The Spaces in BetweenMichael Stonebow
2700 words The arms tingle first. Then the torso. Then the head. Then you’re covered in a warm flash of light. Colors dance on the periphery. The colors morph into whatever comes to mind. A knife’s blade slicing an onion. Your mother’s wrinkled hands. A furry dog chasing its tail. The purple amethyst geode on her night stand. Then the dance crescendos and abruptly stops. You feel peace. But in motion. There is nothing left of the ship you stepped onto, or the pod you entered. Only a perfect three-dimensional copy of yourself—your torso, arms, legs, feet, hands, all in their usual places—your avatar floats in a calming blue space, but only for a moment. The solar system erupts all around you, with the details—planets, asteroids, comets—enlarged. A vast emptiness populated by nothing but tiny dots in the distance doesn’t fit into human comprehension. We’re used to seeing landmarks—refueling stations, endless cornstalks, stores with flashing holograms, islands on the horizon. Unfathomable darkness makes us uncomfortable. You pass Mars on your left, Jupiter on your right. Their virtual representations spin beside you for as long as you look at them. But were you outside the ship, there would be nothing—no hint of their orbits or the last time they were here. Their current positions on their elliptical journeys, all on the other side of the sun. We like to think of Venus as our nearest neighbor, but when calculated by average distance over time, Mercury is the closest planet to every other in our solar system. You remember how she used to pause while that fact blew minds, grin while confusion washed over an acquaintance’s face. “You don’t want to accept it. Humans like to think in lines, not averages.” Halfway through the solar system and the memories still find you. You welcome the acceleration that takes you past the edge of the heliosphere. Your flight begins. 
The emptiness goes on and on, a dispiriting monotony. You manipulate your virtual space, pull the things you see out of the air. Information about the galaxies. Red giant star, white dwarf star. Exoplanet this, exoplanet that. This many degrees Celsius, that many Kelvin. But nothing holds your interest. You fill time by learning about the unique flora and fauna of Xinde. No matter how much humanity has learned, we have only found two planets worth the resources required to colonize them, and Xinde was the first. Still, colonization is less taxing than terraforming. Once travel could whip us quickly between the stars, putting that kind of effort into a single planet no longer made sense. Quick is relative, of course. Months in the doldrums stretch out like years. Her smell, lavender and tea. Her laugh, its glory always stifled. Her ears, uneven. Her eyes, a startling grey. She haunts you. You can put yourself into stasis. You wouldn’t have any discomfort; they numbed your body before hooking you in and closing your pod. Your muscles will not atrophy on the journey, in fact, the chemical conditioning will make you feel stronger when you arrive, even given the increase in gravity. But for some reason, no matter how much you want to avoid thoughts of her, that seems worse. You would never get the months back. She wouldn’t approve, and you can’t help but still care. You resign yourself to a closeup of a nebula and fast forward in time. You watch it birth new stars for many millions of years after your death. 
Mercifully, a small white dot brightens. You feel the ship slow, a simulated sensation of arrival. You shudder as it turns, adjusting to approach trajectory. Part of you mourns leaving the space in between stars; the emptiness understands you. But all the reasons you’ve come—the novelty of a different sky, the opportunity to advance, the need to forget—remain unaltered. Even if they now diminish behind the thrill of adventure, the drum of anticipation. A new world awaits your footsteps and the ripple of your influence. A calm serum works its way through your veins. You joyfully fall asleep. 
You see her by the door, her face alone illuminated by the security light. A dream, a memory. She sways gently to a love song. Her eyes meet yours. She holds your gaze. Such confidence, so settled in her skin. Others see right through you, but she steps forward. She warms you in her fire, her quiet intelligence. She fades. A very nice bot greets you, a female voice, “Good morning, sleeping beauty. Can you hear me Ms.—Ahh, there you are.” It’s soothing and dulcet, like you’d expect from a hypnotist. But you feel groggy, not sleepy. Bright light blinds you. Your head throbs, like a miniature porcupine traverses the blood vessels along your scalp, occasionally stopping to stretch. Your eyes adjust to the source of the light, and your breath catches in your lungs. The sun. The sun takes up the whole window. And it's orange, her favorite color. 
The days here pass differently from those on Earth. Roughly thirty-four hours long, and in Nove, the prime city, twenty-four to twenty-six of them daytime. An entire Earth day of sunlight. Languishing in the UV rays, knowing you have ample hours to soak up Vitamin D, energizes you and somehow also relaxes you. The Xindians, though human, after only a few generations have developed their own culture. They have their own music, art, and diseases. They follow their own rhythms. Long days allow for more leisure. They eat two extra meals. They have more stamina; they stay awake through the daylight. They sleep deeply at night. Like Earthlings, however, some prefer to see the sun rise, others sip cocktails long after it sets. You adjust to the extra time between sleeps quickly, but the stars are off-putting, placed differently in this sky. 
Great fields of moss surround the city. Grass has never grown here, and ecological mandates require that any foreign samples remain in a hermetically sealed greenhouse. Humanity has seen what invasive species can do. We are determined not to repeat our past mistakes. Before you embarked, even the bacteria in your bowels and on your skin were removed and replaced. Your first time in the fields spurs laughter, disbelief. But underneath it, sadness for what Earth could have been, what humanity lost. You immediately strip off your shoes to let the tendrils of the moss work their way between your toes. Nothing back on Earth remains so untouched. Nothing at home grows like this, so clean and pure. The bright greens shudder your breath and bring you to your knees. 
Your adjustment period ends, now to work. You throw yourself into your samples, adjust levels of nutrients, test the effect of different chemicals, vary the length of daily sunlight exposure. But you’ve filled these beds before, watered their soil, measured their fertilizer, counted their leaves. And each day you went home to songs belted at the top of her lungs and bubbling stews on the stove. Awaiting you now, there’s only silence Your eyes stray constantly to any window. Out there. All you have seen of out there is the moss, but it touched you deeply, made you feel good. Such a profusion of life. Not humans packed into artificial habitats like on Earth. Just life, as it evolved. Out there, the colors, the smells, the dirt. Even the dirt. It pulls at you tenaciously. Within days you can no longer focus. 
An idea germinates. Then sprouts, then towers above you. You walk in its shadow with every step. You carry its weight. You eat local proteins. The tackalope and the crawden. They taste foreign yet familiar; your brain connects them to things you’ve eaten before. The berries here are just as sweet, though their pastels and tendrils make you feel as if you are eating a failed experiment. Maps and guidebooks show you where they grow and how to avoid their poisonous doppelgangers. You start to believe that you could go. You start to believe in your viability. But on Earth you rarely ventured outside the habitats. Too few places of interest remained, and permits were too expensive. What gear would you need to survive in this wilderness? 
One day, while you eat lunch alone, you overhear someone mention a strip of stores on the outskirts, a replica of frontier history. Within hours, you walk onto covered wooden walkways that line the street. A craven statue depicts a copper-skinned man with a lavish headpiece made of feathers. Holographic horses swish their tails to shoo away holographic flies. You saw a horse once in a zoo. You were so impressed at the muscles atop their legs. How could four scrawny pegs hold up and propel such a powerful beast? The beauty of the mane, its shimmer, the depth of the eyes. These holograms provide a decent approximation, but they can’t replicate that wisdom looking out at you, that certainty you felt that the real animal knew how to weather intense suffering. Next to the horse you find what looks like an entrance. Two slatted doors remain shut when you approach. You look for a sensor or button that might open them, but nothing. Then from a few shops down you hear a metallic jingle. A pair of identical doors swing open, a man emerges, the doors creak shut behind him. You apply pressure and your doors give way, then sway back and forth. You push through. The owners of the store don’t give you a second look when you purchase a paper map, a canteen, a small metal pot, a book on how to break down a carcass, a bow and arrows, and a box of matches with a guide to starting a fire without them. Another customer who looks even more lost than you picks up most of the same items. When you notice him repeating your selections, he nervously says, “You have nice taste. These will look fantastic in my display case.” He does not turn away. His eyes are kind. You need to go farther away. 
You pick the pack up from your bed. Of the things in it and secured to it, the only ones you have experience with are the bow and arrows. You became obsessed with archery when you were young. You competed in the biathlon, you did pretty well on skis. But it’s been a while since you’ve spied down the shaft of an arrow, and Nove has no practice range. Once you get out past the drone patrols, you’ll have to find an appropriate target to take pot shots at. In the mirror, you give yourself an appraisal. The next step is to open the door. You hesitate. Leaving Nove on foot is forbidden. But security measures are minimal. They don’t expect someone to go voluntarily. One look back into your cramped quarters makes you long for open spaces. You wiggle your toes, recalling the moss. Here you may be free, but out there you will be limitless. 
You pick the right night, when all eyes will be on the fellit migration. The hatch was particularly productive this year. Everyone is excited. The sky fills with lumbering wings. You walk through the crowds, attempting nonchalance. But you have no need to act, no one can tear their eyes away from the dark silhouettes above. The noise is not deafening, but still drowns out the crowd’s amazement. The air takes a beating, and scales catch the moonlight as they flutter to the ground. You can’t tell the scales’ color, just dark and reflective. But you catch one in your hand to save in your pocket. Another falls in your hair. You brush it off. Your pack doesn’t draw attention. All around you, spectators pull out food from their own and spread containers over picnic blankets. You approach the forest line. Once you step under the trees, you will be hidden. But you’ll no longer see the fellit. The canopy grows thick. There’s no reason to hurry. The fellit will distract for hours. You slip off your boots, tuck your socks inside. Wiggle your toes in the sponge beneath you. That sensation again runs up your nerves to your brain. You feel its passage millimeter by millimeter. You slip your pack off your shoulders; it sinks into the moss beside you, just an inch. In your head, you hear her voice, and an impulse overwhelms you. You dance. 
You must move far from the city before you can risk a fire, so you use a dim lamp to travel at night. The forest is dense, and even when morning comes hardly a ray of light penetrates the canopy. Yet wave bushes still thrive, their needles brush your hips and arms and shoulders. They reach south toward the sunlight during the long days, perpetually failing to crash to the underbrush all around. Their crescents provide the perfect hovel for your solo shelter. Even if a drone could see through the trees, you’d be hidden. Dried leaves and thin twigs crunch under your feet. For the first few nights no other sound accompanies you. Then you stumble across a herd of apemoose, named by a dull taxonomist who combined their ape-like faces with their size. Their hoof-like feet disturb the detritus. Branches crack off as their long, thin necks rise. They detect you. The larger males form a line; their stiff necks project their strength. You know from your studies that they don’t attack unless you get close enough to touch them. Still, you stay wary until they begin their ridiculous cackling. It is supposed to warn you, but it sounds so much like laughter that you can’t help but join in. You start to wonder if this disturbance might draw unwanted attention. If the authorities find you, you will be returned home to your quarters for your own protection. You will be guarded like a prisoner. You won’t be permitted to play among the moss. You can’t let that happen. Something feels right out here, your bones were meant for this. You give the apemoose a wide berth and push on, thinking how much she would have enjoyed them. 
Walking into the cave under the gaze of the rising sun releases a tension you didn’t know you’d been holding. Something primal in the musty air, in the cool rock—a feeling of safety grows with each step into the ground. Until you brighten your light, and a cool glow reaches ahead of you, illuminating an opening and a cavern of rainbow stone. Layers of rock, each reflecting their own wavelength, reach up from where you stop, mouth agape. The wonder of it drives stakes through your feet. You fall to the ground and bring your knees to your chest. A geode of impossible dimensions. Crystals pour down the walls. The smallest, no larger than a fingernail. Farther in, a gush from the ceiling, pointed pyramids threaten the floor. You become overwhelmed by an emotion you’ve held at bay for so long. Tears well up, then fall, then stream. You can’t believe you’ve come so far, only to end up here. 
She was bold at the concert. She invited you to her apartment. There you broke apart the amethyst sphere on her nightstand, ran your fingers over the purple crystals inside, and you knew. Other objects, ancient relics seeded around, spoke to you as well. A Nina Simone record, a worn copy of The Left Hand of Darkness, the telescope on her covered balcony. Her hands rubbed your shoulders, a tingling filled your stomach. An anxious tremor shook you. She turned you around to wither under her rounded face. Her desire flared in those dark eyes. From that moment forward, you could never refuse her. Hard to fathom that she too had already fallen in love. Electrons had moved from your atoms to hers, and individually, but in parallel, you’d started to plan out your life together, unable to imagine the extinguishing of her breath. You’d designed a virtual space by the sea, where you could swim, and she could trace the contours of your hips in front of the fire. She’d half written the vows she would speak, and chosen the name of the child that would die with her, too premature to survive. Neither of you had slept since she’d spoken your name for the first time. But in unison, you had dreamed. 
That night, you overflowed, like the crystals lining these walls. But no matter how far you travel, you’ll remain empty, like the spaces in between. |
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Michael Stonebow
Before Michael Stonebow became a writer, he traveled to all seven continents, but he has settled happily into suburban life with his wife and two daughters. He is pursuing his MA in Creative Writing at Johns Hopkins University. His work has been featured in the journal, In Parentheses. You can follow Michael on Instagram @michaelstonebow.
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