Through a Dark Blue Lens: Chapter Two
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 Two: Little Lies for the Little PeopleBy: Peter R. HeatonIt was Anya’s last shower before she boarded the Enimus. She had to choose between sputtering and hot or a strong rinse of lukewarm water. The speaker was hissing out some angry tune, all noise and talking. Should I have told them?, she wondered. If she’d asked herself at dinner, knowing she wouldn’t end up telling them, if she’d thought she’d regret not telling them, she would have laughed for even considering the question. At the time, it made her happy not to tell them. But now, here, the choice removed, the event set in time’s cement, and with only her dark blue lens through which she viewed reality, she did regret it.
She tried putting herself back at dinner. Picturing herself interrupting them as they threw their words around like monkeys with shit:
“I’m going.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“Please, Anya. Please stay.”
“Okay.”
She laughed at the lame encounter conjured. She sought the warm hug of the shower’s water but it lay tantalizing beyond her grasp.
Even in her mind she couldn’t tell them the truth. That was why she hadn’t been able to tell them. She couldn’t even pretend to. Because she knew that loneliness was the one truth – not happiness – that was always there, and would always be there.
The music had shifted subtly, gentle piano notes mingling with chimes. All peaceful-like. Her thoughts followed the notes and--
Couldn’t just give me pills, Anya thought. Nope, because her government appointed psych had turned out to be an oldie. Synth-soothe, she’d told her, it’s much more natural than the pills and a fraction of the cost.
A half a click later, her ticket scanned and approved, she was slipping into a stasis chamber on board the hulking deep space shuttle, Enimus.
Chaos, here I come.
And it was chaos she found. The chaos of the mindfield.
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It was the first space flight she’d ever taken and it tested the bounds of her beliefs of loneliness and happiness and the truths of existence:
A whirling colorless cloud. A blanket of blinking lights. Space but not space. Freedom with limitations. Spots of cold and spots of warmth. She was awake, she was moving, but…she was not…
Physical.
How long?
An answer from the void: the Enimus is one minute and seven seconds into flight.
What are you?
I am the Enimus.
Where am I?
The mindfield. The place where the normal cycles of the human mind are maintained.
Maintained?
As the stasis chambers tend to the physical during our journey through deep space, the mindfield tends to the mental. Do you want to know more about the stasis chambers equipped on the Enimus?
No.
I am always present in the mindfield. If you need something you need only say it to me.
I can’t speak.
It is easier for some humans to process it that way. Think is the accurate term. There are certain flaws in my interface program. Would you like to know more about the version of the mind-link AI equipped on the Enimus?
No.
Thank you. I hope I have answered your questions. Please respect the privacy of other passengers.
She pulled away, the understanding slowly coming to her. Paths were the places between other minds, with resistance coming when two minds met, the charge of their mental energies keeping them from colliding. But as the clicks ticked away she learned that the mindfield was something you could control. With enough time she could map the paths. She could recognize other passengers. Some shut their mind-field doors to her probing. But some…
Overlapping energies could match frequencies, could join and that was the moment her lens almost cracked.
Anya was traveling on a mechanical wave, a summation of escaped energy ejected from some mind mass, when she first saw caught sight of the dance. Others traveling in a manner like her, born on chaos, were catching each other and spinning wildly around or pushing each other away. But there was a controlled beauty to it. Chaos chained like a fire imprisoned by a ring of stones.
She thought they were kindred spirits and after she found them, she didn’t feel so alone in the weirdness of the mindfield--it became to her a haze of warmth and collection and hidden thoughts. Minds crashing into each other at random, an encounter so different than any other experience. In that moment thoughts and feelings, the state and realization of their mind was shared.
It was freedom but not freedom in the mindfield. They danced and thought they danced because they were in control, but no single being could overcome the insistence of the chaos. The partners were always different because the mindfield always insisted on separation. Frequencies could only harmonize for so long.
Time had no meaning, so she did not know how long it was until she crashed into one mind, a mind that found her because it had been looking for her, and there was a sense of comfort there. A sense of comfort in the recognition.
And then a sense of revulsion.
David, she thought, pulsing with surprise. But how?
I told you, Anya, I can read your mind.
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Everything about him was a lie as she had thought--as she had known. An actor acting. It scared her. It made them more akin than she had ever dared believe. In the mindfield, they both were practiced enough that together they could move as one. Anya indulged David at first. They made a place only for themselves in the whirling mindfield and place the enervated against the entropy.
Do you want me? he asked.
You have to ask?
You want me.
You want me.
Yes, I do. We should have done this so long ago, Anya. Then you would have never had to leave.
It was that exchange which kept the glass from breaking. Even here, even intimately connected, he’d still had to ask. Something still separated them, even though the science said otherwise. But how could that be? So she tried anyway just to see, just to know if it had always been her all along:
She gave herself – all of herself – to him. It was a violent coming together: the actions were not physical but the thoughts were still there and so too was the ecstasy; David was still angry with her for leaving; with her gone, he thought the rest of their group would unravel, and with that, his kingdom would crumble and loneliness would pervade the vacuum left behind.
She knew how he liked it – she had walked in on him once, coupling with a girl after hours of partying. It was those nights back on Old Earth that she remembered most fondly; nights that seemed like they would never end but were nothing but memories the next morning, a morning that always came too soon, the memories no more real than the dreams that had come between night and day.
When we’re done seeing whatever you want to see, will you come back with me?
When the words had escaped his mind lips he knew it had been a mistake.
Tendrils of energy touched and then slipped apart. Their sanctum began to crumble around them--without a concerted effort to stay together it was useless; the erosion of the mindfield was greater than the strongest individual will.
There was no closure for him; and before their separation she understood she had only made it worse. Mental appendages reached out for her, trying to pull her back.
The mindfield swirled around them tornado-like and she had no words to say because he knew. He could read her mind.
As she was torn from his grasp, an ejected wave of sadness washed over her: Please don’t go.
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Do I report crimes to you?
The Enimus is currently running LINKI version 1.001.Bx.3. I have immediate access to the ship’s safety and emergency systems. What is it you would like to report?
Mindrape.
The Enimus takes mindrape very serious. You will be pulled out of stasis to make a report to the ship’s security officer. Please do not be alarmed but the process will be disorienting. You will be removed from the mindfield in
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This is your last chance to ABORT REQUEST. You will still be required to submit a report to ship’s security before exiting for your final destination. Please say “ABORT REQUEST” now if you wish to ABORT REQUEST.
Anya lurched upright, coughing violently. A strange silvery liquid expelled with each heave. Where am I? she thought, gasping for air.
Oxygen came to her in a sudden rush. Nothing had ever tasted better--until she really tasted it--smoky and wrong and she would never again remember the mindfield without that scent.
A stranger stood over her, offering her a hand. She looked at him curiously.
“The clothes you tagged are ready for you. Be careful climbing out, the chamber’s fluid massages blood through the muscles as you sleep but you will still feel weak.”
She looked down at the black, soaked fabric clinging to her body. It was starting to come back to her: she was onboard the Enimus. But why was she out of the mindfield? She took the man’s hand and with some struggle clambered out of the chamber.
What did you do, Anya? she could feel something in the back of her mind, something bad.
“If you go through that door you can change. Eat if you can stomach it, there’s some food in there. When you’re done, let me know and we can proceed with the interview.”
“Interview?”
“Yes, LINKI reported a mindrape. I know you are disoriented, but the faster the better. Time isn’t the same out here as it is in there and we want to get the pervert out of there before we get another report.”
Alone, she threw the wet robe against the wall in frustration, collapsing against the wall. Why did I do that? Why did I go and do that?
But she knew. She did it because she had to. We’re all alone and there’s nothing that will change that. What did this even matter? What did this really even change? Sure, it would ruin the rest of his life, but if there was no point, then what did it matter?
It was sometime after the Enimus had escaped the clutches of the Milky Way when the report came through to her.
Private message from Enimus/LINKI: Assailant will be deported in a criminal pod to Gliese for sentencing.
On an impulse she changed her final destination. A stupid impulse but that moment had come and gone. Funny, I think this is how regrets are born.
Auto-Query: Destination Change. Would you like to hear more about your new destination, Gliese?
No.
Okay. Respond yes to disable Auto-Query feature.
Yes.
Thank you. You will arrive at your destination in five thousand, seven hundred and forty-two clicks.
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