Prologue: Silent Ships

Ships. Silent ships. Silent, they come from the sky. Growing larger as they descend through the air, they leave delicate grey trails in the sky. This mark, made by humans is at the mercy of the wind that carries it. Nothing permanent is left behind. This is human existence. When what we’ve build collapses, who’s to say if we were ever here at all? But, tenuous as it is, laid before me is the highest achievement of man. These silent ships that come from the sky. Lay a hand on a newly-landed craft, and it feels warm, as if living. Clean from space and smelling like fire and sterility, with the traces of human life in the presence it creates. It’s been reborn, out there in the universe. The human race is being reborn as well. Everywhere, there is a feeling, as if something is about to happen. Everything feels like sadness and hope and salvation, draped over the human condition like an airy blanket.
  I can feel things drawing to a close and beginning at once. Bittersweet nostalgia as the human race grows up. We’re not children anymore, but adults leaving home for the first time. Out on our own, frightened and excited. The angels of salvation come in the form of silent ships that leave grey traces in the blue sky. What invisible messages are written on them? What wisdom from the universe are they baring? A ship that just arrived always feels different than a ship that’s been sitting in port for a while. Space changes everything. How will it change us humans? How long will we even be able to call ourselves human? Are we outgrowing what we are? Man’s greatest achievement, stepping into that which is real, but unknown to us. In silent ships, we fly like birds in the peaceful quiet of the rest of reality Ships. Silent ships. Silent, they come from the sky… And dive into it.

Part one: Daytime moon

I snap back into reality. What got me on that train of thought, anyway? Looking at the ships, of course. When I look at them, I feel happy and complete, but lonely and small and hopeless. Me, on the earth, and not out in the vast blanket of darkness and light beyond it. A small, temporary living thing locked in a small sphere. Why do we view the universe as being so large? It’s perfectly normal-sized. It’s just people and stars and planets that are small. Why aren’t I working? Isn’t this supposed to be my job? Oh, well. I never work much, anyway, so why should I be doing anything now? This isn’t a real job, this is just being paid by the hour to sit around and wait for someone to have some menial task for you to perform for them. If one is young, and so happens to be poor, bored, or both, this is what they do. Come to the ports and do “odd jobs.” Trouble is, there aren’t many jobs to do.
   Oh, well. This is just as well. I don’t work here for the money or something to do with my days. Rather, I work here just to watch the ships come and go and daydream, just me wandering inside myself. I like it here. This isn’t just a port, this is a gateway to freedom. To the rest of the universe. I look at the sky again. Pale blue with delicate white clouds circling the horizon in a belt of wispy haze. Above me, a full moon hangs in the blue sky. The moon in daytime acts more like what it’s supposed to, I think to myself. It seems to watch us as it blends in with the pale sky. When seen like this, the moon seems to be trying to remind everyone that it isn’t just some light in the night sky. Rather, it’s a rock that floats around us in space. And that Earth is floating as well. Floating, with things walking around on it and building things. Before I go off in my head again, a ship lands, and my eyes divert from the daytime moon and what it means to this world. I hear it cool down and shut off. I shake my head and go back to the moon. Look at it up there.
  Like the eye of God…
  The door of the ship opens. I ignore it. Ships land, and there are people in them, after all. They distract me more than they rightly should. I look at the moon again. After a time, I decide that I want to look at the pilot of the ship. Sometimes, watching the pilots is interesting. Who are they? What were their lives like? And what’s their reason for spending their time flying around in space? Just like every other group of people, pilots are all different. Romantics, workers, commuters, fugitives, and all kinds of people find need for space travel. People with all kinds of personalities. Some love space, some could take it or leave it. What kind of person wouldn’t care about space? Some don’t, though. I don’t understand them, but, like I said, people are all different. What kind of person am I? Sometimes, I question if that even matters. Do I even matter? I’m just a human being, after all. And aren’t there many of those already? I decide to divert my attention to the pilot again. I don’t want to be on that train of thought right now. Last time I got on it, and every other time I got on it, for that matter, I thought about killing myself. I don’t want to think about life if it means contemplating my own death.
  Instead, I watch the pilot.
  Like I said, I’ve seen all kinds of pilots, in fact, I recognized most of the ones that come into this port. But this one didn’t look familiar to me, as an individual or as an archetype. Just by looking at him, I could tell that he had a fragile, maybe even wounded soul. His face, obscured slightly by his limp, untidy black hair, was set into a worn-out looking expression with a hint of fear in it. He had delicate features, and a slightly Asian appearance. There was something almost childlike about his form. Small-boned and no taller than myself, he carried himself with an unconfident air. He had the fragile, newly-created look that people who spend years at a time in space take on after a while due to being away from sunlight, pathogens, undistilled water and unfiltered air, and all the other things that human beings need to become resistant to, with a pale, underfed look from eating nothing but a few little packets of food a day. How long was he out there? He’s young for a pilot, especially one that seems to have been gone for so long. Probably no older than I am. He’s unusual, that’s for sure. Just looking at him makes me feel sympathetic. What have you been through? What could you have seen that made you like this? Was it lonely out there?
  I look away from him, and look at the moon again. Fragile-looking young pilots are interesting, but they probably mind it when people stare at them. The moon doesn’t. That’s another great thing about the moon. You can stare at it all you want, and it doesn’t feel self-conscious or annoyed. The moon will let you study it. The sun is just beginning to set now, and the moon is taking on a warm color and slight glow, while the sky around it is bluer than ever. I look at the glowing, evening world. The warm yellow light reflecting off the ships and the green leaves of the trees. The white pavement beneath the metal crate I’m sitting on has also taken on a warmer color. After a time, when the light has become more orange than yellow, a figure in all black comes to stand beside me. I look up. A pair of silver eyes meet mine. Silver. Not just light grey, but true, colorless silver. Then, my mind puts the information together. I can’t believe my eyes. There, standing beside me, wearing a loose, old-looking black trenchcoat, is the pilot. He speaks to me. His voice is soft, and deeper than I thought it would be.
“Hello.”
I smile faintly, and wave at him.
He smiles faintly as well. “What were you looking at?”
“The moon.”
He looks in the direction of the moon. “You have good taste in views. The daytime moon is amazing. You can really feel its presence when it’s like this. When I see the moon in daytime, I think of it as watching this terrarium…”
“Terrarium?”
He seemed to be surveying the landscape around us “Yes. Earth is a terrarium where humans live. We aren’t kept here, though. We can leave anytime we choose. People have adopted the idea that Earth is home, but that isn’t so.”
I wasn’t sure that I understood this. “Where is home, then?”
“Space. The universe. Earth isn’t a home, but rather, the universe is home to it.”
The information clicked in my mind. “I think I understand…”
He smiled. “Good. More people need to.”
He sat down on the crate beside mine. After a brief, but weary pause, he spoke again. “If you want to talk more, let’s go somewhere quiet. All these people and glaring lights exhaust me.”
My shift was over, anyway. Another so-called work day gone. “Alright, let’s go”

Part two: Understanding, Night, and Lonely Souls

And so, we walked. His pace was slow and his steps heavy. He was still getting used to gravity. Eventually, we settled on a rock by the river. He slumped down heavily, panting slightly.
“I’m sorry for slowing us down. My body feels heavy on earth.”
I nodded. It was as I thought. “It’s alright. How long were you up there, anyway?”
He had a distant look in his eyes. “I grew up in space. I come to earth sometimes, but never enough to really get used to it. I just visit.”
“I can see how planet gravity would feel strange to you, then.”
“Life here is strange in many ways. In fact, humans are strange everywhere.”
I nodded. “They’re all different, but, in many ways, they’re all the same. There are many things they don’t understand, and so, I don’t understand them.”
He looked at me. Those eyes are so unsettling… “I know just what you mean.”
  There we sat, with twilight over us and the rest of the world like a blanket of somber quiet. The vespertine blue stained everything it touched. The world was beautiful. I looked at my new companion. He was a total stranger, but I felt like I knew him.
He looked at me for a while, then spoke. “We seem to have an understanding.”
“An understanding?”
“Yes. I understand your ideas, and you seem to understand mine. Have you been waiting for this?”
I nodded.
He looked at the cool earth below us. “So have I… All my life…”
His voice had an injured brittleness to it. Like he was going to cry. And, after a short while, my thoughts came true. It wasn’t violent, hysterical crying, just some tears, gasps, and shudders. He leaned against me the whole time. Small and light, like he wasn’t there at all. I held onto him in hopes that it would prevent me from finding out that he was just an illusion after all. There we were, two lonely souls, under the darkening sky as the moon took on more and more light and the stars came out one by one. Everything felt so lonely, yet we were complete. Us, in the bittersweet and lonely world. Us, who had finally found one another. In this vast universe that we all called home, we were the people we ended up with and ended up being. What are the odds? Eventually, he stopped crying, and sat up again, looking a little tired and overwhelmed.
“Are you ok?”
He smiled slightly, looking at me. “I’m just fine. That was inside me for a while, and I needed to get it out. I’m glad I met you. It might have been inside me until the end of my life, had I not.”
I thought about my own broken places. “…Do you think we matter?”
“I don’t care if we do. Important or not, let’s just keep on living.”
He made sense. “Alright, then. Let’s keep on living.”
Here we were, two strangers that were becoming friends. The river was sparkling in front of us, the huge, white moon in the sky above us, perfectly round and silent. Moon, what do you know? What do you see? What do you think of these two human beings? We don’t even know each other’s names. Do names matter? I don’t know. All I know is that I want to call him something. To me, he was still just the pilot, even though he had become so much more. He was my friend from the stars. My kindred soul. He was himself. He was leaning on me again. I looked down at him. There, lying against me for support, tired and content from emotional release, his body exhausted and aching from gravity, he had fallen asleep. I sighed contentedly. It was nice to have someone by my side. It was getting cold and cloudy. It might just snow. He twitched, then shivered.
“Cold…”
I nodded. “Yes it is… I think it might snow…”
He smiled. “Good. I like the snow a lot. That’s why I usually visit Earth in winter.”
“Winter is the most beautiful time.”
“I’m glad you think so. A lot of people who live here don’t like it. Winter is more comfortable for me, because space is always cold.”
“How cold?”
He smiled. “It’s not so bad. If you go up during warm months, the change is enough to make you shiver, though.”
I thought for a moment. “How long do you usually stay on earth?”
“Usually anywhere from a day to a month. I spent a full year once. I can’t say that I’d want to do that again, though.”
“How often do you come?”
“If I’m wanting to see something, I come. If I want to see snow or the moon or the seasons changing, I come here, see what I want to see, and leave again. Earth isn’t a place for me.”
I paused, then, I confessed what I had always known… “It’s not a place for me, either.”
He smiled. “Let’s leave, then.’
I was taken aback. “You mean now?”
“Why not?”
There wasn’t a reason. I nodded.
He smiled. “Today was like a dream for me. First I meet you, and now I get to share my flights with you. Please, let’s have wonderful lives.”
I smiled, filled with a disbelieving happiness. I was going to live in space! “Ok!”
“Let’s get back to the port, then.”
I was filled with questions. “Where are you from? You have to live somewhere between flying.”
“You’ll see soon enough…”
One more question… “What’s your name? My name is Willow…” I felt myself blush a little. “I know it’s an odd name…”
He smiled, seeming slightly amused. “First off, Willow, a willow is a beautiful tree, second off, names don’t matter.”
“But I have to call you something!” I protested.
“Then pick a name…”
I thought for a while, then it came to me. “Sorano… It’s Japanese. It means “of the sky…”
“That’s a nice thing to call me. We’re all of the sky, after all.”
I nodded.
“Come on, let’s go…”
I followed him the rest of the way back to the port, and into his ship.

Part three: Home

I strapped myself into the copilot’s seat. My newly named companion, Sorano, was working the controls, getting the ship ready to fly. His hands seemed strong, but delicate as he worked, like those of a pianist. His face was intent and gravely serious. His piloting was his art. We began to lift off. It’s true that your body feels lighter in space. No wonder he had so much trouble walking. Why am I not afraid? I’m going to go live in space, but I’m calm. I know that I’m going home, back to the birthplace of all life and energy. In one day, an entire life can change. Just a few hours before, when I was looking at the moon and ships and contemplating the existence and achievements of man, I never would have dreamed that I would end up here, sharing a cockpit with a strange, delicate space traveler who I had come to know as a friend. Things do have a way of working out…
“Are you scared?”
I shook my head.
“Good…”
His hands were grasping the handles of the steering device in front of him. He was bent over it, eyes closed. He looked tired.
“Are you alright?”
“I’m fine. Earth is just exhausting…”
“Because of the gravity?”
He shook his head. “Because of how narrow the people’s thinking is. They have this “Mother Earth” idealism, but that’s not true. The earth is a creation of the universe, just like everything on it, not the creator of life. Even the universe is its own creation.”
Something inside me was stirring… “How can that be?”
“It thought, therefore it was. That’s God right there: The thinking universe.”
I understood, and listened to him as he mused about everything he thought was true.
“The universe as it is between the stars is the universe as it was when it began. Still darkness is the natural state of all things.”
“That makes sense. Light needs to be created to exist, but darkness is there naturally from the start.”
He smiled. “There’s a lot that you understand that many others don’t. I’d like to say you’re lucky, but I can’t, because I know what it’s like. Be glad that you can perceive the world as you do, but you have my sympathies as well. I know how hard it is.”
“It is…”
I looked out the window. Nothing but black and stars everywhere. This was the real world. Earth is a beautiful place, but it isn’t the world, just a part of it. This is home to all things. All matter is born here, and will return to here. This is the meaning of life. Without top or bottom or gravity, full of abstract light and darkness, this was a world more similar to the inner world of the mind than any other place. Space is home to the soul. The soul that was myself didn’t feel tethered by its body out here. Sorano and I, we’ll wander wherever we want to, and won’t feel lonely anymore. Space and companionship are the only happy endings a human can get. As living beings, we crave both love and freedom like addicts. Out here, with him by my side, I got both. I’m so lucky… Thank you, Sorano…
  My train of thought was broken.
“Do you think yours is the first civilization to have made it to space?”
I didn’t know how to answer.
“It has been said that the human race is much, much older than they tell you it is. What if you found that other civilizations were already living in deep space?”
I looked at him. Something clicked in my mind at that moment. Could it be? I guess I would find out soon enough…
  He spoke again. This time, his message was much simpler. I knew that this was the only way the two of us needed to think for the time being…
“Beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Thank you for bringing me here and showing me this.”
“Are you sure that this is how you want to spend your life?”
“I’ve never been more sure about anything before. Earth isn’t a place for us, remember?”
He smiled. This was the warmest, most loving expression that I’d ever seen on a human being. Then, he reached over and grabbed my hand. His hand was small and strong and warm. “No, not a place for us at all.”
I leaned against him. “This is the only place for me…”
He relaxed slightly, his shoulder resting on mine. “You mean space?”
“Yes, but not just space…” Tears were welling up in my eyes. “…I mean anywhere you are.”
His voice cracked slightly as he spoke. He was starting to cry, too. “I belong next to you. I knew that since we were at the port and talking about the daytime moon.”
He sat up straight again, working the controls with his meticulous touch. We looked at each other for a while, both smiling. Our eyes engaged in soundless conversation. Love never heard of speech. Nor has it ever heard of anything that could conceivably divide people. All love knows is how to exist, and how to find people and unite them. That’s all love needs to know. That’s all love needs to do to be it’s beautiful self.
“Sorano…” It escaped my lips without effort.
“…Yes?”
“I just said your name, that’s all.”
He smiled. “Thank you for giving me that name. I’d never want another.”
There was something I had to say… “Sorano?”
“I’m listening…”
I was too full of love to say anything else. “I love you.”
He put an arm around me. “I love you, too.”
He then went back to his piloting. I leaned on his shoulder and looked out the window. So beautiful. I didn’t want to miss any of it. I tried my best not to, but fighting sleep was getting harder and harder by the second. Sorano’s body felt warm and alive next to me. He was real. Enveloped in stars and the warmth of the living human being next to me, I felt complete. This was the place for me…
  Sleep dropped over me like a cloud that was black and heavy with rain…
“Willow, wake up!”
I opened my eyes. Sorano was by my side, his silver eyes focused intently on mine. Out the window, was a world of colorful light, stars, and wispy strands of  light, all set off by the black velvet background of the universe. I was filled and suffused by the beauty of this place. We were inside of a nebula.
“You were sleeping, but I’m so glad that you’re awake now…”
I sat up. The cockpit lights were off, and we were illuminated in a warm, dim, sunset-colored glow. He was smiling at me.
“…I wanted you to see my Lonely Utopia.”