FLIGHT TO ENDYMION

The reality of a trip by humans in search of another planet must produce horrors of its own...

The dream was, the old book said, that we would reach Endymion by dusk, though it didn't say which dusk and anyway the book is lost along with love.

Well, dusks have come and gone and we're still here, bobbing on the oceans of interstellar space whilst the atomic clocks click the dusks along, one after another, and we grow older day by day.

Miranda died last week. Or was it last month? The clocks may tick the dusks but we have to remember how many, and I'm too old for my memory to work so well. But Miranda died, and it was horrible. She withered in front of my eyes, those breasts I had fondled for so many years emptied and sagged, those eyes I had gazed into as the dusks passed by grew dim and that mind that had been so clear and lucid became dreamlike.

And Miranda died last week.

The debris factors took her away and she was recycled like everything else. Maybe I ate her for lunch today. Who can tell? It might have been Miranda or it might have been my own s**t. But with no Miranda I'm all alone, and that's wretched.

And Endymion gets no closer.

We had set out an age ago, pairs of people in little ships, on a search for Paradise, and Miranda and I were tasked with landing on Endymion, and settling there. When we set out we had been young, Miranda and I. We laid and played in our tiny craft as it raced through the vastness of the emptiness of space. The lying was fun, and so was the playing, all the glorious mess of human lust and love, but we bred no sprogs. We were supposed to make sprogs and boy, we tried until my gonads dried up and Miranda starting pleading no, no more, sweetheart...

The idea was for babies to take our place on the journey to Endymion, and all sorts of factors hid in their cupboards waiting to be woken by the scream of baby voices. But one of us was sterile and no babies came. We were meant to educate … that was the purpose of the old book … and nurture and tease and play and beguile, fill the emptiness of time with maternal and paternal love … but no sprogs came.

We'd been tested for fertility before the off, of course.

But the tests had been wrong and we'd played and laid until Kingdom Come, and no babies. So the journey was ours and ours alone. And this ship of ours, tiny against the backdrop of the stars, sweeps on.

We'd watched each other decay with the passing dusks.

I'd wanted to be the first to die, to be recycled so that Miranda could live, but that wasn't to be. She died, simply, eyes rolling, night clawing her, long painless night, and leaving me with my own long loneliness.

I never got used to it. I still haven't, and with Miranda gone, I want to go too, but the Recycling factors won't let me.

They were designed to recycle, and if there's nothing left for them to turn into lunches and nobody to feed those lunches to, then they'll be useless and their circuits won't allow that. They'll have no purpose.

And the sod of it is they know that. And knowing it they keep me going. Me and no Miranda.

And I am older than I was ever meant to be. And weaker. With no will of my own, no thoughts, really, just this last diary entry and the bleak hollowness of despair.

It's the nights that are worst.

They're artificial, of course, nights crafted by dimmed lights and the moaning of whale music, the encouragement to dream, the teasing tinctures sprayed in the air that I breathe that calm me into nightmares.

Golden sands, blue-green seas, trickling over cringing toes, Miranda with me in a shaft of life, young, laughing or giggling, running and teasing, eyes brighter than bright, grabbing at me until the ecstasy of so much sensation ripples through me like an orgasm. Those are the dreams, and those the nightmares.

Then the daylight and reality and an empty seat where Miranda used to slouch, old and weary and desperate for one more cause to smile. And no cause came.

“Where are we, Factors?” I wept, almost every day until I stopped last dusk or the one before it or the one before that. “Are we there yet?”

And the answer was always the same . The mechanical voice shook its mechanical head and said, “nearly, but not quite... the journey through the stars is a long one, but when you get there, when you breathe the air of sweet Endymion, you will have cause to laugh and dance, to be one with Creation, one with life...”

And all I want to say is “No! No! I'm old enough to die...”

And the air that I breathed is filled with narcotic sleep, and the night draws into my soul, and the stars flash past my port-hole, and nobody, not anyone, will let me sleep for ever, and that's the only thing I want now that Miranda's gone, and the damned factors won't let me as my head grows emptier than on old silo and the night races past.

Let me die...

© Peter Rogerson 25.03.13

Reviews

[M.E.Lyle]

What a fantastic piece of work. You had me all the way through. The picture you paint is like life on our very own little planet soaring through space, only we do it with about trillion other people.
I noticed a bit of humor in this writing too. The bit about eating Miranda for lunch seemed very casual.
This tale reminds me, the voyage through life ain't easy.

[Peter Rogerson]

Thank you for your observations. I am most grateful.