The Crown of Stars

In the end, Humanity went to the stars indeed – though not in the way that the prophets of science had foretold.  Humanity went to the stars with its eyes shut, ignorant of its unity, chasing ever greater rewards, leaving behind the teeming billions who must pay the price for its folly.  Humanity’s elites built the Crown of Stars, abandoning the masses below, in chains.

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“Yes, I was there when the first shuttles began to leave from Dulles, Brother Marcus,” said the woman, wisps of white hair falling about her face. Her one good eye seemed to have no pupil: the iris and pupil merged into a pool of infinite black, and Marcus felt as though he might fall into it. The other was the opposite: opaque, white, milky and impenetrable. “I remember, when I was a girl, my father telling me of tourists who went to space. I thought it very strange at the time. To me, tourism was the trips that I had taken with Mama and Father to the Chesapeake, in our car,” she chuckled. “If I had only known then how lucky we were to have that beaten-up old Ford! And gasoline! We had no idea how good we had it.”

As she spoke, she stirred the old, cracked teapot over the coals with one hand. When it was ready, she poured one cup for Brother Marcus, and a second for herself. The cups were plain and unadorned, fired clay, of recent manufacture. The welcome smell of chamomile and mint rose to fill the hut, beating back that of mildewed thatch and hides.

“It was a curiosity then,” she resumed, “something that the rich did to get their names in the newspapers - back when there were still newspapers. Of course, none of that matters now.” She sipped her tea thoughtfully for a moment. It was still too hot for Brother Marcus. “When I was a girl, they weren't tourists anymore.  They were going to the Orbitals to stay.  

"Back then, the hurricanes had become more frequent in old Washington, and outside of hurricane season there were frequent and sudden thunderstorms. Tornadoes were not unknown, either. It all played hell with the launch schedule, and it was always touch-and-go as to whether any given launch would actually happen on any given day. There were still weather forecasts, of course, but they became less and less reliable as time went on. We didn’t trust them more than a day into the future, if that. I’m sure the shuttle passengers must have found it very inconvenient,” she spat, tilting her head back with a spiteful cackle. Her few teeth seemed sharp, as though she would bite the words she spoke.

Brother Marcus waited impassively for her to continue.  An interviewer for his Order's oral history project, his job was mostly to listen.

“When I was eight or nine, I remember standing next to my parents’ house in the Reston projects and feeling the subsonic rumbling of the rocket engines vibrating in my chest. You cannot imagine the sound, Brother. It was as if the whole world was shaking, even at that distance. You could watch them climb, tiny points of light breathing fire and building a tremendous column of smoke as they went. Those were the days of the Pollution Taxes, and I remember thinking ‘How rich they must be, to be able to afford to create so much smoke’!” Her voice cracked then, and she laughed bitterly as she recovered her composure.

“Please, go on,” said Brother Marcus. His robe had once been black, but sun and the dust of travel had left it a faded grey. His lowered hood lay on his shoulders, among the ends of his thinning brown hair. He folded his soft hands on his lap.

“In truth, I had no idea how rich they were,” she said, here eyes boring into Marcus’. “I thought we were fabulously wealthy because we lived in an ancient townhouse in the welfare district. It was over seventy-five years old, built in May of 1971 - I remember seeing the blueprints rolled up in a basement drawer - but to me it was a palace. I felt like a princess, especially when I saw how some of my classmates lived. Every night, as I said my prayers at my bedside, I thanked God for what we had, for letting us live in a house instead of a plywood shack, or worse, a yurt. Can you believe it? I was thankful… For an ancient townhouse, for running water three times a week that we had to boil before we could drink it, and for electricity four hours per day.” She trailed off, her eye focused on the deep distance, on a time before Brother Marcus had been born.