Майкл Бламлейн - Longer

He paused at this point. He’d said what he had to say, but the message seemed incomplete. More a sermon than a farewell. But sometimes sermons worked.

And farewells … well, they were never less than awkward.

He saved the message, then returned to the lab, where the preparation was complete. A tincture-size amount of concentrated NOK remained in the flask. He decanted this into a bottle equipped with a spray head, then took it to the cargo bay.

The HUBIES seemed instantly alert to his presence. As he approached, their delicate nasal hoods retracted, their nostrils quivered, and their eyes swung like pendulums, then centered on him. The air felt charged. Even the Ooi, ever mute and mysterious, seemed to be holding its breath.

He administered his potion to the HUBIES. Sprayed each of their nostrils inside and out, until they were saturated. Repeated this, emptying the bottle, then moved a respectful distance away to wait.

It didn’t take long. Their bodies were pint-sized. The potion was concentrated. First their eyelids drifted shut, then their chests stopped moving, then their hearts stopped beating, then they were dead.

He said a prayer. Emotionally, he felt raw and nearly spent. He unfastened their harnesses, and one by one took them down. He cradled each in his arms, as he himself would not be, then tenderly tucked them into the bed they’d arrived in. Their womb was now their coffin. He closed and secured the lid, lifted the case, then headed to the door. Then paused.

He couldn’t leave without a parting word for their inscrutable visitor. He wished it had seen fit to be less opaque. He laid his palm on it a final time, thanking it for what it had been, what it was. Then he turned, and HUBIES in hand, left the bay.

The space suit was next. Getting into it was a workout; the boots, next to impossible. His back and fingers fought him every step of the way. He had to stop to catch his breath. At one point he thought he was going to faint.

If living was a chore, preparing to die was worse.

He considered going without the boots, going without anything, leaving life as he had entered it, naked and exposed. This was the last time he’d be dressing, the last time doing that most human of acts, clothing himself. Death was a journey of farewells. Internally, a shutting down; externally, a series of separations. He was no fashionista, hardly cared what he wore, but he did like a good pair of socks, and on occasion, a nice warm sweater, and it grieved him to part forever with those.

The space suit was bulky. He felt mildly claustrophobic. Worse once he got the helmet on and locked in place. Started breathing fast; heart started racing. Chest felt tight, like it was caught in a vise. He couldn’t seem to get any air, and began to panic.

He tore his helmet off, and immediately felt better. Waited out the attack, then tried again.

The second time was an improvement. Barely a whisper of distress. Instead, he felt a flutter of excitement as he entered the airlock. The call from Laura Gleem had sidetracked him, but now he was nearly there.

His plans had changed slightly. He wouldn’t be alone. The HUBIES would be with him. Attaching their carrying case to his jetpack took time and also ingenuity. It was large and bulky, but eventually he got it strapped on and secure. A minor adjustment for him, though likely a real head-scratcher to anyone who happened to come across them in the future. Not that anyone would: a speck of a speck of a speck in infinite space. But if. If. What would they think?

A signal of some kind? A fugitive? A messenger? A traveling salesman, haplessly—fatally—thrown off course?

It made him smile to think of himself as a puzzle for someone else to solve. Wished he could be there.

He closed and locked the inside hatch. The flutter of excitement persisted. So maybe not excitement, or not only. Ignoring it, he propelled himself to the outer door.

Through its porthole he could see a wedge of Earth, its far horizon limned with the sliver of approaching sunrise. The Milky Way was resplendent, not yet erased. He felt a fullness in his heart. Then, unexpectedly, a lurch, followed by a scary pause, then a pain unlike any he’d ever felt.

He grabbed his chest, broke into a drenching sweat. Couldn’t seem to get his breath. His arms and legs felt leaden.

An alarm went off somewhere.

Thank goodness, he thought. Thank goodness for alarms and reminders. He’d been remiss. He was grateful for the warning to set things right.

Everything was happening fast. Memories, faces, and sensations flew by and blurred. One moment he seemed to have all the time in the world, the next not an instant to spare. The alarm continued, loud and insistent.

A warning? Maybe not. In fact, it seemed to be more of an announcement.

His heart was giving out.

He was dying. Could that possibly be right?

Dying on the way to kill himself? Dying on the doorstep? Before he was ready? Before he could realize his plans? Caught with his pants down, fated to be frozen forever in the act, the purgatory, of almost there.

What a joke.

The universe was laughing at him. How trite. How perfect.

The universe was perfect. It was beautiful, beyond belief.

This life—and it wasn’t done, not yet, not quite—was beautiful. He couldn’t get enough. Loved it to death.

That was rich.

He loved life to death.

Love flew out of him in every direction. Love, attachment, desire, connection—the names meant nothing—flew out: to Earth, to the stars, to the emptiness between the stars, to the dark matter and the dust, the fourteen dimensions and the fifteen cosmos, to all that was living and all that was not. Love flew, faster than light. So fast that it came back around, and wasn’t done. He knew it wasn’t done, because the alarm didn’t stop. Like a wake-up call, a catchy jingle that gets stuck in your head, a song from the symphony of life, vinyl version, with a scratched track that keeps popping back, it kept repeating, repeating, as if to prolong the suspense.

He was ready to die, but also ready to live. There was a balance in all things, and death at the moment appeared to have the upper hand. He had made his peace with this, was prepared to embrace it, but he had a passing thought, quite possibly his last: was it too late to change his mind?

The thought, impossibly, gave way to action. Marshaling every bit of strength and will, he clawed his way back to the inside hatch, unlocked it, then collapsed into the bay. It was all he could manage. He had nothing left after that.

He hovered above the floor, more or less on a level with the Ooi, which was nestled on its rock. He stared at it. He, and he alone, had believed in it, and given it life. Who was he, he had to ask, to give life?

He wasn’t God. He didn’t believe in God. Or wishes on a star.

Yet there it was. An inert, unresponsive, implacable splotch now glowing like the rising sun, like a comet’s coma. Radiating heat and light.

A miracle. Like life itself.

He didn’t ask why or how. It was enough to be bathed by its healing energy. He felt it through his suit. It warmed his skin, but didn’t penetrate farther, unable to drive away the deeper chill. There was so much of that. Too much. And it was spreading.

But the Ooi wasn’t done. It ramped itself up, burning brighter, hotter. Red, orange, yellow. It fought the chill and the gathering darkness. Drove them back.

But not far, and not for long.

The alarm kept sounding. Louder now than ever.

Death was knocking at the door.

The Ooi seemed to shudder in response. Then it drew itself up, rose from the asteroid, and began to vibrate. Then hum. The hum was unrecognizable, unlike anything he’d ever heard. From its own symphony, or rather the expanded symphony, the infinite, universal one. Musica mysterium. Heavenly and euphoric. It drowned out the alarm.