The Transhuman Comedy

Eric climbed down the dropship's ladder and jumped off the last rung to the surface of the flowing lava. The cryocompressors in his boot soles hardened the molten surface and his newly-formed raft of igneous rock bobbed on the glowing lava lake. Vaporized helium flowed through tubing up his legs and lower back and radiated heat out of his suit's angel wings.

He had not thought of Anjara for a few weeks but he thought of her now. He remembered how she arched her back and sucked in breath through her teeth when he licked her labia and clitoris while his fingers stroked her G-spot. He remembered the moss-green couch and the retro brick accent wall in her apartment and how she and he sat over wide deep mugs of coffee and plotted his conquest of the world of xenogeology. Here he was, six and a half years later, leading the expedition to the magma wells of Beta Comae Berenices III-B, hated by older scientists like Geli Munday and her cohort, envied by his socially-inept peers. He was only here because of Anjara.

He froze in place but his mind swirled. He clung to the primary research questions to anchor his thoughts. Did tidal forces caused by the primary planet and the other moon explain B's still-molten core? Did the pillars of translucent komatiite date back to the moon's origin or a later impact event?

I'll never forget you, he'd said, in a last desperate attempt to make her stay out of pity.

She must have rented the worldweary expression and tone of voice from some marketer of personality traits, because he knew then and now Anjara had none of her own. The half-life of memory is seven years, she replied.

He had never cried after she ended their affair and he needed to. He needed to cry, to honor his memories of their time together and to redeem the years of byzantine academic intrigue and emotionless hookups since then. The realization rushed on him and his suit stiffened to assure his balance. His suit telltales, displayed inside his faceplate, showed his heart rate and blood pressure in their yellow zones.

Cry now, tears to be captured by the expedition's data stream? And let Geli Munday and his other enemies whisper mockingly about him in the corridors of the institute's xenogeology department?

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posted by Raymund  # 10:54 PM