The Star Line

Liela woke up with a start. Starlight filled the long, glass cabin she was sitting in, and she sat up with amazement as it slowly dawned on her where she was: the Star Line. Through the wonder of finding herself hurtling through space on the long discontinued train to their neighbouring planet, it took her a moment to realize she could not remember how she had gotten here. As the fog of sleep cleared and her grogginess lifted, her awareness of her surroundings sharpened. The train, although familiar from the archives, was much more worn than what she had seen in the video footage. The geometric purple lines of the upholstery she was sitting on curved pleasantly to architectural lines of the other empty seats in the carriage, but the fabric was no longer pristine and glowing like it had been when she had watched videos of the Star Line from the projection room. In front of her now, she noted how most seats had stains or rips on them, and the air smelled even mustier than it did in her subaquatic home. Home – a spark fired in her brain. Home was on Mer. But there was something wrong with her memory. She knew where home was, but she couldn’t physically remember being there.

She tried to bring images to mind, ones that pertained to who she was and how she got here, but all she could remember was the projection room. Her memories, she realized with a jolt, were not all there. Everything she could recall pertained only to what she had seen in the projection room. Yes, she knew all about her planet, and its decades-long defining conflict with the planet she was hurtling ever-faster towards, but nothing about her own life. She tried to focus on what she could recall for any signs of who she was or what she was doing here, but all she could remember was the history that was shown to her in flashes in a dark, empty room through images and film that had been cast onto a large bare wall by some invisible projector behind her. These were the archives - the room that continued the story of Mer and its rival planet, Maret. As she struggled to remember any other events that involved friends, family, or any other living creature at all outside of the two-dimensional viewing room, she began to feel a growing sense of concern creeping into her chest. Here she was, speeding through space, with no idea of why the Star Line had been recommissioned, why she found herself aboard it, or who she was beyond a name and a few depersonalized memories. At least, she thought with no particular sense of relief, at least I know where I am going. The Star Line only had two stops, and since the final destination was forbidden to all Sentiens regardless of money, status, or power, she knew she was bound to end up at the Way Station.

Halfway between worlds, the Way Station was a sprawling space station designed not only for economical reasons (power-ups at the station were much more efficient than trying to transform solar power into electrical energy on the train’s mainframe while it was moving) but also for public ones. Before the war began, and travel between the worlds was still quite common, the Way Station acted as much as an attraction as the worlds themselves did. In fact, many people only ever got as far as the Way Station. Even in the 29th century, true space travel - that of which had final destinations of not only other planets beyond Maret and Mer, but sometimes even other galaxies - was restricted mainly to astronauts, politicians, and the extremely wealthy. The Way Station offered a more accessible option for many citizens of either planet to take a trip to space, mingle with residents of their neighbouring planet, and go back home with a lifelong sense of wonder about the true vastness of their universe.

As she looked out into space and contemplated this, Leila caught a glimpse of herself in the thickly paned window protecting her from the cold, breathless claws of space. She gasped at her own reflection - she was, she was surprised to admit to herself, quite striking. Her long black hair caressed her shoulders and continued flowing until it reached her midriff, where her silky ends danced from the breeze in the cabin like reeds in the ocean’s current. Her face was plump and flushed with youth, and her glittering hazel eyes slanted upwards like a fox’s - a fox! - she thought to herself. She wondered if it would ever stop feeling strange to remember bits of her life like this. Of course, she was not really remembering a fox, just the image of one. Foxes, like all other land mammals, had been extinct on her planet for thousands of years. Still, in all of her visits to the archives, she had come across many species of old, and she recalled that none had captivated her more than that of the nimble, quick-witted fox.

Liela was knocked back against her seat as the train switched gears and began to pick up even more speed. The stars outside began to lose their shape and blended together into glimmering blurs of light. She knew the train would go through four increases in speed before it would start to slow down again, but it was impossible for her to tell how many changes had already happened while she had been unconscious. She stood up to get a better view of the surroundings outside of the train so she could try to determine how far she had already travelled, but it was pointless. Even if the train wasn’t travelling on average at almost 900,000km per hour, she knew that with her home directly behind her, and the Way Station directly ahead, all she would be able to see was out, into the shadows of space itself. She turned to walk into the aisle to explore the train more, but as she did she noticed a sealed envelope resting on the seat she had been sitting on, crumpled slightly from where she had been sitting on it. She hastily grabbed the note and ripped it open, but sped through the contents so fast on her first pass that she could hardly comprehend any of what she read. “Certain damnation”, “grave responsibility”, “be safe” - none of it made any sense to her. Her mind was reeling. She paused to take a deep breath, and then slowly began to read the letter again.

My dearest Liela,

You were meant to pen this letter yourself, but in the end, you couldn’t bring yourself to do it, so here I sit moments before you take off, scrambling to write something of comfort to you for when you wake up. I know you were afraid I would be disappointed in your weakness, this stumble at the last hurdle before your final departure, but the opposite could not be more true. To willingly step into the unknown as you are about to, without even your memories to comfort you… I can only imagine how frightened you must feel. Had I been younger and of sound body, I am not sure I could have done the same. I am proud of you Liela. And while it may be of little meaning to you by the time you read this, I am honoured to be here for you as your last and truest friend, guiding you as always, as you embark on what will likely be the greatest challenge any of us will ever face in this lifetime or the next.

This is all for them of course, and their certain damnation had you chosen not to go. You will remember them - your people - from your lessons with me in the archives. For your protection, and for ours, all of your other memories have been wiped. You will soon come to know that the Nee-ans are as brutal and as cunning as everyone has always said, and you understood the great risk you would have been taking giving them access to your secrets, and the secrets of our planet, should this request for negotiation be a trap. If that were to happen, your memories would have posed a grave danger to us all. You are now a clean slate, equipped with only your knowledge of our shared past and your basest of instincts, which have always been your greatest asset. No matter what happens up there, remember to always trust what’s in your gut - it has always kept you safe before.

You have had a grave responsibility laid at your feet Liela, but your mission is not without hope. I cannot give you much more information without risking making a waste of your great sacrifice, but I can tell you this: your job is to broker peace between the Nee-ans and the Sentiens, whatever the cost. Everything you need to succeed is at your fingertips. Be brave Leila, and be safe.

Your friend and mentor,

X

Leila was practically panting. None of this made any sense to her. X - Who was X? she thought - had supposedly written this letter to comfort her, but it had left her feeling more frightened and confused than ever. She scanned what few memories she had left for any more hints about what she was about to walk into, but true to what was written in the letter, they were only about their planet's histories. The Nee-ans, she thought. Why in God’s name would I have willingly boarded this train, knowing that they were who I was going to meet? She had always been told that it would be wiser to choose death in any of its forms than go face to face with the Nee-ans - their brutality was legendary on Mer. And peace? Peace had always been thought impossible with a race who would willingly slaughter their own people to make sure that their soldiers were fed and strong. Cannibals, the lot of them, her mind spat. Leila collapsed back into her seat and looked at her surroundings again. Her earlier mix of wonder and unease had been replaced by a wild panic now that she knew the train was carrying her towards her certain, and likely unimaginably painful, death. What sort of friend would stick her on a train to space, so ill-prepared to deal with such a dangerous threat? She had no weapons as far as she could tell, and no true knowledge of what she was meant to be doing up here. The letter had told her to trust her gut, so she began to look around the train again, this time paying close attention to what she was seeing. She knew that now was time to be resourceful, just like her old favourite, the fox.

A cold trickle of intense focus ran down her spine as she began to scan her surroundings. The keen sense of awareness felt like stepping back into an old skin. Liela realized that something that had felt not quite right when she had woken up earlier, something that she was too distracted to pinpoint at the time and now couldn’t quite put her finger on. She began to scrutinize the train more closely. The seats, which faced the windows in gentle, curved clusters, held no other letters or messages as far as she could see. This didn’t surprise her; she knew there would be no others in this or any of the other carts either - one clue was all she was getting. She glanced upwards at the ceiling, which was brightly lit by strips of LED lights hidden behind a large, dark gray shaft. The shade of the ceiling reminded Leila of the colour of the perpetually stormy sky on Mer, and the taste of salty air flashed across her tongue and the cold ocean breeze whipped across her face. This visceral image momentarily shook her focus. Sentiens were not allowed above the surface, and she wondered when she would have had the opportunity to have breathed in the fresh ocean air as she had just felt herself doing. It didn’t make any sense, but her body told her she had. There was no time to dwell on it though. Liela shook her head and looked again to see if the odd feeling from before had been triggered by something she had seen on the ceiling, but none of the lights on the train even so much as flickered. This train may be old as shit, she thought, but there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with it. She looked again through the windows at the boundless sky of night, but there was nothing to see there either. The way the stars melted together as she sped past in the train was beautiful, but their beauty was not helpful to her. She sighed and once again observed her face, now full of consternation, in the glassy reflection of the window. Suddenly, with the full force of realization, she saw it. The thing that was wrong was not in the train at all - it was in her. Her eyes - there was something wrong with her eyes.

She leaned closer to the window and marvelled at the unnatural sparkle of her irises. There were metallic flecks of red floating on top of her hazel eyes that were giving her eyes an uncanny metallic glimmer that was definitely not natural. Without hesitation, Liela propped an eyelid open and began to gently feel around for whatever was causing the phosphorescence in her eyes. It didn’t take her long to find what she was looking for. Her finger quickly landed on a soft layer of silicone that easily slid off of her iris under the pressure of her fingertip. Between her thumb and her forefinger, she gently pushed the edges together and lifted the contact off her eye. She blinked several times to clear away the tears that had formed, then looked around again at her surroundings. As she suspected, her vision had not altered in any way with the removal of the contact - she could still clearly see the pattern on the seats beside her and the texture of the ceiling above her. Her instincts, like the letter had suggested, had been sharp. The contacts in her eyes were unquestionably not there for her vision.

Liela lifted the contact closer to her face, and, hovering her finger just above her nose, closely inspected the foreign body that she had just pulled out of her own. The red flecks suspended in the contact were not metal, that much was clear she rubbed her forefinger over the soft plastic bowl - there was no grit or sharpness to the contact at all. She brought it closer to her eye to see if the flecks formed any sort of pattern or word, but she could make out none. Liela sighed and dropped her hand to her side, being careful to not drop her only clue besides the useless letter. Her initial panic had fully subsided and the cold, calculating sensation had settled firmly over her mind. It was something deep and habitual to her, and whatever it was, it was telling her to act.

She knew needed to find a container and some liquid she could store the contact in until she could figure out what its purpose was. It didn’t take her long to find what she was looking for - there was a bathroom at the end of the corridor that had running water and a glass. She filled the cup with water and dropped the contact in. To her astonishment, upon touching the water, the contact immediately began to disintegrate into a foamy barm. She tried to fish her disappearing lifeline out of the water, but the last filmy portion vanished into sudsy scum as her fingers brushed up against it. Liela did not have time to get upset by the sudden turn of events, as the bubbles had already turned the water into a shimmering swirl of pink. Without giving herself time to think things through, she pulled the contact out of her other eye and watched as it plopped into the swirling water and transformed it into a final shade of murky crimson. She gingerly put the tips of her fingers back in the cup again to wet them, then rubbed her fingertips together, wondering as she did at the new, slippery texture the water had. She raised the cup to eye level and stared. Leila felt a low grumbling in the train and braced herself for another speed increase. However, as she walked out of the bathroom with her cup in hand, she noticed that the stars outside the train’s windows had unblurred themselves: the train had not sped up again, it had already started slowing down, which meant that she had less than two hours before she arrived at the Way Station.

— — — — — — — — — — — —

The immediate response to action that had overcome Liela earlier had vanished, and she sat gripping her cup in one hand, letter clenched tightly in the other, waiting patiently for the train to reach its final destination. She had spent just over half of her remaining time on the train trying to decide whether it was worth the risk of trying to drink the mysterious, red water. In the end, she chose to take one large gulp and waited nearly the remainder of her last hour paying meticulous attention to her body to see if she noticed any physical changes, no matter how minute. Despite trying to convince herself that her sense of smell had definitely grown more acute, there had been no change. She was left hoping that the liquid was some sort of weapon intended to be used as a negotiation tactic with the Nee-ans, although the growing knot of dread in the pit of her stomach belied the truth that she did not really believe in this theory. She was now only minutes away from docking, and her hands and underarms were damp with sweat. She knew she had wasted an opportunity for something - some piece of knowledge to give her an advantage walking into the Way Station that could have made the difference between life and death for her. Whatever extraordinary sense of intuition she was meant to have had, had failed her. Why hadn’t X just told me what the liquid was for in the letter? her mind cried out for the thousandth time. Unless… the gears in her brain begin to move again as the train’s pace continued to decline. Unless the contacts weren’t from X. The realization smacked her across the face just as the train rolled into its final stop at the Way Station.

The train’s final jolt as it landed at the terminal knocked Liela’s body so violently that half of the contents of the cup fell onto her body and soaked into the seat cushions. Some drops of water also splashed onto the letter and caused the paper to sizzle brightly. Then, slowly but surely, the area of the paper that the liquid had touched began to disintegrate. Flecks of pink ash split off the envelope and floated down to the carpet, where they seamlessly blended into wherever they landed and became invisible. This letter, she thought, may be useful to me after all.

Leila dropped to her knees and tore the letter out of the envelope. She didn’t have much time - she heard the doors of the train ding and woosh open further down the cart - but she was also running low on whatever mysterious chemical was in the cup. She carefully reached her hand into the cup again and scooped some water in her fingers. Shaking, she spread the water onto the paper. Nothing happened. She blinked in confusion - the reaction on the envelope had been instant, why had it suddenly stopped working? X wrote the letter - I didn’t have access to it before boarding, she thought. But the envelope… Liela heard someone step into the cabin of the train. She quickly and sloppily dumped the remainder of the contents on the envelope, no longer caring about preserving the contents. This was her last and final shot – and it was working. The paper of the envelope instantly took on an eerie glow as the liquid touched it. Scribbled across the middle of the envelope, which was already starting to disintegrate, were panicked letters that shone even more brightly than the rest of the envelope. This message, at long last, was clear:

DON’T TRUST ANYTHING HE SAYS.

AND WHATEVER YOU DO – DON’T COME BACK.

The envelope crumbled into nothing. Liela looked up and across the cabin. The Nee-ans had arrived.