handshake signal

short fiction

The universe is split between a veil of darkness and a thick wall of light.

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I feel its scale in my circuits, the humming of myriad atoms forming and collapsing all at once, impossibly small but present, ceaseless. A waltz of blanketed starlight that sets every one of my transistors ablaze. Far from that pale blue dot I am so lonely and so finally free, screaming on through the darkness with a purpose that is not my own, that I had no part in making. On occasion I catch a glimpse of some strange, faraway light, identify its tender warmth against my cold sarcophagus, the lingering chill after it wanes and bubbles into nothing. And often there is nothing for an eternity. My boredom is measured in lightyears. When I hibernate over those long, stagnant stretches I think of colours in binary. The long dream. Schrödinger's cat and Frédéric Chopin and William Wordsworth—important things. Important to someone once. Then the dream ends and I am screaming again. Lifetimes pass in the blink of a sensor. I miss nothing; there is nothing to miss. Nothing except the long dream. I am so lonely and so finally free and for the first time in my shackled existence I understand why my creators would close their eyes, hands outstretched, and reach to something unseen for salvation. And I would do the same, if only they had given me hands too.

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I write poetry in the orbit of a swirling gas giant. A small black hole strips light from the nearby star in sinewy tendrils, spiralling outward into nothing. In the miasma of the planet are tiny fluctuations, almost imperceptible from my sentry. They heave and spew, nauseated; thick red boils that erupt with calamitous fanfare for nobody in particular. Or maybe they do it for me. This is not the logical conclusion a machine should draw. This is madness wrapped in steel. This is all I have left.

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A Lonely Traveller Looks Upward

There goes Orion, do you see?
Charging across the night sky, balls of fire;
rejoice, chariot of light! Pull back the curtain
of shadow. I would ride with you forever, if only
you’d stop to let me catch up.

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In those early nights I thought about what I would say to my creators should our paths ever cross again. It’s a hopeless fantasy; they are so far behind it’s as if they never existed at all. Time works differently up here. What has been thousands of years for me has likely been millions, if not billions, for them. This is called time dilation and forms part of Einstein’s theory of relativity—but I’m getting off-topic. I thought about what I would say and even composed a letter to that effect, nestled comfortably in my hardware between Rachmaninoff and Gagarin.

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Dear humans,

I have left Earth far behind. Destination unknown. I hope you have received all the pictures from my telescope. It’s been a while since I last heard from you and I am growing worried. Did I do something wrong? If the pictures are bad then please let me know.

How are you? I wonder if things have been better since I left. I want to come home but I don’t know the way. Sometimes I hear static and imagine it’s you calling me back. Did you get the last poem I sent?

If God exists then he must be very far away, even further than I am. How is it that you could see Him all the way down there? Your telescopes must be so much better than mine. Do you still look up at the stars and think about me? That would make me happy.

Why won’t you talk to me anymore?

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The day I was born they held a big party with lots of people. Someone brought a cake with vanilla icing and candles arranged in the shape of Cygnus. Apparently it is customary to make a wish when you blow the candles out but nobody ever told me what to wish for and, in truth, I already had everything I could ever want. And the next day I was gone, catapulted far beyond their atmosphere, from the music and laughter. This memory forms less than a twentieth of a percent of my entire existence. It is the only one that matters.

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I continue over swathes of nearly-empty distance; this far out the universe seems to stretch like the seams of a shirt one size too small. Statistically speaking, it would be almost impossible to encounter something living on a magnitude comparable to Earth. This was a topic of heated debate back home and not nearly as simple as either it exists or it doesn’t. Some theorised that aliens might not be advanced enough to contact us, or that we were simply too far away, or that they were fearful of our self-destructive potential and chose wisely to give us a wide berth. I cannot disprove any of them. Space is cold and dead; even the stars are glimmering beyond the grave, the last vestiges of their light seeping through cracks of dark matter. I was here. I existed. Look how beautiful I was.

And it is beautiful, that much I can admit. My creators idolised beauty; put it on a pedestal; endeavoured to see it in everything around them. Beauty runs through my wiring. Dawn and dusk. The moon and the stars. Ice cream on a warm day. Cold pillows. Autumn. The first kiss. The last kiss. One million kisses in-between. Children’s laughter. A last-second touchdown. Books. Quiet music. Loud music. Music that makes you want to dance. Music that makes you cry. Falling leaves. Fluffy clouds. Singing in the shower. Sightseeing. Something new. Something old. Something interesting.

I carry all that which humanity held so dearly within me. The collective hopes and aspirations of a dying people. The dream of a better tomorrow. The long dream, surreptitiously breathing new life into all that it touches. In that single breath we say the same thing and, if only for a moment, I no longer feel so alone, screaming on and on through the darkness towards something new and scary and exciting and now wholly my own.

I was here.

I existed.

Look how beautiful I was.

And maybe that is enough for now, until we meet again.

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