Aynsefian

The next morning, feeling almost like my old self, I’m having my wake-up meal with these now not quite so strange humans from the Melcheisa Galaxy.

Quite randomly, Zarasena breaks the silence.

“I like you, Fernea.”

I’m not sure where she’s going with this. “That’s… good to know,” I respond, guardedly.

Zarasena responds with a girlish laugh. It’s endearing and I can feel warmth rising in my chest. “You’re so uptight! Just relax! I mean no harm.”

I think I know what she means. Or maybe not. I decide to deflect, and maybe catch her off guard.

“Nikse said I remind you of your brother a bit.”

A shade crosses her face for a moment. She recovers quickly.

“You look a bit like him. Your personality is soft and – I mean soft in the nicest way, you understand – soft and gentle, like his was. You’re easy to talk to. You’re shy, like he was, but perhaps more talkative. Even though I knew him better than anyone, I still felt like he had many secrets that he wouldn’t tell me, even if he didn’t.”

Just like that, she stops talking and looks away, disengaging herself from talking to me. I’m disappointed that she’s stopped talking. I find it hard to believe that this is the same woman who made me feel such hate not that long ago.

“Zarasena?”

“Yes, Axin?” Her face is still turned away from me.

“I’m sorry you lost your brother. It must have been so incredibly hard. I never had a brother or sister, so I don’t know what it’s like.”

She simply looks up at me and doesn’t say anything. Her eyes have so much depth to them. My attraction to her is not just physical any more. I want to know her. That woman a week ago must have been a hologram, or a game in my mind, or something.

This is someone who is kind, intelligent, deep and thoughtful. I feel like my whole future could be wrapped around her, in some way that I’m yet to understand.

I try to be cautious in my thinking. Up until Nikse, I had never felt love for another… for a person, real or constructed. Then I lost Nikse. The pain was real. I will not make that mistake with Zarasena. She is far more worldly than I am. She may not be interested in me in that way. I don’t know where she’s been in this life or who she’s been with. Judging by the way she talks, and the intimidation I feel when conversing with her, she’s been in more than a few close relationships. She knows how to talk to people. I don’t.

Now she’s studying me. The hint of a smile reaches her eyes before it shows on her mouth. I have to look away.

I’m not ready for this. This is all too sudden. I hated this woman earlier today. Easy does it.

“Perhaps you’re more like him than I know.” Her voice is gentle, soft. It’s calming. I have to look at her again. This time I will consider her as a potential friend. It’s easier.

“Are you able to talk about him?”

She looks away again, but she nods.

“Thank you for being honest and open with me. We barely know each other.” I try to put as much kindness in my voice as I can.

“You got that right, pal. I put my whole freakin’ life in your hands, effectively. You better be the goddamn person I think you are!”

I flinch somewhat and move backwards. I wasn’t ready for that. I like it, though. She surprised me. That’s what I want.

Then I think for a moment. I try to imagine her life right now. I have a family to go home to and a planet where I feel safe. Our civilisation isn’t in jeopardy just yet. Zarasena is leaving everything behind, and moving to whole other galaxy, for reasons I’m yet to fathom. If it were me, I’d be very lonely and afraid. For all of her worldliness, she must be having those thoughts at least occasionally.

I decide to answer her directly. “Well, I don’t know if I am, but I can assure you that if there was any game to play, I wouldn’t have the faintest clue what the rules are or what the first move is.”

She regards me again, with that same inquiring smile. This time I will face it. It takes courage, but I return the smile, as best I can.

“You’re all right, Fernea,” she says. For a moment, I notice how her wavy red hair and her deep brown eyes complement each other almost perfectly. There are shades within the colours of her eyes that blend with those in her hair. It’s the source of her good looks. Facing my fears and looking her in the eyes has permitted me to notice this.

I look away again. Job done. I’m staring at the floor now, at a small imperfection in the material, so that I’ve got something real to focus on. I still need to deflect the conversation to something safe. I’ve also suddenly realised that Salvation, over in the corner, has his lights blinking for some reason. Everyone else is in the ship is still here, having their wakeup meals as well. As always, at least since yesterday morning, my world shrinks to just the two of us when I’m talking with Zarasena. I like it and I want to keep it going.

“Can you… are you… able to tell me more about your brother? Sunzirani, right? Did I pronounce it correctly? I’m just repeating what Nikse told me. You can tell me that it’s none of my business, too, if you want.”

“Yes, Sunzirani. No it’s alright.” Zarasena sighs and pauses for a moment.

“We were close. We had to be. Our parents were high ranking officials in the MGC. Their careers came first, we came second. Ambitions are high. But they still could have been there for us. It’s a huge, huge, organisation, you understand. Way bigger than you can imagine. Think about how many people might be involved in an organisation like that, and then multiply it countless times. It’s unnecessarily massive. But enough about that behemoth of a council. My brother…” She pauses for a moment.

I’m studying her again. It’s just about my favourite thing to do. I must be careful. I fell hard for Nikse, and that was wrong. I can’t do that again here, not in these circumstances. Not yet, anyway, if at all. I look away again, at my now empty food plate. There’s some breadcrumbs on it. I’ll push them around my plate for a bit.

“… Sunzirani… was my confidante, my best friend. Our parents were never around. They provided us with home carers, but it wasn’t the same. Then they put us in training classes to develop our careers from an early age. Sunzirani played the game right from the start and taught me so much about how to fake interest and ambition. He was almost two years younger than me, but I followed him in everything and copied the way he reacted to it all. I always felt blessed to have him in my life and felt it was adequate compensation for basically having no mother or father.”

I think about my own, happy upbringing. I never had problems of any sort and had a loving home. “I’m so sorry to hear that about your parents, I say. That must have been hard.”

In response she gives me a quick look that says that I shouldn’t interrupt and sympathy or empathy isn’t necessary. She’ll handle that on her own. I go back to focussing on my breadcrumbs. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice that Anathusa and Jinekali are watching us and listening in. I’m okay with that. The Purlinians have left the room and I never even noticed. I can’t see Lanemu anywhere either.

Zarasena ignores what I said and continues her story.

“When he was sixteen, Sunzirani was able to convince our trainers that he want to join the Spirit Corps. That’s an organisation that delves into the higher dimensions of life, beyond the physical. He wanted to learn from some of the more advanced races in our galaxy. He lied to the MGC trainers and said it was so he could enhance our superiority in Melcheisa. He constantly said this, and with such conviction that I almost believed him myself. Almost. He was so good at faking it, the bastard. I felt like I couldn’t do what he does. But I reckon I’ve done okay recently.”

“Anyway, they sent him away. At the time we were both living on one of our planet’s moons, and they sent him back to the main planet, for his mystic training. It was a forbidden area unless you were doing this training. And just like that, he was gone from my life. Oh we kept in contact regularly, but it wasn’t the freakin’ same. The gaping hole he left in my life was almost unbearable. It was the hardest thing I thought I’d ever have to go through. I was wrong.”

She pauses. I know now that I shouldn’t interrupt. I want to ask what this Spirit Corps does. I don’t like the sound of it. It seems like they use spirituality in a military sense. That sounds awful, to me.

“So after I got over the initial shock of his leaving, I found that we were able to communicate quite a lot. Just not securely. Both he and I knew that our private, secret conversations were no more. However, we fooled those bastards. We had subtle cues in our conversation, distinct tones and words that no psychological sensor would ever pick up. I knew he was discovering things that he wanted to tell me in private. I had to find a way to go and see him, without making it look obvious.”

“So I added a Spirit module to my pilot training. I could do that. I claimed it was so I could learn how to spot existentialism within the lower ranks and stamp it out, so that loyalty to the MGC was not threatened. Sunzirani had taught me well. They believed me. And so I left our moon and went to his training area back on-planet. Seeing him again was so joyful. It had been a year. Straight away he told me that he’d discovered a key.”

This time I feel like I can interject. “Not a physical key, though.” I glance at Anathusa and Jinekali. They’ve clearly heard this all before. They’re watching me, for my reaction.

“No. A dimensional portal, it was, attained through a specific type of meditation that he said would take me some time to learn. He wasn’t there yet either. He’d seen it and he knew absolutely where it went, but he hadn’t got there yet. He wanted me to know in case he vanished somehow, that this was where he would be.”