Short Fiction

Death of Lights

I

              On a miniscule and spherical habitat lived animals of light.  With a telescope on Mag 253U and Filter 17 I watched their languid travels, for their trails were lighted by the remnants of their former presence.  I was not able to see them when they were dark and they were only lighted a third of the time.  But there were zillions of them on the habitat and together they twinkled like some precious dew on a slick little pebble.  The habitat was called Gemstone.  Dreadful name.  The discoveries of similar growths were quite frequent so this one did not warrant special attention.

              During that period of my life I was entranced with two things: the live broadcast of the Hitball Tournament every afternoon, and the sky.  More specifically, I was interested in the vastness of the sky and its unique ecosystem.  I was lucky to be taking Interdisciplinary Studies with Professor Agddo, the most popular twelfth-year professor at school.  He and my Father were hunting buddies so he was our guest occasionally.  Instead of the end, graduating from his class will be the beginning of our relationship as mentor and pupil.  As I mature, he will step down from the all-imposing emblem of knowledge to a mortal being, a feat which will make him even more remarkable.   

              It was the last day of Creatures of the Universe discussions.  We had been on the subject for a month and most students were getting restless.  It all seemed the same: rocks with crawly things, rocks with lighted things, rocks with crawly and lighted things.  One of the more outspoken students said coolly,

               “Well, they all seem quite useless, don’t they?”

Professor Agddo answered, “Very good observation,” to which the class snickered and the student became quite embarrassed. 

               “Why,” asked the professor to the class, “would the universe, an otherwise sensible system, tolerate beings which do not bring benefits?  Logically, the everyday interactions of the food chain would balance out existence.  Everything must serve a purpose or become extinct.  There is no room for dillydallying in the complex ecosystem of life.  These creatures on rocks in the sky—we have not yet found their purpose.  This means that either we do not understand the universe as much as we think, or that there is no balance to existence and no purpose of life.  Which would you prefer?  Be ready for the Big Revolution for next time.  Don’t forget your texts!”  And the class ended in a bustle as students escaped to lunch. 

              At the end of his speech, the professor had obtained a sort of hurried expression.  He was louder and forceful, though he was a gentle being.  Maybe he wanted to be heard over the rustling of impatient students, but that concentrated look remained with me.   He had wanted to communicate something.  Maybe he wanted his questions answered.  But more likely he just wanted us to listen, like all teachers did.

              I was not one of the restless.  I had taken heavy notes and when I got home, dug up Father’s telescope from storage.  It was brown and red-stained with age.  When I washed the eyepiece I found that it had a good extension although its focus was a bit grainy.  My obsessive phase with the sky would last through most of the year, during which I would frequently be annoyed and impatient with the low technology of my telescope.  I found myself veering toward Gemstone.  There, the lights moved more, making it easier to find and once found, more exciting to observe.

I kept a log of their movements but I gave up half way through the year.  I had identified five different types of lights and could not find any more.

The first type was stationary.  This was the second brightest.

The second was also stationary, but it blinked, and was usually very dim.

The third was the quivering type.  It was the brightest.  It was also the whitest, seemingly the most concentrated.

The fourth type traveled.  It was thin and quite dim, and sometimes extinguished and came back on again.  These usually traveled in small groups.

The fifth type traveled in big groups.  Individually, they were also dim.  But together they formed a sort of band, and the strength of numbers made it into a smooth sparkling streak.  This was by far my favorite type of lights. 

It should be noted that only the ones who travel in groups ventured over the waters of the habitat.  This revelation intrigued me.  It was almost as if they were afraid of water.  Primal, senseless things.  It was just as well that I was unable to view them when their lights were off.  The huge mass of darkness might have frightened me, like the way in which the patch of algae surprised me when I lifted a container in the storage room in search for Father’s telescope.

II

              I first heard about the Sig Group while visiting a friend in the neighboring lake of Sahlci-ao-sot.  We had just finished dinner.  We went outside on the porch and he sat on the chair which slipped from time to time so I could have the good one.  I remember that the water around his house was heavy that day, hanging like closed curtains.  And if I thought about it then, I might have realized what was wrong.  Instead I offered him a bloater and in exchange he started talking about the current political state of Sahlci-ao-sot as compared to ten years ago.

              “The problem with Governor Nalk is his concept of definitiveness,” lectured my friend.  “Former Governor Raoslw did a much better job of incorporating concepts of the good faith into everyday operations.”

My friend was devoutly religious.  He believed unquestioningly in ultimate suffering and ultimate happiness.  I was irritated by the direction which the conversation was veering. 

              “I think it is high time for Nalk,” I said.  “He is adventurous.  Many things have been discovered.”

              “Don’t get me started on Green Mold.  He didn’t have to use babies for those experiments.”

              “The babies were terminal.”

              “But they weren’t dead yet.”

              “They didn’t suffer,” I said.  I wondered why I was arguing so rudely.  I did not support infecting babies with viruses—infecting anybody with viruses—to find a cure, even for Green Mold.  “Anyhow they are very close to finding the answer.”

              “They never will,” he said.

              “Why?”  I envied his sureness about everything.

He shrugged.  “It isn’t right.  They won’t be rewarded.”

Even for him that was romantic.  He seemed to realize this too as he puffed his bloater.  I was tired of mine.  The bubbles rose in a train.  I suppose we could have been very deep but we, or at least I, didn’t want to think anymore.  It was tiring.  We had not seen each other for months so I did not want to waste it on unpleasantries.

To dilute the situation my friend said, “But anyway Nalk is doing something with that habitat of yours, that Shiny Rock or Glitter or something like that.”

Gemstone!  What randomness.  Five years had passed with no thought of it.  I was nostalgic, and I asked with sincere excitement, “Well what does he plan to do with it?”

My friend started laughing.  He spit out the rest of the bubbles to free himself for speech.  “You still sound like a child!  You’ve never really changed, have you?  I bet you’ve still got that ghastly telescope.  Did you know that you used to have a ring around your eye?”

              “Did I?”  I laughed with him.

              “Oh yes.  And you wore that weird dangle thing that trailed behind you, do you remember?  It was horrid!  I didn’t want to say anything back then but…”

              “You did!  Oh you did, you told me I looked like a bush of stinky seaweed.”

              “Oh right.  I have to apologize for that.  I was wrong.  You smelled very fine.  Like a great big bowl of potpourri.”

I laughed.  “You mean the one in the first graders’ bathroom?”

              “What else?  Oh, it was so fine I will never forget it as long as I live.”                            

Toutuu was the one who dripped the bowls with perfume from a joke shop.  It took the administration two days to find the source of the horrendous odor, which was so pungent that the removal of the bowl did nothing to hinder it.  The bathroom remained unusable for weeks.

Toutuu was dead now. 

He was killed in war.

My friend coughed.  He had taken too big a hit. 

               “All natural processes,” he said, and coughed some more.  He passed some water through his gills and that seemed to calm him a bit.  “That rock of yours.  You gotta poke it and see if it moves.  And if it does, you know you’ve got something.  Something alive.  Maybe even intelligent, who knows?  Though I doubt it.  Nalk has given more money to the Sig Group.”

              “What’s that?”

“The big environmental research group.”  He sounded surprised.  “Aren’t you a scientist?”

I waved a fin dismissively and in apology.  “Yeah, but I’m doing research on this habitat.  I’ve been tied up with this project for almost two years now.  It’s…anyway it’s very complicated.  I won’t bore you.  But I’m afraid I’m a little behind on unrelated news,” I said, and knew what was coming.

              “Oh, but it’s not unrelated.”

              “Because everything is related,” I quoted him.

              “Exactly.  Everything is related.  This habitat, that habitat.  Whatever.  We are all creations in this universe and bound by the same laws.  Your religion has to agree with that too.”

              “My religion of science?”

              “Because it is a religion,” he said.  “So we poke these rocks with crawly creatures and what we find will reflect back on us.  The ultimate condition.  That is what you’re trying to find.  You’re just going about it in a different way.  We’re in the same pond, you and I.  We just have different ways of living.  But we all turn out the same.”

              “What is that?” I asked.  Then, “Dead?” and laughed.

              “You’re one smart fish, you,” he said, chuckling.

I said, “That’s morbid.”

              “There’s no avoiding it.  I know what your research is,” he said accusingly, pausing to highlight his opinion.  “You cannot eliminate death.  All your fancy equipments that measure nerves and cells or whatever.  All your mutation machines.  They might delay death, but they could never prevent it.”

“We are only trying to cure diseases.  The cure for Green Mold has saved so many.”

I was agitated.  I had dedicated my soul to my group and our research projects, and now my good friend attacked it without prohibitions.  “Do you think patients should just die then?  Submit to fate?”  I regretted my outburst even as I said it.

He seemed not to have noticed.  Tiny bubbles streamed up from the bloater which he held with his fin.

                “No,” he said.  Then he smiled.  “Don’t mind me.  I’m just babbling.  When we discovered the aging cell we delayed death for a hundred years.  But we eventually die anyway, just with more wrinkles.  And I think your group is close to discovering something else.”

It was confidential information.  I admitted, “How did you know?”

              “You could feel the news preparing for it.  Something this big needs its way paved.  I don’t think it’ll work though.”

              “Me neither.”

He said, “People won’t like living forever.”

              “I think so too.”

              “Then why do you do it?”

              “It’s knowledge,” I said, feeling stupid.  I hadn’t really thought about it.  I might have prohibited myself from thinking about it.  All great discoveries were shocking so why should this one be different?  Uncovering the secret of death would set the bar higher for the next project.  I liked projects.  Their answers uncovered who we were.  And anyway we didn’t have to use the information to eliminate death.  There were many options.  So I said, “There are many options.”

              “For what?”

              “The ways in which we could use this knowledge.”

              “I’m intrigued.”

I did not feel rebellious anymore.  Rather, I felt meek, like facing Professor Agddo for the oral final.  I explained carefully how it could explain the reason eliminating the aging cells could not abate death.  By understanding death, we would be able to understand life.  We might be able to find cures to even more diseases, ailments, or general discomforts which came with everyday living.  And most importantly, it might, once and for all, prove or disprove the existence of an afterlife.  This might settle the question of religion with hard facts.  My friend frowned deeply.  I said quickly,

               “Not to disprove religion, but only to discover the truth.  I am sure that we all want to know the truth.”

I fell silent.  After a while my friend said,

               “It would be horrible to live forever.  I would not last.  I would crumple within my body.  I would die inside.”  To which I agreed most sincerely, and said so.  It was turning chilling so he invited me inside.  We ate more dessert, and talked about his job at the traveling agency and our wives and children.  (His wife had taken the kids to their music lesson.)  We parted with sadness.  I had missed him, I told him.                “We should do this again soon.”  He answered, “Certainly.”  We shook hands. 

               “Oh, come off it,” he said, and embraced me.  I laughed.  I was going to have lunch with Professor Agddo in four days. 

               “Oh?” he said, “I’ve always liked Agddo.  Say hi to him for me.”  I said I would.

III

              The reason my religious friend could not join me in my meeting with Professor Agddo was his job.  He told me he would not be free for the week.  I found out three days later that something more permanent had made him incapable.  But in the meantime, I went to work in the day, and at night quite happily researched the Sig Group’s experiment with Gemstone.

It was categorized with nine other habitats which held similar lighted beings.  It was first in line for the experiment because it was small, so the losses of specimen (if it came to that) would not be big, and the lights were relatively mobile, so it was easier to see results.

The experiment’s objective was to discover the reason for the lights.  On different habitats the length of which the lights were on varied.  Why were Gemstone lights turned on only a third of the time?  Did all lights serve the same purpose?

The procedure was simple. 

Record normal movements of species.

Send to habitat a pod of stabilization liquid.

Wait for pod to enter atmosphere, then activate spray.

Wait five minutes or until conditions stabilize.  I.e. lights remain turned on or turned off.

Record movements of species.  Note any differences.  (Be sure to finish assessments within the stabilization liquid limit of three days.)

              The experiments had begun around the time of my visit to Sahlci-ao-sot.  With Gemstone, the whole thing took less than 3 hours, most of which was used for preparation.  The lights had stopped moving even before the stabilization was complete. They grew very bright.  But within four minutes the lights began to fade.  Within six minutes they started to shut down.  Here, there, with increased rapidity, off, off, until the whole habitat was dark.  It was diagnosed as quite dead.  Then it was set aside in case it recuperated.  Basic animals always seemed to stubbornly survive.

              I was angry with Governor Nalk and his Sig Group.  They tampered with the living conditions of the habitat and now it was useless.  Logically, the stabilization liquid was harmless because it only suspended the inner state of the body.  The animals could still operate and live normally.  They probably wouldn’t even notice.  What an imprudent assumption.

              After Gemstone, the Sig Group had moved on to Shine, The Great Fireball, Twinkle, and Star, modifying their procedures between each trial.  I wondered who came up with all their names. 

The day I found out about my religious friend the Sig Group had successfully stabilized Star for twenty hours.  But it was fruitless.  Although Star lights had not died, the habitat had stopped operating.  It was as if the intricate robot brain simply froze in time.  It made a pretty jewel, but it was frustrating to watch and yielded no notable results.

IV

              I was late to meet Professor Agddo because the arrangements for my friend’s funeral took longer than I thought.  Professor Agddo was greatly troubled by my friend’s suicide and lost his appetite for lunch.  He remembered my friend with fondness and asked me about his condition during my last visit. 

               “Contemplative,” I said.  “But he was always contemplative.”

The professor asked me what we talked about and I told him what I remembered.

              “I really don’t understand…” I said.  I had not cried yet.  “But he was happy,” I said, referring to his wife and children.  “His belief was so strong.  He even liked his job.”

We were resting on the bench outside of the restaurant.  My tail was flicking restlessly.  The majesty of winter was descending and I felt a sudden wave of chill.  The potted red waterweeds across the road were changing colors.  I had always liked them wintergreen.  In the spring they will turn yellow before turning red again, then green, then yellow, and on and on.  They seemed the only things to change in this damned hypocritical city polluted with modern technology.  I was admiring their tireless determination of life when Professor Agddo asked, “How is your work?”

              “Good.”

              “What’s wrong?”

              “Nothing.”

Professor Agddo said nothing. 

              “We’ve discovered what it is,” I said.

He said, “Oh good.”

              Talking seemed a frivolity in the face of current events.  Unlike my silence which was empty, his was marinated with ancient knowledge.  He seemed to be searching for something because he looked around both ways but then I realized that he was only trying to get a piece of loose seaweed off his head.  Then he said randomly, “I’ve wanted to become a twelfth-grade teacher since I was very young.  I’ve had some great teachers and I wanted to influence the next generation the same way.  Twelfth graders are on the threshold of everything.  They are about to enter their lives and still have time to decide their directions.  I wanted to unsettle them and open up options.  I’ve had some pretty successful students.”

              “Toutuu.”

              “Right.  He fought well.”

              “Bane.”

The professor smiled greatly, “The humanitarian.”

              “Me?” I asked jokingly, to lighten the mood.

              “Of course.  The leading scientist in the discovery of the cure for death.  I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a Peace Prize for you in the near future.”

              I looked at him to see if he was sarcastic, but he was smiling calmly though looking dead ahead

Then he asked if I remembered what he said once in class, and I said um, probably not, and he laughed and said it was sometime during the Creatures of the Universes discussions and he had asked the class if they knew why lighted creatures such as the ones on Gemstone existed. 

               “Have you heard of the Sig Group?” he asked.

              “Yes.”

              “The lights are dying,” he said.

              “Yes.”

               “You study death.”

               “Yes.”

               “If you combined your researches, maybe something new will come out of it.”

Atrocious suggestion.  Work with those guys who refused to see the consequences of their actions? 

I said, “Maybe.”

              Then I simultaneously remembered two things.

The first was the dream I had the night before.  Toutuu was in it.

The second was the question Professor Agddo had asked that day in class.  His voice came booming into my ear and I heard it with the same surprise I had that very first time.  There is no purpose of life.  Why do they exist?  The words were mixed up but I heard it definitely, as if the real Professor Agddo who was floating gravely next to me was shouting them.

There is no purpose of life!

I kept looking at Professor Agddo to make sure it wasn’t real.

No purpose!  Why do they exist?

I shook my head to clear it.

I heard the answer in an automated voice which sounded curiously like my general search engine at work.  Too broad a question.  Please narrow.  Examples.  Why are there purposes?  What is a purpose?

Why did they exist?  I doubted the Sig Group would find the answer.  Bunch of dimwits.  I did not tell Professor Agddo that I remembered what he had asked mainly because I did not know the answer.  But for some unknown reason, in the light of current events, I felt closer to some truth.

V

              The following is the dream I had the night before my meeting with Professor Agddo.  I had just discovered the suicide of my religious friend and this must be a reaction to it.  When I recounted the events it seemed illogical though at the time the illusion of a dream told me it was not. 

I still remember everything.  It is one of those random memories which stay with me, like Professor Agddo’s expression that day in class.  Someone somewhere once said that if a seemingly meaningless memory refuses to leave then it must mean something.  I desperately want it to be true.  Oh, help me please!  Go the full length.  At least try.  I fear that I never could but if you succeed then at least there is hope.

              In my dream I am aware that I am dreaming.  I am the dry land of a habitat and I know it is Gemstone.  I can breathe perfectly.  I do not wonder about it because I know it is a dream and I know I am a creature of Gemstone and therefore can breathe above water and I know it is night.  The ground is smooth and black.  The atmosphere is dark blue. 

I am in the middle of a street.  How I arrived there I do not know.  And such familiar buildings!  The structure is a variation to ours—they have box corners instead of round ones—but essentially the same.  This unsettles me.

              In the distance an incandescent shape approaches.  I wait.  This encounter will be the reason for my dream.  The shape is fuzzy and blurred like a damaged broadcast.  I could not make up my mind about who I want it to be.  The pod is coming.  I look to the sky.  From the direction of my habitat—my real habitat on which I am peacefully asleep—fall the first drops of water.  I cannot wake up.  Would this be my eternal dream?  I panic.  I look to the shape for empathy.  It is Toutuu, no, my Father.  Then it becomes hazy again and I watch with utter horror.  I have lost control.  It flips through many versions of itself until I recognize it as my religious friend.  I am partly relieved because at least this is reasonable, but death hangs so close and I am scared of ghosts.   Then it changes quickly into Professor Agddo and there it stays.  There is no reason.  Remember, I tell myself, this is a dream. 

              The professor has that hurried expression which he has worn on the last day of Creatures of the Universe discussions.  This time I recognize it and it is fear.  My panic mirrors upon his face.  “I do not accept,” he screams.  His voice is far away and faint.  He does not see me.  He darts around in the haze and his body quivers.  He wavers and starts to melt.  For the water is rushing down, rushing rushing down.  Life-saving quantities.  The ground is submerged.  We are under but I cannot breathe.

I scream.

Tears come out.

              My body convulses and the pain is real.  I reach out, somewhere, where is he, to find him.  My only connection.  My possible savior.  I see him!  In the dark of the water only a push away.  Horrid melted thing.  I push.  I pass through him like something invisible and I know I can neither save nor be saved.  The professor could do no better. 

              I cannot breathe.  I reach up for the surface where the pressure is less.  There is no surface.  Not for miles and miles.  I’m dreaming, I think.  And we die.

Julia Wang