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Chapter 44: Ellie Is Infatuated

  [December 31, 2042]

  "Tell me a little bit about the year 5042."

  "Ooooh, very crafty boss, but you know how the rules to these things work. I'm not going to go discussing major historical events and such."

  Cal and Ellie were walking through the streets of Extremis City, back the way they had come. It was later in the night, even quieter, and the wind had intensified its power. Their gait was slower than before — they took their time — huddled together against the rising breeze, once again arm in arm. The awkward atmosphere from before had mostly dissipated to be replaced by their usual joust-like rapport, or, to be more specific, the pair were doing their utmost to pretend it had never happened at all, that the memory itself had been wiped clean like frost from a mirror.

  "Okay, then," Cal came to a stop, which made Ellie come to a stop beside him. "Tell me a little more about yourself, then. About the girl named Ellinova Mercury in the year 5042."

  She considered this. "Okay. I can do that."

  They began to walk again.

  "Ellinova Mercury..." Ellie began. Her gaze was fixated on the white moon hanging like a ripe plum over the boxy architecture of the buildings, all lit up in shades of neon, LEDs, and sodium light. "I mean, she's not particularly any different from Ellie, the girl you know, the tenant of Otter Manor. Ellinova is pretty smart, I can say that. She graduated top of her class in the cosmonaut training facility -- the sort of girl destined to explore the outreaches of the galaxy, discovering new things, filling in gaps on the map, and let me tell you, three thousand years in the future, that map is large. She was good at it. I was good at it. And it was joyful. Being up there in the starlight and the black..."

  She blinked, as if surprised at the words coming out of her mouth. "I can honestly say nothing else has mattered that much to me." She stopped again, fixing Cal with an intense look. "Do you know what it's like to have a vocation? A calling? A real... a real purpose that you can dedicate yourself to?"

  Cal considered this as he absent-mindedly fixed her jacket, pulling the hood over Ellie's hair in a movement to protect her against the cold air whipping around them. She smiled at this gesture but did not say anything, knowing that Cal was acting from an instinctual place, and that lamp shading it with words would break the effect and make him feel insecure.

  “No, I can’t say I do.” Cal’s eyes were still distant, in fact, they almost seemed emotional. “I think… I was too busy trying to get through day after day. My entire life I’ve been stumbling around in the dark. I didn’t have much interest in those sorts of questions. I was just trying to stay alive.”

  Ellie tugged her hood more snugly around her head. “I know how non-metaphorical you tend to be, boss. You’ve had a tough time of it, haven’t you?”

  Cal shrugged. “I guess.”

  “Ah, so humble. You can cry on my shoulder anytime you want, Cal.”

  “...Thanks.”

  They had begun to move again. The temperature continued to drop and the lights around them continued to dim as the city fell asleep.

  “Well,” Ellie began again, at no particular prompting. “What you described, that aimlessness of being, I think that’s something a lot of people experience, regardless of place or time. Let’s call it the unifying factor of humanity, shall we? I mean, hell, even some of my fellow cosmonauts are just doing it to make ends meet. Imagine having a job as dangerous and time-consuming as ours — and just — just not dedicating yourself to it! But they don’t. They’re not really serious about it. It’s ‘whatever’ to them. It’s a job. They’re like you. Just trying to stay alive.”

  She shook her head in indignation. “I don’t know if I can understand that. I mean, you only get one life, right?! You’re only alive one time, that’s the deal. So… you need to really go for it!” Ellie animatedly punched the air, dueling some invisible and competitive philosophy. “You need to put your full effort into it. Right?! So… so…”

  Ellie trailed off and then fixed Cal with a sideways smirk as they walked together. “That’s why it's tough for me to get along with you, boss, like in a true way, in a way that allows me to tell you what I truly feel. That’s why it’s tough for me with the other girls. They’re just trying to stay alive, too. They’re running away from something. They’re not going towards anything-”

  “I don’t think that’s true…”

  Cal was surprised at his own interruption, which had come from a depth of affection towards the tenents of Otter Manor he hadn’t been cognizant of holding. He winced apologetically, then continued. “Maybe they don’t know what they want in the way that you do, Ellie. But that doesn’t matter. They’re… all good people, I think. Even that bratty princess. Even that wishy-washy poltergeist. That means enough in my eyes. Maybe they don’t all have a focused view on what they want in the future, or even what kind of people they want to be. But that doesn’t mean that can’t find out those things for themselves, eventually. And they need to be alive for that. That’s a certain kind of dignity, I think.”

  As he spoke, Cal was struck by a sudden memory from the first week of September. The girl had been so vulnerable, too scared to even step a foot outside. Watching her had reminded him of himself, the way he had been in the past — and had filled him with a solid certainty, that now was the time to act, to say something with sincere words.

  He remembered the warmth of her finger against his nose, her laughing freckled face, her flying form twirling in front of the white moon. What had he said to her? Nowhere safe and terrifying. Nothing exists until you step through a door.

  “No,” he said, his voice impassioned by his emotions. “No, it’s definitely enough. It’s definitely enough to just stay alive.”

  Ellie was watching his face and found she liked what she saw. This was something different from the Pascal Clermont than she had seen previously. It was almost temirity, a look into the true workings of his brain.

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  “Sorry, you’re right.” She said, grinning with a sincerity that seemed to bypass her typical wall of easy-going informality. “You’re right, boss. That’s a good thing that you just said. Real principled, all good guys need to stand by a single principle or a dozen. I was just venting my frustration. Long night, and all that.”

  Her boot absentmindedly hit a can that was lying on the asphalt. “I mean, it’s something I still believe, definitely, but that doesn’t mean it’s true for everybody. Thinking otherwise is just a convenient excuse to deny people. But what I meant is… look, it’s like this. I was really popular back on the space-base, among my fellow junior cosmonauts. I was kind of the popular girl, right? The girl people want to get with.”

  Cal fixed her with an exasperation expression, returning to his typical coyness. “I thought we were having a serious conversation here, Ellie.”

  “We are! Just listen for a minute, okay? So, I was in the middle of all these wants and feelings and crushes. Clara was a cute girl that I think was attracted to my force of personality, the way I go for the things I want. She was shy — a proper shrinking violet — so she idealized me in her head, I think. And there was Adam. And he, um, well he wasn’t the brightest star in the galaxy, so to speak, but a sweetheart, I mean that, a nice guy in the truest sense. And um… he was sort of strong, which I liked… unlike, well…” Ellie cast a disappointed look at Cal’s scrawny figure, hidden underneath his coat. “Well, it’s not a competition, boss, so don’t feel bad. But he was taller than you, too.”

  “This is still the serious conversation?”

  “I’m getting to it! So, there was Clara and Adam, oh, and there was Wei, who was this sort of ultra-competent type who always knew how to keep a cool head in stressful situations. We were sort of having a friendly competition to be picked as the head of the team, and I guess that kinda got our emotions going, since it’s nice to have someone that you can bounce off of who wants the same sorts of things…” She clicked her tongue, still apparently sore about something. “Well, Wei was chosen to be the leader by our instructors, which is fine, I mean, they could’ve chosen me, but apparently they didn’t think my emotional intelligence was developed enough…”

  Ellie seemed to realize she was losing Cal’s attention, so she grabbed his sleeve and fixed him with a serious stare. “My point is… my point is…” She bit her lip, nervous about saying what she was about to say. “When you’re in the middle of all those sorts of emotions coming from all directions, and it’s hard to categorize any of it except for the fact that people want to get close to you, despite the fact there’s something else you’re aiming for… it’s… it’s exhausting, isn’t it? It’s hard. It’s… I mean, it’s a little annoying.”

  Her dark eyes studied his. “You can be honest with me, boss, about this sort of thing, if nothing else. You’re my friend. A precious friend, who cooked me delicious food and kept me company during this lonely intermission I’ve been stranded in. But that’s all we’ll ever be, because I’m just passing through as an observer. Aren’t you… aren’t you… also tired of it?”

  Cal breathed softly. The intensity of the look in Ellie’s eyes made him consider her question completely. He felt that hidden within the premise of the question was a trap, that to answer it he would need to admit to himself things he hadn’t yet admitted. And yet, he strangely felt that this girl from the year 5042 was the perfect person to finally come clean to, and therefore, come clean with himself.

  “Yes,” he said simply, a tinge of shame in the word. “I’m… I’m overwhelmed, frankly. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before. Nothing this real. I don’t know how I feel. I don’t know what to do.”

  She nodded, as if understanding completely. “Yeah. As someone who has been where you are… my only advice? Think about it. Find yourself a direction. That’s how I rededicated myself to my love.”

  “Your love?” echoed Cal.

  “My infatuation,” Ellie was grinning again in that unguarded way again, representative of her true personality. “Ever since I was a little girl. I was in love with the starry sky. That made me certain of how to act and what I wanted. And what I didn’t want. Listen… this is going to sound a little weird, but… you’ll fall in love one day. Don’t give me that look, boss. That’s the mistake people always make. The one they always, always make. They think it’ll never happen to them. They think they understand their own thoughts and emotions completely — that they’ve experienced everything that they will experience — that they’re too old, that time has run out, that their capacity for tenderness has atrophied. But they’re wrong. One day, something new will happen to them, too. It doesn’t have to be love for an idea. It doesn’t have to be love for a person. But it will happen.”

  He looked at her. She was being serious. She believed it from the bottom of her heart. Then her voice fell to a near whisper, almost conspiratorial. Ellie’s next question was so unexpected yet spoken with a tone of such significance that Cal understood that it was asking something beyond what it was asking, that it was reaching for a conclusion from abstract emotions.

  She tugged on his sleeve again. “Do you ever think about sex?”

  Cal stared at her blankly, but she didn’t break from his gaze. She wasn’t embarrassed or joking. She just wanted to know his answer.

  “No,” he said softly. “Sometimes I get flustered. Sometimes I even feel lustful. Sometimes… I even imagine what it might be like. But I never think about it.”

  She nodded, the same way she had before, before continuing in her lowered voice. “And… when you imagine it… where are you in that imagination?”

  Cal let out a tiny breath through his mouth, forming ice crystals in the air. “I’m nowhere.”

  “Dude,” she said, leaning back a little from him and shaking her head in confirmation at something. She looked like she was halfway between smiling and bursting into tears. “Holy shit. That feels so good to hear someone else say. I mean, I think I suspected it when we watched the bottle-rocket together, but… that was just an impression. A vague notion. That we had a hard time talking up until then not because we were so different, but because… because we were basically the same person, huh?”

  They had reached the gate of Otter Manor. She squeezed his hand, and he squeezed it back. It was a soft and quiet moment, which they both enjoyed together. And then a stark and loud sound rang from inside the pocket of Ellie’s coat.

  “Fucking shit and stars!” Ellie jumped a foot in the air and pressed a hand to her neck, before furiously fishing in her pocket. She pulled out a phone and spent about twenty seconds trying to frantically unlock it, before with prejudice slamming a finger against the screen to stop the loud ringing that was coming from the speaker. “I totally forgot I had that on. Fuck! Sorry, I mean, I had that set up for midnight, in case I fell asleep while working or while waiting for someone to come and pick me up from here. Completely slipped my mind.”

  Then she studied the home screen with interest, regaining her calm. “Oh. I forgot about that, too.” Ellie raised an eyebrow, turning her eyes back to him. “Happy New Year, Pascal.”

  Cal clicked his tongue at her use of his real name, but he was smiling despite himself. “Happy New Year, Ellinova. Any resolutions for 2043?”

  Her face was without emotion. “Get home. That’s it, really. Let’s hope ‘time’ doesn’t mean any longer than a year. How about you?”

  He shrugged. “No. I’ve never really done resolutions.”

  “I’ve got one for you if nothing else comes to mind.”

  “Really? What?”

  “Fall in love, Cal. Just to see what happens. I think you’d be surprised.”

  Cal looked at Ellie’s expression — half-kidding, half completely serious — let out a deep breath, and then cast his eyes to Otter Manor, up on the hill above them. The lights in many of the rooms were still on, despite the late hour.

  “Fall in love, huh?” Cal said, more to himself than to Ellie. “Under the present circumstances… that seems tough. But I’ll keep it in mind.”

  — undoing sex and undoing death. It's difficult for me when I get attached to characters in such games. In those cases, I can't help but feel that the right thing to do is to stop playing.

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