Family
Beads of blood and
Strings of screams
Twine them together to make
A sweater of agony
And sister shut the door
Salty tears and
Milky chills
A remedy for turmoil
And daddy doesn’t even care
Shadows of fear and
Blaring pain
Thoughts of suicide
And mommy’s on the phone
Silent solitude and
Absolute ignorance
By choice they don’t know
And grandma’s busy knitting
Hug for the spirit and
Warm smile for the confidence
Everything will get better
And brother’s listening
SINGLETON PARADOX
Eye.
His body felt strange and heavy in the strong earth gravity, well, what was left of his body anyway. The metal robotic right arm, leg, and lung creaked as it auto adjusted to the heightened gravitational force and increased atmospheric pressure.
Tulec hadn't realized that the 5.6% difference in force between his home world and the spaceship would have made such a difference.
As the artificial limbs stopped adjusting, he stepped out onto the earthen soil. He figured he could stop referring to himself as Tulec, the name they had given him on the ship. As best he could tell, it meant “outsider” or “stranger” in their language. He was back on earth now, it would be Simon Celeste again.
He estimated it to have been roughly 4 earth years since he had set foot on soil, at least in his reference frame. He had absolutely no clue what that had meant here where they hadn't been traveling at near light speeds. How much time he had missed, six years? eight? maybe even ten? he mused, as he looked around the jungle clearing the ship had landed in. Turning around to thank his escorts, he saw that they and the ship had left silently as he had taken in his surroundings.
“Thanks, I'll miss you too...pink little bastards...” he laughed “Never were much for sentiments....”
Simon sat down at the base of a large tree, it would be dark soon, and he would be able to figure out his location. “For now I'll just photosynthesize a bit I guess... what do you say bub?” he elbowed the tree and laughed again, giddy to be home. 'Almost home' he thought with a smile as he leaned Into the tree and closed his eyes, enjoying the direct sunlight, and thinking about Jayna. She would be able to tell him exactly where he was just by looking at the plant life, what he could and couldn't eat too, but those were the least of the reasons he wished she was with him.
Eye-Eye.
Jayna Elpida sat at her desk in her bedroom, wrapped in a blanket to ward off the dark and the cold, rubbing her worry stone. It was just after nine o'clock and the broadcast from The Amalthea should start any moment.
He had smiled that broad roguish smile when he had handed it to her and said “Here you go babe, a bit of silly superstition to set your worrying mind at ease.”
They had both giggled at that, and she had put it aside. Simon would never let her live it down if he found out she actually used it, she knew, but she was nervous, anxious, and she missed him desperately, though he had only been gone two weeks.
A strand of her dark, shoulder length hair slipped from behind her ear, and settled between her eyes and the glowing monitor. Precisely why that troublesome strand had been tucked away in the first place. Setting the rock down, and pulling the scrunchy from her wrist she intended to show the maverick bundle of protein filaments who was boss, but then numbers started to tick across the screen, and the video window opened. Jayna forgot all but her computer screen and deftly brushed the hair aside.
Alfredo Melchior's face appeared on screen. The Italian, rock star of the physics world, was in charge of the science aboard the vessel designed to, among other things, test the theories of relativity in a near light speed environment.
The ship had on board the first engine capable of breaching half the speed of light, Simon had told her, theoretically, it could reach a top speed of point five one the speed of light, meaning that the relativistic gamma could only reach a maximum of one point one four or so. Upon her unimpressed look, Simon had gone on to explain, that even though that had meant only time, mass and length differences of roughly 14%, it would be strong enough to have profound effects on the experiments. To this she had given a half smile, taken his hands and kissed him. Sometimes, when he got excited about things, this was the only course of action that would reel him back into a world where not everyone understood what he was ranting about. It had not been an action of exasperation, actually the unbridled enthusiasm he showed most of the time was one of her favorite reasons that he was her one and only. It had been an action to remind him that she was happy for him, but she did not understand what he was saying, and would take his word that it was exciting.
She watched as Alfredo began his speech, Jayna had finagled herself direct streaming rights through “scientific and professional interest.” the handful of scientists and universities from all over the world that had also been granted a view of the first run were watching the same, unedited broadcast. The rest of humanity would get to watch it later after touch ups and condensing had taken place. It was good to know people in the field.
The scientific community had decided that the primary address would be in English, and so it began.
“In ancient Greek mythology, Amalthea raised Zeus in hiding so that he might grow to overthrow his father, the titan, Cronus.” Alfredo stated, the words bold and clear, despite his thick accent. “Cronus was the diety of the harvest, agriculture, and the progression of time for humans.” A brief, calculated, meaningful pause. Jayna knew that this pause would be left in for the news broadcasts in it's entirety, while the segment by Simon would probably be cut down and edited to telegraphic shortness. The media always hung on Alfredo's every word.
“As Amalthea was a tool for the overthrow of the god of time, we shall use our vessel, The Amalthea, to uncover the mysteries of the eternal tyrant, time.”
Jayna had understood this reference the moment the ship name had been revealed, and had then, as now, thought it obscure and perhaps a bit contrived. She had also entered a lengthy debate with Simon on the implications of the name. “It's like they want to conquer time, rather than to study it.” she had said.
“That's all attention grubbing by l'italiano, it doesn't matter what the mission is called, we are going to learn...” He had responded. There it was, the fundamental difference in their beliefs, superstition. It made for heated debates that always ended in agreeing to disagree, but they were always debates, never fights.
He the physicist, she the botanist, they did, in fact, embody the yin and the yang of science, as their friends made jokes about. Despite the differences in method and thought, she loved him with all her heart, and he loved her with all of his.
“L'italiano” as Simon had called him, was still going on about things that had nothing to do with science, and his tan, muscular, bull dog face looked too genuine and interested to actually be so. She had met him on a few occasions. In person, the man was nice enough, but had proved to be a bit slimy in his pickup attempts of his colleague's fiancé. He had tried his very Italian charm on her several times, and she had wanted to punch his Boxer's face right in the high cheek bones, or strangle that haughty laugh out of him with his Armani tie.
Unfortunately, he was also a good scientist when he wasn't distracted by his celebrity status, and he was a god send when it came to raising funds. The scientific community, including her fiancée, needed him.
Alfredo left the screen and on came Shaye Kennedy, the other of the three physicists aboard The Amalthea, which had a crew, she knew, of 34; astronauts, pilots, cosmonauts, technicians, a cook and a medic.
She didn't care much about what he had to say, though he was an admirable enough sort. The Irish-American Physicist from Boston had a dirty blonde mess of hair atop his slightly large head, and had a habit of getting a goofy grin at strange times, always in his own mind, he didn't speak much, though when he did, it was usually worth listening too. He and his two companions where, after all, the best of the best in their field.
Finally it was Simon's turn to speak, Jayna's heart fluttered and forced the corners of her mouth up into a girlish smile. The smitten teenager, that was only brought out by Simon's witty grin, was sitting in front of the monitor now. Far removed from the 26 year old professional researcher with a doctorate in Botany who had demonstrated “academic curiosity” to achieve the rights to stream the video.
The dark haired man of twenty seven years stared out at her with an angular face and eyes the rich brown of redwood bark, she had been unable to find that hue mimicked anywhere else in nature aside from the tannic acid soaked mass of any member of the Sequoia genus. Those deep intelligent eyes that sparkled with good humor even in the most dire of circumstances.
Jayna would never forget the moment she realized that she could spend the rest of her life with him. It was that sparkle, and a silly remark, in the depths of the road trip from hell. He had somehow managed to make her laugh while he fixed the tire, on that road in the middle of nowhere at 2 in the morning. Then, determined that they were headed the wrong direction, and that they were about 150 miles off course. He had been right. That was Simon, he could cheer her up, and carry on an entire conversation as if killing time, but all the while he was actually calculating, thinking, and solving the problem.
She listened while he spoke his part, mostly physics jargon that the Biologist didn't understand, but it was still good to see his face and hear his voice. The voice of the man that would marry her upon his return from his 2 months in space.
All too soon, his bit was done and he signed off “Alright Mission Control, I'll start the countdown on my mark, ten minutes until the virgin roar of humanities first half light drive.” He raised his right hand into the frame, it held a small black round piece of plastic with a red button on top, “remember, the time lag should be about thirty seven seconds” he reminded. “and MARK!” he said as he pushed the button, the clock across the base of the screen began to tick.
She knew it was the button press that had synchronized the clocks, but yelling “MARK” still pulled an emotional response. Made it seem more intense.
“This is Celeste signing off for the Amalthea, data should start pouring in shortly.” and the video screen went black, the clock still ran across the bottom, and all the other stats (location, heading, velocity, temperature, radiation flux, engine performance...etc) held their respective places. But with the video dark, she felt lonely again. Lonely and cold. She pulled the blanket closer about her shoulders, a large bundle of her hair slipped out from behind her ears and cascaded over her face.
Eye-Eye-Eye.
Simon had slipped into dreaming about his Jayna, as he had most sleep cycles for the previous 13 hundred or so. Now he opened his eyes and looked up into the sky. It was still relatively warm, though the day had faded to a deep violet shadow, with a plenty of stars. The clearing was big enough to see a large swatch of the sky in what he now knew was the northern direction. He could see Polaris, he must be in the northern hemisphere. Though something was wrong with the stars, the patterns were skewed.
Pushing his doubts to the back of his mind as a side effect of not having seen the stars from earth in over four years, he began to pick out constellations that where close to what they should be, tracing their shapes as he saw them across the sky with his metallic right hand. Polaris was roughly20 degrees above the horizon, meaning that he was at a longitude of about 20 degrees. It looked like the sun was near Cancer, making it late July to mid August. He paused and checked his reasoning again. It seemed too warm to be that far from the equator for this time of year, unless he was on an island. Though, he didn't think he had landed on an island.
“Island.” he mused, “all relative I guess...” he grumbled to himself still staring at the sky. “a little tiny clump of earth in the sea of space, of course I'm on a god damned island...”
Better wording, he corrected himself mentally, was that he thought he had landed on a continent. The jungle around him seemed to speak to that, but what did he know about plants? For what seemed the thousandth time since his landing, he wished aloud that Jayna were with him. Though this time the vocalization manifested as “My princess would know for sure.”
Eye-Vee
Simon had been sitting in the green waiting room for almost an hour. He knew that the green paint was supposed to be calming, but he was nervous, a lot was riding on this physical. His mind had already earned a seat on the expedition, under the condition that a doctor signed off that his body could take the beatings of a two month jaunt in space.
Jayna had come with him, of course, and was seated directly to his right. She held his right hand in her left and caressed the back absently with her thumb as she stared off across the room, not seeing the wall that stood there, he knew. The slight hint of her sweet smile lurking on her lips was enough of a clue, the far away glaze over her brown eyes confirmed it. There was nothing enlightening or entertaining about that egg shell wall. There was one poster about getting checked for testicular cancer and another about Herpes. She was either somewhere else, thinking of beautiful things, or he had grossly misjudged her fascination with the herp.
Simon was not so lucky, he couldn't focus on anything but the verdict the doctor might give, and why he was taking so long. True, there were both urine and blood to be tested, before the verdict could be given, but this was a high priority physical. They had been given the choice of leaving, and having the doctor call, but figured an hour wasn't too long to wait to get the documents in hand. Any second Dr. Salvatore Laughter would come walking through that door and say-
“Have you talked to your brother yet about being your best man?” Jayna interrupted, he was grateful for the distractions from his self torment.
“No, not yet, with all this going on, I haven't had a chance to call him... When I get a few hours.” Simon didn't call his siblings very often, not because he didn't enjoy their conversations, but because they generally conversed for hours at a time. Neither he nor either of them had time for that more than occasionally.
Simon's older Brother Eros, originally named Ludwig Eros Celeste, had started going by the name of Eros Celeste for obvious reasons, once he started his writing career as a Romance novelist while still in college. He was in his mid thirties now and was doing quite well as an author of textual pornography, but had for the last several years, continually promised “Some day I'm going to drop the sell out bit and write a real piece of literature.”
A few years back Eros had even tried his hand at a Zombie story, but upon the pleas from his editor to return to familiar ground, he had never finished it.
Simon didn't doubt that the man had at least a few solid works of art in there among the throbbing members, and gasps of ecstasy, but the question was, would he ever do it?
His sister, Karin Paula Celeste, was a biologist that would disappear for months at a time, then one day call, saying “Just got back from Africa, studying the lion...” or something of the sort, and would then proceed to publish a paper that would redefine how her contemporaries viewed certain habits of whatever animal she had gone to study. She was closer in age to Eros at thirty two.
Currently, Simon had no idea where she was. It had been about two months since he had called her last, and she had yet to respond, meaning she had been out of the country for at least that long. The last time they had met for lunch, 4 months before, she had mentioned a small bug indigenous to south east Asia . He assumed that was where she was and had little doubt that she would call any day now.
He would have lots of big news when she finally did call. She didn't even know he was going into space yet. She knew Simon was getting married sometime soon, but when they had last spoken there hadn't been a date.
All three of them were of a slim build and well educated, they all loved to converse, no matter what the topic, and had an insatiable thirst for knowledge that some might call obsession or even addiction.
Once, as a teenager, Simon, the only sibling not given one at birth, earned the middle name of “Beaver” while talking with Karin and Ludwig theoretically about the tree of knowledge. He had stated “I don't think there'd be enough fruit, I'd probably start gnawing at the bark.” To which they all laughed.
“Alright Little Beaver” Eros had commented, always the clever poet. From that conversation forward, at least to his family, he was known as Simon “Beaver” Celeste.
“Maybe we could have him, Elly, Karin and Greg over for dinner some night next week?”
Elly was Eros' wife of three years. A high school chemistry teacher, Simon had approved of her instantly on their first meeting. Eros and Elly lived about an hour away.
Greg, on the other hand, had been dating Karin for about 2 years, and despite the fact that Simon knew no one would ever be good enough to get his approval to date Karin, there were definitely individuals closer to the good enough mark than Greg. An entertaining enough fellow, Greg was a bartender that didn't own a car and had no desire to learn the craft of driving. The two of them lived together in the next town over, just down the street from the bar he kept. Greg was over protective, irresponsible and was way too nice to Simon for him to not think the disdain was mutual.
“I'm not sure where Karin is, think she's overseas, but I'll invite Eros when I call him.” Simon said.
“if you want me to, I can -” Jayna stopped, her eyes over his shoulder toward the door.
Turning, Simon saw that the doctor had come through it and was headed towards them. Simon got up to meet him.
Dr. Salvatore Laughter was a short round man with a circular tuft of gray hair around the edges of his uncovered scalp. The glasses perched on the tip of his nose always looked like they were going to fall off, but they never did. Simon had picked Dr. Laughter because of his name a few years before, but had been pleasantly surprised by his competence and returned again and again. Dr. Laughter, a silly name. However, Simon had noticed the more sinister version that the man had chosen for his name tag, Dr. S. Laughter.
“I have some bad news...” the hobbit like doctor stated as if deeply troubled by what he had to do. Simon's stomach suddenly felt like he might already be in orbit. Dr. S. Laughter looked directly at Jayna as he said this, then continued, “You are going to lose your boy here to outer space for two months.” The most welcome grinning wink Simon had ever received immediately followed.
Vee
He rolled over the slightly humorous thought, after all he had survived, and been through; after traveling countless millions, maybe even billions, of miles, he now sat no more than 12 and a half thousand miles from home, probably less. Such a tiny difference on the grand scale he had grown accustomed to thinking about, yet it would be this leg of his journey that took the longest per mile. Why the pink little goobers had dropped him here, he hadn't a clue, but was still grateful to be back on the little island in space that had bore him.
“For now, my lad.” he announced to himself “let's get you some food.”
Vee-Eye
“Just got a text from Alfredo.” Shaye Kennedy was sitting across the table from Simon, in a modest ash colored suit. “Said he's running late.” he continued, a patented Shaye smirk creeping across the side of his face, looking up from the phone he was holding below the table line to make eye contact with Simon.
“Imagine that.” Simon laughed.
“I'm glad he decided to keep us in the loop... forty five minutes after he was supposed to be here” Jayna added from his right, almost surprised, but not quite.
Simon looked over at her, and gave her thigh a reassuring squeeze. She smiled at him as their eyes met, giving a shrug. Her hair was pined up behind her head with the black chopstick like things whose name Simon didn't know. In the romantic light of the Sicilian restaurant and the candle light from the table, her light brown eyes almost glowed an earthy yellow. She had slipped on her little black dress for the evening, Simon noted that it was the one he could never resist, and couldn't wait to slip it back off of her, then corrected himself... It wasn't just this dress which made him feel this way, who was he kidding? The woman would sparkled like a goddess in a burlap sack with a cooking pot on her head.
Simon's eyes, he realized, had drifted slowly down along the perfect contours of her neck to her all but bare shoulder, where he had been trying, in vain, to not think about how much he needed to plant light kisses. The thin black strap cut a line of unappreciated, but elegant raiment across, otherwise bare, shoulder.
He pulled his gaze beck up to meet hers, she was grinning. Not laughing at Alfredo anymore, she knew exactly what he was thinking. He grinned as though caught stealing cookies from the jar on their counter, that he always insisted she not fill, but couldn't help chowing down late at night.
“Could you pass the bread please?” tore through the two lovers’ non-verbal conversation. It was Laura, Shaye's cute, little red headed wife. Simon rejoined the other three at the table mentally, at least enouhg to grab the basket and hand it down to her.
“So Alfredo gave us permission to start without him.” Shaye spouted, as if informing his party of news that ranked on the scale of dire importance with 'BREAKING NEWS: The King is dead.'
Simon nodded, smiling, noting Shaye's perfect timing as the plate of Pasta con la Sarde was placed gently down in front of him. “Oh good, I'm glad he'll allow it.”
He liked Shaye, a man of generally few words, though far from introverted. He was the clever trouble maker that never got caught. At least seventy five percent of what he did say was a perfectly constructed message that bore several meanings, one of which was usually hilarious if you paid attention, and the others trailing important things you needed to know.
Whenever Simon though of having to spend 2 months in a space bullet with L'italiano, he thanked every higher power that he didn't necessarily believe in, that Shaye Kennedy would be there too.
“Last night of freedom for a long while, and you chose a dish with little sardine fishies all over it?” Simon asked as he looked down into his own plate of Bistecca alla Pizzaiola. “You realize we are going to have sardines on board.”
“Canned sardines, friend, not sardines.” was his response, before he looked down at his plate, grabbing a fork and smiling at his plate, there was such fondness in his face, that simon almost burst out laughing.
They had almost finished eating when Alfredo arrived, his swim suit model date in tow.
After a particularly greasy ogle at Jayna, who gave a visibly strained smile in return, he greeted the party, introduced his date and sat down. Simon knew that the eye-raping he just witnessed would bother most men in his position, but judging by the six feet of expensive legs and breasts he had just led in by the arm, Simon took it as a compliment that Alfredo couldn't take his eyes off Jayna.
“That is a defining dish of Sicily, you know that Shaye?” Alfredo asked.
Shaye smiled and nodded, “first time I had it was when I went to see your lecture on ...`something.” he said, scratching his large head, as if he really couldn't remember what it had been. Of course, he did remember, they all remembered it. Alfredo had been so drunk that he had stumbled through a lot of very important parts and made a total ass of himself and his team. The only big black smear on the Italian physicist record. It was polite, not to bring it up.
Simon wondered if Shaye had mistakenly started the statement, then upon realizing what he was saying, this was his attempt at a backtrack, as he seemed to be feigning. It didn't seem likely, Shaye was generally so calculated. Simon throught this might be an attempt to remind Alfredo that he is only human, and far from infallible. That his careless abandonment of protocol and self indulgence would not be accepted on the Amalthea, where all of their lives would be in constant danger.
Vee-Eye-Eye
Simon sat at the base of the large smooth barked tree again. The last little corner of one of the condensed protein food substance bars that he had been left with, was held between his thumb and index finger of his left hand, the real hand.
The little pink guys had cooked up the recipe after analyzing his digestive tract. It had sustained him for the last four years or so, It contained everything his body needed but water, apparently they needed water too, because they had that on hand. The bars had kept his body healthy, but left much to be desired in the taste department.
Aside from the water bit, he had found it difficult to ascertain anything else about their eating habits, because either they did it in private, or not at all. “Not at all” didn't seem likely, especially because they had the substances with which to make the food bars that he was given twice a day.
Extremely curious about him, they had been very unwilling to share information about themselves. At first he had taken the snuffing of his curiosities as pompous rudeness, but over the course of his journey it had slowly become apparent that it was more fear than a high horse that guided them in such actions. Fear of him? fear of humans in general? fear of their boss or government? Simon could not ascertain, but it was definitely fear.
Popping the last little bit of it into his mouth, Simon looked back up into the sky, the sky was wrong. Worry, panic and fear welled up through his gut and into his throat. He could feel his heart beginning to race, the edges where his metallic appendages fused with bone began to ache in time with his pulse, as they generally did when he got excited.
In struck horror and disbelief he was barley able to breath. He checked and rechecked that he had been looking at Polaris, the north star.
“There is no fucking way...” he trailed off as he realized there was no way it was anything but Polaris.
The star that was supposed to stay relatively motionless in the sky had moved in the two hours since he had first tried to figure out his location. There was, he knew, only one real explanation, but he couldn't make his mind formulate the thought.
Vee-Eye-Eye-Eye
The Engines rumbled to life with a shudder that ran through every bit of matter in the entire ship. Simon could feel the sheer power in the act all the way down to his bones.
He was scared shitless, but more than that he was excited.
Every string of muscle in his body strained to keep his face calm, while his mind raced. The stats on the LCD in front of him began running as expected. Velocity was rising fast, engine strain and temperature joined it on its upward amble. Power was dropping a little, but he knew it was just due to the enormous amount of energy needed to start the drive.
“Everything is as it should be, now calm down, suit up and get your ass to the lab.” He scolded himself.
Fifteen minutes later Simon was stepping into the air lock of Vacuum lab B in his air tight suit. Checking that the oxygen tank was working, he radioed “This is Celeste, I'm ready to start the pump in VacLab B, permission to proceed?”
“Yaromir copy VacLab B. You are clear.” Nikias Yaromir was the capitain of the Amalthea. A cosmonaut of fourty two, with more hours spent in space than any person alive, he had been the obvious choice by the Board of International Science and Research.
Once, Simon had heard, while performing maintenance on a Russian satellite, his shuttle had a complete system shut down, due to some faulty wiring. Being outside at the time the computer crashed, he used his back-up battery radio to listen to them explain the problem, diagnosed the issue, then instructed them on how to fix the problem with a paper clip. This story was highly speculative, as the work they had been doing was classified, and Nikias never talked about it.
On another occasion, when there had been a medical emergency on the international space station, that took all aboard ill, Yaromir had piloted an American shuttle, whose controls he was unfamiliar with, while battling a fever of one hundred and fifteen degrees and landed it flawlessly, saving the lives of all thirteen astronauts, scientists and cosmonauts. This had made him somewhat of an international hero.
Simon felt comfortable with Nikias in charge, and had no problem running everything by him before doing it.
The rumble of the pump slowly faded out as the oxygen left his air lock, but Simon could still feel it on top of the tremor from the laboring drive, when he touched the walls.
The only complaint he had about the suit was that the shock absorbers, insulation, and support of the boots made it hard to feel anything through them.
The indicator light on the lab door changed from red to green, and the door popped open automatically.
Simon began to set up the first of many experiments, which relied on a high power laser. Initiating the power supply took more than just flipping a switch or tapping a button, due to the safety issues involved with equipment that used cyclopean quantities of energy. First and foremost among safety hazards was the heat they generated.
Once during grad school, one of Simon's lab partners had spent too long in a sealed room with a similar device and passed out from heat exhaustion, when he had been found an hour later he had been rushed to a hospital and treated for first and second degree burns over his entire body, including his mouth and throat. The man had survived and returned to his work after a few weeks.
“Congratulations all on board, we have just passed the previous speed record of known human flight, we have achieved zero point one six C!” Alfredo's voice rang over the radio in Simon's ear.
Simon smiled to himself in his suit, if all else went awry; at least they will have set a new record. “Knowing you will not have died in vain is worth something I guess...” he mused as he did his final check of the insulated support system for the power supply and flicked on the contained liquid cooling system. When the temperature seemed to be stable enough, he plugged in the last of the power cables and punched in his access code. The orange LED on the control panel blinked three times, then the card key swipe lit up, prompting him to swipe his card, which hung from his waste by a retractable chord. The temperature on the cooling system began to rise slowly as the unit began it's initiation cycle.
Knowing that it should take about 5 minutes, Simon set his clip board down on the table beside the unit and strolled over to the wall with the visual display. He looked over the ship data that streamed across the screen.
Simon's numerical contemplations, conducted to the sound of the air circulation fans in his suit, were interrupted by a crack on the radio. In the unexpected stream bed of static, he could pan out the rough German voice of Geron Anselmo “Capt. Yarimov to the bridge please! We got a strange momentary ping on the radar at sixty then fifty Mega meters, gone now but-” His transmission was lost in the silt of static. The coordinating conjunction that had faded into radio salt and pepper was the last word he ever heard muttered from the lips of anyone aboard the bullet shaped ship.
As he turned around to the left, intending to look at the warming power supply, he felt the crash through his feet, then his left shoulder as it struck the wall. His helmet turned slightly away from the wall, he watched the power supply and mounting brackets tear from their fixed spot on the floor of the lab and fly towards him. A long spike that was once the bracket sliced open his right shoulder as the unit crashed to the wall next to him, destroying his right leg from the knee down.
Simon passed out from pain, rapidly decreasing pressure in his suit, and shock. His last image before fading to black had been the drops of sublimating coolant drifting in front of his cracked helmet visor, in the background he stared directly out into space, through a jagged hole, at what he recognized to be the constellation Corvus. Just to the right of the kite shaped frame of the crow, his graying mind noted that NCG's 4038 and 4039 were colliding to form the heart shape of the Antennae Galaxies.
Eye-Exe
Simon's breath on her ear was warm, calming. More than warm, it was warming. It made her chest switch from ninety eight point five degrees to the toast function and her mind tingle with a lazy yawn. She had always been so happy and at peace in his arms, the fit was perfect. They were in bed, covered by layers of blankets, her the little spoon to his big, his right arm draped lazily over her bare abdomen with his fingers curled so that just the tips caressed her skin every time she breathed.
“I love you, and always will, you know that right?” Simon whispered into the back side of her ear. She hadn't been sure that he was still awake until he spoke.
“You better, Mister.” she replied, making a quarter of the turn towards him, nestling her shoulder comfortably back against his chest.
He kissed her cheek and pulled his hand back across her stomach, stopping when just his fingers where on her side. “I'm going away for a while.” he stated.
“What? Where?” She demanded, the drowsy comfort she had previously been enjoying now no more than so much ash thrown in the wind.
“I love you Jayna. Get the phone.” was his only reply as he pulled his hand the rest of the way off her body.
Jayna tried to roll back into him, but found herself lying back onto her bed, alone.
The phone rang, there was a residue of a previous ring on her memory, had it just rung? Had she been dreaming?
Simon was gone. Of course he was gone, he had been gone for two weeks, she had watched his broadcast from space previously that night. How long ago? She wondered looking at the red numbers of her alarm clock glowing from across the room.
How long ago? Well that’s relative. Simon would have pointed out.
Five hours ago, she had only been asleep for three or so.
The phone rang again.
It was one AM, why on earth? Oh my god, not on earth! That thought got her moving. There were only two reasons that someone would call so late and it was far too close to the maiden run of Simon's ship to consider the possibility that her mom was dead.
Scrambling for the phone she reached off the end of the bed for the dresser that sat three and a half feet from the foot of the bed on top of which was perched the cradle for her cordless phone. Intending to plant her left hand where sheets and springy support met air, she missed. The air didn't provide the kind of support that her firm mattress would have.
Jayna tumbled to the ground in an explosion of blankets, her fingers grazing the edge of the phone and toppling the whole set down on top of her. The receiver was now buried somewhere in the blankets she wrestled with to free herself.
It rang again, helping her locate it. She hit the answer button as she lifted it to her ear.
“Hello?!” she greeted, to hear only a dial tone.
How many times had it rung? She didn't know as she sat on the floor with her shoulders hunched staring at the phone. If only she had splurged for the caller ID.
Then her cell phone started to sing out a rhythmic “Cha Cha ChAH!” from her night stand on the other side of the bed. For a moment she only looked unbelievingly towards it from her place on the floor, then scrambled frantically over the bed, lunging for the phone and answered just as before.
“Hello?”
The tenants of two of the three apartments adjacent to Jayna's called the police when they heard her cries of anguish and horror, reporting a possible murder. The third tried calling her only to get a busy signal, then proceeded to knock timidly on the door until the police showed up.
Well past the edge of hysteria, Jayna had to be sedated and brought to the hospital, through all of which, even while the calming drugs softened her mind and zapped the strength behind her vocal cords, the only thing that would pass through her mouth was the name Simon.
Exe
There was a brief period of time, though neither would ever know it, that both Jayna and Simon where unconscious. Their times of departure from and return to the world of the waking didn't coincide, but there was a short interlude in which both slept the sleep of unwanted rest.
Both awakening in a state of groggy confusion, then realizing what had happened to the Amalthea, and finally realizing they were strapped to a bed in a predominantly white room.
That, though, is where the likeness ends, because where Jayna awoke to flowers and cards, Simon awoke to find part of his body missing.
Exe-Eye
Simon had found his way to the top of a near by peak. Wondering through the jungle in the dark was extremely reckless, he realized, and if his horrible hypothesis was right, waiting the few hours for daylight wouldn't make a difference. However, he couldn't sit still, he needed to find a vantage point from which to view a larger section of the northern sky, to verify-or hopefully squash- his idea.
He had found it, in the form of a large rise that gave into a high cliff. By standing on the edge, he could look out in a northern direction and see over most of the landscape.
He went to work aligning two sticks, so that by sighting along the top of them he would be looking at the exact location Polaris currently occupied.
He would need to know exactly how far the star moved in the next hour to make the necessary calculations. His theory was that what he was seeing was due to the axial procession of the earth.
Over the next hour, he sat, watching the sky turn slowly and regularly making new marking sticks.
Every twenty six thousand years, he knew, the axial tilt of the earth went through a single rotation, a sort of wobble. This would explain his mistaken calculation of latitude, the movement of the north star, and the slightly shifted patterns of the known constellations.
Judging by the arc described by the movement over the last hour he figured the new polar center, and sat staring at it dumbfounded.
Again he checked and rechecked his calculations. The unbelievable was true. The horrid though he had loathed to even consider sat rude and obvious in front of him. There was no room for mis-interpretation. The earth had traveled a tenth of the way through it's procession...
It had been roughly twenty six hundred years since he had left earth to study relativity aboard the Amalthea.
Simon noticed that, in a sick way, he had finally proven that Einstein had been right about time dilation, it didn't seem to have been worth it.
Everyone on the Amalthea had died when they crashed into the side of the alien ship, it had taken him a long time to come to terms with that fact. Now he was struck in the face with the fact that everyone residing on the earth when he had left it died of old age over the several days that followed the crash.
His parents? It was a given fact, that most children outlive their parents, but how was one to deal with outliving everyone?
How had Jayna died? he hadn't been there for her. He hadn't come back and married her as he had promised. Ludwig, had he finally written his literature before withering away to nothing?
What had happened to his sister?
He curled into a ball on the grass and sobbed.
“Everyone-Everything... gone.” he cried aloud. Grasping mentally for something familiar from his time that would survive the ravages of over two and a half millennia, he came up with an image of more weathered pyramids, stone henge, what about Hoover dam? It was probably still there... but Hoover dam helped little to console him. He hadn't dreamed of returning to Hoover Dam while trapped aboard the pink little bastards' ship. He had dreamed of putting his arms around Jayna, and eating a meal with his family.
Exe-Eye-Eye
Simon had awoken to find his right arm, leg, and part of his chest without feeling, and upon investigation, he had found that they had been replaced with some sort of metallic prosthetic that he couldn't move.
He had been struggling with the restraints on his left arm for about fifteen minutes before Simon saw his first alien.
The pink, wrinkled humanoid didn't wear clothing. It had 8 fingers per hand, all of which looked prehensile. The being stood at about 3 feet tall and stared at him with it's eerie crimson eyes, his head tilted slightly to the side.
“What do you want?” Simon barked. Letting up on his restraint struggling.
The creature only stood and watched him for a moment, then stepped forward, holding up a round black object. The lights dimmed, and the object projected a scene on the ceiling above the bed.
At first it was a triangular ship sitting in the blackness of space. After a brief moment, it disappeared and was replaced by a dotted outline. The view zoomed out to incorporate a view of the Amalthea, tiny in comparison to the first ship, flying straight towards it, spinning as it should to create artificial gravity.
Some sort of wave rippled out of the unknown ship twice, then the Amalthea struck the side of the ship, tearing open and breaking apart. There was little damage to the titan vessel. This view made Simon sick to his stomach.
The view then showed a schematic of the Amalthea with pictures of all thirty four crew members of the Amalthea in various states of pain, Simon saw himself being crushed by the laser power supply. then they started to fade out, one at a time. He knew what it meant, and if he had anything in his stomach he would have vomited it all over the shiny new metal parts he didn't want. As it was, though, he didn't, so he continued to watch as each and every picture faded out but his own. He watched as Alfredo's blood boiled and froze at the same time when he was ejected into open space through a hole in the front of the bridge.
He watched, horrified, as Shaye Kennedy grabbed his head, which had presumably banged against the wall that had a gruesome blood splatter on it. He sat at the base of the wall, hands pressed to his forehead, just above eyes that rolled into his oozing head, and his legs began to twitch.
The image became blurry from the tears that formed over Simon's eyes, but he could still see clearly enough to see when the box faded out of existence.
He dropped his head to his chest, not wanting to see more, but the pink creature lifted his head in time to see the last box aside from his own disappear.
Simon's eyes darted to the Alien, a plead for no more, and was surprised to get a sad understanding from the eyes that looked back at him, but only for a moment before they looked back up. Simon, reluctantly followed suit, to see little crafts, that looked like submersible submarines, extract him from the wreckage and bring him to the ship.
The video flicked off, and the lights peaked again. Simon continued to stare up at the ceiling where he had just watching his crew die. It didn't feel real, but he knew it was.
There was a light beep noise and suddenly he had feeling in the right side of his body.
Looking down, he saw that the alien had slipped to that side of the bed and was fiddling with the little black thing close to his arm.
He could move his arm and leg.
“Thank you.” he said, looking at the creature. “Thank you for saving my life.”
The little pink savior representative nodded his head in understanding, lossened the other restraints and set the little black thing down on the table next to the bed. The lights dimmed again, and video once again was projected onto the ceiling. This time it looked like an instruction manual for his new hardware.
Over the next few days, they started bringing him food and new videos, which he could only sometimes decode, and on occasion they would just come and stare at him.
After about a month, he came to the realization that he might not be headed home, then after a long attempted conversation, that included lots of picture drawing, he was able to portray that he was curiouse as to when he was returning to earth. He was then shown a video of the ship, speedily going around a large loop through the outer solar system, then back towards the sun.
Simon interpreted this as they would drop him off when they got around to it. This had been good enough for him.
It was boring, lonely and dull aboard the ship, but he had the idea that one day he might return home to his Jayna and his family to keep him going.
Exe-Eye-Eye-Eye
Simon stood at the edge of the cliff that overlooked miles and miles of sloping jungle terrain, the fuzzy glow of impending daylight seeped from the horizon. Had he been paying attention to it, Simon would have found it beautiful. As it was, though, he was looking down towards his feet, more specifically, past his feet, down the cliff face, plunging down a long ways, he didn't know, or care, how far. The angle distorted his ability to tell, he knew, but there was no mistaking, it was a long way down.
The distant hum of machinery caught his attention, he almost hadn't noticed it, that insistent buzzing had become part of his accepted background noise aboard the ship, it would have been perfectly natural to ignore it. He looked up to see a gargantuan ship lurking in the darkness over the jungle, it reminded him of a helicopter by how it moved, but the thing was huge, and it was too dark to see any details.
Was it a possible rescue? he wondered. Not likely, the thing had the feel of the Aspedochelon about it. What some might call rescue would be bringing him to a culture he didn't understand, and people he never should be allowed to know.
Everything he ever knew or loved, 2600 years dead and gone, most of it likely dust more than two thousand years before. He had fought so hard to keep his resolve and will to return home during his years aboard the alien vessel, but what is one to do upon finding that his reasons for survival had been scattered in the wind so long ago.
A spotlight illuminated him from the ship, it was at least a mile away, but somehow they had found him, and where now spot lighting him with a remarkably strong light that didn't seem to be scattering much at all, closer to a wide laser than his conventional idea of a spotlight. He took note, but wasn't much surprised. They were watching him.
His gasp took the form of the name “Jayna” as he threw his arms out to his side, spun around and leaned backwards off the edge, palms raised towards the sky.
Simon closed his eyes, the air rushed through his hair and thundered in his ears, then it was gone. He was warm, in bed with Jayna, breathing into the nape of her neck taking in the enchanting fragrance of her hair, His right arm was draped over her mid section and he could feel her every breath. 'I want to stay here forever,' he thought, but at the same time realized that wasn't possible. What if it had all been a dream, and this was the real world?
If only he could make himself believe that.
She shifted the weight of her naked body back into him slightly, “I love you, and always will, you know that right?” he asked, barely able to voice it louder than a whisper.
“you better, Mister.” she replied, turning just a little bit more towards him.
Planting a light kiss on her cheek as he got up, he pulled his hand from her body, savoring the feel of the final contact.
“I'm going away,” he said, then added “for a while.” He thought that last part was almost humorous in it's irony. The last joke he would ever make, and it was a doozy.
“What? Where?” she asked with a start. Damn, he had been hoping to not have to see her upset.
A distant phone ringing drifted through what sounded like a watery medium, the last piece of the puzzle clicked into place. This was his cue to leave.
“I love you Jayna. Get the phone.”
