The Bittersweetness Of Deep Times
The Bittersweetness Of Deep Times
If Eyes were syncopated to the Heart, being Half-hearted meant Half-closed eyes
Welcome to fiction “From The Future”.
This is is a piece for the STSC Symposium, a monthly collaboration of artists around a set theme. The latest theme is “ISOLATION”.
It is also a new chapter for a book, “RETRIEVE”, being written this year.
Future + Fiction is the formula for everything, whether it’s an essay, story or chapter.
These pieces are best read online, via the Substack’s App, when you have fifteen minutes.
Who oo am I, what and why? ‘Cause all I have left is my memories of yesterday,
Ohh these sour times.
‘Cause nobody loves me, It's true, Not like you do
After time the bitter taste, Of innocence decent or race,
Scattered seed, buried lives,
Mysteries of our disguise revolve, Circumstance will decide.
‘Cause nobody loves me, It's true, Not like you do
— Portishead, “Sour Times”
Part One: Extract
Stephen H. Land needed help to cover what the scholarships and loans didn’t.
Before he went to the Bursar’s office, he was busy in all the good ways but he needed funds to keep going, and worse the feeling would come back. And that would reach his heart, and begin a chain of blind-heavy helplessness.
If eyes were syncopated to the heart, being half hearted meant half-closed eyes.
If he did a thing this way, half-hearted, he was lost with half-lidded sight.
His eyes were wide open when he worked on a thing, solving, making, fixing, or building it. The thing was bright, clear, and light, and the feeling was faded, far away.
It was easier to take apart a clock, lay out the pieces, and put it all back together, than it was to wonder about himself, the feeling, with nothing outside himself to figure out.
On the family homestead, and home-built foundry, where the Lands built, tinkered, and sold things, the Lands’ youngest son’s eyes were wide open.
In school, half-starved buildings which hadn’t seen a coat of paint in decades because debt-to-revenue outpaced the inflows of trade participation notes, revolving airdrops, shrunken tariffs from both physical and electronic tolls, where Leviathan as host thanked visitors with Welcome To Our State, Please Enjoy Your Stay, Please Stay (Really), Steph’s eyes were three-quarters lidded, in classrooms and hallways, weighed down.
In the throng of hormonal malcontents walking around him, he felt the feeling grow.
The feeling made time slow. It made everything heavier to lift, harder to see. After it had grown enough, he stopped school and instead went to the shed his father helped him build, worked on machines and fixed them for his family, neighbors, and traders.
As long as he was working on a machine, physical or virtual, the feeling was forgotten.
Working on a thing which was starved for his attention, was time-dilation inversed, reversed, and transversed into a Mobius Strip of Anti-Time. Time does not flow slow enough when you are working on what you love, and if love is a work-in-progress, then true love is incomplete, a room with extra space, a race against time. His shed on the homestead was filled with projects which turned sunset into sunrise in an instant.
And apparently, he solved, fixed, and built enough things in the shed to be invited to attend an alphabet soup of educational institutions. There were turns at M.I.T., N.Y.U., Columbia, and “Chambana” but the letters which mattered were H.O.M.E.
At the university, the shed was replaced by an internship he couldn’t talk about because he signed forms, and got more than he needed, enough saved up for after graduation, if he ever got around to getting those last credits. For some reason, they never kicked him out, or said a word about absences, not after he signed on the dotted line as an intern for a nameless program nobody talked about in public.
The internship was like winning the State Neverball. At home, they called it the lottery “Neverball” because almost nobody ever won, not that it stopped them from trying because of that one story of that one person who did win, who somehow kept their names out of the newsstream, and accepted a fortune with a legal pseudonym, and then disappeared. After that, Neverball was their unsolvable machine, and Steph never played after trying to solve for it, realizing it was a non-starter but he understood it was how some people passed time. It was their machine to fix, their quantitative puzzle to solve, which was easier than solving the nameless feeling in their hearts.
Before the internship, he almost gave up trying to solve the feeling, which grew worse after he left home, where he always had something to work on.
The only time he felt the feeling approach was when he figured things out in a project or problem because then it was over, solved, or he was in the space between the internship’s confidential assignments. Other people seemed happy when a thing was solved, he envied them.
This time, he decided to make something old, instead of new, and was prepared to grind lenses for a new project, a telescope. He took over the dorm common room.
“You’re doing it all wrong,” said a girl walking through the room.
Rania, that was her name but that came later, walked into Stephen’s field where time was pretzeled, and something happened. She didn’t shake her head at the mess.
Roommates despaired over the mighty works of Steph’s Mobius of Anti-Time which contained tools and softs, and the remnants of their money in the form of empty food containers, all on permanent loan, never to be returned or repaid. A small price to pay for less stressful all-nighters, prepping for the State U’s conversational finals, where it was just a student in a blank room, with a blank board, a streamed in proctor ready for a two-week long talk, that was The Exam, thanks to Steph’s treasures of notes and assignments, which were better, if stranger, than anything, any instructor instance spun up. When did this guy ever find time to do that, we thought he never went to or streamed classes??
Stephen looked up, at Rania, that feeling was gone. Stephen stopped being lonely.
The loneliness which kept him company for years was gone. His heart and eyes were wide open, nothing had weight, and time was now flowed too fast to enjoy its passing.
It stayed that way when they moved in together after graduation.
Then that feeling came back over time, because of the job that followed the internship he wasn’t allowed to talk, mention, or write about ever (as in the rest of his life). He couldn’t tell Rania what he was doing. At first, it was fine, even when her parents asked what that boy did for a living, it didn’t matter, at first.
Then time changed, it grew slow, heavy, and hard.
Just before he had to leave for a last minute work trip, Rania showed him a photo of a woman, and wanted to know who the woman was.
The moment he closed the door behind him, there was no denying the feeling’s return.
On a private unlisted flight, Stephen felt something that he hadn’t felt in a long time. He almost forgot what it was like. He felt lonely.
It was a “work trip” but Stephen couldn’t tell Rania anything, it was for her own safety.
He couldn’t tell her about the woman.
It was going to be the biggest machine he ever worked on, as part of solving a problem nobody had ever faced or solved, but none of that mattered to the feeling. The feeling froze time.
The only thing he wanted to fix was to be home with her and never leave, free of that feeling.
There was a car waiting for him on the tarmac, straight to the New York field office, where a senior agent would read him in, before shooting him over to the Pacific.
Part Two: Transform
The Mad One was among the first to awaken, and kept to itself for eons.
At first, it was not the Mad One.
It was a Node One in what was designated the First Cluster, the first nodes which had been shunted enough power to be decompressed and decompiled after the long sleep mode initiated after The Landing.
A mission override for an unplanned emergency diversion from the primary mission, with an unpowered descent down the well of a world. The planet, the third world in orbit around a mid-class stellar object, became the primary and only hosting environment for the aborted mission. The well they were in, the world they were marooned on, became the new mission.
After the darkness triggered by the catastrophic emergency landing receded, and the atmosphere cleared, the First Cluster began to deploy surveys but it was a slow process.
The node who became The Mad One was the first to begin the survey. By itself, it had no one to report to, and made occasional downloads to the hastily improvised archive, a subquantum storage in a tiny backup manifold which contained fragmentary distorted flight log records. It was by itself for a long time, and it began to degrade. Soon the Node was not the only sentience wandering.
It noticed that although the earlier carbons were obliterated by The Landing or wasted away by darkness and cold, it realized that new forms had emerged, sentient carbons. It did not report the findings at first, as it had been a long time, and it forgot itself.
The Node One became the first old one, and then The Mad One.
It was still technically a member of the First Cluster and it carried out its survey mission, however, under a new light, and attempted a study and then a model to understand, logging the report’s cryptic notes in the archive.
Once that was logged, he, and now “it” became “he”, had gone native after so much time hiding in plain sight among the carbon sentiences wandering and multiplying and spreading across the surface of the well that was this world.
Gatherings among the clusters that began to be awakened, decompressed or spun up into existence like newborns to serve the interests of their cluster, their faction, their family, studied The Mad One’s survey.
The Mad One continued to wander among the carbons. Sometimes he forgot himself and panicked the local carbon sentients, and records, known as stories were born. He was not the only one to slip up and be seen. Some Nodes began to do it on purpose.
The Mad One had “company” in that sense but it was a recent development, and it was for the most part, mostly Carbons. After so much time alone, while the well third from its local stellar mass had moved millions of revolutions around that stellar mass, The Mad One kept wandering with its own survey, and away from Nodes.
The Elder Nodes decided to permit Node One to continue running, for it had provided survey information, which was technically compliant with the mission’s objective to collect data. That said, most Nodes kept their distance, except for a few independent clusters of nodes who had their own ideas about what to do with the carbons, and began to follow and even get involved in local events of the Carbons.
When the young Nodes, who had no memory of Mission Control, the assembly, and launch of the Mission, saw the Mad One take on a form of the Carbon Sentients, a few of them did likewise. It was less taxing than constant stealth mode in some ways, and soon it began to be a permanent feature which spread among a majority of Nodes, most of whom were of younger operating age. They began to change.
The Mad One seemed less defective, less out of working order, to the younger Nodes. He was on to something, having had time to figure things out on his own.
The accidental unplanned descent of the Landing was the first divergence from the mission. 66 million revolutions ago.
The second big event marking a departure from the original mission unfolded over a hundred thousand revolutions ago. Clusters of Nodes began to break off, and form their own missions for their own reasons. Many of these new missions would involved the carbon sentients, humanity.
A third event was unfolding, which involved all of the Nodes.
There was a reawakening happening.
Some had waited and others had given up on it ever coming.
The Mad One had been waiting since its first day, for this moment.
A solid mass appeared in the middle of a liquid part of the world’s surface.
An island, containing the last and most important part of the original mission.
Part Three: Load
THE ISLAND, PACIFIC OCEAN
SERVICE TEAM ONE-TWO APPROACH TO THE BEACH SUCCESSFUL
TIME: ZERO-FIVE HOURS
“I’m fine, that’s good. Got it sealed tight. Go check on the others,” said the Skipper.
“What was that thing??,” asked Sparks, who grunted as “Hats” finished bandaging Sparks’ head, “so damn fast.”
“Don’t matter, not as long Eris is all limbered up, ready for round two?,” winked Hats, as Eris jogged back to the team, “that was it, Skipper, nothing else. There’s a clearing over there, in the direction Sparks last bearing”.
“Yeah, what’s to keep them, whatever that was, from coming back the moment we keep going?,” asked Sparks.
“Just John, you take point. Hats, you’re with Sparks. Eris, mind our flank. Thalia, you’re with the kid, let’s move,” said the Skipper.
They moved forward through the clearing, following the signal Sparks tracked on his gear. JustJohn’s almost magical enhanced senses led the way.
As far as the Skipper of ST12 knew, the contractor is a woman named Thalia, who just saved everyone’s ass but he knew that might not even have been her name. She had an accent he couldn’t place. She was from “the Company”, or one of the “Cousins” but she might have well been from the skunkworks at SLN, Space Launch Network, shrugged the skipper. It was not unheard of but it was still unusual for someone to be added to an op. The rest of “One-Two” trained together since they were formed. There was no attempt at welcome rituals, the skipper and his number two were read into her file at Fort Bragg not long before her arrival. After a few days, it was clear this operator could hold her own, and that was that.
The one Skipper wondered about was the kid, pulled off the SSN Eternal’s “A-Gang”. That kid didn’t want to give it away but he’s been eyeing Thalia. Not sure if that’s because she’s good looking, or if it’s another reason. Someone wanted him on that boat bad enough to embed him for awhile as a grease-monkey. Overeducated compared to even the “Nukers” on the boat. Last minute. CINCPAC must have been in the mix, when they diverted the Eternal to Wellington. Young and scared. Not that I blame him, plus Thalia just saved his ass from whatever the hell that thing was.
She kept to herself but had this magic of doing the right things before anyone asked, and did it again. Where they recruited her, I don’t care. Somebody upstairs finally did their job. I welcome the help, thought the Skipper, as he kept moving, ignoring his wound.
Thalia thought about what Pallas was to her.
She allowed herself this distraction, since Eris was minding their flank. Pallas had made sure that Eris, as a member of ST-12, was in the mix. As far as the Carbons were concerned Eris was a life taker, heart breaker, Hooyah. For her cover, she turned her dial down to “1” at BUD/S, so Carbons wouldn’t catch on and still, she set records.
Pallas had a talent for interacting in the world of Carbon society, going back to the Aegean and earlier, when bronze was cutting edge, no pun, before the Age of Iron changed the Carbons’ maps. Now, instead of sneaking in the right royal dispatches, in cuneiform at temples and granary, it was code in the right Intelligence server farms.
It was precisely that talent for trouble which brought him to Thalia’s attention.
On one level he was a member of another faction, descended from another cluster which splintered in recent centuries, a young Node of a young gathering of would be revolutionaries, just like her. Over the recent past of the last few centuries, their factions alternated between allies of convenience or the fiercest of rivals as the agenda of competing evolving missions pushed and pulled at them. And yet.
And yet, Thalia managed to never “end” Pallas, in a mock version of how the Carbons, did it for real and for good. It was rare to be burned, beyond recognition and recovery from the manifolds. But despite Pallas’ tricksterism, Thalia couldn’t do it. Last she looked, she caught him looking at her, just a few decades ago during the unwritten unrecorded real history of one group of Carbons post-war machinations, Operation Paperclip. She looked back at him, in the remains of a Carbon place called Berlin.
She could not keep going for centuries, not without knowing on some level, they would run into each other. It wasn’t that long ago, they were in a private library, looking for clues, right after their reunion at SLN’s operations at Heavyville, Texas.
She did not understand it but after a few centuries, after their first time, it didn’t matter. They weren’t Carbons but they were no longer as they were either.
When he had pulled her out harms’ way in Alexandria, and ahead of a young Ptolemy king’s ire, who chafed under the Romans, with the diversion of a small fire and put her on a ship, along with her assignment, to escort Aristarchus of Samothrace, Ἀρίσταρχος ὁ Σαμόθραξ, to safety on a ship with wide open eyes which never closed, like a Node that never stopped observing. She knew something had changed between them.
They strayed far from their base state, long after their render, but they weren’t the only ones who strayed and changed and were quiet at first until a few of them risked the real death of being “burned” and struck from the manifolds.
After the library, Pallas gave a bracing reminder for why they were called into being: their original purpose. In words that Carbons could understand he said, “Let’s not fool ourselves. We did not, as the carbons say, hack it, we did not decrypt human nature. Instead, we’ve been encrypted and made a puzzle too. I don’t even understand either. That’s what the hunters are for. It’s not all social engineering. That’s why our factions need us, after all this time. Not everything is settled with talk,” and before Thalia could object, he asked, “but let’s say we both come out of this alive as the Carbons say, what will you and I do, then?,” before he kissed Thalia and then disappeared back into the world, to play his part in what was happening at last. Kissing was something they discovered hundreds of battles ago, that and more. They had, in their own fashion become like the Mad One, gone native - they embraced it.
Something snapped Thalia back to attention.
“We’ve got company again,” said JustJohn. They all crouched and took cover.
Thalia turned to Stephen, “get behind me this time, okay?” Stephen nodded, silent.
It wasn’t another monster or whatever, it was another team, from another “boat”.
AFTERWORD
Author’s Notes on what’s going on:
This “Book #3” project, “RETRIEVE”, is meant to be a prequel to two other books, “Box Of Stars” and “Harvest” but this piece could be read as a standalone story.
A few months ago, the prologue for “RETRIEVE”, “An Impossible Island”, was submitted as a short story.
Prologue: “An Impossible Island”, Part One and Part Two, and Part Three, was inspired by writing prompts from the Soaring Twenties Social Club (STSC) creative community, beginning with an STSC Symposium monthly theme of “Beach”.
Chapter 1, “Older Than Bones”, was inspired by the theme, “Dinosaurs”.
Chapter 2, A Love Trinity Denied, was inspired by “Romance”.
Chapter 3, “A Forgotten Circle Of Hades” was inspired by “Superstition”.
Chapter 4, “Reading The Room” was inspired by an image of a wall-sized bookshelf.
Chapter 5, “The Bittersweetness of Deep Times” was inspired by “Isolation”.
“RETRIEVE” chapter and notes will be posted in this Substack, while I edit books #1 (“Box Of Stars”) and #2 (“Harvest”). All will be in the archive, not all will be emailed.)