V.

Part V of Backwash.

V.

 

             We fell out of our regular routine after that. There were no more shuttle missions on planets and asteroids and satellites. There were no more quiet dinners where I’d stuff the food into my mouth like a glutton and watch him chew silently, thoughtfully and discretely. There were no more walks in the ship, reading together in the library, falling asleep next to him in the stargazer’s deck. I didn’t mean to avoid him; it just happened. The day after our argument, after his outburst, I decided that I didn’t want to see him again so soon so I feigned tiredness right after work and spent the rest of the day in my quarters. The day after was also too soon, I had decided, and worked the same excuse. And the day after, I had a headache so I decided that it was best not to face Garth. Day after day after day, it went on like that, my mind subconsciously creating excuses or things getting in the way of me seeing him and soon, not seeing him became my routine. I heard once that he had been injured on a shuttle mission collecting samples of nitrogen oxide on a gas giant and I nearly rushed to the medical bay to see if he was okay. But two steps from the door to my quarters, I hesitated and that hesitation was powerful enough to root me to the spot. I didn’t go but when I heard that he was finally released after four days, I felt more at ease.

            I never found out what Garth was thinking in the weeks that followed his outburst. I saw glimpses of him in the long, snaking corridors of the ship or a flash of his hair among the crowd in the cafeteria or perhaps hear his name in passing conversation among my other shipmates. All signs suggested that his routine hadn’t changed and his demeanor hadn’t changed. If he missed me, he showed no signs of it.

            When I was with Garth, I never thought about love.

            When we separated, I thought about the word all the time. Did I really love him? Did I ever love him? Surely love was simple just more than missing someone. I missed him but in the same way I missed my mother when she was late to pick me up from my first grade class. I told my mother these concerns and after a long analysis, she finally came up with a prognosis. No, I did not love him. I had loved James but not Garth. But I continued to resist her conclusions and kept up my battle with the word love. Without Garth, my life had not changed. I had not changed. Nothing had changed. My life was still a gray canvas mounted on cinderblock wall, bland, dull and boring, decorated with the small frivolities that taint the larger things. I still liked the deli sandwiches with the pickles in the cafeteria. I still grew bored from the fiction stories in the library. I still read about the Switchover. And I still dreamed about Earth.

            Desperate for answers, I finally asked J while working one day in the lab. She was analyzing some new microbial organism found in sedimentary rock through the electron microscope and I was doodling on a spare data pad.

            “J, how do you know if you love someone?”

            “Who do you love?”

            “I don’t know.”

            “What was the question again?”

            “How do you know you love someone?”

            “Simple. If you can say ‘I love you’ to them, then you love them.”

            “What if I don’t want to talk to them?”

            She looked up from the microscope and stared at me closely, as if trying to ascertain if I was being serious or not. She had a puncture wound right above her left eye, undoubtedly from her time in the medical bay, sick with the Tankarian flu.

            “Here’s what you do. Look at yourself in the mirror. Look into your own eyes and say, ‘I love’ and then the name. If you can do that, you love that person.”

            I looked at my reflection in the shiny metallic surface of the machinery I was standing to.

            “I love J,” I told it. The words sounded strange and I winced.

            “It doesn’t sound right,” I told J, “does that mean I don’t love you?”

            She laughed.

            “B, dear, it only works with romantic love. You would love me differently than you would love a partner.”

            That night, I washed my face, combed my hair and painted my lips before I stood in front of the mirror. My reflection stared back at me: tall, proud and bored. My eyes bore into my own and I saw only a lifeless color reflected in them. I moved my lips but no sound came out at first. Shaking my head, I tried again.

            “I love Garth.”

            The words flowed out of my mouth naturally. It was easy to say and it didn’t sound wrong at all. My heart began to beat with a building excitement. Was this finally the truth? I tried again, this time my voice louder.

            “I love Garth.”

            Same results. My heart began to beat faster. I had done it! I had finally realized the concept of love! I laughed out loud to myself. Garth was wrong. This was happiness. I achieved something, I discovered the truth and now, the chapped feeling on my lips because of the paint and the dry feeling of my newly washed skin did not matter. I was euphoric.

            But as quickly as the feeling came, a new thought emerged in my head. You loved James. You don’t love Garth. My mother’s voice whispered and echoed in my brain. On a whim, I tried it, expecting the euphoria to come back when I proved her wrong.

            “I love James.”

            Nothing changed. But I could love more than one person, couldn’t I?

            “I don’t love Garth.”

            Same results. The words still sounded right. My heart slowed down to its normal, steady beat.

            Two days later, on Tuesday July 25^th, my life changed forever. I was in my quarters that day, at 1800 hours, lying in bed in complete silence, not fully asleep but not completely awake either. I was in transition, gradually but steadily returning from dreams to reality. I had had a strange dream. Garth was in it. We were on a shuttle mission at Nakora X9 but it was just the two of us. I was in my environmental suit and he was not. The air was somehow breathable but for some reason, I had to take breaths only every two seconds to stay alive. If I breathed too much and too quickly, the oxygen would poison my lungs. If I waited too long—even a nanosecond too long—I would suffocate. Because of the small window to breathe, Garth was continuously keeping time with an antiquated pocket watch and telling me when to breathe. He didn’t need to breathe. The planet accepted him and allowed him to live. Of me, it was skeptical and waited with bated breath to see if I could survive 90 minutes in the planet’s atmosphere, living only on Garth’s well-timed directions. I passed the test and I suddenly found myself in a well-illuminated chamber of red rock. F was there (Garth had disappeared) and she told me to climb the rocks to reach the surface but when I looked up, I only saw more rock. No hole for me to climb out, no light streaming of sunlight, nothing. How would I reach the top? I voiced my concerns to F but she insisted so I climbed. I climbed and climbed and still, nothing happened. Then, I realized I was still on Nakora X9 and so I held my breath as I climbed. The longer I held my breath, the more the tiny hole at the top of the chamber grew, until it was finally large enough for my body to squeeze through. I inhaled deeply, having held my breath for so long, but the minute I did so, I felt a sharp pain in my side and tumbled back down the hole.

            When the news came, my mind still had a strong footing in the dream so I didn’t believe it at first. My telecomm rang and I heard J’s voice whisper urgently to me:

            “Garth’s been reassigned, B!”

            I laughed drunkenly and told myself to wake up. Using an external voice command, I shut off my telecomm. I sat up from by bed and rubbed my eyes and slowly and fluidly, like the flowing of molasses, I drudged over to the bathroom and washed my face. Once I had finished grooming myself, I noted the “incoming message” light on my telecomm blinking. Curious, I turned on my telecomm and the message repeated itself:

            “Garth’s been reassigned, B!”

            Reassigned? To where? Which lab? My lab? Slightly excited, I threw on my casual overcoat and rushed to see Captain H.

            “Garth’s been reassigned, ma’am?”

            The Captain smiled at me sadly.

            “I understand you and Garth have become close.”

            The melancholic hint in her smile did not pass my notice.

            “Captain, why the gloom?”

            “Garth’s been reassigned, B.”

            “To which lab?”

            Captain H blinked.

            “Which lab?” she repeated. She blinked again and placed her arm around my shoulder comfortingly. I knew whatever she was about to say wasn’t good and I braced myself for the Emotional pain to strike.

            “The Starship Communion,” she hesitated, trying to decide the best and least painful way to phrase the news, “has reassigned him to another ship. The Dauntless, I believe.”

            The pain didn’t strike. I stepped away from Captain H, feeling a great mix of contradictory Emotions swirl within me. Confusion. Disbelief. Fear. Sadness. Denial.

            “What?” It was all I could say.

            “My superiors—Admiral Hayes and the rest of the Tribunal Leaders—are impressed with Garth’s work aboard this ship. They feel that he is wasting his natural talents here, studying rocks and going on geological surveys. Garth in an exceptionally intelligent and determined man and the Communion wants to best utilize his abilities.”

            Confusion. Disbelief. Fear. Sadness. Anger.

            “Captain, permission to leave.”

            She nodded understandingly.

            “Dismissed, B.”

            I ran to Garth’s quarters as fast as I could. I reached his door but as my arm extended to chime the ring, I paused. I had not spoken to him in seven weeks, not since that outburst of his. Immediately, the word love popped into my brain but then the words reassignment, dauntless and waste overpowered it. I chimed and he opened immediately. Not waiting for a greeting, I stepped inside his quarters and turned to face him as his doors mechanically closed behind him. I had seen glimpses of him throughout the ship for the past three weeks and it was the first time I had truly seen his face in that time. He looked no different.

            “B?”

            “Is it true?”

            “What?”

            “You’ve been reassigned?”

            “Yes.”

            “And you’ve accepted?”

            “Yes.”

            I needed a minute to clear my head before being able to speak again.

            “So you’re going. To the Dauntless.”

            “Yes.”

            “When?”

            “Tomorrow, at 0600.”

            “So soon?”

            “It is the only time in the next three years when the Dauntless and this ship will be able to rendezvous.”

            “Why?”

            “Why what?”

            “Why have you accepted?”

            “Are you familiar with the Dauntless at all, B?”

            “No.”

            “It is a top-class research vessel that studies astronomic anomalies and it is headed for Deep Space for the next three years. I will be researching phenomena no one else has ever encountered. It is a unique opportunity to gain insight into the universe.”

            “But what about the life you’ve built here? Your—your friends?”

            “Some small things must be sacrificed to attain one’s goals.”

            “Achieving your goals?”

            “By accepting the offer, I have achieved part of my goal. I told you once: advancement is my ultimate ambition, as it leads to better rates of survival.”

            “Won’t you miss this?”

            “Nostalgia is an Emotion.”

            I stared at him in wonder.

            “Why won’t you accept Emotion, Garth?” I asked quietly.

            “Emotion is useless. My parents taught me that and my experiences proved that.”

            “Perhaps, but you’d be like everyone else.”

            “Conformity is irrelevant.”

            “Don’t you care about your friends at all? Aren’t you concerned of what will happen to this ship without you?”

            “Life will go on as it had before I came aboard,” he replied simply.

            I opened my mouth to protest but Garth’s gray eyes pierced mine and I lost all words. All but one. It was pointless to argue with him, to try and change his mind. I had failed at trying to change his mind about the 4^th of July party. I would fail in attempting to change his decision about the Dauntless. And so, with all determination in my head lost, all signs of hope destroyed, that one word slipped out with several meaningless letters.

            “I love you, Garth.”

            And I embraced him tightly, wrapping my arms around his body and resting my head against his chest. I could vaguely hear the dull pounding of his heart. For several seconds, he stood quite still, almost statue-like and it was deathly silent aside from our breathing. I closed my eyes, unwilling to let my tears come out again. I knew my cause was lost on both fronts: Garth would not choose to stay aboard with me nor would he reciprocate my love. It felt almost surreal, standing in his dimly-lit quarters, his body so close to mine that I could feel the intense heat radiating from him. His skin was always a bit too warm for my tastes. Garth finally moved, placing his hand on my left arm and breaking the embrace. At first, I thought he was pushing me away. I expected that. I lifted my head off of his chest and looked at his face; he was now staring at my hand. To my shock, he lifted my hand to his lips and softly kissed my palm. And then he turned his eyes to mine.

            “You said you loved me,” he said, sounding dazed.

            His normally calm, ordinary eyes were stormy. Clouds of different shades of gray swirled and raged, glimmered and shone in the dim fluorescent light of his quarters. The change it brought to his face was startling. I parted my lips to speak but at that moment, all I could feel was the unnatural beating of my heart and the burning sensation on my palm. I couldn’t rip my eyes away but he could and he did: his eyes left mine. His face moved closer.

            “You love me,” he repeated softly, still sounding dazed, and his lips brushed mine as he kissed me gently.

            I didn’t want to break it so soon…I didn’t want to break it ever. He tasted like iced coffee and mint and I was surprised to find that it was a pleasant combination. I hadn’t kissed anyone in a long time—the last time being with James—and so my lips moved clumsily against his. Garth didn’t seem to mind. His hand dropped my arm and wrapped around my waist to pull me closer. Though he kissed me gently and somewhat uncertainly, as if he wasn’t sure how to do it either, I sensed in him an eagerness, some sort of strange desire, that controlled him now. Could it be lust? But that didn’t make much sense; Garth didn’t like Emotion.

            Garth didn’t like Emotion.

            I pulled away immediately and observed his face closely. His normally expressionless face still looked mildly surprised, as if he couldn’t comprehend what I’d just said to him.

            “Garth?”

            He didn’t say anything. I wanted answers and for once, he couldn’t give them to me. I took a step back unwittingly. What had just happened? Did he feel Emotion? Did he like me too? Was he doing what he thought was expected of him? What do you do when someone you don’t love loves you? I couldn’t just leave.

            “I…I must go,” I stammered, “Goodbye Garth. I wish you luck.”

            And so I turned around but before I could take more than a few steps, he finally spoke.

            “I wish you the best, as well, B.”

            I didn’t turn around. I nodded my acknowledgement of his well-wishes and left.