Mish's Quick Kisses

5 October, 2006 at 22:56 (Uncategorized) (gawain, prose, scifi)

Chardin raised his head from the silicate bed and ran his fingers through his thinning hair. He blinked as he looked towards the darkening sky. Had it been a mistake, he wondered, to stay on this planet long after the others had fled? Of course if everything held true then it wouldn’t matter if the approaching comet did hit it square on or not. Not if he could get the first computations finished on time, then he would have forever to finish the final ones. If he could just manage to keep his mind on the job. Chardin plunged his hands back into the rolling silicates.

Natasha Zeitel continued her lonely trek across the snow. Up here the light from Sol 3 was brightest, which only served to emphasise the darkness as the oncoming comet, Eschaton-Suess began to hide the sun. Natasha wondered to herself if she was the last woman left on the planet, maybe even the last human, standing up there, headed for the pole, waiting for the end it certainly seemed as if she was.

Most of the population of the planet had left as soon as news broke of Eschaton-Suess’s trajectory. Daniel Darwin would happily have left himself had it not been for his fiances strange attitude. First Natasha had broken off their engagement of three years and then she had vanished before the shuttle that was supposed to take her off planet had even arrived. She wasn’t the only one to be acting irrationally, as one of the more influential men on Arcadia Daniel had access to the travel logs. Three of the Abrahamic cults had opted to stay, one, the Peterian Saints had even been shipping people in until they’d been found out and fined heavily. There were still two thousand people on the southern continent that had been given up as a bad job by the rest of humanity. Two thousand people on the southern continent, some bizarre programmer refusing to leave his home on the northern continent and one woman…somewhere. Daniel continued to study the reports looking increasingly desperately for some trace of Natasha.

It was when the comet was a day off that Chardin had his big break-through, up to his shoulders in the flowing silica, only thinking now in streams of numbers and code that caused his fingers to make curious patterns in the liquid where no eyes could follow. He felt the almost magnetic pulse of the equation flow out from his fingers and surround him and knew that he was close. He blinked the sweat from his eyes and ignored the increasing darkness. It was coming fast now the comet, but if Chardin had been able to think in terms other than those of his computations he would have known that now it did not matter, with only hours to go before the comet destroyed all life on the planet he had only hours to imprint the right codes.

There was a shudder in the snow, Natasha braced herself for the ice to crack beneath her, but nothing happened. It was a permanent twilight out there on the sheets, but she sweated as if under the hottest sun. The ever-decreasing distance between the planet and the comet could be felt out here more truly than anywhere else. She wondered how long before all the ice was gone and herself along with it. Then there was another shudder in the snow and Natasha found herself face down slipping away from her goal. She dug one of the picks in defiantly, the pole was where she would feel this planet end, the pole, the top of this world was where she would end. She dragged herself inches further, only a mile to go and only a matter of hours to do it in. She felt the elation begin.

Daniel knew when he had found her. He could feel the moment before his eyes alighted on the record of a skimmer taken as far into the northern continent as it could go before the electro-magnetism allowed it no further. If he could find her now, if he could fly the shuttle himself over the pole as if it were a skimmer and pick her up then he could make it out of the atmosphere before the comet entered. He’d be cutting it fine but he could do it, he could rescue her and save himself and then everything could go on as before, she would be happy with her heroic fiance and renew the engagement. He strode out to the shuttle bay, counting down in his head.

The numbers in Chardin’s head would no longer make sense to anyone else. The ways his fingers, his hands and his whole arms were moving within the silica could not be understood anymore and the ripples, which can usually be read by anyone with a basic knowledge of binary would require hours of study, hours that anyone now off-planet would not have.

Natasha sat on the spot where the electromagnetic null declared the ultimate north was. She looked out at the flaming dark mass covering the sun. She sweated as her hands begand to sink into the melting snow. Natasha smiled at Eschaton-Suess, light in the darkness and dimming the daylight until everything was a gloriously rich twilight. Now she could begin to consider the beauty of her chosen ending, now she could feel the shudders and think of when she would be no more, think of how it would feel to be final. Then the shuttle with the Darwin markings pushed it’s way onto her horizon and her smile was replaced with a frown.

Chardin knew he was nearly there, or he would have done were his whole mind not concentrating on the matter in hand, as he pushed those last few syllables out into the silica via his fingers.

The shuttle could not land, Daniel knew, but if he hovered and opened the doors then he could get low enough to reach her, he was sure. By now Daniel knew that it was almost too late, the shuttle had taken too long to fuel, had taken too long to reach the pole, he would have to get Natasha quickly or they would both die here. The fact of his own death was too awful for Daniel to contemplate, he must reach her and take her quickly away from this dying place.

Natasha watched the shuttle approach and prayed for the comet to come faster.

Chardin felt the light dimming further and the heat increase but could not think anything of it.

Daniel shook as he pushed the shuttle controls to hover over the pole.

Natasha opened her pack, the one she thought she would never need. She saw the bay doors gape before her and Daniel opened his mouth to shout for her. The gun went off before she even thought about it and Daniel was down, bleeding as his shuttle continued to hover, continued to spoil the blessed silence of the pole until the ice began to crack loudly beneath.

Chardin breathed out as the silica breathed in and the numbers flowed.

Two thousand cultists cried out in awe and wonder as they felt themselves ascend, as they felt the numbers wrap around them and pull their own numbers out and become one.

Natasha heard the ice-crack and smiled as she let herself go.

Then she felt herself come back and knew that Chardin breathed out as the silica breathed in and the numbers flowed and two thousand cultists cried out as Chardin breathed out as the silica breathed in and the numbers flowed as she let herself go and Chardin breathed out as the silica breathed in and two thousand cultists cried out as she let herself go and the numbers flowed.

Omega began on Arcadia. Millenia before anyone became aware that a small part of the universe had achieved immortality through it’s own inifinity. Omega began on Arcadia without the infinite creativity that was supposed to come before it.

Omega began on Arcadia.

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