When I have fears that I may cease to be

When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain, Before high-pilèd books, in charactery, Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain; When I behold, upon the night’s starred face, Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, And think that I may never live to trace Their shadows with the magic hand of chance; And when I feel, fair creature of an hour, That I shall never look upon thee more, Never have relish in the faery power Of unreflecting love—then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

John Keats, 1818.

That day when she touched the Coral… or rather, was it the Coral that touched her – Morgan couldn’t tell for sure – she felt… different. It was different now. Before, her fingers would have just slipped through the golden threads as if it hadn’t even been there. The Coral, although beautiful, bordering on indescribable, had felt like nothing. Air. Nothingness. Void? No, just empty space. Void was too heavy a word, void was something around Talos, not inside it. Between then and now had been just one tiny prick of a needle into her eye – the experimental typhon neuromod. “Just a puncture, nothing to be afraid of,” in her mind this voice belonged to Sylvain Bellamy. Morgan knew that Bellamy would always have her back. Their trust was mutual and ran deep. She would even have trusted him to sooth her, which is why some disembodied voice in her head talking about minor inconveniences was Sylvain’s. And now she was standing in the Psychotronics and in the Coral. The Woman Clothed with the Sun. For once, Morgan’s fingers were really touching it, sinking in it, and the threads, radiant with the hues of sunsets in alien worlds, were gently returning the touch, not outwardly showing it, but intertwining with her limbs, invisible to a human eye. She felt it! She felt… It beamed on her. She suddenly felt very lonely. It was so vivid, tearing her apart, the feeling that your family, the closest, your blood and bone was somewhere far, somewhere unreachable, somewhere… hoping to find you. And for a moment Morgan gave in to this emotion, hoping they really would. Find her. The Coral was whispering, although the words were impossible to decipher. For now. She would be back. Over and over again. As many times as necessary. Morgan wanted to know. “I don’t know, Morgan,” Alex took a sip of his bourbon and sighed. He looked comfortable on that sofa. His eyes were examining her face with almost fatherly concern and affection. He cared for her. They were, after all, a family, blood and bone. Morgan waited for him to say something else, but his lips neither touched a glass again, nor opened to utter another phrase. He was just looking. “You’re scared,” her eyes narrowed. “Am I creeping you out by telling you this? Because I don’t want to creep you out… I just… I…” She hid her face in her hands, held it for a moment and then brushed back the hair, straightening in Alex’s cozy armchair. Jupiter kept silent, and Juno sighed almost inaudibly, in line with the air of his halls. “We shouldn’t be doing that.” At last, he spoke and took another sip. “To you.” “You know as well as I do that we can’t allow typhon neuromod testing on any other than… a trusted person. The clearance and the quality of the research, it cannot be compromised. Not now! Not when we’ve finally started getting something out of it.” “A zero result isn’t called result for nothing. We can cease the experiment and close the case and…” She rushed out of the room, never heard the ending of his no doubt logical explanation for a failure. Excuses were for losers, and they both knew it – the Yu family in its entirety couldn’t hold their excuses. They were made for success. Finest breed. And it was never a zero result. Morgan suppressed an urge to wave at the surveillance cameras on the way to the Psychotronics – she was confident Alex was watching her. Great thing about where she was heading to, though, was that what happened in Psychotronics, stayed in Psychotronics, meaning no surveillance streams to anywhere but within the department. Alex would have to get his ass down there to learn the truth, CEO or not. She donned the psychoscope and proceeded to the farther end of the department, to the actual core of the station. It was an open mic evening at the Yellow Tulip, so she expected a quiet night down there. And it proved just so. Cory Richard, the Psychotronics security officer, though, was the only one still hanging around and he gave her a sigh of relief when she said he could go up to the Yellow Tulip, too, ‘she’d keep an eye on things down here’. And by gods she meant no mischief. Just… a bit of understanding. Morgan watched the pressurized doors closing behind Cory and then walked towards a big glass containment chamber with the old Soviet satellite. The Weaver within was never a problem – it was almost a timid creature, preferring retreat to a direct attack. Could it even attack in any other way than releasing those small ball-like cystoids? And the glass was there, blocking its fear waves and excluding any chance of even moderate harm to an observer. However, for some reason, the glass was unable to block those tiny sprawls of the Coral from one side of the container. The chosen ones who knew about the experiment could easily put two and two together and draw a very unsightly conclusion that the Coral did indeed increased in volume since Morgan had installed the typhon neuromods. For the rest of the Psychotronics crew, the cause of its growth was still a mystery. But at least it did nothing. It wasn’t toxic. It wasn’t attacking anyone. It did absolutely no harm. You couldn’t even feel it when you were trying to touch it, although your eyes were saying you were touching it. It just WAS there. At least, that was what all the readings showed. The Weaver indeed retreated to the other side of the glass box as soon as Morgan neared the glass. She lingered a bit, contemplating, and then took off a glove and extended her hand. It was like joining hands. She could swear the Coral was almost warm to the touch, pulsing like a living being. And yet it was still just the radiance in the air, its zero density didn’t change, it wasn’t a solid substance. As if it hadn’t been clear to Morgan from the very beginning, the touch of the Coral was now explaining and confirming that she had an alien presence within. No wonder Alex was scared. She would have been, too, wouldn’t she? And even if they dropped this tomorrow… and made her go through the ‘scary chair’ with Sylvain’s soothing voice saying “it’s just a puncture, nothing to worry about” again… She would still remain the only human alive ever who had a chance to touch an alien lifeform as intricate as this and hear its voice. Of course, he was scared… She was also scared, however differently. She was scared to lose the memory of it forever, albeit she knew it was inevitable. They had always known. No matter how far the experiment could go, there would be oblivion in the bitter end. She drew on the glove and left the room. When Morgan finished pouring her thoughts, conclusions, observations and emotions out of her head and into her personal audio log, she sent a short text to her brother: [May I sleep with you tonight?] [I’m scared.] Alex didn’t keep her waiting long for a response, even though the station clock was indicating very well after midnight. Was he waiting for it? [Yes.] “I’m scared,” was all Morgan said that night. She got straight into his bed, dropping clothes in a messy pile on the floor. Alex got in just a second later, adding to the same clothes pile considerably. He hoped he was at least warm and consoling enough as she nestled her head on his shoulder and was breathing unevenly, not saying anything, stiffening her throat not to burst out crying for the reasons only she knew. His shoulder, though, remained dry. Alex kept stroking her hair long after she felt asleep, trying so hard not to make any rash decisions. It seemed to him that worst decision had already been made. What they had done, was wrong and loomed over him as irredeemable. And now he felt as if he was standing at the crossroads, and no matter what direction he chose, it would always be a wrong turn. And yet, come morning, Jupiter would still have to make his choices. They had always known it.