Light Year

Movement One: The Space Infinite

The infinite blackness of space stretched out all around him. It was everywhere. The sweeping blackness was broken occasionally by faint pinpricks of light glimmering weakly in the distance. The monotonous hum of the mining drill droned on. Its incessant buzz was something every inhabitant of SpaceHold had to live with. After a while the mind pushed the habitual sound to the subconscious. Today it seemed to be louder than usual.

Paul sighed. He was meandering through the grey halls of SpaceHold thinking to himself. He felt like a small, lost little stream in a forest, surrounded by dark looming objects. The halls sometimes made him feel like that. They were a monotone grey like everything else in SpaceHold. SpaceHold was a nexus of human achievement. A feat of mechanical ingenuity, but a designing disaster. Everything was too logical, too plain. The only objects that existed were those that served a purpose. There was nothing in SpaceHold that was entertaining. Unless one took into consideration the end of the week tri-shows shown in the CommonsHall that were only elaborate government propaganda under the guise of 'Motivational Entertainment'.

Paul reached out and brushed his hands against the grey walls. He felt the coldness of the strange metal composites and underneath the coldness a faint glow of heat, as if the hall was a strange mechanical organism waiting to be freed of its shell, waiting to pounce on these small animals that walked around inside its very innards, thinking they could harness its power.

Various crewmembers stared at Paul as he walked through the halls. He was considered to be a strange child. He was an introvert, a child who would not spend his time socialising and playing with the other children. He would sit and stare out of the huge observation windows at the Runners. Sometimes it seemed as if he could see something that no one else could. That frightened most people away from him. When someone did try to speak to him he had an unnerving tendency to stare right through the person rather than at them. Soon people began to avoid him. It did not bother him at all. He appreciated the quiet.

The ObservationHall was empty. No one saw any reason to stare out at the drill, or the Runners. The planet's surface was barely visible from here; it was easier to look at the surface through the various camera equipment mounted near the drill. No one looked at the planet's surface anyway. It was a barren rock, filled with craters. There was hardly any atmosphere. There was only one reason that humans were here and that was to mine. The planet had no life but it had plenty of resources.

The SpaceHold had flown through the infinite void of space and as it had approached the lonely planet its huge mechanical arms had spread out, pincers at the ends. As the SpaceHold descended the pincers had ripped through the planet's strata. Slowly the SpaceHold had found purchase and clung to the planet's surface like a spider clinging greedily to a fly, slowly wrapping its web around the struggling insect, sucking its vitality away, until bloated and satisfied it scrambles away waiting for its next victim. The drill had been fitted into place, as large as an earth skyscraper, it slowly bored its way closer to the planet's core, allowing the human miners access to deep core minerals. The entire process took decades, but when finally over, the planet would be little more than an empty husk, and the SpaceHold would detach and make its way back to Earth.

There were countless other SpaceHolds around the universe performing the same work. Each SpaceHold was a colony, it was one large community focused on doing its job. Paul was part of this community. He had been raised in SpaceHold. He lived in Section AA12 with his mother. He did not have a father. His mother had been artificially inseminated. She had told him that his father was some brilliant professor on Earth.

On Earth. Those words were strange to him.

Paul wondered what it was like on Earth. He had never been there. He had only seen images and tri-screens of it. It looked so blue and alien to him. All he knew was the grey metallic walls of SpaceHold, the infiniteness darkness of space and the strange brownish yellow cloud of the planet's crust being obliterated by the drill. People told him that Earth was home. It confused him. SpaceHold was supposed to be home. How could someone have a home and leave it for so long? How could his home be somewhere he had never seen? He had never even breathed Earth air.

He was silently afraid of Earth. It looked too bright. There would be too much light, there were too many people; they would want to talk to him - to find out what he was thinking. He wanted the low artificial glow of the SpaceHold's bulbs, not the bright intrusive light of the earthly sun.

The crew also said that when they were finished mining the planet they would return to Earth and the SpaceHold would be turned over to another crew. That thought made Paul tremble. They would be giving his home away to other people. Other people would come into his room and change everything. He would lose everything he had ever known. He tried to imagine a world with colours and brightness but all he could think of was the feeling he got when he stared directly at a light for too long and it burned a red and blue image on his retina when he closed his eyes.

Paul stared out of the huge glazed windows of the ObservationHall. He looked out at the rising cloud of dust. He tried to imagine the outside of the SpaceHold. It was probably coated with dust. He thought about what it would feel like out there. Dust clouding everything. The world would be so personalised, not stretching beyond your immediate vision. The thought brought him comfort.

A distant light flashed inside the cloud. Paul stood up and rushed to the window. He peered intently but the light was gone.

A Runner!

Yes, it had to have been a Runner. Paul envied the Runners. He wanted to be a pilot of the light reconnaissance drones as well. They were only big enough for one man to pilot. A small-enclosed capsule, a personal universe, where only the sensors and lights kept you company. A flying observer only absorbing information, not having to give anything - a cocoon of metal, circuitry, and machine.

Paul's mother laughed whenever he told her about the Runners. He had stared in rapt fascination as she explained that the drones were supposed to be pilotless. Some of the men had decided to pull out the auto-nav systems and modified the drones to be flown manually. When Paul asked why, Theresa just smiled and said that men liked to prove things to themselves.

Paul thought about that statement. Men liked to prove things to themselves. Being a Runner was not a safe job. The drones were just big enough to fit one man. They had to fly through the huge dust cloud made by the drill looking for new veins of precious minerals like a small animal flying, scouting for prey. The Runner did have on-board sensors to calculate distances and other information but it was still dangerous and accidents happened. The pilots were treated with a kind of respect in the CommonsHall. They were a special species, different, bolder than the other crew. Most of them shrugged off the extra attention - it was their job, and some others basked in it like a cold-blooded lizard sunning itself on a rock. The more compliments they received the greedier they became.

Paul wondered what it would be like to take a Runner and just vanish into the cloud. Maybe he could disintegrate and become only a sparse few molecules floating on the thin atmosphere. He wanted to dissolve and dissipate, meld with the infinite blackness that surrounded him. He yearned to be part of something bigger, more majestic than he was, something vastly silent.

"Hey, twit!"

Paul turned around. A group of four boys stood snickering at him.

"What do you want, leave me alone."

The leader turned and laughed, "Oh, are you going to make us leave you alone? We just want to socialise!"

Paul tried to walk away but the leader grabbed him and pushed him against the glass.

"Where you going, twit?"

"Leave me alone, John, I was just going."

John stood a few inches taller than Paul and was a year his senior. He was about twice Paul's size. The other three children were Paul's age. They were the terror of SpaceHold. Even the confined and regulated community of SpaceHold had spawned discrimination and troublemakers.

The three minions laughed, granting John more confidence.

He leaned his arms against the glass, effectively trapping Paul in a cage of limb and glass. Paul squirmed, uncomfortable of the close proximity of another person. He felt like a small animal held in cupped hands - wanting to escape, light piercing through the gaps of fingers, offering unreachable hope of salvation.

"Come on twit, where you going? We just want to talk."

Paul closed his eyes; he could feel the warmth radiating from John's body. He was so close, too close. He could smell his rotten-sweet breath. He wanted to shut down his senses, but he couldn't. John stood there towering over him, his presence suffocating him, stealing all his energy. Suddenly Paul wondered if this is what the planet felt. Trying to expel this leech that had travelled countless light years. Trying to reject this parasite that was slowly killing it, unable to do anything except watch itself be gradually drained to nothingness.

"So, you fantasizing about the Runners? You want to be a hotshot one-day? You want the girlies to scream your name?"

John moved closer and began to move his crotch against Paul's leg.

Paul opened his eyes and screamed.

John stepped back and slapped him in the face. Paul hit the glass and slumped down, curled into a foetal position. John crouched over him, breathing hard.

"You little twit, better keep your mouth shut or else you might just get broken."

He stood up and walked away, his three disciples laughing.

Paul didn't move for a few minutes. He waited until the pounding sound of his heart faded and the monotone hum of the drill took its place. He opened his eyes. The walls were still grey. Everything was the same - nothing had changed, but only on the surface. Underneath the regular placid surface was tumult. He walked unsteadily to the cabin he shared with his mother. She was not there. It was her work time.

Paul ignored the plastic dinner tray she had left out for him to warm up. He went directly in his room and crawled into bed. He pulled the covers over his head. Darkness. He wanted to disappear, to become blackness - unseen, unfelt, untouched.

As he fell into sleep, his thoughts dissolved into the pervading hum of the drill.

--End of Part One--