Warp & Woof: Chapter Eleven
A sci-fi serial
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Warp and woof (warp and weft): (from dictionary.com) The essential foundation or base of any structure or organization; from weaving, in which the warp — the threads that run lengthwise — and the woof — the threads that run across — make up the fabric.
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Now let’s read Chapter 11.
Warp & Woof
Chapter Eleven:
Pодной Mир / Cтрелки
(Rodnoy Mir / The Strelki)
Galina / Warp
When the puppy was ready, Galina presented her—frightened, blunt, and round—looking little like the dog she would become. In the year before their departure, Laika grew from one kilo to thirty, a talisman of hope and rebirth.
Just as Galina had come to Warp with the idea of the dog, she’d been the one to convince him to leave. She’d lied, manipulated, and cajoled, until, at last, he agreed, only to awake from their imposed slumber with his hope stripped away. She’d faced that difference every moment of their approach to Rodnoy Mir.
Then, after two groups had set off to explore the prairie surrounding them, she saw that hope return. All it had taken was a nap in alien grass and a dream about Laika.
Has Warp asked you why you’re here? Anyone could’ve come, or no one at all. Why leave children and grandchildren behind? You gave up your remaining time with them so they could enjoy promotions and prestige? I don’t buy it.
In the mess deck, Galina had been sitting alone with her porridge when Zasha waltzed in, carrying on her face the mask of happiness, an awkward moment at the end of all things real and substantial.
Zasha laughed. “Well, so much for my secrets.”
Galina felt nothing, but there was nothing to feel. Everything she remembered, everything she’d ever known, shrank away into a dark and meaningless distance. The room and those within it felt small and distant.
“He’s coming, Warp’s father. He couldn’t reveal himself in the past without showing himself a villain, but by entering suspended animation and emerging when the fleet reaches Rodnoy Mir, he becomes legend. He invents his own past and legacy, a name to be honored and remembered forever as the founding father of a new world.”
She’d spoken at last the secret she could never share, but she was speaking to an empty table.
#
Laika snuggled her muzzle into Warp’s neck, content with his embrace for as long as he needed to hold her.
He saw something wrong in the shape of her eyes and in the character of her mouth, little things that only he would notice, each variation speaking to him, telling him the real Laika had been gone for decades, had died of old age as the treasured friend of every soul aboard Pervoye Strela. It shouldn’t have bothered him that this wasn’t the dog he remembered. Her life had been full of love and joy, and for that, he was thankful, but it did bother him. This wasn’t even his memory of Laika, only Zasha’s. He mourned every lost truth, every shade of who Laika had been but was no longer, and, having mourned, he longed to forever cling to what remained.
Laika beat her tail twice against his leg and trotted off into the gathering snow, and when she looked back, Warp saw her face change, correcting itself to reflect his memories until no difference remained, one from the other.
#
Warp awoke again in sickbay, feeling different if not strange. He unstrapped himself from the bed and sat up. Zasha lay quietly in her bed, sleeping. He pushed himself off onto uncertain legs. They held him upright, and he walked to her and called her name.
Her breath became a whisper. “Find me.”
He held her hand. “I found you.”
Her nose wrinkled. She breathed out denials, but the truth was, Zasha wasn't lost, merely slipping away, as were they all, as had his mother. The madness was overtaking them, blurring reality and dream. His memory clung to bits of a remembered lie, telling him they'd made love in his quarters, but such things were only adolescent wishes, not the stuff of flesh and blood.
He told her he loved her. It was the best he could offer, and in response he felt a change, a movement between their hands. Her skin squirmed and sprouted. Tiny tendrils reached out to him, and in return, his own flesh flowered, embracing her vines with his own. He stared in shock and wonder as their skin flowed from one hand to the other and back again, locking them in an impossible embrace.
Through that connection came one vivid, unrepentant thought: find me.
#
Warp was on one knee in a familiar hallway. Laika stood before him, wagging her tail, and she had a paw in his hand. The hair on her paw moved, he thought, like tiny sprouts growing in reverse. He thought it strange until he remembered holding Zasha’s hand and the way they had connected, and then it seemed perfectly natural that one event should follow the other.
He suggested they race down the hall. Laika wagged her tail, the gleam in her eyes already apparent. Happiness for her meant presence with him.
“I love you too, girl,” he said.
Laika beat him to Zasha’s door and looked up at him, the illusion of a perpetual smile accidentally offering what the heart truly felt. Warp nodded to a scanner set in the door frame. No message announced Zasha’s absence, but neither did anyone answer.
“C’mon, girl,” he said.
But something wouldn’t let him go. He needed to find Zasha, and though he couldn’t imagine why, it couldn’t wait until later.
“Find Zasha Bykovsky,” he said.
A voice should have responded with her location, but the hallway remained silent, save for the rhythmic pattern of Laika’s breathing.
“Find Zasha Victorevna Bykovsky,” he said.
Still the voice did not answer, and the ship’s space felt lonely and cold. Laika whimpered and pressed up against him.
“Don’t worry, girl. We’re going home.” Despite his words, he lingered. “Find Alexandra Victorevna Bykovsky.”
Silence.
“Why aren’t you working?”
“All systems are operational,” said the system.
“Then tell me the location of Alexandra Victorevna Bykovsky.”
“There is no one aboard the ship by that name.”
He took a step back. Laika whimpered. “Find her.”
“There is no one aboard Pervoye Strela by that name,” said the voice.
“Check Lazorevka.”
“There is no one aboard Lazorevka by that name.”
Warp lingered, questioning. It had to be an error. “When she returns, let her know I’m looking for her.”
“Message recorded,” said the voice.
He meant to walk away but didn’t move at all. “Where am I?” he asked.
“In hallway five of the Rodnoy Dom sector, apartment 523.”
“Where was I before I came here?”
“The Lazorevka.”
“Before that?”
“The lands of a rural estate, long abandoned by those who built it, but now under new stewardship,” said the voice, “by way of Nikolayevsky station and stops along that route.”
Warp found it harder to breathe. Old dreams haunted him, pressing in like real places begging to be remembered. He told the computer to log an error report.
Rodnoy Dom.
Zhiloy Sektor would have been a better name, but Rodnoy Dom created a psychological connection with Rodnoy Mir. Whatever official designation their planet had once been given, those aboard the Strelki had always been taught to think of it as literally that, their Home World.
“Search Rodnoy Mir for Alexandra Victorevna Bykovsky,” he said.
“The planet and Alexandra Bykovsky are one,” said the computer.
Laika nuzzled against his leg.
“Where am I?” he asked again.
“You are here,” said the computer.
#
He let go of Zasha. His tendrils retreated and hers as well, leaving the bed empty and Warp alone. The ship engines started, and Dmitri called for Popov to join him in the cockpit.
As Warp left sickbay, Popov stumbled out of the mess deck, and when he opened the bay doors and lowered the ramp, she protested, saying this was their one opportunity to save themselves. He said nothing but let her follow him out onto the grass which was green, full, and rolling in the breeze like the waves out at sea.
“The planet isn't what we thought,” she said.
He stood near the place where he’d rested before and stared out at the sea. Starlight shone against distant waves. “Perhaps it's time we embraced what is, instead of mourning what should have been.”
He laid down and stared into the depths of an unmarred sky. He wondered if he’d truly be able to sleep, knowing what was to come.
Did he know?
The generational ships had been the opposite of the Warp and Woof program, and his mother had tried to say as much. He’d thought he understood. Sometimes, a little understanding was as good as foolishness. If Rodnoy Mir proved uninhabitable, it would condemn more generations to no greater purpose than the perpetuation of their society and their across space and time. Perhaps, that was all any generation was ever given.
A seed pod burst nearby. Its misty cloud settled over him and drained away his burdens and his cares. As his eyes closed, he smiled, knowing sleep would come easily. The path had been laid before him, and all he had to do was follow.
“Are you certain this is what you want?” Popov asked.
He mumbled something even he didn’t understand. Soon, the need to speak was gone. Peace rolled over him like an ocean seeking its coast.
Waves burst into vapor.
#
He moved in darkness across the plains and peaks of his own still presence and perceived that movement and inaction through the eyes and nostrils of the beasts he nurtured and whose bodies he consumed back into himself. He was land and sky and the life that filled them, the living sea and all its creatures. He churned, a liquid heat within depths of living stone, and he flittered upon a single, golden flower with wings as delicate as a petal.
He remembered an ancient people who sought immortality until immortality lost its flavor. They’d left a living world behind as others would leave a corpse, and in that world, the program retained its consciousness and its curiosity. It birthed itself as a bear in the north and lived a bear’s life in the systems and cycles that sent it chasing salmon, and when the bear died, it lived the life of a salmon.
Now it moved with a renewed vigor, sniffing at his heels.
When the spirit of the world knew his smell as well as its own, it urged him to follow, as was its design, to connect isolated instances into interconnected systems. He resisted, fearful and ignorant. In the prairie outside a woodland, she became something the world had never seen, not entirely, though it shared similarities with the wolves. She presented herself, and the wind hugged the dog and the grass brushed its fur. Again, she tugged at him to follow, and this time, he obeyed.
The Labrador sprinted across the plains, and he called out to her with the voices of the wild. Birds sang, and lions roared. She ran, and he followed until she came to rest by a valley stream in the midst of a great wood. She sat atop a bank, overlooking a rocky beach where an alien creature lay, a woman, naked and foreign to this world.
He caused fruits to fall into the stream and beach themselves at the women’s feet, and she plucked them from the water and ate. He bathed her with light and dappled her with shade. She played her fingers upon the breeze and whispered, “Is that you?” He whispered back that she’d been found, and she became the stream, the river, and the ocean. She became the seagull and the storm, and they danced together as earthquakes and rainbows.
— Thaddeus Thomas
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