Soldiers of Ancient Seas, Part 10 (Conclusion): "Centennial"

Sia might never have seen Night again, but that doesn’t mean Oliver didn’t.

     A hundred years later, someone else was calling themselves Oliver Row, but as had long been tradition, they liked to think the life of a previous one was more or less their own, too, and so their lingering memories (every one of them kept a journal of some kind), and so the current Oliver was interested to know as the Oliver at the time what had become of Night, whether she had, as Sia had supposed, departed Earth, before the war, before everything changed, again.

     Of course she hadn’t.

     Oliver never even considered it a possibility.  He waited patiently, as it happens, for Night to visit him, as he knew she would, in her fear, her trepidation, her anxiety, same as anyone, human or Danab, or another other alien race, wherever their origin, the impossible challenge of processing such things easily, as Sia seemed to have, but had really been a mask, as so many choose to wear, which Oliver, then, had allowed her to keep, but had kept tabs on her, when the Danab came, when the war came, as he watched her devote herself to preparing elaborate meals, which, he noted, had become quite the obsession around the world, in households that had never so much as cracked an egg, before.  Nervous tension, the creator.  Eventually. 

   Oliver wasn’t so lucky, and neither was Night.  He worried about her most of all, not because he feared her people would decide to execute her, but that she would harm herself, out of shame, embarrassment, any of the lies she’d be willing to tell herself, this ultimate sense of betrayal, of whole planets, that she had so willingly plunged herself into.

     All because of a little curiosity.

     Same as anyone.  That’s what he told her, when she finally did come to see him.

     “You didn’t do anything wrong,” he said.

     “It certainly seems otherwise at the moment,” she said.

     “Forget the moment,” he said.  “You already did.  Your whole course of action defied all that.  Defied it because you knew it was going to happen.  You did think you were going to stop it.  You’re some kind of princess, aren’t you?  I bet you never told Sia that.”

     “I didn’t want to scare her,” she said.

     “Funny way of showing it,” he said.

     “You wouldn’t understand,” she said.

     “Listen, we’re all in the same boat,” he said.  “We’re all blood.”

     “That’s not what I meant,” she said.

     “I know,” he said.

     “She needed to see at a level she could understand,” she said.  “She had a much different life than either of us.”

     “I appreciate your saying so,” he said.

     “I wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true,” she said.

     “There’s that alarming forthrightness,” he said.”

     “Probably something to do with my upbringing,” she said.

     “Yeah,” he said.  “Probably.”

     “I don’t know my way forward, Oliver,” she said.  “I’m frightened.  I don’t have a role to play anymore.”

     “Narrative horror,” he said.  “I read a book about that, once.  The author was more concerned about the past, but it applies to the future, too, I guess.  That’s the problem.  That’s, really, always the problem.  Right now, there’s fighting going on all over the world.  Sia’s not a part of it.  I’m not a part of it.  You’re not.  You think you should be.  You think you should be.  You think you owe a debt or something.  You think you caused it.  You didn’t.  This was going to happen.  You have no blood on your hands.  Maybe it’s the Danab in you, but there’s humanity, too.  I know what the humanity says.  Maybe the Danab does, too.  I don’t know.  You have to trust me on this.  You’re not to blame.  That’s just how we are.  We were like this long before those aliens took your ancestors into space.  That’s why they were, because they were fighting anyway.  A lot of trouble has been put into thinking about why this is.  Some people think our most cherished beliefs about it.  I don’t agree.  I think it’s just nature.  We can’t control it.  We can only determine what we do in response.  How we view it.  How we learn from it.  It’s not about when the fighting ends, Night, because that always happens, just as inevitably as it starting up again.  I never agreed with the notion that someday it’ll just wipe us all out.  Nature is too indifferent.  It has no role for us to play.  We just need to forgive ourselves.  That’s what you’ve got to do.  You can’t stop this from happening, you never could, but you can help people understand.  You can start with yourself.  Like the rest of your people, it was simple curiosity.  That’s it.  And that’s fine!”

     “You make it sound so innocent,” she said.

     “Innocence is always the first victim,” he said, “but it’s never taken away.  It can’t be.  It can’t be a casualty.  We just need to fight to reclaim it.  Sounds impossible.  But it’s the only inevitable thing about it.  That’s nature, too.”

     “Okay,” she said.
     “During the course of all this I acquired a nasty habit,” he said.  “Coffee.”

     “Anastassia introduced it to me,” she said.

     “The trick is, there’s always different ways to make it,” he said, “and you’ve got to find the one that makes sense to you.”

     “We don’t have coffee on Danab,” she said.

     “You already sound more civilized,” he said.

     “We have worse,” she said.

     “I’m sure you just haven’t figured that out, either,” he said.  “Don’t mean to be rude.”

     “I’m beginning to suspect that’s just nature, too,” she said.

     “Probably,” he said.  “Something like that.”

     They continued their little chat, and Night explained to Oliver what they did drink on Danab, something they’d developed long ago, on the spaceships of the aliens who took her people from Earth.  He suspected it sounded something like motor oil.  She laughed at that.

     She lived longer than he did.  That Oliver died decades after the peace was declared, after Earth was welcomed into a galactic alliance, full of wary members who had no idea what to make of these humans, who so quickly adapted to and then took over an existing space corps, despite even more begrudging acceptance into it.  Other Olivers followed, Olivia, sometimes Olive, Ollie, Ol, as it had always been, until a full century had passed.  Sometimes the current occupant merely retired.  It was another Oliver, from this vantage point.  Night had died, finally, not so long before.  Long life, along with all the other advantages, as he still chose to view them, as many jealous humans did.  Oliver’s wasn’t that choice, but rather admiration. 

     It had taken a great deal of courage.  Sometimes curiosity can produce wonders.  But it takes warriors, soldiers traveling along ancient seas, to brave such treacherous waters.  Sometimes we have the privilege to make the decision ourselves.  Of the three of them. It was Oliver’s opinion that it was Night who most closely matched that description.

     He tipped his cup at all three.  It takes all kinds.