Shine In, Shine On

“Come away from the window, dear. It’s time for dinner.”

Carina turned from the zircon-glass and walked into the sunshine-yellow kitchen, her mother’s face beaming as she waited for Carina to sit down on the silver-silica stool. Carina’s face shadowed as she leaned close to her reflection in the silver-silica table, the underside of her yellow tray dark against the undying supernova shining down from the ceiling. Her yellow Lycra6-booted feet hung six inches off the silver-silica floor, kicking at the faint shadows.

“The Aurigas are passing by tomorrow,” her mother smiled. “We’ll be connecting with them for lunch.”

Carina stopped kicking and looked up from her reflection.

“Why don’t you eat a little, dear? It’s been seven months since you’ve seen Apodis. I’ll bet he’s grown twice as much as you in that time. You don’t want him to think you’re still a little girl, do you? They’re such a fine family.”

Carina looked down at her plate and took a bite of the protein patty.

“That’s a good girl. Eat a little of your green and then you can have red for dessert.”

The next day Carina and her mother dressed in their yellow Lycra6 suits and entered the vacuum chamber. The capsule door slid shut and the two walked across the titanium-void bridge, Carina pulling back at the length of her mother’s arm, looking into the black abyss below.

“Carina,” her mother smiled. “Look within, never dim.”

They reached the vacuum room of the Aurigas’ capsule. Carina’s mother smoothed out Carina’s Lycra6 suit and the door slid open revealing a perma-smiled woman.

“Puppi! How good to see you! And Carina! How grown up you’ve become!”

Smiling a smile she practiced in the reflection of the dinner table, Carina walked into the capsule. Apodis sat on the floor across the room and turned to the window when Carina approached.

“Have you been looking for it?”

Carina stepped to her spot at the window and nodded.

“You see it yet?”

Carina only looked out. Apodis leaned close to the window. “There. Right now!”

Carina saw it for the first time. A dense stripe of black against the yellow gamma wave globe spinning below.

“A shadow,” she whispered.

“More than that.”

The two smiling mothers sat at the kitchen table and breathed aetherium, gabbing about solar flares.

“Carina, dear, don’t just stare out the window, ask Apodis the happy news.”

“Yes, Apodis. Tell Carina the wonderful news.”

Apodis shot a glance at Carina, but she didn’t move until the shadow was replaced by the yellow shine.

“What’s making it?”

Apodis looked out. “I’m leaving tonight. It’s time I start All-fulfilling. They say I’ll get to meet my father. Maybe I’ll meet yours too. What should I tell him?”

Carina was silent. She had only ever met her father in unexpected sleep sessions she drowsily fell into some mornings that she never told anyone about outside of Apodis. “Tell him I want to live with him in the shadows.”

Apodis reached into his pocket and pulled out a tarnished silver, heart-shaped locket. “It showed up two years ago hidden in our meal shine.” He put it in Carina’s hand and closed her fingers around it. “I think it’s from down there.”

“Down there?”

The mothers called them for lunch and Carina put the locket in her pocket.

Back in their orbit at dinner, Carina fingered the locket through her Lycra6 suit while her mother told her how wonderful it was that she would remain connected with Apodis through scheduled sleep sessions while he was All-fulfilling. Everything was coming together as was meant to be. Carina’s yellow boots kicked underneath the table.

“Eat a little green and you can have some red before bed.”

“I’d rather look out.”

Her mother stood, smiling, and placed a bowl of red in front of her. Every little girl wants red. Look within, never dim.”

After Carina finished her red, her mother cleared the dishes and dropped them into the fuel atomizer and walked into her room with a silver canister of aetherium. Carina went to the window and looked at the flashing yellow gamma globe and tried to spot the black. She knew Apodis was doing the same even as everything was disappearing. Tomorrow it would be nothing but a yellow speck out his window.

After the capsule had been quiet for some time, Carina reached into her pocket and pulled out the heavy, dull locket. She could almost taste the grime in the dark crevice that ran down the side when she scratched at it with her fingernail. It popped open. A hologram! It must be a thousand years old! She snapped it shut and ran into her room, jumping into bed, and sat cross-legged under the translucent covers. She wasn’t sure if it was her heartbeat she was hearing or footsteps from her mother. She held her breath. When she was certain the only sound in the capsule was the locket pulsating in her hand, she opened her palm and was mesmerized by the light-absorbing magic of the tiny relic. With two careful hands, she held it close to her ear and opened it a crack, and when she heard only silence, she opened it fully and gasped.

A hulking, swaying mass, shimmering black and filtering out the gentle, setting sun danced in front of her. Below, the shadow of a young girl, her bare feet pointed towards the horizon, floating--swinging! Glittering specks alternating between black and the most illustrious flashes of pink, purple, and turquoise fluttered around the girl as she leaned back, her hair almost touching the verdant green ground, and then, laughter.

Unfamiliar muscles stirred in Carina’s mouth and cheekbones and the corners of her eyes trembled damply. She shut the locket and was dizzy from holding her breath. Or was it from the image? What in All’s creation was that shadowed object? And that sound?

At breakfast her mother told Carina she had arranged for her to connect with the Musca girls that afternoon as they passed. "It's important to spend time with older girls. Ask them anything you're curious about." Carina stabbed at the red-eyed protein cake, her mother’s smile reflecting in the silver shine above.

Carina stared out the window from the Musca capsule as the two sisters hovered and hummed around her. The smiling mothers sat in the kitchen, talking more with every aetherium breath.

"Do you ever look out?"

The sisters shook their heads.

“Look within, never dim,” they said in unison.

“Even if there’s darkness inside?”

"Silver smiles, shine for miles," they sang.

“I thought so.”

“Apodis is All-fulfilling now,” said the eldest.

“Soon you’ll be filled by him,” the younger one teased.

“Ceti!”

Carina looked back from the window. “What do you mean?”

“You and Apodis will sleep after you turn red,” answered Ceti.

“Turn red?”

“She’s just trying to scare you,” said the eldest. “But there’s nothing to be afraid of. Look within, never dim.”

“Silver smiles, shine for miles,” sang Ceti.

Back in their orbit after dinner, Carina’s mother placed a scoop of red in front of Carina, but Carina didn’t touch it.

“What’s the matter dear?” she asked, smiling. “Every little girl wants red.”

“Ceti said I was going to turn red.”

“Of course, dear. Very soon. But there’s nothing to be afraid of. Every little girl turns red one day. That’s when they start All-fulfilling.”

“What if I don’t want to All-fulfill?”

The smile on Carina’s mother contorted into a snarl and she leapt around the table and slapped Carina across the face. In a blink she changed back into a smile and looked around the sunshine-yellow kitchen, smoothing out her yellow Lyrca6 suit.

Carina held her face and looked down at her reflection in the silver-silica table, her cheek reddening to the color of the scoop in the yellow bowl. After a moment, she began to laugh. Her mother smiled and backed away from the table.

“What’s this, Carina? What’s happening?”

Carina stood, and laughing more loudly, walked towards her mother who backed away until she was pressed against the zircon-window, the yellow gamma wave globe spinning frantically below. Carina caught a flash of the stripe of black and laughed wildly. Her mother screamed and pressed her hands to her ears. The supernova beaming down from the ceiling increased in intensity to the point where it would burst. All of the doors in the capsule flew open and a deep, teeth-gnashing bass vibrated the room. It was the Venatici. Carina ran to her bedroom knowing that if she held the mysterious, swaying, shadowy object again in her palm, she could transport herself there. The front door blasted open and Carina’s mother watched aghast as the Venatici snatched Carina in a z-grav cloak and whisked her away.

***

Apodis was met by the on-boarding clerk as soon as he stepped off the ship. He was issued his Adom7 work suit and assigned to work in the core chamber along with two hundred other boys who rode together in a cramped levitator into the dark nucleus of the red planet. Coca-synth and a vitablend were intravenously fed to them throughout the breakless shift. Silver-graphite production quotas increased every hour along with CS/VB dosage. Within the first couple of days the weakest of the boys broke, all emitting the same wail, muffled and absorbed into the charred walls of the narrow shaft, and were transported out unceremoniously on an infirmary zip, never heard from again.

After six months, Apodis was given a rest day to honor All. He asked if he could see his father. This was impossible, as his father was stationed on the far side of the red planet, capturing radium flares for zircon-glass production. He asked about Carina’s father, and the clerk said he had been reported missing years ago after a silver-silica landslide, and was presumed dead. The clerk told Apodis he was scheduled to engage in a sleep session with Carina that evening and was ordered to prepare for it.

That evening Apodis connected with Carina, and with the guidance of a senior censor, painted a picture of his Martian life in broad, generous strokes. Carina asked Apodis if he had seen her father and he wondered if he should change the subject, but said he would be seeing him soon. There was a long silence and Apodis thought he should ask about the locket, but Carina spoke first.

“The shadows were made up. Figments of our imagination. There is only light. There has only ever been light. And there will always only be light. Shadows, darkness--a child’s delusion.”

“What about--”

“A chunk of space detritus. A trick for the feeble-minded. Historical rot.”

“Carina, are you in a distant orbit?”

“Take care, Apodis,” she said, holding a hand over her warming belly. “Look within, never dim.”

***

Restationed at the silver-silica dunes years later, Apodis worked at the mouth of the magma furnace, fusing the precious elements at an endless, backbreaking pace. Landslides occurred daily, and though it was only a matter of time before his unit would fall victim to its inevitable fate, there was no chance of escape.

On their bi-annual rest day to honor All, stories would pass around the men about a man who did escape. “Stole thermholes and a zip transport and flew into the big yellow sea. Used to send messages to his daughter from the shadows of a forest of carbon giants. Much different shadows than the kind we’re used to.”

Apodis would listen from his bunk and think back on the shadows he saw when he was a boy, and try to remember the strange sound he heard from the locket, but the memory was lost, consumed by the inferno of the All-fulfilling. The next day, he would go to work at the magma furnace. New workers would arrive, the silver-silica would be forged, and every capsule would shine on.