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The days passed quickly and slowly, sometimes both at once, sometimes without touching. Time was folding in on itself, running back to front, upside down, and yet still marching forward towards the end of this cycle and the handover to Paz, just days away. For every gap in my memory, where I woke disoriented and aching, unsure of where my own body ended, there was another where the new shape of time felt natural.
Sometimes Sol wasn’t there, but more often he was. More present and solid than before. He was becoming the physical version of the illusion he had made for me. Now when he took a breath it seemed to matter – his shoulders would relax with the rush of oxygen. I would catch his eyelids fluttering at the end of a long day, as though he could tire. But still, how could I be sure that the human attributes I prescribed were real? Isolation is a powerful hallucinogen. No matter how human he seemed, the Vigilant bent around him, time bent around him, and increasingly, so did I.
Something was shifting in me, too. More than my mirrored organs and my time loss... the space I took up in the universe seemed constantly in flux, air and gravity beginning to warp around me just like it did for Sol. Matter moved to match my intent, shortening distances under my stride and removing barriers from my reach - sparing me from physical effort.
Perhaps it was necessary - the change - to be able to survive him...
✧ ✹ ✧
I could see Sol out of the corner of my eye. He was leaning on a tabletop and there was a distinct crease in his jumpsuit where his thigh met metal – he hadn’t had such physicality even just a few days ago.
I shouldn’t have been able to see him from where I was sitting at the recording console. He should have been almost directly behind me. But the room bent around me, and around him, so that almost the entire space was visible to me. I didn’t think he knew that I could see him though, because without my full attention on him, his expression was completely blank. I tried not to look too closely, and to instead focus on my log.
“Cycle 237, Day 25. Eidon A is behaving strangely – beyond modelling and predicted margin for error. Between yesterday’s entry and a few minutes ago it remained entirely stable, with no flaring and no measurable change in mass – all orbiting planets showed tidal and atmospheric readings comparable to those taken before the Eidon project even began construction. Current readings show dramatically increased flares and other indicators of accelerated collapse – beyond what has been seen over the past week. The Vigilant’s systems do appear to be functioning correctly when recalibrated against neighbouring systems, so my current hypothesis is that collapse is simply less steady than we predicted.”
Behind me, Sol’s mouth twitched in a smile, no doubt enjoying the irony of ‘my kind’ trying to predict the unpredictable. Or perhaps I had just given away that he was in view.
“Note for Paz: I recommend that we continue to take more regular manual readings and set up automated measurements to take place overnight – I will be doing so for the next five days until handover.”
I ended the log and spun my chair around to face him, but immediately regretted it. In motion, I could feel my organs sliding over one another, twisting and untwisting as a sickening sloshing sound echoed around my head. I held my breath and screwed my eyes shut as I waited for them to re-find their places, resisting the urge to look down where I knew from experience that I would see my stomach distending and pushing against the hold of my jumpsuit.
In a moment I felt warmth surrounding me, and although I could still feel movement, it felt right, for my body to be coming undone this way. When I opened my eyes Sol was squatting right in front of me, looking up through long jet-black lashes, hand on the arm of the chair as though steadying it would steady me.
I let out a heavy breath. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure, Aniara.” Graceful as a cat he stood, offering me his hand which I took gratefully. “I have not heard you leave a note for your crew before.”
“I didn’t feel like I needed to before now. Or that they would believe the things I wanted to tell them...” I wrinkled my nose and gave him a pointed look, which he charitably ignored.
“But you believe the star’s changes are now significant enough to mention?”
“Yes. And-” I twirled a lock of hair around my finger as we walked, “it’s not long until Paz wakes up. I’m looking forward to seeing them, and I don’t want them to be lonely once I go back into stasis.”
He hesitated in his stride, just enough to put us out of step for a moment, and smiled at me, I thought a little sadly. “Tell me about them. All of them.”
So I did. We settled into place on a bunk, me curled into a corner and him stretched across the rest of the mattress, long and elegant and bent just slightly beyond how human joints should bend.
For a moment, I couldn’t look away from him, even as it was all I wanted to do, like passing an accident on the motorway. His limbs draped so casually, but the geometry was wrong. Whoever had constructed him had done it from a checklist, without a reference. Not quite grotesque, but almost.
My own joints felt just as stretched, and I couldn’t tell if I was just unsettled from looking at him, or if I too was twisted into unnatural shapes. I shuffled where I sat, trying to rid myself of the sensation, and all at once he settled into place. Comfortable, and safe. I felt my fear melt away under his warmth.
I told him about Rowan’s brusque, secretly-caring attitude, how he’d passed every physical and mental test with a quiet self-assuredness that I couldn’t quite wrap my head around – and how that drove me crazy at times. I described Paz ‘s vivid eyes and doodles in every margin, how they made every space they entered feel alive, and about our many horticultural projects over the years, both on Earth and here on the Vigilant. I hesitated when he asked about Lena. What might he do, if he knew them all? Should I keep a piece of them to myself? I still felt sure that he would leave, without me here, but I had always been a wishful thinker...
As always, he didn’t push, just watched me quietly, tucking the blanket over my feet as I mulled over what to do. And as always, in the end, I told him all about Lena. About how she had steadied me in training, and ever since. How she was always neat, and composed, and could step off a 30-hour observation shift and still exude warmth. How in a lot of ways, she was like him. Or he was like her...
“Paz will wake up in just a few days... The handovers are my favourite time, when I can tell them all about how the star has changed. I think they’re the only people who’ve ever really known me. They’re my family,” I gnawed on my lip, “at least, the family I still have...”
He stilled, breath halting in a sharp reminder that it wasn’t needed. His eyes softened like he knew what I was admitting. “You left your family to be here.” It wasn’t a question.
“My parents, yeah... Eidon A was all I ever wanted. I told them, told myself if I'm being honest, that it was for the future of humanity, whatever that means. But it wasn’t. It was for me. To see my star, up close. I think they knew it, too.” I tilted my head back, staring at an unnatural dark spot in the corner of my ceiling. “They’re dead, now.”
Somewhere out there my star was flickering, on its way to join them in whatever came after. I wasn’t sure whether it was my warped vision, or my imagination, or an after-image of Sol’s swirling starlight-eyes, but I could see Eidon A there, in the corner, as though I had turned the many layers of steel to glass.
When at last I looked down, Sol was right before me. I hadn’t felt him move on the mattress, but his face was only inches from mine. He looked intently into my eyes, unblinking, and I was held captive looking back. The air seemed to thicken around me – inside me – pressing at my ribs, my limbs, my throat, like great hands were holding me still. I couldn’t move a muscle even if I wanted to. I didn’t think that I did though - want to.
“You dreamed of the star your whole life, and now you are here.” His voice was thick as the air, heavy with intensity, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, “Is it everything you wanted?”
His question cut like a knife, and I believed it was meant to. Was the sacrifice worth it? I had avoided the question even as it hung in my mind every waking moment, afraid of what my answer made me.
“Yes.”
A shiver ran through him, so quick he seemed to blur at the edges, and like that the pressure was gone. He reclined back, a lazy smile playing on his plush lips, eyes half closed and heavy lidded, curls in casual disarray. He looked as though he had just been kissed, and I was mesmerised. I slumped back myself, the wall turning soft where my bruised head hit it, preventing further damage.
We stayed like that for I don't know how long, at either end of the bed, only breaking eye contact to blink.
✧ ✹ ✧
I dreamt of being outside the ship again, close enough to touch Eidon A.
It was beautiful, of course. A field of stars spread out endlessly beneath my bare feet, the light bending around me like soft earth, and above them all, my star. I could see the collapse now, how the bursts of colour fell inwards instead of reaching out, long-fingered and desperate. Like it had accepted its death, and become all the more beautiful for it, diamond-refracting the remaining sparks of its life.
I reached down, brushing my fingers through the stars like dandelion seeds, and like those delicate seeds, they collapsed under my touch. One by one, they began to melt, light dripping in molten rivers around my ankles, until it began to reach up my legs.
My skin gave way like wax, sloughing off me in sheets that glowed the same gold and violet as Eidon A, and my eyes slid our of place, rolling down my body like teardrops. I tried to move my legs, to run from the stars that burnt my flesh, but I was stuck fast. My fingers too had become soft, webbing together, collapsing. I could feel a scream building, tearing at my throat and lungs, but somehow I couldn't get it out.
Somewhere in the distance the light parted. Or something blocked it. Tall, unnaturally angular, its edges weeping darkness into it's surroundings, looming ever closer.
I wrenched awake, tangled in damp sheets, reeking of ozone and burnt hair. The air was crackling faintly, like as red-hot poker plunged into water. In the far corner, exactly where the shadows met, stood that same silhouette dripping black. Its edges shimmered as though painted in oil, it's darkness spreading, eating into my space and my air, a single bead of night sliding in reverse up the wall.
I tried to scream, but when I opened my mouth it folded back into me, air collapsing suffocatingly, down my throat. I needed to get it out, out, out out out! The shape tilted its head as though listening to the sound I couldn't make. I opened my mouth wider, pressure building and darkness growing until I was sure I was about to burst -
- and then Sol was there.
In the same corner of the room, just watching. The black figure was gone, or swallowed into him, or waiting behind him, blocked by his dark radiance.
The scream finally choked out of me in a gasping, ragged sob, and then he was beside me, all gentleness, all comfort. The lights began to rise in a soft sunrise-glow. My breath stuttered shallow, and the warm air rolled down my throat like a balm for the claw marks my scream had left.
His voice was tender with concern, "Aniara."
I buried my face in my knees to hide the fat tears rolling down my cheeks, and didn't answer.
✧ ✹ ✧
Hydrophonics was the only place aboard that didn't smell of ozone, now. It wasn't a bad smell, but it set my teeth on edge - a constant reminder of how very close I was to the vacuum of space.
I took a deep inhale of the green, damp air as we entered, relief washing over me once again. I told Sol I needed to check on the vats, but I really just wanted to get away from the smell. It seemed I hadn't needed to check them at all since I first brought him here. In fact, re-growth had surged, almost back to 95% of optimal levels, though I hadn't changed anything in the way I was treating them.
I jotted a few notes on the board, finding the pen conveniently already in my hand, and scooped some of the most developed algae into the mulcher for processing, with Sol watching carefully from where he stood, his hand hovering centimetres over one of the vats. The algae seemed to strain after his long fingers as he made tender stroking motions in the air above it.
"How much of this sustains your life, Aniara, and how much sustains the rest of the crew?"
My eyes were on him like a shot, and I spat hotly, "There's no reason for you to know that, since we're all here and we all need air."
His voice was infuriatingly calm when he replied, "I meant no harm, I am simply curious about the effects of their stasis. I already told you, as long as these sustain you, they will be safe."
"And what about the crew? Paz, Rowan, Lena, they all sustain me too." My voice still felt harsh, even as I took a step towards him.
Something in his eyes flickered and his hand stilled over the algae. "Do they?"
"Yes," I said, almost in a whisper. "Of course they do. People aren't meant to be alone."
We stayed in a heavy silence the rest of the day, like the air had thickened once more. I wasn't sure if I was waiting for his contradiction, or affirmation, but neither came.
✧ ✹ ✧
I sat at the recording desk, shoulders heavy and thigh throbbing from a long run.
"Cycle 237, entry fourteen. Eidon A's collapse is becoming more erratic. The impact on Eidon Ab, c, and h's tides has increased along with it, but b still appears within habitable conditions. Provided the theoretical infrastructure is tsunami ready... Sixteen days remaining in this cycle, our current predictions point to Eidon A's full collapse in cycle 241. My next turn awake, if you all let me wake up again, after this. I can still feel the presence. I have not made contact... I won't."
With a sharp click I ended the recording. Entry fourteen... fourteen. That wasn't right... I had made this recording before, hadn't I? I should only have a few days left, not sixteen.
I was sure...
But there was the case of daily vitamins I kept by the recording desk to make sure I took them each morning, only half empty…
I looked up at the clock over the door. It flickered for a moment, numbers tumbling over one another like raindrops. My stomach lurched as they flipped between the past and an impossible future: Cycle 237, day fourteen; Cycle 237, day two; Cycle 237, day eighty-three, Cycle 237, day fourteen; before stilling. Cycle 237, day twenty-seven.
Of course it was day twenty-seven, I had just been telling Sol about how the handover process would go in a few days.
Something was slipping through my fingers. Had I been in a different day? Like sand, I couldn't hold onto idea.
Why was I confused, again?
✧ ✹ ✧
Sol found me on the floor. I wasn't sure how long I had been there. He said he wasn't either, but I didn't know if I could believe him - even when he's not with me, I know he's not really gone.
I must have fallen getting out of the shower. My leg was twisted under me at an unnatural angle, and later when I tried to test standing my quad under the old bruise seemed incapable of supporting my weight. I felt as though someone had flayed away the muscle, and taken a chisel to the bone of my hip where it twisted. I lay on the floor, towel barely covering me, and looked up at him through kaleidoscopic tear-blurred vision, too scared to move without knowing how bad the damage was.
He was on his knees in a moment, hands hesitating to touch just above my damp skin.
"Can I?"
He held so still while he waited for me to reply, but I couldn't make the words come. Instead I just nodded my head limply, jaw quivering, and waited for the pain of being moved.
But it didn’t come.
He moved with inhuman carefulness as though he thought I might shatter, cradling me behind my shoulders and under the crook of my knees. When he stood I could feel bone grinding on bone, muscle tearing further and filling with dark blood, and I knew it should have been agony – that I should have been screaming - but all I could feel was his touch. His fingertips seared my skin until the contact was all I could think of.
He laid me down gently on the mattress, scooping a pillow under my head and adjusting the covers so that they supported my injured leg, but he didn’t withdraw. One hand remained pressed against my side, as though poised to pull away the towel. The other held my wrist lightly, and I could feel my pulse flickering, mirrored in the pad of his thumb.
I should have pulled away, but I didn’t.
Instead I stared at him: at the way his lashes were fluttering, refracting light in shades of blue and violet; at his lips, parted just slightly, as though about to let out a breath; at his thumb making feather-light circles over the thin skin over my purple veins. And at last, at his eyes, at the starlight and galaxies and kaleidoscopes of colour held in them.
Time folded around us, and still we didn’t move.
Hours passed. It was dark, then light, then both and neither. I wasn’t sure when he had laid me down, or how long I had stared at him. I only knew that neither of us had stirred, not even to take a breath, since. But my vision remained unclouded, my lungs didn’t ache or clench for air. I simply didn’t need to breathe, right now. Maybe I had never needed to breathe. I wasn’t sure I could, even if I had wanted to.
Panic came too late. I did need to breathe. I had always needed to breathe. But I didn’t know how. How to make myself do something that had always been unthinking?
I opened my mouth and waited for instinct to kick in, but nothing came. My ribs were locked tight, my chest still. But now my vision was blurring, dizzying black in my periphery, a deep red tinge the telltale sign of bursting blood vessels - and still I couldn’t take a breath.
Sol tilted his head and watched me for a moment, studying me like a butterfly with crushed wings cradled in his hands. And then he pressed a palm flat against my sternum.
More searing heat. Pressure. A strange liquid sensation, as though my skin were melting around fingers reaching inside of me and curling around my organs. He squeezed, and my lungs finally convulsed like startled animals.
Air rushed in with violent life, electric against oxygen-starved alveoli. I twisted onto my side, pain from my hip finally shooting through my body as I coughed and choked and sucked in air like it might vanish again at any moment.
After a long while I was able to return my focus to the warmth of his hand, still resting on my chest. I looked up at him, a vengeful god, a forgiving god, and met his eyes once more.
“So quickly, you forgot. But of course, you persist in holding your shape...” His gaze flickered through concern, hunger, reverence, and back again. “I am sorry Aniara, I promise I will not allow that to happen again.”
I fell asleep eventually, breathing steady, with warm fingers carding rhythmically through my hair.
