Evan Watson, 11th, West Marshall High School, IA, (Fiction

Evan Watson, 11th, West Marshall High School, IA, (Fiction)

"Of Light and Dark"

There existed no sunrise. There was no morning or midday. There was no calm,

shadowy, brown-colored, and cool-winded evening. Not a fleck of dust was kicked up from the rock with the gravitational prodding and pulling of some distant satellite. There were no oceans. It was dry and weightless and lifeless. The dead thing sat there amidst the void, writhing, crawling ever closer to death. There was no realization, no comprehension of the crawl towards some ultimate rest, as the crawl had already been completed for it. A passerby would not look upon it and notice, for no passerby existed. The only ocean amidst the gray was the black. Nothing around, forever, endlessly and infinitely, but the blackness. The ocean was surrounding, constantly encroaching, and bitter. It was a cold place. The only place they had ever been.

The Betwixt was the bordering edge between life and death and between harmony and discord. The waves of the Betwixt crashed against nothing and the waters retreated into nothing. Space/time felt no conviction inside the Betwixt. There was no meaning nor reason. The startling thing was the noticeable fact that, as the waves crashed and fell back through loops of infinitely tumulting nothingness, the sands of Alreality (what the regular space outside the Betwixt was called) would wear away. To observe this is to wear away as well.

A single spire, what appeared to be a single lantern floating dead in the ocean, cast off from the shattered remains of some sunken excursion, stood tall from the rocks. It shattered the ocean and commanded it. The ocean endured, though; it could not speak or react, for it was an ocean. Oceans do not feel. Not for an incalculable distance was any light seen save for this spire.

The station had been manned for an amount of time by three men. They agreed to the task. They made their choice. The station was commissioned shortly after the first ships arrived in the new plane; for humanity, it was no world, but rather, a dimension. A place where the z-axis

is as accessible as the x and y, and matter failed to behave appropriately and there was no relative nature to time. To newcomers, then-passerbys, the station was a beacon in the darkness. A fog made of nothing was difficult to navigate, so this spire was the guide. Since the time of humanity’s great relocation had ended and the settlement of the Black Eye galaxy had finished, these stations were, without saying, rendered obsolete. No soul would desire to travel via spacecraft to these reaches of the universe.

Never again.

A loud sound called out, echoing and pounding, signaling an artificial morning time, or “wake.” The second shift had begun.

Tolm pulled wet, clingy sheets from his sweating person. He reared around on the hard bed, facing a gaping window. With every wake period came, especially for those new to the practice as they had been some amount of years before, a strangled dream. The blackness remained black and deep. There was no respite. Occasionally, something would appear in the darkness, and the observer would then be accompanied by that guttural feeling of falling mid-sleep. The blackness grew to be the kind of black that you cannot see and the deepness a kind of depth and volume you could not understand. The outside failed to exist. Despite being utter blackness on the other side, there was no reflection in the glass.

Tolm secured onto himself a pair of colonial-issued heavy pants and a shirt. Wrapped around him was a heavy coat crusted with saliva and a smelly air that never went away. He felt around his face and saw what he could with shifting eyes. He eyed the razor next to his hygiene kit and the unsorted gray mass on his chin and cheeks. He stepped away.

The bunks were empty at this point because the shifts had not been fully switched; protocol would be that Tolm dismiss the current shiftworker from duty and he takes their place. Tolm rode a central elevator to the top of the spire to do just that. Tolm observed the shaft as the

flat, round floor moved him upwards. The white walls were enamoring, how they streaked with bright light cast off from hanging lamps and lights behind a glass wall. There were never spots on the walls, only mangled reflections. They were in stark contrast to the outside, and were moderately comforting.

The elevator reached the top floor, the observation deck. Large, cylindrical glass doors moved around and opened, making a whirring sound. The sound remained unchanged, the walls remained pure. Something Tolm could appreciate. He jumped away from the metal guardrail he rested on and walked across a short walkway into the observation deck. The shiftworker at the time was J’arnum. He was much younger appearing, as his pale, bright-eyed kind aged significantly slower than humankind. J’arnum did not react to Tolm’s entering the observation deck. He maintained watch.

From this vantage, Tolm could see the surface of the body upon which the spire sat. A common question between the crewmates, in the early times, was the question of the body’s nature upon which they lived. A moon? There was no planet for it to orbit. A

planet? Perhaps, but one with its life taken from it. A life perhaps once fruitful, but now so enclosed and asphyxiated by deep darkness. There was no star for the body to orbit, and seemingly no gravity, as its clean surface invited no meteors or comets. The station was anchored to the surface, leaving wrinkles in its wake. From the command deck, the surface was almost shiny with how flat it was. Dim lights from the sides of the station covered some of the lands, and that which could be seen resembled a fogged mirror. Except the surface was immutable, and a mirror can be broken. After a straightedged point in the distance, a superficial horizon, the light wavered off and the rest of the body joined the void in a silent existence. Whether or not the sands were being washed away, no one could tell. It was too dark.

Tolm stepped forward, seeing only the top of J’arnum’s head. He wore a hooded shirt and the hood was like a veil.

Tolm rested an outstretched right hand against a heavy piece of machinery hanging on the wall of the observation deck. “See anything?”

“Yes,” said J’arnum. He maintained his watch.

Tolm moved from his position and paced to the other side of the room. He observed another heavy piece of equipment, this one with an orange screen displaying logistical information and processed data. He tapped at it and there was no response.

Tolm said while observing the piece of machinery, “Where’s Kal?” Tolm pulled a finger away from the screen, a sensation breathing and rubbing against his fingertip. He looked at his finger and rubbed the feeling away. He frowned and turned, facing out the wide, black window. He paced across the room again, stopping at one of four tall chairs, where one was occupied by J’arnum. The screens facing the chairs were orange like that which was on the machine to the left. They displayed a similar piece of data, too.

Tolm stood and swung his body around in place. He sucked some spittle from his lower lip and sighed. He scratched his forehead and adjusted his hat before his eyes crawled down to look at J’arnum.

“Where is Kal?” Tolm asked as he slid around and down into one of the chairs. He faced outward now, too, looking parallel to J’arnum.

“There is something outside,” said he.

Tolm looked down at the chair in which he sat, studying it. A dark-gray fabric ran down the sides and in a pattern on the arms and seat that mingled with black leather. Tolm’s

fingers rubbed against the gray fabric, his mind empty. Nothing struck him as he sat in a state of total

mental abandonment. Up and down the chair his fingers ran and he counted each ascent and descent. The fabric was clean and smooth, almost velvet-like. However, it was not velvet, and so it retained an opaque, artificial nature to it. Tolm had learned to enjoy the fabric’s smoothness and understand its significance. He could appreciate that in its minuteness, it served a purpose. Tolm’s fingers reached a point around the arm where they began to slip and fumble around with each repeating pass.

There was a point where Tolm felt he could not move any more, that something was deeply wrong. Tolm looked down to his fingers, now caught in the dark fabric. His face soured and his lips and brow curled like a hollow, dead tree reaching out in a dry wind. The hole in the fabric tore open and his fingers, though easily maneuverable, were unable to be removed. He grew frantic, yelling obscenities and spewing spit as his motions in his arms grew more violent and erratic. He felt a pull, like his fingers were being grasped and called deeper. He sunk farther and farther before finally, he relented. He shot back into his chair and let his arm dangle and fingers remain sewed into the arm.

It was as if his peripheral ceased to exist during a period of hyper fixation on this newfound tear. More was broken. Ahead of him, something tore into his flesh and woke him. A light, a deep, bright, peering light shot out from the sea. The sea had extended too far by now; no craft could breach the waves that endlessly crashed closer and closer, against the surface now. This was the most common truth, the fact that remained since this place’s birth. Nothing could breach the waves. But the light stood tall regardless.

As the hole grew deeper and wider, more of Tolm’s surroundings developed alterations. The glossy, white-paneled walls faded and found themselves the focal point of some mossy muddle that had taken root. The top part of the control console, where shortly it met the glass

viewing window, was dominated by a collage of empty dishes, containers, and a wall of dirt and dust that reached out in conquest, determined to reach out to each surface. Around Tolm’s foot was a pile of plastics, collected there from the several broken floor panels. Stains lined the octagonal sections where these panels once sat unbroken. Confliction spoke to Tolm, and he did not dare observe his surroundings as they fell to pieces, but the chill now at his cervical demanded he not look into the blackness, at the light. Regardless, one final anachronism caught his attention. Tolm’s weary eyes drifted over to J’arnum. Below J’arnum’s worn chair sat the crumbled remains of a metal

appliance, something pulled likely from one of the maintenance closets. A stench lined the appliance’s exterior, and its once bright sheam was muddied by a crimson substance. The pooled, viscous material arched outwards and pooled in all directions. It was dark enough that Tolm could make out a reflection. He removed his hand from the tear in the chair and brought it to his face, as he now saw himself.

Tolm paused and shortly returned to face out the window. The light was brightening.

J’arnum was still. Looking forward, he, too, brought a trembling hand to his face and left a trail of the same, thick liquid. “Kal... he’s-”

“Free.” Tolm spoke ahead of him, through the glass. Still, ever into the deep, Tolm said, “We can be free, too.”

The string of numbers on the orange screens looped.