Thing Of The Past

"I think it's glib," he said, "just glib." He had his legs dangling over the edge of the floating pad the two of them were sitting on, floating in the middle of an enormous spherical room.

"It's just a question," she told him. "What, you think reasoning we have to have a purpose is silly, or something?"

"I don't believe in purpose. I think systems just arise out of chaos. Everything only lasts so long - but the longest-lasting things have the most impact. They set the stage for what's next."

"But what starts the chaos?"

"Well, something... I don't know. That's a bigger question."

"Ugh. You didn't mention you were such a thinker."

"It's right on my profile," he told her, beaming up the screen and pointing to the word. "We both swiped right. You should have read my bio more carefully."

"I just swipe right on everyone," she said. "It's way easier. I filter the mutuals."

"Oh. So you didn't even read it?"

"Well, I read it afterward! I still agreed to meet. Be grateful."

"Okay, right... fair. But yeah, it was right there. Your fault. Uh, hang on a minute, something's going to pass through us and it's going to feel weird. It messes with our Holotrips."

An enormous cloud swept through the two. Their forms shimmered, and the diffuse screen lighting dimmed and then wicked away to an inky darkness.

"What the fuck was that?!" she asked, once the cloud passed and their voices worked again.

"Magnetic protein cluster ball thing."

"That was a... a protein? Oh my god. What scale did you set this to?"

"Femto. You know, atomic-ish."

"Wow. I never thought about doing that. It works pretty well. These are actual atoms?"

"Yeah. Well, sometimes the electromagnetics of the atoms can mess with the displays, but I think it's pretty neat. This place in particular has always fascinated me."

"What is it?"

"We're in a mammalian magnetoreceptor."

"We're in... where? Wait, really?"

"Well, to be precise, a mammal's symbiotic bacterium magnetoreceptor."

"Aren't these mostly in the flying ones?"

"No, it turns out... uh, cats had them too. That's the type we're in right now, actually. Cats and quite a few other animals. This particular mechanism went undiscovered for a long time, because the influential bacteria were in the brain stem, but decayed rapidly after death."

"Seems like you're... really into biology, and animals."

"I am. It's fascinating. Have you ever read about it?"

"I'm more interested in real science like astronomy, really."

"Everyone is. It makes sense. Life is kind of on the back-burner in the universe, but it's no different than stars and galaxies."

"No different? What do you mean?"

"Well, the universe had its bang moment, and then stars formed pretty quickly. Relatively speaking, anyway. But eventually there were planets, and some of them had, well, us. Life. It's all part of the same bag, really, stars and people. Magnetoreceptors are proof of that. We developed side-by-side."

"They're proof?" she asked him.

"That we're all part of the same thing. The planet has magnetic fields, the animals get magnetoreceptors. Animals can navigate the planet, so on and so forth, you know."

"Which is great until you leave the planet," she said, itching at her ear and tilting her head, "then you're constantly hallucinating in space because you can't tell where's where. And then we just cut them out at birth. It's routine, now."

"Funny how leaving one's home planet manifests itself on so many different levels, isn't it?"

"It is. It's almost like the new form of circumcision," she said, pausing for a moment and then quickly looking at his face.

The boy shuffled a bit on his bench seat, but said nothing, staring inconspicuously at the far darkness.

"You aren't..."

"It's a bit hot in here, isn't it?" he said, shaking the front of his shirt.

"We're holograms. Your body's in its bunk pod, in climate-controlled sleep-stasis."

"Well, yeah, I mean, it's a figure of speech, and..."

"Why aren't you?" she asked. "Were you... born an outsider?"

"Yes," he sighed. "It was a rebel colony on a far moon. We were conquered just a little while after I turned thirteen."

"You're kidding," she said. "There were only a few new rebel colonies discovered in the past few decades, and you must have been on..." her words trailed off as her screen beamed up and a list of names scrolled through.

"Meranna 12," he said, and she stopped scrolling to look at him.

"Oh my god. You were on Meranna 12? The Meranna 12? That's the most recent one!"

"Yes. Though, I lived in a fishing village on the outskirts of the capital. I only found out what was happening long after it was all over."

"Did you ever feel the Tremors?"

"We were told they were earthquakes. Plates in the moon's crust smashing together. It seemed reasonable enough."

"Oh my god. You actually felt a Meranna Tremor. That's so disturbing."

"It was a long time ago," he said.

"Only a decade or two!"

"That's a long time for me."

"But in terms of the universe..."

"Meranna is old! Oh, wait, hang on. Look over there," he said, pointing to the far end of the huge cavity they were in. "Watch that protein. It's about to collide with the wall's kinetoreceptor."

"It's almost impossible to see, it's so dark, what's the-"

A shockwave burst out from the wall. Webs of lightning and frilly lights danced along the walls of neurons and tissue, and a slow-moving wave of reflecting light and sound ebbed through the magnetoreceptor cavity fluid, eventually passing through the two of them.

"You also set the time scale," she said. "No wonder it took so long for us to finally see one collide. That was pretty neat. No supernova, but neat."

"And somewhere in the universe," he intoned, "a terran cat learned north."

"Simply fascinating. Do you know where this cat is?"

"Meranna 12's ecological facility. The one preserving all the species that were native to the surface."

"Do you go there often?"

"No, natives aren't allowed to, not corporeally anyway. Holotrips are permitted."

"Jeez. At least you can still see some of it, if you really wanted to."

"Yeah... were you always an insider?"

"Ha, 'insider,' never heard that term before, but it makes perfect sense. Yeah. I was born in a pod, live in my pod, and I'll probably die in a pod."

"On Meranna, we walked around all the time and slept on the ground. At least, my family did. Wealthier people slept in beds."

"The ground? But that's... that's so unsanitary. What's a bed?"

"It's a wooden frame with a mattress on it."

"What's a mattress? Wood? You mean trees? Weren't those some kind of lower life-form? I heard they were all murdered to make homes and things, but they burned easily. Kind of useless, if you ask me."

"Maybe we should change the topic," he said, thinking about all of the wooden shacks where he grew up.

"I guess it explains why you prefer biology to astronomy," she said. "Given your history with dirty moons."

"Yeah, I suppose."

"Did you ever interact with animals? Did you touch them?!"

"We had a cat," he said, "who would always sit on our laps. And there were a lot of animals in the village. Cows, goats, sheep. A lot of our food came from the river, so I also touched a lot of fish."

"Fish have... scales?"

"That's right."

"Didn't you cut yourself on them? Or didn't any of them try to bite you? Those are all vicious animals!"

"No, it wasn't quite like that. The animals were domesticated. They were almost like friends."

"That's lunacy! Animals can't be friends. They're just lower life forms. Food. Resources. They're meant to be farmed."

He thought about the day their cat pulled a fish from the river, and dropped it next to his sleeping mother while she was dying. It was just a little minnow, but it made his mother smile something fierce. It was something an insider probably wouldn't ever understand, he thought.

"It's hard to know what animals can and can't be when you've been stuck like a princess in a pod your whole life," he told her, and it came out a bit ruder than he'd wanted.

She was silent, but he saw something building in her expression. "Well, at least I'm not some backwards... dirty... outsider!" she blurted, opening her screen and pressing at the buttons.

Then she was gone.

"Unmatched," he said, and then immediately regretted having said anything at all. He opened his own screen, and disabled his Holotrip, fading back into his own human dreams, filled with moons and the Tremors of shaking earth.