Lemuria

Tatiana Natsuko studied the spectroscope with a careful eye. To her best estimate, the Intrepid was still traveling at six percent the speed of light relative to their new target system. A yellow-white G0 main sequence star glowed in the distance. A fraction of a light-year away, it was a pearly flash of white against a coal black abyss. All around, the blackness was magnificently dusted with stars.

Like every space within the Intrepid, the control room felt cramped. She looked down a dark shaft and felt beads of sweat accumulate at her neckline. The vertigo of the weightless control room inspired a sense of deja vu. Arrayed in the tunnel below her was a dazzling tunnel of holographic displays, wallscreens, eye controls, touchglass, tactile, oligoelectrical, and electromagnetic sensors. The cavernous cylinder brought to mind a childhood memory of a trip to a corn silo. As a girl, the secularist party stubbornly tried to teach her the fundamentals of civilization; farming, industry, academics, and athletics.

Paused in reflection, she remembered the eager smiles of the government instructors-their black, citizen’s uniforms, their notebooks. She mused, perhaps for a few decades, she had been touted as a hero to the next generation of sweaty, impatient ten-year-olds. It seemed obvious to her. The creation of martyrs-that was the real value of their mission to the stars. It had no practical utility. It was symbolic of power, like the Egyptian pyramids of the Old Kingdom or the battleships of the early twentieth century.

Ironically, those governments had all vanished, and yet, here she was. Aboard an ancient artifact, 2000 light years from Earth, she was the first human being to get an unobstructed view of the galactic center. It was humbling. Literally, it was a vision from the afterlife.

“How can this be real?” she mused aloud. “I Chang Tsu slept, and dreamt I was a butterfly. I woke. Or does the butterfly sleep and dream he is Chang Tsu?”

“Holy Shit, Tat, this is a hell of a ride... We are above the galactic plane.” blurted Kat from below. The ship’s astrogator had slid in from amidships, pumped up on adrenaline like a teenager on pixie speed. They were upside down relative to each other, and briefly, their bodies touched in the dark weightlessness. Tat felt the warm curves of her shipmate brush against her.

“Blush reflex working fine in that box, eh?” Kat quipped, curling into a ball as she peered back at the physicist. She used terrestrial slang for a synthetic body-a box. As in; a box for the soul-a box for the mind-the Platonic essence.

“Its cool”, continued Kat, shaking Tat from her momentary reverie, “Something about being in a box makes a person bisexual....surviving death makes gender irrelevant. Ya know?”

Tat changed the subject “Tell me when Baby knows how many planets we have. She must have parked us for a reason.”