A Grand Declaration

Arch/Eternal - Chapter Twenty-Eight

First thing, real quick…

For the newcomers: Arch/Eternal is a sprawling novel-in-progress in the genre of philosophical sci-fi. Think Dune meets Harry Potter, and maybe channeling a little Dan Simmons. It’s also an experiment in long-form serialized fiction on Substack.

For the allcomers: If you haven’t read any of the previous chapters, please abandon any feeling of obligation to catch up, and instead just start HERE, with this chapter.

That’s what the short summary below is for.

By the end, you’ll know whether you want to keep following along or not. And I promise to always include an updated summary, so you’ll never have to worry about keeping track of important details.

You can also always refer to the Table of Contents to catch up or refresh before continuing. There, you’ll find short summaries for all the chapters that have been published so far.

OK, now the summary:

Earth is a protected (read: ignorant) planet nested within a galactic community known as the Fellowship. In an effort to help Earth attain full citizenship, and to rescue its people from total self-destruction, historian/researcher and secret ambassador Rita Freeman is recruiting talented young people to build a better society.

One of these is Jackson River, who grew up with his grandmother in a tiny desert town in northern Arizona, and at 11 years old, lost his best friend after an episode of severe bullying. Another is Esther Quinn, who grew up in an idyllic home in Connecticut. When she was 11, her brother Adam was recruited by Rita to become the founder of a new movement called Cubensia. Years later, Esther moved to Boston to join him.

By some stroke of fate or fortune, Esther, Jackson, and their friend Deek are late to a Cubensian launch party that becomes ground zero of an attack that destroys an entire city block. Rita scoops up all three of them into her spaceship, and takes them through an interstellar gate buried on the dark side of the Moon to a planet called Priezh, where they will receive the Fellowship’s version of basic training.

On the way, Rita explains the galactic drama that has been playing out between the Fellowship and the Confederacy, and the Firstborn, a powerful race of beings at the head of each of them — respectively called archs and eternals. Esther is vocally suspicious of an arch named Morning who was bonded to him, and should have protected him from what Rita claims was an attack by an eternal in Boston.

After undergoing a series of torturous physical augmentations, Esther, Deek, and Jackson begin an intense training regime under the guidance (coercion?) of three non-terrestrial humans.

---

A Grand Declaration

Back when I was getting ready to leave the dry heat of Wind Valley for the green hills of Boston, I remember getting pretty stuck on a particular female pop singer who shall remain unnamed. Something about her vibe really grounded me at a time of seismic change (to mix my geological metaphors). I would listen to her albums on repeat and swear to myself that one day I’d marry her.

I’ve mentioned, I think, the hopelessness of my romanticism? 

Add to that how easy it is to fall for someone during times of chaos, and of course I was absolutely bonkers about Esther. Head-pounding, heart-slamming, brain-blowing infatuation. It got so I couldn’t even speak when she was in the room, and I thought about her all the time. I tried not to, but as any addict knows, trying hard not to think about something just means you’re thinking hard about it. 

So I did the training, and learned the things, and passed the tests, and I got stronger and faster and leaner and all the time only really worried about one thing:

How was I going to tell Esther I was in love with her?

Before you judge me, please know that I’ve judged myself plenty in the time since. Of course I know that this ravenous need to confess my feelings to the object of my obsessive desire was yet one more product of a fevered adolescent brain. 

But what am I gonna do, lie about it? That’s not what this is for. So all I can do is admit to being what I was, and what I still am, probably, deep down.

I’m someone who will always go to bat for saying the thing over not saying it. What I regret is the timing. I knew it was bad. I knew to bring it up, to say anything, to even suggest anything along the lines of what I felt for this girl would be titanically selfish.

But if there’s something that seems to be true about everyone — all of us, no matter what world we evolved on — it’s that when we want something bad enough, and long enough, we will find a way to justify trying to get it.

And I wanted Esther to know I was absolutely gone on her.

So what happened was that Poe came into the foyer of our little three-room culdesac off one of the residential tunnels, and told us Rita would be back in less than two days. 

(Earth days. However the translation technology worked also seamlessly converted units of measurement. For all we knew, Poe could have been saying she would be back in five hundred blorkniks (a word that yes I just made up), but all we heard was “two days,” because that was the closest approximation to whatever he had said, which would have been whatever made most sense to him. Listen I’m gonna stop trying to explain all this stuff and just get on with my embarrassing story.)

Two days! The three of us chattered for a minute about what that meant but since none of us had much of anything to go on, the chattering didn’t last long. And then Esther went to bed, and it was just Deek and me, which was typical.

“I have to tell her,” I said. 

“I think that’s a rotten idea,” Deek said. 

“Who asked you,” I shot back.

“You did, by bringing it up.”

“I have to,” I said again, pleading. “We don’t know what’s going to happen. Anything could happen. We might never see each other again. This could be the last chance I’ll ever have.”

“Oh my god listen to yourself.”

“Exactly. Do you think I want these words to be coming out of my mouth? Do you I want to be like this? If I don’t tell her — if I don’t say something —”

“Then future you will wake up one day after the fever breaks and want to kiss you full on the mouth and say thank you for not making a total and complete ass of yourself.”

“Or future me will hate present me forever for being a coward who let a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity just slip by.”

“What opportunity?!” Deek half-shouted.

“You know what I mean. You gotta pick your regrets.”

“This will not go well for you. It’s a dick move, literally, and you know it.”

“I really appreciate how you’ve been there for me this past week,” I said, and meant it. 

“Please do not do this.”

But I did do it. 

No, I didn’t go knock on her door right then. Instead, I spent a whole day obsessively reviewing what I would say, and how I could somehow orchestrate a minute or two alone with her. 

And then it was the last day. Rita would supposedly be there to pick us up in the morning. To go where? We didn’t know. To do what? Even less. But our time on Priezh was coming to an end. 

I had resolved that I could not leave this place without making a grand declaration. I was drunk with the idea. I could barely see straight as I wandered the halls, haunting the places I thought maybe Esther might be, hoping to just casually bump into her. 

When that kept not happening, I sent her a message:

Hey, can I talk to you real quick about something?

Which only took me an average of three minutes per word to compose.

Now, you might be thinking that she would get a little notification, like you would if you get a text or something. But that’s not how things work according to the Fellowship norms that had by that point been thoroughly drilled into us. They have a massive cultural respect for human attention, which means that for non-urgent messages, you have to deliberately go check an inbox.

What qualifies as urgent? Anything that is unequivocally vital and extremely time sensitive — think life-or-death. Triggering a notification for something that doesn’t qualify as actually urgent is considered absolutely outside the boundaries of socially acceptable behavior. 

So after I sent the message, all I could do was check my own inbox over and over to see if she had read and responded. This was also bad behavior, but at least it was privately bad.

After a while, I despaired of either getting a response, or “accidentally” crossing her path, which left me with only one other option if I wanted to make this happen before the day ran out and the golden window of opportunity closed to me forever. 

There was only one way to get someone’s attention from a distance for something non-urgent. You had to see them in person.

I called up a wayfinder. 

Unless Esther had indicated she did not want to be found, anyone in her network (currently that would be literally everyone on the planet — all seven of us) could get a virtual path lit up to her location. 

Doing this would generate an alert in her periphery, to let her know I was coming, and approximately how far away I was. I won’t belabor the philosophical justification for all of this anymore — suffice it to say that calling up an actual path to Esther effectively shattered any pretense of a casual encounter I had hoped to construct. 

Because now she’d likely go check her inbox to see if I had messaged her in advance, which of course I had, and this was all basically the opposite of what I had been hoping for.

But there was no turning back. I had set myself on the path. To turn back now would spell the death of my soul. (Plus, there are other social norms about false alerts — i.e. not actually showing up after you call up a personal wayfinder to someone.)

I followed the virtual line deep into the silo. As I rounded a wall of gnarled, budding shrubs, I saw aYa stand up from where she had been crouching next to Esther to give me a quick and inscrutable glance before excusing herself from our company.

Oh great just great, I inwardly despaired. The only way this could be more awkward is if I was actually naked.

“What’s up, Jackson?” she said without turning around. She was examining beautiful little flowers sprayed across a patch of short grass hidden in a hollow, away from the brighter lights behind me.

“I —” 

Immediately I had to clear my throat.

She stood up and wiped her hands on her thighs. “Saw your message,” she said, turning to me. 

That face. Those eyes. That knowing half-smile. 

The way her hair hung down to her chin in that light-brown tangle.  

“I uh…”

There was a tremor in my voice but what the hell. I swallowed and soldiered on.

“I have to tell you this before…before I don’t. Before, you know, whatever. Who knows?” I laughed like I’d just told a joke. 

“Tell me what,” she said. 

“I really, uh—“ I swallowed again, involuntarily. “Well, I was going to say—I really like you. But the truth is, I think I might be in love with you, which sounds really trite and really stupid as I hear myself say it, but wow, now I’ve said it, and just like that—you heard me say it. So, um...” 

I actually closed my eyes. I couldn’t look at her. My heart was pounding on my insides like it was furious with me. I kept talking.

“I don’t—need anything, by the way. It’s just that if I didn’t say it, I think it would have twisted me up inside—well, it was already twisting me up inside, which is why—“ Another involuntary swallow. “Which is why I said it. Because I needed you to know. Which is selfish, I realize. I realize I’m contradicting myself, saying I don’t need anything and then I’m saying I need you to know.”

I covered my face, astonished yet again at how quickly all my preparation had evaporated under the white hot gaze of Esther Quinn. 

“Jackson—” she started, but then stopped herself. I was pretty sure I knew the rest.

Jackson…that’s, uh, sweet of you? But come on. We barely know each other. Besides, maybe consider the circumstances? And also, if you remember, my whole world blew up a couple of weeks ago. So…yeah.

“Yeah,” I answered. “I’m sorry. This was a dick move. I’m gonna leave you alone. Except maybe one big favor could you just like pretend this didn’t happen? People do dumb things, right? This was a dumb thing. It’s all good. I mean, I’m sorry. Anyway, okay, see ya later!”

And then it was all I could do to keep from flat out running, right out of the silo and all the way back to my room, where I closed the door and yelled until I was hoarse. A whole fireworks show was going off inside of me. It was this combination of blitzed out joy and total mortification. I thought maybe that had been the worst decision of my life, that I had just wrecked any vestige of self-respect I might have ever had, and embarrassed myself totally beyond repair with Esther. 

But also, her face. Those eyes. 

Now she knew. 

I was ten pounds of emotion in a five pound bag. I was coming apart at the seams. I was boiling to death in my own extremity. 

And then, eventually, a quiet clarity. Wrung out, sprawled on the oval-shaped bed on the floor, I contemplate my absurd existence. 

I missed home. Nali. The desert.

Under a holographic image of the night sky as it would look over Wind Valley, I finally fell asleep.

Several hours later, piercing alarms blasted me awake, and my room was locked tight.

Despite all the training, I was woefully unprepared for what was coming.

We all were.

---

Some business:

Please be so kind as to slap the heart on your way out.

Also, if you’re reading this on the app, or on the website, you can use the “Next” and “Previous” buttons below (underneath the like/comment/share buttons) to navigate through the chapters.

Lastly and always…