The Swamps

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

It’s a line travelers use to make themselves feel daring, a ghost story to frighten neighbors already too fearful to venture off their home planets. But for those that dwell in the vacuum itself, adrift in the vastness, the question of who can hear us bears little relevance. We know better than to think that anyone is listening.

Space. Such a sedentary little name for a force that crushes the lungs of laughing youths who venture too deep into its waters. And before you dismiss me as dramatic or wistful (I’m both, make no mistake), I speak as one whose lungs bear scars like these. All of ours do, in the Swamps.

Welcome to my home. Wipe your feet at the door, or whatever it is you people say on solid ground.

Have you ever gazed up at the stars on a summer night, and seen a haze of green from far away? It must be nice. I’ve only heard stories of those who look up. In the Swamps, direction is hazy. It is…how should I say this? It’s a matter of feeling, rather than seeing. There is no up, or down, or sideways. There is forward, and there is nothing.

Stillness is the enemy. To be motionless for too long is to be snuffed out, soundless and sudden. (You see? I promised you I’d be dramatic). The Swamps are viscous enough to shield us from bone-obliterating pressure of space, And so we move, always. We call our crafts Wakelings, in a stroke of dual-edged cleverness. Wakelings, for the wakes we ride paved by heavenly bodies, and for the wakeful motion they simulate while we sleep.

What? Are you surprised to hear that we sleep? Just because we don’t have “up” or “down” doesn’t mean we aren’t fucking exhausted.

Anyway. The Swamps are green, from what we can tell. Color is another tricky one, because you need light for color, and the Swamps are rather far from anything resembling stars. The nearest thing we have is a nebula, and all the sulfur and hydrocarbon dust leaking out of that bastard casts a glow that shrouds the Swamps in sickly green.

It’s been many years now since I’ve seen a color besides green, but there are a few that I remember. Debris gets caught in our fishing nets from time to time, and once I discovered a bit of scrap metal—from the hull of a spaceship, perhaps. The writing there may have been blue, though I can’t be certain. Iseara used the word “blue” when she looked at it, and since she’d traveled further than I, I tended to take her word on things. To me it was just another, more rebellious shade of green.

I miss her. My sister.

In our language, Iseara means star-swallower (in retrospect, it’s possible that being dramatic is a broader family trait). And we are a family, out here. “Community” doesn’t adequately describe it when you all inhale the same air from the same tank every morning. (It is morning, isn’t it? The time you start your days?). I hear all sorts of wild things about people on planets, people that look up - you breathe all day long, don’t you? It doesn’t even cross your mind how much, does it? Well, out here, we get one long sip - the rest of the day is the slow exhale. You say “heart of my heart,” we say “air of my air.”

Our tank is running out. It’s to be expected, my family has been feeding off the same one for far longer than I’ve been alive. But abandoned shuttle pods with intact oxygen chambers don’t float out this far too often. The pod came with a pair of one-man rafts, too, for who knows what. Escaping the escape? Anyway, there’s only one left now, along with 93 more days of breathing air.

Entering the Swamps is no small feat. The same goes for leaving. But Iseara did it, and now she’s gone, and that’s why I’m here with one raft instead of two.

No one will go near it, because the last one stole my sister. And no one will go near me, because I still go near it. Fortunately for them, that won’t be a problem for long. Today is the day, because for the first time in months of tinkering, I’ve got the thrusters back online.

I think the tape on this thing is running out (who knew rafts even had a voice record function, but I suppose most of you potential hearers do live in the modern age). Wakelings can't hold a candle to the kind of mileage this raft can offer me. Maybe. Hopefully. I’ll find out soon enough.

I can’t say I have coordinates, exactly. I don’t know if I’ll find enough air to save my family from drowning, or if I’ll find my sister, or both, or neither. But I know what to look for as a start.

In the midst of space, there is a smudge of existence cocooned by a belt of dying stars. It is red. Iseara used to see it when she wandered to the Swamp's edges, and tell me what it looked like. That's where I'm headed.

Hello, space - you blackest night, you deepest sea, you cruelest god. You have something of mine. Air of my air, the eater of stars.

It’s time you gave her back.