The conversation in the office was just the start. It gave me momentum, my darling, but I must confess it could only begin things.
I presented to them my findings and my research: from the books I read, I had extrapolated further theories, charts, and equations, which all told of further universes existing beyond their own. There was evidence—theoretical, but evidence nevertheless—according to those equations that these alternate realities lay superimposed on ours, out of view yet ever-present.
What was more, there was evidence that those realities were sending electromagnetic signals to this one. Alternate Realities and Their Mechanics had been the foundation. Upon it, I had built theorem upon theorem that these realities interacted and intersected.
All of this, darling, is to say that what I showed to my friends was that our home was not only real, but that I could return there from here.
Convincing those three was but the beginning. With them, we recruited professors for programs and further studies.
"Suppose there really are multiple universes," we proposed to them. "And maybe we're getting signals from them, ones we can pick up."
No, these authorities didn't come on board all at once. It took more theorizing, more equations and figures, to win any of them over. Even then there were so many one-on-one conferences, so many hours spent in front of podiums staring back at a table full of blank stares behind thick glasses.
You've no idea how tiresome it was, to again and again be met with silence from stony, wrinkled faces, then to perhaps hear our idea "has merit" at best.
No—forgive me. I'm sure, singing to that lecherous king every night, you know exactly this sort of exhaustion.
I wish I could promise an encouraging end in my case right away, to at least give you hope. But such encouragement never came even from those academics who found "merit" in our theory. Because while a few professors were on board, it was never enough to secure funding—the actual means of getting work done on the project.
"What we need," I told professor after professor, "is a radio telescope specially designed for intercepting deep-space radio waves."
They'd point out ones already existed that we could use. I always responded it wasn't enough; we needed it to be tuned for particular radio frequencies, aimed at specific portions of the sky. We had to have total control over it in every respect.
These were the scientific reasons. But more importantly, I knew we could not be beholden to masters, others running our observatory, if I was to find you. I knew none but my friends and I would understand the gravity of this search and how it must be conducted.
But no professors we approached could promise the resources we needed. Most said it was "far-fetched" or "unrealistic."
"Dial back your expectations," one tall man with thinning hair told me after hours of silently watching our presentation. "You'll never get a grant that gives you total control of the project. Especially not for something as untested as what you're proposing."
We certainly didn't in academia. The closest we came was when one professor referred us to another college's board. That college board sent us to an awarding institute, which in turn passed us to a certain other professor, supposed to be quite famous in this field.
We bounced around like that, until we landed on someone to truly help us.
His name was Gakupo, a head of a manufacturing conglomerate. We met him in an office the size of a concert hall. As we entered, he chewed a stick of gum—rubbery stuff with a hint of sweet flavor to it. But he sparkled with excitement when he saw us, when he rushed up to shake all of our hands.
There was an electricity in him even as he had us all sit. He leaned over his desk, dark in its dead lumber and wide as an elephant, and his fingers twitched enough they looked ready to jump out of the steepled gesture in which he held them. His grin, big and toothy, seemed pulled into place not by muscle but by sheer magnetism.
His smile never wavering, he urged us to "go all on about what you're studying."
"We need a deep-space radar telescope," I answered.
Even though Meiko grimaced, and Ia followed suit, the man behind the desk kept on grinning.
"Fine, but what exactly for?" Gakupo asked.
"We want to pick up radio waves. From far out in space," Meiko said.
"We have a lot of very interesting research going," Ia added. "You see, we believe there might be radio waves coming toward Earth from out there. And those waves might be…"
"They might be coming from another universe," I cut in.
That, at long last, made his wide grin falter.
He frowned then, if only for a moment, and managed to resume his smile. Though far less electricity seemed to emanate from his body as it leaned forward.
"Radio waves," Gakupo said, "from another universe."
If you could have seen him, dear—truly the face of one who can't think of a world past the horizon visible from his bedroom window.
"I know it seems far-fetched," I said, "and I'd forgive you for thinking we're all mad." These were tactics I'd learned from the school-hopping, dear—they brought defenses down, amazingly. "But there's plenty of research to back up this theory. We've considered all kinds of past findings. Now, we just need the experimental data to confirm it."
He frowned, and he got up from his padded chair. The steps he took around the room were so light and careful, so deliberate.
"You know, this isn't exactly the kind of research my company gets involved in," Gakupo said. "Bushido Electronics certainly prides itself on helping the scientific community—and, no, not only for the tax write-offs." He chuckled, then continued, "It's just, when the sound department gets involved, it's so often for earthquakes, or maybe deep sea ventures, or just… well, places.
"And to be frank, I'm not sure what real place you intend to illustrate with this idea of yours. Sure, maybe there's something out in space. Except, I don't much care what it might be. If it's life that's really out there…"
"That's not what we mean," Ia cut in.
"She's right. We meant more like," Meiko said, waving her hands in frustration, "like, it's this other place of existence."
It was enough to make Gakupo pause, turn with a raised eyebrow.
"Some 'other place?'" he asked.
"Think of it like this," Lily said. "If you traveled to the edge of the universe—not that you actually can—but if you did, you'd be at the edge of what we know. Right?" She got up from her seat. "Say, do you have a piece of paper? Meiko, get your hand mirror ready, too."
Nervously, I shifted in my seat as I let Lily continue to do the talking—better as she was at all this. Beside me, I sensed that same nervousness from Meiko and Ia.
"Thanks," Lily said as Gakupo handed her the requested paper, bemused. "So, suppose this is the universe's edge." She bent the paper in her hand, shaping it like half a tube. "See, what we're supposing, with our studies, is that at certain parts of the universe's edge…" With a sudden movement, she twisted the paper until it began to tear. "…at some points, space-time gets kind of ruptured. Got that mirror, Meiko? Thanks. Anyway." She set the mirror behind one of the tears formed in the paper. "We think what's behind these tears in space-time is sort of like a mirror. As in, it reflects light—more accurately, it reflects wavelengths. Most of them registering to us as radio frequencies."
"So, there's mirrors at the edge of the universe, and they're reflecting waves back," Gakupo asked.
"That's it, more or less," Lily said. "Not literally mirrors, but, you know, similar concept."
"Okay, but where are these waves actually coming from? Is that this 'other place?'"
Meiko, nodding as she went, arose from her seat to roll a diagram out on the wide wooden desk.
"It's like this. Here, this is the known universe, charted with radar. If what we think about the reflection is true, there are other universes superimposed on ours. Like, we're all here…" With an index finger outstretched, she circled round on the diagram. "…and they're all here." Lifting her hand up, she repeated the same motion with her index finger now circling the air above the map.
"So that's where the mirror comes in," Lily said. Resting the handheld mirror against her chest, she brought out a lighter and flicked it on above it. From her jacket, the mirror shone with the flame's glowing spark. "See? If a wavelength occurs above it, we see that reflected into our universe."
The man, the owner of this company, paced around some more. Even with those soft, deliberate steps, he walked about so long that I wondered if he wasn't about to leave dents in the hardwood below.
When he stopped, he turned right to us, face seemingly blank.
"So, this other universe. The one we're going to be getting messages from," Gakupo said. "What's it even like?"
The lot of us fell silent. The others, no doubt out of confusion. I, out of unease.
For those like Gakupo, the very idea of a world beyond their own backyards—even their own noses—never seemed to matter. It seemed beyond their regular perception. None had ever taken it seriously on my word alone.
Until I'd met and worked it out with my three friends, that is.
With them beside me, I smiled and spoke calmly.
"It's a world of natural beauty," I said, "with pockets of air so thick you can swim through it, and with life that lasts so long you can see the edge of eternity itself."
There was another lull. My friends stared at me, wide-eyed.
Gakupo, for his part, stood slack-jawed for just a moment.
"You make it sound like a kind of heaven," he said.
Lily chuckled, then added, "Well, hey, it is above us. Theoretically."
The quiet after that was thicker, more oppressive. Gakupo's face stayed so blank, so still, that I didn't dare guess what he was thinking.
In him, dear, I saw the same silent, disturbed mind as the King when he watched you perform: something about to blow, even though it remained concealed for now.
That is, until he threw back his head and laughed.
And laughed and laughed. It must have echoed down the hallway, maybe to the elevator.
"All right, all right," Gakupo said as he recovered. "Are you good for a check now, or later?"
The sun shone upon your face through the roots when you awoke, and only the sounds of singing birds echoed through the woods. For now, at least, the guards had gone—back to the castle, perhaps, to continue searching for others amid the rubble, or else to guide the living-stone back to its former shape.
You stretched, shook, and groaned. The last night had hardly been an easy one, for even though exhaustion finally pulled you into slumber, it was little comfort to sleep atop roots, rocks, and the raw edges of earth.
"Awake at last, are you, good maiden?"
The voice of the jolly old oak was deeper and even more resonant up against his roots.
"Yes. I hope you rested well, also," you said as you climbed out from his nest.
"Ah, much better, once the patrols at last left! Noisy beasts, they are, with all that unnatural clattering and clanging. And, well, that's to say nothing of that awful thorn removed from me. Gracious, but you've no idea how freeing it is to be rid of it."
And really, you and I both understood that feeling quite well, though all you decided to say in response was to thank the oak for the night below his roots.
"It was no trouble, oh, most assuredly," he replied. "But why ever were these sorts chasing you at all?"
There was no shame in the story, though you hesitated to recount it—a kind of burning lingered as you thought of the deceit, the attacks, and the living-stone crashing in on itself.
But you recounted the story to the jolly old oak all the same. The tree frowned in deep thought, his leaves quivering as if in a nod.
"Well, it scarcely surprises me that King Kaito's mind rotted so," he said. "You know, among us trees, we've whispered of a terrible stone beneath that castle—a beautiful, ruby-red gem of a thing, yet a relic with horrific power. Trees nearest the castle feel a strange power flowing from it, like waves in the air. Once they felt these waves, the trees would all feel eager to do the bidding of kings, or dukes, or any other manner of leader they should never have heard of. Imagine: a tree bowing to royalty! Have you ever heard such a thing?"
"So this stone must be how the King is controlling the guards so powerfully," you mused. And it seemed so obvious, too: how the knights all eagerly did such terrible acts as locking you up and banishing your lover, or keeping you singing until exhaustion with the tips of swords. Yes, surely it was only by some evil enchantment that so many could deny to others simple freedom.
Already, the picture was becoming clear: it would not be enough simply to return me to this world. No, if we were to stay together, this ruby-red stone, this ruling-stone, would have to be destroyed.
"Is there a way to do away with this rock?" you asked.
"No way that is known for certain," the old oak said. "But, in my time, I have heard the power of song has been enough to shatter rock—or, when the resonance is the opposite of the rock's nature. And since this stone is one of evil, well…"
"…it must be a song of love," you finished.
And it was all becoming clear. Reuniting wasn't the step after freedom; our reunion was freedom itself. Yes, if what this tree said was true, only the two of us could hope to shatter this tyranny.
"One last question, if I may," you said. "Do you know of a way to other worlds? I know it is strange, but someone very dear to me is trapped in such a place."
The jolly old oak shook with laughter, his leaves falling and his branches dancing in the sun.
"Ah, but the maiden is daring! What you ask is a feat far more difficult than to shatter stone with voice alone."
"But is there no way out of this reality?"
"Ohoho! Yet indeed there is. Or I have heard as much. There are much taller trees than I, you know—so tall they can spike their way up halfway to the heavens, and from there they have felt amazing sensations.
"Yes," the oak continued, "from there, where the blanket of the sky grows thin, they sensed a strange sort of warmth: a shivering glow of stars quite unlike those from our own sky. And so those trees whisper that these are stars from another world."
How curious—a thin part of the sky, out far into the heavens? Yet trees, old and rooted as they were, had so little reason to lie. And already this one had shown such kindness and honor.
"It's to that part of the sky that I must go, then," you said, and rose to leave the woods.
At once, the rumbling of the jolly old oak's voice followed: "But how might you get there? No person or beast has ever climbed so high. Not even a tree has seen this part of the heavens."
But still you smiled as you continued on. "Never to worry. A couple friends of mine may just be able to help."
The funding from Gakupo was enormous. Not enormous enough, of course. But still more than I dreamed we would receive.
It first went into construction of the equipment we needed: a gigantic dish, shaped just like ones for soup, that worked with a series of electronics and computer equipment. In so few words, it would amplify waves originating from the stars. It would translate those waves not only into something we could hear on this little rock, but something we could hopefully understand.
My friends here would be able to hear you in full, my dearest.
I'd be able to hear you.
The first time I saw the dish, it was still under construction. Meiko had designed it. She oversaw the piecing together of the metal, the flying sparks of welders and swinging of cranes carrying parts, with a quiet eagerness. Her eyes shone, and her heels bounced ever so slightly off the ground.
She didn't say anything. Only smiled at it all.
I clapped her on the shoulder and said, "It's yours. And it's coming together."
"Oh, Luka, come on now," she said. "It's ours. I'm not looking at it any other way."
Going from her to the massive dish and back again, I beamed. Over us, the sky hung like a perfectly smooth pane of glass, not a cloud in sight.
"It's not exactly small out there, though," Lily said. "We'll be looking for a needle in a haystack."
I gave a little laugh. "But a needle feels so much different from hay. You'd surely find it eventually."
"Difference is," Lily said, "most of us don't have 'eventually.'"
The engineers labored away below us, welding, assembling. They were proceeding as fast as I imagined they could.
A little voice, one I swiftly silenced, screamed out inside to build faster, get the dish up now, now. There would be no searching without it, after all. No way to reach you just yet.
My friends stood by a little longer in admiration of the project. I cited thirst and beat a quick retreat.
There was no admitting it to them, but I wasn't sure how much longer I could watch in silence. Like a suit of burrs, latched onto me prickling and heavy, was the fear that in letting others do their job, I was not doing enough.
It was curious, experiencing you remember exactly where the twins' house was. As I dreamed of you remembering, I went through the same process: alongside you, I also recalled how their home sat within a far cave in the mountains, how it would take days to reach there on foot.
And I was right there with you as you planned your journey in your mind. It would have to be a long, quiet, and careful trip: traverse through the woods by night, never taking shortcuts by flying above the treetops. For, you feared, even traveling in the woods by day might attract too much suspicion. Surely it would also risk exposure to take off soaring over the horizon, even after sunset. Either way, it wasn't a chance you were willing to take.
Days later, through a slow and rigorous journey, you found the foot of the mountains. It would be a few days more to scale them, you knew—but at least here, the tunnels hidden throughout the mountains would keep you out of sight.
On and on you crept along those hidden pathways, until the darkness became more familiar than light, when at last you were again in front of the twins' workshop. In you stepped, the door having been left open to let the noisy clanging and flying sparks out.
"Rin? Len?" you asked.
Into view popped a blonde girl, beaming.
"Miku! Oh, it's really you!"
And below her head, in popped a blonde boy.
"You're back! Miku, you're really back—I feel as if it's been ages."
You laughed, if only at how long these two must have been cooped up in this shop, to have missed the ways of the world so. But such was their passion, and passion was not a thing to lose hold of.
So you explained my banishment, your being chained away, and the plans by which you escaped. You explained the things you heard from trees and the thin part of the sky they believed existed.
The twins gaped in silence at it all, up to the very end.
That was when, at last, Rin said: "Well, we have to move quickly, then. Come on, Len, let's get building."
"You know how to get up that high?" you asked, your excitement shaking you from within.
"We think we do," Len said. "You know, we've been working on—well, we were going to surprise you and Luka with it, actually. We were making this kind of flying machine, and now…"
"Now we're going to use it," Rin said.
Leading you back, she led you to their massive workshop carved out of the very mountain, all about which hung iron gears, metal frames to cover them, and stones that hovered about one another in a loop, suspended in motion by some complex science.
Then, at the far end of the room, there it was indeed: a steel shell shaped much like a boat, only with wings like a dragonfly's sticking out. A set of large, bladed contraptions protruded from the shell's front, which you guessed were meant to drive the thing.
"Now we're still not done with it!" Len said emphatically. He made a wide, frustrated gesture at the large blades. "We still can't get the engines to run consistently, and that's not exactly a small problem. If they sputter out while this is flying—"
"But it has to work!" you said. "And it has to work now! If I don't find her soon, then…"
Both the twins looked deeply troubled, because you had no need to finish: they knew full well it would only be a matter of time before the King found the mountains and stormed their hideout. No, there was little time left to attempt this search, for the armies were hot on your heels already.
"We work through this day, and then the next," Len finally said. "We'll get this machine up and flying by then."
At those words, you swept both the twins into a hug and kissed each on their cheek.
Once the station was complete, I had an easier time getting used to it than I'd imagined. Out on the edge of civilization, away from the noise and grayness of dead stone to which I'd become accustomed, I found the work environment to be much more peaceful. Amid the emptiness, it was simpler to focus on the sky, and it was so much less effort to imagine what it was sending me.
Amid that vastness, I felt so much closer to you.
We spent a great deal of time merely panning the great dishes of our station along empty sky. We listened intently to the star-filled expanse—so immense it would fill a trillion concert halls—and yet heard nothing. All that played on our great radios was the buzz of distant stars crackling and dying.
I had said that this was merely the start, that a pan through the sky would turn up something eventually. What I meant, of course, was it would lead somewhere to a clue from you, and you would guide us the rest of the way.
"We just have to keep looking," I said, each time we recalibrated the controls for the dishes. "Proof is out there. It has to be."
With each new configuration, Meiko shook her head longer and longer. Lily always had calculations of some kind or another to compute, and Ia—even months into these changes, Ia stayed at my side, smiling that comforting smile.
But I must admit that as time ticked on, and as the dishes returned only that painful buzz, I felt a weight on my chest all the same. It sat heavy on me, day and night, keeping me from sleeping, from eating. Each time, Lily would shrug and retreat to spend hours longer at her private apartment, a place she'd bought to avoid paying that "rent" business, which she claimed would cost her even money more later on. But I, in some time, dared not even go home to the apartment I was now sharing with Meiko. I feared that if I was out a few hours, even a few minutes, I might miss your song as it arrived on our instruments.
For all the sleepless nights spent drowning myself in coffee—a warm, comforting drink full of chemicals which keep one awake—I didn't hear any hint of your voice.
A needle in a haystack, indeed.
Only here there was enough straw for all the creatures of every universe to sleep upon.
It was cloudy out, poor conditions for visual astronomy, when Lily ran into the observatory excited, shouting with a paper in her hand.
"I've got it! You guys, seriously, I think I've got it!"
Her shouting immediately lifted our attention away from the station monitors. They hadn't displayed anything significant, anyway, save for an isolated flicker of activity a few minutes earlier, which turned out to likely be a particularly strong surge of background radiation. Despite the inactivity, Ia humored her by turning down the radio we had set up near the station dashboard.
Meiko, for her part, got up and stretched. "Back early from your date. This must really be important."
"It was a work date, first off," Lily protested. "I told you guys that Gumi's a scientist, right? She's literally working in astronomy. Has her own observatory and everything."
"Didn't you say you were going to karaoke?" I asked. Because I made a note of remembering that: here, there were halls devoted to singing along with music played from larger sorts of radios. Were I not so occupied, I'd have loved to visit one such place, if only to see how it worked.
"We did," Lily said. "That was hours ago. It's not like we stayed there the whole time."
"Oh." I looked over at the clock by the workstation, confirming it had indeed been several hours. "I must have lost track."
"But that's beside the point," Lily went on. "See, after that, we got to a bar, and I started talking about work and stuff. And Gumi, she mentioned to me that her observatory had found this patch of sky with weird activity."
Meiko raised an eyebrow. "Weird how?"
"Weird like the area being clear one night, then blotted out by pure light the next. Apparently the light is on pretty much every frequency, too: visible, infrared, you name it, it's lighting up the instruments." She clicked her tongue in the ensuing silence. "And yeah, they checked for interference. It's not satellites or industrial pollution doing this. The origination is definitely from out in space."
With greater confidence than I'd seen from her before, Lily strutted up to the workstation and slapped the paper down in front of us.
"And here's where it's coming from," she said. "These coordinates, right here. Sort of around Virgo."
"So," Ia said with a hum, "if we just listen in on that…"
"We'll find it." I rose from my seat as I said the words, outside of my own accord, as if on a string. The strength resonating in me was so much I half wonder now if the words were all my own. "What we're looking for, we'll find it there. All the pieces fit."
I looked on at my friends in the ensuing quiet, the lull of the radio's music over humming instruments. Though Lily kept her composure and bright smile, Meiko gave a shrug.
"It seems like a long shot, even so," she said.
"But what other option is there?" I asked.
A clatter of wheels from a chair shook beside me, and as I turned, I found Ia standing at my side.
"She's right," Ia said. "Our choice now is to keep searching blindly or take this direction. Surely there wouldn't be any harm in trying. Right?"
After a moment, Meiko sighed, shaking her head with a shy grin.
"You've got me there," she said. And with a start, she leaned far back into her chair—laughing, loud and sudden. "You know, for just how far we've come, I guess some things between us haven't changed, huh?"
I joined in the laughter with Lily, only in the corner of my eye noticing Ia merely stood by, staring at us blankly.
We tuned our workstation's dish to Gumi's supplied coordinates right after. All I could think was how fortunate it was to have gotten them, through this connection of connections. That part of space was so barren, so thin with stars. As far as our maps could tell, all that lay there were trails of dust and the reflected glow of nearby stars.
Unless we happened upon that stretch in our scans, we probably never would have searched it at all.
As ever, the hardest part was the waiting. All my other colleagues—understandably, perhaps—spent that time resting, going out, returning home. Through mobile information devices, Lily told us of how she had more time to spend with Gumi. Where exactly Ia and Meiko went, I didn't inquire. I suppose I never felt a particular need to.
Instead I kept track of the instruments, their various meters and dials and readouts. Fervently, I studied each element of our setup, rolling in my chair from station to station as each part grew old.
Here, they like to say that "a watched pot never boils." I had found strange, as the few times I examined heated water, it always began to bubble and froth in little time at all. Now, though, watching the various readouts and feeds, noting time's passage only by the changing songs on the radio—I think I finally understood. It wasn't simply the time passing, but the need for that result of the time, that boiling desire, that truly made every passing second seem to slow down.
That, or perhaps I truly had been in this world so long that I'd forgotten the way I once knew time to run.
But either way, I simply couldn't tear myself from the station. I could not let myself be elsewhere the moment your voice again reached this world.
Still, I was awakened by the loud beeping of a successful readout printed on a station computer—somehow having fallen asleep even with the pots upon pots of coffee I'd drank. With a start, I shot up in my seat. I rolled my chair over to the monitor and ran my fingers over its controls.
The screen printed that the data collection was finished. There, the confirmation sat plain to see in simple white text, glowing like stars on the dark of a screen.
I commanded it to compile. It fed together into sounds, audible to the ear here, in a matter of minutes more. And yet I sat what felt like hours hovering over the final command, the one to play it back: the one that might at last give me a whisper of your voice again.
But, with a heavy swallow, I told the machine to play.
Sounds emerged from the machine. And at once my heart sank. I fell back into the chair with it. Though a lump formed hard enough to block my throat, I hadn't strength enough to bring forth tears.
All that played through the machine was gibberish, noise as garbled and useless as every corner of space we'd combed before.
You knew you only had till next nightfall to complete the work, if that. Yes, you knew that better than most anyone.
But you also knew there was no need to remind the twins of it. True, they perhaps hadn't internalized what you had drilled into yourself: it wouldn't be long, only a matter of days, before the guards would surely be locked on your trail. But even so, they worked in a frenzy. Away they pounded on the flying machine's hull, tail fin, and wings. Hurriedly they hammered it to a perfect sheen, tensely they adjusted the sails they'd added to it.
As you watched their progress, it was clear they had made quick headway. The shape of the machine was so much cleaner, its body fully patched and complete: now, it had become like a giant dragonfly, one carved in perfect replica out of solid metal.
But you couldn't help but notice the box up at its front—yes, that "engine" as Len had called it. This whole while, that troublesome "engine" had gone wholly untouched.
At first, you thought nothing of it. But you recalled Len's complaints about that component, and then you saw the twins spend hours over it, tools in hand, yet not doing anything in particular with it.
"Is there a problem?" you asked, trying to keep the nerves from shaking your voice.
"Might be, possibly," Rin said. "Or might not be."
"'Might'?" Len repeated under his breath, before quickly being elbowed by Rin.
She continued, "It's just that…well, the engine, Miku. We're not sure how to get it moving."
"No?" You leaned in to stare at the engine. As last time, it was a giant hunk of metal, a case of sorts, with cylinders of rock inside that seemed designed to rotate. Actually, given the propellers on the outside to which these cylinders were connected, it seemed clear they were to rotate rather quickly.
That much motion that fast would be a great task, of course. It had to be many hundreds of times faster than the speed at which living-stone grew, and on a good day.
"We can get it to move," Len added. "The trouble is, we can't keep it moving. Not for very long, at least."
"And we'd need it to move for long, if we're going to have much luck up in the sky," Rin said. "We've been trying to rush it along with electricity, water propulsion, even raw magical energy. But it all conks out after only a few minutes."
Little wonder Len had been so pessimistic about getting the craft finished, then. Outside of the simple movement of winds, those were all the forms of motion you could think of—dreaming of all this from afar, I could think of few others, myself.
"Maybe we should take a short break for now," you offered.
The twins eagerly agreed, as both surely saw the need for cleared heads. And fuller stomachs, for that matter: they brought out trays of sliced meats, freshly grown from a nearby mountain's veins, and after that, dried fruits as dessert. For an occasion as special as this, a visitor like you, there was no reason to keep them stored away.
Nearly finished with the treats, though, the one-sided conversation from the twins—about other inventions and thoughts they had, music they had heard of—turned to you.
"I've been wondering," Len said, "just what is it you plan to do at this 'thin part of the sky'? It isn't as if you can just cross through it, is it?"
"I'd think not," Rin said. "It's hard enough to fly a certain point above the highest trees here. There's no telling how bad things could be in another universe's version of a place like that."
It was a worthy question—because, of course, you hadn't really thought about what would come at that point. The only guiding light so far had been feeling, raw intuition. Such a flame had at least led you out of the tower, away from the guards' control, and then what seemed to be toward me.
Surely, this light would not steer you wrong if you were to speak it aloud now.
"I'm going to sing," you said.
The twins both stared as if your eyes had belched fire.
"Sing?" they said in unified confusion.
"I will sing to Luka," you said, "the same way I did in our choir. That was enough to make her notice me for the first time. It has to be enough to send word to her now, too."
"But having her notice you won't bring her back," Len said.
"It can start. It should be enough, at least, to get her to join in my song." The plate in front of you, on which you'd been served the meat and fruits, sat empty now. Its dark, stone-carved face loomed like a pit before you, and it took great balance not to fall in. "The old oak said a song of love is what will shatter the ruling-stone. If the song Luka and I share has love enough to do that, it must also have power enough to reunite us."
They grew silent at that explanation. Both looked lost in thought, barely even still in the room with.
Until Len jumped out of his seat, grinning eagerly.
"I know this!" he said, and ran to a shelf nearby. From it, he plucked a thick tome and leafed through the pages, letting it land with a thud on the table at the right spot.
"Look here," he said. He stabbed a slender finger at some text and an accompanying diagram, one of orbs upon a curved and bent grid. "See, some magicians and seers have studied this. At certain spots, if the various celestial bodies line up—well, it's kind of like rubbing the spatial fabric."
"The what?" Rin asked.
"Spatial fabric. It's the layer of curtain between our reality and others. Anyway," Len continued, with a brief squint out of the book, "that fabric can be shattered by wavelengths. Powerful ones, anyway."
It was as if a set of gears in your head had clicked just into place, and movement begun on its own.
"And our voices," you said. "Both our voices. If we united, and that unity is enough to shatter a powerful stone, then…"
"That's it!" Rin shouted. With a jump of her own, she rose from her seat and clapped both hands excitedly down on the book. "We get you up there, and you start singing and singing until Luka notices."
"And everything on her side is in the right place," Len added.
Now outright squealing, Rin lifted you from your seat and jumped about the dining room with you, hand in hand. The quick, unorchestrated dance was nearly as exhilarating as the news: simply have me sing with you! Surely it would be possible, somehow, if only the song was to reach me. If only I were to find some means of making the song stay.
But just as quickly, Rin stopped the jumping. Far more soberly, she walked over to the metal flying craft and its troublesome engine.
"You know," she said, "if just a song is enough to do all that—wouldn't it also be enough to get this thing running?"
From across the open workshop door, Len shot her a confused look. "But how are sound waves supposed to do that?"
Ignoring him, you walked through the door to join Rin by the engine. The cylinders still sat motionless, stern and stubborn.
They had taken so many attempts, and rebuked them all. But a song—it might be a form they would accept.
You leaned in close over the stone components.
"I offer a pact," you said. "Turn for me, faster than the wind can blow or water can rush—and I will sing a song to celebrate your reaching a state of motion."
There was no response, at first. Yet after your first breath of disappointment, a grinding noise started: low, grating, and slow, from within the engine.
No sooner could you peek inside than the sound became louder, faster. The cylinders within were whirling, whirling, quick enough to blur. Outside, the attached fans spun so fast as to become full circles of motion.
You yelped for joy as the twins jumped, shouted, held you close in a warm yet restraining hug. At once you were pulled by them to the craft's seat, where already you were singing the promised song of gratitude.
Under the singing, Len said, "Let's get a move on, then! If we do some test flying, we can get this thing up above the trees just before sundown."
You nodded, and the sweet song of celebration turned into squeals as the craft swerved and pulled away—up, up, and, through a hole in the top of the mountain, out from the workshop and zooming along in the blue sea of the sky.
"You really shouldn't be too hard on yourself," Meiko said. "I mean, I did point out it was a long shot, right?"
It was true that she had, I thought, as I sipped at my drink: a mixture of fruit juices and the same stronger spirits that seemed popular here. The effect never takes one as high as the wines back home, exactly. No, here there comes a certain sinking in the flesh, a heaviness as your head buzzes and spins.
Still, that evening I was thankful I had grown to like the stuff.
"I suppose it was a gamble," I said. The bar around us, where my friends had normally gathered, was a place I saw but rarely. Late into that night, the room was filled to the brim with people, all off in their own groups, filling the room with the music of overlapping words.
It was different to be there among them all, to remember that you, my dearest, are not the only thing in the universe. But perhaps it was what I most needed. For all the vastness, the enormity which I had observed, I had been fixed upon only you. And being within that group of people, feeling their joy around me, I thought perhaps it had been too much.
Perhaps I have unjustly pinned all my hopes upon you.
"Yes," I said, after finishing my glass, "I suppose it really was a long shot."
"But we can still try again," Ia said. In the dim, flickering lights of the bar, her smile glowed like a comet flashing in the sky. Her hand gripped mine, firm and warm, and I smiled back. "All it would take is reorienting the dish. It isn't as if this is the end."
"Yeah, like…" Lily, at my other side, took a long swig of her own tall, pink beverage while twisting a hand in thought. "It's that thing they say, right? About, uh, it's not that you failed, you just found another way that won't work."
"Said about inventions, not places to search. But yes." Meiko had only been drinking undiluted liquors—harder, heavier stuff than I dared to try—but by then she had still made it to a third glass, in time with us. "Just being realistic, something being weird in one field doesn't mean another is related."
I sighed, and drank deep from my own cup. The difference was, few other times where that connection was missed could have weighed so hard on the scientist.
And yet, she was right. Something was odd about that spot Gumi gave in an observable manner. That hardly meant something would be odd on my end, the non-observable spectrum. This was a world of science in which I now lived: a world still governed by the principles and precepts that I'd spent years and years learning. Amid all that, here I was operating on emotion, on raw intuition.
Further into my own drink, though—I heard Lily hum, poignant and deep, full of enough feeling as if my thoughts had transmitted something to her.
"I'm stuck on whether or not there really is no connection," she said.
Ia frowned, though. "But, Luka said she couldn't find any."
"Yeah, sure. It's just, I dunno, we went about scanning that area the normal way, right? Even though it's weird enough that astronomers in the visible spectrum see something unnatural in it."
"Your point?" Meiko asked.
"Maybe it's the alcohol hitting, maybe it's just me thinking out loud," Lily said. "But, hey, it almost seems like we should approach from a different angle here—like it's something we don't have the right context to understand yet."
"I still have no idea what you're saying," Meiko deadpanned. "We already listened to that area. We got a readout. The only possible data out there is literally in our possession right now. What other way could there possibly be of approaching this problem?"
Lily shrugged. "I just can't fight this feeling that, I don't know, we're somehow missing the forest for the trees."
There was something about that phrase—the shape of it, the sound of it—that made me go still. I sat with my glass raised to just to my lips, frozen in thought.
Forest. Trees. I repeated the words to myself over and over. There had to be a reason why they were making me feel so off.
"You okay there?" Lily asked me.
And though I didn't say it, I was—I was far more than okay, even. I was ecstatic.
"Like what the tree said," I murmured to myself. And I felt my voice grow, rise in excitement, because I had figured it out.
"He said the sounds were too fast," I said, and I set my glass aside as I rose from my seat.
"Luka, what…" Ia started.
"The who said that?" Meiko asked.
"The tree! I remember it—in my dream, the tree was saying the sounds they heard were like the stars in their universe, only faster." I had gathered myself, had to keep myself from spring out the door then and there. "The trouble isn't that the data's wrong. It's that we're not listening to it the right way. If we just slow them down instead of listening to them normally…"
"Slow them down? Luka, this isn't like we're tuning into electro-frequencies," Meiko said.
I ran out before she could finish. Out to get a car, one of the strange chariots that ran along their streets. You could ride in some of them, for a fee. I needed one of these, one to get us back to the observatory, fast.
One car approached. In the rain it splashed and roared, the lights on its front glaring and glinting through the falling raindrops.
Without thinking I stepped onto the sidewalk. Or, not quite stepped—ran ahead, blindly, oh so much without thinking.
Perhaps I had had too much of that drink.
I felt it in my head as I lost my footing on the sidewalk, then even more as I fell against the pavement. I fell hard, and far. The water on the pavement immediately soaked through my clothes, though I didn't have time to feel the cold.
Almost immediately, the approaching car was on top of me.
Just as quickly, it was gone. Then came the screaming—from the bar's entrance, Ia's voice. They must have been right behind me, for the next thing I remember was them standing by me, helping me to my feet.
It hurt to stand. I was woozy, seeing dark spots.
"Luka? Luka, can you hear us?" Lily was saying as her face faded in and out of a haze. Meiko's arms firmly encircled me, lifting me higher. Faintly, as if from far away, I heard Ia sobbing.
I grunted as I felt my bones start to patch themselves back together and my mangled head beginning to regenerate.
"I'll be fine," I said. "Just find us a ride and take me back to the station."
They all went quiet, even Ia. I had an idea why: my body was already starting to feel much better, to the point I'd surely returned to nearly full health.
I laughed. That seemed to be the only appropriate way to respond to their silence.
"I guess this isn't something you're likely to ever grow used to," I said.
"Yeah," Lily said as she took hold of me under my other arm. "That's putting it lightly."
A/N: Thank you again to Can't Catch Rabbit for editing and support for this story.
Although I personally haven't gone through the rigmarole of chasing down grant money, I hope the general vibe displayed here is more or less on the image. (It's what I heard from friends in the hard sciences, you see.)