III.

Part III of Backwash.

III.

 

            I didn’t notice it immediately: the change in his demeanor, the amicable tone of his voice, the extra hours he spent outside of his quarters. I guess the change was so gradual that it completely slipped my sight. That’s my theory, anyway. J says it’s a probable theory so I suppose it must be true. I first noticed the change one day during lunch in the cafeteria. I was eating a deli sandwich, with lettuce, tomatoes, pickles and olives. I love pickles. I think the sour and juicy taste is a satisfying feeling. He was merely sipping some iced coffee, having eaten an hour earlier. I don’t know why he chose to accompany me to lunch when I asked him; I hadn’t known he’d already eaten or I wouldn’t have invited him to join me. It seemed pointless and a waste of time for him to spend precious minutes doing nothing but slowly sipping a drink that had no significant nutritional value. That’s what he would say anyway. And I think I’d agree. But regardless of our similar beliefs, he still chose to go to lunch with me and while I was pleasantly surprised then after he told me he’d already eaten, I didn’t take the gesture as a sign for something larger, something different, something more meaningful. I just wanted a sandwich.

            The cafeteria had this sort of “Earth memorial” war so that people wouldn’t, or maybe couldn’t, forget Earth so easily. It contained photographs, newspaper clippings, computer printouts, anything that could reawaken a memory. In the center of the wall hung a large photograph of Earth: the first clear image to be ever taken from outer space, actually. I can’t be sure about its history—I’d have to ask F for the dates and details—but I know it was taken by the Apollo 17 crew and informally called “The Blue Marble”. I thought Earth was beautiful. The glassy texture…the smoothness of its surface…the perfect spherical shape it formed itself by…and the fact that there were billions of free-thinking, and now free-feeling, individuals down there. I loved staring at the picture, imagining myself on that marble, wondering what I’d do there. It sparked my imagination, ensnared my senses and consumed my thoughts. Garth caught me gazing that day (he looked up from the book he was reading) and put down his iced coffee.

            “What are you staring at?”

            “Nothing.”

            Skeptical, he turned around and followed my gaze.

            “Earth?” he inquired.

            “Yeah.”

            “What about it?”

            “I wonder what it’s like.”

            “Why?”

            “It’s home.”

            “I was under the impression you were born in space.”

            “I was.”

            “Then how is it home?”

            “That’s where we all began, right? The origin of Homo sapiens. It’s us. It’s all of us.”

            He raised his eyebrows.

            “It seems foolish to harbor sentimental value for something one has had no personal interaction with,” he said mechanically. I shrugged.

            “I’m just curious. But my parents say it’s too chaotic right now to visit.”

            “To visit?”

            “I want to go there.”

            “What’s stopping you?”

            “My parents say it is too chaotic.”

            Those gray eyes of his looked at me seriously.

            “Yes,” he agreed, “it is. Your parents are wise. But what keeps you from disobeying their orders?”

            “I don’t know,” I answered honestly.

            “Are you frightened to visit?”

            “No.”

            “Are you frightened of your parents’ displeasure?”

            “No.”

            “Do you want company?”

            “Doesn’t matter.”

            “Then what?” he pressed.

            “I told you: I don’t know.”

            “You are a strange girl, B.”

            And so he lowered his eyes back to his back and drew the cup of iced coffee to his lips.

 

            There was a time of complete and absolute nothingness on the ship while it was passing through a particularly large nebula. Over one hundred thousand miles in length. That’s how much we had to travel and it took us nearly three weeks to do. Being a Class-B research vessel, our ship did not fare too well, passing through the clouds of blue and violet in space. There was only color through the window, a shadowy and elusive color. No stars, no planets, no comets, no asteroids, nothing solid to study and analyze. It was as though we were constantly submerged in this ocean of rainbows, with the different hues and shades rising and falling like waves. But while the colors were fascinating for the first several days, we found that without the constant black and white of space, color became dull. Boredom became a popular Emotion during this time. So did restlessness. With the crew morale at a near all-time low, it wasn’t surprising that people were quickly turning to any sort of leisure to alleviate the boredom, to bring back some spark into their lives. Before the Switchover, the endlessness of color would not have bothered them. But Emotion brought back the constant need to always feel something more, something larger and something grander than what we usually feel.

            Even Garth was not immune to this disease, though I admit: he was one of the very last to catch it. In the beginning while I complained about not having anything new to research and speculate about, Garth retained his sanity, his immunity, and spoke reasonably that the innovation and overall newness humans constantly crave was nothing more than a psychological Fata Morgana; what we receive as ‘new’ isn’t new at all, according to him. Everything we saw, everything we heard and everything we thought had all been done before by countless individuals in the past. It’s just that newness gives off an illusion of change, of progress. And progress is often seen as a good thing and that pleases us. I didn’t know whether to believe him or not. On the one hand, he made sense. But then again, he always made sense. He never spoke anything without thinking it through first to determine if it would make sense or not. But ever since I had met him, I had wondered whether making sense was the only thing we needed. I voiced my ambivalence to him and he told me it was a valid one—one all Emotional humans pondered over, whether they realized it or not. He didn’t give me an answer to my dilemma, however.

            As my dilemma raged within the deepest and little-known regions of my mind, Garth’s patience began to wane and I soon found him longing for some leisure, from my aberrations from normalcy, like the rest of the crew. What was intriguing about his leisure was that it seemed to almost always involve me and knowledge. I remember the first day he called me, instead of me calling to him to leave his quarters.

            “What’s wrong?” I asked him, pulling over my sweater as I exited my quarters. It was 2100 hours and he had chimed through my door. I assumed something was terribly wrong. His gray eyes pierced mine.

            “I…I could not sleep,” he confessed.

            “Have you tried the insomnia pills in the Doctor’s Open cabinet?”

            “I don’t want to.”

            “What’s wrong with the pills?”

            “They taste bad.”

            “Taste doesn’t matter,” I pointed out.

            “Wisely stated.”

            It struck me that we were having the same conversation we had when I first properly spoke to him on the stargazing deck. I told him this, a slight form of humorous irony embedded in my voice. He didn’t smile. He never smiled.

            “The thought struck me too,” he admitted, “but I see no humor in the situation. It is merely coincidence.”

            I shrugged so he continued.

            “Actually, I found my quarters to be too silent. In actuality, I think I crave some human company.”

            I furrowed my brows in confusion.      

            “Human company?” I repeated.

            “Yours, actually. But if you are busy or too tired, I understand.”

            “Tired from what? I haven’t worked in almost two weeks.”

            “So will you accompany me?”

            “To where?”

            “Anywhere. A walk.”

            We walked in silence. The ship was deathly quiet. Usually, we hear some soft clunking of machinery working overtime in the labs, or the steady and dull roar of high-velocity engines but we could not move past impulse engines in the lab, which were more quiet. There was only the sound of our footsteps as the soles of our boots fell down on the gray carpeting of the ship. We walked out of sync; our footsteps did not follow the other’s rhythm. I had read somewhere that when someone you love asks for your company, it was a good sign. I stole a glance at Garth, at his usual expressionless face. His lips were set in a thin, hard line as he looked straight ahead, his eyes drifting from wall to wall but never to the woman beside him. I was supposed to feel giddy, happy and all-in-all flirtatious. But I didn’t feel that way at all. I felt calm but my heart was steady, my palm weren’t sweaty and my breathing was even. I didn’t even try to make conversation; I knew if he wanted to talk, he would do so. Small talk was, to him, a pointless activity and he despised it.

            We turned a right corner and somehow, I had found that we ended up in the stargazing deck. Only there was nothing to look at but more colors. We sat down without turning on the lights and after a while, Garth decided to say something.

            “Do you ever tire of the colors?”

            “Yes.”

            “I do not.”

            “No?”

            “I neither tire of them nor enjoy gazing at them. To me, they are meaningless.”

            “Some animals on Earth can’t see colors at all.”

            “I know.”

            “We should be happy that we can.”

            “Why? If we had never experienced it, we would never miss it.”

            “Simple enough,” I accepted.

            “Do you know how much longer we must remain in this nebula?”

            “About two more weeks, I hear.”

            “I have heard the same thing.”

            “It seems much longer though.”

            “Why is that?”

            “Time seems to move slow here.”

            “That is merely an illusion.”

            “I know.”

            “We will reach the perimeter eventually.”

            “Of course we will. Backwash,” I said, gesturing to the darkness we were sitting in.

            “Backwash: the return flow of water down a beach after a wave has broken,” he narrated.

            “Exactly. We came from space. We will return to space.”

            “You seem very sure.”

            “Water always returns to the ocean.”

            “Not all of it.”

            “Enough returns so that it’s still considered ocean water. It doesn’t lose its identity. That’s enough,” I said.

            He remained quiet after that. I got bored so I fell asleep, lying on the couch. He sat besides where my head was, very still. I never found out what he had done to pass the time while I dreamed. All I know is that when I woke up, his position hadn’t changed but his eyes were closed. His hand rested on my shoulder.

Reviews

[mirui]

very good. I cant wait to read the rest of this.

[Max Arnold]

this was good, it has subtly improved with every successive installment. I would caution you to dwell a bit more on the thoughts and emotion of you characters. because characters (in my opinion) is the backbone of a story, and the only true connection the reader has to it.