Eva
Today’s fiction piece comes to us from Lois L. K. Chan. Lois (she/her) is a Chinese-Canadian writer from Ontario attending the University of British Columbia, and also—a huge Star Wars fan. Her work is featured and forthcoming in Roi Fainéant Press, Gingerbread House Literary Magazine, Chinchilla Lit, and Yuzu Press. She is a first reader for Corvid Queen. You can find her on Twitter @loislkchan.
This piece first appeared in Juxtapost Magazine, an online lit mag based in Bangalore, India that is now defunct.
Eva is a scientist. She is not an astronaut.
Nevertheless, she lives in space.
One day on this forsaken vessel, there is a smash against the hull at 0800 hours, one that resounds and reverbs through each of the snaking, desolate tunnels.
Looking up from her datapad, Eva thinks it was just a ghost of sound. A hallucination, maybe; those come from time to time.
Then at 1400, she sees It.
• • •
It is as she has always imagined.
An extraterrestrial form—but considering where they are, you could say the same about her. Latched onto the side of the station, It slowly pulses with breath, bursting with eyes like shutters—or something similar to that, Eva can’t be sure.
Judging by Its proportionate surroundings, It has a good ten feet of height on her, and a wingspan twice that. She notices, looking through the cams, that It doesn’t seem to have any perceivable colours. So, because she is human—both curious and polite—Eva goes to greet her guest.
It suctions Itself to the bridge’s viewing port, eyes askew towards the controls, screens, and radars. Eva sits in her chair and watches It for hours. She should be working, but this—this is work enough. Figuring stuff out is work.
Plus this is just like every other day. Contemplating the extent of her existence; adapting to every square inch of her surroundings until she feels that she might belong. Except now, there is something new about the place.
There is It.
When she is too tired to think properly, Eva approaches the glass. She presses her palm and forehead on the barrier between them, screwing her eyes shut.
She imagines Its touch. It is warmer than the chill of aluminum silicate, warmer than the negative 270 Celsius of the universe. Eva has not felt warm, not for a very long time. When she opens her eyes, It is staring back.
• • •
Here are the only three things Eva remembers from Before:
A room.
A man.
The man telling her she’s going to go on a trip for a while.
• • •
When Eva goes to sleep, she does so right by Its side. For every endless night since It arrived at her unopenable door, she slumbers and wakes in Its shadow. Behind It, the Sun boils within the cosmos. Then she starts her day.
First: her litmus tests. Eva answers Hungry. Unsettled. Yes. No. Point nine. Three. Gibbous. Stable. Stable. Stable.
Yes.
Second is breakfast.
After finishing her meal, she begins her studies, brushing up on everything from operational engineering to vegetative propagation. She works out and takes a scalding shower. She reads a fictional story about boys stranded on an island.
Then it’s time for her regulated nap. Eva trudges back to the bridge, downing a glass of water on the way. She kicks back her blanket, staring up at It as she leans back onto her mattress, the one she dragged all the way from her quarters.
It looks larger when she is laying down. It looms over her like a lullaby-crooning nursemaid. Most days, Its eyes do not move. Eva tried to record their directional patterns last week, hoping to make a puzzle out of It, but fell asleep before she could finish.
She will try again later.
She’s allotted 80 minutes to rest; the station’s alarm will set off in due time. It takes a while to fall asleep. She gets close, hangs in the bodiless in-between, but blinks her eyes open every now and then, just to check that she is not alone.
There is no sound to Its breathing and arcane swelling, but knowing that It’s alive—if movement is an indication of life—is comforting enough.
• • •
The truth is, Eva is chronologically 183 years old. She has been here for 171 years, four months and two days. She has been here for a while. Alone. Sometimes she forgets why she is even here.
(For this, maybe. Nothing could be tantamount to Its presence in this universe, as senseless and chaotic as It is to her.
But that’s what existence is, isn’t it?
Unreason.)
Eva has been so sick with loneliness she forgot about speech.
It has been waiting for her voice. So finally, she speaks to It.
• • •
What was your waking thought?
What emotion pulls at you today?
Did you dream?
Do you remember?
Eccentricity factor.
Breathing levels.
Lunar phase.
Engine status.
Satellite communications.
Attitude.
Do you want to go home?
• • •
Definitively, scientists are people who discover new things and research how those things work. This applies to Eva.
Definitively, experiments are procedures undertaken to discover, test and prove hypotheses.
This almost applies to Eva.
When they sent her here, they sent her as the last hope of humanity: a 12 year old girl with an above average intellect and healthy body, one that didn’t disintegrate from the static cryogenic trials. Though that might’ve made her more of a gamble than an investigation.
Eva is all that’s left of humanity; she is Earth itself now. They must not have expected much from her, because they left her out here alone. But she realizes now that she has found her moon. Strung between them is a gravitational pull, an unshakeable similarity. It was sent, as she was. Eva knows because she can see it in Its eyes. That is how It responds.
That is how It tells her to keep on.
(That is how It tells her she is capable of anything. Of life, of survival, of worth.)
• • •
On the bridge, as It watches, she clicks in a set of coordinates and pulls into full drive.
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