Superluminal

[My first Heart Rape post! Hurray! :D I've been working on this for a while, but I still don't feel %100 about it...I know it's a little long, but please comment! Thanks :)]



The scarf folds and coils at her feet, slowly, slowly growing; rolling hills of green, winding coils of blue, dark purple sunsets and pink sunrises. The diamond on her finger shimmers dully like a star behind a cloud, traveling across the sky. A star that has lived a million years. Maybe it is dead, and we see only the dying burst. The needles shift up and down and the landscape flutters.

Sometimes it astonishes her to think that a knit scarf is but a single thread, looped and looped again upon itself. Endlessly self-reflecting. She ponders this as it slowly rolls onto her lap. The yarn is hairy in the sunlight, like his arm stretched across the pillow, hair quavering under her breath.

There is a quiet, mellow chime from the hall clock and she sets down the knitting needles on the glass table beside her, beside the digital picture frame. In it is a young man in uniform, clutching a young woman around the waist. She clutches the armrests and hoists herself up, scuffles into the kitchen, and places a glass mug into the hot beverage dispenser; presses the touchscreen, and hot water pours out. It turns into a steaming dribble and the machine opens a latch. A tea bag falls out and into the hot water, bleeding brown and red.

It takes her a moment to regain her strength. She leans on the countertop, wheezing over the steeping tea, and wonders if she has the energy to continue knitting. She doesn't. She takes the tea and makes her way back into the living room, stiffly tips over into a chair like a falling tree and crashes down into the cushion.

"Television," she says in a quiet voice, and the television zips on.

"-say that xenopolitical affairs may worsen over the next few years. Terran forces have suffered 867 more casualties in the past 3 months, bringing the total to 12,369, and Terran Prime Minister Asaj M. Lewis says that now is the time for affirmative action."

The screen flashes to a prerecorded planetary address by the Prime Minister. He drones on in a slightly Middle Eastern lilt that Earth will not tolerate the violence of the Xertians any longer and that the time for negotiations is over. That as he speaks 10,000 human troops are approaching Xertian orbit. That we Terrans stand for peace, justice, and liberty. In solidarity we stand-"

"-to bring peace to the galaxy," she mumbles. Her lips quiver as the final fleet approaches alien territory. In sixty years her skin has become the delicate crepe of a mourning veil; her hair the dry grass of an untended grave; 10,000 young men and women have traveled 60 light years to a distant planet; and her husband’s flushed and fleshy smile has gleamed unchanging on the coffee table. She clenches the coffee mug and the ring on her finger glimmers dimly.

The television screen turns white and navy blinking text scrolls across the front.

“Incoming video call,” says a gentle woman’s voice.
“Accept.”

“One moment please,” says the television. The old woman sits still in her chair, wheezing. She has no more energy for outward excitement, or for happiness. The tea grows mild and loses its steam.

“Maddy?” asks a male voice as the television screen crackles with static. “Maddy, can you hear me?”

She takes in several shaky breaths and rasps, “Yes.” It surprises her to hear her voice, so hoarse from years of disuse. She doesn’t recognize it, the brittleness. She takes another breath as the image on the screen wavers, and then straightens itself. There is her husband, as soft and youthful as the day he left, wearing that same uniform. A living memory. Other men walk past behind him.

“Oh—” he stutters. A smile shivers on his lips. “You look so…you look great, Maddy.”

She takes a deep breath. “Thanks.”

“How long has it been down there?”

“Sixty…sixty…years.”

Her husband’s face pinches and tears well up in his eyes. He sniffles loudly.

“Oh god, Maddy.”

For a moment she watches him sob, his shoulders heaving up and down. Hot tears rise in her eyes and trickle down the ravines of her face. She grips the mug.

“It feels like…” he whispers, “it feels like two years, maybe five.”

“It feels like yesterday,” she says, and picks up the photograph.

“Do you…do you have any…children? A husband?” he chokes. He looks into her living room, sparse and bleak – an armchair, a loveseat, the single photograph in her hand.

“No,” she says, caressing the frame. She cannot look at the living thing. It trembles in her hand. “I waited for you.”

His eyes soften and he smiles a brief, solemn smile. Then he clenches his teeth. “You know I can’t come back. When I do you’ll…I told you not to waste your life.”

She thinks of him saying this, the day the photograph was taken. She thinks of the feel of his arms around her waist, his chest hot against her cheek, his cheek pressed against the top of her head, his hot tears on her scalp as they clung desperately for eternity, for a moment. How that moment was all the life she had, all the life she wished for. She could not forsake it.

She looked up at the screen and looked into his eyes.

“It was worth it.”

[Superluminal is in reference to relativistic travel as it happened in Ender's Game and Left Hand of Darkness, but I don't know if that really came across...basically a person travelling through space at lightspeed ages much slower than someone on Earth.]