🚀 Fifth Crossing

🚀 Fifth Crossing

by Steven Mathes

I drive a starship. My fuel is passion. As a pilot, I must behold the universe, which by definition is complete. By Gödel's proof, completeness cannot be logically consistent. This implies that the pilot must live with "undecidable propositions," which, let’s face it, means contradiction. Faster-than-light travel is paradoxical, but in this complete and contradictory universe, it is transcendently possible. It is dependent upon the pilot's capacity for metaphor. I am Captain Riu, somewhat more than metaphorically. At least I hope. 

Maybe hope is required, but I am unsure about that.

My computer tells me: "Five hours to arrival." 

Computers do significant things, but computers never contradict themselves without flagging an error. You have to be humanly intuitive to be a pilot. My arrogant computer loves to estimate arrival time, while not even knowing how to navigate a transcendent path. The silly, narrow metaphor created by quantum computation only goes so far. I prefer my own silly, slippery, moonbeam metaphors.

We journey down two routes simultaneously, so that we can cut through the guts of reality. I am the pilot, the guide down both. One of my metaphoric ways floats along the thoughts of twilight sleep. The other way slogs through a deep pain, where I wander lost in a forest. I remember believing this job would build my character. I remember believing strength of character was a talent. Now, I would settle for whatever gets me by.  Even a little bit of painful personality. 

The truth of pain generates my power. Forests are always a gateway to elsewhere, if you are lost enough. I need that lost-in-a-forest feeling, but I also need my drug-induced twilight awareness of pain. Asleep, but paradoxically not asleep in this dreamy universe. 

My metaphorical forest... I glance to my right and see a hill. I know I have not seen that hill before, even though these are just like my woods, the woods of my home, behind my little white house in Maine, back on Earth. If I go up that hill, I will cross over... into... It almost feels like I’m dreaming... 

I cannot afford to dream! Dreamers go nowhere, at least in an interstellar sense.

I must grind along, half in my woods and half on the bridge of my ship. My wandering must balance. If I slip, if I fall into a single path, my passengers, my responsibility, will become lost between realities, wandering from gateway to gateway until we all starve. I must, I WILL (!) believe in the reality of my dream. I must go up that hill. I must believe in my mind that guides our impossibility. Two states of consciousness diverge in the woods, and I choose both ways. I will stretch to get us there. 

There are wily coy-wolves in this forest. The big ones are mostly wolf, but all are coyote-tricky. 

Amy is with me, but I cannot tell if she is real, or just a dreamy thought. I perceive my old friend three different ways. Through my dreams. Through my eyes. Through my spidery brain implant. The implant translates thoughts into navigation. I navigate through metaphor, although all thought is metaphor, thus all reality is metaphor. Three bits of nonsense – unreal, right? I see Amy walking with me in these fantasy woods, I feel her hand on my arm, but is Amy actually on-board my ship? 

"If you're real, come with me up this hill," I say. "Let's see if we can find Tau Ceti." 

"There's something dangerous up there," says Amy. "With fangs." 

"Dangerous? At Tau Ceti?" 

The beech trees blister with bark disease. Blackberry thorns catch my pants. I trudge through soggy, slippery, fallen leaves. I trudge upward, noisy, turning here and there, while the spider in my brain makes lights flash on the ship's console. I need to be aware of my console. If I drift too close to a dream, the hill gets steeper, so I take a tiny taste of stim. 

Says my computer: "Five hours until—" 

"Something deadly," Amy says. "Something that devours. Deadly teeth." 

Living things must devour other living things to survive. This is universal, because the universe is alive. Life must commit the sacrilege of killing to remain sacred. This inevitability can be a bother for those devoured, as well as for those who insist on logic. Not every starship makes it to Tau Ceti, especially the ones where the pilot falls asleep and gets lost, or wakes up and kills everyone in the gravitational tides. The secret is to embrace impossibility.

Just now, my woods have become more fantasy, less dream, less convincing. I can choose, so I choose to steer the ship toward the wily coyotes. But I need Amy's protection. 

"I need your love-hate relationship with our job," I say. 

"Very funny," Amy says. "I'm just here to provide supernatural aid. You need a guide. You need Nedrick." 

"Is Nedrick handy?" I say. 

"Is that a joke?" says Nedrick. 

He walks at my other side.

"Don't I need a projector, I mean protector?" I say. 

"I guide. I don't project, or protect." Nedrick says. "Those last two are your job." 

"Well, guide me past the danger," I say. 

"That would be like protection, but then again I am a guide," Nedrick says. "But then again that kind of guiding would be protection. Who has what job?" 

"Being devoured involves all three of us," says Amy. "Look." 

Feral eyes glow down at us, at me, from the dusky heights. Their pain hits me: difficulty breathing, feeling crushed, having trouble taking the next step. I gasp as I struggle, climb, slog. I see blood-sucking ticks clinging to my legs, and feel the bites of black flies and mosquitoes. The feral eyes add that to my dream. They do it just by looking at me. I need to stay awake. 

"Don't relax. But keep dreaming," Nedrick says. 

"Pain that isn't real still hurts," I say. 

"Pain is unique. Even imagined pain is always real," says Amy. "Don't fall asleep."

"Like you two," I say. "The horns of my dilemma, I steer with imaginary horns."

"We're real!" they say. "Otherwise you'd be mixing metaphors. Keep your eyes on those coyotes."

As we get closer to the summit, their feral golden eyes stretch me taller and taller. One of my knees pops out of joint, my kneecap sliding to the side. I fall, clutching it. I can stand after I pop it back. I nearly pass out from pain, which would put me in deep sleep, which would mean losing my passengers, and me. 

I must not sleep. I take another shot of stim, but buffer it with a downie. As the glowing eyes stretch me even taller, I throw up. Blood clots come out with the vomitus. Tiny trailing wintergreen growing underfoot reaches, the little leaves opening and closing like mouths, devouring the mess. I must move on, move upward out of this dream.

My bones crackle, especially my neck, spine, and determination – the tides of gravity having many meanings here. Tendons stretch and vibrate like music, a minor triad. The first one goes with a snap, in my lower back. The coyote eyes glow bright, repulsive, sucking in the surrounding light, stretching me in a drowning riptide. 

"Straight ahead," says Nedrick. "Sometimes you have to be reckless to be prudent." 

"I remember this part," I say. "I've had this dream before. But I have to be careful about memories." 

"Obviously not," says Amy. 

"This is the tricky part," says Nedrick. "Each crossing is unique. You can thread between those eyes or you can get torn apart by the tides." 

His discouraging encouragement makes me disassemble. More tendons snap. My joints unhinge, my feet and hands go numb. Walking without nerves proves impossible, but I force my mud-numb feet to slog. It feels like climbing Everest without oxygen. I balance over my sloppy, scraping joints, and they slip apart anyway. 

The computer says: "Five hours—" 

"To the danger," says Amy.  

"Just climb to the danger," says Nedrick. 

My breathless death-rattles stop, plugged, after parts from inside me, my very guts, burst out and clog my mouth. I pray I’m not dreaming, and on the faith I am, I try another shot of stim. Oops, then I realize just thinking of stim means I am not completely dreaming, unless there is stim in my dreams. Another shot of downie, and maybe I won’t wake up.

Darkness drops around me completely again, except for a single pair of glowing eyes at the top of the hill. I put foot after muddy foot forward. Sometimes I slide back in the leafy muck. Whenever I fall, I claw it and it oozes between my fingers. My mouth gnaws around that lump of my own guts, but no breath comes, and suffocation clouds my vision. I must have died a long time ago but I still live. Paradoxically, I still walk. 

The computer calls out: "Five—" 

"Mere steps to the top," says Amy. 

Mere? Or more? The screaming in my head from starting to faint makes it hard to hear. 

"Aim between the eyes," says Nedrick. "Stay with us." 

Giving up would bring a relief so pure, the relief of failure, of death, the final accomplishment.

A coyote head as big as a house blocks the way. Its breath smells of maggots. Its fangs drip pink juice threaded with gray mucous. Its amber eyes flash, first the left, then the right, back and forth, like a warning beacon, like my console dumping core because we are past all logic. I step on sloppy, bleeding knee joints, losing count... How many steps? I step and try to forget the jolts of pain. Left, right, toward that open maw. The one true way. 

But my legs refuse. Refusal is permission, permission to fail.

I give up. Let me fail. I fall forward between the eyes of my coyote, but I fall into nothing, into the vacuum of relief. I do it with purpose, now knowing I made it. People all around cheer as I tumble in a floating slow motion. Amy and Nedrick encourage me, but also scream in fear for me. Others hurry, doctors pounding me with stim and downie, pounding my chest until my heart starts back up. 

But then all are laughing in relief. The pain of my frame being pulled back into joint pulls me clear out. They talk about my fifth crossing, nobody ever did five before. It’s all in the mind, the one true engine. 

When you are at the threshold of death, you look down on yourself. The out-of-body thing is real, and I live on two paths. I did not choose this hideous vantage, looking down at my bloodless, cold body, buried in technology, immobilized by shackles, I mean restraints, welded to the hull for the ship's mobility. I like exploration, but I did not choose homesickness, slavery. 

An odd paradox: not of the living dead, but of the dead still living. There is a distinction. A ghost tethered loosely to a body by restraints. Logic tells me I must do one more crossing to get to my home. I must get past the pain to arrive at the even number that makes a round trip. Then I can die, give up, be a real ghost, without a body. Or at least retire. 

Doing the impossible: a contradiction, a paradox. Down there, the computer feeds my brain colorless chemicals, knits my synapses back together, logically, here, now, at Tau Ceti. Amy waves a cynical kiss at me. Her restraints allow hand motion. Nedrick weeps with relief, having survived the metaphor. I have not killed. I have not killed anyone, not even myself, but I am a long way from Maine, as long as forever.

I awake completely, painfully, into restrained freedom.

Says the computer: "Now landing. You have arrived!"