Against the Tide - A New Elysium Story [Complete]

7. A Piece of the Stars

The night was cold, the air crisp and clear. High above, the Milky Way looked like a streak of silver, painted in a great arc across the sky. She leaned back and buried her fingers in the soft sand to prevent that feeling of vertigo and detachedness that this vision of an infinite space would often evoke within her.

The tide was low here, they had walked far to be close to the water tonight. There were no other light sources around, only the stars basked the world around them in their silvery glow. Their light was everywhere, dancing on the surface of the water, and reflecting off the white sand.

"Doesn't it ever bother you," she asked after a while, "That the light you're looking at is billions of years old? So whatever you'll find, it will actually be long gone by the time you see it."

He looked up from his telescope and over to her. It was an ancient thing, standing on the sandy ground on three shaky legs. It wasn't very useful for scientific observations, but he still used it for fun, during his time off work. Almost every second of his life was dedicated to the night, and the silver light of the stars.

Now a whimsical smile flitted across his face for a moment as their eyes met, before he lowered his head again to look through the telescope.

"I'm fine with just the past. It reveals enough about the present to make us strive for a better future," he replied.

"But what if you found something really interesting? It would mean that even if we send some ships out there, by the time they arrive, there would be nothing left of it. That's kinda sad, don't you think?"

He sighed, and turned away from his telescope. He turned the wheelchair around, and made his way towards her over the shifting sands. She knew better than to get up and try to help him. He would only dismiss her with a gesture of his hands and a smile on his lips.

"It is," he admitted, as he came up next to her and followed her gaze up towards the night sky with his own eyes. "It's very sad. But it's also an opportunity. Like a window into the past of our universe. I think it's just as amazing to look billions of years into the past as it would be to look billions of years into the future."

"But you can't change the past," she argued.

"You cannot change the future either. It will simply be what it will be," he said with a shrug. "Because the very moment the future happens, it immediately becomes the past, and becomes unchangeable."

She pondered his words for a long time. The longer she stared up at that streak of silver on black, the more she felt the lights call out to her. She wasn't like him. She wasn't content with just looking at them, and she knew she would never be.

"Do you see that cluster of seven over there?" he asked after a while, probably guessing what she was thinking about. He pointed towards a group of stars that shone with a distinct bluish glow, brighter than the surrounding ones.

"Yes. The... the Sisters, or something like that?" she recalled vaguely from his lectures.

"The Seven Sisters, yes. The Pleiades," he nodded. "When I was your age, I dreamed about going out there, to travel space and have great adventures, go farther than any human ever before. Well, obviously that didn't work out quite as I had expected."

He chuckled, as if it was all just a great cosmic joke to him. Humor was his way of coping. At home, he had put up a large print of a scan of his shattered vertebrae next to a picture of the Milky Way, pointing out that the white specks on black background looked kind of similar. A galaxy within me, he had called it. I found a vast space of opportunity – just not outside, where I had expected it.

"And if longing seizes you for sailing the stormy seas,
when the Pleiades flee mighty Orion
and plunge into the misty deep
and all the gusty winds are raging,
then do not keep your ship on the wine-dark sea
but, as I bid you, remember to work the land."

The words he recited were clearly ancient, probably even older than that ragged looking telescope of his. She didn't particularly care for the past, neither that of the galaxy, nor that of mankind, but she had to admit that the words had a certain beauty to them, as depressing as they were.

"There would have been ways for me to go there, even after the accident, but I realized that this is the place where I belonged. And I think it was the best call I ever made," he looked down at her and put a hand on top of her head, softly ruffling her dark hair.

Over the soft whispering of the waves, she could still hear a part of his voice telling a different tale, one of sorrow and regret, even after all these years. But she didn't blame him. She understood it all too well. She realized that moment that the stubble growing on his chin was not just reflecting the silver starlight. He was growing old.

"Hey," she said, "Didn't people believe that you could make a wish upon a star, back in the day?"

"Hm. I believe so, yes," he replied. "Why?"

"So what happens if you make a wish upon seven of them?"

He looked down at her, his eyebrows raised in surprise, and then he laughed.

"I don't know, perhaps the wish becomes more powerful?"

"Good," she said, and looked up at the Seven Sisters.

That means seven times better odds, she thought, that my wish will come true.

In a couple of hours, this side of the moon would turn to face the sun beyond its planet, and it would close a blue curtain on the silver-spangled blackness. But behind that curtain, the stars would still be there, shining their ancient light. Even during the day, she couldn't help but feel their calling, that strong desire within her to pull the curtain away, and plunge into the infinity of space.

One day, I will go to those distant places that you watch through your telescope. And I will bring back a piece of a star for you.

_____
A.N.
The poetic lines about the Pleiades are from Hesiod's "Work and Days" (Ἔργα καὶ Ἡμέραι)