Inyanga's Star and Other Constellations

Águila Divides An Animus - 3914 S.E.

Character Name Meanings

Águila: Spanish for Eagle

Sueño: Spanish for Dream

Aria: English, a long accompanied song for a solo voice, typically one in an opera or oratori.

Águila's Star Part I

I have lived for almost two centuries in this world, but never had any freedom to enjoy it. Which raises the question: Why would I give up my life to solve the Immortality Problem? Why would I risk death so that the rest of Soliara can enjoy immortal life?

It may be as simple as a sense of destiny, of wanting my purpose to be fulfilled. This would be a destiny I choose, the only time I've been offered a choice, and my destiny because that I exist at all is the only proof we have that the question is solvable.

Immortal life. The formula is simple: One soul, plus a connection to the stars. If the multiverse is infinite, then so are the stars — and so is stellar energy. If you can tap it. Which we have.

Souls, on the other hand, are finite. There are only so many souls to go around. I repeat, the fact that I exist at all is the only proof we have that the Immortality Problem can be . . . 

Pausing in her writing on the lab counter, Águila tapped the pen that ran out of ink, her favorite. She liked non-magical things in her life, but that was it for her lilac ink pluma atómica.

Cadence had spent a good forty minutes trying to talk Águila out of this.

Standing over and watching Águila write, Cadence alternated between true silence and occasionally flapping aer mouth like a star on a movie screen turned on mute, because Águila couldn't hear a thing her boss, partner and overseer said.

Had she told aer sooner — say, a week ago — Cadence would have spent weeks putting the pressure on in whispered debate. In the dark lab, Cadence kept running out of words, leaning back against the lab counter behind aer. When the dust of their argument settled on the tile flooring, Águila could at least say that if the experiment resulted in the loss of her life — immortal or otherwise — at least she was going out with a friend who truly cared at her death bed.

Águila couldn't hear a thing Cadence said because she had shut aer out long ago with stellar broadcasted jazz right into her primary auditory cortex.

To listen to music inside one's own head required a combination of neurology know-how and a time travel spell to play a performance in the past right inside the lobes of the brain — a trick that had gotten her through many chatty study sessions here in the lab where she had lived her whole life, been educated, and eventually been employed to crack the case she was and had been the test subject of — since birth.

It was important to document the proceedings. She stood at a lab tech's station that was not her own, writing out the thought process that had led to her decision to move forward with these trials personally — even though this particular round of experiments could be conducted on anyone — and she didn't have a station like this of her own because she did not have the certification this experiment required. Which she made an explicit note of in the documentation.

The final paragraph she was working on, now with her gnomon spewing ink and erasing and moving words around on the airpage, illustrated the hypothesis nicely. It explained why even though finally here was an experiment anyone could undergo, Águila wanted to be the test subject herself:

Our mother lost aer immortal life and died of old age within a year of giving birth to us, but we both grew to adulthood, healthy and whole, along the same trajectory as any immortal. As the decades passed it became clear that despite the expectations that one of us would turn out to be mortal and keep aging, neither of us did.

Twins. We were two. There were two of us. We broke the rules of immortality wide open: one progenitor imparts aer immortal animus to one being. Just one. Our madre split aer animus in two for us.

As those familiar with the project know, Sueño and I broke the formula. We shared Mamá's animus. At the moment of our conception, Constellation's understanding of immortal life was shattered. One animus, one eternal life. So said the rules. One, not two. Sueño and I are the only twins to have been born in Soliara in millennia. Since immortality's inception.

She and I were raised in a lab. Believing that our family holds the key to dividing an animus into multiple souls, Constellation raised us here. Sueño and I are the only children in Soliari history to grow up playing in President Julia Mars's star dial chamber.

Thank you for reading Part I of Águila's Star. Part II is available now. Please leave a star and let me know what you think of the story so far!