Two weeks passed with the little ship trapped in the icy core of Sonmatia Seven.
The captain occasionally tried to get his crew together for a meal or a video, but most often they gave him blank stares, challenging him to give them a good reason. He could think of none, so he backed away with slumped shoulders and returned to nursing his shame.
At some point in time, days after Ilika had quit trying to boost morale on the ship, he was alone on the upper deck. He leaned back in the steward’s chair and stared with sad eyes at the results of another failed simulation, another useless attempt to find a way out of the trap.
Suddenly Rini flew up the lift. “I’ve been so stupid! I’ve had a wonderful life, I got to see the aurora, fly in the air all over the world, and visit six other worlds! No one in my kingdom has ever been so lucky, not even the king!
There’s only one other thing I want to do. I want to make a video. Please teach me how.”
Ilika blinked for a few moments, trying to get used to the sudden burst of life from one of his crew members. “Um . . . okay. Your station is as good as any . . .”
Rini smiled for the first time in many days as he got comfortable.
“Open the video editor and select New Project,” Ilika began. “You have four visual channels, each with a sub-channel for filters and effects. Visuals
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can come from Manessa’s memory, a bracelet, or the high-resolution camera in the excursion cabinet. You also have four audio channels . . .”
Ilika wasn’t sure what was happening, but he decided to be as supportive as he could. While Rini learned to use the video editor, and often called out questions, Ilika began to clean the galley. He found messes nearly two weeks old, and spoiled food that should have been refrigerated.
As the hours passed and the galley once again looked usable, some of Ilika’s guilt and shame melted from his shoulders. Rini continued to work happily on his video project, sometimes hopping up to grab a bracelet and record something, including, at one point, Ilika scrubbing the galley floor.
The lad’s excitement was infectious, and Ilika decided to cook a nice meal, even if only he and Rini could enjoy it. The food stocks were getting thin, but he found flour and made a batch of biscuits. Once those were in the oven, he turned his attention to a tasty stew, using the last of their dried fish.
Several hours later, Boro appeared in the lift. “I’m done feeling sorry for my . . .” He froze and took in the unexpected aromas of fresh biscuits and fish stew, and the sight of Ilika with a bracelet recording Rini dancing in a clumsy free-form style to some lively music.
Boro waited, a smile growing on his face, while the song finished.
“Hi, Boro!” Rini greeted excitedly. “I’m making a video!”
“Wow. I didn’t know we could do that.”
“It’s going to take me a few days, and I’ll show it to everyone when it’s done.”
Boro cleared his throat. “I’ve got something I want to say.” He stood at one end of the table as Ilika and Rini sat down.
“I . . . um . . . I’ve been thinking about how lots of my masters said I wasn’t a . . . you know . . . a real man.”
Ilika and Rini listened intently, sensing how hard this was for Boro.
“I guess I’m not sure what a real man is. Okay, I’m gentle and quiet, and I’m not very good with an axe. Whatever. I don’t care about that stuff any more. I’m the engineer of a deep-space response ship, and I’ve been thinking real hard about what I should be able to do right now. I finally figured it out,
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and I want you guys to hear me say it.”
Ilika and Rini both nodded slightly to show they were listening.
“I’ve had a good life, and I’m ready to be a man, my own kind of man.
Manessa, you have my permission to begin hibernation as soon as everyone else is ready.”
“Acknowledged,” the ship said softly.
After a moment of respectful silence, Rini smiled. “I told her that too, but I said I wanted to finish my video first.”
The three men of the crew sat around talking about what it meant to be a man. Boro shared what he knew from his culture, the ways he fit into the concept, and the ways he didn’t. Rini admitted he didn’t really relate to the concept much at all.
During a moment when no one was speaking, they started hearing voices from the lower deck.
“Can’t you smell the biscuits?” Sata’s voice asked. “Others must be getting over it too, and someone cooked!”
“I know,” Mati’s voice began. “I just don’t want to do it looking like this.
Tell them I’ll be up soon.”
The three males waited, and a minute later, Sata appeared in the lift, smiling. “Do I smell fresh biscuits?”
Boro smiled back at her.
Sata stopped part way to the table and stood firmly, with her feet somewhat apart, as if steadying herself on the deck of a sailing ship in rough seas. “Mati and I just spent three days . . . maybe it was four . . . dragging each other through every kind of grief and self-pity you can think of, and we both realized what we want to do . . . what we need to do with the rest of our lives.
Manessa, this is Sata, your navigator.
“Greetings, Sata,” came the ship’s pleasant voice.
“I never thought standing on my own two feet, with a smile on my face, would be this hard. Of course, I didn’t know I’d have to get ready to die.
Manessa, you have my permission to hibernate, in about a week, after we’ve done the simulations I want to do, had one last feast together, and . . . done something else Mati wants to do.”
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“Acknowledged.”
Sata let out a sigh and shivered. After a deep breath, her eyes fixed on Boro, and she began taking slow, measured steps toward him.
Wearing a slightly unsure smile, he stood up to face her.
“Boro, will you be the engineer of the Manessa Kwi for the next week while we travel all over Nebador with simulations? And at the end, after our last meal together, will you be there, with your arms around me, as the cold puts us to sleep?”
Boro took a slow breath. “Yes . . . to both questions.”
Sata pulled him close, touched her lips to his, and they kissed long and deeply. Ilika and Rini slipped silently into the galley to work on the stew.
Boro suddenly felt he knew a lot more about being a man — his own kind of man.
About an hour later, Mati appeared in the lift wearing her nicest tunic, the one from the desert gathering. Her long hair was nicely combed but not quite dry, and her eyes sparkled with a special light that had not been seen in weeks.
The four already on the upper deck fell silent and looked at her. Rini quit stirring the stew, came around the table, and stood facing her. His gleaming eyes met hers.
“I wanted to do this from my knees,” Mati began, looking right at Rini. “I wanted to do it on Satamia Star Station, but I have to do it right here, because this is the only place I have, the only place I’ll ever have.”
The others, sensing the importance of the moment, gathered around. Sata was grinning from ear to ear.
“I’m still a cripple, Rini, but I’ve walked all the way around fragment five-three-three. That was one of the happiest moments of my life, and this is another.”
Rini was turning several shades of red and squirming with embarrassment, but continued smiling.
“A desert girl once asked you to marry her, and even though there was a little confusion . . .”
Everyone
chuckled.
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“. . . you found the courage to walk away . . . so you could be with me.”
Rini nodded through his embarrassment.
“Now, here in the last place we can ever go, I finally found my courage.
Ilika,” she said, still looking at Rini, “you’re a captain, and on our world, any captain can perform a wedding. I know we’re not on our world any more, but we’re still in Sonmatia, and there’s no one else here except a few dying people on Sonmatia Two, so I think the rules of our world should apply.”
Ilika grinned. “In the eyes of Nebador, you are married if you choose to be, and you can have anyone you want perform a ceremony.”
Mati took a slow breath. “I don’t have a special pastry to share with you, Rini. Maybe . . . we could use one of these fresh biscuits?”
Rini, still red with embarrassment and still smiling, grabbed a biscuit from the table and stepped close to his sweet friend Mati. No one else made a sound as the biscuit was broken, each of the slender youth offered their half to the other, then slowly chewed and swallowed what they had been given.
Just then Kibi rose in the lift. “Did I . . . miss anything?”
Boro and Sata burst into laughter. Rini and Mati didn’t seem to notice the new arrival, and slipped their arms around each other. Ilika quickly strode to the lift, took Kibi by the hand, and pulled her into the room.
Unlike Mati, Kibi’s eyes were red and her face crusty with dried tears. Her hair was completely tangled and matted, and her cheeks looked hollow. Ilika coaxed her along and gestured at different people as he narrated.
“Rini has decided to use the rest of his life to make a video, and he’s been learning the video editor and collecting pictures. Of course, that might go slowly now, because Mati just asked him to marry her, and it appears he has accepted, so there will probably be a wedding ceremony sometime soon.”
Rini nodded vigorously.
Kibi’s mouth opened in amazement.
“Boro has made some decisions about what it means to be a man, and he and Sata have promised to go into hibernation together. But before that happens, Sata plans to navigate the ship all over Nebador using simulations.”
Kibi tried to close her dry mouth and swallow, but couldn’t manage it, so she just nodded. When she was sure Ilika had finished, she struggled to find her voice. “I . . . um . . . feel completely empty . . .”
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Rini and Mati found seats side by side, and Sata stepped into the galley to get Kibi a cup of water.
After drinking deeply, she tried to collect her thoughts again. “For the first time in my life, it seems like I’ve felt every feeling and cried every tear, and there’s nothing left inside me. This might sound funny, but . . . it almost feels good. For the first time, I’m not worrying about the next emotion that might
. . . you know . . . slap me around. I’ve been to the bottom. There’s nothing left. I’m completely empty and . . . um . . . when we’ve done everything everyone wants to do, I’ll be ready to go to sleep in the cold.”
“Acknowledged,” Manessa said softly.
Ilika and Sata took a minute to get bowls of stew onto the table, and Boro promised to do the dishes.
Mati and Rini immediately began chatting and giggling about their upcoming wedding. Sata volunteered to cook the feast, and Boro thought of things he could use to decorate the ship. The engaged couple tossed out several possible dates, then settled on four days in the future.
Kibi remained quiet, her color and sparkle only returning very slowly as she ate. Eventually, when everyone else had fallen silent as they scraped their bowls, she let out a deep sigh and looked at Ilika. “I’m sorry I’ve been so . . .
distant. It’s part of the curse of being a feeling person, I guess. I thought I knew about every kind of emotion, and could handle them all, at least . . . after getting used to a moving ship.”
Ilika smiled at her.
“The one I wasn’t ready for . . .” she continued, “. . . and now I am . . . is dying.”
“That’s a hard one to practice!” Boro pointed out.
Kibi grinned shyly.
Ilika reached over and took her hand. “I don’t think anyone’s ever completely ready for that. But one of the things we can give each other, as fellow crew members, is the knowledge that if it must happen, we’ll be together.”
Rini and Mati both grinned.
Boro hopped up and collected the dirty dishes.
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Kibi leaned her head on Ilika’s shoulder, closed her eyes, and just listened to the sound of her own breath going in and out.
Deep Learning Notes
The final step in the grieving process is acceptance. Every person arrives at it on a different path, if they don’t get stuck in one of the earlier steps. Luckily, no one on the ship stayed stuck.
In your culture, is “willing to die” part of being a “real man”?
If they are doomed to soon die, is there any value in Mati and Rini marrying?
Since emotions are, by definition, things that motivate us, what are we motivated to do when we feel the emotions caused by approaching death?