Lonely Out in Space: A Collection of Sci-Fi and Fantasy Short Stories
Page 14
tower. Their names and supposed misdeeds are lost to any but themselves, and they do not speak of them any longer. Most of them do not speak at all anymore.
All day, every day, the titans stood with quavering legs and aching arms as they held up the marble floors. The titanic columns that made up the base were forced to find new footholds every few minutes because of the muddy ground beneath their feet. This caused the tower to be in constant motion.
The titans could never rest. They spent every moment supporting the floors and shifting their balance in order to keep the structure upright. Some of them no longer even remembered why they were doing this. It was all they knew anymore.
There was one titaness, however, that decided in a moment of enlightenment that there must be something more to their existence. Her name was Abyssi.
Abyssi no longer remembered her own name, nor did any of the other titans or titanesses that shared the tower with her. She helped to support the third floor of seventeen. For the first time in more than one thousand years, she opened her mouth to speak.
She closed her mouth almost as soon as she had opened it. She struggled to remember how to properly initiate conversation. The best she could come up with was...
"Greetings," she said in a raspy voice toward the nearest titan. Her arms quaked as her diaphragm belted out the word. She felt the tower shift almost imperceptibly as she spoke.
The titan leaned his head forward and turned it slowly to face her. For several minutes, the titan stared right through her. Then, in an instant, it seemed that his eyes were able to focus on her. He took a deep breath and said, "Hello."
They both had to shift their feet several inches as the tower pitched a moment later. It took Abyssi a few minutes to recover her train of thought.
"How are you?" she asked the titan.
He chuckled. The titan equivalent of a chuckle sounded something like massive boulders sliding over one another and tumbling across the ground.
"How can one be?" he asked. "In a situation like this..."
The titan stood near the edge of the structure, and Abyssi near the center. She could see the never-ending rain fall past his shaking, immensely muscular body.
"I don't know," she said honestly. "But for the first time in a long time, longer than I even remember, I began to think and wonder..."
Thunder rolled across the barren plain in which their tower stood and vibrated the marble beneath their feet.
"What did you think of?" the titan asked as he readjusted his hands. Abyssi could see that the other titans on their level had turned to stare at them. "And what did you wonder?"
Abyssi considered the question for a moment. It was a long moment. Their perception of time was very warped.
She thought of the best way to describe what she had been thinking of and how to convey her moment of enlightenment to the titan. She decided that she would need to guide him through her thought process, one that she had not even been aware that she had been experiencing until very recently.
"Think of nothing," Abyssi grunted, shifting her feet to retain her balance as the tower leaned in her direction. "Clear your mind completely."
The titan chuckled again. "Done," he said simply.
"No," Abyssi said patiently. "Really try."
The titan sighed and then fell silent. She allowed him several hours before she spoke again.
"You may think you are succeeding, but our minds are constantly at work. One may think of nothing, but soon thoughts will creep and whisper. They are like smoke in the dark, rising slowly and nearly invisibly toward the ether, but rising nonetheless," Abyssi said.
The titan grunted noncommittally.
"Your mind can be devoid of conscious thought for a while, but eventually something bridges the gap and enters. A trickle turns to a flood and soon what you thought was nothing is a teeming vortex," Abyssi said.
"Hmm," the titan said pensively.
"One thought leads to another and you make connections and after a while you don't even remember how you reached the conclusions you've arrived at..." Abyssi said, flexing her left arm so that she could withdraw her right hand long enough to crack her knuckles.
"I don't mean to be rude," the titan said. "And I enjoy the break from the silence, but is there a point to this?"
"For years, maybe even centuries," Abyssi groaned over the claps of thunder. "I have been in such a state. It was not until hours ago that I realized that for all of this time, I have been wondering why we are still here..."
Lightning flashed behind the titan, casting a brief but sharply relieved shadow of his silhouette across the marble floor. Abyssi noticed that the other titans and titanesses on their level expressed looks of confusion at her last statement.
"What do you mean?" another titaness asked. "We're here because we are being punished..."
"But it's been so long - " Abyssi began before the titan stopped her.
"Our sentence is to last forever," the titan said dejectedly. "I don't remember much, but I do remember that."
"We once thought that we would rule forever," Abyssi said. "I remember that."
"But that clearly did not work out," the other titaness said as her knees wobbled for a moment.
"I was getting to that," Abyssi said quickly. "Is there any reason to believe that things worked out better for the gods that followed us? Is there any reason to believe that our children who overthrew us still rule?"
Her proclamation was met with a stunned silence. It was clear that they were all trying to ascertain just how long they had been supporting this structure. It was extremely difficult for them to focus as the majority of their concentration had to be devoted to retaining their balance.
"What if the gods who sentenced us to an eternity of torturous and banal servitude no longer hold the power keep us at this task? What if we can leave?" Abyssi spoke slowly.
Tension rent the air. Even the atmosphere outside of the tower seemed to have been hushed by the mutinous thoughts that the titans and titanesses of the third floor were now having.
"How could we know?" the titan asked, looking back and forth from Abyssi to the landscape that stretched beyond their tower.
"I'm not sure that we can know for certain... But if we're wrong, even a fight against the gods would be better than another day of supporting this tower," Abyssi proclaimed boldly.
Her words were met with excitement and enthusiasm. The titans and titanesses on her level looked to hear eagerly.
"I'm going to climb to the top of the tower," Abyssi said in a moment of inspiration. "To see what's out there in the distance and to ask the other titans' opinions."
The titan to which she had initiated conversation slowly began to walk toward her, taking great care in choosing his steps and quickly moving his hands to retain support of the marble above their heads. He stopped when he was halfway between where Abyssi stood and the spot that he had just abandoned.
"We'll take the weight you leave behind," the titan grunted as Abyssi lowered both of her arms for the first time since the tower had been erected. "But I ask that you please hurry."
Abyssi stretched her arms wide and strode to the edge of the third floor. She leaned out, and looked up. The rain poured down over her face and she relished in its coolness as it washed away millennia of sweat and grime from her once beautiful visage.
Her limbs tingled in the absence of the tons of marble she was used to holding up at all times. She felt capable of anything, and as she leapt for the edge of the floor above, she decided that it must be true.
The tower leaned and bobbed following her leap. The titans and titanesses on the fourth floor looked over at her.
"We heard," one of them said to her as they quivered under the weight of the tower. "We heard what you said below. We passed word to the levels above. Go - quickly! "
Abyssi leapt over and over. The slick edges of the marble floors were of no concern to her. Her powerful fingers penetrated the marble with ease when she caught the edge
s.
Finally, she reached the last level. With a quick jump, she stood atop the tower. She was the first ever to do so.
The rain fell in sheets and caused a mirroring effect on the smooth marble top of the tower, reflecting the grey clouds above. Flatlands comprising of muck and mud stretched as far as the titaness could see. She saw no indication of anyone or anything around the tower.
The tower shifted beneath her feet. She turned her body in order to regain balance and saw a distant speck floating over the horizon.
Abyssi froze, struck with fear as she watched the speck soar through the air, flying straight for the tower. Had the gods found out what she had done? Did they know that the tower's titans were planning an escape?
An eagle circled above the tower three times, descending as it made each pass. The great predator stretched its wings wide as it lit right beside Abyssi.
Cold amber eyes looked past the hooked beak of the bird. It stretched out its leg - a frayed piece of paper was tied to it with a thin leather strap.
Abyssi, utterly bewildered, lowered herself to her knees and pulled on the leather strap. The knot slid free with ease and she pulled the piece of paper from the scaly leg of the eagle. It sat beside her patiently as she read the note.
The paper was extremely worn and seemed to have been incredibly old. It read:
'Greetings, I hope that this letter will eventually find its way to you all. I know that due to the circumstances of your punishment that it could be difficult for you to retrieve it, but I expect that as time drags on, that