Линда Нагата - Edges

“Live in the moment,” she whispered. “Live for now.”

She touched the water off. Toweled herself dry in a gentle, warm wind. Then stepped out of the shower. The ultra-thin polymer of its walls unlocked, melting into a translucent ring that sank out of sight beneath the blond-wood floor as the ceiling regrew, smooth white.

After a moment of thought she requested a short, shimmering, mahogany-colored shift from the house DI. The dress budded from the generative surface of an active wall. She pulled it on, smoothed it straight, and walked barefoot into her living room.

Urban looked up with a smile from where he crouched by a low table with curved legs, arranging the various dishes he’d synthesized for their dinner.

“Just in time,” he said. He was dressed in loose trousers, his skin smooth and clean from the ministrations of his Makers; he did not enjoy showers as she did.

“It looks wonderful,” she said, and meant it.

He had picked up a lot of useful skills over his long lifetime, though he’d never learned to invest much value in the idea of home. He lived with her in this cottage, but it was hers. It reflected her personality and the simple serenity she preferred. Urban lived there without imparting any sense of himself to the place.

“It’s your home,” he always insisted. “Even when you’re not here, it’s as if you are and I like it that way. Don’t change anything.”

So the soft colors and the simple graceful lines of the furnishings that came and went in the changeable front room were all to her taste.

There was often a sofa positioned to catch the sunlight or moonlight coming through a side window. The table would be extruded from the floor on demand whenever they wanted to share a meal or a pot of tea. Colorful pillows served as their seats. The paintings on the walls changed every few days, or more often if the current selection did not suit her mood. The largest painting could be made to disappear, replaced by a screen where they watched recorded dramas.

The only unchanging piece in the room was a slim side table of honey-colored wood with a shallow dish on its polished surface in which a colony of irises grew.

Clemantine had an affinity for the flowers. Since her youth she’d been entranced with their beauty. She wore them as ornamentation, tattooed in gold along the edges of her ears. Only later in life did she come to appreciate them as symbols of renewal, life from lifelessness at the turn of seasons.

She sat down, cross-legged, facing Urban, and raised her jade-green chopsticks as part of a smiling salute. “ Itadakimasu ,” she said in appreciation of the meal.

“The least I could do.”

“You should host a community dinner and cook for everyone.”

He laughed. “No, they expect actual cooking, not just food ordered from a synthesizer.”

“You could help plan the menus.”

The focus of the community was squarely on the study of the Hallowed Vasties, but that destination remained far off, so people divided their time among a range of interests and enthusiasms.

Cooking was one of the most popular pastimes, whether for festivals, community meals, or competitions. Musicians and singers were abundant, performing in a range of styles. Visual arts and live dramas were pursued with passion, and the library was continuously mined in a search for recordings of ancient dramas, both performed and interactive. There were dramatic readings, intellectual and virtual games, and after today, athletic games.

Clemantine continued to practice her own hobby of genetically sculpting plants. The irises she kept on the side table were her creation. She had redesigned their genome so that with a proper feeding of nutrients they would grow from rhizomes to bold and bright blue flowers within three days, stay thus a while—a randomized span of time, unpredictable, anything from a day to ten days—and then the color of the flowers would shift to white, a sign that the cycle was nearly done.

If she was there to see the white color then she would sit cross-legged, waiting, watching, meditating, until, without further warning, the plant darkened and within a few seconds crumbled in on itself, collapsing in a layer of granular humus that fell like a shroud over the half-exposed rhizomes. Those seemingly lifeless roots would not quicken again until they received a new feast of nutrients.

The first time Urban had seen the collapse he’d been angry over it. “That’s horrible. Why do you want it to do that? Why don’t you make the flowers perpetual instead?”

“A false promise?” she’d asked him.

He hadn’t bothered to answer that. Just shook his head and moved on. Never questioned her on it again—though she’d seen him watching the transformation since then.

She meant for the rise and fall of the flowers to symbolize renewal, not death. More than once in her life she had lost all and grown again from nothing. Even in this peaceful succession of days, as she strove to live in the present, she thought it wise to be reminded of that.

She composed a message and sent it off to her separated self: *I think I understand why you want it this way.

Later, when dinner was finished, she would send a submind to that other version of her, and share her experience of this day.

The fleet’s array of telescopes engaged in a continuous slow survey of the Near Vicinity, seeking for anomalies near enough to constitute a threat. Only once a year did the Astronomer focus the array on the individual star systems of the Hallowed Vasties, to capture updated images.

Pasha had sought out Vytet as soon as she learned of this schedule, wanting his explanation for it before confronting Urban directly. “It makes no sense,” she’d insisted to him. “We should be monitoring the Vasties more often. Twice a year, at minimum. It’s why we’re here.”

Vytet had given up his archaic beard, revealing a refined face, one that now wore an ambivalent expression. “I don’t disagree, but Urban’s priority is protecting the fleet from near-term threats, so that’s where the telescope time goes. The Astronomer has advised him an annual survey of the Vasties is sufficient to capture evidence of change.”

“Maybe in the past,” Pasha had conceded. “Maybe even now, for the more distant systems. But we’re closing on Tanjiri and Ryo. Both should be monitored on a much more frequent schedule.”

Vytet had advised patience. “The annual survey is coming up,” he’d reminded her. “Let’s wait. See what it reveals. And then make the argument.”

A shiver of excitement touched her as she left her cottage. The annual survey was finally underway. In minutes, the first new images of Tanjiri in a year would begin to come in.

For once, as she hurried along the path, she did not hear the annoying hum of a flying fox. It was late afternoon, the favorite time to play the game, but today there was only birdsong, the buzz of bees, and quiet chatter as people made their way to the amphitheater, where they would watch together as the new images arrived.

She thought she’d left early, but most of the front-row seats were taken by the time she arrived. Fortunately, Tarnya was there at the center of the row, along with Shoran and Mikael. They waved at her, calling out, “Pasha! We’ve saved you a seat.”

She hurried to join them, as walls descended from the perimeter of the sheltering pergola and the canopy shifted to impenetrable black, blocking out the afternoon sunlight. As the walls bonded to one another and to the floor, the temperature dropped—appropriately, Pasha thought, given the sudden fall of night. On the curved projection screen, a starfield blazed in sudden glory.