The Dance, page 12
“My decision is final. It’s over, Eric.” Amelia stated, and as the man became increasingly threatening, Amelia made her final argument: “I will call the police and ask for a restraining order if you harass me in any way. No threats and no violent gestures. And don't forget, dear Eric, about our prenuptial agreement: you could lose everything we've made together, the joint assets, if I bring proof of your infidelity.” Eric said nothing more, he realized that the woman in front of him was very determined.
Amelia was certain she had made the right choice. Her biggest fear had always been living a comfortable lie. Now, she embraced the painful truth, starting the year with a metaphorical cold plunge for the greater good. Soon after their agreement, she was driving back home from her lawyer’s office. When a judge finally ruled in her favour, Amelia’s decision became reality. Amelia knew the pain she felt now would eventually be a distant memory. Her reverie was broken by a sudden jolt. The car in front of her had failed to change lanes, causing a minor collision with her vehicle. The driver exited his car and under the glare of the headlights, Amelia recognized him—he was the man from her peaceful future, the one who had held her in his arms. Despite the circumstances, a feeling of warmth washed over her.
Amelia smiled with renewed hope, just days after finally parting ways with her husband. Standing under the falling snowflakes, she thanked the woman who had given her a glimpse into her alternate futures. As Amelia spoke with the driver about their minor accident, the image of her confined in a desolate asylum started to fade, replaced by a more promising future.
SEEING IT ALL
Kellee Kranendonk
EVER SINCE I CAME BACK from Alusinar I’ve been able to see things.
You see, for every choice we make, there are alternate paths we could have chosen, each one having a different result. But sometimes we don’t have a choice.
I see all the alternatives. It’s like seeing your reflection in a broken mirror, each shard reflecting a version of you. Except these are real. Different planes of reality, different universes, I’m not sure. But I am sure that each person in each “piece of glass,” each reality or universe, is as real as I am and is living her best life. Well, my life. And maybe not my best.
It’s difficult to decide which is a best life when faced with so many versions. When I first realized the ability I had, I watched intently as they played out in front of me. There was always a better one, or a worse one. But they were all fascinating; I couldn’t wait to see the next one. I barely slept at night, but I didn’t care. It was like watching your favourite movies looped eternally.
I finally learned how to “turn it off.” It’s never really off, but I figured out how to stop watching. I can’t really describe how, not to anyone who’s never had this experience. The best explanation might be that it’s like learning a second language. You train yourself to recognize the sounds associated with certain symbols. The knowledge is always there, but it only comes out when you want or need it to.
Or maybe it’s more like being an explorer, trained by the Air Force how to deal with varying life forms. You learn the rules of the how so well you can recite them in your sleep. Once you’ve done that, you can break them.
Maybe it’s both of those things. All I know for sure is that now it’s not as exciting. I sleep pretty good at night now that I don’t need to see all the variations. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t enjoy it. It’s just that it’s not a movie marathon anymore. Rather, it’s a part of me, just like breathing.
Let me tell you about a few of the ones I’ve seen. It’s not like I have anything else to do, stuck here on planet Earth, in this loony bin, in the room with the white padded walls. In this universe, you all think I’m crazy, even though I know I’m not. Tell me what you think when I’ve finished.
In one universe, I’m on a planet called Scud. It has three moons, each one a different distance away. Two of them are colonized. The third, we’re not sure about. My team and I are studying it.
I have three kids, grown in a lab because I wanted children, not a partner. I think I’m crazy in this universe—
The kids and I climb into our jitney and fasten our life belts. I program the route before it can ask. I wonder, not for the first time, why they can’t make these things memorize daily routes.
I lean back and close my eyes while the kids bicker among themselves. Our morning norm.
The first stop is the girls’ school. They’re twins. That is, they’re both the same age, and they’ve both tested to be trained in the lab technician field. But they don’t share DNA. Audette has long blonde curls cascading down her back that she always wears loose, never tied up, has the purple-blue eyes that only a Scudian can have, and is tall for her age. She’s quiet and overall quite a pleasant child.
Andel is the dramatic one. She keeps her straight brown hair cut short because “every time I brush it out, it just gets tangled again, and it’s too hard to wash.” Oh, the poor child. It’s not like Audette doesn’t struggle to keep her curls untangled and washed.
Audette quietly climbs out of the jitney, but Andel makes an emotional exit, as if this is the last time she’ll see me for a long time. I take a moment to calm her, holding her face in my hands. I look into eyes that are black as night and remind her that I will be back to pick her up after school. I don’t add that I do this every day, and that I’ve never not picked her and her sister up. If I say that, she’ll just become even more dramatic. She may feel a bit inferior because she’s shorter than Audette, but mostly I think it’s just who she is: she enjoys drama and the attention it gains her.
Audette takes her sister’s hand, and they head for the floating building that houses their school. I turn to my son, who is several birth-cycles older than his sisters. “Anesh, ready to join me at work today?”
“Yeah, anything is better than school. It’s boring!” He looks at me with those same dark eyes that Andel has, excitement shining in them. He has the same straight brown hair as she does, but he chooses to wear it long and tied back with colourful bands. I guess he has no problems keeping it tangle-free.
I chuckle. He definitely gets his attitude from me. Not that I’ve ever voiced it, but I sure thought it when I was his age.
“This is going to be so cool,” he says. “What planet are we studying?”
“We?” I cock an eyebrow at him.
“Isn’t that why I’m coming with you? So we can study together?” He’s not even a bit snarky. He’s totally serious. And right, of course.
“Alusinar-M3. Have you talked about that one in school?”
When Anesh had done his skill testing, he fit into the same category as me. Scientist of Planet Studies. This is his last year of school training, largely consisting of field work. Like accompanying me to the planetarium.
“No,” he says, responding to my question. “Because it’s not inhabited.”
“Right.” I’d forgotten that. When I was in school, the dark moon (as it was called then, now it’s called Valia-M2) wasn’t inhabited, so we only studied Kor-M1.
“Well, you may be in for a treat.”
We arrive at the Planetarium, and I attempt to save the route I’d taken today. I know better, but I’m determined to find a way to save it. Failing yet again, I power down the jitney, and we head in.
Inside, on my desk, I find an actual handwritten note in Scuddish, the common language on this planet. There are several others—I speak four of them—but the particular scientist who wrote this note only speaks the one. And she’s fascinated with ancient techniques. No one has written anything by hand for at least three hundred birth-cycles, probably longer.
Check the ’scope. Call me and tell me what you think!!!
I get excited and head for the ’scope, as the note instructs. For a moment, I forget Anesh is with me. Then he says, “Mamae, what’s that?”
I whirl back to him, slightly startled, and laugh. “That’s a very old way of communication called handwriting.” I know he can understand the words, but the concept itself is alien to him. He stares at the note, at the lines and loops, the smooth ink absorbed into the paper, trying to wrap his brain around it. I swear I can hear jitney gears grinding.
“She wants you to check the ’scope and call her. Why?”
“Let’s find out!” I rush over and peer into the lens, adjusting things as I try to see what my co-scientist wanted me to see. At first I don’t see anything and am disappointed. What is it I’m supposed to see? I move the ’scope slightly. Surely she would have left it in position, but maybe she’d bumped it in her excitement without realizing it. It happens sometimes.
Then, I see it. My heart pounds with enthusiasm I can barely contain. “It’s a structure. Brand new. Anesh, do you know what that means?”
“That there’s life on Alusinar M-3?”
“One hundred per cent correct.”
I pull the comconn out of my pocket and connect with sound only. I don’t need to see her face—I know I’d see my own excitement reflected in it.
Anesh listens as we squeal like school children getting a free day when the weather’s bad. He tries—and fails—to hide his own grin, but the exhilaration is too contagious.
“Santha, you’ve seen it?”
“I have.”
“Are you willing to head up the team that’ll be sent there?”
“Willing? I’m demanding to head up the team!”
She laughs. “I’ll make the arrangements.”
Anesh had been so jealous that I’d gotten to make this trip that he’d almost been angry. Of course, he understands why he can’t accompany me and has settled for bragging to his class.
Although the structure on Alusinar M.3 suggests there’s life, we fail to find anything. We’d searched first with our own senses—seeing the structure, smelling a sour earth kind of scent that hung heavy in the air, but hearing nothing. No people, birds or insects. I swear I felt something, not physical but sort of a whisper in the back of my mind. No one else did, though, so I think it must have been my imagination.
Our handhelds bleeped and flashed, but nothing registered. We even scooped some dirt, but other than a bacterium that barely registered, even that was lacking life forms. It seemed the trip was a bust.
Unfortunate because space travel is expensive, and if we don’t find something, our funding might be revoked.
“There aren’t any other structures,” notes my teammate, Randa. Short and stocky with an almost perfect, blemish-free face, I mistook her for a child the first time I met her. She has the perfect shade of smooth lilac skin to match her purple-blue eyes. It makes me a little jealous because my skin is very light with sprinkles of violet freckles and my eyes are a dull blue.
Her statement is pointless and she knows it.
“But something, or someone, built this,” I say. Another pointless statement.
I wander around the structure, a pyramidal shape with a domed top and short “arms” sticking out about mid-point from each side. It seems to be made from the very dirt it sits on. Alusinar M.3 is all thick, black dirt, which is easily moulded (our feet press into the ground leaving impressions, but our boots aren’t muck-sucked) and foggy atmosphere. No trees, no grass, one moon and one sun, mostly obscured by the ever-present mist.
There doesn’t seem to be a way in. No doors, no windows. Just walls and angles—if it is made of this dirt, I’m certain something has been added to strengthen it. Then, I notice something we’d all missed. Symbols. Carved or drawn onto the walls are symbols I don’t recognize. Not as a language, nor as any kind of pictographs. The closest thing I can think of to describe them is many multi-fingered hands all intertwined.
I stand next to Randa studying the marks, and I reach out to trace one with my finger. As if touching something electrified, a spark leaps into the air and a tingle shoots up my arm. A million voices scream inside my head. I know they’re saying words, but I can’t make a single one out. Images of the symbols form in my mind, as if they’d come to life. They move, as if swaying in a wind.
Another spark sears my brain, and I find myself in the space jet, on my way home. Randa sits beside me.
“You’re awake.”
“Yeah. What happened to me?”
“You reached out to touch the structure and were knocked unconscious. Santha, you were barely breathing. I wasn’t sure you were going to make it.”
“Well, here I am,” I joke. I don’t remember anything.
Not yet. I will later, but by then our orders will be to study Alusinar M.3 via ’scope only. I won’t be pleased about it, but there’ll be nothing I can do.
A few months later our attentions turn elsewhere. We never did figure out who built the structure or what it was for. No others were built during the time we studied it. Alusinar M.3 is still on our radar, but if there’s life there, it isn’t showing itself. We have other planets to study. As for me, I’m fine. At least for the time being. Occasionally I get a flash memory of the images from the structure. I can’t help but wonder if it was a warning of some kind.
My parents have passed on now, but at least they got to see me graduate from every institute I attended, got to hear all about my first space trip. I’m glad they’re not here to see me sitting here in this white padded room. They would believe me.
I don’t regret any of it, though. If I had the chance I’d still go to Alusinar. But I’d take the time to look around more, listen, do something, anything to understand what happened to me and why. Maybe then, my doctors wouldn’t want me to take drugs to stop what they call “hallucinations.” I tried to tell them I can control it, and when they didn’t believe that, I told them the hallucinations had stopped. I don’t think they believed that, either, because they still try to give me the pills.
I pretend to take them, but I hide them under my tongue. Later, I either flush them down the toilet or the sink, or I crush them into dust then sprinkle it into my leftover food. They haven’t caught on. Yet. You’re not going to tell them, are you? If anything is making me crazy, it’s the doctors and nurses.
Why don’t they understand? The whole point of space travel is to meet new life forms. At least, for me it is. So what if one of those life forms is sharing space with my intelligence? Some human women share their bodies with an entire life form or two.
Do any of you care? Are you even listening? Can you hear me at all? I’m sorry that I don’t have nice neat conclusions to my stories. It’s because I don’t know the endings. Not yet. They’re like life, ongoing. Let me share another one.
Another shard. Another planet. Another life. My home planet in this reality is called Resh, but I don’t live there.
I sit in the dining room of the space station and look out the window. From my position, I can see the planet Alusinar. It’s uninhabited due to extremely dense cloud cover. That’s our best guess, anyway. I mean, it’s habitable, but who really wants to live in thick fog day in and day out? I have this strange sense about Alusinar, like I’ve been there, but I’m forgetting the trip (although that’s not likely). It’s like feeling nostalgia for a place you’ve never been. I don’t understand it, myself, so I’ve never tried to explain it to anyone.
Still, it draws me, fascinates me. I have this burning desire to know everything there is to know about it. I’ve asked some of the races that have joined us here about it, but none of them know any more about it than we do, and so far, we haven’t taken a great interest in it. Not when there are so many other planets surrounding the station with races that come here to mingle every day.
Sometimes, I miss my home planet, my friends and my family (Mom, Dad, siblings; I’d never married nor had kids). But then, I remind myself that I’d chosen this path. I’d wanted to come here, to study planets and other life forms. It usually doesn’t take much to convince myself I’m living my best life here.
“Hey, Santha!”
“Care to share those thoughts?”
My friends Trinda and Ranesh join me at the table. Like me, Trinda is tall. Unlike me, she has very curvy curves and, like most Reshers, she has long luxurious black hair which offsets her pink skin. Me, I ended up with pale hair which offsets nothing. Because it’s not common, most people say I’m lucky. I guess I probably am, but not because of my hair.
Ranesh is not from Resh, although people like to make silly rhymes with his name that suggests he is. He’s actually from Earth, from a place called India. He tells me not everyone on that planet has his beautiful chocolate brown skin, and I think that’s sad. I also think I could fall in love with Ranesh if he had that kind of interest in me. He has a partner, though.
Maybe someday I’ll be lucky enough to visit India on Earth and meet another human being as beautiful as Ranesh.
They’re each carrying a tray of colourful food. They enjoy trying the various alien foods available here. Me, not so much. I generally stick to the food I know.
Ranesh’s tray has blue and red foods, the ones from Oreth that are supposed to be the healthiest food in the galaxy (his boyfriend is Orethian). There’s noshok, which is all blue plant matter, mashed into glop.
He also has a chunk of red bramist meat, a blue ruzza-fruit for dessert, and a tall glass of red juice that I’ve never learned the name for.
Trinda is the absolute opposite, with her tray full of odd food, what Ranesh calls junk food. Yellow root chips fried in the oil of your choice, and bright green, sour, shivery jio for dessert. Her drink of choice is a thick sweet drink called chokshara. I’m not sure where that stuff was brought in from, but I know she’ll taunt Ranesh as she dramatically savours each mouthful. He, in turn, will “lecture” her about eating healthier, though Ranesh will eat odd food on occasion. Neither of them is antagonistic, they just enjoy their friendly little game.
