Through The Never

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Through The Never

by Eneasz Brodski

The human pilot smashed a bottle of their intoxicant into the transport’s virgin hull, the impact blossoming into a tiny nova of glass and golden liquid. Zierr swished her tails politely, cheering with everyone else out of obligation. There was no good reason for her not to attend this ceremony. It wasn’t the strangest custom, and she kept telling herself that every culture had their eccentricities. But the humans’ rituals were always so damned public. Zierr didn’t like public. She kept to herself.

Munith shimmied to her side. “Once you’re en route, this will all have been worth it,” Munith whispered through an antenna, uninvited. She resisted the impulse to slap his antenna away. It wasn’t uncommon for exes to retain that familiarity, even if it had been years. His presumptuousness was almost comforting. That cockiness had drawn her once. To be honest, it still worked well for him.

“Social bonding is very important to humans,” he continued, “Go up and exchange touches at some point. It makes you more real to him.”

“Ugh, no.” Zierr replied. “They’re too damn wriggly. Did you have to touch it much?”

“Eh…’have to’ is relative. The project didn’t demand much, no.” Munith had designed the human interface for this new transport. “But there was plenty of touching that ’had to’ be done to keep them comfortable. A touch at every greeting and leave-taking, and often other incidentals. You get used to it.”

 Zierr squirmed with discomfort. “You should spend more time with your own kind--I think they’re rubbing off on you.”

Munith’s antenna trembled in amusement. “Not possible. They have the most shattered minds of any species, they couldn’t rub off on another species even if we wanted it. We think that’s why they’re so resilient, and why they constantly latch on to others.”

Of course by ‘we’ he meant the broader human-research community, rather than Zierr and the rest of the gathered transport design team. He delighted in learning everything he could about these squirmy little creatures with the steel psyches. It reminded her of their time together, and brought with it an unwelcome melancholy ache. Fortunately he’d spent most of his time at this project with the volunteer human, and Zierr hadn’t run into him often.

 “This sort of public bonding is a weak form of human soul-joining, across many minds at once. Come on.” Munith took a shuffling quarter-stride toward the human.

Zierr recoiled. “Oh my god, they soul-join across species?”

“Oh lay off, it barely even counts. It’s the lightest psychic touch. They have to mediate it across air vibrations and physical contact. Aren’t you the least bit interested in what makes them so hard to crack?”

“No. I’m not crazy.” But she relented, and followed him. The discovery of the human race had revolutionized warp transportation. It couldn’t hurt to be in their pilot’s good graces.

Zierr did her best not to think about what this was like for the human as she fondled his little hand in an up-and-down pumping motion, and let him pat her shoulder mounds. He bared his teeth from within the furry bush that covered most of his face--their way of smiling. She really hoped this was worth it.

---

Zierr’s mother had worked in pilot recovery, pre-humanity. Not on the front lines, which was mostly corpse-recovery. Zierr’s mother worked in rehabilitation. She saw the few who had been successfully apprehended before they could force open the airlocks, or override the safeties in the medbay. She was given the survivors. The ones that clutched their antenna against their bodies, staring voiceless into dimensions beyond physical sight. The ones that breathed an endless stream of words, each one intelligible, and consistent with the words before and after it, but in aggregate the words wove together into a single endless sentence without any meaning. …worm summoning the twisting world with the power of their lives while who we are cannot be asked for the reason that never pursues…

“We can’t just write them off,” Zierr’s mother said. “They’ve given their lives to keep our species relevant. We owe them.”

When she was older, Zierr sought out her mother’s former mates. Most wouldn’t talk about her. They folded their antenna and pulled away. Only Jathem took her into his confidence, let her taste his over-sweet regrets.

“Yeah, she would tell me the same things,” he confirmed. “Species self-determination and all that. It makes a great slogan, doesn’t it?” He sighed, a light taste. “And of course we can’t cede the galaxy to the other races. But people like your mother, people who work in recovery… well, that’s not the real reason they do it. If you hear their private words, you can taste the truth. She had to save everyone. Save the world, the species, maybe the galaxy. It’s a noble sort of broken, but it’s still broken.”

Zierr should have done more. Her father had died before her birth, but she could have told her teachers. She’d known something was wrong, even at her age. Her mother’s words had listed towards salt for months. Near the end, no utterance was free of saline undertones. Even discussing Zierr’s schoolwork came with a taste of briny dread. An ever-present seasoning of despair.

“People like your mother feel too much of other’s emotions,” Jathem said, “even without tasting them. They mean well, but they can’t let go. Your mother was doomed from the start. She should have never stepped within a mile of a pilot.”

Jathem had left before the end. Maybe he’d felt it coming.

---

“Why wasn’t I enough?” Munith asked her, a few weeks after the design team had been assembled. They’d stayed late after a team dinner, once the others had left, catching up over a slow hookah. He had aged gracefully. The short furs of his muzzle and crest were touched with symmetrical silver streaks--just enough to make him look distinguished.

Zierr sighed, wondering if she should answer. Would it make the workplace more uncomfortable to leave this hanging, or to let him know? She didn’t think he’d be satisfied with her answer anyway.

“How many other mates did you have while we were together?” she asked him in reply.

“None.” Answered without hesitation.

“And how many did I have?”

“Um… just Cerric I think? Wait, Dnyira too, for a few months.”

“Well there you go.”

Munith’s antenna soured slightly. “I wasn’t popular enough for you?” He studied her face. “You know how busy I was. Hell, I still am. These humans are fascinating! They shouldn’t be able to function, but here they are, not just walking but creating… well, nevermind. The point is I don’t have time for a lot of relationships. So what? You weren’t the sort of person to care about popularity.”

Zierr shifted to her other elbow and pulled from the hookah. She took a moment before answering. “I don’t have a lot of time either, Munith.” Exhaled. “But I didn’t make that your problem. You think warp engineering leaves me with a lot of spare hours? I made time for what was important. You could have too.”

“I didn’t want any other mates.”

And there it was. That selfishness again, the counterpart to his cockiness. She let him taste her growing frustration.

“Right. You laid all your emotions and needs on me, instead of spreading them out. I never did that to you. You saved time by overloading me. Don’t you get how intolerable that is?” Even for someone as attractive as Munith.

“You didn’t have to though! Didn’t you read any of the mono-amory books I lent you? You could have put everything on me as well, and we’d be equal. It’s so simple. Just, why… why wasn’t I enough?”

Oh god. Zierr pulled her antenna away. He didn’t get it. He would never get it.

“People die, you know,” she told him, simply via sound. “Or they change. Or they leave. Who did you have to fall back on when I left?”

“I had my parents. And my friends.”

“No mates. It hurt to leave you. You know that?” Zierr reached out again, let him taste the remnants of that panic. The knowledge that she was leaving him with no one. “But you weren’t trying to find anyone else. I can’t be your savior. I can’t be your world. It’s too damn much to heap on one person. What did you tell me on our anniversary?”

“I want you to be my everything,” they both said in unison. Him with hope, her with anger.

“Never,” she continued, reaching for her com. “I will never be anyone’s everything. Everything is too much. You can’t expect that from me.”

“I should have lied to you?”

“You should have someone else to rely on if I die. Died. You know what, I’m not having this conversation again. I’m sorry I’m not comfortable with your weird social movement. Let’s call it a night.” Zierr pulled out her com-pad, checked her portion of the bill, and approved a payment transfer.

“Of course.” Munith reached for his com as well. “Sorry, I know it’s not for everyone. I won’t bring it up again. Do you wanna split a ride back?”

Zierr hesitated. She didn’t remotely want that, but it could head off awkwardness over the coming months to bury their differences.

“Alright.” She stood, mentally reaching for any other subject. “Hey, did you hear they’ve chosen our human? We might meet it as soon as next month.”

“Him,” Munith corrected, following her lead. “They dislike ’it.’ Enough so that they prefer using the term ‘they’ as a singular if you don’t know their gender.”

“Huh, that’s bizarre.”

“Oh man, that’s not even the half of it…”

---

It wasn’t until a full year after the burial that Zierr summoned up the courage to open her mother’s journal. She started at the end.

It’s a single, endless scream. It doesn’t ever stop.

Haven’t slept in days. The more I try to forget, the harder it gets. Should have retired years ago. Moved on. Or just not thought about it.

NEVER THINK ABOUT IT

Now it’s just me and God. All those little pieces. One tiny shard from each pilot. Who knew? How could I have known? Why would there be any pattern?

Can’t stop. See the pattern everywhere. They knew. Every word meant stay away. Stay away. Don’t see. Don’t think.

Oh God. All those little shards. I collected them. Stuck them all in my brain. Then jumble and shake and stab, stab, stab. Look there! Is that a picture? Is that a pattern? Look harder…

Don’t look. Never look. All the pieces come together in a mosaic. It’s not madness. Not rambling. It’s a warning. Who are you?

I can’t ever tell anyone. I am infected. If anyone else knows, they will be too. It grows in your mind. How to tell if someone can take this curse? Been waiting too long. If I tell anyone, they might tell another. Someone less equipped to handle it. It’ll spread and spread and spread until there is nothing left. No, not an option.

We are all dust. We return. It is not our place to challenge.

No one else knows. That’s the only saving grace. I can’t end that. Can’t end it all. This stays inside me, and me alone.

Have to stop thinking about this. There must be a way.

That final entry had been dated nearly eight months before The Day. The day Zierr had come home from school to find her mother in a cold bath tub. The bright pink water looked like what rose tears would look like, if roses had eyes for crying. At first she had thought it was some sort of fancy perfume. But no perfume would smell like that.

She didn’t bother reading any other entries.