Story:The Distance Within Us/The Last Words of Haruka Homura

The last words that Haruka Homura spoke to her brother were a casual conversation over an even more casual meal. She cannot recall now the contents of their talk, no more than she can recall what they ate or drink – something about a crewmate that her brother found amusing, perhaps, or may be a shared anecdote about their mother told in bits between requests to pass a beer or side dish. It’s even possible they mentioned an age-old promise.

She doubts they said good-bye and neither of them were much ones for wishing luck, and she even less for blessings.

She had uttered her good-byes to herself as she watched the Serenahd’s take-off through a blurry video feed, her words silenced by space and distance, as useless as prayer. Sometimes she thinks that the moment of decision came at that moment, a shadow falling over her heart as the shadow of the moon fell over the ship.

When the Serenahd returned, she stole into it to stand in the empty metal hull and spoke her decision to the ghost of her brother.

He isn’t there.

The last words that Haruka Homura spoke as a child were a declaration – no less final a decision than the one she will make as an adult, standing in wreckage. At thirteen she watched in a sleepy summer classroom the Descent falling in flames as outside the cicadas did their best to drown out the screams.

It was not enough; Haruka could never contain, once started, a desire for the truth that was more the implacable momentum of continuing on a path. Until the early morning, she watched video after video of metal droplets trailing fire, falling into cities that rippled in dust and steel in their wake. Each streamer was so beautiful, she thought, and felt each ribbon of metal and traitorous thought strip away another piece of her childhood.

Somewhere in those recordings of the world burning, she finds these words: "This is a beginning."

The last words that Haruka Homura spoke with innocence were stated half to her brother and half to a sky alive with stars, far away from the artificial constellations of Japan’s largest cities. Their father had driven them to Fukushima Island for Golden Week; even at seven years old, she had accepted that her mother did not have the time to participate in such events.

The island was not a popular tourist destination at the time, and their father had chosen a campsite deep in the hills swathed by slanting slopes of grass. Haruka had never seen a place so devoid of people before, populated only by occasional zelkova trees reaching out forlornly for each other. She liked it.

Aoba did not share the sentiment. In part due to his delays and refusal to assist with setup, night had fallen by the time their father had begun to prepare dinner. The poor man shooed them away so he could grill salmon in peace. "I still think we should have brought fried chicken," her brother grumbled as they retreated up the hillside, with the belligerent confidence only found in an elementary school boy.

Haruka did not challenge him. Her eyes wandered back to the campsite, at the lone tongue of flame in the distance, at the hunched-over silhouette it illuminated. It was the only terrestrial light in sight.

Above them the sky made mockery of the darkness. Against even the galaxy’s arms, no light shone brighter than Fayruz – the fourth moon.

"Big blue’s out tonight," Aoba sang, his voice markedly brighter. He turned to his sister and grinned. "What does that mean?"

It was a favorite question of his. Haruka answered it dutifully, if not without the fairytale spin he was demanding. "Don’t go swimming or space will vacuum you."

Her answer does not seem to fully satisfy him, for he looks back at the sky. His brow creases, his lips tilt in the diagonal expression of burdensome thought. When he calls out to her again, the question he asks is a new one.

"Do you think we’ll ever visit the mountains on the moon...?"

School has taught her that no one, whether via the lens of a spacecraft or earthbound eye, has determined the exact topography of the fourth moon.

"There are mountains on Fayruz?"

"Yeah? The first three have mountains, so why shouldn’t this one? It’s bigger than all the others. I bet there are mountains even bigger than even the ones in Tibet."

Slowly, certainly, the suggestion blooms into a vision– a cerulean screen hiding fantastic peaks and valleys, like the spine of a dinosaur buried beneath the ocean.

"I’m gonna go there someday," Aoba declares. "To the blue moon. It’s perfect for me." He stretches his palm to the sky, and she follows suit.

Fayruz is a drop of rain in her hand. "I’ll go with you, if you like."

"Yeah!" Taking her statement as absolute, he bounds further up the hillside, always unpredictable. Haruka moves immediately to follow him, but a shift in light commands her gaze upwards yet again. Fayruz’s fluorescence dims as a screen of clouds envelops it like a shawl. The field around her is suddenly a sea of black. She calls out to Aoba, but he has left her behind. As she tries to trace her brother’s steps in the grass, she cannot help but realize that the moon is very, very far away.

She does not remember the last words she spoke to her birth mother. It was too early for words and all of eternity cannot grant existence.

The last words of Haruka Homura before she left the airforce were in a letter:

Dear Lieutenant Colonel Jun,

''I am writing to notify you of my formal resignation from the position of Cyberspace Operations Officer, Pacific Division, effective from the 1st of June. Given the extensive time we have spent working with each other, I have taken the liberty of assuming you will appreciate some prior notice and indication of my future path.''

''I have chosen to join the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with my first posting being to the embassy in Yakutia. Rest assured, this career change has not arisen from any sense of disillusionment or disappointment with the air force. I hold strong to the belief that there will always be a need for what you have so aptly termed “watching eyes”. Nor do I wish you to think that I am intending to spend the rest of my life at a frozen port. The reason for my departure and my arrival are the same: because my destination lies beyond both, and I know now that the sky is not the same thing as space.''

''You have my gratitude for our close working relationship over these past four years, and particularly for your ever quiet and measured advice in both this decision and all the rest I have made in the air force. I trust in your understanding. Thank you also for your loan of the 8th Wing Memoirs, which I have found greatly enlightening. I enclose your copy with this letter.''

With my highest regard, Captain Haruka Homura

The last words that Haruka Homura spoke to her mother...

[TBA]

But those were not quite the last words that Haruka Homura spoke in Japan. In the sleepless early hours of the morning before departure, she drove to her friend’s house where she had left Axe and Ami. The windows were dark and silent; Haruka did not bother to wake Kuriko, but unlatched the gate herself, slipped into the backyard as a shadow. She watched the sleeping forms of her dogs, huddled in their separate kennels, the steady rise and fall of breath and the twitching of dreams, and for a moment she thought that might be enough.

They woke to her touch, licking her face fiercely as she held both to her, fur and warmth tangled in her hands. Nonsense words, dog words, more tone than anything else. "You’re going to be good dogs for Kuriko, aren’t you? Do me proud, both of you, and don’t wait for me."

(All the rest, she reasons, had been part of the Ascent - a name of her own, a joke shared with no one. Arranging transport, communing with the Rorqual, the tedious slow crawl of tasks until the last seconds of take-off – it was all the Caesura, nothing of Earth. )

She ghosts out of the backyard, out of Earth.

These are the words that Haruka Homura did not say, should have said, wished to say:

. ..

Nothing, she thinks. There was nothing more I needed to say.

The last words that Haruka Homura spoke with freedom came after a day of disaster. Field expeditions, she had thought grimly that morning as she watched another Japanese plane vanish from her screen, were not her specialty, but they were an excellent reminder that no matter how many steps Korea might make towards communication with the Rorqual, they remained alien.

The thoughts were ripped from her as a river of silver engulfed her pod, plunging the room into sudden dusk. All the lights on her dashboard flickered out at once – either they had died or she had been cut-off; either way, she was alone.

Alone? Only as a human. In the sheet of steel that had once been the front window of the pod, eyes emerged from shimmering metal and found hers unerringly. Out of the depths came a chime, as of a distant bell, and almost she heard-


 * it was the sound of music
 * it was the invitation to jump
 * it was a planet burning as a mother cried
 * it was the end of reason
 * she saw the glass cracking
 * a voice said her name

HARUKA.

The Rorqual retreated in a flurry of gunfire. Haruka felt her body wrenched backwards, returned to herself by the blaze of pain in her shoulder as she was pulled from the shattering pod by Kirika.

Kirika, whose ship’s light she had seen blink out moments ago. The other woman seized her roughly as she stumbled out of the escape hatch, and together they tumbled into the waiting lifeboat.

Somehow they fled without further harm, a process more like losing themselves than escape, lost like the day had been lost. She does not remember how; memory is a spider’s web, tattered by adrenaline and pain. What she next recalls is port, stumbling in the dark beside Kirika, and all the city lights blurring together in the storm. And maybe it was the adrenaline or the comedown, the fear or the lateness of the night, the sheer headiness of living or the memory of something that may have been song-

She turned to Kirika and cried out with every part of her:

"I’m so glad you’re alive! So glad!"

The dockside winds tore her words away and threw them to sea.

The last words that Haruka Homura spoke in her home were to an empty room. Halfway through her packing, surrounded by printed spreadsheets and checklists, she straightened and truly looked at her progress.

Chaos, as little as she wanted to admit it. At this halfway point, she could not say if she was packing, unpacking or repacking, tidying away for her return or throwing out the debris of her life. She picked up an old photo album without opening it, put it in a box, then wondered who she was boxing it for.

"I should have donated all of this," she said aloud.

Immediately, she felt Yi’je’s dozen reaching responses to that: a query as to why she felt the need to perform such an action, the beginnings of new spreadsheets to assess the suitable items and the places that might take them, a calculation that they did not have the time to organise this before leaving for Korea, muted disbelief that she thought anyone might want her belongings, curiosity and amusement and yes, a current of acceptance that it did make humans feel better if they did donate.

Haruka ignored it. If she had wanted the Rorqual’s input, she wouldn’t have spoken aloud.

The album lay at the bottom of the cardboard box alone. The worn vinyl was soft with age to her touch. She opened it to random page in a crinkle of plastic and dust. Father, mother, brother and Haruka stared up at her from the yellowed sheets. Without thinking, she touched her mother’s unlined face and traced the roundness of the children’s cheeks. Her finger came to rest over her father’s chest.

"I’m not coming back, am I?" she murmured, then laughed. "Of course not."

She shut the album and put it back in the box.

She can hardly remember the last words that Haruka Homura spoke alone. It is almost impossible for her to conceive of a time when she was alone, without the shining metal tracery of Yi’je’s thoughts overlying her own, absent of endless calculations, smooth condescension and that machine laughter that is a shade too human. Even in her sleep, she feels its quivering presence plucking at the edges of her dreams.

Overrated, Yi’je whispers its dismissal in her mind. ''I have been alone before you. I prefer not to think about those times.''

Am I the same? she wondered. Perhaps it was true that she would prefer not having to remember the moments before she had become a ROC, that gap between the flurry of preparation and the flurry of consequence. All the paperwork was behind her, the dozens of near-identical interviews and screens, the officials hiding behind the scientists hiding behind forms. Somewhere in the gap, the impatience of waiting had transformed into something with the shape of dread.

"Are you afraid?"

This question delivered to her by the round-faced female research assistant assigned the last of supervising her in the moments before the process. In case of last-minute breakdowns, no doubt. The woman was young enough that Haruka could see the acne hidden beneath a thick cake of foundation. The only thing rounder than her face were her eyes, the very picture of innocence.

"Is this an official question?" Haruka asked tightly.

The young woman blushed. “No. I was just curious. It seems like such an incredible step- even though I research them, I couldn’t dream of- the Rorqual are so, you know-“ Her voice stuttered into embarrassed nothingness.

Haruka held the silence for five seconds. "No," she replied, the word cool and crisp.

''And a lie! Yi’je exclaims. Haruka, you do amuse me sometimes. Ufufufufu...''

She listens to the Rorqual chortling to itself and tries to forget.

''The last memory Haruka Homura recalls with nostalgia is, bizarrely, one with Seungchul Song. Even at this moment of disintegration, the incongruence of her makes her pause. Something to puzzle over. Humans are constructed so oddly.''

''Somehow, she had ended up as his audience in the Caesura’s cafeteria as the young man enthusiastically spread passionfruit butter on several pieces of toast. It was after dinner and the cafeteria was deserted; she couldn’t recall how he had managed to rope her into this.''

She remembers the tartness of the passionfruit melting against the richness of butter, a fragrance so strong that even now, even now...

''Seungchul noticed the change in her expression and grinned in delight. "I knew you would like it!"''

"I admit it’s rather pleasant, but I don’t normally like-"

"My sister Joohyun made it. I think you should thank her directly!"

''Before she could object, he had grabbed her wrist and was dragging her towards the kitchen, heedless of the pieces of toast they had left scattered on the table. Seungchul pushed open a door she hadn’t realised existed and marched them through a cramped passageway so filled with supplies that they had to go single-file. At the end of the corridor, he turned to her, smiled, and flung open the door.''

"Everyone! This is Haruka Homura. She’s one of the ROCs onboard – the best one, in fact."

''"Hi, Haruka Homura," five voices chorused back to her. Haruka blinked as she took in the scene – five people with black hair and Seungchul’s eyes stared back at her from the chaos of the kitchen.''

"This is my family," Seungchul explained cheerfully.

''Ryeowook, Sangwoo, Iseul. Even with her diplomat’s mind, she lost the names in Seungchul’s flurry of introductions. He darted from sibling to sibling, sometimes perching beside them, sometimes poking at a dish they were working at until he was scolded away, always keeping up a stream of chatter that was half an explanation for her and half a conversation shared between every sibling. Not even a conversation, she thought, but bits and pieces of a life strung together, gossip and shared memories and stories that they picked up and put away without a thought.''

Despite herself, she smiled.

''She felt a kind of hollow warmth in her chest, an emptiness that was not quite an ache and not quite pleasant. Nostalgia, she thought after several seconds. Well, she couldn’t be blamed for feeling some reflected emotion; the cheer that appeared to be a Song family trait was almost infectious in its exuberance.''

''That was all it was. For no other reason, she suddenly recalled a memory of her mother visiting her new office. It had been almost the first time Haruka had entered it, shortly after she had joined the service, so her mother had insisted on accompanying her. "Diplomat and diplomat," she remembered her mother saying. “Formally, at least.” There was irony in her voice, but beneath it, Haruka heard the note of pride.''

''For half an hour, mother and daughter had stalked around the room, poking into every drawer, examining the computer systems and the placards, the furniture and the books. What began as commentary on the room’s furnishings from her mother had transformed steadily into comparisons to rooms she had once seen, how she had managed them, the people who had drifted in and out of her long diplomatic career.''

''Somehow, minutes had become hours as they leaned on Haruka’s gleaming new desk, feet resting on the plush chairs, laughing at the mingled gossip and advice her mother was telling her. Haruka stared out of the darkened window and fancied that she could almost see the people her mother was telling her about, the sly secretaries one had to watch out for and the odious seniors who were easily manipulated, how to deal with a military man inclined to dislike you, a scientist with too much funding, a head of a small state with following a perceived insult.''

She couldn’t remember her mother’s face in the unlit room, but standing in the Song kitchen, the pride she recalled in her voice was so strong that almost she could hear it.

And from even further away, she remembered a Golden Week with her father and brother, and an echo of a voice crying out: "Do you think we’ll ever visit the mountains on the moon...?"

The last words Haruka Homura spoke about the future were to Sonthi Mahidol. They sat in the cafeteria of the Serenahd, the shadow of the Caesura stretching across the floor towards them. Sonthi was telling her the minute details of an optimisation protocol he had designed for the life support systems which his mother had rejected as unnecessarily complex. Obvious natter, as conspicuous as his fidgeting with the cup of tea before him, as the flickering of his eyes between her, the shadow and his drink. The boy clearly wanted to talk to her about something on his mind. She sipped her coffee and wondered when he would spit it out.

"Why did you choose to become a ROC?" she asked him, cutting across a comparison of oxygen filtration.

He did not hide his surprise well. Even if the word didn’t escape his lips, the "why" was obvious in his expression.

"You are a prince of Siam," she replied as if he had questioned her aloud. “Your father and brothers have remained behind. You are the eldest fit son-" she placed as little emphasis on that descriptor as possible, saw Sonthi cast his eyes downwards momentarily anyway- "and not the highest scoring candidate. Please don’t say it’s due to closeness with your mother; neither of us are going to believe that. Why?"

"The preservation of duty." A mechanical note to that line, doubtless one recited to himself a hundred times. She wondered if he believed his own reasoning. "It was my responsibility as a prince to shepherd my people. If they are to traverse across the stars, then I must join them."

"Nothing to do with proving your own worth?"

"I have nothing to prove."

"That’s an adequate reason for your parents. What about you, Sonthi?"

She noted the tiny hesitation before his reply as he decided whether to lie or tell the truth. “I don’t know. I’m still searching,” he answered, then continued bravely, "How about you?"

Honesty. Perhaps that demanded some measure of truth in return. She sipped her coffee again before replying. The clatter of the cup against sauce was too loud in the empty cafeteria.

"It was necessary to get where I need to go."

As always, Sonthi was silent for a few seconds as he processed the thought. She could not decide if she found that trait endearing or uncomfortable, that he gave each of her words such solemn consideration, as if they were meant as advice.

"Haruka," he exclaimed abruptly, then paused. "What will you do when you get there?"

What would she do? Arrival would mean further tasks, a period of transition requiring intense management and communication. She would have a wall of responsibilities to keep her occupied. It could span months or years. Beyond that? She considered the possibility of another mission, Sabik as a launch pad for interstellar travel, each ship launching another, a wave of humanity and Rorqual across space. The possibility had the dreamlike distance of fantasy about it.

Sonthi had been speaking whilst she considered his question. She suppressed a stab of impatience as she tried to catch the thread of his speech; why was it that people insisted on asking questions when really what they wanted was to talk about themselves?

"-I thought I would learn something I could apply to my life when I returned, but all I’ve learned are the things I should fix in my past."

"No."

"Sorry?"

"I said 'no'. There is no 'when', Sonthi. There shouldn’t even be an 'if' for us. If you want your mind to remain clear of concerns – and you should, to perform optimally in your role – then you won’t consider even the possibility of a future."

She tilted her cup so that the handle faced the window where the Caesura hung, then met Sonthi’s eyes. "It no longer exists for us."

The last words of Haruka Homura before she began on her path were no words at all.

The electronic form came at six AM, hidden beneath layers of security. She forced herself to read every line at the same some and measured pace. If she committed, then she would allow herself no mistakes in the process.

If. Until that moment, Haruka had not considered that there was ever an if in the matter – there had been a to, a sequence of entrance exams, applications and training, a when she would succeed in them, an after she achieved that goal. Never an if.

Now a blank white box stared at her, requesting her acceptance of the role. If she wanted it.

Sign. Commit to the Caesura, to flight and a journey with potential return. Space, she mouthed, and thought of a moon instead. You’ve already committed to becoming a bridge to the alien. What’s a little journey away from Earth in comparison?

Please indicate your acceptance, she read. Please indicate your victory.

What did she leave behind, really? A house in Japan, easily emptied. Two dogs who would forget her without trouble. No blood relations. An adoptive mother who scarcely seemed to notice their long absences anyway. She surveyed her friendships and work relationships and found them equally sparse.

Nothing she would miss. It could all fit into the white box. Yet still, she hesitated.

The thought crystallised in her mind with sudden clarity: sign, and you lose everything. Decline, and you have nothing to return.

Haruka Homura raised her hand. With one finger, she marked the box – a checkmark in a single stroke, south to north, west to east.

''It is raining outside, Haruka realises. A sound like static, the buzzing of droplets so thick that each individual fall cannot be distinguished, but is lost in all the others. The sound surrounds her; they must be falling through the sea of clouds.''

''Someone is trying to speak to her. A far off voice calling, tattered away by the din, stripping of all identity and emotion. She hears the syllables of her name, but each is separated. Indistinct. Meaningless.''

"The rain is too loud to hear," Haruka Homura says
 * and then
 * less than a breath
 * a step
 * a gap
 * caesura

It says: "It is too late to remember me."