CHarli Anders - The City in the Middle of the Night

This manuscript has been translated from the original Xiosphanti and Argelan into Peak English, which as Jthkyklakno points out [ref. 2327.288] has become the language which everyone reads, but nobody speaks, across several worlds and spacenodes. This exercise entailed a number of challenges, particularly with the Mouth sections, but given the amount of interest in these documents (and indeed, misinformation regarding their contents) a serious attempt at a clean translation appeared necessary. Despite all of the apparent fabulations and liberties taken in both of these narratives, they remain the closest thing we have to primary sources regarding the origins of this emergent new form of human sentience. Detractors such as Linghathy have argued for a mythocratic pseudoframe, choosing to view these hybrids as the products of a response to extreme environmental pressures, resulting in a kind of evolutionary assimilationism. These texts undoubtedly serve to complicate and possibly even subvert that framing. Note: Where the settlers on January chose to adopt archaic Earth terms for common items, along with local flora and fauna, I have attempted to render this into Peak English as seamlessly as possible. (Hence radio, lorry, pager, crocodile, cat, bison, etc.) Names and proper nouns have also been regularized into English spelling, where possible (e.g., Sophie, Bianca, Reynold, etc.). For a glossary of Xiosphanti and Argelan terminology and common names, see Nuxhaven, ref. 11819.99. I welcome any feedback via the usual channels.

{before}

Bianca walks toward me, under too much sky. The white-hot twilight makes a halo out of loose strands of her fine black hair. She looks down and fidgets, as though shes trying to settle an argument with herself, but then she looks up and sees me and a smile starts in her eyes, then spreads to her mouth. This moment of recognition, the alchemy of being seen, feels so vivid that everything else is an afterimage. By the time she reaches the Boulevard, where Im standing, Bianca is laughing at some joke that shes about to share with me.

As the two of us walk back toward campus, a brace of dark quince leaves, hung on doorways in some recent celebration, wafts past our feet. Their nine dried stems scuttle like tiny legs.

I lie awake in our dark dorm room, listening to Bianca breathe on the shelf across from mine. And then I hear her voice.

Sophie?

Im so startled, hearing her speak after curfew, I tip over and land in a bundle on the floor.

Bianca giggles from her bunk as I massage my sore tailbone. I keep expecting some authority figure, like one of the Proctors, to burst in and glare at us for disturbing the quiet time. If you cant sleep when everyone else does, youre not even human.

Sophie! Its okay, Bianca says. I just wanted to ask you a question. I dont even remember what it was now. Then she stops laughing, because she understands this isnt funny to me. Youre not going to get in trouble. I promise. You know, we cant even learn anything here unless we think for ourselves occasionally, right? Some rule we learned as little kids doesnt have to keep us in a chokehold forever.

When Bianca first showed up as my roommate, I hid from her as much as I could. I crawled into the tiny space above the slatted hamper in the side washroom, next to the wide sluicing cisterns that people use as toilets here. Bianca was this whirl of hand gestures and laughter who filled every room with color. When she started trying to talk to me, I assumed she was only taking pity on this painfully shy girl from the dark side of town and Id just have to ignore her until she gave up.

She didnt give up.

Now I look up at Biancas shape as I pull myself out of my huddle on the floor. But you follow the rules too, I say. Like, you would never actually go outdoors right now. You probably could. You could sneak out of here, wander onto the streets, and the Curfew Patrols might not ever catch you. But you dont do that, because you do care about rules.

Yeah, Im not running down the street naked during the Span of Reflection, either, Bianca laughs. But a little talking after curfew has to be okay, right?

Bianca makes me feel as though she and I just stepped off the first shuttle from the Mothership, and this world is brand new for us to make into whatever we want.

Since I was little, I couldnt sleep at the right time, along with everyone else. I tried whispering to my brother Thom sometimes, if I thought he was awake. Or else I busied myself trying to do tiny good deeds for my sleeping family, fixing a broken eyepiece or putting my brothers slippers where his feet would find them most easily on waking. Except my fathers hand would come out of the darkness and seize my arm, tight enough to cut off the blood to my hand, until I whined through my teeth. Later, after the shutters came down and the dull almost-light filled our home once more, my father would roar at me, his bright red face blocking out the entire world.

Everything is a different shape in the dark. Sharp edges are sharper, walls farther away, fragile items more prone to topple. I used to wake next to my family, all of us in a heap on the same bedpile, and imagine that maybe in the darkness, I could change shape too.

Bianca has found another book, way at the back of the school library, on one of those musty shelves that you have to excavate from a layer of broken settler tech and shreds of ancient clothing. This particular book is a spyhole into the past, the real past, when the Founding Settlers arrived on a planet where one side always faces the sun and had no clue how to cope. Thats what history is, really, Bianca says, the process for turning idiots into visionaries.

The two of us stroll together into the heart of the citys temperate zone, past the blunt golden buttresses of the Palace, breathing the scents of the fancy market where she always tries to buy me better shoes.

Bianca reads all the time, and she tears through each book, as though shes scared her eyes will just fall out of her head before she finishes them all. But she never does the assigned reading for any of our classes. Im here to learn, not study. Her mouth pinches, in a way that only makes her narrow, angular face look more classically perfect.

Even after being her roommate for a while, this kind of talk makes me nervous. Im still desperate to prove that I deserve to be here, though Ive passed all the tests and gotten the scholarship. I sit and read every single assigned text three times, until the crystalline surface blurs in front of me. But everyone can tell Im an interloper just by glancingat my clothes, my hair, my faceif they even notice me.

Youre the only one of us who had to work so hard for it, Bianca tells me. Nobody belongs here half as much as you. Then she goes back to telling me that the Founders were bumblers, right as we pass by the giant bronze statue of Jonas, posing in his environment suit, one arm raised in triumph. Jonass shoulder pads catch the dawn rays, as though still aglow from the righteous furnace of decontamination.

Every so often, Bianca puts on a dress made of iridescent petals, or violet satin, and disappears, along with a few others from our dorm. Theres always some party, or banquet, that she needs to go to, to nurture her status among the citys elite. She stands in the doorway, the silhouette of an upward-pointing knife, and smiles back at me. Ill be back before you know. Until one time, when the shutters close and the curfew bells ring but Im still alone in our room. I crouch in the gloom, unable to think about sleeping, and wonder if Biancas okay.