Warp & Woof: Chapter Nine
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 9.
Warp & Woof
Chapter Nine:
Pодной Mир
(Rodnoy Mir)
Galina
Dmitri cleared his throat. “We still going?”
Galina couldn’t bring herself to tell him the truth. “Why don’t you check on the others and get some rest? I have a few things to figure out before launch.”
She watched him go and let her mind wander, chasing guilt and regret back across space and time. From the satellite they’d left in orbit, she charted weather patterns and timed the planet’s rotation and the tidal effects of its single moon. She measured the heat reflected off its surface, from pole to pole and from dawn to dusk. In all things, the planet acted as a planet should.
She tried again to broadcast an alert back to the fleet, but that, it refused to do.
So many years before, Earth had discovered Rodnoy Mir, and at that great a distance they’d studied its atmosphere and its climates. Every reading suggested the same thing; the planet was ideal. It was an invitation to reach beyond the sickly limits of their own world, but that invitation had left them in the grass.
The grass.
She scanned the surface on the assumption that everything was as it appeared, but she knew better. The truth had shown itself. She adjusted the sensors to look for things she knew shouldn’t be there: structures; populations; technology. The routine rhythms of the planet took on a different cast. The planet’s shell suggested a network of interlinked cells where rock and dirt should have been, and those cells produced heat, like a living being or a machine. The greatest of those heat signatures registered in their little seaside prairie, and there, the cells moved like water.
She frowned at the results. Such a thing was impossible. Meaningless. She unbuckled and exited into the hall that passed by the crew quarters on its way down to the bay. Warp’s door was ajar. Shadows moved within, and a man’s voice moaned, as if in pain. Galina had the door half open before she saw Zasha, writhing naked on Warp’s cot, her legs and arms tangled in the sheets, a half-seen body thrusting beneath her.
Galina jerked away and fell into the opposing wall, babbling apologies like a frightened child. She ran down the passage and into the bay, gasping, choking. What she’d seen couldn’t have been Zasha or Warp. Both were in sickbay. Her eyes darted to the open door, and at that moment, Dmitri walked out.
“Our patients are resting comfortably. Any word on the launch?”
She stared at him and then back up the passageway. “They’re both there?”
He moved past her on his way up the passage. “Where else would they be?”
A hollowness swept over her, and she turned away without any understanding. The only idea that came was the long-practiced one of filling emptiness with food. In the mess deck, she sat alone in a wash of soft white light and nursed a tube of porridge. When Zasha waltzed in, Galina swallowed a cry of horror and said, instead, “You look happy.”
Zasha pushed the button to warm another tube. “Dramatically unburdened.” Her tone sounded forced, and for a moment, she stood still, staring inward, at something beyond Galina’s knowing.
“I didn’t realize...”
“My fault,” Zasha said. “Did you see much?”
Galina took another bite.
Zasha sat across from her. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I didn’t see his face.”
“That must have your gears turning.”
“It does.”
“Strange times,” Zasha said.
“You were in Warp’s quarters, so I assume—”
“—Has Warp asked you why you’re here?” Zasha interrupted, the warm smile still plastered across her face. “Anyone could’ve come, or no one at all. Why leave children and grandchildren behind?”
Galina brought the tube to her mouth, but her eyes were locked on Zasha, who hadn’t asked why there had been no launch. “My sacrifice in coming is great, but so is my reward. I share in the honor the fleet bestows upon you, as does my family, and unlike us, they get to enjoy the benefits of that honor. My grandchildren will be grandparents now, and the grandchildren of their grandchildren will one day walk out of that ship. All their lives will be different, will be better, for their connection to what we do here.”
“You gave up your remaining time with them so they could enjoy promotions and prestige? I don’t buy it.”
“I’m not asking you to believe anything,” Galina said, knowing her words held little truth. “It was my choice to come. I didn’t trust what they’d make of this expedition without me.”
Zasha studied her, as if she might see some clue hiding in the strands of her hair. “I don’t know how this would’ve been different without you, but so be it. You have your secrets, and I have mine.”
“As in how you’re out of sickbay?”
“Am I?”
Something in Zasha’s tone made Galina move. She crossed the bay without breathing and stopped in the doorway, sickened to despair by what she saw. Zasha strapped in bed, sleeping.
She stumbled back into the mess deck. “None of this is real.”
Zasha’s answer came calm and low. “If one of us suggested that, you’d tell us we were disassociating.”
“Existence seems real, but that’s no proof,” Galina said, her voice higher pitched than normal. It grated in her ears. “As the end finds you, you’ll have no context to differentiate between dream and wakefulness, but how is it I should see you both here and there except that I, too, am mad?”
“You’re not sick,” Zasha said, “and Rodnoy Mir is real.”
Galina offered up the slightest laugh. “We’re nothing now but the stories we tell, the context we create to understand the impossible. You could be a program running through a script, and it’d all seem the same to me.”
“And if I’m not?” Zasha asked.
The room felt small and distant, as if Galina had withdrawn deep within herself. “If we assume we’re both self aware and experiencing the same moment, then Warp’s mother was right. We’re copies on Titan, participating in a communal dream, seeking a shared escape to the stars.“
Zasha held Galina’s hand. “That’s not the right story. It’s not the right context.”
— Thaddeus Thomas
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