Dark Star
Posted Oct-28-2024
You’d think they’d keep the atmospherics comfortable for the colonists if we’re so goddamned important. But here I am freezing the hairs off my taint in the hallway. The sweat didn’t help. Neither did my lack of clothes.
“Can you at least give me back my-”
My arms flew up to shield my face from the shotgun blast—left sock, right sock, shirt, wrist pad, pants. At least the pellets were soft. I let my arms down too early and learned that my shoe wasn’t. I should have cut my losses there.
“What about the oth-” The second shoe flew into my nose and plopped soundlessly on the floor, cushioned by the pile of fabric. Clara affixed me with a grimaced glare. With one hand tight on the bed sheets shielding her from me, she grabbed the door with her other and slammed it shut. A final vestige of warm perfume wafted over me before it all blended into the cold sterility of the hallway. I suppressed a sneeze.
I dressed quickly. The smart fabric began to readjust to my size and wick away the moisture. My wrist pad would take longer; it had been roughly treated beneath Clara’s weight, then mine, then both of ours. I walked alone back to my quarters. My steps echoed. I curled my feet so I didn’t make a sound. The last thing I needed was the feeling of being followed. Until I heard another set of footsteps coming towards me and realized that was worse.
“Lanny? You alright?” Rhoden asked, looking me up and down.
“Fine. Rhodey,” I said. I regretted my tone there. That was unnecessarily terse. But it did the job; Rhoden kept walking without engaging further. He was a good sport. He usually was. And he certainly didn’t need to know our business to keep beat on the skins. I made it to my quarters without being accosted further by company. I stripped, put in a couple minutes in the ultrasonic shower, then bought the farm for the night. We had a big day tomorrow.
--
4113 A.D. Summer, Night
“You see that up there?”
“I see it.”
“It’s the biggest one yet.”
“Yes it is.”
“And they asked us! The Dysfunctional Xesperados! We’re finally going places. Didn’t I tell you?”
“I’m really proud of you, Lanny.” The corners of her mouth curled like a leaf in the breeze. She wasn’t looking at the starlight. She was looking through the night, straight into my eyes.
--
Now
“What’s with the get-up?” Bronson said lazily.
“It’s the atmospherics,” I said. “I don’t know why they have it so low. And ‘get-up’? It’s a sweater.”
The door to the auditorium hissed open. Clara walked through, yawning. Bronson immediately turned, suddenly alive. I tried not to make a face. I wished he made it less obvious. Luckily Clara didn’t notice. She never did.
“Hey, guys. Lanny, you look like shit,” Clara said.
I wanted to clap back, but looking at her face I saw that she must have been joking. It was such a Clara thing to say. She must be back to normal.
I took a breath. “Good morning to you t-”
A clatter behind us brought a jolt to my shoulders.
“Sorry,” Rhoden said sheepishly. He rushed to set up the kit again. Bronson rolled his eyes. Clara made an exasperated noise. I sighed and came over to help him.
Bronson brought his hands together in a singular, rousing clap. “Alright, let’s hope the rest of the morning goes better than this,” he said. He slung his multicordion over his tall frame. Long fingers flipped the knobs and levers, adjusting the frequencies in the hundreds of filters inside. Analog current coursed through the instrument. Pure electronic audio came out. Bronson deftly tuned the machine until it sounded just right. It could’ve all been automatic, but that wasn’t our way. It’s what made us different.
Rhoden finished erecting the kit and began his warm-up. He was mellifluous, precise, but not mechanically dull. His rhythm had soul that procedural generation just couldn’t match. Clara took up her guitar—the Siamese Seraphim—and brought it to life. Six strings, two necks, all under her control, like all things that held her fickle passion.
Then there was me. I was to the front and right of Rhoden. Bronson to one side, Clara to the left. I swept the stand off the ground, raising it until the amplifier ring floated three inches from my lips. Cold air poured into my chest. It takes a second to build.
Then I breathed fire, Rhoden swung down—the twin oaken tapers drawing executioner’s swings onto skin and brass, Bronson’s multicordion growled in half a dozen voices, and the Seraphims sang in their immolation. We played until there was nothing left, until everything went black.
--
4113 A.D. Summer, Night
“They’re loading it up,” I said. I pointed at the sky. That was where I wanted her to look. It was dark except for the twinkling stars. One was brighter than most. It was moving ever so slightly.
“It’s beautiful,” the new Aoede said.
“Watch.”
A black hand curled around the star. The night returned. The crickets had our audience once again.
“The next one’s in a week,” I said.
“How many more?”
“I don’t know? We’re going pretty far. Four whole light-years. We’d need a lot of fuel.”
“A long way away.”
“Yeah.”
“Are you happy?”
“I don’t know. Are you?”
“If you are.”
--
Now
We put away our instruments. I indulged and took a water shower. Today had been a good day. If our conditioning goes well for the next couple of weeks we’d… play in front of a hundred thousand faces.
I see them chant. Our lyrics sing back at us with amplified fervor. Then at the end I leap off the stage into a hundred arms like a centipede on its back.
It had been a long time since I had this fantasy. Maybe the change of environment was exactly what I needed. The farther we moved from the Erde-Luna suprapolitan volume the clearer my head was.
“Welp, I don’t have any plans after practice. You guys want to watch them load the last cell?” Rhoden said.
“The whole System saw them load the last dozen,” Bronson said, rolling his eyes.
I almost sided with Bronson. It was a stupid idea. Why on Erde would I want to see the same tedious process for the umpteenth time? It would bore me to tears. It made my stomach hurt.
“Sure,” I said.
“Why?” Bronson asked.
“It’s the last sunset we’ll get for a long time,” I said.
Bronson waved the idea off.
“I wouldn’t mind,” Clara said.
“Hell yeah!” Rhoden said. “The gang altogether. Oh, I have some dark glasses.”
The observation deck was almost empty when we arrived. Mostly couples or triples sat in the seats. There was the occasional loner. I took a spot standing right by the photonic screen. The curved surface refracted the exterior of the ELV Phaedo right into the ship—as tall as taiga pines. A snapshot of the sky. A different one than what I was used to. This one was populated by a jovial god. We were close enough to see its faint rings. Some were always there. Others, man had put there.
You could tell quite easily. Ours were canted at odd angles and dipped into the wood-grain atmosphere like sipping straws. Ours conducted pulses of light circumnavigating the planet in seconds. They were glowing brighter and brighter.
I slipped the glasses on.
The pulses converged on an object the size of a grain of sand on the screen. The rings went cold. Perspective made the convergence station look small. It was actually a city all on its own. There was a million staff onboard along with their families, just to name a few of the people that lived there. Poetically, they were called the Lapidarists, and their work was finished for now.
I watched the gem leave the station, leaking from the moment it was born. In many ways it was just like a real star; it looked bright, it was hot too, and would grow hotter as time went on. Then it would disappear in one ostentatious finale—in cosmic terms—in the blink of an eye.
“This is the hottest black hole they’ll load,” Rhoden was saying somewhere behind me. I was half-listening—more than what could be said for the others. “And the most ephemeral. Little over three hundred year lifespan. Six hundred thousand metric tons.”
We were quite far away. But I thought I could feel the gem’s light on my skin, the taste of sea salt on my lips, the scent of sand on my nose. The past was staring at me while I was lingering at the present.
I remembered the sun dipping below the horizon, the oranges fading into blues as reflective hands closed around the gem. I remembered when the water swallowed the light and I couldn’t see her face anymore as the gem disappeared, encapsulated, ready to be transported into the Phaedo’s hull. What face was she making when she had said that to me? “Go out there. Go do your thing.”
“I’m sorry,” Clara said. I snapped out of it.
She was standing next to me. I felt like I was noticing her for the first time today. She wore a sweater which hung over one shoulder, revealing black straps on dark daffodil skin. She had done her hair fully. Sometimes she let it blossom into messy curls. Sometimes she forced them straight. Sometimes she colored them a myriad of colors both in the visible and invisible spectrums. Today she had them done the way they had been on the day we met, back when I could barely sing and she struggled with a hand-me-down five-string.
“Sorry for what?” I asked.
“I keep doing this. I let you in, then I kick you out. I just can’t help it when I- when you say those things and you…”
“Agree to disagree?”
“It’s just that I believe so hard, and it makes so much sense. I can’t understand why you don’t.”
“People are different.”
“I know. I just- I don’t want this to get between us.”
“It won’t.”
“I just need to avoid talking System affairs with you.”
“Please do.”
Her face hardened.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. I was agreeing with you on this.”
“On what? The idea that I’m a windbag? You’re saying I should just shut up.”
“I didn’t mean that.”
“Yes you did. You’re so- how can you sing so well and be so dark on the inside? Like you don’t care about people at all?”
I felt one of my incisors on my lip.
“Clara, on the years that you bother to, we both have the same number of votes.”
To be honest, I knew I shouldn’t have said that even as the words were forming in my head. I did anyway. Clara didn’t make a face. She simply shook a little. Then she walked away. She didn’t even hit me—that was the worst sign. I took a deep breath and resolved to take care of it later. For now, at least I had a moment to myself.
That didn’t last.
“What did you say to her?”
“Fuck off, Bronson,” I said.
“Tell me.”
Ignoring him was usually a bad idea. I didn’t say anything.
A hand grabbed my shoulder and spun me away from the screen. Bronson pushed me against the photonics. The pixels glitched as my weight pressed against them.
“Why do you do this?” He said. “All the fucking time I see her walk away from you like this. And all the fucking time I see her go back to you. What is wrong with you?”
“That’s not what you want to ask.”
“What would that be?” He said, baring his teeth.
“What you really want to ask is, ‘why isn’t she inviting me, when I would agree with anything she says?’”
I braced my foot so when he hit me I stayed upright. I thought there’d be a second one. Instead, he walked away too. I swallowed the copper taste and returned to my screen.
“This is so cool.”
“Yes, Rhoden?” I asked.
He had a window popped up in front of him. He must have been immersed this whole time. “The encapsulation is done with a swirling ball of plasma wrapped around by a quasiparticle layer of electron gas. It’s like a spherical mirror, just like the sun’s insides, keeping the cell’s radiation contained. When they need energy, they just open up a part of it and let some light out.”
“That is very cool, Rhoden.”
“Kind of makes me wish I had gone into singularity engineering instead of drumming. And uh, hey your lip…”
“Just dry, is all.”
“Man, the ship’s atmospherics really doesn’t agree with you huh?”
“Oh well,” I said.
--
4112 A.D. Winter
“How long? How long has this been going on?” The old Aoede asked.
“A while.”
“How. Long.”
“Before us. Oh-eight.”
“Four fucking years ago?!”
“I’m sorry.”
“Why did you even bother with me?”
Because you had something that mattered, that would last.
“You matter more.”
“Is that why you’re leaving and going with her?”
“That’s not what’s happening. I’m going with the group. You can’t just bring people to a colony, you have to bring-”
“Culture. Like you ever gave a shit. You didn’t even care about yourself before me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re not.” Tears. Ugly. Sharp. Painful. “You don’t know how to be.”
--
Now
I imagined a hundred thousand of us stuck in the same assemblage of tubes, trusses, and centrifuges, hurtling between the stars. A mushroom cap layer of ice at the front of this wireframe kite absorbed the hard sleet of interstellar radiation. The unforgiving calculus of this kind of travel forced the Phaedo—the biggest ship ever built—to be light. The armor between us delicate flesh pockets and vacuum might as well be foil.
I had to remind myself the heaviest things onboard weren’t the singularity cores. It was the million more freeze-dried humans packed away, waiting to be rehydrated in a few years; those were the real burden. So that was how long we had to practice, to train, so we’re worthy of being a part of what they’re already calling the Proximan culture.
An honor, truly.
Bronson and I didn’t talk for a few days. We exchanged one or two phrases during practice—no more than necessary. ‘Was I in tune?’ ‘Did that sound right?’ I knew he wasn’t really angry. He needed to put in the motions of defending her. He wouldn’t tell her this of course. Clara needed to be the one that noticed he was the one who really cared. Then finally, finally!—it would all be worth it, this performance. One long peacock’s display.
“What are you thinking about?” Clara asked softly, drawing circles on my chest.
She was a warm weight on top of my arm, light enough to float, heavy enough to pin me down.
“About the past,” I said. “About where we came from.”
“Mmhm?”
“And where we’ll end up.”
“In history,” she said.
That was our plan: to be one of the greats in a branch-off of human civilization away from the storied past of music in our Solar System. To make footfall on a new, difficult road. But that wasn’t what I saw when they announced the Phaedo’s construction.
The forty-second fucking century: when originality was meaningless, when soul could be replicated, when analog was just hipster. The Dysfunctional Xesperados had no real fanbase. Listeners could compress every album we made into a neural payload. One shot and synapses exploded into existence. These things could even simulate passed time, so listeners could feel as though they just spent several hours getting something out of our music, when it was actually three minutes on a chilled bed. Real-time was a waste of time. Not on Proxima Centauri. We’d start over there. Analog humans in an analog, low-tech world. Where they’d have no choice but to listen and to love us. That was what I saw.
So now that we were on the road, why did I want to sprint back to my room and hurl and spend an hour under running water tucked away in the corner of the stall? I supposed it didn’t matter. This time there’d be no Aoede to pull me out. I would never see her again.
“I’d better go,” I said.
“But I haven’t-”
“Better this way. Before…”
“Before what?”
“Before we start talking.”
She seemed torn, like she wanted to recoil but knew letting me go would also give me what I asked for. I didn’t push her out of the way. Never had to before. I usually left when she fell asleep; she had never complained about waking up alone. Other times we would talk, leading to predictable results. Now we weren’t talking, she wasn’t asleep, and I wanted to leave.
“I should go back to my room,” I said. “Practice at seven.”
“You can sleep here.”
“I never do.”
“You can start.”
“Why?”
“Why not?”
“It’s just not what we do.”
“Why. Not.”
“I-”
“We do everything else! Except this- this one thing!”
What thing? I couldn’t say. I decided to move, just a little bit. Clara pinned me down. I wondered what face she was making. We had never been here before—not even close. I didn’t know what this feeling was.
“Let me go, Clara,” someone said in my voice.
“Why?” It was more sob than speech. She bore over me, a heavy, hot shadow of sickly perfume.
“Let me go.”
“No.”
My hands closed around her wrists and I gently moved her aside. Then I walked out, half-dressed, not fully dry, leaving behind the soft sounds of choked gasping. The door hissed shut, silencing it. The sterile air buried our scents. It was all gone.
“Lanny? How’s it going?”
“Shut up, Rhoden,” I said. My gait neither sped nor slowed. I did not look his way.
--
4113 A.D. Spring
“What did you do, Aoede?”
“I didn’t do anything,” said the new Aoede.
“I’ll sue that neuromodder! They can’t do this. Not without my neural cursive signature.”
“I took your name off. We’re no longer common law. I don’t need your consent on anything. Not anymore.”
“How could you have done this?”
“People do it all the time.”
“Other people. Not us. Not you and me.”
“Lanny there couldn’t have been a ‘you and me’ with what I knew you did. I remember how it felt. It was worse than death.”
“Then just leave me. Why do this to yourself?”
“So there could be a ‘you and me’.”
“The only reason I kept going was because of you. You were my Prometheus.”
“I still am.”
“Aoede, how do you feel about our first concert?”
“I remembered something bubbly, a good feeling.”
“How do you feel about that song I wrote about us? The one only we’ve heard?”
“I remembered it being nice.”
“How do you feel about me now?”
“Good. I feel good.”
Her face was as smooth as sand dune. As she smiled, her teeth aligned in symmetry. Her eyes were perfect brown mirrors.
--
Now
Seven a.m. Practice time. We were booked to play for the crew in a couple days, so we had no time to slack off. Rhoden was already there setting up his kit. I started setting up too.
“Listen,” I said. “Sorry about last night. You didn’t deserve that.”
“I know,” he said. “I figured something must’ve been bothering you.”
“That shouldn’t matter. You’re a member of the band, and honestly? Everyone should start acknowledging that.”
“I’m sure they all do in their own way.”
“Our own way might not be enough, Rhoden. We’ve been rather rude to our only drummer for, ha, I don’t know? Since forever.”
I couldn’t remember the last time I had really met him. I stopped my warm-up and looked Rhoden face to face. I nearly dropped the amplifier when I saw his eyes.
“What?” He said with a perfect smile.
“You’re…”
“What’s wrong?”
“I never knew.”
Rhoden shrugged.
“Well I suppose it never came up, you know. It doesn’t affect my drumming negatively. There’s anecdotes out there saying it actually helps with certain things.”
“Why?!”
“’Cuz I was always a sensitive guy. And in this business you just don’t last like that. Millions of people love you, then they hate you, and then they forget. Sometimes your own co-workers call you things. Worse, sometimes they pretend you’re not even there. So I…” He made a clipping motion with his fingers beside his head. “…did this. Now I could last until we made it big.”
Somewhere in the middle of his story I had started laughing. I had to hold onto the amplifier stand to catch my breath. Tears ran down my face. I wiped them away. We hadn’t had breakfast yet and my sleeve was already ruined. What had been so funny? I couldn’t say.
“So don’t worry,” Rhoden continued, “about hurting my feelings or anything like that. I’m beyond tough now. We’ll all make it together.”
“Sure thing, Rhodey,” I said. “In a few years we’ll play for over a million people, and none of them will forget us.”
“Hell yeah, Lanny.”
Our knuckles met—a primal greeting we had dug up from the deep past. For all their lack of sophistication, the ancients knew how to connect with almost no technology.
The door slid open.
“Well, look who decided to show up,” I said to the approaching shadow. Bronson came into detail face first, fist second. I must have lost consciousness for a heartbeat because when I blinked I was on the ground. My hand had moved on its own to my jaw, and Rhoden had stepped between us.
“Whoa! Easy,” Rhoden said. “What’s got our best multicordion player so riled up?”
Bronson didn’t look at Rhoden, he just shoved him aside. He wasn’t so easy with me. Hands bigger than mine lifted me up by the collar.
“This is on you,” he said through his teeth. “You made her do this.”
“What the fuck are you on about?” I said.
He pushed me off. I stumbled back.
“Fight me!” He said. He raised his fists.
“Bronson…” One of my teeth were loose. Oh well.
“Hit me!”
“I’m not going to hit you.”
“You think you’re better?!”
“Fuck no! That’s why I don’t want to fight you. I’d lose pretty hard.”
Bronson wanted to hit me again. His fist practically swelled by his hip. He never got to; a folded chair joined the side of his head with a clatter. Bronson made a muted gasp as he fell onto the ground. When he recovered, the madness in his eyes gave way to confusion.
“Rhoden?” He said.
“Well.” Rhoden shrugged as if he just spilled a glass of milk. “You looked like you needed a breather.”
“I-” Bronson looked at his bloody fist, then at me. Then sheepishly, and maybe a little reluctantly, “Sorry.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“I thought I’d walk Clara to practice,” Bronson said. “She wouldn’t open the door at first, until I insisted. When I walked in, she was crying. Talking about how much it hurt and about quitting the band and-”
“And what?”
“She’s going to take the anti-nostalgic. Tomorrow.”
The centrifuge must have stopped, yet I didn’t float away. My heart seemed to move elsewhere in my chest. It was too much. I had to take a seat on the practice room floor.
“Why?” Rhoden asked like he was questioning someone’s choice of shirt.
Bronson didn’t bother answering. He picked himself up and left. Now there was only the two of us.
Rhoden squatted beside me.
“Oh it’s not so bad,” he said. “I was scared too when I took the anti-nostalgic. Like a lot of people I thought it would lobotomize me and turn me into a vegetable. All it really does to remove the parts of you tied down to negative emotion.” He gave my bicep a painful squeeze. “Beyond tough. Frankly, I’m surprised Clara took so long. She was always a, well, you’d know. You spend the most time with her, after all.”
--
4113 A.D. Autumn
“What do you want to eat?” I asked.
“Anything really.”
“Where’d you like?”
“With you.”
“Do you want to go somewhere this weekend?”
“Anywhere.”
“I want to show you this verse. I’ve been experimenting. How is it?”
“Amazing. I love it.”
“Aoede.”
“Yes?”
“Do you love me?”
“I only love you.”
--
Now
I didn’t make it to practice the next day. I stayed in the shower. My only companion was the little high-pitched cartoon dancing on the glass.
“Uh oh! Someone’s hogging the water!”
My nails were bent. I had spent too long digging them into my scalp.
“Pwease switch to ultrasonics. Pwetty pwease?”
I stared into the ceiling light. Warm water droplets crawled down my face. Some went into my eyes.
“Listen, superstar, water is also reaction mass! We kiiinda need that stuff!”
People had no idea what it was like. If you did something wrong, they remembered forever. At least, I did. Every sour note. Every missed lyric. Every virtual concert where we ended with those blank looks staring up at us. But when we landed our mark and the crowd roared—nothing replaced that feeling. That was the air we breathed. For the moment, it didn’t seem to matter that there were a hundred more groups coming up next.
“You’re not being re-spons-i-ble!”
We only took a spot on the Phaedo because we wanted an easier audience, because we were afraid of bombing as much as we were afraid of being ignored. And because I couldn’t bear to stay in the System anymore.
The Xesperados were meant to fail. Especially with me on it.
--
4108 A.D. Spring
“Well that was fucking horrible,” Bronson said.
“Come on guys, it wasn’t that bad,” Rhoden said.
“I would give up,” Clara said. “But I spent everything I had on my baby.” She gingerly put her guitar down.
“There’s trillions of people in the System,” Rhoden said. “Right Bronson?”
Bronson was already on his way out. His multicordion laid against a box stand precariously. Rhoden adjusted it with his foot so it stayed upright.
“Well, at least we had each other,” Clara said, probably sarcastically.
That was the way she was. But tonight had not been a good night. I avoided her gaze and didn’t bother talking to any of them as I hurried out. Maybe they were right—maybe I should’ve quit a long time ago and went into mum and dad’s business. Maybe I should’ve been looking where I was going, because I nearly barreled into someone on my way out the venue.
“Sorry! Sorry!” I said.
“No worries. My fault, really.”
Weird. How could it have possibly been her fault? I was the one not looking where I was going, so steeped in self-pity that I somehow missed someone like this right in front of me. Now I couldn’t remember the person I was before meeting her.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Aoede.” She offered a hand.
“Long way from the exit, Aoede.”
“Just wanted to opine.”
“That bad you needed to come backstage to tell us?” I said, joking.
“I have a list of criticisms,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Let’s hear it.”
“It’s quite long. We’ll need to sit down somewhere. We’ll probably need something to wet our throats in the while.”
“Oh. Uh,” I sighed. “Honestly, we were thinking of breaking up the Xesperados. And after tonight…”
“You shouldn’t.”
I frowned.
“Why?” I asked.
She had started to inch away, hands tucked behind her back.
“I made a really good list.”
--
The door’s pneumatics weren’t keeping up, so I wrenched them open and shoved myself through.
“What in Dayus’s name?” The doctor exclaimed.
I ignored her.
“Clara, I’m sorry,” I said.
Clara sat up off the neuromod table, squinting.
“Lanny?” She said.
“Don’t do it,” I said.
“Lanny-”
“We can’t do this without you. All of you. There’s no point in the Dysfunctional Xesperados making it if we fuck ourselves in the head like Rhoden did.”
“That’s rude.”
“Just get off the table. We’ll talk about it.”
She slid her legs over the side and left the table.
“I wasn’t gonna go through with it anyway,” she said. “I was- I don’t know. Just weird.”
“Oh.”
Why the hell did I do this then? Before I could get a word in, the doctor began ushering us out.
“I don’t care about whatever this is,” the doctor said. “All I know is you’ve wasted my time. And Lanny?”
“Yeah?” I said.
“Dry yourself off and put on some damn clothes. This place is a closed ecosystem.”
The door hissed shut behind us. We were left to the ship’s punishing atmospherics. I began to shiver. Clara rubbed my shoulders as we walked back to my room.
“I’m glad you came,” she said. “Let’s me know you do care about me.”
“Not that much.”
“I know. I should’ve made peace with it a long time ago.”
“Besides, if I did care about you, you’d lose interest in me entirely.”
“Probably.”
I was joking. She was not. Classic Clara.
I got dressed and called the band together for one final session before we played for the crew. We weren’t the only entertainers on board; there’d be some competition. A little was always good—kept us on edge. I thought Bronson wouldn’t show up, but he did, probably because I had Clara relay the summons. We jammed harder than any practice session before. My voice gave out somewhere around three a.m. The doctor wasn’t too pleased to see my face in her office to have the sore, and my loose tooth, rejuvenated. Oh well.