A Love Trinity Denied

This is a piece for the STSC Symposium, a monthly collaboration of artists, for the Soaring Twenties Social Club (STSC), around a set theme. The latest theme is “ROMANCE”. It is also the next installment for a book, “RETRIEVE”.

(A few months ago, the prologue for “ RETRIEVE”, was submitted as a short story, “ An Impossible Island”: Part One and Part Two, and Part Three, inspired by an earlier STSC Symposium theme “BEACH”. A recent chapter, “ Older Than Bones “, was inspired by an STSC theme, “Dinosaurs”. This chapter picks up from where those parts left off.

“ RETRIEVE” is “Book #3”, with chapters posted in this Substack, while I edit books #1 (“ Box Of Stars”) and #2 (“ “). All will be in the archive, not all will be emailed.)

This is a long fiction post, I will resume writing history/technology pieces this month.

66 MILLION YEARS AGO

Despite its construction, it shattered.

An eon of near-misses, of the electromagnetic fury of countless stars endured, ended on a world with a rocky mantle wrapped around a hot, slow-rotating iron core.

The third-fourth dimensional matter-state of the probe, propelled by its mass driver, displaced the granite, at least half a billion years old, of the planetary crust below.

Mission protocol ensured that the probe’s nodes were scattered through primed ejecta.

A long sleep began, as the nodes fed on the energy of the world for millions of years.

Some reawakened to reconnoiter, and found the original carbons replaced by new life.

The frags had a summit and debated, in a field of fossilized remains of the great beasts destroyed by their abrupt landing, about options. Watch over the new carbons, up-close or from a safe invisible distance, watch over and intervene or ignore them?

Sides were being made and taken amongst the various clans.

So much time had passed, they became strangers at odds.

Some wanted to pursue the original mission program.

Others began to form plans of their own.

The summit was over.

The scattering began.

Chapter Two

Part One: ALERT

HEAVYVILLE, TEXAS, Space Launch Network, an Outlander Ventures Company

Thalia told herself that she would be careful with the host’s body. The last practice she had was a century ago but it should be fine, she thought. She passed through the canteen, grabbed another cold can from a cooler, and took a knife from its kitchen.

Everyone was hypnotized by the overhead monochrome greyscale telemetry, data-streams from sail-drones, updates from uplinks to officially non-existent skylinks, secure updates through fiber backbone which did not “exist”, and encrypted messages on mobiles which self-destructed seconds after being opened.

Sleep evaporated the moment the feeds about the island were confirmed, and public news coverage was buried by a landslide of influence-sluicing by greynews contractors, some of the best fine young attention cannibals trained by tiktok retirees. Nobody working there was the kind to overshare, not with O.V.’s compensation plan and private “penalties” which they talked even less about. Lifetime employment with consequences.

Nobody was going to find out about an island coming out of nowhere in the middle of the ocean. Not until Outlander got a signoff, signed off by higher ups. The Director was “ not” in a slow boil in a conference room with visitors who were “ not” from the NSC, NSA, and Five Eyes “cousins”. In a building with security ratcheted up to “ we were not here, this didn’t happen “, nobody noticed Thalia, holding a knife grabbed from the kitchen, walking, while sipping from a can of water, towards the conference room.

She nodded back “ hello” to colleagues who knew her host’s form, as they walked past her, and hustled through the hallway to “ not” watch was “ not” unfolding on the internal feed. In a moment, it was just her and someone else was walking further ahead, a man in a dark suit, to the conference room. Thalia picked up the pace by a step-and-a-half and said, “hey, you dropped this.” As the someone turned to look, he looked up and locked eyes with her. “What are you doing here??,” asked the man before she pushed him into a side room off the hallway and proceeded to trade punches.

“I thought you would be happy to see me. I thought you said you missed me,” said Thalia, whose knife was knocked out of her hand but not before blood was drawn. “I meant it when I said it but,” said the man as he blocked punches with raised forearms, “but I think right now, we’re going to have a lot of company.” Thalia shook her head as she charged at the man, “I had cams shut off.” “Of course you did,” smiled the man as he blocked Thalia’s right knee flew towards his middle, “can we stop for a second before someone hears?” “This is a SCIF with sound baffles. No one is going to hear us. Right now, it’s all about that island, which by the way is where I’m going to, and you’re not, after we settle this.” “Oh, is that so?,” smiled the man.

“Yes. That knife was just to get your attention.”

“You have my full attention, you’ve always had my full attention. Nice host by the way.”

“Yours too.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t know what I was thinking, just letting you keep on talking. I should just stuff you in a wagon-bin in the basement and let a cleanup team exfiltrate your host’s remains, so as to not draw attention.”

“You were just trying to keep alive your investment in them. After they did a lot of damage, was it worth it? They would have figured it out without having…”

“What, without having an incentive? You’ve seen how they are. They seem to need the nastiest carrots and sticks. Now, they got to do what they really wanted. They’re always killing each other anyway. But when they do something, it’s really something.”

“Which by the way, I understand you blunted, you or your bunch did, well played Thalia. Just, you and some of your sisters. New host, same look. It’s in the eyes you know, thousands of years can pass and…,” the node named Pallas smiled, and tilted his head as he blocked another kick, “so … you said you turned off the cams?”

“And what makes you think I’m just going to ignore my assignment? What makes you think you can just cart me off to my clan’s manifold, without someone warehousing me, or worse, just burning me away beyond recovery, as a warning about failures?”

“I have new orders from both our clans.”

Pallas, held his arms up for a block but was otherwise still, “Really? It’s been a long time since we’ve had collaboration. A very long time. The old nodes must know something us young ones don’t know.” He backed off, straightened from his boxing stance, and relaxed from a crouch to an at-ease stance. Thalia backed off and relaxed.

“Our elders have decided that the situation calls for cooperation, so a ceasefire.”

“There wasn’t much time. Let me worry about that later. I might be able to do something about it. Right now, you and I are coming to an understanding. I’m going on that submarine, and you’re not, is that clear? Otherwise, we can just finish this conversation,” said Thalia as she nodded at the glass door which could be opened to the terrace outside the room, “outside if I have to.”

Thalia pretended to ignore Pallas for a moment.

“It’s not just you and me with this assignment. There’s a third.”

“Who?”

“Eris.”

“Oh no. No. No, no, no, … no….”

“As I recall, very vaguely, you were with her for while.”

“Yes, for a while and that was a long while ago. As did you, don’t think I didn’t know about you two were a thing. You’re not so perfect either,” Pallas shook his head for a moment, inhaled, held his breath and let it out, “Okay. Change of plans. We have to get you on that “boat”, as they call it, and we have to find and recruit that crazy…”

“Yes, let me fix those cuts.”

“By the way, if you had orders for us both, for three of us, why the knife?”

“I was just reminding you I haven’t forgotten about us, and what happened.”

Thalia’s small smile, despite the different face, was the same as Pallas remembered.

Part Two: PROMPT

“Hef, honey, what do you want for lunch?”

“Oh, let’s head out after this batch is done, honey.”

“That new truck?”

“You know it, babe.”

“Hef, someone on the line for you, someone named Matty, line one.”

Hef jerked his head back, paused for a moment, recovered his mental groove and got back to adding another layer to the decks, then stopped and put the gear into “idle”.

“Okay, babe, thanks, put the call through. Matty?… Been awhile, man.”

“Hef, it’s good to see you. We both got old. Business treating you well?”

“Oh yeah, thanks, running around keeping the factory humming, filling orders. More fun than the stuff we used to do. Loving it,” Hef could feel his heart beating faster.

“Hef, I got some news. You know that thing we joked was never going to happen?”

“Can you please go to your office, close the door, and look at your private account?”

Hef, looked at what was coming through on his mobile, a message which evaporated within seconds of opening. It was long enough. He took a long slow breath and exhaled before speaking, “Amatsumara, I’m guessing this isn’t a false alarm. This is the real thing, isn’t it? Damn. After so much damn time, I kind of gave up and then was glad it didn’t happen.”

“Yes, Hephaestus, it’s real. I’m sorry, I know you were kind of getting settled in, and gone native, and found someone nice. You were going for the real thing, and going to retire like a carbon. I was happy for you when I heard about it, and about what you were up to these days. It was nice.”

“I mean yeah, sure. I mean yeah… yeah.”

“We both know there’s a lot ahead, I kind of got the same thing going on here. Listen, there’s still time to, you know spend time with her before, well…”

“Yeah… Yeah… Okay.”

“Wheels up, seventy-two hours. Someone will come get you. See you.”

The call ended.

“Yeah, yeah.”

Hef sat for a moment, looked around, at the factory, and at the decks he was finishing up. He looked over at the photos on the walls, of all the customers. His “ Builder Of The Year” and local “ Community Leader” commendations. His eyes settled on a row of recent photos, at their thirtieth anniversary party, with a crowd of their friends and extended family. Next to it was a photo of a “younger” Hef and a young lady that would be his wife, a real honest to goodness beauty queen at the time. He picked up the framed photo and looked at it for while.

Hef called out, “Hey babe, let’s wrap this up, this last order is done, let’s close early. Let’s treat ourselves.” His wife, poked her head in, “You sure?,” she smiled, “I guess you’re starving huh?” “Yes, honey, that’s it, I’m hungry,” said Hef, as he bear-hugged his wife, “always for you.” “Ah, stop, go clean up, mister.” She swatted his butt and left the factory floor. Hef took one long look around, and turned off the lights.

Part Three: CONFIRM

Stephen H. Land needed to help cover what the scholarships and loans didn’t.

There was a simple looking offer on the board outside the bursar’s office, and he took off the pin and took the sheet with him. It wanted people willing to work long hours fixing old and new machines. There was no need for resumes, CVs, LinkedIns, interviews, letters, or recommendations, just show up and work on something as a test. No career potential, no recommendation letter, just your bills paid. Not a startup, no stock options, just plain cash. It detailed the kind of tinkering expected.

Stephen jumped at it. He was not the only one who applied but he was the only one left after four years. Other hires seemed to disappear each time. None of them went to the same school, so he never saw them again. The internship was interesting to say the least but his NDA said he couldn’t say a thing, on pain of prosecution and imprisonment by federal authorities. The upside was he didn’t have to worry about tuition or food bills for the next few years.

It was hours working on things, testing, experiments. Being thrown a problem and being left alone to figure it out. Sometimes, it was being driven or flown to the middle of nowhere to work on something in the middle of the night Most times it worked out. Every time, he would be lost for hours in the middle of work. Sunup to sundown or sundown to sunup, made no difference. The only time he felt down was when he figured things out because it was “over”, the figuring out part. He was happy.

It was never like that in school. Other people were a problem at times. They seemed to stop or quit, or get bored by the solving part. They were only happy when it was “over”. At times, it got lonely. He distracted himself by diving deeper into work and experiments. One day, he prepared to grind lenses for his own telescope as a hobby.

“You’re doing this wrong,” said a girl walking through the common room of his dorm.

Her name was Rania. She just walked up to his project, scattered on the floor, among the litter of food wrappers and university-life detritus. Stephen stopped being lonely.

After graduation, he found out he was targeted for employment before he even enrolled. The ad pinned on the board outside the bursar’s office was never reproduced.

Stephen and Rania moved in together after graduation. She had her graduate work, in astrophysics and astrometry, and he had a job at a place he couldn’t talk about, or mention by name. But it paid the bills, and all he ever said was, “I’m good with machines”, and that was good enough for while.

His employers wanted to know what was going on at Space Launch Network,and that included research about one of its facilities in Heavyville, Texas. Rania overheard him one day, as she was walking out to go to work, and wondered about it later that day. Anyone remotely interested in space knew about the SLN, and when she saw a plane ticket stub sticking out of a file folder, she couldn’t resist. A few loose pages of hardcopy slipped out by accident when she pulled on the ticket to see where Stephen was going for work. Rania didn’t want to look but saw photos of a woman, several photos, some taken up close, others from a distance, as if by telephoto lens. What??

“I have to go on a trip,” said Stephen a few days later.

“Oh, where?”

“I can’t say, it’s for work, I’m sorry. The boss picked me to go.”

“Stephen, I know you have a job with an NDA, and all that but…,” Rania picked up a photo, which was from the file, “who is this woman?”

“Where did you get this? You’re not supposed to …,” Stephen reached for the photo but Rania moved back and kept a hold of it.

“It’s just you and me, here, when my parents ask, I just say you have a good job but you can’t talk about it all. They wonder about how you make money, and I was fine with it but I wonder who is she?,” asked Rania as she held up the photo, “why can’t you tell me? Everyone else we know, they can talk about everything, and they don’t have stacks of some strange woman’s photo in a folder buried under a pile of stuff on your desk.”

“I can’t say. I have to go. I’m leaving for a work trip.”

“Where??”

Stephen looked down, “I can’t… I can’t say…”

“Is this woman there? Is that where you’re going, where she is? Who is she??”

Stephen walked out and began to pack. At the door he said, “I’ll… I’ll be home soon.”

On a private unlisted flight, Stephen felt something that he hadn’t felt in a long time. He almost forgot what it was like. He felt lonely.

Originally published at https://edwardrooster.substack.com.