The Sun Seeker
Note: An earlier draft of this short story was published in the October 2021 volume of the & magazine.
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When the arriving members of the Cradle government heard of our president’s imperative decision to build a Zoo right in the centre of the thing, at a certain point, after multiple clarifications, the visiting party stared him into eyes for 10 seconds straight without saying a word; seven people and a secretary it was, as they did not count secretaries as people (you do not gain human status when you change jobs, so there was no reason to leave). It was a man in his thirties; while everyone else looked at our President in disbelief, he stared into despair; it was his late thirties. He will always live in the Cradle. He will only leave it temporarily, when there is enough fuel to go on a mission and back. He has no chance of fleeing into another country due to him being a secretary. He hoped that being called in for a “pleasant” — I am quoting our playful President here — surprise would mark a crucial shift in his career, which was also his life. It was the last atom of Hope that was currently being insistingly crushed with the chances of being split and turned into an explosion diminishing with every word that our President was saying. It would be an urgent matter, he was saying; no time would be lost. The president will go with them immediately (on the fuel that was Cradle’s, not our own; they had to harvest it for 2 years, only the secretary knew). The secretary opened the window of the fifth floor of our Presidential Palace and made a step forward in an attempt to end his life: it was only the fall that was short-lived. The secretary could not be hospitalised, so he would go home on their own plane, he was being calmly assured, with no mention of any treatment. Not only no people were lost, but also “a non-entity” was saved during the mission, the official correspondence later mentioned.
Due to the silence from the Cradle side throughout the journey, I told Mr. President that there is nothing in the middle of the country, if we were to build right in the centre. “Perfect”, he replied. No, Mr. President, perhaps you misunderstood. There are not thousands, but thousands upon thousands of acres of Nothing within The Second Cradle. Traveling in one direction takes approximately 32 hours because it requires a plane of a slow and large kind, one that contains enough fuel, for there are no refuelling points anywhere in-between the centres of our countries. “Perfect” was the only thing that Our President was saying in reply to my every objection as the secretary stared at me in what was clearly an asking to pull his life plug.
The plug and every other part of the treating equipment was donated by our side, which prohibited me from doing the deed. Death, for the secretary, was a difficult subject. His mother died at birth (also his), and his father dwelled so deep into the mines that he would not have enough time to go back to his son before dying of old age. The secretary lived in the mines for more than thirty years, he told me, eager to get outside, working his way up while everyone was going down in search of a precious material that no one has yet actually seen. He has heard thousands of miraculous life stories from multiple generations of people stuck at different places, as he was making his way up; he has fallen in love six times, with people he would never meet again, and has fallen out of love five times. He had no knowledge of The Law. As he made it out and finally saw The Sun for the first time, eyes watering not only due to the physical brightness, he was being apprehended for leaving the mines; to get either sent back to the mines or become a non-entity was the only choice. He was regretting his decision, he told me, as he was finishing his story at my request.
We still had 31 hours and 44 minutes to go.