4/23/10

In The Laboratory, At Lunchtime
By Sam Smith


They had long planned to make love as the sun went nova. They were the last
inhabitants of a minor planet that spun around an equally minor star, one
of the more far-flung outposts of the interstellar colonial explosion
following the discovery of the Tannhauser Gate. They had never been
together before and the stakes were high. They were Alex, an astrophysicist
of dubious significance who had volunteered to stay behind and continue to
gather data about the dying star, who was happy to have found something
larger than himself, who sometimes drifted to the thought that it wasn't
all that hard to do. They were Ethyl, a cafeteria worker at the laboratory
of assured insignificance, who had no reason to stay, who was nevertheless
stricken with a boundless love for theatrics. She had even taken his hand
in hers as the last rocket burned away.

In the laboratory, at lunchtime, they had often been near each other if
never close. Oftentimes they smiled at each other, but one or both of them
had oftentimes been many miles away. When they were both present in mind
the smiling was heartfelt, even if quickly ended by a glance flickered down
towards the synthetic pork chops. As a matter of fact, it was the highlight
of Alex's day, unless he was having a particularly good one.

Ethyl knew she was good-looking and knew that Alex knew it, too. She
thought he was good-looking, too, for an astrophysicist, if you were
looking for it. But she had always liked abundantly available men.

All necessary data had been gathered. The first kiss was hesitant, both
half-waiting for the other to back away. Neither did, and the first kiss
quickly broke for a gasp. Then a giggle, and eyes on eyes, and Alex's arms
strengthened around Ethyl's waist. The second kiss impressed them both.

On an empty planet the sexual possibilities were endless. It had been the
subject of much halting conversation. Alex's room at the laboratory was
cramped, unimaginative besides. Ethyl's apartment was dirty--cleaning was
too powerful a metaphor for swiftly approaching existentialism--and also
unimaginative. For a period of five days they had been set on a beach by a
blue stretch of ocean, but Ethyl reluctantly admitted that while she had
never had sex on a beach she had heard bad things from friends, mostly
about the sand. Alex's few friends didn't discuss the same things as
Ethyl's friends, but it made a lot of sense after he heard it.

An expensive hotel room, the honeymoon suite, high above the planet's
largest city. Speed of transit was not an issue at this stage of
technology, but it would have been a long walk. Further than Alex would
travel for sex in ordinary circumstances, a considerable unit of distance
in its own right. Ethyl's eyes were closed but Alex's were open--even while
kissing the world without his glasses was too frightening to shut out
completely--and low candlelight played foggily at the corners. Cool gold
champagne warmed both of them, because even in the far future it was the
sort of thing that didn't go out of style (and as Ethyl's nails dug softly
into his back and she let a contented sigh, Alex knew that this was the
same sort of thing). Over Ethyl's bare shoulder, out the fine window, the
apocalyptic clock flung itself towards zero.

Built skyscraper tall towards the horizon, the clock was the work of a
billionaire who became very eccentric after Directive Nova. Millions
complained, of course, but man's desire for private property could overcome
even an exploding star. It measured the exact time until the sun engulfed
the planet, cut to the millionth of a second, perhaps to try and stave off
eternity by folding it over and over again. That was the optimist view. The
pessimists, the untouchable majority, felt taunted by it. A few were killed
in skirmishes centered around its destruction until both factions agreed on
a mutual futility. In reality, most could not begin to read it, being
nothing but a fantastic set of whirring numbers so vast as to nearly curl
around one's head from the right angle. Trained men could decipher its
cobwebs of patters and algorithms, and even up until the last days anyone
stuck around different schools of thought were being hypothesized, debated,
and debunked. Alex was very well trained and could read as far into it as
his far above average comprehension would allow. Whether that made the sex
better or worse depends on who is telling the story.

Ethyl made enough acquaintances to become a part of the emergent Going Away
Party culture, which spanned the range from benders to backyard cookouts to
white tablecloth dinners. A young woman among young women, she attended an
array of house parties that all left her in a shrinking room as couples or
triples would split off to sneak in final consummation before the rockets
flung them starwards again. But she played along, even held one of her own,
and didn't even grimace when she bought far too much liquor for the final
number in attendance, tossing her hair as guest after guest begged out
early, promising to see her somewhere in the surrounding solar systems.
When it was done she didn't clean, and that is why she told Alex her
apartment was too dirty.

Alex bought quite a bit of liquor as well, and spent a bizarrely happy week
and a half consuming it in the company of his dog, who was then sent away
in the custody of cousins.

They tumbled onto the bed, skin prickling against skin. Ethyl's thighs
warmed Alex's waist as his fingers pressed tenderly into champagne-goldened
flesh. Towering above the streets, which could have been teeming with life
and still invisible from the height of the bed, his lips wandered, chasing
moans. For a moment, if anybody had been listening, the entire planet would
have emitted nothing more than sighs and ragged breath.

The way Ethyl's lips found his bottom lip, biting, sucking it in, made him
feel wanted. When a particular breath burned his ear, part of a larger
whole. Ethyl found the same in his little imperfections, a grip too tight,
or a kiss too rough. Rolling her, he could again see the clock. Without his
glasses, however, the numbers were fuzzy, illegible, but not frightening
with her lips cushioned against his neck. Her smile, heartfelt, was far
more interesting.

As she smiled he smiled. He wondered how little he cared about all things,
how far they were from him, and how the fire was racing silently through
the great void. These came in fragments, and in rhythm. His fingers took
their natural shape on an arched back. The world sank further into the
place of their meeting, seething, until something that seemed endless, very
close but in reality very far away, incinerated all thought.


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