Austin Bunn - The Brink - Stories

Why were you alone, without a check partner? I thought about Bo’s counsel on the white board—“Major Offenses: Having likes + dislikes, Trusting your own judgment, Using your own mind” + I knew I had to rescue you from your thoughts. Which itself was also a thought but the right kind. I lifted the window + slid myself through it + snuck out to you because I wanted to know your secret. I wanted to be the one to hear it. I wanted to tell one too.

The bougainvillea flowers supernova’d into pink + red along the path. A warm wind brushed the palms. I came beside you + said, “What is it, Leah? What’s wrong?” There are no mirrors in the house, but if there were mirrors you would be able to see how tired your eye machines were.

You said, “When you look up, what do you see, Michael?”

The clouds were gone + left a litter of stars. I was surprised that at night I still couldn’t make out the ship or the comet, but Bo always reminded us that human eyes were foreign + cheaply made. I cranked my head back + laced your fingers with my fingers. It was wonderful + bad + strange since I had not touched someone else’s skin for three years, since I joined up. Your container was so revved, like the hood of the van after one of our thousand-mile drives.

“I see our last night on earth,” I said.

I had no thoughts when I kissed you except: I am not thinking, finally I am not thinking. I crashed through your atmosphere + landed in a place I already loved.

“What are you doing?” you said + pulled away. As you did, I could see Bo at the back door. His facepart was hard + cold under the door light, the way my father looked at me when he saw the tomcat dead at my window. Bo’s gravity pulled us to him. Air pumped through his nostrils as if he’d come from a jog. His scalp was newly shaved but scored with nicks.

“Go immediately to your rooms,” Bo said. “I will be there promptly.”

What I didn’t get to tell you: Leah, your mother wrote you letters too. Last year, when we lived in the earth-ship made of dirt + Coke cans in New Mexico, her letters came every month to our P.O. box + it was my job to check the mail. “Christmas this year was lonely without you,” she wrote. “Daddy and I miss you and love you and hope you are well, sweetheart. Please come home.” There were dozens of these letters, at holidays + birthdays + I learned so much about you. They were even how I came to write these letters to you now. Once, there was even one all the way from Brazil, from your brother. I got them + read them + I threw them away.

Leah,

Bo almost found my letters to you tonight! He came in + told me that the earth gravity has addicted me to human behavior + that he wasn’t sure that I would make the window any longer. He searched my entire room — under the mattress, my dresser, even inside my suitcase for tomorrow. (But not in the lint filter of the dryer!) He knew I was hiding something somewhere + that I was having my own thoughts. Then he sat beside me + put his hand on my thigh + squeezed + said that I would have to work as dispatcher tomorrow, which is like doing the dishes except with people’s containers. I wouldn’t get to see you at all.

I am still so nervous. I felt like I was about to shed in front of him. He just left. Right after, I took out my tuning fork from my pocket + consulted the Next Level but there was no broadcast. I spent some time practicing my telepathy with you, except you don’t seem to want to transmit. I’ll leave you alone.

Leah,

I’m writing you from the nursery, in the dark, because I don’t have much time. This whole morning I have been running around the house like a crazy vessel. Helping fifteen people shed is not easy. Brian is supposed to be the captain but all he did was give me the plastic bags + tell me that I needed to make sure each person had eaten their medicine + shed their container entirely before going on to the next person. But that’s hard because I’m distracted by you not being home + because some of the containers backfire + puke a little when they shed.

Old Margaret told me that you went with your new check partner Ladonna to get more applesauce (people had been snacking!). But you’re still not home yet. It’s almost noon. Where are you? Reading the greeting cards like you loved to do? Watering the plants in some parking lot?

I’m sitting here in the nursery because it was your room, because it is where babies were + they are weightless. I remember once we sat on the floor + you showed me your suitcase. It was covered in glow-in-the-dark stickers of stars. You had packed it with everything you wanted to take with you on the space jump: T-shirts + books + gum.

In the bunks around me, the four containers lay still, Thomas + David + Claire + Julie, because I already did this room. I figure they are at the ionosphere, maybe further. Their suitcases are next to me on the floor. Through the wall, I can hear Bo doing his testimony for the camera, the final one. “It is time to level up,” he says. “The end of the age is upon us.” I still have the fifteen plastic bags in my hand from the first departures. They have condensation inside them because breath becomes water when you shed inside them. I have to take them to the dumpster — Bo does not want us to recycle.

Writing this, I wonder how long the window in the sky will stay open + if we can still hold each other even if we cross through at different times or if that is just me being stupid. When I lived in Boulder, resurrecting computers, I felt I had no windows. Now there are many + they are open. Still, Bo says it is possible to miss our rendezvous + then we drift in the vacuum, like space trash. I have to stop now, somebody’s knocking—

Leah,

I screwed up.

Brian came to the nursery. He had a whole bunch of messed up towels in his hand. He said he’d been cleaning up after me. “Why?” I asked.

“Just go upstairs,” he said.

Bo + Old Margaret were clustered around the bunk in the guest bedroom. I knew I was in trouble. Darwin was stretched out, streamlined for his XXL container: hands at his side, Nike swoosh on his feet for velocity. Darwin was one of Bo’s favorites. He had been with Bo for two decades. He even had his testicles erased in Mexico, like Bo had done, because of the drag. “Some students have chosen to have their vehicles neutered,” Darwin once told the camera. “I can’t tell you how much lighter it has made me feel.”

Then Bo pointed to Darwin’s chest. It rose + fell, rose + fell, a bad bellows. I must have taken the plastic bag off too soon, before Darwin was done shedding. Bo + Old Margaret stepped away + I knew my responsibility as dispatcher. I pressed my hand to his mouth + pinched his nose + stared at his chest to make it stop. But we all knew that I had banged his timing. Darwin is space trash now.

I felt sick to my stomach. I thought the insides of my container were going to come out my mouthpart. But Bo put his hand on the back of my neck. He said, “Don’t take on his weight, Michael.” All of the sudden, I remembered why I need Bo. Because Bo doesn’t let any weight hold him to the earth at all.

Leah,

This is my last letter. I have to write it in my head because you’re not back + I don’t know how to find you. We’re ready for the last group to make the space jump. That means me + you. Brian has bowls of pudding + applesauce along with baggies of Bo’s powder. Plastic cups of the vodka we bought checker the kitchen table. I choose the applesauce because I think it will get you back faster. Old Margaret gives me a piece of paper that she printed with the Routine: “Eat two teaspoons to make room for the powder and stir. Then drink.”

“Wait,” Brian says. “Shouldn’t we wait for Leah?”

Your name is a comet streaking.