Fishin' Off The Starry Stream
by
Bruce Taylor
I belong to the Amalgamated Dimension Sliders Union, Local Group 386 and I get paid good wages plus six Standard Time Frames of vacation a year which is enough time to visit my sweetie in the inter-dimensional district of Yoodoob.
Now, it's not easy work I do, shifting and sliding dimensions back and forth. With all the universes, all the galaxies that abound, there's gonna be friction and the way you ease the friction—well you have to slide dimensions, but no matter how careful you are, a little White Space slops over into Red Space, a little globular cluster from the Purple Universe slips into the blue galaxy and makes for tremendous fireworks. But, that's okay. It's pretty and no real damage is done.
So, I got a good job and it's interesting and full of responsibility—as if I don't have enough already. Got a child to take care of, but he's growing up fast. And that's sad, but it has to be. We went on—I guess—our last fishing trip a Standard Time Frame back. He came up to me—I had just eased the sixty-seventh dimension between a negative universe and a positive one (now this is risky—and I get paid triple time for this; you don't slide a dimension right and you're gonna blow out the negative universe with the positive one and vice versa; nasty business but certainly spectacular when a little negative comes in contact with the positive: explosions, brilliant light and strange colors and sparks go flying and the other Dimension Sliders are yelling, “Slide it! Damn it! Move it! Too much contact! Slide it or work overtime! Get a move on!” And we slide the dimensions in and about and the two universes touch, spark, but they're protected now and they slowly stabilize) and anyway, we sat there on break and my son drifts up to me. It's amazing how fast he's expanding; he used to be so small and white; an intense little pulsing sphere of energy and now he's growing yellower, older, larger, as he becomes diffused with more experience. Soon, he'll become like me, large and red. He comes up to me. “Can we go fishing at the Starry Stream?”
“Why,” I chuckle, “thought you'd never ask.” I call, “Hey, GC N 45!”
GC N 45, the supervisor, comes drifting over. He's older, a bit on the purple side. He's always flashing red with irritation. “Yes?”
“Gonna knock off early. Things are quiet right now. Going fishin' with my son on the Starry Stream.”
GC N 45 thinks for a minute.
“Problems?” I ask.
“No, it's okay,” says GC N 45. “Just trying to remember how tight the universe is with the Starry Stream. It's still expanding and has a ways to go—you and your son's matter shouldn't upset it unless, of course, a new universe starts pushing from someplace—but that's unlikely right now. Yeah, should be safe. Go ahead.”
“Thank you,” I say.
“Good-bye, GC N 45,” says my boy.
“Good-bye, little LG L 37.”
We drift in silence for a ways. And I keep marveling at my son. Have so many Standard Time Frames gone by? So much more expanded he seems than last time I remember. Also so much quieter. We finally come to the place of Maximum Contact between our inter-dimensional world and the Universe with the Starry Stream. Actually, the Starry Stream Universe is just like any other one, except that, for some reason, there aren't many like this one: only two basic—if you will—colors: black, which is cool, and white which is very warm. My son always has asked how it was possible that such coolness could, as he put it, “pull itself together and get hot and bright.” And I confess: I do not know. It is the same process that occurs in every universe, but here, it's the contrast that makes it so obvious: that some of the blackness turns warm and brilliant. Amazing.
We stand on the threshold of the universe. “Well,” I say, “this is it. As soon as the universe ripples and the dimensions part, we can slip in.”
He nods. And almost as soon as he does, we can feel the universe ripple; slow, heavy ripples. The dimensions slowly pull apart, some blackness spills out. We grab it and flow in with it when the ripple retreats. And before we know it, we are standing on the black banks of the Starry Stream.
I sit, extend my filaments into the river to feel the stars, all sizes and colors roll and turn through me; ah, the warmth, the flames! How they tingle, excite! Lovely, lovely. In the immense system of things, this has to be my favorite place. I withdraw my filaments and sigh; something calm, soothing about being here. Old SC K 452 likes the violent Yellow Universe. Gets a thrill out of holding stars and having them go novae. Says the heat helps warm up the colder portions of himself. LM M 34, still young and learning the trade, likes the Red Universe—a very energetic place. All sorts of things go on that he loves to watch or experience. But here, yes, here on the banks of the Starry Stream—ah. Serenity. To watch those suns slowly moving by. Don't know from where they come, don't know to where they go.
Little LG L 37 lays down and extends a filament into the stream. He fishes out a huge yellow star, almost as big as he is.
“Nice catch,” I say. “Beautiful.”
“It is, isn't it?” he muses. “Gotta do something with it.”
The star keeps wanting to drop down and flow with the stream again and little L GL 37 says, “No, no, not yet. I'll let you go in a minute. But I'm not gonna let you go alone.”
He reaches in again into the stream and pulls out some, as yet unformed, glowing starstuff. He makes little dark balls of it. “Here,” he says, “a close one. A hot little world.” And he sends it scurrying about the star.
“Nice,” I say.
“This next one's gonna be neat,” he says. “It's gonna be a little larger, have a shiny atmosphere, but be terribly hot.” He makes the world, and sends that one spinning about the star.
LG L 37 is happy. Happy as I remember him all the times before; he is lost in his own magic. He creates yet a third little world, a stunning jewel of blue water, rock, and swirling cloud patterns.
For some time I watch him. Such an imagination. Large worlds with bands of swirling clouds. A world with a splendid wide band of rings. Then two pale blue-green worlds and an icy final world. How happy LG L 37 is. Finally, he gently pushes the sun away and it drifts about the Star Stream.
“Well done,” I say, “That was quite well done.” After a long while, he says, “You know, I've been thinking about The Breaking.”
I am at once proud of little LG L 37. I am also sad. Expanding and expanding away. And that's the way it is, and yet it is difficult.
“Yes,” I say, “I know that has been with you.”
“And you know what I most enjoy.”
“Just as you were doing.”
“Yes,” he says, “Yes, that is what I want to do forever.” His enthusiasm sends me feeling, dreaming of an earlier warmth, a brighter color.
“You will not be upset with me for not wanting to be a Dimension Slider?”
I sigh. “How it is you know me better than I know myself?” I want so much to say, “No, no, it bothers me not in the least.” But it does. And here I've been trying so hard to appear that it does not bother me, that I can let go so easily, and yet it is so hard. It is so hard not to act upon what I really do feel. And I touch him with a filament. “I must remember that you may be of me, but you are not me. Just understand how hard it is to let go.”
He touches me with a filament, and light and warmth flows into me. And I give him my light and warmth of time, patience, endurance, and respect for himself hence for others. “Thank you for your honesty,” he says, “I suspected that I might be disappointing you—it is difficult for me, too. But, I must do this.”
“Yes,” I say, “and I am glad you have the courage. I am proud yet envious that you are doing something that I never did—for I did not want to be a Dimension Slider—but did not have the courage—” And I stop. “But that matters little now. It matters little.” And for a small time space, there is a silence between us. And then I sense his restlessness. “I think it is time,” I finally say.
“Yes,” my son says, “it is time. I must go.”
Little LG L 37 now is no longer little; before me he has expanded more, become brighter still. Behind him flows the stream of stars.
“Yes,” I say, “Yes, it is time.”
Again, we flow warmth and light into each other. Then he says, “We shall meet before long.”
“I know,” I say. “Carry my warmth with you.”
“Thank you,” says LG L 37. “Good-bye.”
“Good-bye,” I reply.
With that, he leaps into the Starry Stream, joining the slow and ever moving brightness, and I sit and watch for a long time until my joy, my sadness blurs the Stream, the Stream, the Starry, Starry Stream.