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 Posted: Wed Aug 22, 2012 12:19 am
Aquarius Outpost was always quiet, eerily so. The sole constant sound was the fountain in the atrium, though the lack of doors throughout most of the building meant that the water’s echo was heard throughout. Other than that, the place was silent. It made sense, when one thought about it- because there was no air in space, there was no sound. But logic had long since been tossed out the window- or would have, if the Outpost had any windows. Space wasn’t supposed to have castles or libraries or long rainbow walkways, but it did.
The door to the building creaked as Aquarius opened it. For some reason, whenever she teleported to the Surrounding, she always ended up right outside the gates of her Outpost. Maybe it was some strange sort of security measure, or maybe the people who used the place before her liked to exercise. Either way, she didn’t appreciate having to walk the equivalent of a couple of city blocks in the dry heat, with sand coating the insides of her flat-soled shoes. More sand blew in after her until she managed to shut the heavy door. The entry hall, which had served as the records office when the civilians had all been stranded there, was still littered with papers and paraphernalia from their stay. There were extra pens, paper, folders, and organization supplies, which had been far too useful for Aquarius to consider returning. There were also books by the dozen, of course, but these had been organized into neat piles, based on language and possible content. She put a hand one one of the taller piles to steady herself, and emptied her shoes one at a time. Some sand would always stubbornly stick to her feet, and this visit was no exception. With a sigh, she left her shoes by the door and continued on barefoot.
The entry hall was fairly well-lit, but she always had to cover her eyes when she entered the atrium. Somehow, despite the lack of windows or obvious light sources there, it always looked sunny inside to her. Maybe it had something to do with how the light reflected off the tiles, the water in the fountain, the slightly shimmery fabric that served as curtains between the rooms. She blinked several times, trying to help her eyes adjust, before walking inside. There had been several changes made to this space since the civilian crisis. Most of the leftover supplies had been donated to charities back on Earth, since it had been impossible to figure out which senshi had brought the cans of Spaghetti-O’s and which had brought the packs of plain t-shirts. More personal items had been returned to the people who had brought them, and all that remained on the long table were a few miscellaneous items that nobody had claimed, and, of course, more books. There were always more books.
Aquarius lingered in the atrium for several minutes, running her fingers over the mosaics that decorated the walls, making sure the trees were healthy to the best of her knowledge, and finally dipping her feet into the fountain. There was a thin layer of sand at the bottom now from all the times she had done this, covering the inlaid Zodiac wheel, and she had the distinct feeling that she was committing a horribly offensive act. But there was nobody there to stop her, or chastise her, or tell her anything about the way things worked at Aquarius Outpost. Despite the fact that she was supposedly in charge, despite the fact that she remembered what she considered a fair bit about her past life, many of the Outpost’s workings were still a mystery to her.
“That,” she told herself sternly, “is part of why you’re here. Get on with it.”
She groaned, as if someone else had scolded her, but she pulled her feet out of the fountain. They met dry tile with a wet “thlump” and she squished off to begin her job for the day.
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Posted: Wed Aug 22, 2012 12:20 am
The four miniature laboratories had been a mess when Aquarius had found them. With some help from her temporary cleaning crew, also known as refugees, they had been organized and cleaned up considerably. One of them even had the brilliant idea of creating inventory sheets, listing everything that they had found so that nothing would get lost or stolen. Aquarius couldn’t understand why someone would want to steal a potentially lethal chemical or an ancient dried-up plant that would never grow again, but she appreciated the lists wholeheartedly. They made the task she had set for herself merely tedious, rather than utterly impossible.
The lists weren’t just single sheets of looseleaf paper, either. Once Aquarius had gotten wind of what was going on, she’d brought back binders and sheet protectors and dividers and reinforcements. The last thing she wanted was to have her nice lists end up waterlogged or dirty or missing. Now, they were safe from most mundane disasters, so as long as nobody set them aflame or submerged them in acid, she’d be able to locate everything. Everything in each room was logged, some with sketches for easy identification, others with brief descriptions. What the civilians hadn’t finished by the time they left, she had done in the weeks following their departure, putting in the elbow grease necessary to make sure her notes were complete and thorough. Even though none of what they had found helped with a solution to the problem at the time, the work that they had put in had made it easier for her to find solutions to other problems, if they existed in this collection of eclectic space junk.
Aquarius didn’t like calling the contents of her workrooms “junk.” Surely, she wouldn’t have gathered it if it didn’t have a purpose! Others scoffed at her for having shoeboxes full of dirt and scraps of paper and pits from the fruit she ate, but she knew that the stuff was invaluable. And having access to a slew of foreign chemicals and alien plant samples was amazing, or would be if she wasn’t afraid of blowing her Outpost to smithereens. Some of the things that her past self had collected defied simple explanations. She could understand slides and cracked petri dishes, but one case seemed to be full of weirdly-shaped paper clips. A nearby bin was filled with broken glass. Why was this stuff important? What could anyone do with it, in the name of science?
It was a puzzle for another day. That day, her goal was to find signs of language in the assortment of implements and samples, and compare them to what she had already found. Over the past year, many of Aquarius’ trips to the Surrounding had been spent compiling collections of characters, grouped together by language and arranged in order of occurrence. She had finally managed to isolate the symbols she believed made up the basic Aquarian language, though other books had similar yet different ones that could have been the written equivalent of dialects, or corruptions, or completely new structures. Her findings had been recorded in several places, but her most-used reference was a battered composition notebook that had a double-page spread allotted for each language. The book was her constant companion for projects like this one. On her last visit, she had used it as a guide to the characters that appeared in the mosaics in the atrium and on the floors. Most of the mosaics were abstract or clear pictures, but she had found one or two symbols that helped support her hypothesis for which set made up basic Aquarian.
Starting in the room dedicated to what she would have called Earth Science if she had been on Earth, Aquarius opened up her notebook and the binder for that room. It was difficult to juggle two open books as well as the objects she was examining, and she moved her operation to the worktable after nearly dropping a slide with something that looked similar to seaweed plastered to it. Most of the handwritten notes on slides or samples were made up of symbols that were on her list, with only a handful that didn’t seem to fit. The handwriting was hasty but definitely legible, so she decided that they were probably personally-created symbols. There was time for those later; her main goal was to identify and decipher the main language, and to worry about codes and the like later.
Poring over the slides alone took a long time, since they had labels on the sides, written directly on the glass with some sort of permanent ink. At least, it didn’t smudge when she grasped the seaweed slide clumsily on that side when she almost dropped it. There were also vials, boxes, and other containers with writing on them that made this task take even longer. It was a relief when she had finished the last one, making notes on a pad she had retrieved from the entry hall, and could move on to the things without labels. Even though there were more things like that, chances were that most wouldn’t have any sort of identifiable writing on them.
Once she was done with a rack of loose, spoiled samples, Aquarius turned to the part of her binder that listed the rocks in a nearby display case, the glass over which was broken. The notes and pictures that went with each item helped her to decide what needed a closer look, in addition to making sure she didn’t miss something. Most of the rocks went quickly, being rocks, and not even etched or sculpted ones. A few had some carvings that she needed to check against her book, and a few new symbols popped up amongst them. Aquarius sighed; deciphering this stuff was hard enough without new characters popping up that she couldn’t even tie to any given language. The new ones went onto her pad for later study, and she turned another page.
At the top of the new page was a listing for a “medium-small gray rock, unpolished, with symbols scratched on its surface.” She frowned. That description was not the best, but even bearing that in mind, she could see that there was no rock like that in the case. Had it been moved? She looked in other sections, then under the case itself, and when that failed, all over the rest of the room. There was no rock going by that description, vague though it was, anywhere. Aquarius bit her lip. Finally, she had stumbled upon a lead, and it was missing. Was it her personal Rosetta Stone? Probably not, but without seeing it, she couldn’t know for certain. And the fact that it was missing was suspicious.
She shut her eyes, trying to picture the rock. Her only lengthy encounter with this particular display case had been months ago, when she was helping to catalog everything in the first place. Most of the rocks in it had been rearranged since then, put in places that she couldn’t quite approve of. Looking at the new order was distracting, but with her eyes closed, she could faintly recall how things had once looked. There! Way off to the right was a stone that fit the description. She tried to zoom in on it in her mind’s eye, but was barely able to make out a pattern that reminded her of a heart before the image broke up. She opened her eyes again and cursed. Her focus was pretty terrible, and her memory wasn’t exactly photographic either. It was kind of amazing that she’d been able to remember as much about it as she had. General shape, shade of gray, and hints of the markings on it. She might even be able to recognize it if she saw it. Which was a big “if,” considering she had all but turned the room upside down with no results.
“I’ve so had enough of this,” Aquarius muttered, snapping the binder shut. There was only so much of any given task she could take at once. There were other projects she could- and should- be working on. With one last regretful glance at the case, she took her notebook and walked out, stray particles of sand clinging to her still-bare feet.
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Posted: Wed Aug 22, 2012 12:21 am
The library at Aquarius Outpost was a mess even at the best of times. Now it was a disaster zone. With no access to the shelves to put books away- not that any would have fit in the first place- the books she brought there to read piled up on top of the ones that had started there. Notebooks mixed with the vast quantity of books and got lost. Loose sheets of paper were scattered everywhere. Enormous pieces of chart paper were taped to the bookcases, depicting carefully drawn characters from the language that Aquarius believed was Aquarian. It was her hope that looking at them for long enough would spark some sort of recognition. So far, all it had sparked was a deep resentment that none of the memories that had come to her included the ability to read.
In its present state, the library was as much of a workout for the body as it was for the brain. Aquarius carefully picked her way over and around piles of books, moving deeper into the room. At one point, several piles had collapsed, and the only way past was to climb atop the bookshelves and walk there. But that was only a partial solution; more books were piled up there, and it wasn’t long before she had to get down again or risk dislodging a large stack. The last thing she wanted to do was get herself caught in a book avalanche. Since nobody would look for her in space, a mistake like that could be potentially fatal.
After maneuvering herself through one tricky part that required her to hang off the bookcase, to avoid fallen books above and below, she found herself at her goal: the writing desk. She had been through most of the papers that had been left on it already, when she was compiling her character maps. Back then, she had been looking solely for letters to add to her lists. Now, she was hoping that seeing her own writing would remind her of a word. Any word. Even just one would be able to tell her what sort of language she was dealing with, and help her to start decoding. All she needed was one word, and the rest would come, she was sure of it.
There were notebooks on the desk as well as loose sheets of paper. Some of the paper had an odd, slightly slippery texture, and not for the first time, Aquarius wondered what it was made of, and where it came from. Surely the former Aquarius didn’t make paper on top of everything else... but then, if paper had been an interest, it was possible. She still remembered the time she had tried to make ink out of blackberries and charcoal, and ended up ruining her new pink Easter dress. Her mother had never let her forget that one. At least it seemed like her past self had been more successful, which she supposed was comforting.
Setting the paper aside, Aquarius flipped up the topmost notebook and began to read. She still called it reading, even though there was no comprehension going on there. Her eyes transmitted the symbols on the paper to her brain, which recorded them. It found matches in her mental database. She had seen these characters before. Of course she had. She’d probably looked at more Aquarian books in the past year than ones written in earthly languages. But there was no meaning to anything she saw. The symbols started to run together, as her brain tried to find something to tie them to and couldn’t. All she knew was that she was supposed to understand, and she didn’t. This whole search was an exercise in failure from the beginning.
The next step, she knew, was to compile a list of common words. She would stick to Aquarian for a while, since the body of works she had in that language was the largest. More important than the books were the notes, though. Whatever the past Aquarius had been working on she wanted to understand. She needed to. Somehow, she knew that whatever it was, it was important. And there she was, after almost a year of puzzling and staring at foreign characters, with nothing to show for it but charts and lists that meant nothing.
Aquarius threw the notebook she had been holding at the nearest bookshelf. It bounced off the invisible field around it, hitting a stack of books nearby and knocking them over. She glared at them for several moments. Getting back to the entrance of the library had just gotten much harder, and she didn’t have any more tedious tasks in her. She was done, beyond done. There was nothing to be gained from burning these symbols into her mind any longer.
She was so tired of failing at everything. In theory, failure was better than not trying at all, but while she tried to tell herself that she was happier now than when she had been running full-blast, she couldn’t. She was still running, and her cowardice tainted her every action. “Can’t I do anything right?” she asked. She waited for a bit, but the only sound she got in reply was the echo of trickling water from the atrium. “I’ve had enough of you, too,” she told it. Talking to herself had never bothered her much, especially when there was nobody else there to tell her that she was crazy for doing it.
“You’d be crazy too, if you had to deal with this.” Aquarius waved her arms around to indicate her surroundings, and in a huff, pulled out her phone. It only took a few seconds for her to return home, where she swore to herself that she wouldn’t go back to that hellhole anytime soon.
It was the seventeenth time she had told herself that, and she knew there would be many more times to come.
(3086 words)
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