Sirius Sirens

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

They forget to tell you how complex the evolutionary design is. That with each layer upon layer of matter before even our brains had gained sentience, we were iteratively and self-generated through sensory feedback. Over and over until we became rich in sensory input beyond any measure of the stimulus provided alone. Add a conscious mind into the solution, with the rich stores of memory to pull any lived experience from, then just a mixture of that with something you love, and you are proper fucked.

Life rebels, the feeble vacuum of space can’t suck experience out of life, particularly the horrors of it.

You know that one person you connect with so fully, that you wanted all there was to have with them. But at some point, you gave up wanting, merely so you could enjoy every precious moment with them, so you could always have a life with them. Because as long as they were around, as long as they were in it, your capacity for joy was boundless.

How can you not hear their scream in the vacuum of space. As you watch, as you take action, as you desperately try to keep them. All knowing as you exert yourself, that you are powerless to stop what is happening. But you are there, you are just there, and their last expression as they look at you and the life bleeds away from their eyes to vacancy, is a taxonomy of terror.

You hear that scream, you hear it as you see it, you feel it. You touch it. The only regret is you never tasted anything more and all you are left with is that scream, in the remembrance of all that she was. And now, the life you hoped for, compromised for a bit of permanence is left empty of her anyway. You were there and you accomplished nothing, you failed. She screams. You wake up.

The sirens merge into the screams of my nightmares. The soundless becoming reality as my senses acclimate to my surroundings. The freighter is as dark and dank as it ever was. Repurposed to carry a few of the leftover squadrons still fighting for ideas that no longer live except in the recesses of the minds that still carry them. Still fighting to stand up to a power in a war that was lost a long time ago. Fighters without homes, waiting for a time that might reignite past hopes.

::SCRAMBLE ALL FIGHTERS, THIS IS NOT A DRILL::

“Get up Buck, we gotta get to the squad.”

I stand up, my body moving through the motions programmed by a more meticulous human design. The designs of a life left behind, to be with her. She’s always on the mind, a siren frozen, demanding remembrance, that maybe if I hadn’t been so selfish, she’d still be here. That is what I had power over, I never had to abandon the cause. I paid for it dearly.

My current “best friend”, leans in and whispers in my ear.

“Buck, hey Buck. Snap out of it. You’re on, we gotta get on deck”

I take in the crowd that surrounds me on the flight deck. Waiting for words of impetuous fever. To spurn them on even though their only feelings of hope are the brain washings of a time that no longer exists. Those hopes having long been sucked into the void. Only the minds that still contain this programming still hold on, still rage against that ether of emptiness. A losing battle if you ever saw one.

Still, I speak the words, I go through motions, my mind tells the stories of injustice and the need to continue to fight. These improv speeches have lost their color to me, but they have not lost the perfection in the affect they have on the puppets. You’ve traded your life to be with the puppets, and you don’t truly know who the puppeteer is anymore.

“Good job Buck, first flight is almost away, we’ll be on the second squad out.”

I walk over to the flight deck officer.

“How many we got coming this way?”

“Too many, but they don’t know we are with the refugees.”

I sigh, “Let’s hope not.”

I look at the view screen, I can see the twinkles in the distance. A few larger capital ships, waiting to be bled. You glance at the crews scrambling to and fro, hoping to continue the cycle of pain, to give their life to pass such feelings of vengeance on to another’s loved one, so that they might be free of it.

No, you can’t hear the screams of those you love in a vacuum, for by the time you have heard them, once you hear them the first time, that is the last time you ever feel such screams again. For then the vacuum has already conquered your experience, all you have left is the vacancy its left behind. So you step into the automation that is the hallowed out tatters of the only mind that is left, a mind on pause, going through the motions, focused on whatever exchange of pain it can provide to another. Since you long ago stopped feeling it.

I step up to the fighter, board, and into the void to face the cause of my powerlessness.