Dreams of Starlight
It’s not stealing. I’ll just use
a few marks to buy the newest issue. Science journals can’t be that expensive.
Father will never miss it--I’ll just say the inflation got worse. Anyway, it’s my
fee for going all the way to Nürnberg to pick up his supplies. I just won’t buy
any cake at lunch.
A wisp of smoke in the distance told me a train was coming from the
Nürnberg direction. I rocked back and forth on my heels impatiently. At least
it meant my train would come soon.
I stared down the track towards the train, watching its blackness expand
against the vivid green fields on either side, its smoke cutting through the
blue sky. The sun was shining hotly on the back of my neck. I rubbed it, smiling.
The April rains had finally dried up and May was well underway. It was the
spring of 1922, in
The train pulled up to the platform, stopped briefly, and chugged on its
way. To my surprise, I saw it had deposited a passenger, a large man with a
blond beard and round glasses that reflected the sun into my eyes. He was
wearing a brown overcoat that was too much for the weather, and pulling a small
leather trunk. He looked around, as if lost.
The man spotted me and spoke to me from across the tracks.
“I’m looking for a town called Waldorf,” he shouted.
“This is Waldorf,” I shouted in reply.
The man pulled off his glasses, wiped them, and put them on again. I
didn’t blame him. There was nothing in sight but fields and a couple brown
lanes. Waldorf isn’t much of a town. There are just farms, and the houses that
go with them, and a pub at the crossroads.
“Perhaps you could help me then. I’m looking for a Dr. Adler.”
Just then my train came with a whistle and I had to step back as it came
up to the platform. The doors opened but I didn’t get on. The few other
passengers looked at me expectantly but I ignored them, and the train left
without me.
“That’s my father!” I yelled, as the train pulled away.
****
My older brother Janich was weeding in the garden out front. He wiped his
brow and squinted at us as we approached, but didn’t even stop us to ask
questions as I led the stranger in the house. A man of few words, my brother,
especially in front of strangers.
Father was in the basement, as usual. What he did down there was anyone’s
guess. We weren’t allowed inside. I’d snuck in on numerous occasions during my
childhood, of course, but all I’d seen were bottles of strange-colored liquid,
metal instruments whose function I could never figure out, and tables piled
with drawings. Even the drawings didn’t make sense. They were diagrams, spirals
and intersecting circles with equations marked all over them, but what they
meant I had no idea. They looked like my geometry homework, multiplied to the
tenth power.
I banged on the basement door. He didn’t answer, again as usual.
“There’s an important guest!” I yelled at the top of my lungs, banging
again.
A moment later my father opened the door looking harried. There was three
days worth of stubble on his cheeks and his eyes were red.
“You’re back already? Did you get what I asked?”
“No, Father, it’s still morning. I didn’t go to Nürnberg. I met him on
the station.” I realized as I motioned towards the stranger that I hadn’t asked
his name or given him mine.
My father’s face turned white when he saw his guest, then he broke into a
rare grin.
“Hans!” he shouted, throwing his arms wide. He and his guest embraced;
then my father turned to me.
“Franzeska, make coffee and refreshments for our guest. Bring them here.
We’re not to be disturbed otherwise.” He pulled the man named Hans into the
basement and slammed the door in my face.
I found Jan hanging in the kitchen door. “Cheska,” he said in the slightly
pleading tone that meant he wanted something but was too lazy to say what.
“I met him at the station,” I said,
answering his unasked question. “His name is Hans and he said he’s a friend of
Father’s.”
In reply Jan scratched his head and left for the garden. I smirked. I
lived in a house alone with two men and neither of them was capable of having a
conversation.
****
After I served their coffee I went outside and squatted down in the daffodils next to one of the small basement windows set into the stone foundation of the house. I made my father keep them cracked open for air, which was convenient now because I could hear everything Father and his friend were saying. Jan gave me a look when he passed, hoe in hand, and raised an eyebrow, but didn’t talk or join me.
“...closed off like this. What if something happens to you? All this
would be lost. Unless you’ve passed it on to your children--”
“No, no,” Father was saying. “I tried, but the boy has no aptitude or
interest in anything but growing cabbage.”
That’s a rude way of describing a talent like Jan’s. He keeps the farm
running all by himself. We’d probably starve if he didn’t, the way the prices
keep rising.
“What about your daughter?” asked Hans smoothly.
I could imagine my Father dismissing that with a wave of his hand.
Hans laughed. “You’re so old fashioned. There are plenty of women in the
sciences now. You could send her to
My father mumbled something derisive and Hans laughed again. They
switched their talk to something else. Something that had to do with Father’s
mysterious drawings and liquids, no doubt. I tried to pay attention, but they
may as well have been speaking Greek. At times I suspected they were. I heard
some ‘gammas’ and ‘perihelions.’ My feet began to fall asleep, so I got up and
went to the fields to bother Jan.
****
I sat on the front stoop. The night was clear and the stars were shining
brightly, clustered around a Cheshire cat moon.
Footsteps sounded behind me.
“May I join you?” asked Hans.
I nodded and moved over. He sat down beside me on the stoop.
“Humans and stars are made of the same substance,” he said, looking at
the sky. “Maybe that’s why we are so fascinated with them.”
“Atoms?” I asked, looking at my hands, then up.
He chuckled. “Where did you learn about atoms? Not in class surely.”
I shook my head. “The school library has scientific periodicals. I read
them, sometimes, when I have a free hour.” Or I used to. Maybe if I got a job,
I could afford a subscription. But where could I work? The pub?
“You took the Abschluss already, didn’t you?” he asked. “Or do you have another year of school left?”
“No, I took it two weeks ago.”
“How were your marks?”
“Good.” Top of my class in physics, foreign languages, and chemistry.
“Did you ever think of attending a university?”
I rested my chin on my hands. Of course I’d considered it.
“I have some physics treatises with me, if you’re interested in reading
them. Perhaps we could discuss them afterwards.”
My head shot up and I nodded eagerly.
He laughed again and got up. “I’ll leave them on the table.”
****
I set the bottle of peppermint schnapps on the table, then took a seat
beside Hans. Hans had been with us for two days, and already we saw more of him
than our own Father. Hans at least sat with us after dinner.
“What did you think of the treatises?” asked Hans as Jan poured the
schnapps.
“I haven’t finished all of them, but I have some questions.” I pushed one
of the essays towards him.
“Aaah, Mach and Otswald.”
“Why’d you give me this one? Einstein disproved their theory, didn’t he?
Atoms exist.”
Hans looked disappointed. “You have a good mind but you’re already
afflicted with the same small-mindedness that plagues the scientific
community.”
I felt like I’d been slapped. Small-minded?
“Just because part of a theory has been disproved doesn’t mean it’s lost
significance. And Einstein isn’t omnipotent. Look at it once more. What are
they really trying to say?”
I scanned over the treatise again. I hadn’t taken notes on this one, but
now I wished I had.
Hans turned to Jan and started a conversation about fertilizer. I half
listened as I read. Hans was doing most of the talking. Farming was one subject
that Jan would talk about. I’ve seen him lecturing the old men in the village
on new kinds of fertilizer. But he wasn’t saying much tonight.
Does he not like Hans? I wondered. But then, my eyes caught it.
“I found it!” I said, banging the table. Jan frowned at me.
“It’s energy, isn’t it?” I asked excitedly. “They’re saying that only
energy is physically real.”
Han’s mouth stretched into a grin, and the candlelight glinted off his
spectacles.
“Genau,” he said. Exactly.
****
Hans stayed with us well into the summer. I made up the guest room for
him, and I began to feel like I knew him better than I knew Father, who still
kept his normal hours in the basement.
That was fine with me. Father was becoming even more irritable, which,
according to Hans, was a sign that his research was going well.
“Your Father is a genius, and geniuses are eccentric. That goes double
for when they’re close to a breakthrough.”
“But what kind of research is it?” I asked for the millionth time. Hans
kept giving me physics treatises to study, but I had a feeling Father was
working on more than equations down there.
He laughed and ruffled my hair. “You wouldn’t get it even if I told you,
at the level you are now. But don’t worry, we’ll let you in on it eventually.”
****
“And I’ve been studying even more than I did in school, but he still won’t
tell me what they’re up to,” I complained.
Jan straightened up and wiped his brow. I handed him a handkerchief from
my seat on the fence.
“You spend too much time with him,” he said.
I laughed. “So? What’s wrong with that? All he’s doing is teaching me
physics, which is what I want. And he says once I know enough he’ll let me help
with his and Father’s research. Who knows, maybe I’ll even get to go to a
university.”
“You should go to a university. But, you shouldn’t trust Hans.”
“Why not?” I scowled. This conversation was making me uncomfortable.
He didn’t answer. I sat swinging my legs for a while, fuming.
Stupid Jan, always acting like he knows everything, then being all
cryptic about it. Like when we were kids, and Father used to let him come down
to the basement, but he would never—
“Jan, you know, don’t you!” I realized. “Father used to take you into the
basement, and I overheard him telling Hans that he tried to teach you his
research, but couldn’t.”
Jan gave me a mean look but I stared him down.
“I don’t know what they’re doing,” he said, looking away.
“Don’t play dumb--”
“But I know they’re trying to do something people aren’t meant to do. You
shouldn’t involve yourself in their sins.”
Sins. That was an odd word choice. Jan wasn’t religious.
“Just be careful,” he said. And I couldn’t get him to say anything more
on the subject.
****
“You’ve finished Einstein’s Special Relativity paper?”
“Yes,” I said proudly, displaying my pages of notes.
“Do you understand it?”
“Yes.” I was especially proud of that.
He looked at my notes, his eyebrows raised in surprise. “You really do.
This is a hard concept for most people to wrap their minds around.”
“Size doesn’t matter and time is relative to the observer,” I said
happily. I loved Einstein.
“Yes, but remember Einstein isn’t perfect. Take it a step further.”
“What do you mean?”
“In this he says time is relative to the observer. What does that mean,
if you put it to practical use?”
Huh? “It means...I don’t know.”
“If time changes with the observer, it means there is no absolute time.
What we call time is just an arbitrary measurement we use to explain the
universe. It doesn’t move in a straight line. It doesn’t move at all.”
“Then...it doesn’t exist.” But that doesn’t make sense. I looked at the
cuckoo clock on the wall.
“The way we measure time gives us the illusion that it moves. But what if
it were the opposite, and we are the ones moving?”
I thought about everything I’d ever read about time. Einstein talked about
space-time, as if it were one thing.
“If it’s us that move,” I whispered. Then aloud I said, tentatively,
“Space and time are still, and we move through time the way we move through
space.”
He nodded. “Follow it through.”
“And in space, we’re able to go any direction we want, except for up
because of gravity. So, if time is the same, we should be able to move around
in it anyway we want to, only, maybe there’s something like gravity that stops
us!” My voice grew faster and stronger as I went on.
“What if gravity didn’t exist? Remember Mach?”
“That’s right! If all we are really is energy, then gravity wouldn’t
affect us, not any more than it affects light anyway. So, we should be able to
go any time and any place we want--”
“Every time, every place, exists right now, right here.” Hans got up and
clapped a heavy hand on my shoulder.
“Keep working. You’re almost there.”
****
The silver moon hung so low over
my head, trembling in my tear-blurred vision, as if it were about to drop. I
reached an eager hand...
Too far...
My eyes opened to sunlight streaming in from my window, but it did nothing to wash the stardust from my eyes.
It’s been a long time since I had that dream, I thought, rubbing my
forehead. I’ve had this dream ever since I was small, and it’s always the same.
I’m walking in a strange place, where the land is pale gold, and I can’t tell
if it’s day or night. But there are two moons hanging in the sky. In the dream,
I can feel the ground beneath my feet. I can feel the cold air as I inhale. It
always ends in the same place. I fall backwards, and stare at the moon, and
then I wake up. And every time I wake from it, I feel sad and distant, as if
part of me is still in that strange place, stuck.
****
“I want two eggs and brötchen with marmalade,” said Jan, coming in for
breakfast from the fields.
I grunted and banged a water-filled pan on the stove. I didn’t notice that my hand was still on the iron handle until it grew hot and burned me. I yelped and jumped back.
“What’s wrong with you today!” exclaimed Jan, jumping up and grabbing my
hand. He pumped cold water over it. “You’re a million miles away.”
I nodded absently.
“Did you have another one of your dreams last night?” he asked quietly.
I nodded, surprised he’d remembered. I’d told him about my dreams before,
when I was about twelve, but he’d never said anything about them. But, I guess
he’d been paying attention after all.
“Normal girls dream about princes in shining armor, don’t they?” He
looked at me for a long time, smiling, but his expression was sad. “Anyway,
don’t tell Hans about them.”
“Don’t tell Hans about what?”
We both jumped. Hans was standing in the doorway, an odd smile on his
face. How can such a huge man move so quietly? I wondered as I moved away from
Jan and busied myself with breakfast.
“Don’t worry,” I said, thinking fast. “He’s talking about another Hans.
One from school, who’s courting me.”
Jan unfroze and went back to the table. Hans followed him, chuckling.
“So, you’ve got a beau. I’m not surprised. But, if I may say so, I think
you’d be wasted, tied down to some country farmer.”
“I don’t really have many prospects otherwise.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” he said, catching my eye as I set the breadbasket on the table. “With the progress you’ve been making...” he trailed off. Jan was glowering so hard you could almost see the dark cloud around him. Hans smiled weakly and changed the subject.
****
That night after Jan went to bed, I took a lamp out to the porch so I
could study and look at the night sky. I get an odd feeling when I look at the
stars. I feel like I’m missing something important. The feeling always gets
stronger after I have the dream. So I stare at the stars and feel too big for
my skin.
“You’re still studying? I wish my students at the university were as
dedicated as you.”
Hans.
“I started out as your father’s research assistant, you know,” he said,
sitting down beside me. “At the Institute in
“Why’d he end up here?” I asked. Why would anyone willingly come to
Waldorf?
“After he lost his tenure, your father and his research became a
laughingstock and he disappeared. I stayed at
“So what is his research? Can’t you tell me yet?”
He smiled. “I’ll do more than tell you. I’ll show you.”
****
“This is a monumental event,” he said as we went inside. “It’s our first
experiment since your father left the Institute. We need a third person to
record observations from a different angle.”
“But I still don’t know what you’re doing--or what I’m supposed to do.”
“Don’t worry,” said Hans, opening the door to the stairs and pushing me
through. “It’ll come naturally. Just observe.”
My father scowled when he saw me. I felt like I hadn’t seen him in ages.
Stubble covered his chin and his face looked pale, his eyes overly bright. He
sat before a Bunsen burner, the flames shining through the red liquid in the
jar above it, staining his gray whiskers crimson. The basement was very
different from the last time I’d snuck in and seen it. The tables were pushed
to the side and the floor was covered in chalked diagrams. I examined them
closely. They looked just like the drawings I’d seen before. I looked up and
saw that the ceiling was covered with chalk signs too.
An odd thrill ran through me. Intersecting ellipses wove in and out of
each other on the floor and ceiling in a pattern that was, I felt
instinctively, mathematical perfection. Jewel-like equations and symbols were
strung along the lines. I recognized some of the symbols from my own studies,
but others were unknown to me, and most of the equations were beyond me.
Hans put a hand on my shoulder. In the other he held the beaker of red
liquid my Father had been working on.
“Drink this,” he said. I looked to my father, who was still sitting
behind the Bunsen burner. He looked away.
Hans laughed at my hesitation. “It’s not poison. It’s necessary for the
experiment, to protect from radiation. We’ve already had some.”
I hadn’t seen them drinking any, and I couldn’t imagine what kind of
radiation could come from this experiment. The only strange things in the room
were the chalked diagrams.
Maybe Jan was right, I thought suddenly, but I shook the thought away. I
was finally about to find out what was going on. I couldn’t back out now.
Forcing a smile, I took the beaker and drank.
The red liquid was awful and stung my nose and throat with fumes. It felt
like accidentally inhaling a whiff of ammonia. But, though I gagged at the end,
I managed to get it all down.
“That’s a good girl,” said Hans. “Now, I want you to observe the
experiment carefully from the center of the circle. Pay attention. We will need
you to report afterwards on what you saw.”
“But what am I looking for?” I asked as I positioned myself in the center
of the diagram, careful not to smudge any of the beautiful chalk marks.
“You’ll know when you see it,” said Hans, smiling.
My vision blurred for a second and I swayed. I tried to ask what was
going on, but I didn’t seem to be able to control my tongue. It felt like the
moment between sleep and awake, when you imagine yourself doing something but
your body can’t move. I became aware of a blue glow, lightening the room,
making the shadows on my father’s face squirm. I looked down long enough to see
that it was the chalk drawings that were glowing.
Then the world exploded.
****
I uncurled myself from the fetal position, the floor cold beneath me. The
air was cold too, much colder than I remembered the basement being. I paused on
my hands and knees, staring at the floor. The chalk marks were gone. Then I
realized that the floor my palms were touching was not stone, but a dull gray metal.
I stood up quickly, too quickly, for I got lightheaded and had to sit
back down. As I gained control of my breathing I froze. Sitting before me were
two people, but they were not my father and Hans.
There was an old man with gray whiskers like Father’s but much more well kept, wearing spectacles and a tweed suit. Sitting next to him and clinging to his arm was a girl maybe a bit older than I, a pink ribbon holding back her blond curls. They were staring at me with open mouths.
I backed away from them, scrambling on my hands and knees, and I hit a hard, freezing surface.
I turned around and stopped breathing. The wall curved outward in a concave lens, as if I was on the inside of a giant eye. And it was clear, affording a view of outside.
Outside was darkness, pierced by white stars, burning coldly and so close. Too close. There was no feeling of distance at all. They were just beyond the glass.
Waves of vertigo swept over me and I had to look away from the view that was both beautiful and sickening.
This is a dream. I’ll wake up in a moment. Or else, they gave me a drug that’s addling my mind, making me hallucinate.
Except…can I not feel the cool metal beneath my hands? Can I not feel my heart beating? Are there not people in front of me?
I looked at the two strangers again. They looked like normal people. Even their clothes weren’t that strange. They were both still staring at me, mouths open, as if I were a ghost.
Maybe I am a ghost. Maybe Hans and Father murdered me. But, my heart’s still beating. So I’m not dead.
And this can’t be a dream. I’ve never seen anyone like them before. This
place--I’ve never seen anywhere like it before. Even if that drink they gave me
was some kind of mind drug, this can’t be an illusion. Dreams and illusions
come from experiences, don’t they? Don’t they?
My heart thumped so hard it blurred my vision. That explanation...doesn’t
explain the dreams I’ve had up till now.
Except...this place, it seems familiar.
Every time, every place, exists
right now, right here.
Hans. I gritted my teeth. That bastard.
“Are you alright?” the old man was saying. Somewhere in the back of my
mind I registered that he was speaking English.
Good thing my marks in English were good.
“She looks like she’s going to be sick,” said the girl.
She was right. My stomach lurched and I threw up red liquid and my
half-digested dinner. That was real enough.
I managed to back away from the mess before I passed out.
****
“Where did that girl come from?” asked a rough voice.
“It’s just Ms. Edie. She’s not feeling well, that’s why I’m in here, to
attend to her.”
“Ms. Edie has blond hair, not brown--”
“My good man...” A door shut, cutting off the voices.
A door on the other side of the room opened and the blond girl appeared.
I bolted up, but the room spun again so I fell back down. I looked around
to orient myself.
I was in a bed, covered with white sheets and a pink blanket. We were in
a different room, a small room with no view of the outside. There was a desk
and chair; both made of a white, smooth material that didn’t look like wood.
Clothes, pictures, and cosmetics cluttered every surface.
That was comforting. This was a teenage girl’s bedroom, just like mine.
Perfectly normal.
“This is your bedroom?” I asked.
“Whose else would it be?” She picked a pair of stockings off the back of
the chair and deposited them in a drawer.
“Feeling better?” she asked, rather awkwardly. I suspected she was trying
to be kind.
“I’m still dizzy. And I still don’t know what’s going on. Or what this
place is.”
“It’s a ship. Outbound from Ganymede. Destination Robinson’s World.”
That didn’t explain anything.
“Ganymede...that’s one of Jupiter’s moons right?”
She sniffed and crossed her arms.
“That’s my homeworld you’re talking about. And we’ve been independent from the
Great, I’d offended her somehow. Maybe my English wasn’t as good as I
thought. I pulled my covers up higher. What the hell was this place? I
shivered, though the room wasn’t cold.
The door opened again.
“Well, I managed to convince him there isn’t anyone in here but you,”
said the old man.
“What is she!” hissed Edie, flinging a hand in my direction. “She just
appeared out of nowhere! You’re the professor. Explain that!”
The old man smiled. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. I’ve been waiting
all my life for something like this.”
“Like what?”
“I suspect...” he paused for dramatic effect, “that she is a space
phantom.”
“Don’t start that again!” snapped the girl. “She’s not a ghost. Ghosts
don’t puke. And she doesn’t know what’s going on either.”
“I’m right here,” I said.
“Yes!” The old man fell to his knees by my bedside. I sat up and edged
away from him. “You are here! So, are you a space phantom? Why did you come
here? To observe Human life?”
I didn’t like being interrogated like I was the weird one. My head spun
again and I gagged.
“Not on my sheets!”
But there was nothing left to throw up. I slumped over my knees, chest
heaving, and the world went black again.
****
Alright. I can’t keep fainting every time something weird happens. I just
have to accept things as they are, even if I can’t explain them, I told my
reflection in the mirror. I was brushing my teeth, a comfortably familiar
activity.
Now that I’d had time to think about it, it didn’t seem so strange.
Well...it did, but...it’s not like it happened randomly. Hans and Father must
have tried out their experiment on me. I bit down on the toothbrush angrily. So
much for all that talk about making me his apprentice. He was just buttering me
up to be his guinea pig. And I fell for it completely.
Stop thinking about him! It won’t do you any good, here. Right now,
you’ve just got to focus on getting your bearings.
Edie and Professor Wellington, the girl and the old man, weren’t that
bad. They’d taken care of me while I was sick. The third time I’d regained
consciousness, we’d managed to have something resembling a normal conversation.
We’d all introduced ourselves. Edie came from Ganymede. The Professor, her
tutor, originally came from Earth, like me, but not from Earth in 1922. I
thought he was from
So here I am. See, not so bad.
****
The days I spent with Edie and the Professor on the strange ship seemed
to blur together. We danced circles around the crew members, so that they
wouldn’t know there was a third passenger. We had tea every day in the
observatory, which was the room I’d first appeared in. I had to get used to it
gradually, but after a few days I could stare out the eye-like window for long
intervals, and started to enjoy the feeling of looking down at the sky.
Sometimes when we went to the observatory, the view out of the window was
a throbbing, opaque white. This, the Professor explained to me, was when the
ship was in a ‘jump.’ So Einstein’s theory of relativity was true, but Han’s
was right too--it didn’t go far enough. Space, like time, was relative, and a
starship could ‘jump’ through space the way I had jumped through space and
time, only this method wasn’t instantaneous.
The white nothingness disturbed the Professor and Edie too. When the ship
was ‘jumping,’ they hit a button and a picture of fields of flowers would
appear over the window. They said it was a painting made of electricity.
As my life on the ship fell into routine, strange things became familiar.
While the technologies were way beyond anything I’d ever seen or imagined,
their uses made sense. It was, after all, still a Human society. I began to
learn more about Edie and the Professor, and to rely on them to teach me about
this new time and world.
“Space phantoms are a documented phenomenon,” the Professor was saying
one day. “They appear out of nowhere on ships in deep space. Many people
believe these appearances are hallucinations caused by space fever, but there
are theories that there are collective intelligences that live in the ether.
These intelligences observe us, and take on human form in order to contact us.
That’s what I thought you were, at first...”
I listened, fascinated, teacup in one hand. Edie sighed and lounged on
the couch, obviously bored.
This feels as normal as eating breakfast with Jan, I remember thinking
suddenly.
But, as comfortable as my new life became, as familiar as the Professor
and Edie became, something felt off. Sometimes, I thought it was that I must be
homesick. But my life in
Mostly, it was a nameless feeling that settled in the pit of my stomach
and in my hands. Once in awhile, when I’d reach to pick something up, my hands
would pause and shake, and I’d be filled with fear that my hands would pass
through it, that I didn’t really exist. Other times, I was afraid that this
wondrous world around me was only a dream like the ones I used to have, and
that I’d wake up in my bed with the spring sun in my eyes. Sometimes it was a
feeling that this had all happened to me before. But underneath all of that
there was a sense of urgency, of sand pouring through an hourglass.
Once, as I lay my bedding out on the floor of her room, I asked Edie, “Do you ever have a feeling that you don’t exist? Or that the world doesn’t exist?”
“Every day,” she said, to my surprise. “I tell myself that I’m not here.
That I’ll wake up in my own bed and this will all have been a bad dream.”
I thought that was a funny thing to say. “Why are you on this trip,
anyway?” I asked.
“I come from Ganymede. We’ve been independent from Jupiter for three
years. My family has been on Ganymede since it was terraformed. We opened the
first carbon mines, and we helped win independence and start a new government.
So, I guess, when the
I couldn’t think of anything to say. I lay down with my hands behind my
head, staring at the slightly curved ceiling.
“You don’t need guns anymore to win a war,” she said. She leaned over the
edge of her bed to look at me. “There was still violent war when you lived,
wasn’t there?
My heart thumped oddly and I felt sick. “Hitler...he’s that politician
from
“Oh, that war didn’t start till the thirties, though, did it. What time
were you from again?”
“Nineteen twenty-two. I...I don’t think this is something I should know
about.”
She looked at me for a long moment, then laid back down. “I guess not.
Sorry.”
****
“Maybe this one will fit,” said Edie, holding up one of her dresses.
I changed out of the one I had been trying on before and took the new
dress from her hand. The problem was, Edie was much taller, yet skinnier, than
me.
I was halfway into the dress when the entire ship rocked, knocking me
onto the bed. Both of us shrieked then listened as a series of hollow bangs
sounded from far away.
“Is this normal?” I asked in a whisper.
“No.”
Just then a crewmember burst the door open; I didn’t even have time to
hide.
“We’re under attack! Report to the inner cabin!” he shouted, then slammed
the door. He hadn’t noticed me.
“Attack by what?” Edie whispered. The door opened again. It was the
Professor this time.
“Come on girls, let’s go.”
****
We sat huddled in the inner cabin, a small, gray, windowless room at the
center of the ship for a long time, wearing spacesuits that were kept in a
compartment along with emergency rations. Eventually, the hollow banging became
sporadic, then stopped completely. But there was still a tension that gripped
us all, and there was still no word from the crew telling us that it was safe
to come out.
“Who are we being attacked by?” asked Edie once it had been quiet for a
long time.
“I don’t know, but...we’re in Reregan space,” said the Professor.
“That can’t be. There hasn’t been an attack since the treaty--”
Edie’s words were cut off by a large bang. The entire ship rattled, and
suddenly I was floating. My stomach lurched and I flailed my arms and legs,
trying to get back to the floor, wherever it was. The walls, ceiling, and floor
were the same. What was once a room became a featureless cube.
The Professor grabbed the back of my suit, stabilizing me. “They’ve shut
the gravity--”
As if cued, the gravity came back on, only from a different direction and
much stronger than normal. We fell to the new floor and lay pressed against it,
the pressure increasing until Edie and I screamed.
The gravity reversed again and we
fell back onto the original floor. I banged my elbow hard and my arm went
temporarily numb.
“Have we crashed?” asked Edie. Her lip was a little swollen.
“It appears so,” said the Professor, surveying his glasses ruefully.
Their frame was bent, and there were red marks on his cheek and on the bridge
of his nose.
“Where?”
“I’m not sure. Probably one of the planets in the Rere System.”
“A planet?” I asked as I rubbed my elbow. Butterflies started to flutter
in my chest. “We’ve crash-landed on an alien planet?”
“You actually sound excited about it. Geez,” said Edie, scowling. She
stood up and adjusted her suit.
“Anyway, for now all we can do is wait for the crew to contact us--”
“What if they’re dead?” asked Edie, cutting the Professor off. “We should
see what’s going on.”
I got up and stood beside Edie. The Professor looked at our faces and
sighed.
****
The ship’s corridors were dark, lit only by blue emergency lights. The
floors were slanted. It was eerily silent. I missed sounds I had never noticed
before; the humming of the ship running, the whispering of the air recycler.
We checked each room as we passed, but found no one. On Edie’s
suggestion, we decided to go the observatory.
As we walked, the feeling of displacement, of urgency, returned to me. It throbbed within me, growing stronger with each step, until I had to force myself not to run.
The Professor noticed I was feeling off and put a reassuring hand on my
shoulder as we entered the observatory.
The view out the eye-like window was not starlight this time, nor white
nothingness. It was a landscape of pale gold and ochre, set against a starlit indigo
sky. In the distance hung a silver moon.
My breath left me and I dropped to my knees, shaking.
“Cheska! What’s wrong?” The Professor shook my shoulders.
“It’s just like...in my dream.”
****
“Take a helmet and air pack at least!” pleaded the Professor. “Human’s can’t last long in that atmosphere.”
“I won’t need it,” I replied. In my dream, I didn’t use one.
“Just take it!”
“She’s crazy,” muttered Edie. “Just let her go out and die if she wants.”
I turned to Edie but she was facing away.
“Edie,” I said, but she wouldn’t look at me.
The professor pressed the helmet into my hands. “Please. If you must go
outside…don’t stay out long. Look around and come right back.”
I couldn’t tell him what in my heart I knew. I wouldn’t be coming back. I
let him put the helmet on me and activate the breather.
“Thank you, for everything,” I said, my voice hollow-sounding inside the
helmet.
The Professor wiped his eyes. Edie stood still, her shoulders stiff, her
head down.
I felt a million miles away. I tried to smile, but couldn’t, so I just
nodded and went outside.
I walked on the surface of the alien planet. My footfalls felt lighter
than usual, barely pressing into the springy ochre turf. After a few steps I
took off the helmet and breather and let them fall to the ground. The air
really was thin; even when I took deep breaths it didn’t seem to fill my lungs.
And it was cold.
I was used to cold, but this cold was different. It didn’t beat at me
from the outside like a rough wind, or numb my nose like snow. It crept into me
slowly, running alongside my veins like the liquid ice of mountain springs,
digging its blue fingers into my chest.
I felt I walked forever, though I couldn’t have walked far. I only looked
back once, to see the ship embedded in the ground, dull metal and immense and
strange, a fallen behemoth. I felt a pang of sadness, thinking of Edie and the
Professor, but I didn’t look back again.
Every step felt right, as if I had taken it before. I knew, if I walked in
this direction, I would come to the edge of a cliff, and I knew what I would
see when I got there. Were those dreams I had guides to what I should do now?
Or had I been dreaming something that had already happened and I just hadn’t
known it at the time.
Maybe time is always still, always there, and we are the ones who are
moving, transient, through it as we wander over land. Maybe we can move any way
we want to in time, the way we do in space, but we all just march in a straight
line to the ticks of a clock because we don’t know any better.
I came to the precipice and stopped, suspended over a valley of miniature
golden meadows spotted with stunted trees. A silver river wound sluggishly
through it. I could see this all clearly, though the sky was black. I couldn’t
tell if it was day or night. Maybe day and night didn’t exist on this planet.
To me, it will always exist in this moment of twilight.
I turned my gaze upwards and it was caught on the two perfect spheres
almost eye level in the sky. The smaller sphere was red, like iron after a
summer rain, wrapped in bands of blue and studded with spheres of white.
But the other was a silver-lode moon so close to the one I knew. And it
hung so low it seemed about to drop. I reached an eager hand, as if I could touch
it and discover it was liquid as mercury dripped down my hand.
The sky was encrusted with stars that were bigger and brighter than any I
had ever seen. As I watched, two smaller stars detached themselves from the
firmament and flew off together.
Another ship? I wanted to scream out at the pilot, but I had no breath
left. Suddenly, just seeing one alien planet wasn’t enough. I wanted to be in
that pilot’s place, with the entire universe at my fingertips.
The world spun, and I found myself lying on my back, my breathing
shallow, looking up at the silver moon. It really did look like it was going to
drop.
I tried to get up but again, my body wouldn’t move. So I gave up and
stared at the sky, tears freezing into beads of ice as they left my eyes. So
beautiful. I’m seeing Heaven while I’m still alive. How many people can say
that?
I’ve come to the place where my dream led me, followed my footsteps to
the place the dream always ends. For me, there is nothing more than this,
nothing beyond the moon, nothing behind me. There is only right here and now.
So this is it. I would have liked to live a bit longer, to see Jan and the
Professor and Edie again. I would have liked to see at least one more planet.
But there is nothing past this moment. Here is where the dream ends.
I took another breath, but it felt like nothing was entering my lungs.
The world was exploding into bright sparks before my eyes. I braced myself for
what would come beyond, my arms open wide.
****
“What did you see? What did you see?”
I blinked my eyes, seeing only flickering, hazy blurs of light and
shadow. I was still lying spread-eagle on the ground, but the surface beneath
me was hard and even, not soft and alive.
Warmth began to return to my body and my fingers twitched. My eyes
focused and I saw Hans and Father standing over me, both men pale with eyes
burning with hunger and curiosity. They looked just like I had left them, weeks
ago.
“Am I dead?” I asked, and found I could breath again.
“No.”
“Was it a dream?”
“No.”
“Thank God.” I closed my eyes as a lump formed in my throat and my eyes
tickled with warmth.
“What was it like? What did you see?” asked Hans feverishly. “Did you get
a glimpse of something?”
I opened my eyes and looked past him. The chalk marks in the ceiling were
black now, as if they’d been burnt into the surface.
“More than a glimpse.” Everything was just as I’d left it. But I’d been
gone weeks and weeks.
Silly, I’m still thinking of time the wrong way. Even after all I’ve
seen.
“I thought I was about to die.” I was supposed to die. That’s where the
dream always ends.
“I’m sorry, Cheska,” said Father.
“Aren’t you grateful--” started Hans, but I cut him off with my eyes.
“Send me back.”
My Father gaped and Hans’ lips curled into a smile.
“Send me back.”
How can I live now that my dream is over? They stole it from me, my last
moment. That was supposed to be my last moment. No other could be that perfect,
under a mercurial moon, on an alien world.
I looked at Hans once more, his eyes shining with tears and triumph.
“Send me back. Please.”
End
© 2005 by Saki Channing. Saki Channing is a Polysci/Asian Studies major in her
last year of university in post-apocalyptic
For comments and concerns email her at: saki_channing@lycos.com