Blue Sunset by lae astra
1000 words, ~5 minutes reading time
Issue 4 (Spring 2024)
On this planet, clouds of tiny invertebrates rise at dusk and flow over the treetops. A shimmering glow is visible through the reinforced biodome glass, fogged from the inside with the humid breath of the plants we care for. Our home–the gardens of Shin Kyoto. Moving with practiced certainty as you clip a leaf sample here, record growth data there, your glance sweeps from the misty swarms in the distance to the rich, dark soil beneath our feet, then upward to my face, where your eyes linger. We smile at the same time.
That night, you help me stretch. I’m still working on regaining the full range of movement after surgery and, week by week, I can move more fluidly without feeling tugs of pain. You help me apply healing cream on the scars on my chest. I trace my fingers lightly over your shoulder, breathing in the warm scent of skin and spices from dinner, made with the plants we grew. A swirl of insects dance along the window and back into the darkness. A stray scattering of stars.
“I’ve just called for support.”
Your voice wraps around me like the cloud-soft blanket we once lingered under. Limbs intertwined, skin against skin.
“They’re almost here,” you say. “Just throw up the signal so they can see you through the dust clouds.”
Looped around my waist, the signal rope flickers on and beams neon blue, the same colors as the tattoos that glowed across your chest. The first night I saw them was the night you gifted me the surgery appointment I’d wanted for so long, saying that yours wasn’t urgent,that maybe you were finally okay with your body the way it was.
All of that was before the asteroid—
While I was under for surgery, I didn’t feel any pain. But I heard indistinct voices, from the medical staff maybe, echoing as if through a long tunnel. I hallucinated strange feelings of movement, of traveling far without recollection of a beginning or end. I couldn’t see my body.
When I opened my eyes in the med bay recovery room, the first sensation that returned was hunger.
You brought me soup with fragrant spices, fresh greens from the morning’s harvest. Clinging to your hand as I ate, I couldn’t get enough of the nourishing, vibrant flavors. The calming joy of your touch.
Of knowing that you looked with me and saw not only who I wanted to be, but who I already was. Myself, extending outward. Reaching toward embrace.
Now, on my knees and covered in purple sand on a planet far from home, shreds of bioluminescent fungi strewn around me, I see your rover bumping its way over the rocky landscape, and I fling up an arm in your direction.
Inside the rover, the driver’s seat is empty.
Your consciousness, stored in the rover’s physical drives, is controlling the vehicle.
I shout for you to turn back, away from the colonizer robot I was trying to dismantle when its emergency defense system triggered.
But you never listened when I told you to save yourself first. Not even on the day when the asteroid hit, while I was hauling supplies outside Shin Kyoto.
That day, you saw the alert first, called me right away, then drove out to find me. But the massive rock burning through the atmosphere must’ve disrupted navigation signals, because we ended up missing each other.
I made it back to the shelter.
You didn’t.
The rover’s engine roars in my ears as you drive directly between me and the colonizer robot, who rears and refocuses their aim. Headlights flood through billowing dust, across the robot’s gleaming silver body, and a fuzzy stream of sound from the rover speakers fills the air.
Ancient music from an abandoned planet. A ballad in a lost language. The same song you used to play for me as we watched the glowing blue sunset in Shin Kyoto.
Surrounded by the flowers we tended, the petals seemed to hum with the last remnants of light. I felt a wave of tiny bumps along your skin as we huddled together, shivering with the leaves. Taking in the feeling of existing and building with you, I wanted to press it deep within me.
You always believed in the importance of backups. As the gardens inside the biodome flourished under our hands, you told me of explorations through the old archives, your previous job of organizing files and cleaning up code. You mourned the loss of so much music and art, the generations of stories once passed from one person to another by speaking them aloud around a crackling fire, words and flame intertwined, rising against the cold.
Proof of life, you said. Each individual with their own subjective experience of the world. Their own stories to tell.
You showed me your salvaged favorites.
After each day of work in the gardens, you meticulously backed up the research data and made sure all of your notes would be accessible, even if you weren’t around.
You were charmingly secretive about the place you went to get your tattoos, the shimmering blue branches and leaves stretching across your torso. Pulling me close, you rested your head against my chest and talked about ancient trees that once lived for thousands of years.
It wasn’t until after the asteroid that I heard from the tattoo artist, who was also a cognitive tech, informing me that you had volunteered for an experimental backup of your mind.
With a shuddering leap, the robot lands on top of the rover and begins to rip it apart, piece by piece.
“Now,” you say, your voice glitching and pitch-shifting. But still you, always.
A cluster of blinking green air jellies rises like wind-blown seeds into the dark sky.
I pull the signal rope from my chest, swirl it over my head, and aim for the stars.