Arch/Eternal - Chapter Thirteen

Rita's ship

Skip this part if you’re caught up!

This is Arch/Eternal, a sprawling novel-in-progress in the genre of philosophical sci-fi. Think Dune meets Harry Potter, and maybe channeling a little bit of Dan Simmons.

If you’d prefer to start from the beginning, here’s the Prologue.

And if you want to follow along with the world-building behind the story, take a look at the companion series shamelessly titled A Terran’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Finally, here’s a short summary of what’s happened up to this point, to save you from having to click on a bunch of links to figure out what the hell is going on:

Earth is a protected (read: ignorant) planet nested within a galactic society known as the Fellowship. Historian/researcher Rita Freeman is a secret ambassador of this society, who spends a lot of her time on other worlds. In an effort to help Earth become a full citizen planet of the Fellowship, and to rescue its people from total self-destruction, she is on a mission to recruit and guide talented young people to build a better society.

One of these is Jackson River, who grew up with his grandmother in Wind Valley, a tiny desert town lodged deep inside a northern Arizona reservation. His family history is tragic, and when he was 11, he also lost his best friend, Andre, after an episode of severe bullying. Shortly thereafter, he met Rita, who became a mentor.

Another is Esther Quinn, who grew up in an idyllic home in Connecticut. Both her parents are professors, and her older brother, Adam, is an impossibly gifted genius. When Esther was 11, Adam was recruited by Rita to become the founder of a new movement called Cubensia. Years later, Esther moved to Boston to join him.

In the previous chapter, Jackson, Esther, and Deek head to a Cubensian launch party, only to discover that the entire city block has been destroyed. Esther leads a desperate and futile search for her brother and their friends, before the three of them realize the Cubists themselves might have been the target, and decide the safest thing for them to do is regroup back at Jackson’s dorm.

When they get there, they find Rita waiting for them on the roof with a spaceship…

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Rita’s Ship

Before we could find our way through our collective shock to ask any questions, Callan shuffled us onto the platform with Rita, and then stepped back as it started to rise again.

“Please do your best to stay alive,” she said. 

“Yes ma’am,” said Callan.

Then we were inside. 

How can I describe that moment? Surreal, like a dream. Over the course of seven years, I had managed to completely convince myself that I hadn’t seen Rita invite Nali into some kind of space ship that night. But now here I was. 

And, weirdly, it looked a lot like her office: a well-appointed lounge, with leather couches, low tables, and bookshelves filled with actual books. The interior was oblong, flat on both ends, a gently domed ceiling filled with a deep holographic mural of the Milky Way, the one frankly stunning feature in the place. 

The three of us stood mute and blinking, until Rita put her hands on Esther’s shoulders. 

“What’s going on,” Esther asked, sounding small and unsteady.

“I’m sorry.” 

“No,” Esther insisted, with half a shake of her head, like she could stave off the meaning behind those words.

Rita pulled her in and put her arms around her. “I’m so sorry.” 

“No.” This time it was a plea. 

Rita tightened her embrace, and Esther choked out the strangled first notes of grief as the truth crashed in. 

Adam was dead. 

Her brother, and everyone else. 

Getting lifted up into Rita’s ship had surely rekindled a hope that things were not what they seemed. That maybe Adam and the rest were somewhere else, were somewhere close, were behind that door…

But no. Gently, firmly, Rita had confirmed the horrific truth. 

And now whatever agony Esther had been holding back as we searched the wreckage of that city block, and then trudged two miles through the cold rain, released itself in a long, helpless wail in Rita’s arms. 

Deek and I kept our eyes on the floor. Deek with his own shock of grief, and me with a bewildered sense of being very much on the outside of this tragedy. 

Esther pulled away suddenly. “What happened,” she demanded. “You have to tell me what happened.”

“I will tell you what I can. But first, the three of you should get warmed and dried. We have some time.”

Tucked away behind a panel was a small bathroom. I went first, eager to let the other three alone, even just for a few minutes. 

Inside, I stripped out of my clothes, and followed Rita’s instructions to set them inside a hamper-like compartment. There were two bowls partly filled with water — one at about the right height to be a sink, the other ringed with a seat, but lower than the toilettes to which I was accustomed. Not that that stopped me from using it. Then I stepped into the cylindrical shower stall, and became completely enveloped in hot water and steam. I’m not exaggerating when I say it was the best shower I’d ever had. Just a few minutes warmed me to the bone. Then the water shut off, and the steam was replaced with hot air blasting from every angle until I was completely dry. When I opened the hamper, I discovered that my clothes had also been dried. The whole thing took less than ten minutes. 

Esther went in after me, eyes ringed red and puffy with rage and grief. I gave her a wide berth as we passed each other.

Deek was rubbing his nose and staring at the floor. As I took a seat next to him, Rita asked me how my first month at MIT had gone. It seemed an absurd question, given the circumstances, but I didn’t want to be impolite. And talking about my efforts to make friends with my roommates, and attending my singles’ ward for the first time, turned out to be an effective distraction, and loosened me even better than the hot shower had.

When Esther came out, Deek went in, but she didn’t want to wait any longer.

“Tell me what happened,” she demanded.

“Let’s wait for Deepali.”

“We can fill him in.”

“We will wait.” Rita’s voice was very soft.

“No!” Esther hissed. “Tell me what you know, everything. Start with what happened tonight. Start there. Or I swear to god I’ll set this place on fire.”

She radiated crackling fury, and I silently pledged never to stand on the other side of a conflict from Esther Quinn. 

But if anyone could withstand the force of that glare without withering into total compliance, it was Rita. The surface tension of her calm remained unbroken. Full of sympathy and patience, she accepted all the fissile energy, and kept letting one moment stack on another. 

This went on for whole, horrible minutes. This is not my fight, I thought. I shouldn’t be here. Part of me truly feared Esther would make good on her threat, and find something to burn. And I couldn’t see an exit. 

By the time Deek finally came out of the bathroom, the tension had become so fierce I thought the room might just catch fire on its own. When Rita spoke, I almost laughed out loud with relief.

“Jackson,” Rita said. “I assume by now you’ve been told something of the Cubensian project?”

I nodded. “A little bit.”

“You should know” — she was facing me, but it was clear she was addressing all of us — “that it will continue. That it must continue. With or without us.”

I nodded again, not really understanding, and certainly having no idea what to say.

“When we discovered the three of you were still alive,” Rita began, “I sent Callan to go find you and bring you to me as quickly as possible.”

“Why weren’t you there?” Esther asked. An accusation.

Rita ignored it. “Callan feared that an active connection with one of your phones would put you at risk, so he instead triangulated your position and started calling the phones of people nearby.”

The woman who had chased us near Harvard Bridge…

“When that didn’t work, he guessed where you were headed.”

“Wait,” Deek said. “What was the risk?”

“We believe that the Cubensian gathering was targeted by enemies of the Fellowship.” She shared a look with Esther, who’s hard glare didn’t flinch. “Of the three of you, only Esther has heard anything about the galactic organization with which Adam and I are associated.” 

“Galactic organization,” Deek repeated. I couldn’t have spoken if I wanted to. 

Rita gave a wave of her hand, and the hologram of the Milky Way above us descended and shrank so that it floated in the middle of the room.

“Oh my god,” Deek said.

Bright blue lines sprouted from a single point near the center, then spiderwebbed out almost to the edge, carving out a vaguely wedge-shaped “blue zone” in the fat disc of the galaxy. 

“That’s the Fellowship.”

Rita got up and approached a long counter to the side, pulling out familiar culinary tools as she continued. 

“Few people on Earth have any knowledge of this, and that’s on purpose. Cultures need time to mature, and they need literal and figurative space to do it. And so, on many worlds like yours, the Fellowship watches, and waits. When a world’s people are ready, they are invited to join. But until then, worlds like Earth are protected.”

“Protected from what?” Deek asked.

Rita swept diced vegetables into a pan, then set the knife down and made another quick gesture toward the hologram. A second spiderweb branched out from the same point in the center, red this time, in contrast with the blue. The zone it carved out was visibly larger, and somehow denser, than the blue. 

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

“It looks like we’re on the losing team,” Esther said.

“It is an ancient and eternal conflict,” Rita said. “Between liberty and tyranny, the rivers and tributaries of history lead toward and away from each and the other. In every era, among every people, the cloud of tyranny threatens to snuff out the lights of liberty.”

“But it never wins,” I offered.

“You know better than that.” Rita sounded disappointed. 

“It wins all the time,” Esther said.

“For every world that joins the Fellowship, or comes under its protection, our enemies take twice, perhaps three times as many. But we persist. We fight them how we can.”

“Who are they?” Deek asked.

“We call them the Confederacy of Galactic Preservation, a rough translation of what they call themselves. Language, you understand, is not universal. The words we use, the names we give the people, places, and things that have nothing to do with Earth — they are approximations.”

“Well OK so who came up with the translation?” Deek said.

“I did,” said Rita. “They seek to impose eternal stasis on the galaxy. No more entropy. No more chaos. Their operating philosophy, so far as we’ve been able to parse it, is as grand as it is convoluted. I’ve come to prefer Callan’s characterization.”

“What’s that?” Having spent some time with Callan, I might have been able to guess.

Rita paused and looked up for a moment, then went back to what she was doing. “Supremacist utopian hogshit.” 

“So…they’re racist?” I felt dumb for asking. 

Rita tilted her head from side to side. “Both the Fellowship and the Confederacy were founded by the same race. We call them The Firstborn. Those that govern the Fellowship, we call archs. The Feds call theirs eternals. Both archs and eternals are very, very powerful.”

“Powerful enough to destroy a city block.” Esther hypothesized.

“It would be trivial for them,” Rita explained. “Like stepping on a beetle. But there are unique energy signatures associated with Firstborn actions.”

“So it could have been either,” Esther said. “An arch or an eternal.”

“An arch would never do this,” Rita said. “It’s an intervention that runs directly counter to their fundamental ideology.”

“Right, because no one has ever blown people up for the sake of a fundamental ideology.”

Rita paused and met Esther’s eyes. “We don’t know what happened, but trust me when I tell you Morning would never have done this.”

“Who’s Morning?” Deek asked. “One of the archs?” It was a relief to know I wasn’t the only one struggling to keep up.

“One that was bonded to my brother,” Esther said, still staring at Rita. “To protect him.”

“There are many things we don’t know,” Rita said.

“Like where the fuck was the all-powerful arch that was supposed to stop something like this from happening? Which reminds me — Deek found Adam’s astral lock in the glove box of our car.”

“Wait, what?” Deek said.

For the first time since we’d gotten there, Rita looked surprised. 

“Seems strange, doesn’t it?” Esther goaded.

“Are you sure?”

“Maybe Adam knew something about Morning you didn’t.”

Rita shook her head. “He knew plenty about Morning that I didn’t. And vice versa. That’s the nature of the bond they shared.”

“Through the astral lock. That he left in the car.”

“It is strange that he didn’t have it with him,” Rita conceded, “but Adam and Morning would have been connected with or without it.”

“Well, can’t we just ask?” Deek looked like a puppy afraid of getting hit. Like how I imagined myself looking. “Morning, I mean?”

“I don’t know where he is,” Rita said. “I haven’t been able to make contact.”

Esther glared at Rita with grim satisfaction. 

As little as I understood of the particulars, it was easy enough to see what was happening. Esther was rabid with grief, tearing the place apart looking for someone to crucify. Rita wasn’t a good option, for plenty of reasons, both logical and emotional. But then here’s this arch named Morning, a being not only powerful enough to have committed the crime, but also mysteriously missing. And, if I followed correctly, somehow derelict in his responsibilities. 

“Would the astral lock help us track him down?” Esther asked. 

“It might,” Rita. “If he’s still alive.”

“Well then what are we waiting for? This thing can fly, can’t it? Let’s go get the damn thing.”

“We are going to go somewhere safe—“

“No!” Esther shouted, standing up.

“And then we will determine how best to proceed.”

“No, fuck that, I’m not running away. You can let me off right this goddamn second if—“

Rita waved her hand, and the holographic Milky Way expanded outward in a bright flash that blinked away the roof, the walls, and the floor. 

With a great, collective gasp, all three of us flailed and grasped the couches. Below us was an expanse of dark Earth, dusted with city lights in one direction, and great oceans in the other. Above, the Moon shone fiercely. 

Somehow I was the first to get back a scrap of my voice — “Is this real?”

“When you can’t fight,” Rita said, “you run. And you keep running until you can fight.”

“This is real,” Deek said, shaking. “This is real.”

Still white knuckling fistfulls of upholstery, Esther shot another hard look at Rita. “What about everyone else? There are nine billion people down there on that so-called protected planet. Is this thing, this arch, or eternal, or whatever it is just gonna keep blowing up cities and killing people?”

“We hope not,” Rita said.

“You hope.”

“Yes.”

“Great strategy.” Her sarcasm could have cut through steel.

“Every action we have taken,” Rita said softly, “has been on behalf of the people of Earth. That will not change. Regardless of what happened to Morning, we have a plan. And I will do my best to explain it to you. But first, we will eat.”

Rita removed a steaming pan from a hidden heat source and dished its contents onto four plates. She carried them confidently across the totally transparent floor, and then set them onto a great, polished table carved from the truck of some enormous tree.

Whatever display tech had made the floor invisible was terribly convincing. It took us a few tense moments to find the courage to trust that we could let go of the couches and stand on it without careening into space. But eventually we made our way over and joined her.

For a while, we ate in silence, which allowed the phenomenon of my own experience to bloom like a flower in the dim light. As an outsider, the heaviness of their sorrow, the poignancy of their grief, was palpable enough that I envied it. An intoxicating mixture of guilt and longing, an unquenchable desperation to belong, transformed my familiar baseline of loneliness into something new, and piercing. 

Even now, as I write this, I feel a pang of shame that I am the wrong person to relate all this.

But we don’t get to choose our perspective, do we?

For me, that quiet meal was surreal and magical. In the presence of these people, in the inarticulable strangeness of that circumstance, I moved through the fourth dimension of time in a state of hyper-presence, and subtle euphoria. More than once, I swallowed back tears as moments of almost unbearable sweetness melted together.

Beneath our feet, under a floor made transparent to our eyes, Earth sank away, smaller and smaller, as the Moon grew large above us. 

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