DeLorean Gray

You wake up.

 

You slowly open your eyes and blink the sleep away.

Sleep….sleep. Wait. Where were you? You think.

You breathe deep and stretch, letting the fatigue roll down your limbs and out through the tips of your fingers, out through the tips of your toes. Then you realize…slowly…..you look around..it’s coming faster now….and it hits you-.

You have no idea where you are. You are wide awake. You scramble to your feet to take in your surroundings and regain your bearings. It only takes a few seconds to realize that when standing in an endless gray void, the two are infinitely different.

Even without knowing, you know two things. The gray is infinite. And you aren’t dead.

Frowning to yourself, you furrow your brow and look around. Your fingers trace your jawline while your cluck your tongue, as if stumped during a game of hide and seek.

You open your mouth to curse and realize you don’t remember how to speak. You panic.

You begin to hyperventilate, you run. You run as hard as you can. You move as fast as humanly possible and you get nowhere. Humanly possible isn’t good enough.

You stumble to a halt and fall into a crouch, supporting yourself with an outstretched arm. You reach for peace, you breathe deep and exhale slowly, letting the panic roll down your limbs…wait. Déjà vu. Again? No. Wait. Where are you?

Who are you?

Panic. System overload. You run again. You run as hard as you can. You move as fast….wait. Déjà vu. Again? No….wait. Yes.

Who are you?!

You panic. You run your fingers through your hair, combing your mind for the answer. It doesn’t come. You glance down at a stray hair on your finger. It’s white. You panic. You rip out a few strands of hair. White.

You scream.

You scream nothing.

You scream at nothing.

You scream anyways.

You know that, somewhere, sometime, you knew who you were. But you can’t quite place it. You DID know who you were. Yeah, that’s it. You just forgot. You must have known. Right?

Your mind races and you rack your brain, looking for something. Anything to latch on to. You probe your mind until you gag. Change is the variable, but memory is a constant.

Until you forget. But that means you must have remembered sometime, if you’ve forgotten now. You tell yourself. One can’t exist without the other. Something clicks in the back of your mind.

A jigsaw falls into place. One can’t exist without the other. Something about the duality of man. But what does it mean? You file it under some papers in the back of your mind.

Suddenly, you remember the gray. Your eyes slide into focus and you have to brace for impact. The despair shatters through your shields, through your armor, and blossoms in your soul.

Whatever that means, you laugh nervously out loud, but there are no echoes in space.

You’re overcome with hopelessness, you scream again into the nothingness that is everything.

 

You blink away the tear, but manage to catch it on your finger. You look at it.

Something flashes before your eyes. You blink. You look closer.

Look closer.

[Something] flashes before your eyes. A memory. Memories? Was it just one or an entire life?

Can a life be captured in one moment? Surely. Or maybe not. You look closer. The tear rolls down your finger. You manage to lick it off with your tongue. The tear is salty.

Bittersweet. You think, for a moment, and laugh to yourself. But it’s salty! You reflect on that for a moment. Or maybe it was a lifetime? No matter. Back to the task at hand.

Your mind races and you rack your brain, looking for something. You didn’t get that education for nothing. Wait, that’s something! You nearly cry with relief. You remember, therefore you were. Once upon a time.

Remembering anything at all is enough.

Then, all of a sudden, like fog, it’s gone. You can’t remember what it was. What what was?

You panic. You scream again and start to run. You stop, steady on. You open the door to your cave, but there’s been an accident. The paramedics wheel the foreman out on a marble-top stretcher.

Ah well, the black lung would have killed him anyways. The police ask you to exit the area and point you towards a gray sign on the wall. Wait. Gray. Where have you heard that before?

You snap back to the present. You see gray. You panic again. You begin to hyperventilate, you run. You run until your veins bulge like ropes and each breath gives a little less respite and your legs turntojellyandyourvisionturnstoblur.yourunharderthanyoucan.youmoveasfastashumanlypossibleandyouget nowhere. Humanly possible isn’t good enough. You see gray all around as you collapse with exhaustion. White stars burn around you like a million candles.

You black out.

You wake up.
You slowly open your eyes and blink the sleep away.

Sleep….sleep. Where were you? You think.

You breathe deep and stretch, letting the fatigue roll down your limbs and out through the tips of your fingers, out through the tips of your toes. Then you realize…slowly…..you look around..it’s coming faster now….and it hits you-.

The gray. The gray is still there. Everywhere. It suffocates you and you choke.

You can’t run. You can’t reason. You vomit gray.

You stare at the gray and remember something. Something you had made a note of. Once upon a time. Years and years ago. Or was it only a few minutes ago? You shrug to yourself and rack your brain. One can’t exist without the other. Your mind shuts down and reboots. System overload.

You lie down, unable to cope with your epiphany. Black can’t exist without white. You try to remember if you learned that or made it up. Gray’s kind of an average of black and white.

You remember…something…but you can’t quite place it. Déjà vu. Again? Yes.

You accept it. You accept everything. You accept nothing. And you note; what’s the difference?

You black out.

 

You wake up.

 

You slowly open your eyes and blink the sleep away.

Sleep….sleep. Where were you? You think.

You breathe deep and stretch, letting the fatigue roll down your limbs and out through the tips of your fingers, out through the tips of your toes. Then you realize…slowly…..you look around..it’s coming faster now….and it hits you-.

You’re me.

 

You’re me and it doesn’t change a thing.

The Cloths of Heaven, Part II

Part II: Watership Down

 

Movement IV: St. Elsewhere

 

The gray, metallic floors stretch endlessly through the ship. Gray gives way to gray in an endless succession of rooms. I bet Dorothy wouldn’t have liked that yellow brick road so much if that’s all she ever knew. I was robbed of Earth, and now I sit, imprisoned in my gray cell, on my gray cell block, in my gray ship that is my gray world.

Sometimes I forget.

Sometimes, when I squeeze my eyes shut and try to remember, I can’t. I try to taste the saltwater breeze of home. And I can’t. I remember her name, but when I try to recall what she looked like, I can’t. It has been so long.

I wonder, sometimes, if people ever once looked out at the stars from Earth and realized just how alone we are. I have lived on board this ship my entire life. We are searching for a new home, they told me. We are searching for Eden.

They tried to be cheerful, but they were never quite the same again.

I am going to die on this ship. I realize now that I’ve known that ever since we were told there was an evacuation. They have no idea where we’re going. For awhile, some of us held on. Maybe there was a planet they had in mind…maybe there was hope. But that faded a long time ago. There is no plan, and there is no planet, just as there is no hope.

BANG! The lander lurches off course, as the team inside snaps into action.

Status? Two leaks. Forward-left landing gear is off.

The pilot grips the controls tightly as the craft shudders against the wind. Increase flow to right thrusters. No visibility. Dirt swirls around in a brown and gray impressionist painting outside the windshield as the lander hurtles towards the surface.

BANG! Another impact. Lights flicker.

Status? Not sure. Stay the course.

BANG! The lights flicker. The roar grows louder.

Status? Hull breach. The roar grows louder.

The pilot grips the controls tightly and blinks away both fear and sweat.

Hold together, baby. Hold together.

BANG! The back half of the lander is ripped off.

The pilot grips the controls tightly as the roar consumes him.

The lander spirals through the perfect storm and into the surface.

 

The transmission stops. Static confirms the sound of silence. No one says a word. What is there to say? Planets recoil at our touch. Space is our prison.

I quietly take off my headset and push away from the desk. No one says a word as I stand up and walk away.

I reach the door and hesitate.

I don’t look back.

There is no Eden.

 

I heard one of the crew leave their post. I was supposed to stop them, supposed to maintain discipline. Needless to say, I did not. I couldn’t.

Silence hung about us like an omen as I dropped back into my chair. I knew they were looking at me, to me, for leadership. But what could I do? What man can tame a planet?

We had already lost so many. So many lives. And, perhaps more importantly, so many landers. The transport had been left abandoned on Earth for so long during the war, it was only barely outfitted. Barely fit at all. We didn’t have any landers to spare, even if there were still people on the planet.

I closed my eyes, reached for peace, and took a deep breath.

“Put me through to the ground team.”

Forgive me.

 

We saw the lander break apart. Or at least, I think that’s what we saw. Between the wind, debris, and our temporary shelter, it was hard to tell what was happening. Our readings were completely fucked, and so were we.

I think I knew that they would leave us before the transmission. We all knew the couldn’t spare landers. Or lives. Perhaps those most of all.

I remember, even now, at the end of all things, when we received that last transmission. I never thought I’d be on death row, but we all had been sentenced to death and we knew it.

After the fleet stopped responding, we held together as a team for about thirty seconds. No one said anything. No one took any action. No one said a word.

Three days later, we’d lost two. One to his gun, one to the weather while he slept. Something had ripped up his entire sleeping pod. We couldn’t even try and find him.

Within a week, we ran out of food. We were all lost, but none of us would accept it.

But that was three weeks ago. I think. I don’t really know. Does it even matter? They’re all dead anyways.

Even at the very end, we fought.

 

Even now, we fight. Even when the only way we can survive is to stick together, even now, all we manage to do is splinter.

It began when they decided to leave the ground team behind. Within an hour, there were riots throughout the ship. Years of anguish, despair, cramped living, gray walls, confinement, homesickness, and hopelessness broke through the walls that we had built to repress them. Soldiers became police and held the line. But unlike the streets of Earth, on a ship such as this, we cannot afford collateral damage. Damage to its internal systems could impact anything from sewage regulation to engine performance. And so the soldiers were given orders to subdue the riots quickly and harshly, before the mob got to the tipping point.

Oftentimes, it only takes one shot, one casualty, to ignite a war.

No one knows which side fired first.

 

They shot first. Those damn fucks. I’d rather have died on Earth then be a slave. It was their fault all this happened. They went to war and God got sick of their bullshit. Kicked them right off the damn planet.

I tell you this, I want answers! I wasn’t the one who fired the nukes. They did. The governments did it. I…I ain’t done anything wrong. But, then..why did I have to leave? Did I do something wrong?

No. No. No, I didn’t! But they did. This is their fault.

Fuck the Powers. We have to stop them. I have to stop them.

 

The high pitch scream interrupts our dinner without warning, causing everyone in the room to jump, knocking over drinks and dropping food. For a moment, we all take a breath and regain control. Then we jump into action. We leave everything where it fell and grab our equipment – never far away – and run to our stations.

Of course, it’s a false alarm. Always is. Ever since the so-called Resistance sprang up. Both sides blame the other – of course. Still, I think it’s the Resistance. The Eight Powers only do what they deem best. Is that not just cause?

 

Whoever said obedience is just was a fool. The Powers demand obedience. For the greater good. Don’t ask questions. For the greater good. We have a plan. There is hope.

Yeah, well, you can’t tell authority anything.

Except with force.

 

“Sir, you’re not wearing your dress uniform?” Disapproval etched the young soldier’s face.

I glanced over at the soldier and back at the seven leaders standing behind me; proud, insulted, and utterly terrified.

“There are times for pride and formality, and there are times for humility and frankness.”

When the rebels took hold of Horizon, they caught everyone off-guard. No one had expected such a quiet coup d’etat. One moment she was under our control and the next, she wasn’t.

The news had come over the speaker system. “This is the Resistance. We have gained control of the Horizon. The rest will soon follow. We have won. The Powers must submit.”

Immediately, we had moved to cut her off, bringing all our weapons to standby. We then ordered the rebels to stand down. They didn’t. So we ordered Sol to prepare for disable while Frontier moved to board.

What we didn’t know was that the Resistance had placed sleepers in key places inside the command structure. Instead of moving to board, Frontier dropped around Horizon and waited. Moments later, Sol’s captain followed, along with three other small cruisers. Within minutes, half the fleet was divided and we had lost control.

So, we stood about, all lost in our own thoughts, as we awaited the shuttle pilot that would ferry us over to negotiate with the Resistance.

We stood, humbled, and awaited the negotiations as we might a trial, for we knew that whatever happened in the coming hours would determine the fate of our entire species.

 

They were scared.

I could see it as soon as I saw them. They were actually afraid of us. But there were other emotions. Anger, pride, indignation. That was to be expected, of course. The last of the opposing party’s guards entered, taking up neutral, but clear vantage points about the room. I allowed myself a cocky smile and waved at the Powers to sit. The old men took slowly and reluctantly their seats.

I leaned forward.

“Here are our terms.”

 

The Resistance and the Powers sat on opposite sides of the table, their political differences enumerated by their physical differences. These rebels truly were from every walk of life. They had managed to infiltrate everything from the brig to the bridge. The rebel leader was a young man, likely only in his mid-40s, with perhaps a tinge of Asian ancestry. He carried himself with a swagger befitting even the most self-righteous.

I watch him, silently, from behind the Powers. I had never met him myself, but everyone knew his name. I received my orders through a fellow guardsman, a lieutenant who now stood silently a few feet away.

I spare a glance. His gaze remains fixed, waiting for the signal. We both wait for the signal.

Wait. What did he just say? I tune in to the rebel’s delivery of the terms.

“..furthermore, any ships not willing to submit to the new government will be left behind.”

The eight Powers at the table reacted externally as I was internally; with outrage and indignation. When the human race is reduced to what is already nearly certain extinction, this boy has the audacity to suggest that we should further decrease our chances?

The doubt washes over me and solidifies as betrayal.

The rebel leans back. The signal.

I can barely manage a glance before the lieutenant’s gun is at the third guard’s head. The rebel guards’ guns snap up towards us.

I freeze. My eyes stay fixed on the rebel leader. The lieutenant shouts at me as the fourth guard, the one I’m supposed to be holding up, brings his rifle up to bear on the lieutenant. I remain frozen. My eyes remained fixed on the rebel leader.

I drop my rifle……and in one fluid motion, bring my pistol from its holster to my hand. My eyes remain fixed on the rebel leader, who stares right back.

I pull the trigger.

Time slows. The lieutenant arcs gracefully to the floor.

Both sides open fire. I feel myself slide down the wall.

Time stops. I guess there really is beauty in the breakdown.

 

When the negotiations broke down, the rebel leader had been injured and five of the eight government leaders were killed or severely wounded.

In the aftermath, the fleet fell into disarray. For days on end, any semblance of order was overwhelmed by the waves of chaos that rippled through the entire convoy. A few days in, someone detonated a crude explosive device in the barracks, killing nearly a hundred soldiers, including one colonel. The barracks were near the outer hull, and the entire section had to be shut off.

Soon enough, both factions were destroyed, decimated, dead and gone. But even when something is dead and gone, the effect remains. The civil war between the Powers and the Resistance left a power vacuum. Of course, the power vacuum didn’t last long, soon giving way to a multitude of competing factions, both political and militant.

The remainder of the fleet drifted nearly aimlessly for over a year during the reconstruction project and simultaneous the power struggle between various go-gooders, politicians, and profiteers.

 

The election was a landslide.

“Today, today is the dawn of a new era for our human race. The last remnant of the tyranny that were the Powers of the old order is finally ended once and for all. But this is not my victory, this is your victory. A triumph by the people over the Powers that were. This, this is for you!…”

The young couple sprawled on their futon passed the rolla from one to the other, inhaling deeply.

“Fuck him.”

The man glanced over at his brown-haired, green-eyed companion.

“Yep.” He exhaled deeply.

 

The years come and go. The duty of every human being is to fulfill the role best suited to them. Why? In order to preserve the human race. We learn only what we have been able to recover. The story is that when the Exodus occurred, there had been no time to upload all the scientific progress that had been made. Those scientists who had survived the Purge had enough pressing matters to attend to for the rest of their lives that only a fraction of the scientific knkowledge had survived. The most liberal estimates are that current scientists knew perhaps 14% of what was once known.

We put ourselves to the fullest possible use, which is all they say any person can ever hope to do. Whoever said obedience was just would love us.

I’m afraid. I’m afraid. My mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going.
The years came and went. And we are vagabonds.

We live this close to death.

And we float on.

Movement V: Within a Mile of Home

 

The star shone brightly and brilliantly against a backdrop of black, in turn dotted with the twinkling of farther off stars. Several planets of varying composition sat in orbit around the star, revolving and rotating in endless repetition. At length, another light lent itself to the solar system. A flash and another twinkle was born.

The transport, half-dead and dark, fluttered through space and into an asteroid field. The lights flickered from the secluded sections of the wounded hull. Slowly, but still surely, the lone ship limped towards the inner group of planets.

The first few planets from the star were all varying shades of cold, hell frozen over at last. The light from the star reflected and refracted from and around the transport, flickering like a flame.

 

The commander stood on the bridge, weary and worn, his gray-white beard trimmed and cropped around his chin. He sighed, again wearily.

“Scan it.” He glanced down. “Watch the moon.”

Something stirred in his mind. The commander inhaled slowly, methodically, and looked down again. “Scan the moon, too. Run the results.”

The second-in-command nodded somewhat briskly and executed the commander’s commands to the best of her ability. She snapped orders and salutes in perfect harmony, albeit with a degree of fatigue, as if she had been doing the same thing for her entire life. And she had.

The screen bleeped. 64% match. That was higher than most. The commander’s heart skipped in spite of his efforts to the contrary. He looked to his second.

“Send Dr. Fernandez groundside.”

 

The lander hurtled through what remained of the planet’s atmosphere, the windshield icing around the edges and the winds buffeting the pod without mercy. The scientist gritted his teeth and uttered a cross between a curse and a prayer, his hands gripped tightly to the controls.

His pod was caught in a gust and flipped end over end. His vision seemed to spiral away from him and he could do nothing but hold on. The planet’s surface, miles and miles away, rushed up to meet him faster than he could ever have mentioned.

 

The leaders stood around the projection, hands clasped behind their backs, watching the groundside scientist onscreen and awaiting the report.

The results were as projected; unsuitable to life.

The commander and his heart sank slowly. His heartbreak was echoed throughout the room in a collective sigh of concession.

“What now, sir?”

The commander raised his eyes and looked at the lifeless planet.

“We bring him back home.” He breathed deeply, resigned and yet resolved. “And we keep going.”

 

A few hours later, the transport dropped out of orbit and drifted on towards the edge of the solar system. The commander sat in his chair on the bridge of the ship that carried what was left of his entire species. He sat, numb, and oversaw the crew as they prepared to throttle up.

 

The mother sat in her chair as the loudspeaker relayed the news throughout the ship. The solar system, as were all the others since the civil war, were barren, nonresponsive, and devoid of even the potential for life.

 

The soldier gripped his rifle harder as the loudspeaker spoke. He breathed deeply and closed his eyes, reaching for some form of comfort. He found a void and begged the question; is that enough to live for?

 

The ship sailed across and to the edge of the solar system. The human race looked back, but only until the sun no longer marked the horizon, left forever to memory.

 

Epilogue: The World Without Us

 

The scientist opened his eyes. He was alive.

 

He slowly moved his hand to his seatbelt and unbuckled himself, promptly falled to the roof of his lander. Disoriented, he blinked and tried to roll over. His right side ached dully. Both his wrists had been sprained in the crash. He tried to roll over again. No luck. His hands found the radio.

“Hello?” A voice made its way through the radio, miraculously.

“Command to Dr. Fernandez. Do you copy? Over.” He nearly wept with relief.

As he relayed his position to the ship, he suddenly became aware of the cacophony outside. The wind was raging. The scientist gripped the sides of the broken window and managed to pull himself halfway out of the lander. He was faintly aware of a cold rush near one of his feet. He continued to struggle as the lander rocked in the wind like a lullaby.

With great effort, he was able to free himself from the lander, along with his mobile survey gear, or at least what didn’t seem to be broken. Fastening it to his suit as best he could, the scientist stumbled over the rocks and made his way towards higher ground.

At length he managed to reach the nearest peak and survey the surrounding area. There was a strange object only a couple miles off. He glanced back towards his wrecked lander and up to the sky. He pressed on.

 

The scientist gazed at what could only have been a tree. The once-jagged, sanded branches erupting from the plateau, made a surreal spectacle for someone who had only ever seen trees in contained biomes.

He methodically, yet eagerly, went about taking samples from the soil and from the half-petrified specimen. It must have been thousands of years old. Could it possibly still live?

The scientist crouched and checked his clock. Time was quickly becoming an issue. He look to his instruments. The first result.

Negative. His heart dropped. The cold from his right foot reclaimed its hold. He look down.

His heart hit bottom. The bottom of his pants leg and his top of his boot were ripped. He could see the ice white of his skin. He cursed and prayed in unison and waited for evac.

The other results shortly followed. Negative. Negative. Nothing. The tree was lifeless. Still crouching, the scientist picked up a handful of soil and ran it through his gloved fingers. Sighing, he resigned himself to defeat and picked up his instruments.

With a heavy heart and a weary soul, the scientist trudged back to the lander, where he met the rescue team.

 

As the scientist stood aboard the dropship as the surface rapidly fell away, he watched the ever persistent winds wipe away his footprint. Before he left the atmosphere, the planet had erased all memory of his visit.

 

The star sets over the horizon and the shadow passes over the tree as it begins its daily journey across the far side of the world. The planet turns as it has for ages, while humanity searches as it has for ages. The variables change, yet the equation remains the same.

The tree stands resolutely in the wind, raging against the dying of the light, even in death. In the soil next to it, a cell divides.

 

The third planet from the star sits against a backdrop of infinity, defying the universe with life.

It radiates our legacy.