Sometimes silence accompanies the worst types of chaos.

Peaceful silence is hardly ever soundless. That peace, that “silence”, is usually accompanied by the sounds of a gentle force. A brush of a signal to let you know that you’re still safe here.

Flocks of birds chirping, flying over the purple-red horizon flawlessly. The cries and the laughs of young children playing in the distance. Or the crashing of a nearby waterfall as it plummets into an endlessly flowing riverine, splashing and lapping swiftly to an ocean a million miles away.

Can you hear them?

But wait! Don’t move so suddenly. Not yet.

Peace is not determined by our control over nature, but the trust that nature won’t withhold its love from humanity. That, and the promise that, in the infinite power that controls nature beyond human comprehension, it will have mercy on the blind. God will watch over us, and is with us.

The absence of sound is, in itself, void.

But if there is no sound, no signal, then how safe are we, really?

And just how far away are we?

How far away are we from ourselves?

A woman gazed out at the horizon bleeding over the mountaintops in the distance. The early morning sun had begun to materialize under a purple-red sky. She stared at it for a moment, considering the light that had made itself known to the Earth. It’s something she’s never truly done before, she realized.

She moved closer to the window that stretched to the tile floor of the lab she stood in. The woman had forgotten how out of place she felt in that room. And for a moment, it felt like she belonged there. The glow of the sun suddenly yet slowly peaked from above the crest of the mountain range. It made her heart jump somehow, like she was sensitive to it. Though it made her feel warm all the more. The sight was a perfect view from the watch point.

Yes, perfect in beauty. But anyone who looked in this direction would have a clear view of the sun rising from the west. Perfect for observation.

The woman blinked and let her eyes fall on the plain below the mountains that inched closer below the peak of the watchtower.

The plain looked almost unnatural with how clear it was. From the woman’s view, it stretched in a wide circular shape around the watch point, probably for several miles. But since there was nothing in the plain besides grass and some rivers, you could easily make out the tall walls at the edges, blocking entry into the plain.

No animals frollicking or eating or sleeping anywhere on the terrain. There were carved rivers that may have been natural, some leading to the edge of one of the hills, flowing out of a waterfall gracefully.

The unnatural look was by design. Anything that would have blocked entry to the watch point or made it less visible would have hindered what it was made for: to be seen and accessible. To see and to access. Even if not just by anyone.

The woman’s fingers landed on a badge pinned to her black jumpsuit, and she gazed down at it.

The badge was the size of a dollar coin and felt cool to the touch, smothered in a glossy gold. She brushed her fingers across the middle of it to feel each letter, as if to remind herself what the badge truly read: ‘CLASS IV’, carved into the gold with a stencil. The badge lay above the threaded name tag on the jumper, which read, ‘DAWN RIVERS’. Dawn pressed the gold badge into her suit, as if to click it into place.

She turned behind her and began to walk across the empty lab, and made her way into the hall of the watch point.

Dawn hadn’t spotted anyone else in the halls as she walked toward one of the control rooms. Though before she could reach it, she stopped in the middle of a hallway made of glass. The hall was designed to view the sky from both sides during any time of the day, and Dawn had caught a glimpse of the rising sun again.

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Shapes of sun rays began to peak out more clearly, and she could make out the circular shape of it just creeping up behind the trees in the mountain range. From here, Dawn could see the orange shape of the sun clearly, as the glass in this hallway seems to have been made with something similar to what is used in solar viewers to watch a solar eclipse with. Here, the sky looked much darker, the features below the tower in the plain were much darker, and she could barely see the outer walls of the space that protect the plain. To Dawn, it looked almost as if the sun’s shape had been reprocessed and put through software, as each shape looked defined. Solid and smooth,

Solid colors and perfect shapes, so unlike the previous, more natural view.

She spotted a woman in a lab coat and a tall elderly man walking toward her while chatting. Dawn stood firm as she recognized the old man as her new commanding officer. As they approached her, they greeted her formally.

“Good morning, pilot.” the man said to Dawn in a gruff voice. “I can see you’re ready for launch. Has your team gathered at the launch point?”

Dawn cleared her throat. “Yes sir, the harvesters are prepared for flight. Awaiting your command.”

“The launch sequence will begin at the scheduled allotted time at 4 p.m. and we’ll be connected to communications. Langley, have you got data on diagnostics?” the commander responded coldly, upholding the stoic tone this hallway has just suddenly shifted towards.

Dawn let her eyes fall back to the glass for a moment.

The woman in the lab coat, Maya Langley, pushed her black hair behind her ear and held her glasses in place as she peered at the document on her clipboard and said, “Rivers, our latest report shows your ship will withstand the heat flying out of the atmosphere and the heat shield will withstand the sun as long as you remain within it in the given amount of time, approximately 45 minutes.”

As Langley spoke, an older couple and a little boy appeared at the end of the hallway, making their way toward the three. Dawn peered behind Langley to see her parents walking with her son, Daniel.

The boy at the end of the hall had jumped from around the corner of the hallway. He continued to jump through the hallway trying to land in the large square designs scattered on the tile floor, as if he were playing hopscotch. The older man of the couple laughed and pointed somewhere on the floor as he walked with his wife, seemingly leading the boy along in his jumps. Dawn’s heart jumped again, but then it slowly sank down.

“How long will I be gone, Langley?” Dawn said to the scientist, her eyes fixed on her son and parents.

Langley looked up for a moment to take in the question before shaking her head. “It’s hard to tell. Your hyperjump will reduce the time it takes, but–"

“–but the time perception scales.” Dawn took note of the “hyperjump” tool she’s used in training before, allowing a shuttle to manipulate space and time to travel millions of miles in just a few minutes. Though since that process speeds up time for people on board and not people outside of the shuttle, what would be a few minutes to her team would be something like a week on Earth.

Langley looked behind herself to see Dawn’s family making their way toward the solar hall.

“Momma! Grandpa, look! I see Momma down there! Momma!” the little boy sprinted ahead of the old couple.

Langley turned around as the commander loudly and cheerfully greeted him. She fixed her eyes on the pilot and put a warm hand on her shoulder.

“Dawn, you’ve done this before. That team looks up to you. They’ll listen to anything you have to say, do anything you tell them to do. And they’re some of the best. You know that. I know that. I’ve seen it, time after time.” Langley was speaking low, trying to comfort her, but also to make sure Daniel wouldn’t overhear as he chirped in conversation with the commander.

But Dawn only nodded slightly, not looking at the scientist. She turned her eyes to the glass another time, looking back down at the long meadow below them. She held her right hand in her left, rubbing her thumb into her palm, as if to calm the rising dread that began to fill her chest. The sun shape casted an amber glow on the field, but Dawn began to shut the sight away from herself in her mind in dissociation.

Langley looked at her for a moment.

“These are just like your material runs. Only this time you’re bringing something back.”

Dawn kept her eyes on the amber glow. Langley was wrong. This was nothing like a material run.

She compared the two missions in her mind. If Dawn were engaging in a material run, she would command a maintenance crew to launch bits of metal or minerals into the sun’s corona and observe which ones withstood the heat the longest. These missions became blazing hours sweating in a shuttle near the Sun, less than ten miles away from it, to see what combination of material would be best to build the most durable thermal suit with. Longer runs would mean they would be injecting material farther into the sun to see which ones could go the deepest for the longest period.

But this mission was different. There wasn’t another need for a material run. Dawn and her team had been successful in building the suits out of the best material. It all led to this day, where the pilot and her team would need to bring something home, an interstellar feat no person nor nation had ever accomplished.

Dawn would be harvesting plasma from the sun’s thermonuclear core. She would bring home a piece of the sun.

She turned around to face her partner. “Maya… This is far from a fucking material run; don’t give me that!” Dawn hissed, trying to keep her voice at a whisper. She glanced over at Daniel.

“You’ve traveled to the sun before.”

“But I’ve never been inside of it! Look–” She glanced at Daniel again, unable to focus on Langley. “–I might not come back. And that’s a reality I really need you to consider for just a moment.”

“I understand, Dawn. When hasn’t that been a reality? You’re the front line. Your son…” Langley paused for a moment. Dawn had crossed her arms and was looking in another direction. “You know he’s safe here. That there’s a place for him here if things don’t go right. The same goes for your parents.” Dawn was still looking away.

“Dawn. Look at me.”

And so she did. Langley gave her a warm smile with her brown eyes and placed her warm hand back on her shoulder. Dawn softened her hardened expression, allowing the touch of her friend to calm her.

“There’s a place for them here.” Langley said again in a light voice.

Dawn gazed at her for a moment. She appeared unsure at first, then desperate. Suddenly, without smiling, she embraced her friend tightly, grasping at her as if she were Dawn’s only lifeline. She fought back tears as she let go of Langley, returning a hand to her partner’s shoulder.

“Bring me home, Langley.” Dawn uttered desperately. “Please, bring me home.”

“Momma!” Daniel jumped into Dawn’s arms, startling her.

“Daniel, careful!” Dawn gasped as she held onto him tight and kissed his head a few times. “ Hi, sweetheart.”

TO BE CONTINUED IN 'Hillcrest Watch Point'.

COMING SOON.