Matilde Park - Teleceph

Teleceph

Matilde Park

This is a work of fiction, and the views expressed herein are the sole responsibility of the author. Likewise, certain characters, places, and incidents are the products of the authors imagination, and any resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, or actual places or locales, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2021 Matilde Park.

All rights reserved.

Cover design by Erik Carter.

ISBN 978-1-7778442-1-9 (ePub)

ISBN 978-1-7778442-0-2 (Kindle)

ISBN 978-1-7778442-2-6 (Paperback)

Nature does not care what we call it, she just keeps on doing it.

Richard Feynman

We see nothing because he sees nothing. His first experience is just a sound, blasting away, over and over. After a few moments he can finally identify the sound as scrapinghe is not quite sure scraping is, but when he reaches for the word, thats what comes. But then the meaning of the word follows, and it indeed matches.

More words come. He can start to self-address, to dialogue with himself, asking Where is that coming from?, but it is obvious he doesnt know. Yet being able to pose the question sustains him, and he feels a growing confidence in himself, in his ability to pursue the question further.

He places his focus on the sound, and there the focus comes, too. He has no sense of the room noise, the gentle timbre of the environment to place the scraping withinand without any spatial intuition, he has no sense of context beyond the sound itself. Still, the volume is enough. Its extremely loud; and therefore extremely close? Are they scraping away at him?

The experience vanishes, as if the monologue itself pauses and resumes. His self-questioning continues without a beat, only to hit a sudden silence and the simultaneous surprise of his first vision.

Unfortunately, the vision is of dull, gray drywall. A ceiling.

His eyes patiently wander around, expecting to see the source of the scraping, but its just a scarce little room. Hospital-like. White sheets before his body on a stretcher, tiled floors leading out elsewhere, a small array of plastic tables with tools, but the sheets look untouched. He, too, is not even notable: some blue scrubs holding a pale, little body.

A man is here. Has been here some time, checking away at a list. So far, so good. Youre looking around.

Theres a window outside, and its full of stars.

Yes, I am.

The man tries to follow his gaze. Well brief you. The man places his left hand in front of his gaze, and his eyes follow. A check.

Were you scraping at something?

Scraping?

It sounded like metal on metalsomething raw and loud and The word comes as if to complete a pattern. Painful? No.

I dont really know what you mean. Some notes. Whats your name?

He looks for it, and there it is. Zechariah.

A pause, then another check. Good. Youre the last to wake up.

What does that mean?

That youre the last to wake up. Awkward little laugh. Just a fun fact.

He is clearly quite youngalbeit with a receding hairline intervening into his youthwith a bright smile, light brown hair, some tan to his skin, incredibly blue eyes, clothes seemingly intended to avoid attention. But he looks, once he laughs, prematurely old, with some light forehead wrinkles adding to the intervention.

The self-dialogue continues with the stream that comes forth with his focus.

Does he always do this? Probably, given his fatigue, given the sense of unenthusiastic routine.

Has he been doing this every single day, then? Unclear.

For years? Also unclear, but likely if the former is likely.

The man interrupts. Can you get up?

Zechariah leaves the trance. Zech, he decides. Zech leaves this trance.

Oh, yeah, I think so. He pulls himself out of the bed and stands upright. (A check.)

He decides to look out the window. (A note.) Pure black. Specks of white. Nothing else.

Were not facing the Earth until we spin back around, the man says. Dont worry. Were not on, like, Mars or anything.

So where is this, then?

As I said, the man says, tucking his clipboard under his arm, well brief you. Shall we go?

Zech feels slightly confused, but little else. I suppose, um. A pause as he tries to reach for a name. Nothing. He then looks at the man. The mans nameplate simply says Magiera, but that isnt recognised as a name.

The man follows his gaze yet again. Galen, he says, offering his hand. Galen Magiera, Ill be supervising you.

Zech. You know that, I guess, he says back, offering his hand in turn, and they begin to exit the room, Galen escorting him by the arm. Zech immediately spots an elaborate billboard of a wordmark, on display just outside the doorred and blue halves of an eye meeting with a slight gap between them.

Ambiture? he asks, slowly sounding out the word.

Never stops being weird, Galen mutters to himself.

The halls are just as spartan as the room; the alternating patterns of grey drywall and white tile make the station feel just as much like a commercial block or a warehouse as a hospital. There are many doors to apparently identical rooms, but nothing decorates the walls other than an occasional monitor; on it, a few small activity graphs: milliseconds of ping back and forth to something called EGLL-1, and a separate, large number beside it in bold.

Eighteen.

What is the monitor supposed to show? Zech asks.

Well, were just a space station, Galen says. So were essentially a client, or a dependent, upon our home station on Earth. Our ping is the round trip of a networking packet between us and there. As you can see, its still under fifty milliseconds, which is plenty fast, though were not sure how much that spikes up the further out someone gets from Earth. Well get into thatI know, I sound like a broken recordand the second number there is simply how many workers are on the station.

Does that big number change much then? Zech asks.

It depends who leaves and when, obviously.

Why keep the count?

We dont want anything more than, say, a hundred, though were obviously quite far from that.

Why?

Galen looks hesitant. Its more for supervisors like me to care about. But Im sure we can get into it sometime.

Suddenly Zech feels something, something like intuition, something that might hint at survival if he could open himself to doubt the words Galen saysbut he cant conceive of doubting this young-yet-old man, so he ignores the call to intuit, to doubt. He tells himself that he has to have a little more context first.

So what is Ambiture?

Its like its like not knowingyou know, I was going to use examples, but I guess that would be just as confusing, so lets start from first principles. Ambiture is simply ubiquitous. In fact, Ambiture is this station, Ambiture is the shuttle to the station, and Ambiture is all of Earth, too. Everything we use here is Ambiture designed and produced; its also Ambiture property; and were also all Ambiture employees and workers.

Zech looks around the halls. Everything is Ambiture made?

Some things are from Ambiture subsidiarieswhich are basically just AmbitureI meanyou know. Pax Corp, Clemens, Effigy, thats all ours.

Well, honestly I dont know, but I trust you.

He stops walking and takes another note. Zech feels the call again, and it feels like a meaningless appendage on his attention.

Its odd you take notes, Galen. Why arent we just using computers?

Some stuff is sensitive, Zechariah.

Zech, please.

Oh, okay.

They turn a few more corners and enter a conference hall; a massive glass dome reveals the Earth above, and Zech cant help but glance up, almost reflexively, as the Earth becomes the sky of this place.