Let me recount a certain week of my life, a week that one might call “important to my self-growth”. It started on the ship, with the girl who smiled at me. Who must she believe she was? Did she pity me? Was I just some little pet who needed some act of affection to keep it running on its wheel? I had looked away and thought on what had occurred. The government had corralled our entire city. The ones left behind…well the officials did not happen to mention, which spoke volumes as to their fate. Do not assume that I had the ability to empathize with those souls; my only feeling was relief because I had snuck on. They began herding the families first. Something they had claimed to be for the “good of the nation.” In reality, they simply found their largest economic assets in these pods. I found a nice oblivious family and feigned as their child. It was fairly easy. They did not check much, the patrols desired to get off that god-forsaken Earth as quickly as we did and mindlessly shoved as many groups as they could. See I do not have any parents. Never had them, never knew them, do not care about them. I have always been able to fend for myself and had convinced myself to be cautious. At the time I thought, “if you want to find somebody good to trust in this world, you would have an easier time fitting an elephant through a ventilation shaft.”

That girl…who was she? Ah what does it matter? She’s cute but that’s all you will receive. Forget it. Go find a place to sleep now. Though there was no notion of light or dark, my body had begun to taste the bitter weariness of a long day. The ship was not welcome to wanderers such as I. All the rooms were meant for families and would not have granted me clearance without ID. It wasn’t my first time trying to find a place to sleep; it had already been a few weeks aboard the ship. Think. Think. What options are available to me? There’s the mess hall. There’s the exercise room. There’s the Floor Captain’s room (how hilarious would it be to rest upon the pillow of the Captain?) No stop. Focus. It was already 11:00pm (according to my antique Rolex watch courtesy of my “father”) although with no windows we seemed to be in a state of perpetual night. I started with the Mess Hall for the easiest way to hide is in a crowd. However, the hall provided no sense of solace anywhere and so went the exercise room as well. It was beginning to look like a sleepless night when I stumbled across the Auditorium.
Neatly tucked away, this massive chamber was designed to fill up with melodious harmonies and concertos as well as contain it so as not to disturb the other rooms around it. Simply walking in made you feel as if your presence did nothing to encompass the vast space. Pacing under its arches and its curves allowed you to witness the notes tumble across the room. That night, the Sky Orchestra, featuring a solo violinist, played a song called “The Playful Mermaid”. The soloist, oh how the audience marveled in his musicianship. His strokes started on stage and slowly swam up onto the side rafters. From there he threw them across the room along the arches of the main stage and rolled the notes towards the middle seats. As the melody grew, he thrust his phrase towards the rear and there it continued, dancing across the beams like a trapeze artist. With every new flourish of his wand, the audience, and myself, became even more entranced in his spell. That was my first musical experience and I could not force myself to back away from it. It seemed as if I were caught in a whirlpool that I dove into. As the violinist concluded his enchantment, I began to quickly devise a course of action. The only reason I was able to stay this long was because of the guards who themselves neglected their duty for a moment to relish in the exquisite display on center stage.
I began to search desperately. Fool. They will throw you off the ship. As complex as it was, the room was still open and began to get even emptier as the crowd shuffled out (some still with their mouths open). I climbed up to the top seats. Here I could see everything, including the slight opening that seemed to lead into the wall to my right. I crawled in, slipped through the narrow walkway, eel-like, and slithered into a room that overlooked the concert hall. It must have been an observatory or a construction post that was never taken down but now, now it was mine and there seemed to be even more pathways leading out of the little room. Brilliant. Now I will have places for exploration. For now however, I used a little bit of insulation left behind in the room, made a nice pillow and blanket, and set out to explore the darkness
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I was not fond of dreams. And that night only increased my distaste. A haze surrounded me. But strangely it was much more tangible and felt like a calm sea of satin all around me. I tried to peer through it but succeeded in only staring deeper into the quiet darkness. I heard nothing, saw nothing, and felt only the chill kiss of the air around me, as a mother would kiss their child. I stood upon a small hill, held aloft, as a father would hoist his son to witness a parade. But I saw nothing. Only an endearing abyss that soon began to whisper, “Jump” and then again “Jump” and again until I myself began to think in its soft voice Jump, Jump, Jump. A new drowsiness set upon me, it came upon and poured hot lead onto my shoulders and numbed my nerves and all the while thinking Jump, Jump, Jump. I wanted to lie down on the mound beneath my feet and curl up yet I could not move. I could only think in solitude, stuck on my raised island. Suddenly, the haze thickened, it embraced me, crushed me, filled my lungs, betrayed my very existence, as the ground crumbled, and down, down, down I fell. Towards that soft voice still whispering “Jump, Jump, Jump”.
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My eyes shot open. Where am I? Oh that’s right. I’m on the ship. Flashes of recent happenings ran across my mind. The rough takeoff, the roaring fires, the beautiful girl: shadows of the past cast by the mind. I was still lying in my cozy observatory, which the designers must not have insulated because the bare walls echoed my belly’s cries as if the room itself was hungry for company. I set about finding the cafeteria and crawled out through the walkway and out of the concert hall. As I exited the now empty hall, I bumped into her again. Literally.
“Oh sorry sorry! I didn’t see you there!” she exclaimed. Oh goodness it’s her.
“It’s fine,” I replied. I could feel my face begin to warm up. I quickly composed myself and walked away from the hall, leaving her standing in front of the open room before she could utter anything else. However, glancing back only made me feel even lonelier than she must have. It was only instances such as those that granted me the touch of human contact. She was still looking at me when I turned back and she gave a quick smile. With a sigh, I looked forward. Having lost my appetite, I eventually began to scour my Floor.
The ship was built as a precaution. Named The Aftermath, it was meant to save us in an emergency and was never meant to be used during my lifetime. It was, simply put, a mini-Earth, all wrapped up in a hard exoskeleton with divided ligaments like in an ant. It was molded into the shape of a reverse hourglass, pinched on the top and the bottom and wide in the middle. With the poor, the well, and the privileged, stacked upon each other. What was intriguing was that this was not designed by the engineers, it was simply a given fact that this was the format that must be followed. All who came aboard accepted it and melded the fact into their lives, no questions raised. I was in the heart of The Aftermath, nothing was terrible nor was it entirely wonderful either. It was ordinary, at least to the minds of those who had resided here.
Walking along in a crowd, one can become lost. Like resting on a boat in a salty ocean while one’s throat is dry as a desert. It is the saddest form of detachment for it reminds you of what could be: the mirror image. As I passed the couples and the children going to and from the entertainment centers, as I passed the restaurants and the cooks, as I passed the theatres, I remember thinking that nothing had changed. My circumstances were exactly as they had been pre-Aftermath. I was still scouring for homage, I was still fighting against hunger, and I was still roaming in solitude. My “escape” had only shifted the setting that the events took place. I walked around the entire floor, eating when I saw fit, passing room after room, with naught but the clothes on the back. Even my thoughts seemed to have departed for another brighter soul and left me be.
When I stopped, I had come back around to the Auditorium. The time on my Rolex read 8:00 PM. Had I really spent the entire day walking? Where I had left the girl was only the ghost of a warm presence. There was no performance that night, only a small rehearsal so I snuck back upstairs and crawled into my hidden spot on the side of the wall. Emerging into my room I began to look into one of the walkways protruding from the room. There were a total of 4 including my entrance and were positioned on each side of the boxlike room. I was peering into the one directly opposite the first one when she said,
“Where do those lead?” I was so startled I bumped my head on the low ceiling and spun around. There she stood, like a hearth in the midst of a winter storm, she wore a plain yellow top with some ordinary jeans. She looked about my age but was slightly shorter. With her head slightly tilted to the side, spilling her golden hair across her shoulder, she continued to stare at me intently, waiting to be answered.
“I’m not exactly sure. Actually how did you get here?” I managed to reply.
“Oh it was not so difficult. I saw you as you went into the concert hall and followed you in from there. I do hope you don’t mind. It has been awfully boring since we left. I figured you may not have much company either,” she said. A smile danced upon her lips.
“So are you going to find out where that goes?”
“I think it might overlook the Mess Hall,” I said. Focus on the job I thought. Just find where it goes.
“Well we’ll never find out sitting about here. Let’s go!” pushing past me, she began to crawl through the space. I followed behind her as the path curved and turned a multitude of times. It seemed as if I were turning my entire existence around simply by crawling behind the girl (mind you I knew not even her name). The winding path seemed to end quicker than I anticipated and emerged into a room similar to the one that I resided in. The same boxlike structure overlooked the Mess Hall that still teemed with people finishing their free meals (courtesy of the government).
“Hm, well it seems you guessed right. It did go to the Mess Hall. Say, why do you think they have these?” she pondered.
“Not entirely sure. Looks like they use it for maintenance.”
At this point, I had spent around 15 minutes (according to the everlasting ticking on my wrist) with this girl, more interaction than I had ever had. Looking down into the hall, we scanned the crowd in silence. Neither one of us knowing or wanting to speak. Then suddenly her phone rang. Quickly, she answered the call.
“Mother?” Mother my mind echoed. “Yes, yes, mmhm, of course, I will be right there!” Putting away her phone she apologized to me and said she had to depart right away but would be back the next day to explore again. Returning back to my observation post, she gave me a quick smile and left. That simple smile however opened up something inside my heart. It felt as if someone were caressing a turtle to peek out of its beaten shell and grace the world with its presence.
For the next few weeks the routine would be the same. I would wander for some time and then she would meet me in the hall and we would begin to explore the interworking web of the Aftermath. Each visit resulted in the turtle to become evermore confident in peeking out from underneath his shell but I still had not the slightest as to who she was. The one thing I did know was her name: Ariel. However, my temporary span of openness was not to last. On the third week of our meetings, it happened. Why things must happen at times of great happiness is beyond my understanding but nevertheless as we were climbing into the Crow’s Nest (as we took to calling it) above the concert hall, the entire ship jolted. A sound as loud as a train rushing into a mountain, the Aftermath groaned with distress. Ariel was thrown onto me as we both struck the floor of the nest. Yet, neither one of us moved a muscle; we simply waited for the worst. And then a low, cold sneering voice spoke. Like the soloist, we were entranced but instead of swimming through the room, the voice pierced our very souls and held us in place with a grip stronger than any I have ever felt.
“Puny humans. You thought you could escape? Well time is inexorable, and your fate, inevitable. By leaving your homeland, you have only given up a place for your body to rest. Now you will be doomed to float across the darkness until something pulls your pitiful form and burns it up. Good riddance pests.”
And they fired.