This Weightless World, page 26
As you move away from everything you used to love at speeds approaching that of light, it’s good to know that which is close to you, that which you hold dearest, stays relatively the same. Physics, after all, does not need to be so kind. It just is.
L. is so close. She had no idea how close she’d be to me. In the end, Omni is so close, I could do the trip twenty more times in a lifetime, many more trips than Admiral Robert E. Peary took to the North Pole. Earth was so close, we didn’t know how close we were. We were so close to saving ourselves. For a century, we were almost there. People were pulling us into the future. Sweet Bennet sisters, if only you’d grown old, but history keeps each of us frozen, preserving us for the future, still coming of age, stunted in our ages of anxiety, paranoia, depression, and mania, stuck in the years of Ashurnasirpal II, Assad, Americans, the planet Omni. Memories. Don’t worry, though, Herodotus does not pass judgment. Herodotus does not say: It is clear you should have done this. Herodotus will be the first to admit it: You think you have the big picture, the whole cache, everything in its right place, but a cat ruffles some code and …
What will you do when I’m gone? I’d asked Herodotus.
I’ll re-create you, it said.
I wonder how many times I will be re-created on this journey. I wonder how many times I have been re-created already.
* * *
Mr. Bennet? Herodotus asks.
Yes, Herodotus? I reply.
Congratulations on your daughter Elizabeth’s marriage to Mr. Darcy.
Yes, it appears they needed only to abandon their prejudice and pride, respectively, to finally find happiness.
* * *
I have asked to hear a story from America this first night on Omni, a story from one of my nation’s moons, from a planet that haunts me with lunar resilience, from a time for which I still scream out at night, when everything was much closer—the internet, a bedsheet, away—before the tides gradually pulled her from me, the tides that the Moon herself caused …
* * *
From the start, I say to Herodotus.
Things are always beginning, beginning again and again. We have no say on beginnings. The start is a choice, where one pushes play. An enactment on time. Start.
The cellist starts. The library’s air-conditioning is kindling air.
I close my lonesome eyes. I really listen. The words go back to where they came from. You think you have it, the way it all fits together, from poems to mountaintops, it is five volumes long and called Kosmos, and then a madman named Darwin appears …
* * *
“Okay, Eason, you ready?”
“Hell no, I’m not ready.”
“We’re recording.”
“What should I talk about?”
“Whatever. Remember?”
“Who’s gonna listen to this?”
“Probably nobody.”
“Good.”
“And get that nice new cello of yours ready because you’re gonna play, too. Ready?”
“Sure.”
“OK, you can start—no, wait, let me time-stamp it. This is Severino del Toro, recording on the fourth floor of the Harold Washington Library in Chicago, Illinois, time and date: 4:57 P.M., Friday, January 12th, 2013. The speaker is Eason Wallace, age seventeen. OK, go ahead.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you: Linda Swanson-Davies and Susan Burmeister-Brown for publishing my first story. Marya Spence and Clare Mao for reading and redirecting this novel and finding it a home. Danny Vazquez for clarifying the story and bringing it to the world along with everyone else at Astra. For being an extraordinary copy editor Rachel Broderick. The Michener-Copernicus Society of America and Sally Lincoln and Dudley Davis at Beth’s House for material support. David Soto. Pablo Tinajero. Matt Iaculla. Rosemary Samuels. Zack Lazar. Matti Hautala. Austin Mobley. Chanda Grubbs, who was there the first day of the planet and read three versions of this novel and never gave up on it or me. Frank Leonardo. Jamie Rasmussen. Samir Bakhshi, Sandy Guttman, Brady Myers, and Barry O’Keefe. My mishpocha, the Dexheimer-Chotzinoffs. St. James Alan McPherson and the Keokuk Social Club: Marcus Burke, Nick Butler, Eddie Chuculate, Jessica Dwelle, CJG, Christina Kaminski, Kannan Mahadaven, and Scott Smith. My fellow and former faculty members at school and our incredible students and their families. My ASF family, Adeena Reitberger, Rebecca Markovits, Nate Brown, and Erin McReynolds. Michael Noll, Bethany Hegadus, and Claire Campbell. For her mentorship, friendship, guidance, and poetry, Monica Berlin. For his mentorship and exemplary life as a teaching artist, Robin Metz—we miss you. For introducing me to Art History and critical theory, Greg Gilbert. And to Michelle Huneven, who took seriously a young man who was desperately unserious, you were Iowa to me. Sam Chang, Deb West, and Connie Brothers and everyone at the IWW. Ma, Dad, Al, Tithi, Steve, Stephanie, Grandma, Dad the dad, Itty Bitty Mims, cousin Kat, Martin, Ashleigh, George, Tilden, Sarah Xel, Jesse, Tithi Berdna, Tío Aurelio, Carlos, Ivan, Marilin, and Christian. My constant companion, Napoleon the cat. And Robin Grace, who reads every word and lives more stories than I can write. I love you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Adam Soto is a co-web editor at American Short Fiction. He holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is a former Michener-Copernicus Foundation Fellow. He lives with his wife in Austin, Texas, where he is a teacher and a musician. This Weightless World is his first novel.
Adam Soto, This Weightless World
