Pink Noise - Leonid Korogodski [13]
Must go.
The urge was pounding inside his mind.
Must reach.
Must find the Fairy.
Must touch.
“Please?” the girl asked. “Let’s go, hurry! We must turn the wheels. She’s waiting.”
“Who?”
“The Fairy. You haven’t heard?”
“No.” Nathi was too old for fairy tales.
“Then listen. Once upon a time...”
…THERE WAS A FAIRY. BUT SHE WAS STRANGE, UNLIKE the other fairies. She didn’t swim inside the Sun. She didn’t ride on comet tails. She didn’t even grow Martian blueberries in her cupped hands.
“What good is she?” said everyone.
They asked her questions, told her what they wished to see her do—this thing or that one, going from up to down on the entertainment value scale. But she ignored them.
For the fairy was deaf.
“What powers does she command?” they wondered.
They waited for her word—of power or wisdom, even for a squeak to laugh at. But they only wasted time.
Because the fairy was mute.
“Then let us show her the things we fear, everything we crave for.”
But they tried in vain to move her or to scare her, to plead before her, to embarrass her, to push her, to caress her, or to beat her. For she didn’t feel a thing.
And she was blind.
“My, what a worthless fairy!” the people said. And they decided to forget her, for a worthless fairy makes worthless memories, and memory comes at a price.
Except one little girl. “My, what a poor fairy,” she said.
She didn’t know what she wished for. But she had to speak, for someone had to listen for the fairy. She spoke from her heart—and listened.
For the fairy was deaf.
The girl was weak and small, neglected and abused. But she did not give up, for someone had to speak the words of power and wisdom. She grew up, and spoke them.
Because the fairy was mute.
The girl did not close her eyes on evil and injustice, did not become inured to others’ pain—nor did she shy away from love and friendship. Someone had to live life to the fullest, sharing its joys and suffering with others. So she looked for those others, found them, and looked with them.
But not the fairy—she couldn’t feel a thing.
And she was blind.
THE BRIGHT PALE EYE OF JUPITER IS HOVERING JUST OVER the dark horizon, by the Needle’s base. The planets are approaching inferior conjunction.
“It is time,” the girl says. “Go.”
And she cuts the link.
All of a sudden, Nathi is alone—a naked spirit caught within a lucid dream. “Wait!” The girl’s consciousness is gone. How could she do that to herself? To me?
With an incredible force, something fans out the streams of particles. Their dream contraption of imagined sails is caught in a magnetic storm. It carries Nathi at increasing speed toward the Needle. “Fold!” he tries, but he’s already lost control. He’s never had it to begin with. It is clear now—sharp and obvious as the enormous blades of flywheels in his face.
The girl could not have done it on her own.
Less than a blink, and he is in the gap between the wheels, the Needle’s axis thrumming straight ahead of him with a colossal current. A detector eye snaps open and swallows him whole, in a blink.
Kidnapped. Somehow, they must have tricked his digital “sleepwalking” self to beam himself out of the castle in a stream of laser signals focused on a dime—a spy detector of a tiny size. Inside—a two-dimensional array of laser nanocavities, electrically pumped. Here, light itself can be confined, not physically as each individual photon (this is no black hole), but in stable oscillation patterns—for information storage. A “gray hole.” A spy’s dream, so impossibly hard to detect next to the power needle. Nathi’s consciousness is spliced across a honeycomb of cells much smaller than the light’s wavelength. He’s packed so tight his thoughts are being torn by quantum interference. A genie in a bottle, stored away for an eternity.
He barely has time to think, So, back to square one. Regret. His backup may not do as good a job. Just don’t give up, girl.
And he’s off.
How does it feel—to be a ray of light? You’re cutting through the plasma of the solar wind at nearly