Prologue - Five Ghosts
2019-05-14 20:51![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormglassThe least alien things were the hardest.
Familiarity made them splinters of glass, chewing down her synapses with every rough-edged facet and demanding: why? Why were there familiar things here at all, amongst these worlds so very far beyond her own? If her hypothesis were correct, she had done more than transit across distance alone, however great, but phased into another universe entirely. Of course, that was part of the rub - it remained a hypothesis, for she had no way to truly try and substantiate it. There were merely the hints and jabs, sprinkled throughout the days, and leaving her reminded uncomfortably of a visit to the Farside archaeological dig on Luna Command what felt much longer ago than it was.
If space and time could be sliced once, it could again. And again and again. The repercussions were immense.
So she watched and waited and gathered information. Considered the possibilities of exotic technologies in the face of the centerward race. Wavered in an uneasy armistice with her own mind, day in and day out.
And as hard as the familiar things were, in that familiarity they also had the greatest allure. It was why she sat in a common area in the Amber Blossom Songbird (these people named their ships and stations like Ulanti…), playing pattern-stones with Jael Zeruuv.
Formerly Kel Zeruuv.
Assembled in bits and pieces, what she knew of him. He and others of his once-squad outprocessed for some infraction, their minds scrubbed by way of something that sounded like the most grotesque Psych Briefing process. What was the infraction? No one aboard who knew had said, but Xiulan had learned enough about this society to understand it may have been something she would have seen as innocuous. Perhaps something Zeruuv was never truly given to understand. Heresy, she had come to understand very early on, was an ever-haunting ghost here.
And yet…despite the fact that a process gone awry had damaged him in some irreparable way, despite the anxious tics and twitching hands, she had yet to hear him - or Ajri or Dez - speak of it with clear anger. They simply didn’t speak of it. That had driven her to learn too: outprocessing was a multi-headed euphemism, the snarls of which went beyond stolen skills. It could mean death outright.
Perhaps he was simply relieved to be alive.
Zeruuv was presently bent over the game board, contemplating his next placement. It was not about winning or losing for him, she had decided. Which explained why he was the only one of the crew still willing to play pattern-stones with her regularly in spite of never winning. It was a focus, the black and white dotting the board, working stillness through his hands and jumping gaze. So they played and each in their own ways, remembered how things once were.
A click, as a stone was placed. Xiulan took her turn in slightly longer order than she strictly needed, but it was part of the unspoken deal, to weave a bit of ease into it all. Zeruuv took up his next token, just before the slate by Xiulan’s leg beeped a notification. She picked it up, scanned the message. From Ajri, owner of the moth and one of Zeruuv’s two spouses.
“The Rahal have placed the station under interdict,” she read aloud.
TING!
A stone shooting from Zeruuv’s hand as fingertips pressed tight together, ricocheting off the wall. He stared at her across the table, any sense of calm quickly fled. Xiulan added, “Ajri says she and Dez are on the bridge.” And— (Remembering a game of Go in a hospital room, remembering ghosts beyond the rift) —more gently: “We can finish this later.”
His nod was a spasm’s fraternal twin, before he headed forward without another word. Xiulan heard the boot-taps of other crew members converging on the common room, the murmur of discussion. She glanced at the slate again and then stood.
This time? This time information could be had and she intended to do just that.
Familiarity made them splinters of glass, chewing down her synapses with every rough-edged facet and demanding: why? Why were there familiar things here at all, amongst these worlds so very far beyond her own? If her hypothesis were correct, she had done more than transit across distance alone, however great, but phased into another universe entirely. Of course, that was part of the rub - it remained a hypothesis, for she had no way to truly try and substantiate it. There were merely the hints and jabs, sprinkled throughout the days, and leaving her reminded uncomfortably of a visit to the Farside archaeological dig on Luna Command what felt much longer ago than it was.
If space and time could be sliced once, it could again. And again and again. The repercussions were immense.
So she watched and waited and gathered information. Considered the possibilities of exotic technologies in the face of the centerward race. Wavered in an uneasy armistice with her own mind, day in and day out.
And as hard as the familiar things were, in that familiarity they also had the greatest allure. It was why she sat in a common area in the Amber Blossom Songbird (these people named their ships and stations like Ulanti…), playing pattern-stones with Jael Zeruuv.
Formerly Kel Zeruuv.
Assembled in bits and pieces, what she knew of him. He and others of his once-squad outprocessed for some infraction, their minds scrubbed by way of something that sounded like the most grotesque Psych Briefing process. What was the infraction? No one aboard who knew had said, but Xiulan had learned enough about this society to understand it may have been something she would have seen as innocuous. Perhaps something Zeruuv was never truly given to understand. Heresy, she had come to understand very early on, was an ever-haunting ghost here.
And yet…despite the fact that a process gone awry had damaged him in some irreparable way, despite the anxious tics and twitching hands, she had yet to hear him - or Ajri or Dez - speak of it with clear anger. They simply didn’t speak of it. That had driven her to learn too: outprocessing was a multi-headed euphemism, the snarls of which went beyond stolen skills. It could mean death outright.
Perhaps he was simply relieved to be alive.
Zeruuv was presently bent over the game board, contemplating his next placement. It was not about winning or losing for him, she had decided. Which explained why he was the only one of the crew still willing to play pattern-stones with her regularly in spite of never winning. It was a focus, the black and white dotting the board, working stillness through his hands and jumping gaze. So they played and each in their own ways, remembered how things once were.
A click, as a stone was placed. Xiulan took her turn in slightly longer order than she strictly needed, but it was part of the unspoken deal, to weave a bit of ease into it all. Zeruuv took up his next token, just before the slate by Xiulan’s leg beeped a notification. She picked it up, scanned the message. From Ajri, owner of the moth and one of Zeruuv’s two spouses.
“The Rahal have placed the station under interdict,” she read aloud.
TING!
A stone shooting from Zeruuv’s hand as fingertips pressed tight together, ricocheting off the wall. He stared at her across the table, any sense of calm quickly fled. Xiulan added, “Ajri says she and Dez are on the bridge.” And— (Remembering a game of Go in a hospital room, remembering ghosts beyond the rift) —more gently: “We can finish this later.”
His nod was a spasm’s fraternal twin, before he headed forward without another word. Xiulan heard the boot-taps of other crew members converging on the common room, the murmur of discussion. She glanced at the slate again and then stood.
This time? This time information could be had and she intended to do just that.
