Superluminal (Version III)

[A redo of my first HeartRape post ever! Original found here.]



II.
It comforts her to say that her life remains unchanged. She wakes on her side of the bed, showers, dresses, eats, arrives at work at the punctual hour. She finds time passes no slower than before. When she arrives at her cubicle she is greeted by her neighbour with the customary grunt; at the lunch table her coworkers speak the same mundane babble without noticing a profound change in her, and so that must mean that there is no profound change to be noticed. Even her fingers are unaware of turmoil, flitting across the touch screen with as much assuredness as the week before, like pistons on a train, propelling her forward. When she returns home, it is as still and empty as when she left it. That these things persist without alteration is proof that past events are no great harm done in the grand scheme of things. The past can be put in the past so long as one slogs forward.

I.
The table was glass and she noticed the flecks of grease across its surface, dried now into small opaque stars in a translucent sky, flung from the mouth of a famished god, starch worm wriggling into a puckered worm hole. She saw also the smears and, looking closer, the minute lines drawn by the ridges of his finger pads, and the concluding whorl. And these were like spinning galaxies leaving trails behind them of their unique existence. And even closer on a microcosmic scale she saw the globules of oil, intermittent deposits through time, sticky and insoluble. And as she stared down at the bottomless glass he took her hand. She pulled away.
“That’s a really long time,” she said.
“I know.”
He glanced down and they gazed into the universe together. They perceived the timeline of a thousand shared meals and a thousand wax drippings from a thousand lit candles, their light overwhelmed by a unified gust, and they saw in the dark of space some remnant flickering until the last flame reflected in their eyes was snuffed out by darkness. He gripped a little harder.
“The irony,” he said, “is that at the same time, it’ll only be five years…”
“For you,” she said.
“Yes.”
“And what am I supposed to do?”
He huffed his chest. Contemplated a spaghetti stain.
“Whatever you want to do, I guess.”



“Then I’ll wait for you.”
“You can’t. You’ll be waiting your whole life – for nothing. It’s impossible.”


“But if you can travel forward through time, can’t you go back?”
“It’s not the same.”



“It’s not so easy.”

VII.
She turns her back to his side of the bed, certain she feels his warm shadow there.

III.
The colony suffers a minor power surge. Artificial gravity offline. She sits above her armchair, legs gently brushing the fabric. She is awash in white light. Watches the news:
“‘We can assure you that this is nothing more than a minor disturbance, caused by a small solar flare, not a warhead—this is not an attack.’”
The framed photograph glides through the air like a mote in suspension. His plump smile turns to the screen. In uniform, he salutes the President. She stares with moist apprehension.

IV.
She has decided to take up knitting. She buys a holo-tutor, scours an antique store for the needles. Cannot find yarn.
“Knitting is an archaic craft,” states the holo-tutor, “sustained by a few devoted hobbyists on and around the globe. However, knitting circles are more commonly found planetside, where the craft possesses deep roots in some traditional Terrestial cultures.”
The needles themselves are ancient. She traces with her eyes the dark brown warbling rings of the wood, the stretch marks of time. This tree was alive, once. It seems so prehistoric.
“A novice may find it difficult to procure yarn at an affordable price, particularly in the colonies, due to high exportation costs. However, yarn can be salvaged by unravelling knit sweaters.”

V.
She stirs pasta in a pot, attempting to break its sticky bonds. It becomes a heavy, entangled mass, a ball of yarn with a dozen loose ends. There is too much starch in the water, viscous and grey. She tells herself that she might as well cook the whole pack, no sense in leaving just a few strands behind, save herself from cooking again later, what if she wants another plate, might as well make extra, just in case…
As she stirs the clock pauses a moment, timid. It quickly steps into the next minute.
“Is someone there?”
A warm, familiar smell. She hears footsteps approach from behind.
“Cooking the pasta wrong.” A rumbling laugh, a deep breath. “Same as always…”

VIII.
She finds, abandoned at the back of the closet, a man’s sweater.

IX.
She unravels.

XI.
“Want to talk to her, Tony? Don’t you have something to say?” – a woman’s voice, garbled somewhere between Iowa and Lagrange Point 3, by a surveillance satellite, perhaps. She hears shuffling as the phone is brusquely shoved into Tony’s hand, clattering against the newest handheld gaming device. She hears the tinny music, the rush of vehicles through space, chasing stars.
“Thank you, Aunt Marla.”
Pew pew pew.
(“For what?” )
“For the birthday card.”
“Oh, you’re welcome Tony. Thirteen is a big year, you know.”
“Mmhmm.”
Shuffling static. The techno-beat of space fades.
“You should really come down sometime, the weather’s great.”
She eyes the unlocked door.
“I’d love to,” she says, “But I’d have no one to watch the house. Who knows what kind of people might break in…”

VI.
“You look different.”
“I’m older.”
“But still the same…”
She appraises him. A little tattered, a little softer around the edges. She supposes she is too. Too much pasta.
“You said this would be impossible.”
“It was. Back then.”
“And now?”
“It’s still impossible, now. But not in the future. I’m…from the future.”
He shifts his eyes. His smile is grim.
“But your ship hasn’t arrived yet. You said that would take my entire lifetime.”
“Time dilation is a tricky thing…”
X.
She finishes knitting the scarf. Or rather, knits it to its logical end. The yarn ran out. That seemingly endless thread…It had surprised her to discover that the sweater was made of one continuous line, looping over and back and under itself. Taking form.

IX.
She unravels.

XIV.
She opens a package and finds a tiny, potted cactus. It’s from Tony. He’s roadtripping across the country with son.
“C. Gigantea from what was once Arizona State. It takes 75 years to grow a side arm.”
It is a small and prickly nugget. It tears through the tissue paper.

XII.
Maybe he was a figment of her imagination.
She sits in her armchair, needles in hand, watching the dusty couch, its indented cushion. Maybe it is the phantasm of her own weight she sees. Or maybe it is like a ripple in the water. Maybe in another time, he is sitting there, and she sees only the frozen reverberation of his existence, like pausing on a single frame of film. Maybe he moves too quickly to be perceived – the Wink of an Eye.

XIII.
At her retirement they give her a watch and a cake. A fruit cake. She notices for the first time that their faces are different, and yet the coworkers in her department have remained the same age: fresh-faced graduates, faces so plump that the strain does not show around their smiles. Retirement, they muse, must be…awesome.
They pat her on the shoulder or back and she feels like a statue, groped and greased over thousands of years by thousands of hands.
“Such a nice lady,” they sigh, and take pictures.

XV.
She sits in her armchair, unravelling. The needles lie on the table and yet she feels them in her fingers. On the finger a ring: it 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. Beside the needles rests the framed photograph, fading in the sunlight.
The television screen blinks its eye, searches for her face.
“An incoming transmission,” it coughs.
She nods, stiffly, then hears a shuffling static, an image warps into place.
“Hello...is this...Marla...?”
A living photograph.
“It is.”