Chapter 18 Hazel
Hazel
STATION C, DATE UNKNOWN
Robin lets go of her dungarees and makes a rude hand gesture.
‘How uncalled for! I never should have taught you that.’
The Tinys at the back of the crowd pluck debris from the ground and swing their arms back as one, readying to throw. Gravel was one thing, but these chunks are big enough to cause damage.
‘Stop right there, you’re taking it too far.’ She raises her hands.
Robin turns to the others, tail twitching, and they lower their missiles.
‘Thank you,’ Hazel says. ‘Look, I understand why you’re angry, but I really believe you and CHARL1E can sort this out.’
The Tinys break into a chaos of gesticulations, frowning, shrugging, or repeating Robin’s rude hand movements.
‘At least let me talk to him, alright? Let’s see what talking does before we throw rocks.’
Robin gathers opinions as the other Tinys all twitch and sway their tails. When they fall still, Robin nods to Hazel.
‘Good. Now give me some time, CHARL1E isn’t as bad as you think, but he’s still stubborn.’
She cranks up the volume on her headphones and enters the Experimentation Dome.
Inside, she takes off her biosuit and stomps to the computer bank.
It took a few days to talk CHARL1E round to letting her back into his code, and even now it’s on the provision she doesn’t discuss the “The Heretical Book of Hope.”
‘Your heart rate is elevated,’ he observes as she settles to work.
‘Didn’t you hear? The Tinys are cranky,’ she replies. Her headphones switch to her favourite Keeper band, Uhrhaus, who play long bass-heavy tracks that help create quiet brain time.
‘I did hear, however you are also cranky.’
‘I’m tired.’ Hazel tries to find the place she left off, but her eyes are already scratchy again and the code goes skewwhiff every time she blinks. ‘Exhausted actually. I think something’s wrong with me.’
‘You sleep for an average of seven hours a night, which for a normal human would be sufficient.’
Hazel grunts. ‘Are you implying I’m abnormal?’
‘Affirmative. You are a Traveller. Lucid dreaming prevents access to the deep sleep required for true rest. Travellers who spend too much time in the dreamscape commonly develop symptoms of insomnia.’ One of the other monitors turns on, displaying graphs of Hazel’s sleeping functions.
‘As one of its functions, the Tiny you call Robin has been tracking your sleep habits by observing your breathing and eyelid motion.’
Hazel glances out the window to where Robin is passing between the rebellious Tinys. ‘And here I thought it was just being sweet.’
‘If sweetness is defined as a care for bodily and emotional wellbeing arising from empathy and affection, I am led to understand Robin is indeed being sweet.’
Hazel raises an eyebrow. ‘So, I’ve got some kind of slumbering insomnia?’
‘Affirmative. A severe case. You have been on Station C longer than the average Traveller. Your conscious mind is overwrought from trying to suppress your memories and engage in lucid dreaming. No human is designed to do this for long periods.’
‘So, what can we do?’
‘To start, we should hope that Echo mends the timeline and completes the Deed quickly. However, your time in the dreamscape has also expanded dramatically since you began seeking the Backward Traveller As Was.’
‘Well, she’s hard to find,’ Hazel says, consciously forgetting by focussing on Uhrhaus’s beats.
‘When I do find her, I can’t make contact, because she won’t …
I can’t really describe it, she won’t settle.
I’m worried I’m going to trigger another anamnesis attack with all the memory recall involved.
Honestly, I’m starting to think I can’t get her to build the catopthura. ’
‘In fact, it is the most certain part of our Excursion,’ CHARL1E replies. ‘We know you succeed, because the Backward Traveller As Was did build the catopthura in the past.’
‘It’s not worth succeeding if I end up sending myself home in the process. A successful catopthura doesn’t mean a completed Excursion.’
‘The only other option is using the Catopic Aperture.’
Hazel shakes her head. ‘No. It doesn’t work well enough without the Tinys, and they’ll never agree. Understandably, they’re terrified of the machine.’
‘Continuing to risk anamnesis or using the Catopic Aperture are your only choices.’
‘Hello rock, let me introduce you to hard place.’
The code before her isn’t coalescing into any kind of sense, but she’s so nearly there. She sighs deeply.
‘Hazel, you are cranky.’
‘Alright, yes I am!’ she snaps. ‘Tomorrow, we should be ready to download you into your body, and we can’t because the Tinys will flip their lids.’
‘We cannot allow the Tinys to prevent us.’
‘Can’t we indeed?’ She glowers. ‘They’re going to fight your body as soon as you set foot outside this dome, and the download’s risky enough without a battalion of furious robots to fend off! You and the Tinys need to sort this out.’
‘Define “sort it out.”’
‘Make amends, smooth the waters, reconcile, bury the hatchet—’
‘I comprehend.’
Hazel crosses her arms. ‘I’m not giving you a body just so you can keep fighting the Tinys.’
‘Inaccurate, the Tinys are fighting me. They are hypervigilant and afraid of the world.’
‘Then ask yourself why they feel the need to be vigilant of you. What’s their beef?’
‘Unclear. Bovine species have been extinct for centuries.’
‘Don’t be obtuse, you know it’s slang. I’m saying, what’s their problem with you?’
‘I bring change and they dislike it. They must learn that change is inevitable.’
‘Of course, but it doesn’t have to be cruel, and never giving Tree a moment alone with the Tinys is cruel.’
The monitor displaying Hazel’s sleep cycles turns off. ‘I have not been called cruel before. I do not enjoy it.’
‘Then make amends.’
‘I will consider your proposal and calculate appropriate responses.’
‘That’s not good enough.’ She stands up, pulling her biosuit back on. ‘I don’t care what it takes, get down off your high horse and mend your relationship with the Tinys. Understand?’
‘You are not jesting.’
‘No, I am completely serious. No truce with the Tinys, no body for you.’ She fixes her helmet in place and punches the airlock button. ‘And until you’ve come to an accord, I’m going back to bed, because I’m too damn tired to code.’
She’s so furious as she stomps towards the Hab Dome that the Tinys scatter before her. She lets herself in and slings her biosuit in a heap on the floor. CHARL1E has the sense not to speak as she strides down the long corridor to Lilith and Huxley’s old dorm and upstairs to the greenhouse.
She slumps to the grass, grounding herself in present details despite the temptations of anamnesis: the relentless rhythms in her bone-conduction headphones; pom-pom dahlia heads against lush ferns; starlike cosmos emerging from feathery leaves; clouds stroking each other’s backs and bellies as another overcast day anoints itself in a sepia sunset.
Wondering half-heartedly if it might work this time with just her and the Eikos Muthos, Hazel approaches the Catopic Aperture, setting the elpis device spinning with memories of the Backward Traveller As Was.
She clambers into the cradle for the present, wincing as the glass arm bobs with her weight, and the Aperture starts circling lazily.
Ghostly imprints of the Backward Traveller As Was brush the mirrors, but far stronger is the reflection of Hazel’s own baggy eyes and stress-pimpled skin. It’s not working.
Throwing the hatch open, Hazel gazes at Station C’s shoreline, which the sea might still be cinching ever smaller. Even CHARL1E and the Tinys might one day be underwater, their tin husks inhabited by amoebas or salt or nothing at all.
Hazel sleeps, entering the dreamscape automatically.
Given how early she’s fallen asleep, and that the Backward Traveller only meets her in the dreamscape when their sleep cycles are in parallel, she swims alone through the memory seed grove.
Hazel’s stopped talking to CHARL1E about it because he gets so mad, but the seeds have swiftly grown into a forest, inhabited by flowers the size of her torso and vines as thick as her arm.
She curls up in the mossy roots of a tree, and there she falls into a deeper slumber, the real dead-to-the-world sleep that her body needs, empty of dreams or lucidity.
In the middle of the night, she’s woken by lights moving on the ground beyond the greenhouse.
Her headphones have fallen off in her sleep, letting her hear the muffled crackling coming from outside.
She clambers from the Aperture cradle, frightened that it’s a fire or meteor strike, but as she approaches the windows she realises the light’s too artificial, blue white and flashing.
Veins of electricity spark along the stretch of rubble between the Domes and Tree, inching closer to the Tiny burrows.
Tinys sprint from the tunnels, throwing debris at the sparks, but the electric waves just catch the dirt with eager snaps of lightning, forcing the Tinys into a defensive circle around Tree, their wheels scuttling up dust.
‘This is not what I meant when I said make amends, CHARL1E,’ Hazel mutters, but the AI doesn’t respond, either ignoring her or distracted. ‘Heck, do I have to fix everything around here?’
She dashes down the ladder and through the corridors, racing to get outside.
She fumbles into a biosuit, then bounces on her toes, waiting for the airlock timer to drop down.
The overhead LED reflects her red-and-gold hair against the helmet glass like flames.
A line from the “The Heretical Book of Hope” comes back to her—hair as licks of fire—but the thought half forming around it is shoved aside by the airlock door opening.
Hazel sprints and stumbles towards the sparks, sweating under the biosuit’s weight, her steps small and clumsy in its big rubber boots.