Been on a dry spell with the short-stories for a few weeks as I’ve been working on a second novella. But Nikolai the Cosmonaut’s engrossing short-story collection inspired this derivative little piece.
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Photo credit: Chris
[1,149 words]
Agios Sostis beach is less than an hour of meandering from the sugar cube houses of Livadi town. But it feels much further, distances stretched out by the warmth and light. On Serifos, you can feel days away from the morning.
The sky is the blue of Mediterranean sea and the sea is the blue of Mediterranean sky. Both are flawless except for a small blemish in the heavens. A white dot I noticed earlier has stretched into a thin, white scar.
The beach is a shallow strip of sand in the elbow of a cove. Small rises of bleached, rocky hillside on three sides, battered into unearthly shapes by centuries of wind.
The Agios Sostic Orthodox church perches on the north side of the cove. Short and stout, blue and white. Alone, but waiting dutifully under the daily thrashing of photons.
I envy it. I declined my duty under the gradual, emotional bludgeoning of heartbreak.
“It’s empty,” says Jig, flicking off her flip flops in that way. “I thought this was one of the famous beaches.”
“It’s the off-season here.” I don’t know what season it is. I have lost track of the time since I quit. “Shall we go in?”
“My bikini is in my bag,” she says.
The church pulls on my eye. “There’s nobody here, it’ll be alright.” I try to remember when we last saw someone. Dinner last night? Where did we go?
“You’ll just have to hold the towel up while I change,” she jokes with a gesture of fake self-consciousness. “Actually,” she continues, “I don’t trust you not to peek.”
“I wouldn’t trust me either.”
“We’ve never skinny dipped together.”
“No.”
“Shall we do it? Where’s your lighter? Do the game.”
“If it lights first flick, we go in.” I shake the little Bic lighter as is our ritual and flick the trigger. It lights first time.
So she just takes off her clothes, looking at the sea the whole time, pretending to be all cool and fine with it, as she was with the break-up, as she was when we got back together, as she was after the news a few weeks ago.
I watch her gallop awkwardly across the sand and into the water like a baby pony. Delicate, brown ankles that look like they should snap when they hit the waves. Tiny bum, like what was still fashionable until a few years ago, lighter than the rest of her body.
She gasps and coos at the colder than expected water. When she’s waist deep I take off my clothes, slightly ashamed at my lust on show to the church, and follow her into the water.
Deep, uneven breaths as the sea swallows my muscles. She splashes me pathetically. I embrace her. She wraps her legs around my waist, half carried, half floating. I can feel her 12 week secret pressing against my belly.
The white scar in the sky is larger now. I would say it looks like a comet, but it can’t be. Before I can ask her what she thinks it is, she asks me: “Do you regret staying?”
“No.”
“What made you call me?”
“I just had to know, if you thought it could work, before I said yes to the mission and left forever.”
“Do you think it’s working?”
I move my hands to her belly, “I’d say so.”
She puts her head back and closes her eyes, floating in the sun’s glare. All cool and fine with the emotional weight of everything. My throat is tight.
I can see a little taverna set back from the beach on one the bleached hillsides. It’s closed and dark.
“Did we have breakfast?” I ask.
“Looks like that place is closed,” she says, following my eyes.
“No, that’s not what I’m asking. When did we last eat?”
“Are you hungry?”
“No. But when did we eat?”
“Last night? Did we have breakfast?”
“Can you hear that?” I ask.
There is a roaring coming from above. The comet is now a long, white tear across the sky – fuzzy and twitching.
“Are you seeing that?” I ask.
“Is everything alright? Are you angry?”
“What? No. But can’t you see that?”
“Yes I can. What’s wrong?”
“You’re not…
…
…
…
…power to maintain computer programme. Insufficient power to maintain computer programme”.
I unplug from the simulation rig, wait for 80 year old joints to loosen up enough and float over to the main control panel, pushing the fat switches and dials. Simple, interchangeable components. Essential for a 20,000 year journey.
The barebones command line terminal tells me there is a dust cloud mapped in the next sector. I must redirect more power to the deflector. The dust cloud covers nearly two sectors. About seven years to pass through. Can’t go seven years without the simulation. Will have to lower the power load again.
The simulation rig was supposed to stop me getting bored during my decades long stint as the caretaker. I wasn’t supposed to get addicted. There’s ways to stop that – I didn’t use them.
I tap my chest pocket. The Bic lighter is still there – the butane decades expired.
I float slowly to the stasis chambers, delaying the inevitable. First few dozen or so of the pods are caretakers. I have to wake one before I die to continue the mission. I’ll explain what I did. No point lying. They’ll have to deal with it, not me.
After them is the colonisation crew. Some of the stasis pods are already expired. Bodies within them won’t rot because the pod environment is sterile. All the deactivated pods are men and older women, naturally. They’ll need the younger women even more after what I’ve done, the womb is the bottleneck of repopulation. They only need a few men, they might even be grateful once they get over the betrayal.
The pods are vaguely organised by expertise. I left as many of the practically skilled people alive as possible. Most of the soft-skilled crew members are already dead. Getting harder to pick who is the least useful now. I estimate I need to turn off another three to have enough spare power to keep the simulation running.
I randomly pick a pod, take out the Bic lighter. If it lights, you’re saved. If it doesn’t, you’re dead. It doesn’t light. Do it two more times. That’s enough.
Soon I am plugging myself back into the rig. The sea as blue as the sky, the sky as blue as the sea. The one who got away is flicking off her flip-flops in that way she does. I’m 31 again. She’s 28. The bump is 12 weeks. I’m not on the mission, I didn’t accept right away, I rang her first and worked it out, I wasn’t too proud, I wasn’t so damn dutiful, I was just another guy trying to be happy.
END
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