Through a Dark Blue Lens: Chapter One
This story has existed in some form or another for 9 or so years. It was “completed” in 3.5k words at one point. But someone told me that the real story was still in there somewhere, between the lines. So here is the second version of Through a Dark Blue Lens, presented one rough chapter at a time.
Through a Dark Blue Lens
Chapter One: Behind the GlassBy: Peter R. Heaton“My soul?” David asked, knowing the others would be listening. Except Anya. Her eyes were skyward; she was too busy staring at the fading ion glow sparkling Old Earth’s atmosphere: a thousand hues of blue fighting against neon lights for her attention. Rats, she thought, picturing the thousands of sleeping bodies on board the ship, rats racing away from the plague.
The reds, pinks, greens and oranges (not the blue, the blue was for her) kaleidscoped upon David’s face--a motley rainbow painting his skeletal grin: “My soul is so old--so cold--you couldn’t even dip your toes in it.”
Anya let the words float past her; she was here, but she wasn’t here. Besides, David always said all kinds of shit like that; thought it made him mint--real cool-like. Guillermo and Kelli ate it up, of course. Little people, them two, but little people can still be friends. She laughed and the others looked at her. Stupid Anya, she thought, sitting here laughing to myself.
“What’s funny?” Guy asked her, his tight synth shirt showing off a toned upper body.
“You, baby bird,” she replied.
“Baby bird?” His hand stopped midway between table and mouth and made a flourish with the vaporizer pinched between gloved fingers, insisting she explain. She didn’t. Guy shrugged. David stared, straight-lipped; the dark circles around his eyes underlined their gaze, invoking whispers of primal things in her mind. Lies, she knew, lies for the little people. That was how he unsettled the others, but it didn’t work on her. Once you know someone’s secret, it’s so much easier to kill them.
“I still don’t get it,” Guy pressed a button; a mist of red burst from his mouth and nostrils.
The wind sang a harsh song. Her nose began to tingle. Always cold. Always the same. She thought entropy existed--hoped it did--but she saw a future here that was going in one direction, like icicles blossoming across the lip of a roof, always growing down.
With the one hand wearing a real wool glove she took a sip of her drink. Clear the screen, she thought. “You don’t need to. Just being stupid,” she finally replied, not caring if they saw it for what it was: a routine answer to a routine situation. Input driving output, she thought, just like a robot.
Kelli shuffled her feet. “Well, don’t be mean to Guy, Anya,” she said, getting it without really getting it. “That’s my job.” To show she was joking she pecked him on the check, one hand clutching his bicep.
Some oldie acting all wysiwyg with them (“Pad and pen and not a screen between!”) took their food and drink order; desperately trying to seem like he wasn’t only friending them up for a nice tip, even though he most definitely was. Anya was quiet as Guy and Kelli threw-up the events that had happened to them since they’d all last been together: a gross pile of words over words over words.
Just being stupid, Anya thought. How many times had she said that to them? And how come, not once they hadn’t guessed that she wasn’t. Maybe that’s one of their secrets, she thought, the killing kind.
Not the physical kind of death, but the kind of killing you do in your mind, when someone becomes a nothing to you. David always called them little people, and that was their word. Their joke. But she had one on him: David was a nothing. Nothings were worse than little people because nothings think they’re better than little people. We’re all just the same.
David was telling them about his last girl. “Said she’d just gotten back from Jdheddi, in the Crab, they’ve got a wicked set of falls not far from the hub at Carson.” He didn’t do a good enough job hiding the fact that the story was for her. Reminding her that, Hey, you could have this, like that was what was going to work on her. “And there’s this stuff, she said, that’s better than pheramol--yazz, yazzie, yazzup something. Oh, and she had tits like coconuts.”
That was the part Guy was waiting for. He grinned. Kelli pretended not to see, and in turn, stole a glance at David. Anya hadn’t gotten that, why Kelli wanted David even though she had Guy. Because the curse of humanity isn’t mortality, it’s never being happy with what you’ve got.
“She went the other way?”
“Come on, Guy, you know people always come back. There’s no place like Old Earth.” David rolled on. Another night of wasted words and wasted breath. They say the universe is chaos but there was so little chaos here. The conversation turned, and she felt David staring at her, trying to read her mind like he thought he could--it was on a pheromol high, when she almost gave herself to him, that he’d told her his secret, something that he was so serious about that it had turned her off, shut her down.
She didn’t like the idea that he could poke around in her mind. Even if he really couldn’t she didn’t want him trying.
The food came. The conversation quieted. They picked at their food, drank their drinks. Some shouting was going on in the background, nothing-to-see-here. David and Guy started talking about something she didn’t care about, arguing the way they did to show who knew more about this or that. Kelli was playing with her food and singing:
Don’t be blue,
I’ve got the fix for you,
Digging moats across her plate with her fork, she occasionally stopped to poke a piece and pop it in her mouth. Sing:
I’ll make you happy, maybe,
Pure high, like dark blue,
pie-eyed, no curfew,
And pop. Sing:
I’ll make you happy, maybe,
‘cuz I’ve got the fix for you,
So don’t be blue, baby-baby,
Her fork dragging absently across the plate-- a rusty pipe through fiery embers. Anya knew the song but couldn’t place it:
I’ve got the fix for you,
‘cuz it’s one for me,
and it’s one for you.
Someone had won Earth’s smartest man. Guy put the question out there, ending the singing: “Well, where do we go tonight?”
“Saymus said there’s some knobbly stuff down at the Abbey.”
“We did that two nights ago,” Kelli whined. She put her hand on Guy’s: “Can’t we go see the tunnel rats? They say they’ve been down there so long, that they don’t have eyes.”
“They’ve got eyes, Kelli,” Anya replied.
“How’d you know?”
“How else, she’s been down there,” David said, like he already knew, too.
“Alone?” Guy asked.
Anya shrugged. “Sometimes I get bored.” Bored, she thought, bored from the lack of chaos. David was looking at her again. Reading her mind or trying to memorize her cleavage? She didn’t care. He’d never get her secret: that everyone would be--was-- alone; only one person can inhabit one body; only one person can experience every moment, every regret, every emotion; only one person can have those things, and they cannot all be shared no matter how close two people are, no matter how much they surround themselves with the same habits and hobbies, passions and love.
“It’s creepy enough when we’re all together, Anya.”
“Let the girl do what makes her happy.”
Happiness, she thought, almost laughing but then, remembering that had exposed her earlier, she choked this one back: happiness never endures. “That’s all I want to do, what makes me happy,” she said, thinking it was a lie.
“Tunnel rats it is,” David said finally. “We’ve got a guide, don’t we Anya.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“But she said they have eyes. I don’t want to go if they have eyes.”
“Kel, she couldn’t have seen them all.”
“Oh, yeah. Of course.”
“Meet at the old spot in 2 clicks?”
They said their goodbyes--Anya was good at faking that part: a nice firm hug, a soft kiss on the cheek, a sincere see-you-later. That part was easy. Besides, she didn’t intend to see any of them ever again. The next time the ion lights left their glow behind, she’d be piled in with all the other rats.