Contraband
“Wounds that cut us deep leave big scars.”
Death comes for everybody. It is so obvious and overstated as to be tautological. Yet that fact defines us so completely we’re stuck with this unsatisfyingly boring, axiomatic reality. Here we are, mortals.
Most of our behavior, most of the time, could safely be predicted by that simple fact: on balance, people make choices that will be least likely to bring about their deaths—especially in the social sphere. Occasionally, some people, notably thrill-seekers, will take calculated risks for recreational purposes. That small demographic is not what brought me to Etterus. What concerned me on this trip was a curious pocket in the human psyche that, when it emerges, trumps all reasonable valuations of self-preservation. How did it come to happen that for some people, certain low-value items—in the Etteran cases I came to study, objects of familial, of personal, or (especially of interest to one of my profession) of historical value—were worth more to these people than their lives. How did it happen that these Etterans dared tempt death, seemingly for nothing.
Maybe it is that very unsatisfying truism that death comes for everyone that compels someone to brave their own death simply on principle. If this is my life now, then damn it, let them take it. Terms acceptable. I don’t know. But sometimes people are intractable. When do society’s lines move so far that people just don’t care to live in that culture anymore? Is there an algorithm for that? Who’s going to snap and when? These questions are more interesting the older I get.
What the hell are you going on about now, Airee? A fair question.
Recording history has been my obsession for the better part of eighty years now. I look back on my work in my younger years, having learned the lessons I’ve learned, with hard-earned wisdom, and I read the work of a younger me, and the limitations of earnest scholarship become so very apparent. The arrogance of intellect. This is why I am so grateful to have the opportunity to visit Etterus for the first time in my later years, nearly two decades now since the Armistice, which, excepting a few minor early skirmishes, has kept the Western Battery in a peaceful but cautious state of stagnation since the war’s apparent conclusion. History of such major conflicts shows that unresolved issues often flare-up again after long respites, though at the time of my current visit, I see no overtly troubling signs of recurrence. There is a stable peace.
I’ve been all over the Battery. I know so many of her cultures well. But Etterus? She was largely a mystery to non-Etterans. They were long-lost brothers and sisters to us Athosians, many descended directly from members of that first expedition, departing the early stages of expansion in Dreeson’s system for the recently discovered miracle planet always considered a close but unacceptable candidate for human habitation because of her massive size. Yet, probes and prospective expeditions returned surprising data on closer examination. Etterus was large, yes, but her core was far less massive than expected, meaning the gravity was not overwhelming. Though we in the Battery largely think of Etterus as the natural descendent of the early Athosian people, both genetics and a more thorough examination of the planet’s early immigrant population shows surprising diversity, notably from seven sizeable colonial expeditions from Charris, one of which founded the city I came to visit—Nu City, along the high plain at the foothills of the Olkinnay Mountains of the northern hemisphere—the sixth most populous city on Etterus currently and for most of the duration of the war, with a population best known outside Etterus for its hard manner and even harder manner of speaking.
One of these hard talkers invited me, with the permission of the Etteran Commission—essentially the Etteran Guild’s High Command still operating under a post-war moniker. But who could blame the Etteran people for keeping up a guard. For so many of them, in their minds and spirits, that awful war will never be over. Even as an Athosian, I harbor many deep feelings I still cannot articulate after nearly two decades, feelings that will only ever rest when I am nothing but bones and all that remains of my conscious mind are these verbal artifacts I share with the listener now—the intellectual bones of a very rich human life. Some of that same bitterness will linger in my words as in my bones for all time. Doubtless, many Etterans harbor similar sentiments much more deeply than I can ever comprehend.
My host, Reina Avagedis, as the name may indicate to students of genealogy, was a descendent of those original Charran expeditions and a fellow historian. She’d come into possession of a historical treasure too valuable to keep to Etterus alone, she told me, as though she needed to entice me to come. Etterus was more than enough.
The planet was a unique sight in memory. The capitol world was one of the few worlds in their sphere of influence untouched by kinetic warfare in the century-long conflict with the Trasp. It was not difficult to see why on approach. The system was dense with mines, sensors, and passive defense systems, so littered with weaponry that it was difficult to tell the starlight from the light reflecting off the nearby defensive orbs encircling Etterus. Even now, twenty years on, approaching the planet without specific vectors provided by the Etteran Approach Command would, at best, be all but suicidal. And the orbital defense structures rivalled those of Athos and Iophos combined, shrunk down from the scale of two gas giants to this impressive, but still relatively small, rocky world. This planet was a fortress. But it was a sign of progress that they would invite a guest like me to share in their history. Few outsiders in the war era ever set eyes on Etterus and left again to speak of her secrets.
Avagedis had arranged an escort to meet me in a public setting. I was expecting a person but was greeted by a multi-use model that introduced itself as a Gina. I’d never seen the model before, but later came to learn she was extremely common and of Etteran origin, rarely exported off world. She was to remain with me for the duration of my visit. A proper chaperone, one I’d have made a concerted effort to ditch in my younger years on planets or outposts not named Etterus. The Etterans were a serious people, unfond of games or exceptions to rules.
Reina Avagedis had this Gina escort me to a side street in a neighborhood in Nu City that seemed quite vacant. She introduced herself and invited me to sit on a bench at this outdoor restaurant that could only be described as a rather large, automated purveyor of street food. We had nothing quite like it on Athos.
“My parents took me here often as a kid,” Reina told me as the Gina retreated to the other side of the street to give the humans space to speak. “War cakes. Etteran delicacy.”
I noted the sarcastic tone immediately. Reina had a warm smile for an Etteran, one that indicated she’d learned to find some genuine joy amidst the lingering sorrow of her post-war civilization. I guessed her age as early forties. Her eyes were somewhat flat and serious.
“I suppose you Etterans aren’t known for your cuisine,” I said, smiling back at her.
“What’s cuisine?” she joked. “I do think we had such a concept a hundred fifty years ago; you might find it in the historical record; since the war, though, all we’ve had here on Etterus is food. These public ration stands kept a lot of people from starving. The Commission keeps about a third of them operating as both a public service and a reminder.”
“I see that not so many wish to remember. At least not this morning.”
She shrugged. “I actually have fond memories. When they were supplied, which was most times, people waited patiently, socialized, and commiserated. And then we got a bite to eat. Simple food and not enough to fill you up, but not bad. Would you like to try, Dr. Airee?”
“I would love to, but please, call me Carsten.”
“Oh, that would feel too strange. I’ve read so many of your books.”
“Then call me Airee if you must, Reina, but regardless of how well-known I may be, we’re still colleagues, you and I.”
She nodded and smiled, hitting the button on the counter in front of both our chairs. “It was a courtesy when it was busy, a minute or so before getting up to hit the button. That way, the next person sitting wouldn’t have to wait for their ration.”
“And everyone was entitled to a meal?”
“A snack more like. You’ll see, Airee.”
“I’m very grateful for the invitation, and I also must say I’m struggling to contain my curiosity. What could be so compelling they’d let me in to examine it?”
“Mmm. Yes. I’m nearly bursting with anticipation to show you. But I wanted to bring you here first to help you appreciate something of the culture our people lived in. This ration stand is a relic of it as well, a taste of it. Pardon me for being maybe a bit too on the nose.”
“I suppose I’ve waited decades, a little while longer won’t be too insufferable.”
The scent of the food was not quite what we Athosians would expect from street food. Basic. None of the spices or aromas beyond a sense that there was some oil involved. My nose told me some food was cooking behind the steel wall, little more.
“Tell me, Airee; have you met many Etterans in your travels?”
“Met? Yes. I even came to know a few.”
“Recently?”
“I can’t speak much of it, even today, nor do I want to, but I knew some Etterans during the war.”
“You did?” Reina asked, looking surprised when I nodded. “I’m shocked you’ve never written about them. I’d be curious to know the context.”
“I can’t say,” I told her. “Not even confidentially. Maybe as far as I will go is to say that I didn’t merely write about history back then. I observed it, and perhaps a bit more on occasion.”
“I hope if you can’t say in your lifetime that you’ve at least recorded your experiences for posterity somehow. A faithful bot perhaps could release the recording a few decades after everyone involved has passed?”
“Maybe so,” I said, nodding.
“Can you tell me, Airee, what did you think of the Etterans you did meet?”
“Nothing specific without giving away too much. I can say every Etteran I met was impressive—very much in the literal sense that they made an impression on nearly everyone they encountered. Hard, serious people. Not one of them to be trifled with.”
She raised her eyebrows, and just then, the food arrived. A plate each. They both contained an identical ration—three thin, tortilla-looking flatbreads, warm and aromatic, alongside a fist-sized pile of mixed vegetables, a shotglass filled with a green liquid, and a glass of water.
Reina explained. “Bean flour. We called them war cakes. Simple, efficient, nutritious, and edible enough.”
She picked up a cylinder that was sitting on the countertop. It turned out to be a peppermill that got passed up and down the line in days past when the stand was still busy. She cracked a light dusting over both our plates, folded up her war cake, and invited me to do the same.
I bit into it.
“Not bad,” I said, genuinely. “Surprisingly good. Nice.”
“In hungry times, many people had fond memories here. Several generations.”
“I could see it.”
“The vegetables and water are self-explanatory, but the green stuff, I don’t suppose you have that on Athos.”
“No,” I said, smiling. “I was about to ask about it.”
“Liquid vitamin supplement, all the body’s vitamin and mineral needs in a readily absorbable form. Not nearly as tasty as the bean cake.”
I lifted my glass, enquiring with a look. She nodded reassuringly and lifted hers as well.
“Down the hatch, as my mom would say,” Reina responded, tipping her head back as she drank.
I followed.
“Okay,” I said. “Not nearly as bad as I was expecting. Not good, but, hmm …”
“Peoples of war are efficient. They do what they need and little more. We were war fighters, even the children and the elderly. The war was everything. No place speaks that reality as clearly as this ration stand.”
“Not that many people want to hear it spoken it seems,” I said, gesturing to the nearly empty benches.
“Far fewer people are here in Nu City to do the speaking than there used to be,” Reina said. “The war took its toll. Bots maintain a lot of the city’s infrastructure in Nu, Haila, the capitol, the other major cities. Most of the flats in these surrounding buildings are vacant, Airee. Just like in the Protectorate, as we understand it. A lot can be said for the people who finally managed to stop the war before we were both extinct, but they only just did. This is a city that would comfortably house sixteen million. Seven hundred thousand live here now. Not even.”
There was nothing to do but shake your head at the horror of that reality. It was hardly a new feeling for either of us. I kept eating. Not cuisine, as Reina had said, but decent wholesome food. A good enough snack after a long transit.
Reina Avagedis had a great sense for timing, setting her large bag on the countertop just as I was preparing to ask about her reasons for bringing me here to Nu City. To my eyes, the bag looked to contain quite a few books.
“I imagine as an Athosian you’ve studied your system’s origins, the schism, the Dreeson family, the original charter from Charris?” she asked me.
“Of course.”
“What do you know about the origins of the Trasp Protectorate?”
“Quite a bit, Reina. It’s possible I’ve read every book on the topic—at least the contemporary ones and the relevant commentaries.”
“Ever seen one of these?” she said, opening the bag and pulling out a large object that appeared to be a book made of paper.
I didn’t answer, inspecting the object. It was a book all right. The lettering on the cover read—Genealogical Origins, Founding, and Early History: T.R. & S.P., Iophos. My eyeballs nearly dropped out of my head.
“Is that what I think it is?”
She nodded.
“What is it doing here?”
Reina pulled another book from her bag. “This one’s not real paper … well, not from wood from trees like the ledger. Synthetic paper. There are nearly thirty like this one.”
“Whose are they?”
“Journals. They belonged to the woman who saved the ledger originally. Her parents came to Etterus when she was four years old. That was about twenty-five years before the war started. She was an only child, and her mother gave her the ledger as a wedding gift. She was a direct descendent of one of the original principal board members.”
“How the hell did it survive?”
“That’s the interesting part,” Reina answered smiling. “She explained it all in her journals. She’s a hell of a writer, too, Airee. Actually, reminded me of you a little. A storyteller.”
I was flabbergasted. Genuinely speechless. I didn’t even know where to begin asking questions. Reina saved me the indignity of disclosing my utter lack of composure and professionalism. Short of pulling out originals of the founding volumes from the Columns, nothing could have surprised and delighted me more than this trove.
“Would you like to hear from her in her own words?”
“Please,” I said, shaking my head.
Reina seemed to take particular joy in my wonder at such a discovery. Doubtless, she’d had a similar reaction on finding the volumes.
“Her name was Greentree Dawes, but it was such an uncommon name here on Etterus that she went by Greenie. She married a man named Reynid Stock. The journals began two years after they married and had only a few sparse entries before the war began. The journals really begin then, a documentation of sorts.”
Reina paused.
“Shall I just read, Airee?”
“Oh, please do,” I answered.
Reina smiled and began. She’d obviously spent enough time poring over the pages of the journals, because she never once hesitated in bringing Greenie Stock’s memories to voice, even from what appeared to be difficult to decipher handwriting—ink to paper, the ancient way. It was a miracle. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and just listened.
We had the most peculiar fight today, Reynid and I. I’ll never forget a detail of it. I told him I was coming in to declare the book during my lunch break. He was supposed to be at work. He approached me from behind at the outer edge of Razmus Court, by the city offices in the old town. He spoke to me as he never had before, and then he physically pulled me by my arm, stuffed his hand to my mouth to shut me up, and looked at me with such anger and urgency as I’d never known was possible. Foreign emotions. Reynid. The most loving person I’d ever known. My husband. It was like he had become a different person from the man I married. I almost didn’t believe that things could have changed so dramatically. “Shut your mouth, Greenie,” he said to me. “You shut your mouth right now or I will.” As I protested, he stuffed his hand right into my face. And he pulled my arm so hard it hurt, yanking me back toward our flat. I was about to scream and cry out, thinking that he must have lost his mind, perhaps that everyone had. Then, in that moment of utter shock and disorientation, he looked at me so desperately, so lovingly, I could tell in that look there was something he couldn’t say out there. It was enough. I trusted Reynid, and I walked with him tugging me by the elbow for a few steps before yanking myself free. Then we walked together, back home.
I was furious, of course. I thought it was unforgivable, him treating me like that, in public no less. But every time I turned to him, ready to open a conversation, he glared back at me, forbidding it with a look. Not here, wife, his eyes said to me. Not now. I love you.
We walked all the way home together in silence, an angry silence on my end, and what I came to find out later was a nervous silence on his, for he genuinely feared for my life. I was so carelessly naïve; he was right to fear for me. Smart. Ahead of the moment. That was Reynid.
When we got inside, again I was prepared to explode on him, thinking that we were in the comfort and safety of our own home. And again, my mouth was half open, ready to speak, when he put his hand over my lips, gently this time, shaking his head, and then he pulled me close to him. He began to kiss me. I was confused, struggling to push him away, but he wouldn’t let me go, forcefully holding my body against his, kissing me so that I couldn’t pull away, couldn’t speak. He moved me, as I pushed back against him the entire way, to the bedroom, where he began to pull on my clothes. It was this strange and foreign mix of passion, anxiety, and protest. It was only my trust and love for him that kept me from fully fighting him off. And as he kissed my neck, his hands hot against my back, busily embracing me as passionately as he ever had before, he put his lips to my ear and whispered, “The war has begun, my love. Everything has changed.”
Moments later, we were together in bed, naked, entangled in the most surprising, confusing, bizarrely passionate sex either of us had ever experienced, Reynid whispering the truths of this new world into my ears as he professed his love for me. This, he told me, was the only place Ketch would not be listening. The protocols had changed, he knew, because he was part of the programming committee that had changed them, secretly. The city’s portals were now all subjugated under Ketch—a word I had never heard before Reynid whispered it in my ear. It was the military intelligence division’s strategic AI, and now Ettera fell under her—all requests, conversations, cameras, schedules, routines, behaviors, habits, aberrations—everything would be observed and monitored for compliance. Only intimate encounters had been programmed to be filtered out, or at least couldn’t be monitored by human oversight by law. Ketch wouldn’t hear us if we whispered and played music for interference, at least in those obviously intimate moments.
Reynid simultaneously scared the hell out of me about this new existence while he somehow made me feel that here, with him, the place I felt safest in the entire galaxy was now the only safe place either of us had to speak.
“The age of forgiveness and understanding has passed us now, Greenie,” he whispered in my ears. “Whatever this new era brings, we will face it together. We must be careful. Your past. Your parents. We can’t take the chance.”
“What if somebody finds the ledger?” I whispered back.
“Then we’ll both be seen as traitors, love. Everything has changed now. Put your fears in your journal. Never speak them aloud. Ketch will be watching, listening, monitoring: every aspect of our lives is about to change.”
We left that bedroom different people. Never again did we speak freely to each other outside the confines of our bed, Reynid and I, not even in the privacy of our home, for it was no longer private. Ettera was no longer just Ettera. She was Ketch’s ears and eyes, gauging thoughts, interpreting body language, calculating loyalty and value, net benefit to the war effort.
Reynid and I spoke less than we ever had before, but something came in the exchange, and I can only confess it here, but for all the horrors of war—the savagery—something raw awakened in us both. The way we looked at each other, a shared truth in our eyes. A magnetic passion. A secret desperation that we shared whenever we were intimate. We’d never felt so connected. I couldn’t have imagined that it was possible for two human beings to be more magnetically connected than we were in those secret moments together, at our most vulnerable and passionate, whispering our truths to one another. If not for the war, I never would have known it was possible to feel that alive. So human. So animal.
That first day, the day Reynid pulled me off the street like that, I was on my way to declare the ledger. There were other people of Trasp descent on Etterus, of course, many who declared tokens of their ancestry, as was the custom of our people. Almost all were Etterans now, in mind and spirit. There were no mixed loyalties in my heart. I’d lived in Nu City all my life. And I watched in horror from afar as a handful of these transplants were turned into public examples of disloyalty. Reynid had been right. I’d thought until then that people could always be reasoned with. Not so. Sometimes the spirit goes too far. People’s minds become hard. There was no reasoning. That book would have been the death of us. My stupid mouth would have been the death of us. I just didn’t know it. But I learned fast. Both of us did. The state is never to be trusted. Not to be decent. The state is more savage than any of us.
Reynid, of course, was invaluable to the city in his regular duties. We decided together that I should give up my literature class and volunteer in Support Services.
The rest of these early days is in the notes. Daily prayers. I made a habit of it. That first day I went into the closet with my journals, Ettera asked me, “Greenie, you’ve never done that before, and it is uncommon behavior.”
“These are uncommon times,” I told her. “I’m praying for our people. I list out all my prayers in my journal. All for the Etteran people, our soldiers most of all.”
Even if I didn’t write anything, I still sat there, like a child hiding from the world outside, amongst my own shoes, like my mother’s when I was young. Here on these pages I speak what can no longer be said. I pray to my own shoes, as though they were my mother’s. May they one day walk me out of this horror.
Reina looked up from the pages of the journal now for the first time. “I brought others,” she said. “Many pages are filled with daily messages, notes and recollections. Rarely, Greenie writes summaries like this of major life events for her and Reynid and their children, as they came. They had eight together.”
“That’s not entirely surprising after that entry,” I answered.
“I’d like your indulgence to read you some more, Airee. I picked out a few passages. I’d love it if you read the balance, if I gave you access to all the scanned data files and you’re open to reading them all?”
“Are you kidding?”
She smiled. “Shall I continue?”
“Please.”
“This next one is shortly after the birth of their third child, their first son. They named him Moss.”
Admittedly, the name is not my favorite. Moss Stock. It will seem dissonant, etching that name into the book of my ancestors during this war, as we try to wipe their culture from space, from existence. Could there be a more Etteran name? Yet it lives in the pages of our lineage, and he will likely never know it was there until I am long dead. If he still lives. What dare I even hope for him? It was different with Reece and Emmika. And who knows? Maybe something will change to bring this interminable war to a close. Four years on now and the talk of victory seems as it did at the outset, a hope. Real hope would be an end. Yet we dare not even think that way, much less speak it.
Moss Stock. My son. What will he be called to do for Etterus? I see it in the eyes of my fellow mothers, setting their young ones down to walk or run, ever so subtle. There’s this look we share when we meet eyes, almost a prayer really. May you return.
This infant—Moss—the things that are asked of my daughters will not be asked of him. What Etterus takes from him it will take, just as it takes the young men of Nu City today. Etterus need not ask to take what is freely given. I see this child lying before me, helpless, his tiny hands, fat little versions of my hands, Reynid’s hands. Reynid is no warrior and never will be. He takes orders just the same, though, as we all do now. He tells me how Ketch is adjusting its target outcomes to meet with the High Command’s objectives. Human inputs. I never studied history well enough to understand what so terrified our ancestors about such technology. In truth, I struggle to see the difference from my stories in ancient literature, long before technology was a word.
Civilization nourishes and consumes. I feel the ancient pain of a mother. I know the conflict of a citizen. Feed our monster and it may consume our very children. Feed it not and their monster will consume us all for sure. Ketch is but the same hand of the state that has held every son and daughter by the shoulder, the hand of the pharaoh, the queen, and the czar—the hands of presidents, ministers, and chancellors. It is our hand. My Trasp hand. My husband’s Etteran hand. Moss Stock’s tiny hands, if he’s so blessed, will grow to lift our same burden.
I am no philosopher. Nor do I know how to pray to make sense of this world. I write only thoughts here, and sometimes I weep. And surely, I hope the galaxy I was born into might return one day for my children. It would have seemed so absurd to me ten years ago, but here I sit, praying to the walls of my closet, earnestly.
And now I must run. My child wakes.
My host paused as though it was the end of that entry. “May I ask a question, Reina?” I asked her.
“Of course you may ask, Airee. But I suppose the real question you intended to ask is whether I would answer, which depends on the nature of the question, of course.”
“It’s just, all this secrecy still. Etterus is still so very closed.”
“A long habit.”
“And fear, no doubt,” I said, nodding. “After the war ended, I remember waking up on Athos daily for nearly five years and feeling that I couldn’t take a breath until I consulted my news queue to be sure the Armistice still held. I imagine that feeling wasn’t nearly as intense as it was for the people here.”
“Intense. Complicated. I wore our colors during the final years of the war, Airee. I remained in the service for three more years following Armistice Day. Those of us who wanted more than anything for the fighting to finally stop were nearly as afraid of our own leaders after the war as we had been of the Trasp during it. All of our commodores were lieutenants once. They all remembered the pain of loss in their early commands. The numbers only got larger as they climbed the ranks. We’d all lost compatriots, many before our own eyes. We’d lost brothers and sisters and fathers and mothers. Perhaps the role I serve now belies the complexity of the emotions I feel finding these documents. As a historian, that this contraband material survived so that it can speak its history is a miracle that brings me joy. As an Etteran, though, Greenie Stock was not a particularly good one. Part of me hates her. Part of me feels that she deserved to be punished for keeping this ledger. Part of me understands her only too well, makes me hate the part of me that resents her.”
Reina paused, realizing she’d let her emotions carry her away on a digression. She looked embarrassed.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “You had a question, Airee?”
“You needn’t apologize to an old man, Reina,” I told her. “Wounds that cut us deep leave big scars. There’s a lot I can’t even pretend to be objective about. We don’t always write what we feel.”
“This is true.”
“My question was about Ketch. Certainly, I don’t expect any sort of confidential answer, but I wonder about its precursor. It seemed as though Greenie indicated the precursor—Ettera, was it?”
“Yes, she was the citywide AI—planetwide, actually.”
“So she was in their home or everyone’s home? Was that a choice or, I guess what I’m asking was how ubiquitous was that technology before the war?”
Reina looked at me so blankly I could tell she almost couldn’t even understand the question.
“Do Athosians not have an interface in every home, Airee?”
“I don’t know the statistics, but some don’t. Probably ten percent or so don’t have a homewide system, of those, some probably have a housebot that performs many of those functions.”
“It’s part of the citywide infrastructure on Etterus,” Reina said, still looking astonished that it wasn’t the same on Athos.
“That was part of our founding charter of rights,” I told her. “A right to privacy from technological monitoring. Most people opt in for the convenience of it, but citizens have an absolute right to control what gets observed, when, how, what data gets shared with the providers, with the state. We take that seriously.”
“I shall have to think on that,” Reina said. “I can’t even wrap my mind around it. What if somebody starts choking or falls? I can’t even—”
“As I said, most of us opt to have support in some form.”
Reina continued to shake her head and looked so perplexed that she’d almost entirely lost focus. I smiled and hit the button in front of my seat on the counter again, as it seemed Reina had much more to read from the stack of journals in her bag. I figured I could use another snack while she continued Greenie’s history. I invited Reina to continue reading with a gesture, and after a moment, she indulged me by opening the next journal.
How to begin to summarize the past two weeks? I haven’t written in all those days, yet I’ve prayed. How I’ve prayed.
Last Tuesday, Emmika found the books. My journals she took out, fumbled through, and mostly discarded, as she struggled to read my writing. Under the journals, she saw the Trasp Genealogical Register.
She told me that at first she didn’t know what it was, because the title lettering used an ampersand, like the original committee: T.R. & S.P. She said it was such a strange sight she knew it was something she wasn’t supposed to see. But it wrought on her consciousness—those letters she had seen before so often, only ever burned into her mind in association with the enemy.
This week was hell. She told Reynid she thought her mother might be a traitor—that I kept a book. And he stopped her before she could speak the words.
“You mean your mother’s prayer books,” he said to her. “You are mistaken, Emmika. Your mother is a loyal servant of Etterus, as we all are. Let’s go look at this book.”
He brought her to the sofa at the foot of our bed, the cushion with the false bottom, and he asked her, whispering in her ear which books she’d taken from that hiding place where I kept the ledger, beneath my stacks of journals.
“I never touched it,” she whispered back to him. “I couldn’t. I couldn’t. What if she’s a traitor, father?”
“Tell no one, Emmika. Your mother and I will speak to you about this soon, but you must promise to tell no one.”
The blessing was that the ledger couldn’t have been seen by any of Ketch’s inputs. Had it, we’d likely have already been in custody by the time she confessed what she’d seen to Reynid.
We fought bitterly, Reynid and I. We shouted in whispers. Neither of us knew what to do. What could we say in secret corners to convince a nine-year-old child that the world was more complex than us and them, friend, traitor, enemy. Emmika looked at me bitterly every time we sat for a meal. Of course she couldn’t keep it to herself for long.
Reece came to us Friday morning. I knew immediately what had happened. A mother’s instincts.
“Come pray with me,” I told her, and I pulled her into the closet.
I kissed her on the forehead and pulled her head close to mine, whispering in her ear, “You know my only loyalty is to you, your sister, your brothers, and your father, Reece. This family.”
“I know,” she told me. “I took care of it. I made her promise she’d never say a word to anyone, not even our brothers. Never.”
“How can you be sure, love?” I asked her.
“I told Emmika that they would take you away to die a traitor’s death, because you were Trasp when you were little. I know. I saw the book too. I know your name was Dawes. I saw our names in your book.
“And I told Emmika that if she told anyone or even spoke it aloud and you were taken away, I would tell Moss and Oren that she had killed their mother and broken up our family. And that they’d never forgive her for it and would always blame her for killing their mother, and that I would blame her too. And I also told her that even if she were the one to confess, everyone would still think she was a traitor, because her mother was a Trasp. The only way for people to think we’re all loyal is to keep the secret. She believes that now.”
“I am so sorry for this world you live in, my love,” I whispered to Reece. “Do not ever stop loving your sister and your brothers. You can hate me if you have to, but I will always love you and Emmika and the boys. Always.”
In the dark, that week, I demanded that Reynid ensure none of our children could ever find a way into our private things again. I couldn’t imagine how they’d ever discovered it, right under our noses and we hadn’t seen. We thought we were so careful.
Oh, the things we thought and were so wrong about.
Now I was the speechless one. So often these historical objects reveal stories too human to be believed. No matter how hard we practice the art of placing ourselves in the shoes of others, they elude us. By light years and parsecs and immeasurable distances more.
“I’m Etteran, and even I can’t comprehend it, Airee,” Reina said. “I’ve been studying the early war era since I made my professorship. I saw things myself that would be difficult for outsiders to believe. Now I read this, and I wonder what secret things my mother and father endured as children, as young parents, bringing me into this warring world.”
“Have you talked to them about it?”
“My father died when I was a child. My mother won’t talk about it. We don’t speak much about the dead. Perhaps that’s why it’s so impactful when the dead themselves speak in their own words.”
“Can you tell me her history—what happened to Greenie and her family? You must have seen records.”
“Yes, of course. Greenie Stock. Reynid. All of her children. She was about your age now, Airee, around the time you were born. Should I tell you now?”
“On second thought, I think I’d like to hear more from her before you tell me. It helps to hear her thoughts as she experienced them without knowing her fate.”
“Then I’ll read more,” Reina said, picking up a different journal and opening to a page she’d marked in advance of our meeting. “Some of their fates will become apparent.”
At times, I wonder if sanity is possible in this life. I have mourned each of my children a little each day. I’ve practiced as they walked out the door. Pretended as we heard the wail of neighbors when they were notified of their dead sons, their lost daughters, that it would never, inevitably, come to our home, that pain. I can see no other scenario than that this world has broken me, for I cannot seem to make it real in my mind or in my heart. All the pain feels real. Impossible. Overpowering. Yet my senses are numb. That too feels real. But I cannot feel that it is possible our Oren will never return to us. That is not this life. That will never be real, never be true. I feel that this life is a lie, a false one. Am I insane? Or am I only now seeing through the gossamer fabric saturating these senses and bathing my consciousness in unreality. I feel that it is nothing more than a production, a fabrication of reality. I feel that I will die and meet Oren stage left and we will say to each other, “Well played, my love. Brilliant performance. Good show.”
Reynid thinks I am broken. I think he is wrong—they are wrong. If they choose to participate in this false reality, I will support them in feeling it to be so. I will feel sad for them that they believe our Oren is gone. I cannot. I won’t. And I won’t lie about it to make them feel better. All of the lies, all the pretending, and now it’s a problem if I feel the truth to be a lie?
I will never accept this. Never.
Either my Oren lives or he never was. There is no reality in which he died.
These are the truest words I have ever written.
I could do little more than shake my head. I wondered if Greenie was ever so honest with anyone in her life as she was with the pages of that journal. And here we were, two complete strangers, reading those words aloud in the hollowed-out streets of a city she would recognize as the mere bones of the Etteran civilization she was defined by.
Reina didn’t speak. She just sat, looking over at me for my reaction, waiting, I guess, for me to say something. The historical perspective of the great Airee of Athos maybe. Maybe it was something more personal? An attempt to connect on a human level?
“So did she lose her mind after all?” I asked Reina.
“That was it,” Reina answered, shaking her head. “I mean … sorry, the way I worded that makes it seem like that was the last entry. There were seven more journals after that, mostly normal entries. That was the only time she ever wrote anything remotely like that. I was curious what you’d make of it. A kind of one-off, grief-induced delirium?”
I couldn’t help letting out an involuntary laugh.
“I’m sorry?” she said. “I don’t understand, Airee.”
“I believe she was being honest there, Reina. I don’t think Greenie was delirious at all. It might be as she said, the truest thing she ever wrote. Stage left.”
“That’s a reference to Shakespeare, right?”
“That’s right. Greenie would appreciate that you know that, I think. Didn’t she say she taught literature?”
“Something like that. Though, there’s no record of her ever picking that up again after the war began. She worked her entire life in the Support Services—a sort of community outreach, morale, grief counseling, recruiting for community volunteers to boost the war effort. Fruit for grieving spouses, parents, and children. Things like that.”
“Remarkable,” I said, again almost involuntarily. “How long did she live? Relative to the war, that is?”
“Almost through the second cold year. In Athosian terms, actually it was right around the time—”
“I’m familiar,” I said. “I remember well enough.”
“Right,” she said.
It was about as close to an apologetic tone as one could expect from an Etteran, even a personable one like Reina.
“How did the books survive?” I asked her. “That was nearly thirty years after Greenie’s death that somebody else had to keep them a secret. Doubtless it would have been a death sentence for their keeper, no?”
“Probably but not definitely,” Reina said. “Greenie kept them in the sofa under a keylock—fingerprint and tempo coded. The smart play would’ve been to simply say, ‘Grandma just gave me a couch. I didn’t ever look under the cushions.’”
“And that would have worked?”
Reina shrugged doubtfully. “Those were pretty tough decades. All those people were raised in the war machine. Hard people.”
“I did mention I knew a few Etterans of that time?”
“Sure,” she said, a slight smile, trying to probe further with her eyes, I think. I didn’t indulge her.
“I can give you complete transcripts of all the journals, Airee. I’d love to have your thoughts on the ledger as well. That has to stay with me on Etterus, of course, but we can spend as much time examining it as you like while you’re visiting. There’s one more entry I’d love to read for you now, though.”
“Please,” I said, inviting Reina to continue.
I thought about Reece for a moment when Reynid died. It didn’t seem like the time to approach her about passing the book on. She loved her father dearly, and with Aura, Maxx, and Reynor all out on deployment, I couldn’t burden her with it—or risk her resentment. Reece was cold, and I knew she would do anything to protect her family. I had to remember that I was not her priority to save. She had her own children now. It was too big a risk to take. So I’d been holding the ledger without a plan for what had to be nearly fifteen years.
Occasionally, over that time, I’d take a measure of something in the words the kids would say in passing, a sharp look, a tinge of resentment. And I’d think, maybe Reece, maybe Moss, maybe Julia. Ultimately, it was none of them.
Libby came to me last week. She’d heard a rumor from her cousins that they had Trasp ancestry. And, of course, as much as I loved them all, it was always Libby who had that special place in my heart. Emmika was always so cold with her, and she was so warm, almost like she didn’t belong in this place.
She simply showed up at the door as though she’d been sent by some strange, outside force—the spirit of our ancestors, perhaps.
She smiled as she came in, told me that, no, she was just here for a visit, missed her grandma and wanted to see me. Then she put on some music and said, “Grandma I need to give you a hug.” And then she whispered in my ear. I couldn’t help but think of Reynid. Those first days. All those years ago. The music. The secrecy. The danger.
“Mama told me you had a Trasp book,” she whispered.
“Are you a spy?” I whispered back.
She shook her head at me and stepped back.
“I detest the war, and I don’t care who knows it.”
“You don’t mean that,” I said, firmly and loudly enough to be heard over the music. Then I leaned in and whispered to her, “Repeat after me, love, or this conversation ends here.”
I waited for Libby to acknowledge that command with a nod, then I made her say the words so Ketch could hear them. “I’m sorry, grandma. Sometimes I just get so sad and frustrated. Of course, I support Etterus with all my heart. I love my people more than anything.”
She repeated what I’d said to her, and when she’d finished, I embraced her and asked loud enough for Ketch to hear, “Would you come pray with me, Libby, my love? Come and pray.”
I thought there was some small chance, given how strongly they indoctrinate these children of ours in our ways, that Libby might have been fishing for a traitor. My bright little Libby. More likely, though, that resentment in her tone was genuine. If I was wrong and she was a far better actor than I’d given her credit for, then, oh well. I’d lived a long, strange life in this bizarre time in history. What a final chapter that would be. But she was true, my little Libby.
I moved the music into the bedroom, got out one of my prayer journals, and asked my granddaughter to sit with me in the closet. It was a moment I wish I could have shared with anyone. The look on her face—an old woman like me crawling into a closet! She didn’t know what to think. How she laughed! It had been so long I needed help getting down to my knees.
I told her everything. Our ancestry, the ledger, how I’d kept it hidden all those years, my journals. And I asked her if she’d keep them when I passed.
Such a sweet young woman. She shook her head when I told her about all the books in that secret hideaway in the couch.
“Grandma, all that weight,” she said. “I’m not sure we can move it without it registering. The bots will know it’s too heavy.”
“Move what, love?” I asked her.
“The sofa?”
“Oh, sweet child,” I told her. “I’ll just leave the flat to you.”
“Mama will be furious,” she laughed.
“Not half as mad as she would be if I left it to your aunt Reece. That would really get her going.”
So that was that. A brave young lady. We talked about what it meant. I told her about my girls finding the ledger, how close we came. There was a lock on that compartment now of course. I told her I had hope that the war would end in her lifetime. If she lived a long life, a good life, she might live to see the end of it. She might be able to take that book out again, show it to her grandchildren, maybe even her children. Miracles happen. Even the stubbornest, blackest times must eventually give way to the light.
“I can’t even picture it,” Libby told me, her hushed voice, muted in this enclosed little box, my true confessional of all things disloyal and unsacred, utterly un-Etteran.
“Oh, Libby, when I was your age,” I laughed. “I never could have imagined this. Never in a million years. This life.”
And it was true. I never could. I suppose the rest now will be her story. That much, I truly prayed.
“You got the books from her?” I asked Reina.
She shook her head. “Libby, ironically, was the one who had a bit of a breakdown. That was about a decade or so before the war ended. One of her sisters took over the flat and lived there for another two decades before Libby came back. Never even knew the books were there. Apparently, Libby had a bit of an adventurous life out in the Letters. At least that’s the family’s understanding.”
“How did you come by the ledger then, Reina?”
“One of her nephews found the books after Libby’s sister moved off-world, about five years or so after the war ended, I think he said. You really need to meet him, Airee. You may have heard of him. Willem Stock?”
“The Commodore, Willem Stock? That Willem Stock? He ended up with the book?”
Reina nodded. “I think you two would really enjoy each other’s company. He has some fascinating stories to tell, Airee. I’d be happy to introduce you.”
There was an added layer there, something more than the words she was speaking, a whispered message beneath the words speaking through Reina’s eyes.
“I think I would like that very much,” I told her. “Very much.”
Then, in a silent moment, Reina looked at me, and perhaps this was part of the inheritance of these Etterans who survived the war era, but she knew exactly what I was thinking, the question I would ask, almost a telepathic connection, spoken in the quiet reticence of an outsider, uncertain about what could and couldn’t be said, the questions that could be asked or answered.
“Ketch isn’t listening here anymore,” she said. “We can speak freely now Airee. And I can speak the truth. Freely. From my heart.”
“What would you like to say, Reina?”
“Do you know why we didn’t lose the war, Airee? I’d love to have your take.”
“Oh, I don’t know. We have a thousand different takes on Athos. All of them bullshit, I’d wager. None of us knows the first thing about your people, least of all the few lucky ones like me who met some of those warfighters.”
“What’s your version, Airee?”
“My take is probably too simplistic for a serious historian to ever give in any formal capacity, but it’s this: the Trasp engineered superior machinery; you Etterans developed superior warriors. I think your society engineered the perfect culture to survive that impossible time. You made the environment that made the people who could endure almost anything. And it didn’t matter if it broke you all, so long as bombs never rained down on Etterus.”
“They never got within a hundred light years of this planet,” Reina said, nodding. “Before the war, they thought it was noble to tune Ettera into human development, education, human achievement. I could show you the parameters—what an optimal seventy-seventh day in a five-year-old’s life looks like to maximize human flourishing for a world like Etterus. On one Tuesday in Reynid Stock’s lifetime, they turned the dial, tuning that awesome machine for the planet’s survival in galactic warfare. We survived all right—nine decades of ruin.”
“And now?”
Reina looked up at the towering empty edifices, spire upon spire of vacant residential towers reaching skyward, fencing us in, two tiny specks on a metal bench at a ration stand from a fading era. She gestured to the streets, the few lonely pedestrians navigating this clean, hollow shell of a once-grand, once-powerful civilization.
“This is the silent city, Airee. No one dares touch that dial now. We take no directives. We tune to our own future destiny. What could Etterus possibly say to us anymore. Look at this place. Listen to her echoes.”
As if on cue, the sky opened. Soft rains began to fall.
I've decided to post stories on Royal Road as well! You can find my profile here:
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