Suffocation and Jubilee

"MJT cats cradle" by Sgerbic is licensed

by Lucas Jackson-Peterka

Her people were already dead. It was best to think them gone, at least. Best to put it all behind her and get on with the mission at hand.

Rochelle needed to go home.

She tried not to laugh at herself for thinking of it as “home.” A myth. Some destitute legend. That hopeless dream of her grandmother’s was all Rochelle had to go on. In the cold vacuum of space, she found herself chasing a song. If a note were carrying on the solar wind, there would be no way to tell.

The stars are breathless. They talk and move and feel the same as us, but the universe will only ever take two breaths: one to begin and one to end. These are the only moments the songs can be heard. Until then, there was no chance for sound to travel in the void. Rochelle had to contend with the silence—drift endlessly in the lonely dark if she wanted to get anywhere in a reasonable amount of time. Fun as it may sound, she had gotten tired of waiting around for the world to end.

The Big Sigh had actually been a play of Rochelle’s that had earned her some modicum of fame back at Issak Station. There was just something about the heat death of the universe that brought people together.

The satire of the play had been lost on them, however, and The Big Sigh had gained fame as a religious puff piece. How had they not noticed her criticisms of Nietzsche? The Intellectual himself! The Cult had its head so far up its ass that her proof of God was propagandized as proof of His death—and somehow it worked! She had made fun of the whole faith, their fetishization of the end; the hypocrisy of making a deity out of a supposed “no-God” and somehow, she had accidentally shat out scripture.

Fitting really. She did not much like having to think of the station at all, let alone the one memory so encapsulating of all her failures. A prophet even when I’m not meaning to be.

“You really believe all that junk?” he had asked her.

That’s what he had asked her. Twenty years she had spent researching all the old tales and records. Translations, calculations, meticulous writings, and a wasted youth—all in search of the truth. And he had asked her if she believed.

“Of course. That’s what I said, isn’t it?” She was talking to the past, but she did not much care anymore. Rochelle was near to three years on her journey now. She spoke to the ship when the memories came.

The ship had good enough manners to keep quiet.

“You have to be careful Shel,” John’s voice was lowered and chilled. Rochelle could barely make out what he was saying, even replaying the scene in her head. “The Headmistress has been looking into your ‘research’ and the Cappella Magna are getting concerned about what she’s finding.”

“Let them be concerned, I care not what they think.” The words sprung quickly from her mouth in the pursuit of confidence. So quick they sprung, as if in flight.

“You should care Shel. There have been whispers—rumors—that you’re not even calling yourself an Intellectual anymore.”

“They aren’t rumors.”

“Shel…” he said it in warning. Speak softer to me, he was thinking. Speak softer so no one else hears. There was no disappointment in his voice—John could always be counted on to believe in her, at least. Rochelle knew he feared the council though. Knew he couldn’t be trusted to betray them. Knew some part of him still bought their lies.

“John, there has been so much lost to us. So much hidden from us. I can’t trust in the Cult when they have lied so recklessly to me—to us all.”

“Reckless? Shel, what have they been hiding? Last I was here you were reading that old book your mother left behind. Was there something in there?”

“No, she was insane. I have established that.”

“So what? Are you just done with the Faith? Do you have any good reason?” He waited, but received no response. “You’re just going to keep me in the dark?” He was growing belligerent. “This is why the Cappella Magna are up in arms—an Intellectual keeping information from us all. You are a disgrace.”

“It would destroy everything if I said anything.”

“You’re a fucking liar. If you had anything at all you would’ve torn this whole station down years ago, you spiteful bitch.”

Well, he kind of believed in her.

“So I’m a bitch again?”

“You’re a traitor,” and he spat it out like hot coals. “As traitorous as that mother of yours. I don’t believe you’re trying to do anything except get banished just like her.”

“I don’t have to get banished. I’m leaving.”

“You’re what?”

A red light went off on her dashboard. Rochelle sighed in relief as the familiar surroundings of her cockpit settled in around her. She had grown used to the alleyways of her mind. During the trip there was not much left to do but wander through them. She did prefer to be present though. Rochelle thought the tedium and numbness of space easier than the pain deep in her soul.

“Guess were getting close, huh ‘ole girl,” she said, patting the console in front of her fondly. The ship, thankfully, had nothing to say back.

Only two clicks away, she thought. But the promise of sailing allowed John to filter back into her mind. It still hurt. And even though she couldn't bear the memory, it still haunted ever-lastingly.

“You’re not going to make it. Your ship will fail before you even have a chance to crash-land on some rock,” he said frankly, not minding the callousness of even the simple musing. Rochelle remembered having to forgive him a lot.

“That’s what you said about The Big Sigh.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t expect everyone to just forget about a thing called subtext,” he teased. They were in the middle of a full-scale fight, on the verge of losing each other forever—and he teased her.

“You seem fine ignoring the subtext of that gun around your waist,” Rochelle shot back.

“I’m not going to use this on you Shel, you know that.”

But there was no way to really know that. One Peacekeeper was dangerous enough; a Peacekeeper you thought was your friend? Rochelle could not think of anything worse.

“I’m glad you weren’t planning on shooting me, John.” She spoke with acridity. “I’m especially glad that you recognize the need to articulate that to the class.”

“Shel, I—”

“Please. Did you forget that watching my father get beaten to death by one of those batons of yours is what drove my mother mad in the first place?”

“Of course not. I—”

“You still enlisted. You didn’t forget and you still joined them.”

“These people are my family, Shel. This place is our home,” John said, pleading for her to stop. The pain of hers, too much for him to bear, lest it destroy his own delusion.

The ship came to a sudden halt out of light-speed.

John’s delusion came crashing down.

“This isn’t home, John,” Rochelle spoke aloud to the ship, but addressed her friend directly once more. “There are more places in the galaxy than Issak Station. There are more stories than they tell you.”

Through the glass, Rochelle’s myth stood before her. This journey had finally come to an end. She was home.

“My grandmother used to tell me we didn’t all start out here, out in space.”

“Always so obsessed with the start of things, aren’t you Rochelle? You ever think that if you followed the handbook and focused on the next step instead of the one before, that you might not work yourself into such a fuss all the time?

“That is what I’m doing, John. And my grandmother didn’t fuss—she told a story.”

“What kind of story? Why do you care so much about the stories?”

Space should not be allowed to be this blue, she thought.

“There’s more truth in any single story than in any of the statistics the Cult feeds you. If I were to talk about what they doctor and hide, I do not even know where I would begin. Everything they do—that you help them do—is so we will forget the before. So we will forget where we came from.”

The brilliant, planet-wide oceans stared back at her. A dead rock flanked her ship.

“My grandmother had a tale at least as old as her own grandmother—no one in our family ever really knew when it came about, just that it was old.”

More light than she had ever seen filled her cockpit. Rays of every color danced across her face as the tears started to pour.

“A tale about us, John. A story about humans. Hundreds, thousands—hundreds of thousands of them all living together under the same roof.”

Her mother’s book sat on the vacant seat next to her. Cat’s Cradle, by someone named Kurt Vonnegut—Rochelle had never been able to find the slightest bit of information on him. Books were a non-starter back on the station. Primary sources strictly prohibited. Cat’s Cradle had remained a family secret her whole life. Well, a family secret plus John. Another thing she could give him credit for. Her mother’s inscription on the inside cover sat heavy in the chair.

“A story about a home, John. We used to live on the ground; used to breathe fresh air and could travel for miles and miles in any direction; we used to be able to think about whatever we liked; about both directions one can step.”

“What happened?” he asked. Rochelle had been surprised by his genuine curiosity. She had worried the Cult’s indoctrination had been too complete—that her honesty would award her with two bullets in the back of the head. She was the killer here, though. A prophet even when I don’t want to be, she thought.

Rochelle pulled her own weapon from its proverbial holster:

“The Cult—or whoever made the Cult what it is; maybe even Nietzsche himself—they packed us all up into stations just like this one and sent us each off in a different direction through space,” she shuddered in both past and present. “My grandmother even used to say the stations were separated by color or faith. Humanity departed its planet in great ‘tribes’ of race. Segregated itself voluntarily.”

Then, she pulled the trigger:

“Then they bombed it—bombed it to death. As the stations were about to be lost to each other forever, Isaak herself released an arsenal of nuclear weapons and blew it all to kingdom come. Every other station, the Earth herself (that’s what they called the planet)—we destroyed it. The last remnants of our history and brethren, gone. And then we ran away and forgot.”

Kind of like her, really. Because even though it was only Rochelle and John who spoke, she remembered the Faith draining from him. She saw him deflating again and she knew—standing here before the legend herself—there would be no cure for his Doubt. She had done to John what her own mother had done to her.

John was destroyed, and Rochelle had to leave him, to let him sort himself out.

“I’m going looking for it. I’m going to find our home so I can say someone remembers what we did and where we came from.”

“You’re leaving me here?” his disappointment stabbing in its naivety.

“There’s no telling what I will find. I could be flying to my death, John.”

“And how is that a worse fate than what you would leave me here to do? What do you expect me to do with this story of yours?” He said story with such disgust Rochelle could hardly believe he got it out.

She shrugged. “I’ll mark the course I take. Come after me if the time is ever right.”

That’s what her mother had told her. Maybe Rochelle’d finally see her again.

“I can’t lose you,” he said forlornly.

Fitting really, she thought. “That’s exactly what I told her. She still had to leave.”

Rochelle started the landing process. A few switches flipped and buttons pressed, and the ship was descending all on its own.

“Do you think you’re actually going to find her?” His voice echoing in her ears, as the wheels of her craft grew closer and closer to the answer.

“I don’t know,” she said back as honestly as she could muster.

The nose of her ship broke through the atmosphere. She could make out the surface now, approaching ever faster.

“I just want to find some mud.” The wheels touched down. “I want to find God, and the first place my mother taught me to look is in the mud.”

“God? This whole thing really does have you as crazy as her.”

Her cockpit opened.

“Yes.”

Rochelle stepped out into the light.

Onto the mud.

“I must believe in their stories, John. I have nothing else left.”

She struggled with what to say last to him. She still didn’t know how to say goodbye.

So she leafed through the old book her mother had left for her, took a breath, and in the likeness of a baptizing priest, read her mother’s inscription aloud:

“My dear Rocky, I hope you can forgive me someday. I’m sorry for how I’ve made them laugh at us, for the burden of shame I leave you with. But I feel a sadness that will not go away. I tried my best, but I can’t bear it any longer. The loss is too much. I miss something I’ve never even seen. My soul aches, and if I stay here any longer the ache will swallow me whole. I must see the mud. I must go home. At the very least, I must try. Tell them I went crazy for me, okay? Couldn’t bear knowing I got you hurt again. I do hope to see you again someday. If you ever get it in your head to follow me, I’ll be waiting out there for you. But if not, know I love you forever. I know it’s hard to leave what you know behind. I just believe there’s something better. I have to go find it.

Yours always,

Mother”

Rochelle dried her eyes. She hoped that somehow, miraculously, the sound of it would travel all the way back to Isaak Station. Maybe he would hear.

“I’m not coming after you, you know,” he had said.

That’s what I told her, Rochelle thought. Then she set out to search for her mother, for the first time in her life, finally sure she was home.