Marina J. Lostetter’s original short fiction has appeared in venues such as Lightspeed and Uncanny Magazine. Her debut sci-fi series, Noumenon, is an epic space adventure starring an empathetic AI, alien mega structures, and generations clones. Her first fantasy novel, The Helm of Midnight, is forthcoming from Tor in 2021. Marina tweets as @MarinaLostetter and her website can be found at www.lostetter.net.
It’s 2185.
We can travel to the far reaches of the galaxy overnight.
But we can’t fucking eradicate cancer.
* * *
I’m going to a place that shouldn’t exist. The last place I would’ve thought of going three years ago. It’s the last place I want to be.
The Face.
Oh, you don’t know about The Face?
Funny.
I’d have thought . . .
Anyway: if you happened to be on Earth, in the southern hemisphere, on a clear night, you could easily look up and find the constellations Sagittarius, Serpens Cauda, and Aquila. Between them is another dinky constellation, made up of not especially bright stars, called Scutum. In the center of that constellation, past the Sonnet nebula, astronomers found a face. Just a face.
Lilac purple, smooth and glossy, with pits for eyes and a strong nose and wide lips. About the diameter of Betelgeuse from chin to forehead. An effigy. A face the size of a star.
The back of The Face is concave, but only slightly. Here slightly means a depth of two light minutes. The whole thing has a pressed-flat look about it, like a mask that won’t really fit. One made for hanging on the wall instead of wearing to fancy masquerade parties.
I can’t remember the last time someone wanted me at a fancy party.
That’s my fault, really. I wasn’t easy to live with before I left. They were making it too easy, so I had to make it hard. Everyone was so damn accommodating—like the word terminal changed who I was, who they were.
I’d ask and they’d provide. Yes, yes, yes—all the damn time. You’d think it’d be great. But it’s . . .it’s devastating. Because they tell you yes now because before they thought they’d have years and years to tell you no.
I hated it, so I kept pushing, asking for more and more ridiculous things, hoping they’d crack, hoping they’d say no, hoping they’d treat me like they did before.
It was like they thought their tolerance was a final gift to me, their acquiescence to my every whim a beautiful treasure instead of wholly dehumanizing.
Eventually I couldn’t take it anymore, knew it was as bad for them as it was for me. I’d been lashing out, controlling them in the hopes of controlling something—anything—in my life. It wasn’t fair of me. But I still needed . . .still need.
Control. The end I can control.
So I’m going. Am gone. Whatever.
I found a vessel making its pilgrimage to The Face of God (ha), paid my fare (who needs earthly possessions when you won’t be around to appreciate them?), and left everyone I’ve ever known (Mom, Dad, Leroy). Because that’s what you do when you’re about to die painfully—do the wildest thing you can think of in an attempt to die not-so-painfully.
The Face makes no sense, which you’ve probably figured out on your own. It doesn’t have any seams. No rivets, no soldering lines, no mortar, no superglue. It looks to be a solid structure, molded or carved. Scientists think it’s metal. It looks and feels and acts like metal. But it’s violet, and all the atoms are wrong or something like that.
It’s all wrong.
It’s as big as a big-ass star, like I said, but gravity is barely two thirds of a g at the surface.
And it cries. Two colossal rivers flow from its eyes, its tears liquid mercury instead of briny water. As the rivers flow, they slowly evaporate into the cosmos, leaving not a drop to drip from its perfect purple chin.
Thing is, everything else that flows down the rivers evaporates too.
They sent probe after probe down the rivers in the early years, and as the little machines made their journeys they got lighter, thinner. They disappeared slowly, molecule by molecule. At the top it was a fully-functioning, high-end space-exploration appliance. At the bottom, nothing but dust and star stuff.
The probes couldn’t even detect what was happening to them. They broadcast no helpful data, no special clue.
We don’t even know where the mercury comes from, how it is replenished. There are no reservoirs, and the mercury appears to percolate out of the bottom of the eyes like water through the dirt floor of a well.
This is why The Face makes no sense.
Oh, and also because it’s a giant fucking face in space.
We have no theories about The Face. Not real ones, anyway. Most people of any faith just slap divinity on it and go about their business. Scientists say ancient aliens built it while usually using some handwavium to explain why it looks human. My two favorite (least favorite?) explanations are convergent evolution and mental matrixing. That last one there implies it’s not really a face, and that it just looks like a face to us because we’re used to seeing faces everywhere. On Mars, on the moon, in your bowl of sludge-soup after the latest chemo treatment.
But they don’t know. No one knows. There aren’t any real clues, no leads, no evidence.
There’s nothing else like it in the galaxy. No hands, no feet, no giant neck for it to sit upon. All we’ve found is The Face.
Why, what, who? All mysteries. What is it for? What does it do?
Does it matter what its original purpose was, now that we’ve assigned it our own?
It’s beautiful, though. I saw it with my own eyes for the first time today. The surrounding nebula sends pinkish-orange rainbows over its contours. Starlight reflects more strongly off its surface than the surrounding ships—and there are hundreds of those. Some are just visiting, some are conservationists stationed to protect The Face—protect it from what, I don’t know. Some are temples permanently in orbit.
The pilgrims who ferried me here told me to pick my last meal from the Trees of Life they grow in the ship’s belly—a giant conservatorium, a special bio-dome, with arching windows that look out into the stars. Lights in the ceiling cross the expanse on tracks, back and forth, a strange strobe show. The kind of light the trees need, chaotic and unnerving.
Their trunks are bone-white. Because that’s what they are: bone. Engineered to grow like plants, with marrowy sap and meaty fruit.
These bones are nothing like my bones, but there’s still a sense of wrongness in them. Only their wrongness is a gift, and mine . . .my bones . . .well . . .
Meat. I picked an orange from a tree, unpeeled its hide, and ball of hamburger fell out.
We can grow this shit, but we can’t fucking cure my cancer.
But I’m grateful for the food. Something like this would have made me puke a week ago. But my stomach doesn’t have long enough to reject what I put in it. The meat has grown well-seasoned on the tree. Spicy, tactile. Warm and juicy.
After, they fit me in my space suit, and we leave the reverent fleet to make for the tears.
Truth is, these things shouldn’t exist. This too-human face, divorced from physics as we know it; these trees that feed me as though by a chef’s hand; this shuttle with its willing priests, who will drop me in the river of tears and fly away again; this cancer eating my bones, distorting my marrow and taking over my blood. None of it should exist.
But it does.
They lower me down, like an acrobat or sky dancer, on a length of silk the same color as The Face. When I reach the river, I lay down and cross my arms over my chest like I’m a kid at the water park. It’s just a slide. A long, long slide.
But I don’t let go of the silk.
There’s a priest on the other end. My guide. Holding tight.
I’m buoyant on the mercury. I can feel its pressure against my suit, rippling here and there, but I can’t tell if it’s hot or cold or any temperature at all. The current pulls me, and the silk is taut in my glove.
“Are you ready?” my guide asks over my helmet’s comms. The shuttle won’t leave until I let go. Even then, they’ll scoop me out if I say so. My guide will even take me back to Earth if I’ve changed my mind.
But I haven’t. I want this.
“I’m ready,” I say, and feel my own tears welling in my eyes. They’re tears of grief and tears of relief and tears of happiness all at once.
He makes the sign of his religion from where he leans out of the shuttle, his own suit masking his expression. I try not to laugh as he moves his hand—it looks like he’s drawing a smiley face of old.
He doesn’t push or pull.
I let go, and he lets go, and the silk falls across my body.
The current is fast, but I feel no great whoosh. Here I am, exposed to all the universe, to all of these ships and these people. They are too far away to see me with the naked eye, but I can feel their gazes on me, hot and proud.
They are proud of all the people who take the plunge.
I hope my family is proud too.
Or, at least, I hope they understand.
Space is lain out before me. The sensation isn’t quite like flopping down in the grass on a summer night; the stars are clearer, and there are the ships all around, noses pointed at me like arrows. The ships make me feel like I’m looking out instead of up. Like I’m slowly slipping feet-first down a waterfall instead of meandering down a river.
I am alone on The Face’s cheek, surrounded by quicksilver, rushing, rushing, through, away, beyond.
I feel light. The continuous background pains of my body rearranging and strangling itself abate.
I could pitch forward—upward—just a bit and float free into the void. Leave the surface of The Face. But I’m heading toward something now. There’s an echo in my mind, like the howl of a distant wind, and it feels like a call, like I need to get closer to make out the words.
So much space. So much universe. The tall ridgeline of the nose is on my left. Distant and gigantic. I’m here already. That means I’ve been in the river for days. It doesn’t feel like days. It’s been seconds. Nothing looks like it’s changed—the ships haven’t moved. The universe holds fast.
But has it always been this bright? Always been these colors?
Lighter, lighter still. I feel fuzzy, like my head is a balloon. And it’s a wonder—these points, speckled space. So many colors spread out before me, each a globe, like I can see every single planet at once.
And the voice. It’s gentle.
It’s you, isn’t it?
So much wonder and I don’t know what it means. But I think when I reach the bottom I will.
The voice is many voices. The voice is all voices, even voices that don’t use sounds. What is this place? What am I knowing, what am I seeing?
I’m elsewhere, but still on the river. The Face cries for me, grieves over the loss of me.
There is loss, but that is all entropy.
I can see the edge, the chin approaching beneath . . .not my feet. I have no feet. I don’t know how I can see the end when there’s so little of me left. But the vastness is forming to swallow me. I don’t need my body anymore.
This was right. This is a good death.
Can you still hear me? Are you even real? Are the voices those of the others who have gone, or others who have yet to be?
And then I’m there.
I’m here.
I’m over the edge.
Nothing but dust and star stuff. That’s all I ever was. Part of a star that walked, and breathed, and felt for a while.
A thing that shouldn’t exist.
Copyright © 2020 by Marina J. Lostetter.