Gatekeepers

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. But that is because “those who say,” including the owner of that specific observation, were standing in the wrong spot.

It is not his fault though. To him, space is a horizonless realm in which up is down, forward is backward, and all sense of direction is lost in the vastness of what is often mistaken as eternity. Words like “endless,” “boundless,” and “unimaginable” are the descriptors through which his species attempts to understand the landscape they see when they look up and glimpse beyond their atmosphere. So understandably from his perspective, a scream could never be heard in the vacuum of space. In fact, a scream would likely not even be heard if it happened within a mile of where he stood.

But this story is not about him. And although it will return to him, this story is about those who taught him, those who revealed to him that one can in fact hear a scream in the vacuum of space, if one is listening through the correct door.

-

She awoke again to find only darkness. She was beginning to regret her decision. Maybe there could have been another way.

Time is a finicky subject and measurements for it differ between worlds. For her world, she had awoken the equivalent of 10,219 human years ago and still there was only darkness.

She used to be called Anza, but now, it didn’t really seem to matter. Before those 10,219 human years, she had been asleep for a long time. Her physical body had lost the will to survive many millennia ago and she knew that when she awoke, she would be only a consciousness. But that is what she had wanted. She had needed to escape beyond where her body could carry her.

For the 321st day in the 10,219th year in a row, she tried to open her eyes, only to yet again realize that the eyes she was trying to command no longer existed. She fumbled again in the darkness, noncommittally grasping for anything tangible in this void. But she knew none would come. The brochure had warned her none would come. The word it had used was “disorienting.”

“The step after you wake is going to be challenging. It can even be disorienting for some,” the teacher had elaborated during her training, in the most monotonous, laborious, sleep-invoking voice. She had been to hundreds of worlds, met thousands of inhabitants, and no one she had ever encountered on her journeys could even dream to contend with this one teacher in regards to who had the most painstakingly boring voice.

But as she stumbled through the emptiness for the thousandth time, saturated with boredom, she now understood why the designers had used his voice for the teacher who prepared members of the Regalise family for this.

The room in which her brochure had been carried out was dull. Its most exciting feature, a cleanly polished steel chair, could have been considered nothing more than an edgy version of bland. The walls were beige and windowless, the floors were a characterless light wood, and the ceiling was nonexistent. The designers hadn’t even exerted the energy to code a ceiling and the bare-minimum features they had decided to code often glitched. It felt as though she sat in the set of an old TV show sitcom, with ceiling-less walls and the same proximity to reality.

But that is what she had come to expect ever since the genealogist had declared her a distant relative of the Regalise family and she had been plugged into her first brochure. They had sat Anza in a chair, reminiscent of one in a dentist’s office. When she placed her hands on the touch-pads at the end of the armrests, the brochure had begun. Before even glimpsing the glitching walls, she had heard the teacher’s voice begin to drone in her head amidst the darkness.

She had listened to the same dull teacher for every brochure. His voice ricocheted off the beige walls as the brochure played a series of historical pictures through her mind, denoting the great, honorable, and illustrious history of the Gatekeepers.

“It is hard to comprehend the responsibilities of a Gatekeeper. It is an ancient duty that in many ways has helped the Existence - and in many others corrupted it, but of course they don’t teach those ways. It is a sacred position, one that only a few have the privilege of serving. The only requirement to serve is blood relation to the Regalise family, distant or not. Because yes, the keepers of the Existence are also nepotistic elitists.”

That had been her summary of her training. Which had not been appreciated by the proctors of her final evaluation. But luckily for her, as a recipient of her newly discovered nepotistic rights, the proctors could only chide her. Condescendingly at that. She had not appreciated their “It has been a while since we’ve had the privilege of being confronted with the perspective of a distant,” but even they could not condescend away her “distant”-ness. She was a Regalise, whether she liked, knew, or believed it.

The cost of being an opinionated distant, however, was assignment in one of the less-traveled worlds, the academically titled “Distant Worlds,” the colloquially titled “Lower Worlds.” She had never appreciated this title though. She had visited many of these Distant Worlds and discovered a freshness in philosophical thinking and a curiosity about the discovery of self, subjects that the academically titled, “Center Worlds,” had considered resolved ages ago.

And yet, even though she came from a Center World, as she floated now in the void, she found herself contemplating one of the questions she had first heard on a Distant World - “Do you still agree with the choice you’ve made?”

If she answered honestly, she didn’t know. Although she found the entire idea of being a Gatekeeper questionable and at many times problematic, she also felt a sort of thrill at the thought of the unknown, the novelty of it, the opportunity of it - the potential safety of it. She had spent thousands of years exploring different worlds and this was a realm she had never even known existed.

Most inhabitants knew nothing of the Gatekeepers. In the most cliché, Center World-efficiency manner, they kept their existence secret. The teacher had explained in one of the many brochures that “It was not necessary for most to know of the Gatekeepers because most would never have a reason to even contemplate joining them - most were not a Regalise.”

The woman had never given Anza her name. They had spent only a little bit of time together and in that time, she had called herself Rez, but Anza knew she had been lying. She had come from a world Anza had never visited before and her descriptions of it were beautiful, until a point. That point is why the woman had needed to leave.

Anza had been unconscious when she had been discovered. When she woke, she had opened her eyes to discover a forest of pompously-suited inhabitants from a world she did not recognize towering over her, including among them the infamous genealogist.

The woman was gone and Anza had figured it was best not to ask the suited figures. Questions can sometimes have such a mischievous way of betraying their askers.

Instead, the genealogist had made his proclamation, she had been plugged into her first brochure, and her teachings in the bland room had begun.

“Do you have any final questions before you accept your commitment as a Gatekeeper?” the teacher had laboriously asked during her final brochure.

Anza hadn’t answered. She came from an efficient world. No answer meant “No,” speaking the full word was not necessary. But as she floated in the dark void around her now, she wished she knew how long this stage would last.

There had been days when she wondered if she had ever awoken at all or if this seemingly perpetual void was just a dream, another brochure, or a different, equally frustrating invention of the pompously-dressed inhabitants.

Was this a prison? Had the woman exposed her? Was everything about the Gatekeepers just propaganda, a distraction to muffle any potential attempts at escape?

That thought used to worry her. She used to try to imagine raising her hands, in case they were still attached to a touch-pad restraining her in this void. She used to spiral in the darkness, grasping at any way to escape. But even her fear couldn’t withstand the monotony of the void. If they had imprisoned her, would she ever even know? Or would it even matter? Her thoughts were the only tangibility she was granted in this void. They were her comfort, her entertainment, her adventure - and her imprisonment. She could not escape them, whether she was intended to or not.

“There is no returning once you begin your commitment as a Gatekeeper,” the teacher had continued during her final brochure. “When the gate you are meant to keep opens, you will enter it and it will be yours to tend until the Carish collect the knowledge necessary to close the gate. At that time, you will be reassigned.”

Until then, Anza could only wait and for the thousandth time, journey into a memory of a world she explored long ago. She had been young at that time, and free. There had been no weight in that world, only iridescent shadows that shimmered in the never-ending daylight there. That is where she would escape from the void today. That is where her thoughts would adventure, all the while her consciousness floated in the darkness, waiting, and out of sheer lack of a different option, believing her gate would open.