I have seen the edge of existence. Somewhere beyond the asteroid belt and far before the center of the Universe there is a place where the waters run with the silkiness of life. Bright green and blue waters swirling and flowing in great bays and oceans of perfect existence.
I could not imagine trying to make a home here, for losing the novelty, the specialness, of living in paradise would be life’s greatest tragedy. I come to visit from time to time, to swim in the waves of life-bearing water, to bathe in the hot springs.
Many centuries ago Mankind was obsessed with finding a fountain from which youth would be bestowed upon the drinker. A mercilessly unsuccessful venture. Those cool waters were never meant to wash over the hands of man. Mankind has a way of advancing itself, building the greatest of cities and colonies, terraforming entire planets for our expansion, and yet the average lifespan is still no greater than a hundred years. And no manned expeditions into the afterlife have ever come back.
So even in our greatness we are sure of the notion that we are going to die. Perhaps in a spacecraft incident, maybe even some disease--for even viruses are still our arch nemesis-or we may go peacefully while sleeping. In any case, we are all certain, no matter how ready we are to accept it, that everything will one day continue on without us.
It is as if we have become second class to the overall achievement of our species. No amount of technology can really suppress mankind’s basic prejudices. We do not have slavery anymore, thankfully, and widespread racial hatred has been for the most part erased. But a man is a man, no more, no less.
So would I admit to wanting to find the fountain of youth? No. I knew it is something akin to Santa Claus or the Bogeyman--a figment of the collective imagination. But hope is something that time will never take away.
As the shuttle came into orbit around the pitifully small satellite of a desolate and lifeless world we refer to as Sigma Four(which really makes me wonder in my old age what God calls his planets, and his stars, and each of us)I stared at the lush canopy of jungle and flowing blue waters hundreds of miles below.
"Is everything okay?" The Captain, a boy just a few months out of university, asked me as he walked up from behind. I had wrangled a passage on this cargo ship for the purpose of swimming through paradise one last time. "Are you feeling okay?" I could almost hear him adding, ‘old man’, to the end of each statement he made to me.
"No," I assured him, "I’m just looking."
"We’ll be descending after a few last instrument checks," The Captain walked up to a porthole-like window just abreast of the one I had laid claim to and looked out. "It’s very beautiful. Is it everything you hoped it would be?"
"More," I said, unsure if he was able to hear me. "Much more."
The last time I had been here I must not have been much older than The Captain, and it had been one of my very first missions. We came to harvest a particularly important flower from the depths of the jungle, and somehow I had stumbled upon the water.
I remember I was walking through the forest--I believe we were taking a rest period--and suddenly a lagoon of hypnotizingly blue water spread itself before me. I stood on the edge, looked out into the water. I watched little minnow sized fishes darting just underneath the surface, as if attracted to my presence.
I cannot explain the impulse, but in less than a few minutes I was swimming through the water. A breach of protocol, especially for a green young captain who followed the book to the T, but I felt free. And as I swam a sense of rejuvenation swept over me, tingling my senses. The lush jungle air filled my nose with the fragrant smells of hidden flowers and secret places, and water cooling and refreshing.
And when it became time to leave, I made a vow that I would return someday. It might have taken seventy years. It might have been thousands and thousands of dreamfilled nights ago. Dreams of my paradise.
"Now, sir," The Captain said to me as I stared and daydreamed, "I have to be totally honest with you. I don’t feel comfortable with you here. I have a feeling you are going to try and pull something strange."
"Strange?" I asked, astonished.
"What I am trying to say, as tactfully as possible, is that I have to see to it that you come back..."
"Come back?" I asked, still confused as to what the young man was trying to say.
"There have been some studies done, on older people such as yourself, that implies that there is some kind of unexplainable impulse that would drive you to, well....Remember the Eskimos?" I nodded in agreement. "They had a custom of placing their elders on an iceflow and leaving them to die."
"Oh, I see," I said rather bitterly, "You have a feeling that I’ve come here to die. Am I correct?"
"Yes sir," The Captain said, and then tried to cover himself, "It isn’t anything personal. I’ve looked through your service records and I am amazed at the things you accomplished in your career. But this is my ship now. And all I ask is that you don’t put me into a difficult position."
"Believe me, son," I said, "I have no intention of staying here. How long do you think we will have on the planet surface?"
"About two, maybe three hours. Long enough to harvest the lotus’ and then we’ve got to get going."
Even for space travelers there is a sense of home. Home may be a closet sized apartment on a space station, or an antique house on Earth or Mars. But home is a place for almost anybody. I only knew that as I stepped out of the shuttle doorway and onto the pliable soil of Sigma Four. For all the decades I spent on an endless odyssey to the edges of the known universe, I have never felt at home.
The words that The Captain and I had spoken while still in orbit reverberated through my mind, as if suddenly what he had said began to come true. I felt The Captain’s eyes boring into the back of my head as I stood and took in every smell and sight from just outside the shuttle. I turned and gave him a wry smile. We both knew what I was thinking.
"We’re going to begin our search. Meet us back here in two hours. Please do not force me to come looking for you," The Captain said as he took his men away into the jungle. I stood on the edge and absorbed every nuance of this place before I began my own journey.
As I took my first steps into the jungle I had a terminal feeling of deja vu. It felt like I had been here many times, and every tree and flower and sound of birds singing seemed familiar. I had been here many times, all while sleeping. I stumbled upon what seemed like a path through the jungle, and I followed dutifully. It felt as though this path had been placed here for me. It was dark within the jungle, for light was blocked by the lush canopy above. It felt as though I was walking through my dreams.
The water was exactly how I remembered it. The path had taken me directly to my secret lagoon, and I swam with the abandon of youth. I felt fifty years younger, as if all the years that had separated my first visit and this time had been no more than a day. A humid mist hung just above the water and the sounds of life teeming on the edges of the lagoon drifted on the breeze.
It felt like a matter of minutes before all of a sudden I heard my name being called out. The disturbance roused me out of my state, and I had the compulsion to run, to run away until they stopped looking for me. They would have to leave at some point, and I could get far enough away to force them to leave without me.
I had no time to put this plan into action. All of a sudden The Captain was standing at the edge of the water where I had arrived just minutes before.
"I asked you to please come back in two hours," He scolded me from the twenty yards that separated him from me as I swam. "Would you please come back now?"
"Come in the water!" I called back, swimming no nearer to The Captain.
"I can’t," he called back, "It’s against protocol."
"Is living against protocol?"
"I don’t have time to play wordgames, not right now. Once we get on the shuttle we can play all the games you want..."
"Old man!" I yelled back.
"What?"
"Go ahead, say it. Old man. I know that’s what you want to say."
"Please come with me. We don’t have time for this."
"Come with me. I have much to show you."
Inexplicably The Captain began shedding his jumpsuit. He jumped into the water and began swimming towards me. I put a little more distance between him and I for it dawned on me that he might have the compunction to drag me away from my home.
"This is the most beautiful place I have ever seen," he said. The smile was broad on his face and his eyes twinkled with childlike innocence. "Why didn’t you tell me about this?"
I did not have an answer for him. In the fifty years(or had it been only a few days) after I first came here I told not a soul about it.
"You can’t take me away," I said, half pleading. "I was meant to be here."
"I have no intention of taking you away," The Captain said as he slid gracefully through the water. "My only wish is that I could stay with you. I wish I could stay forever. Nothing seems to matter so much now."
"It doesn’t," I called back blissfully. The Captain started to make his way back toward the shore.
"But I have to leave," He said as he got out of the water and started putting his jumpsuit back on. "I hope someday I get the chance to come back."
As I watched him disappear back into the jungle I knew, deep down as if it was being whispered into my ear, that he would be back. When the time was right.
The End
Mikael Bernard is a Novelist/writer/painter living in Auburn, Alabama. He has had several poems published, two gallery showings, as well as short stories in various places on the internet.
E-mail: kaceybernard@mindspring.com
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