibly fragrant, perfect little tetrahedral jewels of wonder. Some speak of species with bodies made of silicon—staid, dependable beings who took a million years to finish a single thought. Some mime the flirty, flighty lives of creatures of pure information, who lived through a thousand generations in a single second. Some recite poetry written by sentient wings who skimmed across the surface of their star and dove into the convection zone to capture photonic worms.
It’s like what humans, I think, would call a variety show—a gala to pass the time on a dark night in winter. Though we’re all dying, the last consciousnesses in a universe conquered by entropy, there is pleasure and friendship, there is celebration. It’s not home, but at least we don’t have to die alone.
“It’s your turn.”
☼ ☼ ☼
This is one of the most complete fragments of memory I have left. A precious crumb left in my last failing memory bank.
A billion trillion stars streaking across the inky empyrean.
On the horizon are glowing constellations, though the constituent lights are so numerous that they merge into lines, curves, planes: a symmetrical pair of arched wings with a rounded beak in the center, like the mathematical idea of a bird in flight; a rectangular bridge topped by a multi-storied tower with layers of swooping roof-skirts, like a squat spider wearing a big hat; an elongated, thin pillar shooting straight up into the sky, with a string of ovals roving up and down like beads on a string.
TWA Flight Center
Beijing West Railway Station
Pulau Ujong Space Elevator
Each of the points of light speeding toward those structures is a human consciousness, a telepresence being shuttled across the FTL network that bonded all the human island-ships scattered across the universe into one.
Children of the cosmic summer, humans loved to wander far, to live in places where their parents never lived, where their children will grow up only to depart again.
Yet, there are times—when they are about to start a new venture, when they’re feeling the weight of age, when arbitrary marks in the cycles of their ancient calendars come around—when they wish to return to the places of their origin, the ancestral island-ships they only vaguely know through half-memories, the places where their parents waited for them with reminiscences sweet and bitter, so that they could give thanks, so that they could share a meal with family, so that they could be rejuvenated by gazing upon the past.
At this moment, most of the shooting stars are coming from or heading toward Beijing West Railway Station. It is as bright as the very beginning of the universe.
“Heading home?”
“You got it.”
“Where are you from?”
“Off the shoulder of Orion.”
“Safe travels, and happy spring festival!”
☼ ☼ ☼
The shapes of the telepresence hubs in that memory were inspired by actual buildings on the Earth that had long since crumbled into oblivion. They were icons whose forms told stories about their origin.
But it goes deeper than that. The spider with the tall hat was built at a time when humans traveled by cramming into boxes that levitated on parallel bars, like some tangible geometry proof. Millions went through that station to go home to celebrate the coming of spring.
But that swooping hat on top? It served no purpose except to remind humans of an even older time, of a time before the city had people-moving boxes on parallel rails. It was an icon embedded in an icon.
The ancient roof led to a train station that led to a virtual imitation for a galactic network that was recreated in the quantum memory banks of a memorial island-ship that might or might not be the same place as the land on which that train station had once stood.
And so I speak of years and trains and spiders and hats and islands, things I have never seen and have never known, constructing the Beijing West Railroad Station of my imagination with sounds and symbols invoking outdated definitions recalling semi-reliable memories wrapped around mythical truths.
If you follow the trails of icons all the way down, you find out where you come from.
You get to go home, even after it no longer exists.
☼ ☼ ☼
No one has spoken for a long time. The star is only a few Kelvins now, a black dwarf that is just barely visible. Soon, all of us on all the island-ships will be dead.
Ancient myths speak of the universe as clinging to one of two parallel branes separated by dark energy, like the two parallel tracks on which those human-moving boxes had once ridden. The two branes collide periodically to crunch and bang out the universe, rejuvenating it in endless cycles.
If winter has already taken away everything, can spring be far away? I seem to sense the approach of the other brane—the way I imagine one would hear an oncoming train.
I pour my last energy reserves into maintaining the integrity of the memory of the glowing hubs. The myths say that the shapes of the sprouting structures in the next cosmic spring will be determined by the seeds of the quantum fluctuations planted this winter.
I am doomed to never see the new cosmic year. None of us will. There will be a brilliant flash, a trillion trillion baby stars, and new island-ships and unimaginable beings of wonder who will be born on those ships and fill the cosmos once again with wonder, beauty, light.
If I give it my all, perhaps one day, on one of those island-ships, someone will sit up and see a pattern of stars in the sky in the shape of a rectangular bridge topped by a multi-storied tower with layers of swooping roof-skirts, and they’ll name it Squat Spider Wearing a Big Hat.
Because they deserve to know something about those who came before them, something about where they come from.
Happy new year, universe.
The Spires
Alec Nevala-Lee
I.
In the English Mechanic, September 10, 1897, a correspondent to the Weekly Times and Echo is quoted. . . . Early in June 1897, he had seen a city pictured in the sky of Alaska. “Not one of us could form the remotest idea in what part of the world this settlement could be. Some guessed Toronto, others Montreal, and one of us even suggested Peking. . . . It is evident that it must be the reflection of some place built by the hand of man.” According to this correspondent, the “mirage” did not look like one of the cities named, but like “some immense city of the past.”
—Charles Fort, New Lands
BILL LAWSON STUDIED the silent city. The photograph in his hands was the size of a postcard, creased at the corners and brittle with age. It depicted a cascade of roofs and chimneys emerging from what appeared to be a fogbank, its upper half obscured by clouds, with something like the spire of a church faintly visible in the distance. After examining the picture for another moment, he returned it to the man on the other side of the desk. “What about it?”
The photo went back into the valise. “Have you ever heard of a prospector called Dick Willoughby?”
“Sure. An old sourdough. Before my time. Willoughby Island is named after him.”
“That’s right.” The visitor, who had introduced himself as Sam Russell, was in his late forties, with handsome features and eyes that looked as if they had been transplanted there from the sockets of a much older man. “He claimed that every year in Glacier Bay, between June and July, a city appeared in the sky to the northwest, above the Fairweather range. He went back three times to get a picture of it. Finally, he came up with this photo. He sold copies of it to tourists.”
Lawson checked to see if Russell was joking, but the older man kept a straight face. “It looks fake to me.”
“Oh, it is.” Russell grinned. “It’s a picture of Bristol in England. Either Willoughby was deliberately lying, or somebody sold him a plate of the city and convinced him that it was taken here in Alaska. I’
m inclined to think that he was a victim of a hoax. But that’s interesting in itself. It means he thought that this picture resembled whatever he saw in the sky. You see?”
Lawson decided to ignore the question. “So why are you showing it to me?”
“I want you to fly me to Willoughby Island, so I can take a look for myself.”
Lawson paused before responding. He prided himself on being a decent judge of character, but Russell was hard to pin down. The coat that he had hung by the door was rumpled but expensive, like his traveling case, and the bundle by his feet included a surveyor’s tripod and a camera. He certainly didn’t resemble the hunters or prospectors who tended to come through Juneau these days, the flow of whom had slowed to a trickle in the depths of the Great Depression.
It occurred to Lawson that the other man might be toying with him. People from the outside often assumed that the locals were simple folk, when the opposite was more likely to be the case. Seeing himself through Russell’s eyes, he was aware that he didn’t cut an impressive figure, with his untucked shirttail, oily jacket, and busted nose, and he felt a twinge of resentment at being mistaken for a rube. “I wonder if you’re having a laugh at my expense.”
“Not at all. I just want to be clear about what I’m doing. It seemed better to tell you the most ridiculous version now, so there won’t be any confusion later. But I’m serious. I’ve spoken to other eyewitnesses, and I have good reason to believe that Willoughby did see something in the sky. Even if it’s only an optical phenomenon, it’s worth investigating.” Russell glanced at his watch. “But I should come to the point. I’m interested in doing research on Willoughby Island, and I’m willing to pay cash up front. I’ve been told that the flight shouldn’t take more than forty minutes, which means I’ll be back in time to buy you dinner.”
Lawson remembered that Russell had mentioned arriving from Seattle the night before. “You came a long way for a day trip.”
“There may be a second stop. Or even a third. I’ll tell you once I know more.”
Lawson paused again. Two dueling impulses were at war in his mind, and he finally yielded to caution. “Sorry. I can’t fly you into Glacier Bay. Nobody can. Maybe no one explained it to you, but it’s a national park. I could cut you a deal on a sightseeing trip. But we can’t land.”
Russell absorbed the news without any visible reaction. “It has to be on the ground.”
“Then you can take a boat up there. There are plenty of fisherman on the docks who might agree to it.”
“That won’t work. It took longer for me to get here than I hoped, and I’m at the end of my available window. I can’t waste any time. If you won’t take me, I’ll find someone who will.”
Lawson heard the unspoken implication. There were several other pilots in town who would welcome the charter, legal or not, and the plain fact, which was written on his face, was that he needed the money. He wondered if Russell could sense his desperation, and he found that he didn’t want to give the other man the satisfaction, even if they never met again. “You expect to see a city in the sky?”
“Not really,” Russell said. “But I want the chance. It would mean a great deal to me. And to my wife.”
Lawson was about to respond when he saw a figure outlined against the window that faced the street. A moment later, the door opened and a woman entered the office. As the two men rose, Russell introduced her. “This is my wife, Cora. She’ll be coming, too. If we can reach an agreement.”
The woman did not sit down. She wasn’t pretty, exactly, but she had red hair, green eyes, and a face that would be hard to forget. Lawson saw that she was much younger than her husband, probably no more than thirty, and as he looked at her, he found that he had come to a decision.
Taking a seat again, Lawson began to play with the cord of the window shade behind his desk. “If we’re doing this, it has to be done right. There can’t be any record. I won’t put it down on the flight plan.”
A satisfied look began to spread across Russell’s face. “What do you have in mind?”
Lawson let go of the cord. Opening a drawer, he fished out a stained topographical map, which he unrolled across the desk. Willoughby Island was an oval the size of the palm of his hand, nestled like a turtle in the blue ribbon of Glacier Bay. “Where were you hoping to land?”
Russell pointed. “The southern tip. It’s where the most credible sighting took place.”
“We can’t. The shore is too bold. There’s nowhere to tie up the plane.” Lawson indicated an area to the northeast. “There’s a cove here. Maybe even a floating dock. A fox farm used to be there. It might even be worth my while to check it out.” He glanced down at Russell’s shoes, which turned out to be a pair of good boots. “You’ll have to hike four miles along the beach. It shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours. We can still get you home by dinnertime.”
Russell glanced at his wife, who gave him a short nod. “When can we leave?”
“Ten minutes after I get paid.” Lawson rolled up the map. “Normally, the charter would come to seventy dollars apiece. Let’s call it eighty, given the risk of trouble on my end.”
Before he had even finished speaking, Russell pulled out his wallet, counting eight twenties onto the desktop. Lawson pocketed the money. “You know where the lower city float is?”
“I can find it. Let’s call it half an hour. I need to make a phone call from the hotel.”
“Fine with me. You’re each allowed twenty pounds of baggage.” Lawson stuck out a hand. “Glad to do business with you.”
“Same here.” Russell’s grip was firm. He retrieved his coat from the peg and left with his wife, whose eyes lit briefly on Lawson’s on the way out. She had not spoken a word since her arrival.
Half an hour later, they were in the plane, heading out into the channel for takeoff. On his way to the docks, Lawson had made a stop at the grocer. It had been a lean couple of months, and he had been tempted to stock up on treats, restricting himself to a bag of sandwiches, a Horlick’s rum fudge bar, and a few squares of mintcake, one of which he devoured in front of the store.
His plane, a yellow and blue Stinson on Fairchild floats, occupied a rented hangar at the southern end of town, past the docks on high pilings where boats and fishing vessels were tied up at the pier. As he descended the wooden steps to the shoreline, he had been pleasantly conscious of the bills in his pocket, as well as the expectation that there might be more to come.
Somewhat to his surprise, Sam Russell and his wife had turned out to be familiar with the rituals of departure. Without being instructed, they kept their bags on their laps, placing the weight toward the front of the plane, and as he opened up the engine and rocked the stick back and forth, his passengers swayed along with it, helping him to jockey the floats up onto their steps for takeoff.
They broke loose from the surface, the water rising in a fine spray around them, and then they were airborne. As the plane climbed, Lawson looked back at the others. “We’ll fly over Douglas Island to the channel, then head across the Chilkat Range. Should be on our way down in half an hour.”
Russell nodded and returned his gaze to the window. Cora kept her eyes fixed on the landscape below.
Lawson turned to the windshield again. He decided to take a scenic route, bending up and around the Beartrack Mountains before heading down into the bay. He suspected that the Russells would be gone before long, but there was still the outside chance that they might decide to stay. A pilot could survive on just one regular charter, and if he failed to land this one, it might be his last chance for a while.
The flight passed without any conversation. Below them spread a spectacular vista, with the forests on the mountainsides giving way to the snowfields of the ridgetop, which was white even in the middle of July. The glaciers descending to the sea, with their compressed layers of thousands of years of ice and snow, were a deep emerald. It was a sight that could reduce even the most jaded travelers to awed silence, but if the R
ussells were impressed, they kept it to themselves.
Before long, they neared their destination. Lawson zeroed in, checking the approach as he circled around toward the cove. The island was four miles from north to south, the thick spruce woods on its eastern edge ascending to low mountains, bounded on all sides by the waters of Glacier Bay. To the northeast were two smaller outlying islets, one of which was joined to the larger island by the gravel bar where he planned to bring them down.
As they descended, Lawson saw that the floating dock was still there. He made the landing upwind to reduce his forward speed. Once the floats were on the water, he cut the propeller as low as it would go and steered the plane like a boat to the pier, where he cut the engine and climbed out.
As Lawson secured the lines, Russell and his wife picked their way toward the shore. Gulls were pecking on the pebble beach, and a flock of murrelets circled overhead. The temperature was in the high forties, with just a few tufted clouds to the south, although he knew that the weather could change without warning.
Lawson tied up the plane and went to join the couple, up by the fox farm that stood against the thin black trunks of the spruce. It consisted of a log cabin, a warehouse, and a line of trap houses stretching along the edge of the water. Islands throughout the state had been leased to raise blue foxes in the twenties, with the animals left to roam freely before being trapped. The Depression had destroyed the fur market overnight, and now most of these farms were abandoned.
Going closer, Lawson saw that Russell and his wife seemed tense, but he knew better than to comment on it. “Everything good?”
Russell turned south. “I’ll hike down there on my own. Cora will stay behind to get some work done. The log cabin looks sound enough. I assume that you’ll stick with the plane?”
Lawson nodded. “I’ll pick through these shacks to see if there’s anything worth saving. But I can get you set up here first.”
