Letters from the Spiral Arms

Karman Gift

"Elora ground control, this is Mori, asking permission to go open box in the designated area."

"Solid copy, Moreena. You're good to go. Happy flying."

Moreena moved the throttle of her Alsephina Courier up to the military power setting and the spaceplane responded in kind. She pushed the engine to the edge of its operational envelope, and it swallowed the crisp icy air of the stratosphere as its scramjet reached its optimal altitude.

***

Josie's smile was painful.

"Yes...it's radiation-induced glaucoma. My ophthalmologist says that it is due to a short episode of heavy exposure. It's old. Slow-burning but inevitable. I'm afraid it goes back to my time on the Migrant ship. My vision will slowly degrade and I will become fully blind after a few years. It was detected way too late."

"Hey, Josie...we're in the interstellar age. Your optic nerve can be replaced. You'll see again, don't worry. I promise you."

"Mori, I know. I know. But...you know how this works, right? They burn your optic nerve with lichens, then they reconstruct them with stem cells and algae seeds. I'll be blind for a year at least. Twelve months of darkness."

***

When the Courier reached the mesosphere its engines started losing power as the air in front of its gaping maws became too thin to sustain the scramjet. Moreena flicked a switch and the Dagger-class drives went from open-cycle mode to closed-cycle mode. The Alsephina Courier had ceased to be a plane and had become a winged rocket. Underneath the dark fuselage gleamed icy clouds, stretching their tendrils from one side of the horizon to the other. Elora's nascent space elevator filled a small part of the sky with thirty thousand kilometers of carbon needles. Moreena's voice was sweet and calm, barely troubled by the Courier's engine humming through the hull.

"Are you alright, Josie?"

Her passenger nodded. Moreena pulled the stick towards her and the Courier reared up in the freezing sky, hungry for the void.

***

Orange leaves dangled in the wind which rustled the pseudotrees underneath the snowy mountains. Elora was plunged in a long stellar autumn. Local life had slowed down and even the four-winged birds had stopped chirping. Moreena gently stroked Josie's ashen hair.

"Hey. It's getting cold. We should return home, lest the birds start taking us for trees..." Josie smiled and nestled in Moreena's arms.

"I'd like to be a tree. They don't have to worry about anything. They're just trees."

"Careful, now... Eloran trees can think and dream. Perhaps they could even hear you, if they were to spy on us."

"Do they have eyes?"

Moreena extended her arm towards a furred pseudolizard that slithered towards her and hopped on her shoulder, snuggling against her neck in search of warmth. She patted the small creature on the head.

"The trees, no...but everyone else in the forest, yes. You know, maybe this lizard is going to report to the trees. Who knows what they are up to? Conspirators, the lot of them."

Josie blushed, though Moreena couldn't tell if it was sincere or one of her deeply charming acts.

"Oh...so you mean that when we make love in the forest...they..."

"I am sure they are well-educated trees that know when to look away. Elora is a civilized world."

The lizard had fallen asleep.