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insomniac-dot-ink · 7 years ago

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Universe Falling

genre: sci-fi fantasy, wlw

words: 7k

summary: A young scientist starts communicating with the night sky, a love story across the universe

So it looked like I was going crazy. Actually, legitimately crazy.

Not the fun kind of crazy when your great aunt takes off her wig and dips it in the stew at family dinner in order to make your uncle shut up about his problem with bell-bottom jeans. Not evil crazy like your math teacher making everyone re-do their multiplication tables eighty times in a row after one kid swore.

It was crazy crazy.

My name is Francine Wesley.

And this is how I started talking to the night sky.

————————————–

When I was twelve years old I had a transfer student ask me if I was a pirate. I’m not sure if she meant it in a bad way or not, she hadn’t learned the pecking order yet- which was me and then everyone else up ahead. She asked me if the bandage over my left eye meant I was going to get a parrot and sail the seven seas.

I wish.

It was the year of the second surgery on my left eye, trying to correct it before the smudges at the edge of my vision started to devour everything else. My glasses were -25 and took up 55% of my small face at that age.

I was 12 and playing pirates and princesses with people who didn’t know why I couldn’t catch the ball when they threw it at me.

My father bought me my first official telescope that year, the year my grandpa passed away and left me all of his star charts and a broken down radio. I fixed the radio, I built the ladder up the tallest tree in my yard.

I traced the charts he left with my fingers, taking out a magnifying glass and looking and looking.

————–

They say math is the handwriting of God, that it breaks the world down into patterns and sense and definable movements.

I wasn’t sure about that, it felt more like God’s bad treasure map, one he put a lot of effort into making particularly unreadable sometimes. My mom was a math teacher, so it both helped and didn’t help at all. I hated most my other math teachers, they taught it wrong, I wasn’t fond of imaginary numbers, I never liked pi more than the average person, infinities were a headache. That didn’t stop me from beating all the boys at pop quizzes by the time I was in algebra one.

It was easier for me I think, smoother, faster, they said I was the quickest girl this side of the Cherry Creek. I didn’t know how to respond.

I didn’t like math, but I did like being told I was good at something, I did like what I could do with it, numbers and movements and the whole universe laid out. It got easier every time I did it.

That was the year that Cindy Claire took me to her birthday party, lifting me from the depths of social rejection, she said I was too pretty for the boys to be that mean. She wove flowers into my hair and asked if I liked anyone. I told her I didn’t know and we watched a movie with the captions on right in front of the screen.

That was the nicest thing anyone had done for me and Ratatouille is a beautiful movie when you’re barely looking.

She had a button nose and a splattering of freckles that curled and crawled around her body like paint flecks. I wanted to lick it up and watch her eyes light up, green as green fields and as wild as the western sky.

I entered a math tournament, she came and got asked out by every boy there, she laughed and said she already came with someone. I might have burst from joy if everything else inside me didn’t ache.

She grabbed my hand and said we were best friends and by that time next year she was dating the man she was going to marry and I was staring at the constellations in the sky like they were freckles. It’s easy to be in love with the sky and it’s easy to feel like breaking.

My dad was teaching me how to read his books under bright lights and a giant magnifying glass, my family always said I was like him- for better and worse.

———————-

I was seventeen when I had my license taken away, I only had it for one year but my mom told me she wouldn’t risk it. Not with a -30 prescriptions.

I was my father’s daughter and she wouldn’t see me driving myself off the side of the road when a blizzard rolled in. I lived in Northern Massachusetts, it snowed a lot that year.

I went to prom with Billy Eccleston, he didn’t know my middle name and I didn’t know his, but we sat in the back of his van and made out until my mouth went numb. I told myself this was probably how it was supposed to feel.

He tried to push my dress down and I wrinkled my nose and told him I was waiting for the right moment (and this wasn’t it), he rolled his eyes and reached for my glasses next, I bat his hand away. Now I was waiting for marriage.

He snorts and asked if I was still ‘actually getting out of this town soon?’ I nodded because this is why I accepted his prom invitation in the first place. We both wanted out- we could almost relate.

We both sigh at nothing and he kisses me again as I look over his left shoulder and watch the lights dance behind the cityscape.

I applied to 8 colleges and go into 6, my mom cried and my dad patted my head and I asked if I needed anything else- anything at all. He told me to get a dorm on the first floor and that he’d be there every weekend.

I cry, just a little bit.

———————————-

Everyone thinks it’s black, black like a setting sun or black like an airtight empty room. That it’s the night, the moment when you close your eyes and every color in the world is snuffed out.

A dark curtain, the thickest shadow over the world. But it’s not. It’s white.

Bright terrible light that floods and fleets into my vision, wavering colors and streaks of pure white, distracting as it is nonsense. I grit my teeth, it’s my sophomore year of college and I am squinting at the board and screeching in my head.

I was in the front row of the lecture and the professor was writing formulas on the board like his hand was on fire. I had a growing headache in my frontal lobe, I tell myself as I narrow my eyes at the board that I just needed to go to sleep, that it would be better in the morning.

My lip trembles and I take out my phone to get a close up of the board with my camera, trying to write and zoom at the same time.

“Any questions?” The professor asks as he turns around sternly, “this last one will be on the test.”

I flinch, was it too much to ask the world to iron itself out into a flat surface instead of a series of smudges and blurs? I see the professor turn in my direction and my stomach drops as I try to fix my expression.

Professor Chadwick was the ‘hardest bitch’ in the department as they called him and I couldn’t keep asking to come closer to the board in the middle of class. Soon I would just be licking the ink off of it to figure out what he had just written.

‘WRITE BIGGER’ is always on the tip of my tongue, but I just take another picture and wait.

“Got that?” He lets out a slew of theory before pointing at the clock as class comes to a close.

I’m almost up and out of my chair faster than a snap, I hurry to the board and finish taking pictures.

“Miss Wesley,” I jump at his voice. I barely turn my head as the five foot eleven man comes up to me, portly and round with a heavy dent in his forehead. He pats me on the back, “I saw your last test.”

I gulp and my lips pinch together, “uh, is this about Mrs. Dubois contacting you? Because I promise it won’t be distracting, I’ll just keep it on my desk.”

“I don’t care if you need five enhancers miss Wesley, that was some damn fine math.”

I raise my eyebrows, “thank you. I… studied?”

He chuckles, “you’re quick.” He pats my shoulder again, “and Mrs. Gregor says she likes the way you think. How would you like to intern for the department this summer?”

I blink only a couple times, “really?”

He nods with a sniff, “I see bright things in your future.”

My mouth was a little open and resist making the joke that I would be seeing a lot of bright things in my future too. I just nod instead, “thank you! Yes, I’d love to.”

That is the year I start working for Professor Chadwick and the university, it’s also the year that the government declares me legally blind.

—————————–

I had seven coworkers, two interns, and one sandwich place next to the observatory.

I was turning 28 in March and I hadn’t had a boyfriend since the last disaster of 2021. I was with sitting my back to the computers and a sandwich in my hand dripping mustard onto my lap.

The radio was on, playing ‘Winds of Fire’ as loud as it possibly could as I hear Sai Bhatia tapping her foot like she wanted to start a miniature cockroach band on the floor with it.

I moan loudly into my sandwich to let her know that it was both alright to take a break and hopefully expected. I had a feeling she resented me, but I also had a feeling that my next door neighbor was trying to summon ghosts in my driveway, so I wasn’t always a great judge of circumstance.

I was 27 and that still felt like it meant something.

“Woah,” both me and Sai pause as we hear a voice gasp from the other room. “Woah!” I sit up straight, “Dr. Wesley,” he says shrilly, “oh man, Dr. Bhatia!”

My skin was prickly as I stand up straight, “Rory, my boy, use your words.”

I hear some stumbling and chair screeching from the other room, “come look at this!”

I navigate my way into the next lab room, Rory, our grad student intern was standing next to the ROSTA computer and gesturing. I squint my eyes down and look both ways.

“Can you read it to me?”

“Yes, but you’re going to have to take a seat for this.”

I shake my head, “let’s get to the reading first, then we can see if any chairs need to be involved.”

“Let me see,” Dr. Bhatia clicks her heels over in a few strides, “did you locate the nearest asteroid cluster wavelengths?”

“No, but this electromagnetic field is enormous, and… weird? Really read. Listen to this,” he starts reading off the numbers and I perk up.

I only start leaning forward and my thoughts start racing, “This is saying it’s only a couple light years away, how the hell is that so close?” I turn to him, “Have we ever seen this before?”

He makes a couple non-committed gestures and points, “I’ve recorded it, we have to send this immediately.”

I nod quickly, “I’m going to scan some journals to see if this has ever been recorded before, how fast is it moving?”

“Dunno,” he shrugs, “but the camera picked up on some objects in it too.”

“Comets?” Dr. Bhatia was glancing over the numbers too.

“Dunno.”

I ruffle Rory’s bright red head, “hang in there kid.”

“Promise I’ll keep looking!”

I laugh and crack my knuckles, “let’s get to work.”

That was the first night, and it was a very long one at that.

—————–

Rory left around 3am, he said he needed to get back to his girlfriend, but even I could tell there were bags weighing his eyes down and a slump to his shoulders. And that was saying something.

Dr. Bhatia left just before dawn, not because she wanted to but because she hated the only donut place that delivered to our facility and someone had to eat a proper meal she said.

I was waiting expectantly for my Krispy Kremes when it hit six in the morning on a chilly fall day. I heard it first.

A radio buzz, bursting and calling as if this was a 1950s spy movie and the Russians were trying to jam our equipment, my eyebrows spike. I go to turn on the audio function to read the recent findings and digital images.

I pause when I start hearing the same repeating numbers: 01101000 01100101 01101100 01101100

I furrow my brow, “what the hell?”

I bend down and try to squint at one of the digital pictures from our probe, I make a face. It was a very pink, a very large and pink blur.

Our mother university had called and told us to keep on an eye on the phenomena, it might be just a series of comets with some odd readings, but I was staring at something entirely different now. I couldn’t quite make sense of it, or make it out. But it was pink and bright.

01101000 01100101 01101100 01101100

I shouldn’t be getting numbers in this way.

“Okay computer,” I say stiffly, “but why?”

I sit down to start looking for the main patterns in the data as the numbers keep repeating and repeating.

—————————

I was going crazy, legitimately crazy.

There was only one pattern in the repeating readings of the magnetic field that made any sense, it was binary, of course it was binary. And it didn’t make any sense, why would our computer translate coordinates into binary?

Why would it read it out over and over? Our stuff was either breaking OR, unfortunately, the sky was somehow writing ‘hello’ to me.

Which was either first alien contact or a very sad local news article: bravely differently-abled scientist makes her way to the nut house.

Sky’s. Didn’t. Say. Hello.

Especially comets, what even lived in comets? There was a lot about the universe we didn’t know and the sudden small chance this was it sent a giddiness through my veins like no other.

It was new. It was never seen before. I don’t go home that night.

————–

I wake up on my desk the next morning in a puddle of my own drool and in front of a whole slew of numbers and a binary-language program open on my computer. Alongside a whole box of Krispy Kremes as the site of a tragic graveyard massacre of crumbs.

“What are these?” I hear a new voice enter and I wipe at the crust in my eyes.

“We’re being visited by aliens, haven’t you heard?” I yawn, “they’re very pink.”

“No, I mean, really, what am I looking at?” Dr. Chadwick had returned to the facility.

I crack my neck and stand up, “hell if I know.”

“Haha.”

“Just a little joke for your morning doctor.”

He sniffs loudly, “please come in here.”

I find my glasses and lurch my way to the room that I had just spent the last eleven hours in. I clear my throat, “Did you see the readings? It’s like the computer is possessed or something.”

“And by that you mean possessed by an angry ghost that erases our equipment?”

My eyebrows shoot up, “what?”

“Tell me what you see? And no, that isn’t a joke invitation.”

I lower my face into the paper and see nothing but an empty blackness. It was empty, a nothing, a black picture.

My head falls down, “what.. What?”

I was going crazy.

——————————-

I try not to be at the office the next day. Or the next.

I take some time off to scroll through my tinder notifications and visit the nearest pool to just sort of stick my feet in and sit in the sauna room until I melt. It was funny I left my small town in Massachusetts just enter another smaller town in Maine.

Who even went to Maine?

Scientists and bad decisions.

All of the data from the night before had been scrambled, we had still sent off the original points of magnetic radiation, but we were told it was just a phenomenon. An off reading.

I still had a couple handwritten notes, sloppy, large, and with one word in the middle: HELLO.

Fuck, hello. I tried that one on a few of my tinder matches and it didn’t quite feel the same after hearing it from the sky. Aliens existed and so did English binary in space apparently.

Or ghosts that knew computer binary and possessed equipment. Stars that could speak. The end of the world? And I was that one scientist who had to warn everyone about the danger and yet no one would believe me.

The film tagline: The Blind Girl Saw it All! But No one Could believe their eyes. The stars were speaking now, and they were pissed. Disaster movie 2028.

I lie on my belly in the sun and listen to an audio book about magic and intrigue. It was my second time trying to finish the Wheel of Time series and I was halfway asleep in the grass.

Something buzzes inside me: I should send something back, I blink a couple times. I should definitely try and send something.

Said every normal person right before they are eaten by space monsters.

I roll over and crawl over to my porch, it was time to break out my old CB radio that my grandfather left me. I take my time arranging the frequency and sitting on my roof that night, thinking, writing.

I tap out one clear, dotted message: hello.

I knew it wouldn’t carry very far, but somehow that wasn’t the point for me. I wait.

————————

It was the next day when I hear Dr. Bhatia in the next room. “I’m leaving.” She says loudly, “I’m not doing this again.”

I lift my eyebrows and turn around toward the computer room. “More weird numbers?”

Her heels click as she walks in, “it’s getting closer. I emailed the data points away quickly this time, but the second time I looked they all came up blank.”

I wrinkle my nose, “we’re being haunted.”

She sniffs, “And I’m not going to be the first brown person eaten in the movie.”

I laugh, “it’s okay. I’ll be the blind girl that tragically stumbles into the queens nest first and gets fed to her young.”

Dr. Bhatia snickers to herself, “yeah. And then Rory saves the day, it’s a blockbuster.”

We laugh together and I’m hoping the passive aggressive PhD comparisons fades. Even if I did get magna cum laude a year ahead of her- just for the record.

She pats me on the back, “go home too.”

“No way,” I stand up and crack my back, “finding new and unusual things is why I’m in the field. I’m like Velma from scooby doo, but sexier.”

“Sure,” she leans over my chair and points at my glasses, “an appropriate comparison.”

I grin, “extra hours never hurt.” I sing and I can make out her shaking head.

“I’m calling maintenance tomorrow to check for pigeons in the observatory dish again.”

I laugh, “I love talking to pigeons you know.”

She pats me on the back and the only thing left to do was hurry over to the next room, I turn on the audio readings and take out a pen. I jot down the numbers faster than the computer can speak.

It reverted once again from its usual numeral coordinates back into ones and zeroes. It was happening again.

But it was different.

Night number two: ‘can you hear me? Can you hear me? Can you hear me?’

I use the lab radio this time: yes, yes, yes. Yes.

The hard drive is all blank in the morning. Everything from the emails to outdoor cameras in the parking lot were left blank.

Maintenance was sent in twice, Rory jokes that the FBI was coming next with Scully and Mulder.

I tell him he’s Mulder already and that apparently makes his week and he makes coffee for me first for the rest of the night. But my skin is crawling, I wait for them to leave again.

Our equipment was breaking or I was talking to something, I consider bringing in more experts, new pairs of eyes to watch me contact it. But I have feeling it wouldn’t speak then, and I have a deeper fear that I didn’t want anyone else to see it anyway.

I wait until 3am, tapping, looking, waiting, the computer starts reading binary again, I translate quickly through my other computer.

‘I’ve seen you before, I’ve seen you before, I’ve seen you before.’

The hairs on the back of my neck stand up. So this is the part of the movie where the alien comes down and uses me as it’s first meat puppet.

But it was also the part of the movie where every part of my being lights up.

‘Where? Why are you deleting our files? What are you doing? Who are you?’ I had prepared all of these binary questions the day before.

I only get back one word: ‘again. Again. Again.’

I hold my breath and write down as much as I can with pen and paper. The equipment is blank as a newborn baby the next day but I have the one word: again.

——————————-

November 10th 2028: the messages start. And it’s not possible, it should not be quick or easy or fast.

I knew something was wrong. But the binary in the sky comes back just as I type out a new message on the lab radio.

‘It’s been so long.’

‘How long?’ I ask, ‘Where are you?’

‘Too long.’

‘What do you see?’

‘You. It’s been so long.’

‘That’s kind of freaking me out.’ I finally tell whatever it is the truth.

‘Haha.’ I get back some sort of strange binary laugh. ‘I don’t mean to. You’re so small this time.’

‘Now you are really freaking me out. Why are you deleting the data?’

‘Goodnight my love.’

I don’t sleep that night or the next day or wonder why ‘my love’ was written in my notes as if my fingers were going through an earthquake. Of course, I could finally add: ‘at least the sky loves me’ on my next dating profile.

——————

November 11th 2028:

I ask first this time.

‘Do you have a name?’

‘Of course.’

‘Can you tell me?’

‘You may call me Heaven’

I sit up in my chair and my mouth hangs up, “Oh fuck,” I swear up and down and suddenly stop being an atheist for a second.

‘Heaven?’

‘Haha.’ I get back the same metallic laugh.

‘Heaven?’ I send again.

‘No.’

‘You made a joke.’

‘You are very funny when you are surprised.’

‘Can you see me?’ I write first.

‘Can you see me?’ Is the return.

I send a very short message, ‘let’s just say ‘no.’

‘You may call me ‘Texca’ until we meet again.” I translate the name over and over again until it looks like I got it right.

‘Texca?’ I send out quickly, some part of me knows it shouldn’t be this quick. It was light years away.

‘Yes. What is yours?’

‘What do you mean by ‘until we meet again?’ It was a long message to get out, it was almost five in the morning now.

‘That is a very long name.’

‘Haha. My name is Francine.’ I tell her quickly and the response is immediate.

‘Francine, Francine, Francine.’

‘Please,’ I type, hoping that weird ghost/deities/aliens knew begging. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Francine.’ Is written back, ‘goodnight my love.’

I lie on the floor and trace lines in the ceiling. I was surely losing it, but they would have to come shut me down before I stop.

——————-

November 12th 2028.

‘Francine.’ She (I now call it she) messages first.

‘Good morning!’

‘It really is.’

‘Is it morning where you are?’ I try to decipher where she is.

‘It’s always morning when I see you.’

‘Oh.’ My hands hover over the ‘dot dot’ button. ‘Are you making more jokes?’

‘No.’ Texca writes.

‘Can you really see me?’ I write again.

‘Yes,’ it says, ‘yes, yes, yes.’

‘How?’

‘You are very much a scientist.’

‘You know what a scientist is?’

‘I know what you are.’

‘Where are you?’

‘Up above.’

‘Okay?’

‘You’re confused.’

‘Yes!’

‘Haha,’ it said again and I sigh heavily, ‘give it time my love.’

‘I am frowning. Do you know what a frown is?’

It took a good ten minutes for me to translate the next couple messages, I groan when I find the right combination.

‘:)’

‘An alien with a sense of humor,’ I write back and stretch out as I savor my time in the ethers of nonsense. Of the impossible.

‘A human with one too.’

‘How are you doing this?’

‘Keep looking.’

‘Where?’ I sit up completely, ‘where?’

‘Goodnight my love.’

I put my head in my hands, hunch over and then groan so loudly I think it echoes off the lab walls.

I’m looking for something in a forest of weeds it feels like, no up, no down, just roots and questions.

———————

“So,” Sai Bhakti was sitting with her back up straight a pastry in her hand, “I hear you’ve been keeping long nights.”

I put my elbows on the table and lean forward, “can’t we talk about Game of the Thrones or something? We’re out of work for once.”

She cracks a smile, “I just hear you’re talking to ghosts.”

I sniff, “The ghost of the second monitor? I guess so.”

She pushes a pastry over to me, “God. We really did need to be kicked out of that office. Thank God for maintenance days.”

I bat a pastry back and forth in my hands, “do you think there’s a chance… I dunno, it’s not broken?”

She makes a face at me, “how? It’s erasing data points.”

“Well,” I frown, “there’s a lot in this universe we don’t understand.”

She leans forward, “like ghosts.”

“And aliens.”

“And bigfoot.”

I snort, “bigfoot is definitely involved.”

“You know,” she tucks a piece of long dark hair behind her ear, “you’re right. We don’t have to talk about work.”

We both stare at each other for a second and she leans back, I clear my throat, “how’s your husband?”

She shrugs, “the usual burden.” I raise my eyebrows and open my mouth, she puts her hand up, “lovable burden.”

I listen to her describe the problems of laundry day and having to share a bathroom with a man who cuts his toenails on the counter. But he made her dinner every night even on the nights she didn’t come home, so she assures me it’s working.

I nod, she starts eyeing me, “and you?” She narrows her eyes, “you’ve been more… chipper.”

“I’m always chipper,” I defend, “like a cheap socialite at an invite-only event.”

She smiles, “how’s the love life doctor?”

I stick my tongue out, “I can be chipper without another person involved.” It surely wasn’t a person anyway.

She studies me, “eat your pastry then.”

I take a bite and sigh into the sky, “okay. I mean. Something is… going on.”

“Something?”

“Something. But not like, dating something. Just something.”

“Ooh,” her features get sharp, “one that rhymes with one night hand?”

I couch on my own spit, “oh my God.”

“I’m not that young Fran.”

I crack a smile, “I mean. There have been a couple long nights,” I say mysteriously, “but nothing happens. And I think… I mean, I don’t know much about her.” Like if she had a body or ate or walked or breathed air.

I take a deep breath, “But she seems to like me? A lot?”

Sai hums loudly and sits up, “and how do you feel?”

I pause for the moment and stare up at nothing, “good?” I say slowly, “confused.”

“Ah, does she like you more than you like her?” She taps her chin again.

I tilt my head to the side, “I don’t know her.”

She shrugs, “then give it a chance.”

I smile down at my hands, “I’m not sure you’d say that if you knew her.”

Sai laughs softly, “is she odd?”

“The oddest.”

“Good,” Sai slaps her hands on the table, “you’ll match.”

I blow a stray piece of hair away from my face, “local pirate falls in love with the sky.”

She gives me a strange look, “come again?”

“Nothing.”

I wait for maintenance to check our equipment and I hope nothing changes.

————

November 15th 2028

‘How are you Texca?’ It’s the first night I have alone again.

The response is immediate, ‘where have you been?’

‘I thought you could see me?’

‘I was so worried.’

‘I’m here now. They were checking our observatory. You’ve caused quite a stir.’

‘I’m close.’

I sit up completely straight in my seat, ‘oh?’

‘I’m so close my love.’

‘Where? Where are you?’

‘Above,’ it says again and again, ‘I have something to tell you.’

‘Please,’ I say quickly, ‘yes, I am listening.’

‘I know you don’t remember.’

‘Remember what?’

‘But I am Texca,’ there is a long pause between those words, a buzz that comes across the speaker as the computer seems to almost fritz. ‘I have always loved you.’

My mouth is hanging open and I feel like the world will become completely white and empty after that second. ‘Why?’

‘Always,’ ‘always, ‘always.’

A screech comes over the speakers, the two programs working together to translate the binary into words starts showing numbers, symbols, nonsense, gibberish.

‘Always, always.’ It forms a simple elegant formation. And one last word, in English, no filter. ‘SOON.’

I hold my breath and wonder if this is when I walk into the alien queen’s lair and get eaten. I knew then that I would go willingly.

“Soon,” I whisper the word to myself like an electric thrill, something was happening, something I could never explain.

I fall asleep sitting against the cool wall of the observatory and try to make sense of things I see in the telescope, blurry shapes. Something pink.

———————

I wake up the next morning and the computer was smoking, Rory was dancing from foot to foot and trying to explain it to Dr. Chadwick.

“I didn’t do it!” He says shrilly, “I promise, I promise professor, please don’t fail me.”

Bob just sighs, “someone get maintenance in here again. And figure out what these damn numbers mean.”

“Wait,” I limp back up and feel the bruises on my body from spending the night against the wall.

Bob turns around, “and if it isn’t our favorite Cinderella. You do own a bed, don’t you? God knows I pay you enough.”

I shake my head, “wait.”

“Dr. Wesley didn’t do it either!” Rory defends quickly, “in fact, I did do it.”

“That’s very kind kid,” I make my way over and fumble for the audio button, “let me hear the numbers.”

“64.2008, 149.4937.”

I wipe at my face and stand up straight, I knew it in my gut. “Oh.” I blink, “someone get a map.”

“You think the numbers are for here?” The doctor asks and I nod.

“How do you know?”

I turn around, “I have to go.”

“Doctor?” Bob Chadwick turns to me, “are you alright, wait, Fran.”

I wave listlessly, “I’m taking a few days off.”

I don’t stop as they call after me, I knew it then. There was no going back.

I leave them a long note and all my coupons for the local restaurants.

————————–

The plane ride was $200 for one way since I was buying at last minute, I choose first class because why the hell not. I was treating myself as I chased strangers that were either playing the longest game prank ever. Or something else.

I was going to Nome Alaska on a Tuesday night.

The trip over is a dreamless hush of sleep that leaves me feeling empty and anxious in every crevice of my body. I was chasing something that erased data points and communicated in binary and had been watching me.

Which might say more about my mental state of being rather than things in the actual realms of possibility. But I had to go, I had to find out.

I get off at Anchorage in a wobbly daydream of consciousness and board a second tiny plane.

I sit between an old man with his cat under the seat and a teenager who talked on the phone with his mom before we took off. He was visiting his dad and she was worried about the spider bite he got last time he was there.

I almost start crying after we take off, I don’t know why.

We arrive at seven in the morning, the old man shakes me gently awake as we land and there are tear stains dripping down my cheeks again, I wipe my face and don’t say anything as I enter Nome Alaska.

It was another world if I had ever seen one, small colorful houses and empty streets. It was the middle of the winter so no one was out of their houses and very few visitors made it this far out.

I was lucky it was warmer than usual, but it still numbed my cheeks and shook my teeth to their roots as I stepped outside. I hurry to get inside the airport and pick up my simple bag- a large radio inside.

I took a long look out the airport window before tugging a hat further down on my ears and finding the nearest tourism desk.

A smiling yet surprised looking woman greets me, “Welcome to Nome Alaska! What can I do for you?”

I lift my chin up, “just a little help.”

“Will you be needing lodging miss?”

I just nod before taking a deep breath, “Yeah. Also, I have a question.”

She leans over the desk, “go right ahead.”

“Where is the best place to the see the sky around here?”

———————————–

I booked a room at a motel named ‘Linda’s’ met Linda and took a very long walk until my toes went number, which wasn’t very hard at all. I was living in Maine so I wasn’t not used to the cold.

But Nome Alaska was a different type of cold altogether. It wanted to eat you alive and leave the bones to freeze.

I kept walking.

The tour guide gave me some helpful tips: there’s a lot of great places with natural beauty around Nome! The snow and trees and little squat rural houses.

And snow.

I didn’t mind the snow and there were more stars here in this tiny chunk of the world than in all of Massachusetts combined. Nome had a glittering sky that went on in all directions, it was mostly all a big blur to me, but a beautiful one nonetheless.

I use my camera and magnify and magnify, following the path as far as it will go.

I follow it until I find a low hill with a view of the city just behind me, I sit down. I wait.

———————

November 20th.

Nothing on the radio, I call Dr. Bhatia, she says the equipment has returned to normal, though they had to throw out monitor two.

A woman at the local dinner refills my coffee five times and someone buys me a piece of cherry pie.

I pet someone’s Husky malamute in the street and wait.

———————

November 21st.

The sky is so big sometimes I’m afraid it’ll swallow me whole when I look up into it. I start shaking at night, the tear stains pepper down my cheek each morning I wake up.

There is silence at the other end of my radio and I wait. Perhaps there was a lead leak into my local water back in Maine. I dream of mad kings and beautiful pink princesses that never wake up from their enchanted slumber.

————————–

November 22nd.

Someone takes me out snowshoeing and the first winter storm rolls in that night, I don’t see any sky for days.

Linda’s says she’s going to stoke a fire in the common room if I want some strong whiskey and a game of poker. I lose thirty-two bucks that night and any sense of purpose.

“What are you doing here miss?” The man at the poker table asks twice.

I just shrug twice, “I dunno.”

They hum at that and then I lose thirty-three bucks that night.

——————–

November 25th.

The storm clears up and I don’t know how to tell the local residents that I am both Jewish and not here for Christmas. They are having a small parade in the city center nonetheless and every other person I meet tells me to come. I watch a tiny girl bundled up to her neck sing a Christmas carol as high pitched as a silver bell.

I clap, and I wait.

The sky is so large I’m afraid if I don’t hold onto something then it will suck me up into the vast cold above, sometimes I try to let go though and let it happen.

I’m afraid I really have lost my mind.

———————

December 2nd.

“They’ll be an aurora tonight,” Linda tells me that morning and I perk up, just a little bit.

“Oh,” I blink a little bit, “really?”

“I feel it. Yeah, will you still be around for that young lady?”

I hum, “I’ll try. I’ve booked a flight home on Thursday.”

She gives an old wizened smile, “shame. My son really liked your singing voice.”

I wipe my face and adjust my thick glasses, “that’s why I don’t drink whiskey anymore.”

“It’s always nice to have more people out this way!” She wipes the counter down and watches me, “for whatever reason they arrive for.”

I shrug listlessly and give an almost-smile, “early mid-life crisis.”

She chuckles, “hope it was a good one!”

I laugh, “it was.”

I wander around the city all day and hug the first loose dog I see, “do you know where you’re going sir?” I ask the dog as I pet his ears and he laps up my face.

Neither of us has much of an answer.

—————–

December 3rd.

I hear it before I see it. A buzz, a whistle, something like a whisper and a clanking sound all at once. “Told you, stranger!”

A crowd is pointing and picking up cameras, it’s night and I had missed my flight home, I start walking in the opposite direction of the crowd.

The buzzing and chiming increases like a soft caress eating away at me. I look up.

“Texca?” I call out into nothing as I hear it, the something. “Texca.”

There is something pink on the horizon, I start running, my eyes are prickling. I see the same hill I had found the first night I had arrived here.

I stumble and hobble through the snow, climbing and clawing my way to the top as I keep the colors of the night just in front of me. I can see their smears of greens and blues kissing the earth.

I squint and call, my voice rising in the wind. “Are you here!?” I raise my arms up, “were you real…?”

Maybe I already knew the answer. The greens shift to blue and yellow before my eyes, and pink, pink like flowers, pink like cats noses, pink like the universe.

I gasp and see something morph and shape above me, large enough so even I could make it out, large enough to steal my breath away. The night sky was alive with one word: my love.

The tears start freezing on my cheeks as they won’t stop flowing, “it’s been so long.”

I reach my shaking, hungry fingers up and grasp at the light. I see it, a figure, a being, something I couldn’t describe. Maybe we all were made of souls and stardust and perhaps soulmates exist in feral untamed universes.

Even if they must cross the galaxy to meet again.

My fingertips grace over something warm and I am overcome with something morphing out of the nothing. “My love,” a whisper, like a wish and a prayer and the rev of a car engine. “You came.”

I am enveloped in warmth and something drips down my body like melting candle wax, I close my arms and wrap my arms around the light.

“Hello, my love.”

And the sky devours me whole.

------------------------

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tessatechaitea · 6 years ago

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Teen Titans Spotlight #8: Hawk

Whenever I wield a flamethrower, I like to do a bit of grappling with my enemy first.

And right out of the gate! First fucking panel! Christ, Hank Hall!

This comic book is from 1987 so even though I had a gut feeling that "zipperheads" was super racist, I still had to look it up to make sure. So now my Google search history contains a search for "zipperhead"! Man, I hope I don't get gunned down in a mass shooting over the next few days! Not like anybody will be able to log onto my laptop by guessing my new super racist password!

Visually, I don't like what this panel is implying!

How long did Hank Hall carry that stupid hang glider kit around with him before some editor huffed, "Just give him fucking flight powers already!"? I love when a comic book introduces a sexy woman and then has the main character instantly refer to her as a "kid." Way to make me feel like a pedo, comic books! I mean, I expect to feel like a pedo when reading Deathstork. But not Teen Titans Spotlight On Colon! Two soldiers begin following Hank and the Sexy Kid but Hank knows how to deal with them! First he calls them dinks which is weird because how does he know they're a committed couple with no children? And you'll never guess what he does second! Oh, you guessed. Yeah, he punches them in the face.

Ha! I bet Hank is feeling pretty dumb about his dink comment now!

The sexy kid's name is Lupe. She works for the Queen of the Hive whom Hank has traveled to South America to see. She was a huge fan of Hawk's sneaking panel last issue so she wanted a memorable walking away panel of her own.

You would think she's running away because of the violent man comment but really she's just headed to the Jeep. I have no idea why a couple Slendermen make an appearance.

I only included the second panel in the above image to show I wasn't lying like I totally hardly ever do. She really was just heading back to the car. Hank and Lupe drive into the jungle to meet with Arachnid, the creature composed of billions of other insects. He's waiting to give them a ride on a gigantic tick that's also probably composed of other insects. If these insects have such great powers of transformation, why can't they take the form of a limousine or a helicopter or Heidi Klum? I'm not too impressed. Arachnid and the giant tick take Hawk and Lupe deep into some jungle ruins to relax before meeting the Queen of the Hive. Relaxing means eating dinner topless and now I regret never having relaxed with anybody in high school. Although after eating, Hank is swarmed with bugs so thankfully that regret only lasted a few seconds. I knew it was a trap, Gabrielle Ruggero! Although now that I'm remembering Gabrielle, how likely would it have been to die from bug bites?! The regret is back! Lupe drugs Hank so that when she reveals the big surprise (that she's the queen! Surprise!), he'll be too fucked up to remember that she's a kid when he puts his face in her pleasure region. Hank's main concern isn't that Lupe might be a little young but that he might be sticking his dick in a vagina made from cockroaches. "No homo, dude!" is probably what Hank would say when he learned his cock touched a cockroach.

"She told me she was as ancient as the first life that crawled on Earth" is no excuse for statutory rape. Better play it safe and go jerk off in a bush, Hank!

Queen Lupe tells Hank her life's story which doesn't include any proof that she's older than sixteen. I thought she would be all, "I was born within the buzzing chaos of a hornet's nest!" But instead, she's all, "My whole village was slaughtered and I followed a butterfly to safety where it taught me how to spell and rub my genitals on the soft moss of the river rocks while thinking of someone like you."

Don't worry. She's probably nine hundred and sixty-two here.

The Queen of the Hive didn't just bring Hank Hall all this way to fuck him. She also needs his help defeating a white colonialist named Toxicator. I'm not sure what his power or his plans are but who cares? You don't call yourself Toxicator because you're looking to make the world a better place. Hank asks Lupe her age one more time and she's all, "Older than you!" So that cinches it and they fuck all night. In the morning, Lupe is all, "Um, I don't mean to be rude but could you get the fuck out of my bed and go defeat the Toxicator already?!" I bet while she was fucking Hank, she was dreaming of a mossy rock by a waterfall. Seriously, Hank doesn't seem the type of guy to care about a woman's needs. Hank wastes valuable time putting his PVC hang glider together before finally heading off to stop the men ruining the environment. It's not the kind of thing he usually cares about but he got some action out of it and now feels slightly obligated to give a shit. What a hero. On his way to talk to the lead man behind the deforestation, the rest of the man's crew begins shooting at him. It's a good thing because now he knows he can be as rough as he wants! It would have looked bad if Hank just showed up and started punching a guy in the face without getting his side of things. Maybe the Queen of the Hive just doesn't want the white man discovering her nuclear testing facility!

Apparently nobody on the board of the Comics Code Authority could speak Mexican Spanish.

Just like any good Californian, I've always known the phrase "Chinga tu madre" to mean fuck your mother. I've also never put any thought to the phrase than that. Apparently, it's got a lot more subtlety and nuance that I've been ignorant about. And used in this context, where a guy just yells "Chinga!", I can see why maybe it wouldn't offend (especially to some East Coast editor who didn't grow up with the phrase "chinga tu madre" and was just working from an English-to-Spanish dictionary). Or maybe they just didn't care? I certainly don't! Or maybe the person who reviewed this issue let it go because they were working on The Flash and the memo in the background reads, "Buy The Flash by us guys!" The Toxicator interrupts Hawk's interrogation of this guy who is probably just a secretary. He looks exactly like the rejected G.I. Joe action figure you'd expect him to look like. He and Hawk talk mercenary trade secrets for a bit until The Toxicator is reminded that he's getting paid a lot of money to protect this deforestation company. At that moment, he shoots Hank in the face with his super-soaker full of what I'm assuming are toxic chemicals. One of the guard's speeches is translated with a note that it's translated from the Portuguese which is when I realize this is taking place in Brazil. Whoops! That also explains the "chinga" thing although in Portuguese, "chingar" means "to scold." So I don't know if it totally explains it! Sometimes when a guy crashes through my front window causing me to shit my pants, I yell, "Scold!" I should have know they were in Brazil since the first panel says Hank is landing at an airfield in "Matto Grosso." But since it's spelled incorrectly, I can pretend that I thought it was just a made up place! Hank's lungs are now full of something called u-cyclotron so he has to escape on the giant tick. To revive, he has to suckle at Lupe's breast. Man, I really wasn't paying enough attention to this comic book in 1987! I could have told Gabrielle that my lungs were full of u-cyclotron and there was only one remedy!

"So, uh ... cough cough ... Gabrielle. Um, I've got a weird ... cough cough ... request?" "Who the fuck are you, nerd?"

Oh yeah. That's totally how that would have went down. My regrets are many but not hitting on Gabrielle Ruggero definitely isn't one of them. You gotta remember your limits! Hank comes up with a new plan after tripping balls off of Lupe's breast milk. He tells her to gather all the bees together and make sure they drink deeply of her titty juice. Then he has them sting all of the invaders so that they're out of their minds from the hallucinations. At that point, it's just a simple matter of telling them he's God and that they really need to change their ways. Being backwards Brazilian Catholics full of Portuguese and Native superstitions as opposed to logical white oppressors, they're all, "Chinga me! Chinga me, God! Tell me what I've done wrong my entire life and fix it!" Boom! Problem solved and Hank Hall got laid to boot! Teen Titans Spotlight #8: Hawk Rating: B+. It's a good thing the writer clarified that Lupe was older than sixteen. I mean, she didn't offer any valid proof or anything. She just said she was! But it's not like a sixteen year old would lie about her age just because she was thirsty for some big super hero dick, right?! Also, she's completely fictional so who fucking cares?! Anyway, it was a decent story that ended rather abruptly and super weirdly (even if I lied about the breast milk which was really just rare pollen used to make healing mead). How can you go wrong with a comic book that shows an ass, uses the slur "zipperhead," and swears in another language?! I bet Comicsgaters hold this comic book up as a triumph of what the medium can produce!

#Teen Titans Spotlight #DC Comics #Hawk #Hawk and Dove #DC #Teen Titans

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