A canyon rose up around her, arches crumbling and rocks stained red. The sky was so far away, a swath of intangible blue beyond the grass-tufted clifftops. Below, birds nested in whatever cracks and crevices they could find. They darted around the shady space with breathtaking speed, turning to catch beakfuls of the insects that filled the hot air.
Presumably hot air, that is. The theatre did not include sensory input beyond sound and sight. This wasn’t a sim. The theatre pre-dated that technology – or, to put it more accurately, pre-dated contact with species willing to share that technology. Every Exodan district had a theatre, and they still used the same antiquated tech, patched up a thousand times over, and the same recordings, taken by Eyas’ ancestors’ ancestors when it became clear that collapse was unavoidable. It was an old tradition, viewing the last scraps of a living Earth. There had been a time when going to the theatre was something you did every tenday – every week, then – or more. Every day, for some. You and your hexmates put on comfortable clothes, you brought some floor pillows, and you sat alongside other families on the floor beneath the projector dome, surrounded by all-encompassing images of a canyon, a beach, a forest. It was time made for reflection, for reminding. People laughed, sometimes, or wept, or sang quietly, or had whispered conversations. Anything beyond that was frowned upon. The theatre was a sacred place. A quiet place, even when any given day found it packed from end to end.
Eyas had never seen a theatre that crowded. The need to acquaint oneself with what a planet looked like had faded more with each generation after the real thing had been found. She’d never seen more than ten people in a theatre at once, and not all the theatres were in use anymore. They weren’t a vital system, and they didn’t get resource priority unless the surrounding district voted otherwise. Hers always had. Eyas sympathised with people who wanted their stores to go to more practical uses, but she was glad the majority of her neighbours shared her view that practicality became dreary if you didn’t balance it out properly.
Her primary reasoning for loving the theatre was selfish, and she knew it. She could’ve cited tradition and culture – and no one would’ve questioned her, given that her work embodied said same – but no, Eyas was glad to have a functional theatre nearby because it was one of the few places she could just think. Her work might’ve seemed quiet to some, but there were always families involved, and supervisory meetings like everyone else had. And even on the days when her only company was someone dead, she was focused on the task at hand. As for home – home was a place of rest, sure, but more chiefly distraction. Chores to do, friends to chat with, conversations leaking through closed doors. There weren’t many places in the Fleet you could be alone. While she very much enjoyed being around the living, sometimes her own thoughts were noise enough. The theatre wasn’t private. It was as public as could be. But it was a different kind of public, the kind of place where you could be alone around others.
She lay down on the floor, resting her head against the cushion she’d brought from home. The ghost of a wind rustled the scrappy canyon plantlife, and she imagined she could feel it coasting over her skin. She had no strong yearnings for wind and sky, but they were fun to think of anyway. Imagine: the intense vulnerability of an unshielded space. The wild chaos of atmosphere. Such thoughts were soothing and thrilling in equal measure.
Eyas folded her hands over her stomach, letting them rise and fall with each breath. She let her mind drift. She thought about the laundry she needed to do at home. She thought about her mother, and knew she should summon the fortitude to visit her one day soon. She thought about Sunny, and a hidden place inside her kicked with remembrance. She thought about dinner, and her empty stomach growled. She thought about work the next day, and she felt . . . she felt . . . she wasn’t sure.
She shifted her weight, the floor now less comfortable than it had been a few breaths before. There it was again – that tiredness, that nameless tiredness. It wasn’t lack of sleep, or overwork, or because anything was wrong. Nothing was wrong. She was healthy. She had a good home with good friends, and a full belly when she remembered to feed it. She had the profession she’d wanted since she was a little girl, and it was a valuable thing, a meaningful thing, a thing she believed in with all her heart. She’d worked hard for that. She had the life she’d always wanted, the life she’d set out to build.
Maybe . . . maybe that was the problem. So many years of training and study, always striving, always chasing the ideal at the end of the road. She’d reached that end by now. She had everything she’d set out to do. So now . . . what? What came next? Maintaining things as-is? Do well, be consistent, keep things up for however long she had?
She pressed her back into the metal floor, and felt the faint, faint purr of mechanical systems working below. She thought of the Asteria, orbiting endlessly with its siblings around an alien sun, around and around and around. Holding steady. Searching no more. How long would it stay like that? Until the last ship finally failed? Until the last Exodan left for rocky ground? Until the sun went nova? Was there any future for the Fleet that did not involve keeping to the same pattern, the same track, day after day after day until something went wrong? Was there any day for her that would not involve the same schedule, the same faces, the same tasks? What was better – a constant safeness that never grew and never changed, or a life of reaching, building, striving, even though you knew you’d never be completely satisfied?
A bang broke the stillness, startling everyone present. The canyon gave a seizing shake, froze, and went dark. The audience collectively held their breath. Someone turned on a handlight and ran around the theatre’s edge.
‘Sorry, folks,’ the theatre attendant called out, to a chorus of disappointment (but also, relief). ‘Looks like we’ve bust a projector. I’ll get the techs up here right now.’
Eyas got to her feet and picked up her pillow, knowing maintenance had a thousand more important things to fix right now. Besides, her stomach was growling louder. She’d never solve anything hungry.