It began with Belkin’s fingernails, initially only a light iridescence that coiled and shifted along the surface like rain-slicked oil. The first thought he had was of the Void. That same playful pattern that had plagued him through FTL space, which had scrambled his instruments and thoughts into a chaotic, colorful blur.
After-images Belkin reassured himself. They had told him their might be after-images.
It was nothing to be concerned about. Not now. Not after three months of medical checks following the test flight that had so nearly left him stranded in the furthest reaches of space, unable to get back. They were still picking the craft, his story, apart but had finally signed off on him. Left him to his goodbyes.
If Lara noticed it when she returned home, she said nothing, simply melted into his arms by the fire, quirked a quizzical brow at the cat’s strange reaction.
‘You smell like the void,’ she’d joked, ‘That's why she won't go near you.’
He had laughed, kept silent about the fact that it wasn't only Muffins. That he had noticed it from all the animals he'd passed in the last day he'd been free. The old lady Weatherby’s dog in the park. It had snarled at him, despite having known him for years. The horses. The horses had panicked, nearly broken through the paddock fence in their madness to be away from him.
They know. The thought lingered at the edge of his consciousness. Animals always do, don't they?
He gave another sly glance to his nails, pulled Lara in close for a kiss. Whispered a soft, sad ‘I love you’ into one perfect ear.
Right on time he thought, somewhere between relieved and hurting. Everything was unfolding just as he'd been told it would.
After the first day, the effect began spreading through his fingers, undeniable now, and Belkin took to wearing gloves to cover the shifting chaos of his hands. It was becoming harder to hold things. Lara had given him a strange look when he'd dropped a cup that morning. She hadn't seen his hand pass clear through it, thank God, but she was getting suspicious all the same.
‘Still not used to the gravity,’ he'd said with a forced smile. ‘It'll come right.’ And it had, for a few moments as he'd managed to force enough substance into his hands to pick up the cup and drink from it. The effort had cost him, a slick of sweat rolling down the side of his face in the cool air. She had wiped it away with a small frown and said:
‘Maybe you should go in. Just to check.’
Belkin had promised he would and then went walking instead through the moors by the house, wincing at the sounds of small birds careening into the sod around him, a little string of corpses that mirrored his steps. After that he'd refused to leave the house, kept a safe distance from all their pets. Lara’s face had grown increasingly concerned in the days that followed and for a few agonising moments he had wanted desperately to tell her.
Then that same strange calm that had taken him in the shuttle weeks before had settled into the corners of his mind. Belkin started wearing long sleeves, checked carefully the hollow planes of his face each morning for any sign the disembodiment had spread that far. It was a matter of days now before it ceased to matter.
All of this has happened before. You are not the first.
They had told him that, drifting in the multi-colored dark and in time (weeks, months? The construct of it didn't matter) he had made his peace with it. In every timespan, every single one, the result was the same. Humanity could not go to the stars. The destruction that followed in the wake of those events was too terrible to contemplate.
‘What happened when you passed through the wormhole?’ The debrief had been the same every day of those three months. Patiently, Belkin had answered them. No, he did not remember what he'd seen during FTL.
Presences. A kaleidoscope in seven other senses than the ones he knew.
No, he could not tell them how his ship had been refueled. He'd emerged from the other end and nothing, blackness.
A song, older than the stars themselves
One minute he was in the wormhole, another beyond it and then… Earth orbit. Weeks had passed. No, he didn't remember eating. No, he couldn't explain how barely five minutes had passed in the logs, why his instruments had malfunctioned.
‘It was two weeks,’ they'd insisted.
Aeons. A veritable cascade of alternate histories. A million races before. A million to come. Every thread leading to the same mistake.
Each time they'd had to let him go, shaking their heads. More tests, squinting at their instruments. Nothing. No radiation. No record, down to his very cells, that anything had happened.
There had been seven other humans ‘before’ him, seven more ‘to come.’ Each had been given the opportunity to say their goodbyes though the concept seemed ludicrous to him now.
You will exist outside time, like the others. Eyes in the void. Painstakingly unpicking the fabric of space-time before some new race can unravel it completely
By the Tuesday after his release, Belkin found that he couldn't leave their bedroom. His hand simply passed through the door handle and refused to take on any substance regardless of how he willed it to do so.
It’s time
The irony of it didn't escape him. Already the world around him had started to fill with that same, odd shimmer. When Lara awoke, she began to scream and continued hysterically as he tried to comfort her and passed like a wisp through her soft skin instead. Around them, the world continued to shift, rearranging itself, snuffing out the things that shouldn't be - erasing. All her memories of these past few months. Their whole life together, ended when his ship failed to return from that strange melting darkness beyond the wormhole. He looked at her tenderly, a slight pang slipping past the calm as he thought about the pain to come.
Lara had stopped screaming by now and was simply rocking back and forth, clutching her knees. She refused to look up as he drifted towards her, refused to acknowledge the maddening horror that was the rapidly disintegrating world around her.
‘I'm sorry, my love,’ he managed, running an ethereal hand through her hair. ‘It really is better this way.’
It was the knocking that jarred her awake and with it an instant feeling of dread. Pulling on her robe, Lara stumbled to the door, undid the latch with trembling hands. Uniforms. Crisp white in the morning light. A brightness that never reached their faces.
(Image from Pixabay: https://pixabay.com/en/science-astronomy-planet-galaxy-3228540/)
This story is an entry to the @mctiller twenty four hour shortstory contest here: @mctiller/writers-win-5-steem-24-hour-short-story-contest-for-may-22-a-test-pilot-returns-to-earth-after-the-first-ever-faster-than-light