The Eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg

“Early each day, in the first shift, alone, the captain looks out on her crew. She sees them and loves them and watches them go, and she’s watching for you just as well.”

-from “The Captain’s Blessing”, spacer lullaby

The last leg of the journey to Olar was difficult for both Yan and Sid. They spent most of their time together, holed up inside one of their rooms aboard the Sky Boat. They had a very brief stay aboard the Zhani station, barely even enough time to check if they had any messages sent over the ansible, before they were shipped off onto the Fantastic for their trip to Olar.

Yan did have a few messages. One was from Sylva detailing new developments in her apprenticeship, another was from her second cousin, Captain Pellon, wishing her a happy early birthday, and the last was from Stonecourt containing a simple update on the situation at Olar. Yan didn't have any time to respond to these messages before the Fantastic undocked from Zhani station and began the last leg of their trip. Even given a three day journey to stew on those messages and to try to compose responses, Yan wasn't able to put hands to keyboard and type out anything meaningful. What was there to say?

To Sylva: I'm a murderer and having a mental breakdown. Glad you got assigned your first translation to work on. Good luck with that. Love you and miss you, but also I've had an experience that has irreparably damaged me as a person, so I don't even know what to say. Sorry?

To Captain Pellon: Thanks for the birthday wishes. I had totally forgotten that my birthday is next week because I'm completely losing my mind. Please don't hate me for the letter I'm sure you got from Captain Lida of the Sky Boat. It's true that I abandoned ship in an hour of crisis but I didn't know what else to do. Stay safe and say hi to my cousins for me.

To Sandreas, Kino, and Halen: I don't know how to cope with the things that I've done. I think I had to do them, but I also think I'm going a little crazy. Please tell me what to do so that I can survive this. I hope your trip to the front is going well.

None of that was acceptable letter material, but it was the only thing that Yan could think of to write, so she didn't write anything.

Above all, Yan just wanted to go home, but there wasn't any one place that Yan could point to to call home. She felt sick about returning to the Iron Dreams, her private apartment in Yora was still too lonely and sterile to feel like a home, and her dorm apartment she had shared with Sylva was long gone. It was that last one that she most wanted to return to, but it was the least possible.

At least Sid was there with her. Despite everything, his presence was a comfort. He was working his way through the bag of pills that they had been given aboard the Sky Boat, taking half of one every night before going to bed. Though it was distasteful, Yan envied his dreamless sleep.

The trip aboard the Fantastic was unmemorable. Yan stayed in her cabin, often with Sid, and politely declined any offers to meet with the crew of the ship. After the first day, they learned their lesson and left her alone. It was lucky at least that Captain Lida had not felt it necessary to gossip with crew of the Fantastic while the two ships were docked at Zhani station. Yan was fairly sure she would make good on her promise to send a message to the Iron Dreams, however.

Yan even missed the Sevensday worship, for what seemed like the first time in years. She couldn't drag herself out of her cabin to attend the service aboard the ship. Her behavior was apparently worrying Iri because she came knocking every day. There wasn't much she could do about it. Being on a ship with nothing to do but fret over the past was an excellent way to send a person spiraling out of control. Yan was simultaneously looking forward to and dreading their actual mission on Olar. She knew she functioned best when she had work to do, and finally reaching their assigned destination would give her a task, and a goal, and something else to fix all her attention on. Still, she wasn't looking forward to facing other people in the real world.

She would have to get over it, though, because the Fantastic finally docked at Olar station. That had taken some doing. The two ships who were parked in orbit around Olar, the Skyfish and the Imei, were none too happy about another ship coming in to dock at the Olar station, considering that they were there specifically to prevent any trade with the planet. The Fantastic had to promise that all they were doing was dropping off passengers, specifically the Imperial delegation, and not sending down cargo to the planet.

Sid was a little worried that Trade Guild officials would want to search them as they headed onto Olar Station, but his fears were assuaged when there was absolutely no one on station to greet them, aside from a few maintenance personnel and the station operator. He was lucky, because he had all the pills just tucked inside the pockets of his cassock.

"Where is everyone?" Iri asked the station operator as they headed towards the elevator that would bring them down to the surface.

"When no one can buy or sell product, there's not much traffic up here," the station operator explained. "Everyone prefers to meet down on the planet, and civilian traffic is limited to what the Guild brings in. I tell ya, it's been miserable for our permanent staff."

"Well hopefully this trouble will all be cleared up soon," Iri said.

"I'm countin on it," he said.

The elevator trip down to the surface of the planet was as slow and tedious as every elevator trip was. Watching the surface come slowly into finer detail was not enough to take Yan's mind off of everything, and she had no interest in talking while she sat in the public area of the elevator. She half read a dossier about their upcoming negotiations, and half stared out the window. Maybe she should have used the time to write back to everyone who had contacted her, but she still wasn't feeling up to it. She didn't want anyone to worry, but she figured she had at least another day or so of leeway on letter writing before anyone, mainly Sylva, felt ignored. After all, space travel could take strange amounts of time, and they were a little behind schedule.

The elevator came down at the equator of the planet. Surprisingly, it wasn't hot there, merely mild and rainy. The whole party didn't have much of a chance to marvel at the weather underneath the thin shadow of the elevator, as they immediately had to head off to catch a flight that would take them to the capitol city, City-One-North.

Olar had, for whatever reason, rejected some of the conventional naming schemes that most planets preferred. In most colonies, whenever a new city was established, it would be up to the people living there to vote on a name. Olar, however, retained the preliminary names given during the colonization planning. While it made understanding what cities were, and where they were, fairly easy, it was also weirdly clinical. Even to Yan, whose childhood geography had been comprised of places named such things as "Bay Three" and "The Bridge", it was odd to think of what had possessed the citizens of Olar to keep these non-names.

City-One-North was in the center of a mountain range, nestled in a valley and surrounded on all sides by towering rock faces. It was originally chosen as a spot for settlement because the mountains provided a barrier against the strong winds that circled the planet, and it was far enough north that it didn't face the constant rain that fell almost incessantly around the equator. Unfortunately, the drawback to the location of City-One-North was that it was cold. Very, very cold.

Yan was hit by a blast of frigid air as she stepped off the plane and onto the tarmac. Her cassock and short cape were woefully inadequate. Winters in Yora were never this cold, and the wind still blew despite the mountains, sapping even more heat.

"You packed winter clothes," Iri said. "I made sure of it."

Yan did remember vaguely, it seemed like a lifetime ago, Iri texting her and telling her to pack her warmest gear. It was all buried in the bottom of her suitcase, and she wouldn't be able to get it out until they made it to their temporary accommodations.

It was nice that Yan now had a team of people who would arrange lodging and transport and food. Certainly at this point in her life, Yan didn't feel like she was capable of taking charge of all of those details. The whole group was shuffled into a van taken them to the hotel. They were trailed the whole way by members of the Olar Planetary Militia, in their own unmarked cars.

The airport, in order to provide a sufficient distance for planes to clear the mountaintops, was in the center of the city. Their hotel was on the far south end, built directly into the side of a mountain and overlooking the rest of the valley. Though the city streets were cleanly laid out and free of traffic, it was a long drive to go from the airport to the hotel due to the sheer size of the city, and the prevalence of potholes in the streets, which caused their van to bump along sickeningly.

It was a relief to walk into the warm hotel. It was a very fancy place, full of gleaming metal and marble walls. In styling, it was comparable to parts of Stonecourt. Unfortunately it did not inspire the same sense of majesty that the halls of Stonecourt did, since Stonecourt was the seat of government for all of humanity and this was a hotel on a rather backwater planet. Yan felt vaguely guilty for thinking that, but it was true, even as she was grateful to be housed somewhere nice, dry, and warm while on this diplomatic mission.

Before she was allowed into her hotel room properly, Iri and two of the Fleet group did a security sweep of the room, checking for bugs. Yan saw Hernan enter the adjacent room, which was apparently Sid's, to also check it. Iri left her blessedly alone after that. It wasn't as though Yan disliked Iri, quite the opposite, actually. But it had been a long, exhausting day of travel in a series of long, miserable days and Yan wasn't feeling very sociable. She really wanted to curl up in bed.

The room, suite really, was massive. The windows overlooked the city, and there was a balcony that Yan did not plan on using, considering how dark and cold it was outside. The main room had a mini bar, well stocked with complimentary beverages and snacks. Yan was tempted to eat, but she was more tired than she was hungry, so she gave it a look through and then moved on.

The bathroom was the real star of the show. It was divided into two areas. There was a functional toilet, sink, and small shower in the main room, but a door opened up into another room sandwiched between the bathroom and the bedroom which had a massive tub. It was absurdly large and deep, it could probably fit four people comfortably. This tub also had a control panel built into the wall to change the temperature and... bubbliness... of the water. Yan had no idea what that meant, but if the tub was fancy enough to require a control panel, that was enough to intrigue her. She made a mental note to try out the tub the next night, but she really did have to go to bed.

The only concession that she did make to her future self was to take out her clothes from her suitcase and hang them up, so that they wouldn't be quite so wrinkled in the morning. She would probably still have to iron them before she could go out in public, but it was the thought that counted. Besides, she had to get her toiletries and other things out of the suitcase anyway, so she might as well take care of that.

Yan was changing into her pajamas when there was a knock on the door. She sighed and hurried to open it. Of course, it was Sid, looking rather pathetic. Yan let him in.

"How long are we going to keep doing this?" Yan signed.

"Until these run out?" He pulled the baggie of pills out of his cassock pocket. There were a few pills left. Since he was splitting them in half, they would probably last the rest of the trip. That was good.

"And then what are you going to do?" Yan asked.

"Die, I guess," Sid signed. Yan frowned.

"Not funny."

Sid wandered through Yan's hotel room. "This place is just like mine," he called out to her as he inspected the bathroom. "The jacuzzi is really interesting."

"What's that?" Yan called back as she headed back into the bedroom to put her dirty clothes in a pile.

"The bathtub. You've never seen one before?"

"I've never heard of that, and I've never seen a bathtub that needed a control panel."

"Spacers live such deprived lives. It's just a bathtub that can get really hot and blast you with bubbles while you sit in it. My family went on vacation once and I got to use one."

"Weird."

Sid came back out into the bedroom and plopped down on Yan's bed.

"Are you really going to stay here tonight?" Yan signed, feeling conflicted about the whole thing.

"Do you not want me to?" Sid asked. He looked slightly hurt.

"People are going to start talking," Yan said. "It's pretty weird."

Sid shrugged. "Let them talk."

Yan waved her arms helplessly. "We can't do this forever."

"If you want me to go, then I'll go," Sid signed.

"I don't know what I want," Yan signed.

"You never do."

"I'm sorry," Yan signed, helpless.

"I'll go," Sid signed. "All I want to do is whatever doesn't make things worse."

Yan nodded. "If... If you need to, you can come back."

"I'll let you know," Sid said. "That reminds me, you should set up your phone to work on the net here."

"Will do. See you in the morning?" Yan asked.

"We can investigate the hotel breakfast, see how the fancy people eat."

"Sid, we ARE the fancy people."

"God. You're right." He smiled, a genuine grin that Yan had missed seeing over the past few days. "We are the ultimate authority here."

"Don't let it get to your head," Yan signed with a laugh.

"My head is receptive to all bad ideas," Sid signed. He turned and headed towards the door of the hotel room, Yan following behind. They stood in the entryway for a second, Sid looking like he wanted to say something else. Yan waited for him to compose his thoughts, but instead of signing something, he just reached out and hugged her. Yan was stiff in the awkward embrace, and patted him on the back a little bit. He let her go after a second.

"What was that for?" Yan asked when she could use her arms again.

"Just, thanks for being my friend," Sid signed.

"Thank you for being mine," Yan awkwardly replied. "But I haven't done anything particularly nice to you today."

"You put up with me," Sid signed.

"Goodnight, Sid," Yan signed, then pulled open the door. She waited in the doorway until he had shuffled himself back into his own apartment, then she shut the door.

All of a sudden, it was much lonelier, and she immediately regretted sending him away. But she couldn't take that back now. Yan washed her face and brushed her teeth in the bathroom, turning out the lights in the hotel room. She set an alarm on her phone for the next morning and configured her phone to connect to the net.

Before she could crawl into bed, however, Yan felt like she had to pray. She hadn't been doing much of it over the past few days, but it was perhaps time to change that, just as she had forced Sid out. Yan pulled back the curtains that covered the balcony door all the way back and knelt on the carpeted floor.

She looked out over City-One-North. The lights in the valley below were a mix of colors, predominantly yellow and white, and they blurred out into a general shining patch as she traced the lines of the city up towards the opposite end of the valley, where more mountains loomed. Above the peak of the mountains, unobstructed by any clouds, Olar's singular moon shone down. It was massive, three times the size of even the large moon of Emerri, and it cast a dusky red light over everything. Yan stared at it, transfixed. She could see the pits in its surface, gouges that spoke of a rough history or formation.

She opened her mouth to pray but felt all choked up, staring at that massive red rock. Yan closed her eyes and prostrated herself instead, arms out in front of her on the floor, head tucked between them. She spoke the words of the penitential rite.

"Oh God- how can I be forgiven? What penance must I do to atone for the wrongs I have done? I have held my heart against You. I have held my sword against my brothers and sisters. What is the payment I must make for a pound of flesh? What is the cost of my transgression? There is no one from whom I can seek forgiveness. Oh God- how can I be forgiven?"

Of course, there was no answer. Yan lay there on the floor, whispering the words of the prayer over and over, covered in the light of the red moon.

After a long time, Yan fell silent, then pulled her stiff body up off the floor. She staggered into the bedroom and into the large, cold bed. The sheets tangled around her like snakes as she tried to get comfortable. For what felt like hours, she rolled over and over, trying to sleep.

Yan woke with a start several hours later, drenched in a cold sweat. While she slept, she had kicked the quilt off the bed, but the undersheets were tangled up around her. She panicked upon waking, instinctually using the power to try to fight of the bedsheets that felt like an attacker. Unfortunately for her, the sheets were wrapped around her left leg so thoroughly that yanking them with the power pulled her leg, and her, down the bed, giving her a bruise and a friction burn for her trouble.

Yan cried out in pain, falling off the side of the bed with a crash and hitting her head on the nightstand. She lay there on the carpeted hotel floor, first stunned, then angry, then pathetic. She cried.

To the credit of the Fleet security detail who had been accompanying her, it took the guard on duty less than ten seconds upon hearing her screaming and crashing to break into her hotel room. The guard came in, gun drawn, looking for an attacker, but found only Yan lying pathetically on the floor, relatively unharmed. Unsure of what to do, he backed out into the hallway and called Iri for backup.

Iri arrived not long after. Yan was still on the floor. Iri was wearing her own pajamas, a rumpled pink tanktop and checkered flannel pants. She surveyed Yan's bedroom with her hands on her hips for a second, then crouched on the floor next to Yan.

"God, Yan, you're a mess," Iri said. She disentangled Yan's foot from the remains of the bedsheet, then held out a hand to help her to her feet.

Yan accepted the hand, feeling more embarrassed than anything, and stood. She rubbed the tears from her eyes.

"Sorry," Yan mumbled.

Iri rolled her eyes and turned on the lights.

"You ok?" Iri asked.

"No," Yan said. "What time is it?"

Iri looked at her watch. "Four and a half hours."

Yan groaned. Not that her sleep had been that restful, but if it was that close to being morning, there wasn't any point in trying to go back to it. "Sorry for waking you up."

"Don't worry about it," Iri said. "Coffee?"

Yan shrugged and Iri headed out into the main room of the suite, where Iri poured water into the coffee pot and dumped one of the pre-measured bags of grounds into the filter. The bubbling sound and smell was comforting. Iri took a seat on one of the stools around the table while she waited for it to finish. Yan sat down across from her.

In the harsh lights of the hotel kitchen area, Yan could clearly see the bags under Iri's eyes, as well as the taught muscles of her arms. Although Yan had known Iri for about a month, Yan didn't know her. She could privately admit that she found Iri attractive, though obviously she would never speak that aloud to anyone. That was part of the reason she had been so flustered when they had first spoke at the Governor's Dinner.

Iri looked at Yan across the table with a steady gaze. "Yan, can I trust you to be honest with me?"

The question was startling. "What would I need to be honest with that you don't already know? I-"

Iri waved her hand. "This isn't about Sid, if that's what you're wondering. I do know all about that."

"Oh." Yan hadn't imagined that Sid's bag of drugs could be kept secret for long, considering that Iri, and presumably Hernan, were consummate professionals when it came to spying on their charges.

"I need to know if you think that you can actually complete this task," Iri said. "I can't see into your heart, but I know how you've been acting the past few days."

The coffee finished, and Iri stood up to pour two mugs of it. She placed the mugs down on the table and scooted the plate full of creamers and sugars towards Yan, who poured in four creamers and two sugars. Yan sipped the coffee to avoid answering the question. It burned her mouth. Iri was waiting for her answer.

"I think I can," Yan said, finally. "If something is important, I can put myself aside and get it done."

"I'm glad to hear that." Iri drank her own coffee. "I've been worried about you."

"That makes two of us."

"You did the right thing, you know," Iri said. "There isn't anything I would have recommended you do differently."

"I don't really want to talk about it," Yan said, then continued to talk about it. "I know that I'm just going to have to accept it, and it will take time, and... There's no 'what ifs' I go over in my head that didn't end in basically the same way. I'm rambling, sorry."

"If you need to get it out, get it out. If you don't want to talk about it, we don't have to."

"Have you ever killed anyone?" Yan asked, looking up at Iri.

"Once," Iri said, terse.

"How did you cope with it?" Yan asked.

"I tried not to think about it, I drank heavily, and I moved on."

Yan didn't say anything.

"Do really want to know what happened?" Iri asked.

"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to," Yan said, though she was quite curious.

"It was... four years ago. I was in the Fleet security detail at Stonecourt at the time. To make a long story short, First Sandreas was attending a party and I was in the guard group. There was a man there who tried to kill him. He had taken drugs to slow his heart rate and stay calm so that Halen wouldn't be able to notice him. But I saw him draw his gun, so I shot first."

"Oh."

"That was the reason why Halen took me under his wing, and how I eventually got to be your minder. He saw my potential, I guess." Iri took a sip of her coffee.

"I'm glad you're here," Yan said.

"Ha, thanks. I'm glad to be here."

They sat in silence for a few moments.

"Happy birthday, by the way."

"Thanks," Yan said. "It's been real fun so far."

Iri laughed. "How much do you like surprises?"

Yan looked alarmed. "Uh. At this moment? Not at all."

"So you want me to spoil one for you?"

"Please."

"Your uncle, Maxes BarCarran, is with the Guild delegation that just pulled into orbit," Iri said. "It's definitely supposed to be a surprise, but I got the passenger manifest."

"Oh God." Yan leaned her head into her hands. "Really?"

"You don't want to see your uncle?"

"Hey, Iri, consider this for a second. You're working your first job, and your boss asks you to give a really important presentation to the whole company. But it turns out your family member who you have a weird and complicated relationship with is coming to wish you happy birthday, but also participate in this business meeting. Also you just killed a whole bunch of people, and he doesn't know that yet."

"You're really bad at coming up with analogies. I can forbid him from coming, if you want."

"No, that'd just make it worse." Yan sighed.

"Probably. Look, if he cares about you enough to worm his way onto this delegation, he's probably not going to ruin it for you."

"Here's a fun story about the relationship I have with my uncle. When I went home to the Iron Dreams over the summer, I learned from my mother's cousin, Captain Pellon, that Uncle Maxes was the one who bought black market genetic material in order to get my mom pregnant with me. I'm not supposed to know this, and Uncle Maxes doesn't know that I do."

"That's pretty wild. But as they say about families, everybody's got their own private drama to play out. I don't think that he's necessarily going to make it awkward."

"I might," Yan protested. She didn't know what she was protesting against, as it was clear that she would see her uncle regardless. "I'll try not to. Thank you for the warning."

"My pleasure," Iri said.