You've got it bad, man

Arch/Eternal - Chapter Twenty-Six

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 grieves the loss of her brother, Adam, and 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.

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You’ve got it bad, man

Deek was tired.

For the moment, he was alone at a table in the common room, head down, the way he used to do during class his senior year after a night shoot. But this was different. It wasn’t sleep deprivation, it was total expenditure — no more juice. 

Since he’d woken up this “morning,” he’d done a full session of martial arts training, a complete battery of cardio and strength exercises, and then three runs through the obstacle course, which he could do in under seven minutes now. The trick was all those shortcuts — sprinting across the balance beam, climbing up the side of the box of hallways, swinging like Spiderman through the optimal route in the ropes course, and then diving deep enough into the water to find the straight shot tunnel that run underneath the meandering maze up top. Swimming underwater at top speed, it took Deek at least three full minutes to get to the pool at the base of the final platform. He’d drowned the first time. And the second. Each time, he woke up back in his room, and then they just stuck him right back in the course until he could beat his last time. When he finally managed to hold his breath the whole way, there was still that big fucking ladder to climb at top speed, while gulping down air to replenish his oxygen-starved blood. 

It had been more than a week of this, since Rita left them there. They were trapped in a hyper-gamified training regime, where the carrots were things they had taken for granted in a past life. Want to know how much time has elapsed since your arrival in Earth terms? Knock oyAyo down. Want a little clock you can check in Eastern Standard? Best your max set of calisthenics. Want to hang out with your friends and shoot the shit for half an hour? Well, why don’t you tell us what you think your next benchmark should be? 

Nothing came free. Everything had to be earned. Even sleep and meals. Especially those. 

The alien chaperones — Poe, oyAyo, aYa, Mowk — had all the cards, called all the shots, and had tuned this entire experience to motivate as much progress in as short a time as possible. Deek could imagine army generals back on Earth creaming their pants at the thought of what was possible here, with fully composable environments and micrograft-mediated augmented reality. In a week, Deek’s body was lean and taught as a wire. He could run a mile in less than three minutes. If he was holding still, he could hold his breath for six. He could climb a two hundred foot rope without using his legs, or breaking a sweat. 

None of that stopped him from hating it with his whole soul. The web of underground tunnels. The insane day-night cycles. Poe’s and oyAyo’s calm inflexibility. All his early tantrums proved was that nothing could crack the veneer of serenity those sons of a bitches carried around. 

The highlights were the co-op games. Elaborate variations of freeze tag, hide and seek, and capture the flag. For those, the room that contained the obstacle course would be entirely redesigned, sometimes with immersive virtual environments like ruined cities, jungles, or the insides of some gargantuan beast. They would all play until they literally dropped, knowing that the next “day,” they’d all be back to their own private grinds, one-on-one with their designated alien trainer. 

Just before Deek had gotten here, they’d all been doing a run through that big dumb obstacle course. The carrot: a rare opportunity to share a meal together. 

Deek lifted his head as Jackson walked into the common room.  

“Where’s Esther?” he said, taking a seat across from Deek, who shrugged. “I was sure she would finish first.” 

“She did,” Deek confirmed. “Must have made another stop on the way.”

Jackson nodded, disappointment radiating off him like a sad oven.

“Well,” Deek said, putting his hands flat on the table, “I’m gonna eat.” He’d been waiting until they were all together, but now it seemed like Esther might be a no-show.

As sour as Deek was on the tyranny of this place, there was no pretending that the food wasn’t amazing. Every time he sat down to eat (usually alone, usually here), he would simply identify some set of cravings — sour, crunchy, sweet, creamy, savory, etc — and then that, combined with biometrics supplied by his micrograft, would be synthesized into a meal that not only delivered a robustly wonderful assortment of flavors and textures, but also satisfied the exact nutritional needs of his body. It was a miracle that didn’t get old. 

Fifteen quiet minutes later, they were both finished eating, and still no Esther.

“So how are you doing?” Jackson asked, clearly trying to not seem eaten alive by Esther’s absence. As though it weren’t obvious.

Deek took a deep breath. They had had so little time to just talk to each other, that every personal interaction ended up feeling stilted and awkward. But what the hell. Throw the guy a bone.

“I’m tired,” Deek said. “Really. Fucking. Tired.”

He watched some of the tension go out of Jackson’s shoulders. “Hard to believe it’s only been a week. These cycles make me feel insane.”

A typical “day” of training went for about six Earth hours, followed by an hour or two of sleep. There was no getting used to the rhythm. They’d been told things would shift to a more familiar cadence soon, once they had completed their basic physical training. 

“It’ll be nice to go outside and see the sun,” Deek said. 

The orbital and rotation periods on Pizza Planet meant that at their latitude, the sun would be up for about eight months in Earth time, followed by more than a year of darkness. Deek hadn’t even tried to understand how that worked, but he did know it meant it would look like noon outside for the entire time they were here, even though they hadn’t actually seen it yet.

“I just really hope week two isn’t as shitty as week one.”

“It won’t be!” Esther interjected as she crossed to the table.

“What took you so long?” Deek asked, mostly on behalf of his tragic friend.

“Sorry,” Esther said. “I wanted a hot shower first. I needed one. And yes, it was amazing. You should try it if you haven’t.” She sat closer to Deek than Jackson.

“I feel like I’d just fall asleep,” Jackson said.

“Yeah, I’m amazed you made it here at all. We ate already. Sorry.”

“That’s fine,” she said, putting in her own order. “What are you guys talking about? What did I miss?”

“Not much,” Deek said. “What makes you so confident things are going to get better?”

“Well for one, I don’t think things are that bad.”

“Oh, got it.”

“No, really. Think about it — we have everything we need, including personal fitness coaches that have helped us get into better shape than probably anyone on Earth. People would kill for this,” she said, making a vague gesture at her own body. They were all wearing their skin-tight black singlets, which had become their de facto uniforms here. Jackson faked a little cough as an excuse to look the other direction. 

“You’re right,” he said. “I feel like a superhero.”

“You’re taking her side?”

“No, I’m— I mean I just—”

“I get where you’re coming from,” she said to Deek, either ignoring Jackson or saving him from his awkwardness. “It’s a brutal schedule, and these people don’t make great conversationalists.”

“These people — the aliens?”

“Obviously they’re people, Deek. Anyway, it’s short term pain for long term gain. It’s a really good deal.”

As they talked, she ate like she was late for something. 

“I guess I’m still not totally sure what all this is for,” Deek said. “Are they expecting us to have to, like, fight Confederate soldiers? Because I doubt a couple of weeks is gonna get us there.”

Esther shrugged. “Better something than nothing.”

“Maybe it’s like rehab,” Jackson said. Then, off the looks Deek and Esther gave him, he added, “Maybe being from Earth means we’re just hopelessly out of shape and unhealthy, and this is their way of getting us to normal.”

“That’s actually a pretty good hypothesis,” Esther said with her mouth full.

“Okay…” Deek said slowly. “But then what’s with all the martial arts stuff? oyAyo cracked four of my ribs the other day. None of this feels normal.”

“Who’s to say what’s normal?” Esther said as she finished her last bite, then stood up to leave.

“You have other plans?” Deek said. 

“I’m right in the middle of the history of the Fellowship on Earth,” she said. They had all found A Terran’s Guide to the Galaxy loaded into the network their micrograft gave them access to. It was a slightly more linear version of Wikipedia, written by other people from Earth who had become Fellowship citizens long before them. But the only time Deek might have had to really look into it he’d used for sleeping. 

And yet somehow Esther was finding time. Big surprise. 

“It’s pretty interesting,” Jackson said. “But there’s less there than I was hoping for.”

So was Deek the only one lazy enough to sleep during sleep time?

“Let’s compare notes when I’m through it,” she said.

Jackson straightened right up. “Yeah OK.” 

When she was gone, Deek fixed Jackson with a penetrating look until he squirmed. “You’ve got it bad, man.”

Jackson went red, and swallowed. “Is it obvious.”

“I hate to break it to you.”

Jackson pressed his forehead firmly into the heels of his hands and gave an exasperated grunt. “I feel like such an idiot. Some sad sack obsessed with a girl he barely knows, who, by the way, just lost her brother and her life’s work in one night like a week ago—”

“In fairness, it does feel like it’s been a lot longer…”

“—and who am I? Some dude. What’s the matter with me? I’m—I—I feel like a total asshole. I think about her all the time. All the time. And what possible reason could she have for thinking about me? She shouldn’t be thinking about me. It would be absurd.”

“Because you’re just some dude.”

“Yes! But I can’t— she’s—” Jackson’s mouth opened and closed in a vain attempt to satisfy a nonexistent demand for an explanation, but ultimately gave up with, “It’s hopeless.”

Deek let the silence sit there for a second, then said, “Dude. Take your foot off your neck. I get it.”

Jackson looked up at him like a lost puppy, dying of thirst for validation. 

“I mean come on. How could you not have a thing for Esther? Everyone does.”

Jackson huffed a laugh. “You too?”

“Of course! Well, sort of. It’s complicated.”

“You guys have history?”

Now it was Deek’s turn to laugh. “Definitely nothing like that. No, it’s just…I’m not really…into that stuff.” 

Jackson frowned a string of unspoken questions.

Oh well, Deek thought, why stop now?

“It all kinda freaks me out, is the thing. I tend to shut down. So, on some level, I get it, I think, but also: no fucking thanks.”

Jackson nodded, trying to understand. “So are you, uh, asexual? Sorry if that’s offensive….”

“No, I’m the one who brought it up. It’s weird. I don’t think so? Well — no. I’m not. But also, it just doesn’t seem to hit me as hard as other people. I mean it’s supposed to be overpowering, right? But it’s just not like that for me. I don’t know. And I usually don’t talk about it because I don’t know. People expect you to have super strong feelings, like right away. And maybe it’s the counterculturist inside of me, but, like, I’m an artist. Don’t tell me how the fuck to feel.”

Jackson leaned back and regarded Deek with appreciation. 

“Well then I envy you. I’m going crazy over here, and I can’t see any good way through it. I think I’d give anything to be able to turn it off.”

Deek dismissed that with a wave of his hand. “No you wouldn’t.”

“Yeah, I would!”

“No. It’s bullshit. People love being in love. Look at you. It’s keeping you going. It’s the reason you’re mostly fine with this whole stupid boot camp thing. You’re riding the wave.”

Jackson shook his head. “I’m miserable.”

“You’re ecstatic.”

“I’m losing my mind.”

“You’re in love.”

Jackson covered his face with his hands again. “I’m in love with her, Deek. I’m in love with her.”

“Good luck to you.”

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