Papa’s jacket was so worn it was nearly transparent. He held Rasp’s hand in his and traced his thumb over the veins under the skin.
“You are so small. Like me,” Papa said. A thin white scar cut through the sagging skin on his neck. He stood up suddenly and flung his arms around Rasp. The sweet smell of infection and human sweat wafted around them. The jumpsuit Papa gave him reeked of someone else. Another person’s suffering tucked around him, enveloping him in the too-big garment.
Papa had stacked empty cans in every corner. When Rasp looked at them, his heart pounding from fleeing the shapes in the hallway, Papa said, “Helps me know.” Plasticine buckets brimming with clear fluid stood around the room, ripples emanating from some unknown constant motion under the floor.
Light from the monitoring station illuminated the room in a cool blue light. Another black shape slid around the corner, knocking over the tower of empty cans. Papa leapt up and grabbed a bucket brimming with a clear viscous substance. He shuffled over to the corner and squatted, gripping the bucket with white knuckles. The shape darted to the other corner, and Papa doused it with the substance. It made a high whistling noise as the liquid coated it and then flopped on its side. The liquid bubbled into a huge orb and lifted from the floor, the dark shape suspended in the center, rattling and squawking. Papa rushed to a hand-rigged switchboard in the center of the room and flicked some switches. The orb drifted toward the sliding door.
“Open it, son!”
Rasp, transfixed on the creature in the bubble, sat paralyzed where Papa left him.
“The switch by the door. Open it!”
The orb neared the door, the creature shifting into spikes and angles, and then into a human face. A face on candles from The Before, with open hands and halos. It smiled at him with blinding white teeth, its eyes wrinkling at the corners. It coughed. Flecks of something cool and oily spattered on him. Golden thorns wreathed the grinning face and pressed into the illusion of skin. Pushing into the cheeks until the skin punctured with a barrage of small pops. It neared him. It floated to him like an impurity on an ore stream. Slow as approaching break time. The switch. The switch. He must reach the switch. His arms were heavy. His mind comfortable and soggy.
Papa pushed past him and flicked the switch. The being giggled as the orb zipped into the dark hallway.
Papa wiped his forehead with his sleeve and trudged over to Rasp. The haze behind his eyes faded into a strange clarity. A feeling he could not name rose in its stead. A feeling like standing on his own air supply hose.
“I’m sorry. I froze.”
“It’s ok.” Papa sat down on the dirty military-issued cot beside Rasp and motioned for him to sit.
“What was that?”
“It was…what did you see?”
Rasp described the being to him.
“They are that then.”
“Can they hurt us?”
“Oh yes. Yes they can. We had thirty crewmen when we landed.”
“Do they have teeth or something? Are they animals? I didn’t think animals existed anymore. Did you know that some people think they never existed at all and that the streams are lying? That’s forbidden thinking though. It will get you so many demerits.” He chattered. “Are they engineered? Who engineered them?”
Papa stared at the monitoring station and said nothing. He pinched the skin between his thumb and forefinger.
“Papa?”
“I’m sorry. What was the question?”
“Are they animals? How do they hurt us?” Rasp hopped up from the cot and wrung his hands.
“They hurt our minds, and our hands hurt ourselves,” Papa said. He looked around the room as if taking inventory and stood up.
“Oh.” Rasp’s heart rate steadied.
“Come here. I’ll show you where to fill up the buckets.” Papa pointed to the buckets around the room.
“Ok. What is that stuff?”
“It’s a coolant gel that regenerates and auto-congeals. The diablitos just wear it like a dress to the dance and then shed it ,and we have to go get it again. Sometimes if I can’t get them out of the room in time, they’ll pop the bubble into a million little pearls.” Papa’s eyes darted around the room. He took a comb out of his pocket and ran it halfway through his tangled hair before it snagged. He stuck the comb into his breast pocket, where the corner pushed through the thin fabric.
Papa led Rasp to a tiny room that blinked with old servers. A blob of the clear fluid congealed underfoot and scooted toward the corners of the room.
“Where is your ship, son?”
“I don’t really know. MOTHER got me here.”
“Your mother?”
“No. MOTHER. She says the drill is hurting her.”
“There is a woman here? Where?”
“A woman? No, she isn’t a woman. She’s under the ice. I think. I think she’s under the ice.”
“Mijo, you shouldn’t listen to her. They are trying to kill us.”
“She protected me. The membrane is because of her. I would have frozen.” Rasp said.
Papa’s eyes hardened, and he twisted Rasp’s collar, wrenching him off his feet. He yanked Rasp closer to his face and shook him. His thin arms tensed under Rasp’s face.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
“They are the enemy. Nothing else. Do you understand?” Papa released his collar and stepped back. “Now, pick up that shovel. We have work to do.” His tone was sure and serious.
The comfort of direction overwhelmed Rasp. Someone telling him exactly what to do. Exactly who the enemy was. Exactly where to go, what to eat, who to speak to, like a blanket thrown over his shoulders. A Pornographic Art Film with his face on anyone he wished. A bonus to his Commissary account.
He thought about being cocooned in his bunk, the screens perfectly customized to his color vision, his eyesight, his sexual orientation. Microtransaction after microtransaction, draining his Commissary account to crumbs while he inserted himself into each constructed scene. The light pouring from the other miners’ self-contained pods like gargantuan alien seeds. Here, he was cold and responsible and hungry – working on the unscheduled project of survival.
Even as he said “ok” to Papa, something dug at the corner of his mind. The tender hold of MOTHER as she enveloped him in the membrane. She asked him only to remove the drill. To make it stop.
“Ok, Papa.” He stooped to pick up the shovel and followed him into the dark hallway. “Can I ask one more question?”
Papa sighed and nodded ahead of him, barely visible in the dim light, the plastic buckets swinging at his sides.
“Why can’t we just see if it helps to stop the drilling?”
“Because there are more important things to worry about now.”
A dark shape materialized ahead of them, blinking in and out of visibility as they neared it. It arched and grew into a creature on the edge of Rasp’s understanding, with limbs that stretched and folded into mandalas of teeming movement.
Papa lifted the bucket to his chest, gripping it by the edge.
“Do you see it, my son?”
Rasp realized Papa had never called him by name.
“Sí, Papa. Lo veo.” The strange words spilled out.
Papa lunged at the creature and slopped the remaining coolant out of the bucket at it. It keened and skirted away into the darkness. A sound like tangled hair being brushed through echoed down the corridor. He turned back to Rasp and motioned for him to follow, his finger to his lips.
Rasp turned and looked behind him into the darkness. Nothing. The emergency lights buzzed on above, revealing the corridor under the orange light again. Dozens of overturned plasticine buckets, identical to the one that swung from Papa’s right hand, lay scattered everywhere.
“Come on, we have to get to the operations room,” Papa whispered.
Rasp followed, trying to remember the color of Papa’s eyes from The Before.
***
Dear [redacted]:
I realized that I have written the children and have forgotten you. That is not to say that I have forgotten you; we had spoken over the comms even before our decision to no longer be married. I suppose even that decision doesn’t carry the kind of weight it once did. I am doubtful this will ever reach you, much like the children’s letters, but it gives me a touch of normalcy here in this thin tin can floating through these unmoored rocks.
The truth is, I miss you out here. I used to think about other women when we were together. Even when I had your breasts under my hands. Even when I saw our son. Now I only think about you. I did always have a flair for the melodramatic. “La pasión” you used to joke, before all of this, with my head in your lap. I suppose we should have asked what the cost of our ambitions would be.
Is now the time to think about blame? I’m unsure. Is blame ever useful? My father asked me once that if I threw a ball and it broke our neighbor’s window, was it still broken even if I didn’t mean to?
It was still broken, and I was responsible for breaking it. The answer is simple. It always was simple, I suppose. I have always wondered who is responsible if the neighbor threw the ball back and broke their neighbor’s window. What is the recompense then? Both neighbors have broken windows now. Is this justice? Who can mediate this?
You told me once that I ask a lot of questions for someone so dedicated to authority. “Questions are the antidote,” you said. I asked the antidote to what? And you pulled me into you leaving the question unanswered. Your cold hands on my belly. The fading pink star tattoo above your breast, covered everyday with pullovers and crisp dress shirts.
You were like a collapsing star. Nothing escaped your pull.
I remember the first time I saw you. You were being chewed out by your C.O., your back so straight and your eyes like river stones. Your small fists clenched at your sides and your mouth set in defiance. The only word I could think of was “mighty.” Like a mockingbird diving a crow. Fearless. The staff sergeant was red up to his neck. Sweat slipped down his back darkening his uniform. His hand was a blade leveled at the tip of your nose. He might have spent his energy screaming at the moons for all the good it did. You saw me looking after he strode away and winked at me. No one had ever winked at me. I don’t think anyone has since.
My heart. Mi corazón. You are already a collapsing star and a mockingbird and the moons of Mars in this letter. You are an abyss and the forest floor. I approached you and told you that you were brave. You said I was romantic for the military and let me buy you a drink. Martian swill probably spiked with coolant. We danced belly to belly in the dark packed room. The recycled air smelled like engine grease and sweat and perfume. Our feet stuck to the floor from the sick-sweet drinks. The AndyGirls danced on raised lit platforms. They were closer to clones than Andys at that point, I suppose. Each identical to the last with their strange long legs and ice blue eyes.
I said, “You are more beautiful than anyone else.”
And you asked, “¿Hablas Español?”
I knew it was against regs. I knew I could get ninja punched, but your eyes were warm with liquor, and I was brave for once.
“Eres más hermosa que nadie,” I said. You pressed your cheek against my chest, and I marveled that you passed the physical tests to get in. Your body was an unsprung trap. Smaller than a bullet wound.
I have always wondered if you remembered that night.
I am certain that by the time I send this transmission, you will be out of range. Maybe I planned it from the start. I have never understood why it was so hard to apologize. It costs nothing.
Lo siento. I’m sorry. While it is too little, too late, know this: I am paying out here.
The Black is a place of atonement with no priests to guide you. Remember me, for your thought shall be my last incarnation. My bones will not go back to the good earth. My skin will go unconsumed by the insects we sought to eradicate. My teeth will go unfound by the generations ahead. My stories will slip away. I will not be among the resurrected. How will I be found?
Enough of this. Self-pity was always my failing.
I am sorry. I truly am.
Besos,
[redacted]
***
The Holy Book™
New Intergalactic Version
Chapter 956 Verses 12-19
12 And when you do return to My bosom, know this, you will need to earn your fat, for our fathers did rise unto their own by turning labor into silver and silver into untraceable currency.
13 And herein do I say unto you, My first commandment is as follows: women were created and adorned for a singular purpose, and that purpose was to work, as is man’s purpose. Let it be known that work for women and work for men are to remain separate. Women who perform the labor of men shall not be allowed access in The After. Men who perform the labor of women will pay the non-refundable fee before entry.
14 Covetousness is virtuousness. This is My second commandment. Man cannot be driven by joy in his station alone. Ambition doth enhance the plight of all men.
15 You shall have no other systems before this one, built by hard work and inheritance of the blood of the fathers and mothers who came before, and the leadership of Mechoben and The Father. Heed this commandment most of all, for it is greater than all of My other commandments.
16 Despise your father and your mother, for they sinned in your creation. The female body is meant for consumption and admiration, not distribution. The male body is meant for construction and labor and the honorous work of war, not the random distribution of genetic material.
17 Shine is life. Sup on it for all meals.
18 Consume and sup from the fruits of Terra and beyond. The After Book is the Commissary Ledger. The Father will dash thy name from entry should your consumption flag, as it doth glean the tithe that is Thy Father’s.
19 Know these commandments and know them to be the only Truth.