Ball of Silence

Ball of Silence - Chapter 13

Chapter 13

         My nights are torture. Every night I edge a tiny bit closer to my goal, but will I ever get "there"? Increasingly, I fear that I'm trying to reach light speed by conventional means. One can't. You may reach 99.99999 percent and another thousand nines after the decimal point, but one hundred percent is impossible. Every night my fear grows that the crystal will tease me forever. If it does, I'll be mad before the end of the standard year, three months away. How pointless that we keep Old Earth's calendar, a sentimentality of the human mind—hanging on to things long past.

Even Flin, the most patient of my crewmates, starts avoiding me. I haven't slept with Sina in three weeks. I can't get my mind around to it. I want to arrive, nothing else.

         We hop from system to system, as we always do, though business is slow. Liv Fogue's bad rating does hurt us a bit. People tend to ship only stuff that nobody would steal en masse. We mostly ship machined parts or food specialties. Nevertheless, I try to save some credits, either to pay back Liv one day or for the cost of a mental asylum.

         The crystal ignores my anguish and impatience. Well, I don't know if it completely ignores my feelings, who can I compare my experiences with? I could ask Hriff whether the crystal sounds different now, but I don't want to see her before I arrive at my dream's destination.

The stupid crystal sounds the same, always. A low, disinterested, indifferent hum. There aren't many highs since I stopped having sex.

         We sit in the mess hall and argue.

"I have to arrive, I just have to."

"Jaiah, you need a shrink," Priar says.

"No, I need to arrive, things will be better then, I'm sure."

Flin nods, but Priar and Sina exchange glances.

I hate them for that. I don't need a shrink. I need to arrive.

         "Jaiah, maybe you'll never arrive," Sina says gently, like speaking to a moron.

"Don't say that, I will arrive, I will."

It drives me nuts. Oh, help me, gods of the universe. I have to arrive! There will be answers at the end of this journey. But even if there are no answers, there will be an end to the urge, the need to get "there".

         My senses remain at the level they were before the abstention of sex. I hear now much like a normal person, and a small part of me enjoys that. A bigger part misses all of the subtleties of the world of sound.

         Regarding the mix-up of my senses, tasting with my skin and seeing smells, the occurrences are infrequent. When it happens, it has no pattern.

I pray to the crystal. I beg it every night before I sleep to let me arrive. I cry and howl in front of the thing, but the more I rage, the more it ignores me, and the more I hate the wretched beast and myself. I do consider seeing a shrink, but every night I hope for arrival and relief.

         A vain hope it seems.

         I go to bed, and I fall asleep wanting, waiting, begging for arrival.

         I sleep.

         I dream.

         I'm hurtling through space with terminal velocity. I don't become any faster. At least it doesn't feel faster. They say the journey is as important, or even more important, than the destination. Bullshit! It's all the same anyway, stars rushing by, blue stars, red ones, white and yellow ones, orange ones. Some nebulae here and there, planetary nebulae, gas nebulae, dark nebulae, you name it. I haven't left the galaxy; I know that. Apart from that, I have no idea where the crystal is heading. Heelith space can't be that big. But maybe I'm going in circles, making detours, coming back to the same coordinates again and again, though I have no proof of that.