Return From Zeta: The Pilot
Jun. 11th, 2014 10:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aaaaaaaagh_skyShe's younger than your kid.
Not that she's not- well. It's not like when you used to tell your son about what you'd seen in Manitoba during the annexation, before they sent you home. He'd nod and he'd look all concerned, and he'd pat your arm and tell you it was all over, Mom, everything was okay now. And he'd smile and you'd know that it didn't sink in. He knew what happened to Manitoba from the newspapers and the newsreels, and you could talk as much as you liked, but his mind's eye saw Canada in black and white. It always would.
Well, you assume it would. You don't know. He's been dead two hundred years.
That's what they tell you. You took off from Teterboro that night, trying to clear your head. The sky always took the worst of things off your shoulders, the night sky more so. You'd been halfway to Cape May when the engine stopped and the light shone down all around, and for a moment you thought it was the End Times. Only it wasn't, unless the Almighty was little and green and fond of prying open His creations with surgical-
Well, you've thought about all of that before, so there's not much reason to talk about it now, is there.
Except that you've seen what's become of your world, now. Only that's too big, too much to handle, so you've tried to keep it to thinking what's become of your country, but that's too big to focus on either. There are some nightmares you can't let yourself think about, because once they're really in your thoughts no amount of night flying will ever clear them away. And there's no flying here anyway. So if you're going to go on living- and as much as you seem to have been sent back to Hell, they tell you that you really are alive, so you've got no other choice but to go on living- you've got to deal with it one way or another. You have to let the nightmares out, drip by drip by drop, or they'll break you and flood you and you'll never be free of them.
And the soldiers here- they wear American armor, even if they don't wear the American flag, so you're about willing to deal with them- they heard your request for help. And they sent you a girl with grey hair and scars, dressed in the kind of uniform you remember from the Memorial Day parades before, and said to talk to her.
She doesn't smile when you talk. She doesn't pat your arm. She watches you, and she listens. Mostly you just tell her about flying at first (she gets pretty pale at that), and about your husband and your kid back in Fairfield two hundred years ago, and she nods some when you do that. And then you mention the light, and the little green men, she closes her eyes. They're still closed when she finishes your sentence, the one about the arms and the whirring things. But they're open when she says, very quietly, "I know. Go on."
She is, she tells you, all of twenty-one years old, and she has never been farther from this place than Pittsburgh; but you're pretty sure that if you told her about what you saw happen to the captured partisans in Manitoba, she'd see Canada in color. And she might not be able to change the Hell of a world you find yourself in, but you're pretty sure she can help you let the nightmares out.
Not that she's not- well. It's not like when you used to tell your son about what you'd seen in Manitoba during the annexation, before they sent you home. He'd nod and he'd look all concerned, and he'd pat your arm and tell you it was all over, Mom, everything was okay now. And he'd smile and you'd know that it didn't sink in. He knew what happened to Manitoba from the newspapers and the newsreels, and you could talk as much as you liked, but his mind's eye saw Canada in black and white. It always would.
Well, you assume it would. You don't know. He's been dead two hundred years.
That's what they tell you. You took off from Teterboro that night, trying to clear your head. The sky always took the worst of things off your shoulders, the night sky more so. You'd been halfway to Cape May when the engine stopped and the light shone down all around, and for a moment you thought it was the End Times. Only it wasn't, unless the Almighty was little and green and fond of prying open His creations with surgical-
Well, you've thought about all of that before, so there's not much reason to talk about it now, is there.
Except that you've seen what's become of your world, now. Only that's too big, too much to handle, so you've tried to keep it to thinking what's become of your country, but that's too big to focus on either. There are some nightmares you can't let yourself think about, because once they're really in your thoughts no amount of night flying will ever clear them away. And there's no flying here anyway. So if you're going to go on living- and as much as you seem to have been sent back to Hell, they tell you that you really are alive, so you've got no other choice but to go on living- you've got to deal with it one way or another. You have to let the nightmares out, drip by drip by drop, or they'll break you and flood you and you'll never be free of them.
And the soldiers here- they wear American armor, even if they don't wear the American flag, so you're about willing to deal with them- they heard your request for help. And they sent you a girl with grey hair and scars, dressed in the kind of uniform you remember from the Memorial Day parades before, and said to talk to her.
She doesn't smile when you talk. She doesn't pat your arm. She watches you, and she listens. Mostly you just tell her about flying at first (she gets pretty pale at that), and about your husband and your kid back in Fairfield two hundred years ago, and she nods some when you do that. And then you mention the light, and the little green men, she closes her eyes. They're still closed when she finishes your sentence, the one about the arms and the whirring things. But they're open when she says, very quietly, "I know. Go on."
She is, she tells you, all of twenty-one years old, and she has never been farther from this place than Pittsburgh; but you're pretty sure that if you told her about what you saw happen to the captured partisans in Manitoba, she'd see Canada in color. And she might not be able to change the Hell of a world you find yourself in, but you're pretty sure she can help you let the nightmares out.