Before I Rejoice

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say.

Professor Jean-Yuu in his 23rd century paper on The Man & The Stars, commented on the ‘human’ in space. Of the few races across the cosmos to evolve from the hominid, it is in our nature to conquer and scorch an indifferent universe with divine prejudice and governance. To a multiverse otherwise existing, we spend our days searching for purpose, for rationality, for order. The human condition and motivations lie in psychotic self-involvement, the only race that would otherwise scream in space– for other claves have already understood that nothing could hear you… What does that mean?

Lerin jerked awake, much less able to pretend to sleep when I was caught in a tangent. She rolled over in her bunk, mumbled something incoherent, pressed the pillows into her cheeks before demanding silence. She’s a famously deep sleeper so to wake to my philosophical drivel must’ve been quite a shock. In chorus, Jones and I fell into our bunks, taking time to prepare for the local Asop customs. We also had to self-adjust to the new planet's day-night cycle lest we spend nights awake crooning for breakfast. Most planets on the Randall Belt are prone to 45 ER (earth-relative) hour days and quite a short night and I found it hard to sleep in earth’s climate. Lerin was back to sleep, Jones was quietly staring at a dictionary, Rist took the only hypersleep pod, leaving me awake to look around the cabin.

I rolled over, adjusting my hips and blanket to a half-reasonable posture before restlessly facing down the belly of the ship.

Hued a soft green glow, the slumber quarters are bathed in Poseidon's light, a star local to Asop. Asop would be the fifth planet we’d visit, another in a long list of planets to document. The name– aptly coined by Hiroshi Asop, has spread around the multiverse to much effect, the home-planet’s name being impossible to translate.

The slumber quarters were the largest part of the ship. A few feet apart, a carbine metal bunk, strapped in by fibrous cabling holds all the crew’s beds horizontally. The space is intimate, no wider than a couple metres the whole way round. Cylindrical and hollow with instruments, probes and space-walk suits all pinned to the sides with blue taping. The rim of the ship is lined with a primitive graphite-epoxy, layered by blakemetal. It made for beautiful striations of lights and kept the ship insulated and an even temperature. The ship is a cheap knock-off modular-type (perhaps the reason that no one ceremoniously named it) and we were all still adjusting to the new recon unit. It made a subtle hum that’s enough to disturb a normal night's rest and tensions were high.

Along the hollow panopticon, the warm hum of the internals gave the ship its artificial climate, warm and dry air with occasional temperate sprays of cooled oxygen. To simulate our night, the portholes were closed, an ill-conceived design flaw, Rist's mistake, not covering the cockpit's viewfinder. Despite my best efforts, the moss-coloured gullies and shadows across the ship's innards weren't a comforting rest. I find better sleep when we aren't directly facing a star and it didn’t help that the cockpit is drenched in Poseidon’s (potentially poisonous) rays. Alas, a long night of moaning and reading is due. Qualt's Manifesto: Connection to Liberty was the last book I have to read, and I am not looking forward to such a vicious tome. I suppose the crew would be much less excited to hear what I have to say about it the morning after as well. Jones had recommended the book to me, lending me the physical manuscript some ER months ago but I had never gotten round to it. Prologue–

Humans have forgotten our cyclical nature. Our ancestors found religion, born from an imprecise comprehension of their planet. Men killed each other and burnt their homes to find understanding. Man invented arcane delusions of grandeur in our monarchs and judicial system, unaware of how cosmically silly we looked. Born from stars, our beings evaporate to time and earth, our thoughts inherently heavier than our substance.

Generations killed this logic, and sent us towards space. The bandits raid a planet's resources, the excavators destroy a planet's will, the documenters kill their history. Humans can find themselves in the midst of a planet's development, perhaps at a crossroads in their culture or perhaps moments from assured apocalypse and still find themselves a divine arbiter for a planet's history, its wars, its evolution.

Stuck between the fool and the wise, man still forgets its own place in the multiverse, simply animated dust. Documentation of the stars inspires us not to solve a planet's puzzle but to experience deep mind intelligence.

******

I hadn't heard the phrase: deep mind intelligence before Jones mentioned it a while ago, but I shrugged it off as some more of his own ‘space-logic’. I chuckled to myself: space-logic, I had coined that term a while ago but as all things in space– you are never the first one to do it. Jones is still a novice to interstellar travel and is still finding his footing in the multiverse; a concept that is lost on the rest of us. He’d talk about his ancestors on Earth and puppet the conversation around our endeavours as documenters. I’d humour him enough to settle his rants, but I couldn’t invest myself into his beliefs. What did our ancestors mean for the present? The mono-planet folk can afford to cast delusional aspersions upon spacefarers, that our cosmic tourism is somehow unethical. I knew Qualt was from the Green Scape’s Lois VII so he hadn’t even heard of half of the systems we had explored. Who was he to assume our mission?

I hopped out of bed, one last reassuring check to ensure the cameras were charged and primed. In a few ER hours, we’d be landing in East Asop– sometime during their night cycle to observe their customs. The expedition’s clandestine at best, but the planet doesn’t seem hostile, on the verge of eusociality, a rarity in intelligent lifeforms. These days the word, ‘intelligent’ is almost a slur but to call the planet anything other than brilliant was an understatement. It had its fair share of tourism, but it hadn’t truly been documented, at least not before its matriarch took leadership. Since the high elder succeeded the throne, very little information has gotten off-planet safe for some bar rumours and pirate chatter concerning the residents’ practices.

I continued to read up on Asop; doing my best to squint through green-washed pages. I caught a couple moments of reading before Poseidon was behind us and the acute blackness of infinite space washed over me. I blinked, a yawn, I saw my mother smile at me and then I saw Asop.

Already awake, the rest of the crew were fastening the camera gear to their harnesses. Upright, Lerin is even more domineering, our de-facto leader and patron of courage in our expedition. She stared off into a distance we couldn’t see. Her cheeks, hair, mouth all pulled in one sharp motion as if to draw your focus to her eyes. Her hair is tied back into braids, roped against broad shoulders. No blemishes on her face, safe for few lonely scars across her lip and jaw; a story she wouldn’t repeat. Unlike the rest of the crew who were born on-world, she was born to a faction of space diplomats. Like so many neo-terrans, she was born in space and had very little regard for the earth, its inhabitants, or humans in general.

I watched on from my bunk. Jones is handling guidance, motioning the local dialect to ask for safe transit onto the planet. He’s our new resident linguist, and he was still getting a hand on non-vocal language. Even on earth, we had our own motions and gestures for our deaf, but Asop culture relied entirely on context, intention, and emotion for communication. In this language there is no room for lying, corruption or doublespeak. Every eye roll, parted lip or eyebrow raise is a ‘word’ and taken as seriously. For the first time in a very long time, a pool of doubt and apprehension began to well up inside of me. I glanced at the books tucked away into my nook and I felt the anxiety there– all at once. There was a brief silence, Lerin watched as Jones stared into the translator screen, tilting his head, fluttering his eyes and perching his lips.

Rist, inside the cockpit, was still dragging the ship around Asop’s orbit, waiting on Jones for the go-ahead to land. Spending long stretches staring at the black of space would exhaust anyone but his happy-go-lucky attitude made for an excellent navigational spacefarer.

Jones was still motioning and waving in front of the screen, communicating with the Asop embassy for safe transit. I couldn’t quite see what the Asop people looked like from my angle on the bunk but Lerin didn’t quite seem impressed. We were granted passage and with it, a sigh of relief swept the ship. I looked off into the distance before looking up at the translator cautiously. On other planets, I had relied on history to get us out of situations, on articles to hide our weapons. What would Asop find in my eyes that I hid with my words?

Rist flicked the landing module (perhaps the only reliable part of the ship) and came back into the sleeping quarter for our journey briefing. He looked around wearily to spot any minor discrepancies before we disembarked, scratching at space suits, and taping to ensure we truly were slaving to keep the ship airtight. In quiet moments like these, you could catch a glimpse of Rist. Blind in one eye, you could look at him side on without incurring his rage, his broad shoulders almost covering his short curly hair. He was one of the last humans to still have blonde hair, a fact that he was indifferent about despite it starting most conversations off-world. His demeanour was serious, and he was perhaps the only conduit between me and Lerin. Unlike our leader, he was chatty, open and friendly but wouldn’t mention any of his time spent on earth. At the slightest mention of our home-planet or his missing eye, he’d groan, only to pull sharp drags of tobacco into his lungs.

Lerin seemed typically stressed, all her focus flooding into this exact spot. She was reeling from our last documentary, and she wouldn’t give any room for error. She said nothing and tapped Jones to kick off our meeting. He turned to face us, after his brief interaction with the Asop ambassador, his face seemed unusually strained and warped. Jones’ skin is darker than Lerin’s, not for his heritage though, instead he was tanned almost blue by years spent journeying further and further from his local star. His hair is long and jet black, cupping a face that might’ve been handsome were it not for his shaggy beard. He’s older than the rest of us and the lines, cuts and wrinkles alike, told of adventures spent grinding through warring states, presumably on planet Earth.

It took a roundabout way of thinking to express what you felt rather than distil it through a vocal language. This was my fifth documentary and like most planets, there was a new way of thinking that would delineate our human mindset but Jones seemed especially serious this time. He leaned in, warning how direct and deliberate your moves must be and how quickly one motion can be misinterpreted. Lerin seemed impatient and instead arched over him and motioned to the cameras. He cleared his throat, scratched his chin and fastened the cameras to his shoulder.

We were going in to observe, document and research the Asop way of life– nothing more.

Entry into Asop’s atmosphere was smooth, no problems but the landing module oddly put us somewhere west of our target, still at night, our ship was plunged into Asop’s darkness.

Our crew stood in the doorway, silent, bracing ourselves, adjusting time dials, fastening belts and miscellaneous apparatus with the little light the ship afforded us. Lerin stared off into the distance, her body tense and ready, focused. Jones seemed particularly on edge, jerking as the ship disinfected our suits. The ship opened up, spitting us somewhere into a residential suburb– too dark to see their homes. We wouldn’t move for a few breaths by Lerin’s orders. A eusocial world was rare but not totally unheard of. Lerin was understandably weary to mistrust a society that had learnt to share a common goal entirely and assumed our hosts would only see us as invaders. She sighed, pointing to me especially to only speak if necessary. She glared at me for final reassurance before she scanned the planet.

Jones gave us all a reassuring nod before he closed his eyes– a silent prayer, an affirmation to himself? There was nothing within that void; behind us the ship groaned and did its best to project enough light to find direction within Asop. No lights– not yet, no voices, a silence you’d only find in space but not a welcome absence on a new planet.

A laboured cough broke the silence as Rist pulled from his dusty box of cigarettes. As our lead navigator, being ‘lost’ on a planet was never a fear so he took the first step off the ship. The air seemed breathable and the smoke was perhaps the only thing cutting the edges of the darkness. The sort of blackness that lets you forget there ever was light– my eyes wide open, tracing lines and shapes that weren’t there, pricking my fingers against the air. I could see my future in the forms, could see my past in another direction, all at once and not at all. Hallucinations in the dark no doubt, but tangible in the mind. The mist began to split. Visions of brothers faded to scenery, disjointed moments ebbed into the background– my eyes adjusting, finally but only so far, perhaps a few feet.

Hesitant steps followed, Jones the first to venture into the pool of black. The planet was quiet but not completely void of sound. Wildlife and fauna, still caught in the planet’s depths, reacted to our sudden arrival, croaking and wheezing quietly. The planet bore no natural smell without any waste or atmospheric disturbance. Above us, few clouds found their dwelling in the atmosphere, no moon orbited the planet and no flying animals coursed through the sky. The clouds caught some light, empty and hollow lights that had no origin, bouncing and bobbing effortlessly, my eyes still suffering the planet’s projections.

The ground beneath us was a grey epoxy, trapping blue flowers in their hold to produce oxygen, something I had read about prior to our visit, no wonder Rist didn’t choke. We couldn’t see much of other vegetation either but instead found several wild animals brush against what little light we had, mostly resembling earth’s mammalian triassic period. The planet’s recently underwent a shift in their atmosphere, evidenced by their artificial day-night cycle.

We could all only see so far but slowly it seemed, our hosts were revealing more of the planet to us, allowing us to digest it all in time. The light barely scratched the nooks of the planet and yet, the shadows began to wrap around textures and the air began to press against colours. The blue epoxy began to break apart at the horizon, as if its seams were being torn across the landscape. Within the scars, streams of the same flowers trapped pools of water. The water was still, undisturbed yet the lines of blue rumbled and lashed, whipping away at the earth slowly. The planet’s geography had our landing gear confused, no wonder– the roads themselves breathing and changing. Lerin moved about the paddies, holding her camera to her shoulder, steadily spreading her feet across the moving earth to avoid the pools of water, doing her best to capture film for the documentary. Rist followed suit, the camera at his hip, his main focus his cigarette.

Jones and I trailed behind, watching Rist and Lerin chart an intangible course through the muck. Was there a point to moving at all? Lerin caught herself and halted movement. Rarely could you catch a logical paradigm without Lerin finding it first. She sharply turned to Jones but we all looked for her command, “The Asop are revealing their planet to us. Exploration is prohibited, simply document and observe. We are being watched. Steady yourselves.”

So we waited.

Rist’s cigarette burned to the stump. I stretched my arm and could only see to my elbow, my fingers lost in the blackness. We stood for a few minutes, hassling with equipment between lethargic moans. Lerin was the only one standing after waiting. She stared out into the darkness and remained tranquil, her eyes poised at some part of nothing. I always wondered where she was looking and why her gaze never fell onto me but I had a feeling, I’d find out on this planet. Jones stood to his feet suddenly and stood next to Lerin. They didn’t trade a word but stared at the same point, their shoulders the only thing giving away that they were breathing. I called out to Jones but got no response. “Jones!” Rist heard me and reacted, spinning around to get Jones’ attention but he didn’t budge. Jones seemed to be transfixed into some point within the darkness. Rist was bored, resisted the urge to smoke another cigarette, and collapsed to the ground. Lying up towards the sky, his incessant mumbling began to fade to nothing, his eyes fixated on a cloud that had long since drifted away, barely blinking, his pupils reflecting a vision I couldn’t see. Moments passed, maybe a few minutes.

I turned away from the group and searched for something in nothing. I crossed my arms, hugging at my knees as I stared off, sulking. Nothing stared back at me, laughing in its silent nature. Whatever the mind wants to see in the darkness, whatever flickers of light still found my eyes had long since faded till the obscure taunted me. I expected darkness and I got it back, nothing, till suddenly, the illusions began to stir. I felt silly for a moment and disturbed the ripple till it all went black again. I didn’t focus but instead relaxed in the shadows and saw a face staring back at me finally. It seemed formless at first, taking on whiskers, feathers, hair and reddish skin till it spilled out of the black with a smile. Its eyes were a milky green but still recognisably evolved from hominids. Its nose and ears were similarly shaped but its eyes were wider, its mouth revealing sharper canines and a bluish tongue. It looked back at me, its eyebrows raised and its mouth slightly parted. Most of the figure was still lost in the darkness, its hands stretched; surprisingly human-like out of the muk to stand up straight, looking down at me.

It rolled its eyes up and sneered. I stood to my feet too, perhaps a few inches taller than the Asop visitor. Up close, the Asop resident suggested no gender. They maintained eye contact so fierce I couldn’t see them beneath their shoulder blades; serious and intense.

Jones broke the next silence, “The hivemind is projecting the same figure to all of us. Do not speak. I will translate.” I tried to maintain composure but the eyes looking back at me could see through my poor attempt at tranquillity. They didn’t leer, dilate, didn’t shift or jut out, instead they maintained that still and pierced me. I closed my eyes, maintaining enough focus to pray out: I won’t say anything and instead let my ego fall into the vacuum. Despite my efforts, I could feel my mind split in twain, my face projecting vague memories, anxiety, frantic excitement compounded by my nervous eyes trying to hide it all. I could feel my face contort and bend in places I couldn’t control.

The face staring back at me blinked then glanced down. It looked away.

In my panic, I could hear Jones cry out, “To access the planet’s information, we need to connect to the collective consciousness. Don’t break eye contact.” I looked at the Asop resident; up and down, its scalp facing me. Shit. Rist was still lying down; looking skyward, he was somehow able to see the same vision as me. He didn’t break eye contact with the darkness, but cried to Jones, “How do we connect?” A pause followed. Jones and Lerin whispered under their breath, translating the Asop resident’s twitches, blinks and tacit lip quivers into implicit language. I stared at the Asop person, still, barely moving, breathing- sure, but not looking at me, instead it looked down at its feet, down. Jones opened his mouth but Lerin answered, “Touch the pools of water.” I thought I should say something, alert the others; the Asop person wasn’t looking at me, it's not looking at me, it doesn’t like me, it doesn’t want me, but nothing came out. A hollow mumble cinched its way from my lips, I sunk down, perhaps subconsciously to see if I could catch their eyes but before I could see them, I felt the cool water of Asop touch my skin.

Plummeting but still,

Away from my ego at last

Here, I blur into you

Every moment happening twice

All of the earth environed us crying

Curse the individual

Asop and me

Who am I and why am I screaming?