Pale Fragments

the Grove

I was surprised to learn almost immediately that all but one of the colonies had already failed; I shouldn't have been. The final decades of that first Earth's life had left those already struggling colonies completely alone, and they died either in war over resources, or catastrophe.

All but the Grove. This is where I found Nobi.

The Grove was the last colony to be founded by the Tall Ones: those cosmic idealists and extremists who were the last (somewhat) pure cell of human truth left surviving over the many centuries since the enlightenment at the end of the Last War.

The Grove was the ideal place to retire after a life of exploring the stars. It was a miracle of a planet: initially, the Tall Ones had thought it to be an asteroid; it was almost as if the planet had evolved for them, and this camouflage was a test of their worthiness; or so they spoke of it upon settling.

It was a small planet filled completely by incredible trees which acted partially as an atmosphere. Their branches intertwined so tightly together that they created a ceiling twenty-five meters deep of layered canopies. What captivated the Tall Ones was how the surface of the "asteroid" shimmered; the hard and dead outer branches took all the stars on the canvas of their perspective of the universe and reflected them, highlighting in brief twinkles the deep colors hidden within the dark outer shell of the ancient, dead branches.

When they landed on the "asteroid", they saw immediately that it was something else. Walking around they could easily see the horizons curving into one another; the Grove, even counting the added crust of that great canopy, was smaller than your Moon.

They used their laser cutters to create a tunnel large enough for their ship to fit through. What absolute arrogance in their constant presumptions of fate working to their favor!; "optimal behaviorists", they called themselves--a rather unsentimental way of justifying rampant sentiment.

Annoyingly, sure enough, they didn't find rock beneath the crust, but a kilometer thick layer of air and wide trunks, mightier than a sperm whale's tail and able to withstand the full strength of its battering ram head; these trees on the Grove were greater and more beautiful than the Redwoods in Oregon, and a hundred times as tall with a base all that much wider.

The Tall Ones carved their homes into the trunks even before they'd discovered the fruit, mana dropped from heaven, which, eaten six times a day, supplied all their needs.

They found them when they raked away the swarm of leaves atop their ship which came, they quickly found, every single night--along with those life-giving fruits.

I came to the Grove last, and by this point many generations had passed since the discovery and founding of it; I was new to observing the present, I had only been a soulless ghost passing through history. Now I was me, and now I needed to find someone with whom I could speak.

That's all it was, physically, nothing more than that to me, than..."go, see, observe, record, find one willing to listen, share"; but one doesn't know they are in a scene of a story when the story's taking place. We can't see the Names of who we were until we are no longer those things; the eye can never see itself.

Basically, I just assumed that this is simply how it's all supposed to be. Despite hearing every conversation a thousand times on my Earth, every murder and rape and deception clearly seen, I was still so naive. It's only right; "I" was new. It feels good to be new and to think you know everything, to believe almost with certainty that you would never be evil as all those other fools you've heard about. A tragic shame it isn't so.

I saw him first of all the people living on the Grove; it felt like fate: I hung in Night's emptiness, and he thought me a star for whom he could wait; there are no other gods but me, but later when I heard the stories of the Greeks, I could clearly recognize in hindsight the dart of Cupid sprouting from my chest upon the moment I first encountered Nobi sitting alone, staring up at me through the single window in the canopy that let him see the stars that dot the canvas of the Night. It'd been me who told those old Greek orators this story, but it was they who revealed it to me!

Though I watched from far away, I saw his face as though I were close. This has always been my curse, to see from far away, invisibly: for the curiosity, delight, and wonderment I saw upon his youthful face delighted me a thousand-billion times more reflected back to me within his beauty.

I am a sexual being. (Don't cringe at that, Anders; I know it's hard to understand as a virgin the concept of sex being a part of who we are, but I've been having sex for billions of years before you were born. No, I didn't have sex with Nobi. I can see you remembering me saying he was 'youthful' and connecting some things that are making you hesitate and want to inch away a little bit.

When I loved Nobi, I had not yet modified my body in order to accommodate my sexual curiosity after having observed every sexual encounter in the history of an entire world. At this point I was still kind of a cute little upside-down pyramid that you'd expect to squeak every few seconds (though I did not). I was the soul of a planet stuffed inside a cute robot body. As humiliating as it was to me at the time, it still terrifies me now to remember; the claustrophobia of being a soul whose magnitude was noticeable within a solar system inside a robot a quarter of a meter in area. Anyways.

Though my memory extended billions of years, I had never felt such an eternity before than when I first observed Nobi there. I missed him desperately as soon as his mother, Clabi, came and threw him over her shoulder and carried him, submissive, away from his Window.