Science Fiction: Drabbles and assorted babblings

Neptunian Ink

[Author's Note:] This was a story orignally written for my creative prose workshop in university, so (in keeping with the class guidelines) it's only around a thousand words long. Anyway, enjoy! - Jeb

Orph Magnusson hated Neptune.

They hated many other things right now. The frost-riddled slush sucking at their feet, the weight of the makeshift sledge tied to their right leg, the rasp of their only companion's breath occasionally audible in their earpiece. No, it was the planet itself they reserved most hatred for. Hanging static in the sky, an azure crescent suspended thousands of kilometres above their head.

Watching. Waiting. Taunting.

They turned to check on Iverson. His glare visor was still raised under the sealant on his helmet. Whatever strut or panel had hit him in the crash, it'd evidently made a mess of his face as well as his abdomen: he refused to let Orph see it at all. The abdomen wound was harder to hide. A great patch of misshapen sealant stretched from the right hip of Iverson's suit all the way across his stomach. Blood tinged the fibres of Iverson's breastplate, partially obscuring his name badge; the United Nations sigil on his chest looked as if it'd been rubbed in Martian dust.

Their partner's breath hitched, then cut in and out as his head lolled unconsciously in his helmet. Orph breathed a sigh of relief. Iverson was much better company when he wasn't conscious. Right now, it was hard enough to concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other.

Ahead of them, Triton glistened wetly under the glare of helmet-mounted headlamps. Slurries and peaks of mud-like tholins stood like stalagmites. Their brownish-red colour reminded Orph of home, back on Ganymede, and how Jupiter's pale crimson light would wash over the domes at sunset.

Nope. Stop right there, Orph told themself. The more you think of home, the further away it gets.

Trudge. Lift. Trudge. Lift. Trudge. Lift. Glance at the datapad. Self-medicate. Bypass the warnings. Jab the medicate button again. This level of methamphetamines would gradually become fatal, Orph knew, but it didn't matter if they couldn't get to the relay station. If they stopped now, both they and Iverson would collapse, suffocate freeze over, in that order: a new boulder on the Tritonian landscape. Orph felt the meth tickling their synapses, and a renewed burst of clarity set them off. Trudge. Lift. Trudge. Lift—

Without warning, the icy vista expanded.

Distant mountains and crater rims curved upward, hemispheres of brown and white hunching upon each other. They swallowed Neptune, swallowed the stars, swallowed Orph and Iverson; two sacks of flesh and bone standing in a tunnel of impossible geometry. The floor accelerated out from under their feet, multiplying in length, a slush-soaked highway millions of kilometres long. At the end of the tunnel, a conical shape glimmered.

The relay station. Safety. Survival. Salvation.

Their breath hammered in their ears. The echo was unbearable: the thought of stopping, more so. The sledge felt lighter. Now it was easy. Too easy. It reminded Orph of when they'd first stepped on Triton after six punishing months in Earth-gravity; everything was more fluid out here.

"Hey, Orph? Orph? Can you take it a bit easier?" The rasp of Iverson's voice shocked them: even after two years of deployment together, the extended vowels and harsh r's of the Martian accent still sounded as foreign as ever. "The sledge is bouncing a lot and it's starting to—"

"No, no, it's okay, it's good, the faster I go, the quicker we get home."

"We've got time," Iverson gasped, "we've got supplies, just...c'mon, man, slow down..."

"Don't call me 'man', Iverson."

There was a pointed moment of silence, broken only by the rapid rasp of the sledge against the icy surface of the tholins and some sort of thudding noise Orph could feel behind their head. Their skin prickled.

"Sorry," Iverson said. His voice sounded ragged and far away, as if he were speaking to Orph from a few light-hours' attenuation distance instead of right behind them.

A perfectly circular hole irised open ahead and above them. Through it, Neptune shone; a deep blue glow began to fill the tunnel. Orph looked up: a silvery belt of wind was moving languidly across the planet's dayside. As they watched, the belt unravelled itself into a thin string covering the entirety of Neptune's visible crescent. It coiled for a few moments, seemingly unsure of itself, then began to form letters.

It began by writing the word ORPHEUS, then after a moment's hesitation, IVERSON. The writing was thin and slanted, as if written with an ancient quill nib.

"What...are you?" Orph asked, staring wide-eyed at Neptune's radiant blue cloud tops.

The belt curled itself into a circle for a few seconds, then into the shape of a trident.

TRITON, it wrote.

"How...what are you doing?"

I WATCH. IT IS WHY I WAS BUILT.

"What do you watch?"

YOU, the line answered. ALL OF YOU. TOGETHER.

"Why?"

The belt curled into a spiral and uncurled, several times. After a few minutes of seeming deliberation, the line simply lay flat. A few minutes passed, or perhaps hours. Maybe days. There was no way to tell.

"What do you want from us?" Orph finally whispered.

OBSERVE, came the response. NURTURE.

There was a brief pause. The silvery line spiralled and unravelled several times more.

"Orph..."

They whipped around, facing Iverson. The Martian was cast in eerie Neptunian light; the slick surface of the helmet sealant shimmered like spilled oil. His glare visor sparkled in a thousand shades of blue, from cornflower to deepest midnight.

"What, Iverson?"

"Call me... call me..."

A spurt of coughing cut him off. The fingers of Iverson's right hand uncurled feebly, flopping his suit's glove against the terrain like a landed fish.

"Call me...Ben..."

Orph knelt beside Ben and pressed their glove to his, palm to palm. His fingers juddered slightly, then closed, interlacing his fingers with Orph's own.

"It's okay, Ben. It's going to be okay," Orph whispered, the words almost imperceptible even to themself.

Unbeknownst to them both, in the tapestry of stars above their heads, Neptune's great silver streak of ink twisted and fractured once more.

BEN, it read simply.