Anastomosis by David Kutai Weiss
THE HYSTERESIS CHAIN
DAVID KUTAI WEISS
Hysteresis ∙ hiss-tor-ee-sis ∙ noun: The dependence of the state of a system on both its present and past state.
Part 1: Anastomosis
Anastomosis ∙ uh-nas-tuh-moh-sis ∙ noun: The rejoining of two conduits, such as streams or veins, that previously branched out.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Anastomosis
Copyright © David Kutai Weiss 2013
All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission. Images courtesy NASA and ESA. All images courtesy NASA and ESA. Cover art courtesy Lauren Jozwiak.
“The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.”
―Terry Pratchett, Diggers
The sky was a crisp royal blue, contrasting sharply with the tan ground. The land stretched on forever, a continuous flat plane with no horizon in sight. Stowik squinted his eyes against the blaring sun. How is the Earth so bright? How could people live like this?
“You’ve got it wrong, Stowik,” said Rockhead as he shook his head.
“I do?” asked Stowik.
“You made the blocks out of pure space-fall,” Rockhead observed, eyes squinting against the oppressive sun.
Stowik stepped into the shadow of the nearest massive iron block as a respite from the glare and scanned the landscape. Enormous blocks of iron dotted the terrain; all were either cubes or rectangles, standing on one side. Some of the blocks were the size of his fist; some were the size of an entire city. Bizarre. He cast his gaze upward and saw that smaller iron blocks rested on top of many of the larger ones. Unaccustomed to the heat and bright light, he sweat profusely and raised a hand to shield his eyes as he gazed out further.
Stowik shut his eyes firmly for a second and then opened them. The blocks were now made out of ice.
“Woah, Stowik, I didn’t say you were completely off. Just make the blocks tan. And grainy, like the hydrocarbon dust back home,” suggested Rockhead.
Stowik imagined the changes, squeezing his eyes tight. He opened them to find the blocks tan and grainy. Sandstone. A good third try for someone who had never seen a rock bigger than his fist. Stowik turned around expecting a pat on the back from his brother, but he was nowhere to be seen.
“Rockhead!” he called out nervously. Where did he go? Is he okay? Stowik squinted his eyes against the sun as he scrutinized the desert landscape in front of him. Being alone on this alien planet was making Stowik edgy. He took a step forward, electing to go looking for Rockhead. Silent as a cat, Stowik’s older brother turned the corner of the sandstone block behind Stowik, jumped on his back, and wrestled him to the ground. They rolled on the tough sandy pavement for several minutes in mock combat, throwing light punches, each brother gaining the upper hand and then losing it, until the fight dissolved in laughter. The two brothers lay on their backs coughing up dust and panting on the ground.
“You weakling,” Rockhead called out through his deep gasping breaths.
“Yeah right, I only stopped because I got sand in my eyes. I had your back pinned twice,” countered Stowik.
The two brothers lay on the ground, content with this new world they discovered, enjoying the constant warmth against their bare chests. The sandstone blocks loomed menacingly around them.
“You know what those blocks are?” Rockhead inquired.
“Skyscrapers,” Stowik breathed slowly in awe.
Rockhead nodded with a smile, “And do you know what they’re for?”
“People on Earth lived in them. Kind of like how we live inside craters because they are easy to build in. But we can’t live in the skyscrapers like they are now—they haven’t been hollowed out yet.”
Rockhead ate up the rays from the glaring sun. “You’re a smart kid, Stowik,” he murmured slowly.
Stowik turned his head to the side, looking at what appeared to be a giant wheat stalk as tall as one of the sandstone blocks. It waved invitingly, its branches rippling in the thin air. The wind was still as a stone. “A forest!” he exclaimed, pointing to the wheat stalk.
Rockhead laughed, realizing Stowik had never seen a tree before—the only plantlife Stowik had been exposed to was what their colony grew in the greenhouse, which was limited to those plant species brought in the Landing. “Looks like I spoke too soon. One is a tree—” he began before Stowik joined him.
“—two is a forest, you won’t find them here, get back to the core-test,” they said in unison. Stowik broke out in uncontained laughter.
“Think we can live here?” asked Stowik after he had quieted.
“Sure, it’s as good as any spot. I can’t believe how far the horizon goes. It’s almost like this world is flat; Earth must be gigantic!” exclaimed Rockhead.
“It doesn’t get cold at night, either,” added Stowik.
“How do you know?” challenged Rockhead.
“If it gets cold, I’ll imagine heat,” murmured Stowik.
Rockhead laughed, “You always were the best Fabricator. We can start tomorrow,” added Rockhead. “The house.”
Stowik looked around and furrowed his brow, “Rockhead, I don’t see any craters nearby for us to build in.”
Rockhead smiled, “We’ll build above ground, then.”
“Above ground?” wondered Stowik aloud. It defied logic.
Rockhead reiterated firmly, “Above ground.”
The two brothers watched the stars come out as the sun set. They had never seen stars so bright—they weren’t used to the thin atmosphere of planet Earth. The stars illuminated everything, but in a softer, more comfortable way than the sun had earlier in the day. And Stowik was right—as they lay under the impossibly vivid stars, neither brother felt a hint of the cold. Even knowing nothing but the cold for their entire lives, the two brothers knew there was something better out there; the warmth. This would be a good place to live. When the sun rose again they missed the stars dearly.
“We should start. It will be fun!” chimed in Stowik when it got bright enough for him to see.
“Yeah, how about that one?” Rockhead pointed at a large sandstone cube over two kilometers high.
Stowik and Rockhead walked over to the looming sandstone block and rested their palms against one side. They began pushing at the same time. The enormous piece of rock resisted initially, and then moved slowly under their great efforts. After several minutes of straining against the rock, they stopped, pleased with its location. They eyed the next block and repeated the procedure over and over until they had pushed together over a dozen of these blocks, each one ranging in size and shape.
The two brothers stood back to survey their work.
“It looks good,” said Stowik smiling.
The shadows grew long as the sun set and the two brothers went to sleep under the starlight again.
Rockhead woke up when the sun rose, the darkness seeming to last only minutes compared to the nights he was used to back home, “It’s not going to hollow out itself.”
“You and I?” asked Stowik.
“I don’t see any other volunteers,” said Rockhead.
Stowik yawned and stretched his arms outward. “Let’s do it. I just realized we haven’t eaten in two droes. Are you hungry?” asked Stowik.
“It’s been two days not droes, Stowik,” countered Rockhead.
“I was just going by the sun,” defended Stowik.
“We’re on Earth-time now. Sixteen days here is one droe back home,?
“But we have days on Titan,” protested Stowik.
“A day is a twenty-four hour unit of time, Stowik—it has nothing to do with the sun. A droe is how long it takes Titan to make one rotation” explained Rockhead. He continued, “So, while the sun has risen and fallen twice, it has only been two days.”
Stowik scratched his head, “And two droes is equal to about one Earth-month?”
“That’s right,” said Rockhead.
“Well, why do we use the Earth-year?” asked Stowik.
“We use the Earth-year,” responded Rockhead, “because if we didn’t, you wouldn’t be five years old—by Titan years, you would be one-sixth of a year old!”
Stowik shook his head and made a face, “That’s just a baby!”
Rockhead laughed and the two brothers gazed up at their creation. They split up to either side of the giant structure and began digging their nails into the walls. For hours every day they worked on hollowing out the structure. On the fifty-first day, their mansion was complete. The mansion was outfitted with hundreds of rooms connected by long hallways and dozens of floors adjoined by massive staircases.
When Stowik and Rockhead woke up, they noticed that two people, if you could call them that, had joined them in their structure overnight. One was just a human skeleton, but the other was a human skeleton with taut green skin. Neither one spoke, and they kept to themselves.
Rock shouldn’t burn, but that didn’t stop the mansion from being aflame. It began for seemingly no reason. The mansion didn’t disintegrate or burn up in the fire, though—it just stood there, a sentinel in the desert, flickering in the tendrils of the flames. It doesn’t hurt either. Stowik walked into another room where he saw three skeletons sitting around the table. The skeletons’ pitch-black eye sockets bored straight through Stowik as they turned and stared at him.
“Where is Rockhead?” he asked.