In this blinding light, on such a bright morning, I seek your smile, a sign, even a shard of memory.
Where are you, in this, or another world?
Do the rays of our star still caress your skin?
Or are you now so far beyond, perhaps on an alien shore, watching another sun rise?
I have lost your trace, your scent, the feeling of your existence.
Night will come.
“When was this photo taken?”
“Sir, we cannot be certain, it was transmitted just before the station was destroyed, that is, before the start of the eruption. As one can see, there is no trace of dust or smoke.”
“And what do our satellites see?”
“Nothing, Sir, just dust, surrounding the whole planet. It must be dark down there, doubtful there will be any survivor.”
“And that little island on the other side of the lake?”
“We think, now, that this is where the first eruption took place. It’s hardly believable: a stable old ground for millennia.”
“Well, we will have to rethink. Any other pictures?”
“No, Sir. All cameras have been vaporised.”
From the gate it was a short walk to the ship, under the high protective dome which had been erected on their arrival the year before. The leader could see his crew was excited: they would find back their cubicles, their personal possessions, holograms, books, games, even the small pets they were allowed to keep on the journey. They would also find, for the lucky ones, messages from family and friends. He looked at each of them, smiling, as they stood before the door, at the foot of the small elevator. They exchanged jokes and greetings. Over half of them were humans, fourth or fifth generation colonists who had volunteered for the reconnaissance of their old world. The others were replicants, but an uninformed observer could not have guessed. He thought the replicants tended to be smaller and somehow more fragile looking, many were women for whom it was the first long range spatial experience. From what his first officer had told him, he knew already that it was them who had been the most agitated until his return. Now they were all boarding slowly and orderly the big ship.
He found the size and glow of the hull pleasing. Two thirds of the vessel were taken up by the drive, the giant fusion reactor that allowed the ship to achieve trans galactic speed. But they would use the much smaller magnetic drive to leave the earth. The leader had several hours of tests and preparations to work through before their departure. He was looking forward to this work. Himself a replicant of the twelfth generation, cosmonauts and navigators, he would steer the ship into orbit, and then out of the solar system. The entire crew, bar himself and the first officer, would then be sent to cryogenic sleep for most of the journey. This would happen about a year after their departure from earth.
As he initiated the first test programs, the leader reflected on their mission. It had been a great success. They had plenty of recordings and measurements. Non-human life was now again plentiful on earth. The machines the previous mission had left to roam the oceans had done beautiful work of removing and destroying the plastic and other noxious material that polluted them. The atmosphere was clean.
There was more. One of the replicant ladies expected a baby. The first human being conceived on earth for three hundred years.
Picture: Rachael, Blade Runner
“He said he would come this morning, so have no worries!”
“Without him we are lost, we won’t ever go back home…”
“Just watch the light, soon you will se him, coming down from the top of that hill!”
The valley was still in darkness, but soon it would be dawn. Soon, the leader would be back with his flock. He would guide them to the gate, he would open the gate for them.
After so many months of searching and waiting, they would see it, in all its glory.
They would see the glowing spaceship that would take them home.
Reaching this corridor had taken time, and my companion and I were exhausted. When was the last time human beings had visited these walls? We had to decipher puzzles, and pick complicated locks. We had lost our way many times, fearing to fall through some traps, and crash down to deep and horrific dungeons.
The surface of the armour was a dull grey, a thin dust covering those parts not hidden behind the cobwebs. Was this a sentinel? Or a witness, to the horrors that had closed the house to posterity? We thought of the Commendatore, the victim of a terrible crime. The man, or should we say the creature, who had worn the armour, was tall, and rich. The exquisite finish of the metalwork, the still luxurious leather of the joints, all showed this was a work of art, brutal, signalling the strength and power of its owner.
The corridor was dark, only faintly lit by a distant window. The same thin dust covered walls and the carpeted floor. The solicitor had not not known the details of ownership, merely that the property was for sale. For a fortune. There was a large park around the house, century-old trees. And many works of art inside, he’d said. The owner, whoever, or whatever that was, had not yet allowed visitors. We’d taken on ourselves to have a look.
There was very little furniture, but some ancient prints on the walls. The air was dry, not stale, as if, somehow, fresh air was sometime allowed to penetrate the house. We decided to take a look at the prints. A few steps away we were looking at a delicate drawing… of the same armour, with a text we could not read. We heard a faint noise, a light friction sound. There was now way this was possible…
The high helm, which must have covered the skull of the knight, was now turned toward us.
“Is it a signal?” she said softly, “or is it for us?” It is both, I thought in silence, this is to warn, and prepare. I took my friend’s hand and we walked away. We knew we were not wanted. The warning was clear. Everywhere we would go in the country, it would be the same, and one evening…
None of us was amnesiac. We knew full well how it would end. There was a long tradition. From time to time we would lit a bonfire, but most of the time the fires were lit to burn us. Us, witches.
Through the snow, through the pixelated mist of our lives, I see him. Writing about him – only the antlers prevent me to say “her” – is another story: precisely.
Inspiration is like this vision, looking back at us, shrouded in doubt, shying away from the obvious, a myth. The stag will soon disappear, absorbed by the shadows, by the blank page. Alone, the white flakes of memory will, briefly, lit our darkness.
“… No, we can’t detect any sign of human or humanoid life anywhere… There is plenty of life in the water, on land too, mammals and birds… plenty of beautiful insects…”
“What about buildings, traces of recent organised activities?”
“There are ruins, covered with vegetation, some remnants of railroads… We have scanned what looks like bombed-out urban complexes, mostly under water, on what might have been the coast line, before the floods…”
“Can you confirm the telemetry: any trace of emissions, radioactivity?”
“All confirmed. Radioactivity is stronger around the old nuke power stations, mostly flooded, but weakening. As our satellites showed, there is no radio emission. Some structures look like ancient observatories, on remote mountains. All dead.”
“Okay, it looks as if there is nothing for us to do here. Just complete the scans, and then come back when you are done. The orders are to continue to explore the remaining planets in the system. Just in case some of them have escaped there…”
Photo by Alexandra Shchelkunova on Pexels.com
This year it may have arrived late, but now, it is here. The time of the year when shadows play tricks, shallow shapes appear, as if conjured up by a malicious genie, and then disappear, erased. This lovely vision may not be real, those blond hair, flying in the light wind, are not what they seem: as I got nearer, anxious to see the face, it’s nowhere, it’s just me, and some hidden gnome, invisible, yet present, and I think, laughing silently. The light is low, diffused, under the trees one does not recognise anything, cannot see through the light mist: I see you, but is it you? Or an ancient witch pretending to be you?
The waters of the canal reflect a deep green that doesn’t not come from the sky, but from an elsewhere, a deep, unfathomable to us, humans. We lost the skill to see this light, but was it ever a skill, or rather, a right? Gold and brown, grey and a colour which is undefined, a wavelength our eyes don’t capture. Dark knights ride in the clouds, bearing runes that may signal our end, our dismissal from what is, still, paradise. I feel small, in a world that, for now, and the next few months, no longer smiles at me. Those ghosts are not my friends, they merely remind me that life is short.
And Winter is coming.
It is not so far, where we met for the first time, when we were incredibly young, and so ignorant.
Not so far in distance from here, but in time, we dare not say. We know, much have changed around us, everywhere.
Except us.
Wiser we are, and so much stronger.
We’ve lost tracks of all those years, for we live for the present: ghosts we might be, but the happy sort,
as we have each other, for evermore.
