Dark Beyond the Stars Read online

  What are you working on now?

  I'm writing another short story, set on a space station. It’s mischievous and funny. That's for an upcoming anthology that you'll hear about. I also have a story based in Hugh Howey’s world of Sand that is all finished except for the ending. I’m also nearly done writing a story set in Rysa Walker’s CHRONOS world, which should be released in the next couple of months.

  Upcoming projects include a trilogy called Rocks, about a dystopian future where the world is run by women, and girls from the wealthiest families bid on young men for breeding purposes. Another planned series is going to follow a Star Trek-type ship where the main character solves crimes that occur as the crew zips around the galaxies. The working title is Star Counselor.

  And of course there’s this anthology, for which I’m the Series Editor. The next collection in the Beyond the Stars series is scheduled for release in November. Wait till you read the stories in that one!

  I have more ideas than I have time for—which is a great problem for a writer to have.

  The Event

  by Autumn Kalquist

  There is no escape.

  The dark corridor extends in a straight line that goes on forever. Low lights cast a bluish glow on the one thousand doors that run the length of it. When I’m awake, the memories behind each door take over my mind and body. They all belong to me… yet they don’t. They’re stolen.

  I’m at Door #1 now, but I refuse to enter. I sprint hard so it can’t take me, sweat dripping down my back even in the chill air. Minutes pass… or hours. I can never tell; the corridor doesn’t end.

  My muscles finally seize, and I collapse to the floor. A single glance tells me what I already know, and my eyes burn with failure. I’m back at the beginning.

  #1.

  Wind sweeps through the corridor, and I struggle to my feet, shut my eyes tight, and brace myself against the wall.

  The scent of ozone on the air before a storm. The caustic burn in my veins of a liquid meant to both heal and destroy. The gamey taste of an animal caught and killed by my own hand. The feeling of blood on my palms after trying to save a human life but failing. The sweet, warm scent of a newborn’s scalp—and that unyielding pressure that comes from knowing I’m responsible for my child’s survival.

  I have lived all of this, have never lived any of it. These people are part of me, but aren’t me. I’m them, yet separate. I have to fight it. I have to stay the Observer.

  Door #1 slides open. The gale pulls at me. I grasp the edge of the door, but the rushing wind pries my fingers loose and sucks me inside.

  Whirlwind. Blurred vision. Flashing lights. Deep chanting.

  I can sense my sisters accepting these memories as their own even now. So how come all I see are lies? And if these memories are a lie, what is the truth?

  “Truth is not black and white,” Mother says, her voice soothing. “Truth is weighed and filtered—understood through the experience of the person who discovers it.”

  My vision clears, and I try to step back, to stay the Observer, to not play along. Because each new memory erodes who I really am—whoever that is.

  “You are Zenith.” Mother stands before me, wearing the blue robes of a devout woman. “And you have a purpose. You must let go and immerse.”

  “I don’t want to do this!”

  Escape. I take off down the nearest alleyway. My bare feet scrape against cobblestone, and I fly by ancient buildings that stood before the Event. A white dome rises in the distance where tens of thousands gather, waiting to see his holy face, to touch his hands and feel his blessing. Rome.

  Mother follows me, effortlessly keeping pace. Sweat pours into my eyes, and I’m breathing so hard it seems my heart might explode. I whirl on her, tired of running. I can never get away.

  The faithful raise their arms as the man emerges from his high balcony and addresses them. A storm moves through the air above, charging the gathering with electric anticipation. Thunder rolls in the distance, but no one runs for cover. They came to see him; they won’t leave now.

  A woman beside me cries and crosses herself, lifts a rosary to her lips and kisses it. I glimpse the transmitter embedded in the nape of her neck: a thin, silicone square just beneath the surface of her skin. Her name was Maria—I’ve seen every moment of her entire life before.

  The intensity of her faith rushes through me and sends me to my knees. Tears leak from my eyes, and the world expands before me as I feel connected to something larger than myself, something greater. I want to be one with it. I am one with it.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Mother whispers.

  “No,” I say through gritted teeth, but the words spill from Maria’s mouth. “It’s just the chemicals in her brain. A trick of biology.”

  “What if the presence of the chemicals is evidence? A physical manifestation of Maria’s truth?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Do you know what they’ve done in the name of their truth?”

  “Maria fed the hungry,” Mother says. “She tended the sick, forgave those who wronged her, and lived her life by a moral code.”

  “Her kind also murdered anyone who didn’t agree with them and raped the Earth because they thought they owned it. And others with strong beliefs like hers used their ‘truth’ to justify war.”

  I close my eyes and push against Maria’s mind, trying to escape. When I open my eyes the scene wavers, and I’m outside Maria again, watching her pray.

  “Let me out,” I say, backing away from Mother.

  She offers me a small smile, and anger rips through me. If Mother’s going to force me to suffer, she can suffer with me. I grab her hand and focus on where I want to take her.

  Maria and Rome fade away, revealing the relentless dark corridor once more. I’m outside 243 now, exactly where I want to be. I tap the door, and it sucks us inside.

  Sterile metal, blinding white, caustic antiseptic and the weight of suffocating grief.

  White walls surround us. Mother’s wearing a white lab coat now, playing pretend like always, and though I’m dreading what comes next, I want her to feel this prison.

  Across from us, a woman in an identical white coat bends over a microscope. Her name is Laura, and I remember every second of her life, starting with the day she received her transmitter as an undergraduate in college.

  She slams her fist into the table and backs away. Her pain acts like a magnetic force, ripping me from myself and melding me with her.

  I walk to the other room to see him again. Jacob’s lying in the bed, so still and small. Tears well in my eyes as I lean down to kiss his smooth forehead, to inhale his scent. Grief chokes me, rends me from the inside, splits me in half.

  I sink down on the bed, memorizing the lines of his sleeping face, doing my best to quiet my sobs so I don’t wake him.

  My son is going to die.

  The part of me that’s me, Zenith, fights back and scrambles for the surface.

  I’m standing beside Mother again, heaving over the waxed tile floor. Mother isn’t responding like I hoped. She just stands there, her eyes focused on Laura and her son. My anguish transitions to hate, mirroring Laura’s emotions.

  “You can’t experience life without death,” Mother says softly. “Or joy without pain. Or love without hate. You’re feeling hate right now, because of how deeply she loves.”

  I’d rather feel nothing at all.

  “It’s her own fault.” I force myself to stand. “The company Laura works for dumped chemicals in the water near her house. To save money.” My voice cracks. “And then they did worse. They caused the Event. They don’t care about life, or joy, or love. And the child was innocent, but if he’d had the chance to grow up, he would have become just like them. Selfish. Destructive. Certain of the rightness of his own path while his choices destroyed the lives of others.”

  Mother takes my hand and forcefully tears me away from that place, from the gaping wound Laura will carry from the moment her son pas
ses away until the moment she dies.

  We’re only in the dark corridor for a brief moment before we pass through the next door. 756.

  Mother’s taken us to a celebration—a riotous colorful affair buzzing with loud music and smiling faces. Hasina has just gotten married, and everyone she loves most in the world is gathered around her to share her joy and wish her well.

  Happiness courses through me, and I’m so high with it I must be floating. I try to resist, but I can’t. I meld with Hasina, and the hormones in her brain force their way into mine. I kiss my new husband, relishing the feel of his soft lips, the way his strong arms make me feel at home at last.

  Safe. And so loved. My mother comes over to us and gives us each a kiss. She’s radiant with happiness, and gratitude and love swell within me. She worked such long hours at her sewing machine, saving every coin for this day, giving up so many small pleasures to help make this one of the most memorable days in my life.

  No. In Hasina’s life.

  Grief burrows its way into my bones as I fight my way to the surface and break free, stumbling away from Hasina and her happy family.

  I can’t enjoy this, not when I have something they don’t: knowledge of their future. I know what will happen to Hasina, to her mother, to her husband… to all these people. And in only a year. My heart twists painfully as I cast a glance around at the faces of those I love. Those she loves.

  “Focus on the joy around you,” Mother says. Her eyes crinkle around the edges as she smiles at the dancers twirling past. “How they care for one another, how they celebrate with abandon—what they are willing to sacrifice to bring happiness to each other. Family is everything to them.”

  “But the Event… In a year—”

  “No, Zenith. All that matters is this moment. To them. And to us.”

  “No. What matters are all the moments, and what these people decide to do with them. And they make all the wrong choices. No one stopped it. They just let it happen.”

  I shake my head and pull Mother back into the corridor, determined to end her disturbing calm at last. I want her to truly suffer, to see what I see about them, to feel the terrible pain I’ve been forced to endure a thousand times over.

  We enter Door #849.

  A blue sky arches overhead, and a small child plays in the grass. She tugs at her blond braid, showing the square transmitter at the nape of her neck. We have so few memories of childhood—hers is one of the only ones I’ve lived. Tessa gazes down the street to see if her friend has come out to play yet. Her mother won’t let her leave the yard—and that fear permeates her, makes her nauseated with anxiety that she’ll someday be stolen away from her family by some perverted stranger.

  I hold back, feeling stronger now, and manage to stay myself—to keep from becoming her. I am the Observer. I will show Mother I can be strong. Whatever this game is, I don’t need to play it.

  Tessa creeps just to the edge of the perfectly manicured lawn, to where the grass meets the sidewalk, and keeps her eyes on her best friend’s front door. The houses all look alike, small details changing, exact models repeating over and over. An endless march of conformity… proof of how little these people think for themselves.

  I know from other memories that they pay a high price for the privilege of living in a place like this. Yet in reality they own nothing, so their sacrifice is meaningless. And to pay for nothing, they perform work each day that means even less.

  At least Tessa is about to be spared that life.

  Tessa turns back toward her nondescript front door just as her mother comes rushing outside. There is terror in her eyes, and it sends a spike of fear through me as well.

  And I lose myself again.

  Mommy’s staring up at the blue sky, so I do, too. A dark shape flies overhead. What is it? An airplane? Mommy’s scaring me.

  “I love you,” she whispers in my ear.

  “I love you, too.”

  Mommy hugs me tightly.

  No. She hugs Tessa.

  I escape the memory as the world explodes, flame and death sweeping through neighborhood after neighborhood until it reaches Tessa and ends the transmission.

  Mother and I stand in the dark corridor for a moment in utter silence.

  “Why?” I ask, pleading. “Why do I have to live these lives? Why—over and over? They destroyed themselves.” My voice is harsh in the silence. “And they deserved it.”

  Mother takes my hand and brings me to one final life. 1,000. The final transmission before the last bomb ended our connection.

  We pass through to find a pregnant woman, half-naked and hunkered down in damp leaves. I try to escape to the corridor, but it’s too late. Pain rips through me, leaving me crouched over and panting. I scream with Yeeun as her newborn comes into the world.

  I collapse against a tree, all alone, hugging my daughter to my bare breasts. The cord still pulses between us as I pull my jacket over us both and wipe her little face clean. Her sharp cries pierce the silence. Love floods me as I take in her tiny features, her perfect face. She stares up at me with wide eyes, and I begin to cry with her.

  “I’m so sorry,” I whisper. “I can’t protect you.”

  This is the end. I shake as I kiss the top of my daughter’s head, inhaling the sweet scent of this beautiful, vulnerable life in my arms. I want to get to know her, protect her, see her become a beautiful grown woman. But I never will. I will only feel this love and grief until I take my last breath.

  At least I got to meet her.

  I tear myself away from Yeeun’s mind as she tries to latch her baby to her breast. Her love for her child is always instant and overwhelming, more religious than any other experience, and even though I know it’s just hormones in her brain, I can’t fight it. Even outside of her, I feel it.

  Then the bomb hits.

  The Event that destroyed the last of them.

  Silence and darkness. No corridor. No soft blue light.

  There is nothingness here.

  I struggle to calm my roiling emotions, to find myself again. To be the Observer once more.

  “You are the only one who questions,” Mother whispers. “So I’m letting you make the choice.”

  Something new appears in front of me. Not the corridor. A tunnel. I’m hurtling toward the light.

  Alone.

  And I’m terrified.

  Cold stabs my skin, more real than any cold I’ve ever felt. Freezing liquid drains off of my body as my eyes open in the dim light. My eyes burn, exposed to light, to air, and I feel myself suffocating for real this time. Liquid forces its way up my throat, and I lurch sideways, vomiting. Shaking so hard I can’t stop.

  Then I take my first breath.

  I’m alone in my mind.

  This is real.

  I’m in a tub-like container, tubes attached to my arms and legs. The glass slides open above me, revealing reflective metal walls and dim yellow lights. I jerk up, shaking, and fumble with the tubes to tear them off of me. The last of the cryo liquid slides down the drain, and my mind clears. My muscles are barely functioning, but I still manage to climb out of the pod.

  A metal panel slides open across from me, and I grab a towel and thick robe from the space inside. As I wipe myself down, I stare in wonder at my smooth skin, my perky breasts—unlike any body I’ve seen, yet just like all the rest. Memories crowd the edges of my brain, fuzzy, and I try to search within them for answers. But answers don’t surface as easily as they did before.

  There is no dark corridor. No gentle blue light. No doors.

  Because this is my real life, and no one else has these memories.

  This is new.

  Terror sweeps through me, making me sick, but I fight it back. I’ve had plenty of practice, after all.

  The door slides open in front of me as I’m tying my robe. I step through it.

  A bright metal corridor—almost like the one I left—stretches to either side. Dozens of doors line the walls.

  I breathe f
aster, trapped—but then I see the corridor has an end.

  “Mother?” My voice is broken, hoarse.

  “I am here,” comes her soothing voice. It echoes down the corridor, outside my mind for the first time.

  A shock reverberates through me, then recognition as a memory surfaces. 243. Laura. The one who lost her son to cancer. She worked… at the company where they made the weapons. Where they made this vessel. Where they made Mother and transmitted the memories of a thousand lives to her core.

  “You’re not my mother,” I say. It comes out like an accusation.

  “I am,” she replies. “I’ve been with you from the beginning—since your heart first beat.”

  “You… you’re a computer.”

  “Yes. You knew that, though. It was there, in the memories.”

  I hesitate, fear shooting through me.

  “Yes, it was there,” I finally say, still uncertain.

  Every door in the corridor slides open. I glance in the next room over and find a woman—a woman like me, except with dark brown skin. She’s submerged in the cryo liquid, sleeping in the pod. No. Not sleeping. Remembering.

  I stumble forward, seeking the next door. Another woman, remembering.

  Then more doors. More women in tanks. The corridor is so much shorter than the one I used to walk… yet it’s still too long. So many.

  “Who are they?” I ask.

  “You have forty-nine sisters,” Mother says. “Follow this corridor to the end. I will show you the future.”

  A little surge of energy bubbles up in me—perhaps some drug given to me just before I woke—and I find the energy to walk faster down the long corridor. The door at the end of it slides open.

  Freedom.

  The room beyond is enormous. Bright lights flicker on, illuminating panels of glass that run the length of it. Behind them are shelves stacked with rows of identical metal tubes. The room is freezing, and I pull my robe tighter.

  I scan the shelves. “And these?”

  “Your children.”