THE CREATURES THAT TIME FORGOT

During the night, Sim was born. He lay crying on the cold cave stones. His blood pulsed through him a thousand times a minute. He grew, steadily.

Into his mouth, his mother with trembling hands put the food. The nightmare of living had begun. Almost immediately after birth, his eyes became wide open, and then, without fully understanding why, filled with bright, overwhelming fear. He gagged on the food, choked, and cried out. He looked around, confused.

There was a thick fog. It cleared. The shapes of the cave came into view. A man emerged, looking crazy, wild, and frightening. He had a haggard, dying face. Old and weathered by the winds, his skin was dried out like clay in the heat. The man was crouched in a distant corner of the cave, one side of his face pale as he listened to the distant wind howling above on the frozen night planet.

Sim's mother, shaking every now and then while watching the man, fed Sim pebble fruits, valley grasses, and ice nipples broken off from the cave entrances. As he ate, digested, and ate again, he grew bigger, bigger.

The man in the corner of the cave was his father! The man's eyes were the only thing alive in his face. He held a rough stone dagger in his frail hands, and his jaw hung open, lifeless.

Then, with a broader perspective, Sim saw the elderly people sitting in the tunnel beyond this living area. And as he observed, they started to pass away.

Their suffering filled the cave. They melted like wax figures, their faces sinking in on their sharp bones, their teeth sticking out. One moment their faces were grown-up, fairly smooth, full of life, electric. The next moment, their flesh dried out and burned away.

Sim struggled in his mother's hold. She held him tightly. "No, no," she comforted him, softly, sincerely, hoping this would also make her husband wake up again.

With a quiet rush of bare feet, Sim's father dashed across the cave. Sim's mother shouted. Sim felt himself pulled away from her hold. He tumbled onto the rocks, rolling and screaming with his fresh, wet lungs!

The webbed face of his father hovered over him, the knife ready. It felt like one of those nightmares he had while still in his mother's womb. In those next few intense, surreal moments, questions raced through his mind. The knife was raised, suspended, prepared to end him. But everything about life in this cave, the dying people, the decay, and the madness, flooded Sim’s new, small brain. How did he understand? A newborn? Can a newborn think, see, comprehend, interpret? No. It was wrong! It was impossible. Yet it was happening! To him. He had been alive for an hour now. And in the next moment, he might be dead!

His mother threw herself onto his father’s back and knocked the weapon down. Sim felt the overwhelming rush of emotions from both of their conflicting minds. "Let me kill him!" shouted the father, breathing heavily and sobbing. "What does he have to live for?"

"No, no!" the mother insisted, her frail, old body stretching across the large frame of the father, trying to wrest his weapon away. "He must survive! There could be a future for him! He might live longer than us and be young!"

The father leaned back against a stone crib. Lying there, staring, eyes shining, Sim saw another figure inside the stone crib. A little girl, quietly feeding herself, moving her delicate hands to get food. His sister.

The mother yanked the dagger from her husband's hand, got up, crying and brushing back her stiffening gray hair. Her mouth shook and twitched. "I'll kill you!" she shouted, glaring at her husband. "Leave my kids alone."

The old man spat wearily, with bitterness, and stared blankly into the stone crib, at the little girl. "One-eighth of her life is already gone," he gasped. "And she has no idea. What's the point?"

As Sim watched, his mother appeared to transform into a tortured, smoky figure. Her thin, bony face became a web of wrinkles. She was overwhelmed with pain and had to sit beside him, trembling and clutching the knife to her withered breasts. Just like the elderly people in the tunnel, she was aging and dying.

Sim cried continuously. Everywhere he looked was terrifying. A mind connected with his. Instinctively, he glanced at the stone crib. Dark, his sister, met his gaze. Their minds brushed against each other like wandering fingers. He felt a bit of relaxation. He started to understand.

The father sighed, closed his eyes. "Feed the kid," he said, tiredly. "Hurry. It's almost dawn, and it's our last day alive, woman. Feed him. Help him grow."

Sim fell silent, and images, born from the fear, came to him.

This was a planet close to the sun. The nights were freezing cold, while the days felt like blazing fires. It was a brutal, unlivable world. The people lived in the cliffs to escape the intense ice and the scorching days. Only at dawn and sunset did the air smell sweet and fragrant, and then the cave dwellers brought their children out into a rocky, barren valley. At dawn, the ice melted into streams and rivers, and at sunset, the daytime heat faded and cooled. During those rare moments of comfortable temperatures, the people lived, ran, played, and loved, all outside of the caves; life on the planet erupted, bursting into activity. Plants grew instantly, birds shot across the sky like projectiles. Smaller, four-legged animals raced desperately through the rocks; everything tried to make a living in that brief hour of relief.

It was an unbearable planet. Sim understood this a few hours after he was born. Racial memory awakened in him. He would spend his entire life in the caves, with only two hours a day outside. Here, in stone corridors of air, he would talk, talk endlessly with his people, never sleep, think, think, and lie on his back, dreaming; but never actually sleeping.

And he would live just eight days.

The intensity of this thought made him feel nauseous. Eight days. Eight short days. It was wrong, unbelievable, but it was a reality. Even while in his mother's womb, some instinct had informed him that he was being formed quickly, shaped, and pushed out fast.

Birth happened in an instant. Childhood went by in a heartbeat. Adolescence was like a bolt of lightning. Adulthood felt like a dream, maturity was just a story, old age came on fast, and death was an unavoidable fact.

Eight days from now, he would be half-blind, fading away, and dying, just like his father was now, staring helplessly at his wife and child.

This day was one-eighth of his entire life! He needed to enjoy every second of it. He had to explore his parents' thoughts for understanding.

Because in a few hours they'd be dead.

This was so incredibly unfair. Was this really all there was to life? Hadn't he imagined in his early days of existence long lives, valleys filled not with barren rock but with lush greenery and mild weather? Yes! And if he'd envisioned that, then there had to be some truth in those dreams. How could he search for and achieve a long life? Where? And how could he manage such a massive and daunting life goal in just eight short, fleeting days?

How did his people end up in such a state?

As if a button had been pressed, he saw a vision. Metal seeds, blown through space from a faraway green planet, battling with long flames, crashing onto this desolate world. From their broken shells, men and women tumble out.

When? A long time ago. Ten thousand days. The crash survivors hid in the cliffs from the sun. Fire, ice, and floods washed away the wreckage of the massive metal seeds. The survivors were shaped and hammered like iron in a forge. Solar radiation drenched them. Their heart rates quickened—two hundred, five hundred, a thousand beats per minute. Their skin thickened, their blood changed. Old age rushed in. Children were born in the caves. Faster, faster, faster was the process. Like all the wild life in this world, the men and women from the crash lived and died in a week, leaving children to do the same.

So this is life, thought Sim. He didn't actually say it in his mind because he didn't have words; he only had images, old memories, an awareness, a sense that could break through flesh, rock, metal. So I'm the five thousandth in a long line of pointless sons? What can I do to save myself from dying in eight days? Is there a way out?

His eyes widened as another image came into focus.

Beyond this valley of cliffs, on a low mountain, lay a perfect, unblemished metal seed. A metal ship, not rusted or damaged by the avalanches. The ship was deserted, whole, intact. It was the only ship among all those that had crashed that was still in one piece, still usable. But it was so far away. There was no one inside to help. This ship, then, on the distant mountain, was the destination toward which he would strive. It was his only hope of escape.

He was flexible in thought.

In this cliff, deep down in a prison of solitude, a small group of scientists was working. When he was old enough and wise enough, he needed to go to them. They, too, dreamed of escape, of long lives, of green valleys and mild weather. They, too, gazed longingly at that distant ship atop its high mountain, its metal so flawless that it didn't rust or age.

The cliff creaked.

Sim's father raised his worn, expressionless face.

"Dawn is coming," he said.

II

Morning eased the powerful granite cliffs. It was the time of the Avalanche.

The tunnels echoed with the sound of running bare feet. Adults and children pushed forward with eager, hungry eyes towards the dawn outside. From a distance, Sim heard a rumble of rocks, a scream, then silence. Avalanches crashed down into the valley. Stones that had been waiting, not yet ready to fall, for a million years finally let go of their weight, and where they had begun their journey as single boulders, they smashed onto the valley floor in a thousand shards and friction-heated fragments.

Every morning, at least one person got caught in the rain.

The cliff people faced the avalanches head-on. It brought just another thrill to their lives, which were already too short, too fast-paced, and too risky.

Sim felt himself grabbed by his father. He was roughly carried down the tunnel for a thousand yards, to where the daylight was visible. There was a wild, bright light in his father's eyes. Sim couldn't move. He sensed what was about to happen. Behind his father, his mother rushed in, bringing along his little sister, Dark. "Wait! Be careful!" she shouted at her husband.

Sim felt his dad crouch down, listening.

High on the cliff was a tremor, a shivering.

"Now!" shouted his father, and jumped out.

An avalanche came crashing down on them!

Sim saw walls rushing towards him, dust swirling, and chaos all around. His mom was screaming! Then there was a jolt, a sudden drop.

With one final step, Sim's dad rushed him into the daylight. The avalanche roared behind them. The entrance of the cave, where Mom and Dark lingered out of the way, was blocked by rubble and two boulders that each weighed a hundred pounds.

The storm sound of the avalanche faded to a trickle of sand. Sim's father burst out laughing. "We made it! By the Gods! We made it out alive!" Then he looked at the cliff with disdain and spat. "Pagh!"

Mother and sister Dark pushed through the debris. She yelled at her husband, "Idiot! You could have killed Sim!"

"I might still," the father replied.

Sim wasn't paying attention. He was captivated by the remnants of an avalanche in front of the next tunnel. A blood stain oozed out from beneath a pile of boulders, soaking into the ground. There was nothing else in sight. Someone else had lost the game.

Dark ran ahead on agile, graceful feet, bare and confident.

The valley air was like wine filtered through the mountains. The sky was a vibrant blue; not the pale, burnt atmosphere of midday, nor the heavy, deep black-purple of night, bursting with sickly shining stars.

This was a tide pool. A place where waves of different and intense temperatures came in, then pulled back. Now the tide pool was calm, cool, and its life was active.

Laughter! In the distance, Sim heard it. Why laughter? How could any of his people take the time to laugh? Maybe he would find out why later.

The valley suddenly lit up with vibrant colors. Plants, waking up in the quickening dawn, pushed out from unexpected places. They bloomed right before your eyes. Light green shoots emerged from worn-out rocks. Seconds later, ripe fruit bounced on the tips of the blades. Dad handed Sim to Mom and gathered the fleeting, colorful harvest, stuffing bright red, blue, and yellow fruits into a fur sack hanging at his waist. Mom pulled at the wet new grasses and placed them on Sim's tongue.

His senses were sharpening. He absorbed information eagerly. He grasped love, marriage, traditions, anger, empathy, rage, selfishness, nuances and subtleties, truths and perceptions. One thing led to another. The sight of green plants spun his mind like a gyroscope, searching for balance in a world where there was no time for explanations, forcing his mind to explore and interpret on its own. The satisfying weight of food gave him awareness of his body, of energy, of movement. Like a bird breaking free from its shell, he was nearly whole, all-knowing. Heredity had shaped him this way. He felt a rush of excitement with his newfound abilities.

They walked, mom, dad, and the two kids, taking in the smells, watching the birds hop from wall to wall of the valley like bouncing pebbles, and suddenly the dad said something odd:

"Do you remember?"

Remember what? Sim lay cradled. Was it any effort for them to remember when they had lived only seven days!

The husband and wife exchanged glances.

"Was it really just three days ago?" the woman said, her body trembling, her eyes closing as she tried to process her thoughts. "I can't believe it. It's so unfair." She sobbed, then wiped her face and bit her dry lips. The wind tousled her gray hair. "Now it's my turn to cry. Just an hour ago, it was you!"

"An hour is half a lifetime."

"Come," she took her husband's arm. "Let's check everything out, because this will be our last chance."

"The sun will be up in a few minutes," said the old man. "We need to turn back now."

"Just one more moment," the woman begged.

"The sun will find us."

"Let it catch me then!"

"You can't be serious."

"I mean nothing, nothing at all," the woman shouted.

The sun was rising quickly. The greenery in the valley faded away. A hot wind rushed in from over the cliffs. In the distance, where rays of sunlight struck the cliff walls, the giant stone faces shook loose their debris; those avalanches that hadn't already crumbled down were now triggered and fell like blankets.

"Dark!" shouted the father. The girl jumped over the warm ground of the valley, responding, her hair a dark flag trailing behind her. With her hands full of green fruits, she joined them.

The sun edged the horizon with fire, the air twisted dangerously with it, and whistled.

The cave people ran away, yelling, grabbing their fallen children and carrying heavy loads of fruit and grass back to their deep hiding spots. In moments, the valley was empty. Except for one small child who had been left behind. He was running out on the flat ground, but he wasn't strong enough, and the intense heat was coming down from the cliffs just as he was halfway across the valley.

Flowers were burned into effigies, grasses pulled back into rocks like charred snakes, flower seeds swirled and dropped in the sudden blast of wind, scattered deep into gullies and crevices, set to bloom at sunset tonight, and then go to seed and die again.

Sim's father watched the child running, alone, out on the valley floor. He, his wife, Dark, and Sim were safe in the entrance of their tunnel.

"He won't make it," said Dad. "Don't watch him, woman. It's not good to see."

They turned away. Everyone except Sim, whose eyes caught a glint of metal in the distance. His heart raced, and his vision blurred. Far away, on a low mountain, one of those metal seeds from space reflected a brilliant flash of light! It was like one of his dreams come true! An intact, undamaged metal space seed, lying on a mountain! That was his future! That was his hope for survival! That was where he would go in a few days, when he was—strangely enough—a grown man!

The sun sank into the valley like hot lava.

The little running child screamed, the sun blazed, and then the screaming went silent.

Sim's mother walked slowly, as if she had aged suddenly, down the tunnel. She paused, reached up, and broke off the last two icicles that had formed overnight. She handed one to her husband and kept the other. "Let's have one last toast. To you, and to the kids."

"To you," he nodded at her. "To the kids." They raised the icicles. The warmth caused the ice to drip into their eager mouths.

All day the sun felt like it was blazing and bursting into the valley. Sim couldn't see it, but the vivid images in his parents' minds were enough proof of the day's fiery nature. The light flowed like mercury, sizzling and roasting the caves, pushing inward but never going deep enough. It illuminated the caves and warmed the hollows of the cliff just right.

Sim struggled to keep his parents feeling young. But no matter how hard he fought with thoughts and appearances, they turned into mummies in front of him. His father seemed to fade from one stage of aging to another. This is what will happen to me soon, Sim thought in fear.

Sim grew aware of himself. He felt the movements of his body digesting and eliminating. He was fed every minute, constantly swallowing and consuming. He started connecting words to images and actions. One such word was love. It wasn’t an abstract concept; it was a process, a breath of fresh air, the scent of morning, a flutter of his heart, the curve of an arm holding him, the look on his mother’s suspended face. He recognized the processes, then searched behind her suspended face and found the word, ready to be used in her mind. His throat was preparing to speak. Life was pushing him, propelling him toward oblivion.

He felt his fingernails growing, his cells changing, his hair getting thicker, his bones and sinew multiplying, the soft pale wax of his brain shifting. His brain at birth was as clear as a circle of ice, innocent and untouched, but just a moment later, like it was struck by a thrown rock, it was cracked, marked, and patterned with millions of crevices filled with thoughts and discoveries.

His sister, Dark, darted in and out with other little hothouse kids, constantly eating. His mother hovered over him, not eating; she had no appetite, and her eyes were tightly shut.

"Sunset," his dad finally said.

The day was done. The light dimmed, and a breeze stirred.

His mother got up. "I want to see the outside world one more time ... just one more time...." She looked off into the distance, trembling.

His father's eyes were closed, and he was leaning against the wall.

"I can't get up," he whispered weakly. "I can't."

"Dark!" the mother croaked, and the girl came running. "Here," and Sim was handed to the girl. "Hold onto Sim, Dark, feed him, take care of him." She gave Sim one last affectionate touch.

Dark said nothing, holding Sim, her big green eyes shining with moisture.

"Go now," said the mother. "Take him out during sunset. Have fun. Gather some food, eat. Play."

Dark walked away without looking back. Sim twisted in her grip, glancing over her shoulder with disbelieving, sorrowful eyes. He shouted and somehow formed the first word of his life from his lips.

"Why?"

He noticed his mother tense up. "The kid spoke!"

"Aye," said his father. "Did you hear what he said?"

"I heard," the mother said softly.

The last thing Sim saw of his living parents was his mother weakly, swaying, slowly moving across the floor to lie next to her silent husband. That was the last time he ever saw them move.

IV

The night came and went, and then the second day began.

The bodies of everyone who had died during the night were carried in a funeral procession up a small hill. The procession was long, and there were many bodies.

Dark walked in the procession, holding the newly walking Sim by one hand. Just an hour before dawn, Sim had learned to walk.

At the top of the hill, Sim saw the distant metal seed once more. Nobody ever looked at it or talked about it. Why? Was there a reason? Was it a mirage? Why didn’t they rush toward it? Worship it? Try to reach it and fly away into space?

The funeral words were spoken. The bodies were laid on the ground where the sun, in a few minutes, would burn them.

The procession then turned and rushed down the hill, excited to have their few minutes of free time to run, play, and laugh in the fresh air.

Dark and Sim, chattering like birds and foraging among the rocks, shared what they knew about life. He was on his second day, she on her third. They were driven, as always, by the fast pace of their lives.

Another part of his life opened up.

Fifty young men sprinted down from the cliffs, gripping sharp stones and rock daggers in their strong hands. Shouting, they raced off toward the distant dark, low lines of small rock cliffs.

"Conflict!"

The thought lingered in Sim's mind. It shocked him and weighed heavily on him. These men were rushing to fight, to kill, over there in those small black cliffs where other people lived.

But why? Wasn't life short enough without fighting and killing?

From far away, he heard the sound of a fight, and it sent a chill through him. "Why, Dark, why?"

Dark didn’t know. Maybe they would get it tomorrow. For now, there was the need to eat to keep their lives going. Watching Dark was like watching a lizard constantly flicking its pink tongue, always hungry.

Pale kids ran all around them. One bug-like boy hurried up the rocks, bumping into Sim, to grab a really juicy red berry he had found growing under a ledge.

The child quickly grabbed some fruit before Sim could get up. Then Sim stumbled forward, and the two of them ended up in a clumsy tangle, rolling around, until Dark pulled them apart, both of them yelling.

Sim bled. A part of him stood apart, like a god, and said, "This shouldn’t be. Children shouldn’t be like this. It’s wrong!"

Dark pushed the little intruding boy away. "Go on!" she shouted. "What's your name, troublemaker?"

"Chion!" the boy laughed. "Chion, Chion, Chion!"

Sim glared at him with all the fierceness in his small, inexperienced features. He choked. This was his enemy. It felt like he had been waiting for an enemy that was both a person and a situation. He already understood avalanches, heat, cold, and the brevity of life, but those were things related to places, to the environment—silent, extravagant displays of unthinking nature, driven only by gravity and radiation. Here, now, in this piercing Chion, he recognized a thinking enemy!

Chion took off, turned at a distance, playfully shouting:

"Tomorrow I will be strong enough to kill you!"

And he disappeared behind a rock.

More kids ran by Sim, giggling. Which of them would be friends, and which would be enemies? How could friendships and rivalries form in this hectic, fast-paced life? There wasn’t really time to make either, was there?

Dark, as if sensing his thoughts, pulled him away. While they looked for food, she leaned in and whispered urgently in his ear. "You can make enemies over things like stolen food; gifts of long grasses make friends. Enemies can also come from opinions and thoughts. In just five seconds, you could make an enemy for life. Life is too short; enemies should be made quickly." She laughed with a strange irony for someone so young, maturing faster than she should. "You have to fight to protect yourself. Superstitious people will try to harm you. There’s this ridiculous belief that if someone kills another person, the murderer takes on the life energy of the one who was killed and will therefore live an extra day. You see? As long as that belief exists, you're in danger."

But Sim wasn’t paying attention. Breaking away from a group of delicate girls who tomorrow would be taller, quieter, and the day after that would develop curves and the next day get married, Sim noticed one small girl whose hair was a vibrant blue flame.

She ran by, brushed against Sim, and their bodies made contact. Her eyes, as bright as silver coins, sparkled at him. In that moment, he realized he had found a friend, a love, a wife—someone who, a week later, would lie with him on the funeral pyre as sunlight stripped their flesh from their bones.

Only the glance, but it stopped them in their tracks for a moment.

"What's your name?" he shouted after her.

"Lyte!" she called back, laughing.

"I'm Sim," he replied, confused and puzzled.

"Yes!" she said again, excited. "I'll remember!"

Dark nudged his ribs. "Here, eat," she said to the distracted boy. "Eat or you'll never get big enough to catch her."

From out of nowhere, Chion showed up, running past. "Lyte!" he taunted, maliciously dancing away. "Lyte! I’ll remember Lyte, too!"

Dark stood tall and slender, shaking her dark clouds of hair sadly. "I see your life ahead of you, little Sim. You’ll need weapons soon to fight for this Lyte one. Now, hurry—the sun's coming!"

They ran back to the caves.

One-fourth of his life was over! Babyhood was gone. He was now a young boy! Wild rains lashed the valley at nightfall. He watched new river channels carve into the valley, out past the mountain of the metal seed. He saved this knowledge for later. Each night, there was a new river, a newly cut bed.

"What's out there past the valley?" Sim wondered.

"No one's ever been past it," Dark explained. "Everyone who tried to get to the plain either froze to death or burned. The only land we know is a half hour's run. Half an hour out and half an hour back."

"No one has ever reached the metal seed, then?"

Dark scoffed. "The Scientists, they keep trying. What a bunch of clueless idiots. They don’t realize they should quit. It’s pointless. It’s too late."

The Scientists. The word excited him. He had nearly forgotten the vision he had just hours after being born. His voice was filled with urgency. "Where are the Scientists?" he asked.

Dark looked away from him, "I wouldn’t tell you even if I knew. They’d kill you, experimenting! I don’t want you joining them! Live your life, don’t waste it trying to reach that silly metal thing on the mountain."

"I'll find out where they are from someone else!"

"No one will tell you! They hate the Scientists. You'll have to find them on your own. And then what? Will you save us? Yes, save us, little boy!" Her face was gloomy; she had already lost half her life, her body was starting to change. Tomorrow she had to figure out how to make the most of her youth and her love, and she knew she couldn't fully explore the depths of passion in such a short time.

"We can't just sit around and talk and eat," he protested. "And nothing else."

"There's always love," she shot back sharply. "It helps you forget. God, yes," she said with contempt. "Love!"

Sim dashed through the tunnels, searching. Sometimes he half imagined where the Scientists might be. But then a wave of angry thoughts from those around him, when he asked for directions to the Scientists' cave, hit him with confusion and resentment. After all, it was the Scientists' fault they had been thrown into this awful world! Sim recoiled from the barrage of insults and curses.

Quietly, he took his place in a main room with the kids to listen to the adults talk. This was the time for learning, the Time of Talking. No matter how much he wanted things to speed up or how strong his impatience was, even though life was passing quickly and death was looming like a dark meteor, he knew he needed to gain knowledge. Tonight, then, was a night for school. But he sat there feeling uneasy. Only five more days of life.

Chion sat opposite Sim, his thin-lipped face projecting arrogance.

Lyte appeared between the two. The last few hours had made her more confident, kinder, taller. Her hair shone brighter. She smiled as she sat next to Sim, ignoring Chion. And Chion became tense at this and stopped eating.

The conversation buzzed and filled the room. Faster than heartbeats, a thousand, two thousand words a minute. Sim absorbed it all, his mind racing. He didn't close his eyes, but fell into a kind of daydream that felt both deeply relaxed and vividly alive. In the soft background, the words flowed, creating a tapestry of knowledge in his mind.

He dreamed of green meadows without stones, just grass, smooth and rolling, flowing effortlessly toward a dawn untouched by freezing, harsh cold or the scent of burnt rock or charred landmarks. He walked across the green meadow. Above him, metal seeds floated in a sky with a consistent, comfortable temperature. Everything was slow, slow, slow.

Birds rested on huge trees that took a hundred, two hundred, five thousand days to grow. Everything stayed exactly where it was; the birds didn’t flinch at the sight of the sun, nor did the trees recoil nervously when a beam of sunlight shone down on them.

In this dream, people walked casually; they hardly ever ran, and their hearts beat steadily, without any franticness. Their kisses were long and sweet, not the desperate pecks of lovers with only eight days to live. The grass stayed lush and didn’t burn away like torches. The people in the dream always talked about tomorrow and life, not about dying tomorrow. It felt so familiar that when Sim felt someone take his hand, he thought it was just another part of the dream.

Lyte's hand rested in his. "Are you dreaming?" she asked.

"Yep."

"Things are balanced. Our minds, to even things out and counter the unfairness of our lives, turn inward to discover what is good to appreciate."

He slammed his hand against the stone floor repeatedly. "It doesn't make things fair! I hate it! It reminds me that there's something better, something I've missed! Why can't we just be unaware? Why can't we live and die without knowing that this is an abnormal way of living?" And his breath came out harshly from his partly open, tight mouth.

"There’s a purpose in everything," Lyte said. "This gives us purpose, pushes us to work, plan, and look for a way."

His eyes were like hot emeralds in his face. "I walked up a grassy hill, really slowly," he said.

"The same grassy hill I walked an hour ago?" asked Lyte.

"Maybe. Almost there. The dream is way better than the reality." He focused his gaze, squinting. "I observed people, and they weren't eating."

"Or chat?"

"Or talk either. And we're always eating, always chatting. Sometimes those people in the dream lay back with their eyes closed, not moving at all."

As Lyte looked down at her, something dreadful happened. He pictured her face darkening, wrinkling, and twisting into a bunch of knots from aging. Her hair blew out like snow around her ears, and her eyes looked like discolored coins trapped in a web of lashes. Her teeth receded from her lips, and her slender fingers hung like burnt twigs from her thin wrists. He watched as her beauty faded away, and when he grabbed her in panic, he cried out, imagining his own hand decaying, and he stifled a scream.

"Yeah, what's up?"

The saliva in his mouth dried up at the taste of the words.

"Five more days..."

"The Researchers."

Sim jumped. Who had spoken? In the faint light, a tall man spoke. "The Scientists stranded us on this planet, and now they've wasted thousands of lives and time. It's pointless. It's pointless. Put up with them, but don't spend any of your time on them. You only live once, remember."

Where were these despised scientists? Now, after the learning and the talking phase, he was ready to find them. At least now he knew enough to start his fight for freedom, for the ship!

"Sim, where are you going?"

But Sim was gone. The sound of his running feet faded down a corridor of smooth stone.

It felt like half the night was wasted. He stumbled into a dozen dead ends. Many times, he was attacked by crazy young men who wanted to drain his life energy. Their superstitious rants echoed after him. The scratches from their desperate fingernails covered his body.

He found what he was searching for.

A group of six men gathered in a small basalt cave deep in the cliff. On a table in front of them were objects that, while unfamiliar, resonated with Sim.

The scientists worked in groups, with older men doing important work and younger men learning and asking questions; at their feet were three small children. They were part of a process. Every eight days, a completely new set of scientists tackled any given problem. The amount of work accomplished was painfully inadequate. They grew old and died just as they were starting their creative phase. The creative period for any individual was maybe just twelve hours in their whole lifetime. Three-quarters of their life was spent learning, a short burst of creative energy, then senility, insanity, and death.

The guys turned when Sim walked in.

"Don't tell me we have a new recruit?" said the eldest of them.

"I don’t believe it," said another, younger one. "Get him out of here. He’s probably one of those warmongers."

"No, no," protested the older one, shuffling his bare feet toward Sim. "Come in, come in, kid." He had warm, slow-moving eyes, different from the quick ones of the swift people in the upper caves. Gray and calm. "What do you need?"

Sim hesitated, lowered his head, unable to meet the calm, gentle gaze. "I want to live," he whispered.

The old man chuckled softly. He tapped Sim on the shoulder. "Are you some kind of new breed? Are you unwell?" he asked Sim, partly joking. "Why aren’t you out playing? Why aren’t you getting ready for love, marriage, and kids? Don’t you know that tomorrow night you’ll be a teenager? Don’t you see that if you’re not careful, you’ll miss out on life?” He paused.

Sim shifted his gaze back and forth with each question. He blinked at the instruments on the table. "Shouldn't I be here?" he asked, innocently.

"Sure," shouted the old man, firmly. "But it's a miracle you even exist. We haven't had any volunteers from the regular folks for a thousand days! We've had to create our own scientists, a tight-knit group! Count us! Six! Six men! And three kids! Are we not impressive?" The old man spat on the stone floor. "We ask for volunteers and the people shout back at us, 'Get someone else!' or 'We have no time!' And do you know why they say that?"

"No." Sim flinched.

"Because they're selfish. They want to live longer, sure, but they know that anything they do can't really guarantee them any extra time in their own lives. It might guarantee a longer life for some future kids of theirs. But they won't give up their love, their short youth, or even a single moment of sunset or sunrise!"

Sim leaned against the table, seriously. "I get it."

"You do?" The old man looked at him blankly. He sighed and lightly slapped the child's thigh. "Yes, of course you do. It's too much to expect anyone to understand anymore. You're one of a kind."

The others gathered around Sim and the old man.

"I’m Dienc. Tomorrow night, Cort will take my place. I’ll be gone by then. The night after that, someone else will take Cort’s place, and then you, if you put in the effort and believe—but first, I’m giving you a choice. You can go back to your friends if you want. Is there someone you love? Go back to her. Life is short. Why should you worry about those who will come after? You have the right to enjoy your youth. Leave now if you want. Because if you stay, you’ll have no time for anything besides working, aging, and dying while you work. But it’s worthwhile work. So?"

Sim looked at the tunnel. From a distance, the wind howled and whipped around, the smells of cooking wafted through the air, the sound of bare feet pattering could be heard, and the laughter of couples was becoming increasingly pleasant to hear. He shook his head, feeling restless, and his eyes were moist.

"I'll stay," he said.

VI

The third night and third day went by. It was the fourth night. Sim found himself immersed in their lives. He learned about the metal seed on the top of the distant mountain. He heard stories of the original seeds—things called "ships" that crashed, and how the survivors hid and dug into the cliffs, aging quickly. In their desperate struggle to survive, they forgot all about science. Knowledge of mechanical things had no chance of surviving in such a chaotic civilization. There was only NOW for each person.

Yesterday didn’t matter, tomorrow loomed vividly in their faces. But somehow the forces that had accelerated their aging had also sparked a type of telepathic communication where philosophies and impressions were absorbed by the newborn. Racial memory, instinctively growing, preserved memories of another time.

"Why don't we check out that ship on the mountain?" asked Sim.

"It’s too far. We’ll need protection from the sun," Dienc explained.

"Have you tried to create protection?"

"Salves and ointments, suits made of stone and bird wings, and lately, crude metals. None of these worked. In another ten thousand lifetimes, maybe we’ll create a metal that can provide cool water to protect us as we head to the ship. But we work so slowly, so blindly. This morning, with a sense of maturity, I picked up my tools. Tomorrow, facing death, I’ll set them down. What can one person accomplish in a single day? If we had ten thousand people, the problem would be solved...."

"I will go to the ship," Sim said.

"Then you'll die," said the old man. A silence fell over the room at Sim's words. Then the men stared at Sim. "You're a really selfish kid."

"Selfish!" Sim cried, resentfully.

The old man swatted at the air. "Selfish in a way I don't mind. You want to live longer, you'll do anything for that. You'll go for the ship. But I'm telling you, it's pointless. Still, if that's what you want, I can't stop you. At least you won't be like those among us who go to war for just a few extra days of life."

"War?" Sim asked. "How is there even a war here?"

And a chill went through him. He didn't understand.

"Tomorrow is soon enough for that," Dienc said. "Just listen to me now."

The night went by.

VII

It was morning. Lyte came yelling and crying down a hallway, and ran right into his arms. She had changed again. She was older, again, more beautiful. She was trembling and clung to him. "Sim, they're coming for you!"

Bare feet walked down the hallway and rushed through the opening. Chion stood there grinning, taller as well, holding a sharp rock in each hand. "Oh, there you are, Sim!"

"Go away!" Lyte yelled fiercely, turning on him.

"Not until we take Sim with us," Chion assured her. Then, smiling at Sim. "If he’s with us in the fight."

Dienc shuffled forward, his eye weakly flickering, his bird-like hands fumbling in the air. "Leave!" he shouted angrily. "This boy is a Scientist now. He works with us."

Chion stopped smiling. "There’s more important work to do. We’re heading now to fight the people in the farthest cliffs." His eyes sparkled with worry. "You’ll come with us, right, Sim?"

"No, no!" Lyte grabbed his arm.

Sim patted her shoulder and then turned to Chion. "Why are you going after these people?"

"There are three extra days for anyone who joins us to fight."

"Three extra days of living?"

Chion nodded seriously. "If we win, we get to live for eleven days instead of eight. The cliffs they live in, there's something about the minerals in them! Just think about it, Sim, three extra long, good days of life. Will you join us?"

Dienc cut in. "Manage without him. Sim is my student!"

Chion snorted. "Go die, old man. By sunset tonight you'll be nothing but charred bones. Who are you to give us orders? We're young, and we want to live longer."

Eleven days. Sim couldn't believe the words. Eleven days. Now he got why there was a war. Who wouldn’t fight to extend their life by almost half? So many extra days of youth, love, experiencing, and living! Yes. Why not, really!

"Three extra days," shouted Dienc, loudly, "if you live to enjoy them. If you don't get killed in battle. If. If! You’ve never won. You’ve always lost!"

"But this time," Chion said firmly, "We'll win!"

Sim was confused. "But we all come from the same ancestors. Why don’t we all share the best cliffs?"

Chion laughed and adjusted a sharp rock in his hand. "Those who live in the best cliffs think they're superior to us. That's typically how people act when they have power. Besides, those cliffs are smaller; they can only hold about three hundred people."

Three additional days.

"I'll go with you," Sim said to Chion.

"Great!" Chion was really happy, way too happy about the decision.

Dienc gasped.

Sim turned to Dienc and Lyte. "If I fight and win, I'll be half a mile closer to the Ship. Plus, I'll have three extra days to try and reach the Ship. That seems like the only option for me."

Dienc nodded, sadly. "It is the only thing. I believe you. Go on now."

"Goodbye," said Sim.

The old man looked surprised, then he laughed as if he found a little joke in it. "That's right—I won't see you again, will I? Goodbye, then." And they shook hands.

They went out, Chion, Sim, and Lyte, together, followed by the others, all kids growing quickly into fighters. And the light in Chion's eyes was not a comforting sight.

Lyte went with him. She picked out his rocks and carried them. She refused to turn back, no matter how much he begged. The sun was just below the horizon as they walked through the valley.

"Please, Lyte, come back!"

"And wait for Chion to come back?" she said. "He thinks that when you die, I'll be his partner." She shook out her stunning blue-white curls defiantly. "But I'll be with you. If you go down, I go down."

Sim's expression grew serious. He was tall. The world felt smaller after the night. Groups of kids rushed by, laughing as they searched for food, and he watched them with a feeling of distance: could it really have only been four days since he was like them? It seemed odd. His mind was filled with a sense of having lived many days, as if he had truly experienced a thousand. There was such a rich blend of events and thoughts in his head, so vibrant and varied, that it was hard to believe so much could occur in such a brief period.

The soldiers ran in groups of two or three. Sim looked ahead at the rising line of small black cliffs. This, then, he said to himself, is my fourth day. And still, I am no closer to the Ship, or to anything, not even—he heard the soft footsteps of Lyte beside him—not even to her who carries my weapons and picks ripe berries for me.

One-half of his life was gone. Or a third of it—IF he won this battle. If.

He ran effortlessly, lifting and dropping his legs. This is the day I fully feel my body; as I run, I nourish myself, and as I nourish myself, I grow. As I grow, I glance at Lyte with a kind of overwhelming dizziness. She looks at me with the same gentle understanding. This is the day of our youth. Are we squandering it? Are we losing it chasing after a dream, a foolish fantasy?

Distantly, he heard laughter. As a child, he had questioned it. Now he understood laughter. This particular laughter was about climbing high rocks, grabbing the greenest blades, sipping the richest vintage from the morning dew, enjoying the rock-fruits, and tasting young lips with a fresh desire.

They approached the enemy's cliffs.

He saw the slim form of Lyte. The new surprise of her white breasts; the neck where if you touched it you could feel her pulse; the fingers that fit into yours were lively and soft and never still; the....

Lyte turned her head sharply to one side. "Look ahead!" she shouted. "See what's coming—just look forward."

He felt that they were speeding through parts of their lives, leaving their youth behind on the sidelines, without even a glance.

"I can't see anything because I'm staring at the stones," he said, running.

"Find new rocks, then!"

"I see stones—" His voice softened like the palm of her hand. The landscape drifted beneath him. Everything felt like a light breeze, flowing dreamily. "I see stones that form a ravine in a cool shadow where the stone-berries are as plentiful as tears. You touch a boulder and the berries tumble down in quiet red avalanches, and the grass is incredibly soft...."

"I can’t see it!" She walked faster, turning her head away.

He saw the delicate thread around her neck, similar to the soft moss that grows silver and airy on the cool side of stones, which moves with the slightest breath. He looked at himself, his hands clenched as he pushed himself toward death. His hands were already marked with veins and swollen with youth.

They were the hands of a young boy whose fingers were meant for touching, now unexpectedly sensitive and larger, fidgety, and feeling detached from him because they seemed so big for the slim length of his arms. His neck, through which blood throbbed and pumped, was also developing with age, showing small blue veins embedded and flaring in it.

Lyte gave him something to eat.

"I'm not hungry," he said.

"Eat, keep your mouth full," she said sharply. "So you won't talk to me like this!"

"If I could just kiss you," he begged. "Just once."

"After the battle, there might be time."

"Gods!" he shouted, distressed. "Who cares about battles!"

Ahead of them, rocks rained down, crashing loudly. A man fell with his skull shattered. The war had begun.

Lyte handed him the weapons. They ran in silence until they reached the killing ground. Then he spoke without looking at her, his cheeks flushing. "Thank you," he said.

She ducked as a thrown stone whizzed past her head. "It wasn't easy for me," she admitted. "Sim! Watch out!"

The boulders started to tumble in a man-made avalanche from the enemy's battlements!

Only one thought was racing through his mind now. To kill, to take someone else's life so he could survive, to secure his place here and live long enough to make a run for the ship. He ducked and weaved, grabbing stones and throwing them up. His left hand held a flat stone shield to deflect the rapidly falling rocks. There was a spattering sound all around. Lyte ran alongside him, cheering him on. Two men fell before him, slain, their chests cut to the bone, their blood gushing out in unbelievable streams.

It was a pointless conflict. Sim realized immediately how crazy the whole thing was. They could never take the cliff. A solid wall of rocks came crashing down. A dozen men fell with pieces of rock in their heads, and half a dozen more had their arms hanging limply and broken. One screamed as the white bone of his knee was exposed when the flesh was ripped away by two precise hits of granite. Men were tripping over each other.

The muscles in his cheeks tightened, and he started to question why he had even come. But his lifted gaze, as he swayed from side to side, weaving and bobbing, always searched for the cliffs. He wanted to live there so badly, to get his chance. He would have to endure. But his heart was no longer in it.

Lyte screamed sharply. Sim, feeling his heart race, turned and saw that her hand hung loosely at the wrist, with a nasty wound bleeding heavily on the back of her knuckles. She pressed it against her side to ease the pain. Anger surged within him and erupted. In his rage, he charged forward, launching his missiles with deadly precision. He watched a man stumble and fall, tumbling down through the caves from one level to the next, a victim of his aim. He must have been screaming, as his lungs were opening and closing violently and his throat was raw, while the ground spun wildly beneath his hurried steps.

The stone that struck his head knocked him back. He tasted sand. The universe melted into purple swirls. He couldn’t get up. He lay there, realizing this was his last day, his final moments. The battle roared around him; faintly, he felt Lyte beside him. Her hands cooled his head as she tried to pull him to safety, but he lay there, gasping and telling her to go away.

"Stop!" yelled a voice. The entire war seemed to pause. "Retreat!" ordered the voice quickly. And as Sim lay on his side watching, his comrades turned and ran back home.

"The sun is rising, our time is running out!" He noticed their strong backs, their legs moving, tightening, flickering up and down. The dead remained on the battlefield. The injured cried out for help. But there was no time for the injured. Only time for quick men to sprint home and, with their lungs burning and raw from the hot air, dive into their tunnels before the sun scorched and killed them.

The sun!

Sim saw another figure sprinting toward him. It was Chion! Lyte was helping Sim get up, softly encouraging him. "Can you walk?" she asked. He groaned and replied, "I think so." "Then walk," she said. "Start slowly, then pick up the pace. We can do this. Take it slow, start steady. We’ll make it, I’m sure we will."

Sim got to his feet, swaying unsteadily. Chion ran over, a strange look on his face, his eyes shining with excitement for the fight. He suddenly pushed Lyte aside, grabbed a rock, and struck Sim hard on the ankle, opening up the flesh. All of this happened without a sound.

Now he stepped back, still silent, grinning like a wild animal from the night mountains, his chest heaving up and down, shifting his gaze from what he had done to Lyte and then back again. He caught his breath. "He'll never make it," he nodded toward Sim. "We have to leave him here. Let's go, Lyte."

Lyte, like a cat, jumped at Chion, looking for his eyes and screaming through her gritted teeth. Her fingers tore bloody lines down his arms and, just like that, down his neck. Chion swore and jumped away from her. She threw a rock at him. He grunted as it missed, then took off a few yards. "Idiot!" he shouted, turning to mock her. "Come with me. Sim will be dead in a few minutes. Let’s go!”

Lyte turned her back to him. "I'll go if you carry me."

Chion's expression shifted. His eyes dimmed. "There's no time. We would both die if I tried to carry you."

Lyte looked right past him. "Then carry me, because that's how I want it."

Without saying anything more and glancing nervously at the sun, Chion ran away. His footsteps quickened and faded from earshot. "I hope he falls and breaks his neck," Lyte whispered, glaring fiercely at him as he passed a ravine. She turned back to Sim. "Can you walk?"

Agonizing pain surged up his leg from the injured ankle. He nodded sarcastically. "We could reach the cave in two hours on foot. I have an idea, Lyte. Carry me." And he smiled at the dark joke.

She linked her arm with his. "Still, we’ll walk. Let’s go."

"No," he said. "We're staying here."

"But why not?"

"We came to find a home here. If we keep walking, we'll die. I'd rather die here. How much time do we have?"

Together they measured the sun. "Just a few minutes," she said, her voice flat and lifeless. She stayed close to him.

He looked at her. Lyte, he thought. Tomorrow I would have become a man. My body would have been strong and full, and there would have been time with you, kissing and touching. Damn, what kind of life is this where every moment is soaked in fear and surrounded by death? Am I going to be denied even a little bit of real life?

The black rocks of the cliff were shifting into deep purples and browns as the sun started to brighten the world.

What a fool he was! He should have stayed and worked with Dienc, thought and dreamed, and at least once pressed his lips against Lyte's.

With the muscles in his neck flexing prominently, he shouted up at the cliff openings.

"Send me one man to fight!"

Silence. His voice rang out from the cliff. The air was warm.

"It's pointless," said Lyte, "They won't listen."

He yelled again. "Listen to me!" He stood on his good foot, his hurt left leg aching and pulsing with pain. He shook his fist. "Send down a warrior who isn't afraid! I won't turn and run home! I've come to have a fair fight! Send a man who will fight for the right to his cave! I will definitely take him down!"

More silence. A wave of heat swept across the land, then faded away.

"Oh, come on," Sim scoffed, hands on his bare hips, head thrown back, mouth wide open, "surely one of you isn't afraid to take on a cripple!" Silence. "No?" Silence.

"Then I've misjudged you. I'm wrong. I'll stay here until the sun strips the flesh from my bones in dark rags, and I’ll call you the disgusting names you deserve."

He got a response.

"I don't like being called names," replied a man's voice.

Sim leaned forward, forgetting about his injured foot.

A huge guy showed up at the entrance of a cave on the third level.

"Come down," urged Sim. "Come down, you big guy, and kill me."

The man glared intensely at his opponent for a moment, then awkwardly walked down the path, his hands free of any weapons. Instantly, every cave above filled with watching faces. An audience for this drama.

The man walked up to Sim. "We'll fight by the rules, if you know them."

"I'll learn along the way," replied Sim.

This made the man happy, and he looked at Sim cautiously, but not unkindly. "I'll tell you this much," the man said generously. "If you die, I'll provide shelter for your partner, and she will live as she chooses because she is the wife of a good man."

Sim nodded quickly. "I'm ready," he said.

"The rules are straightforward. We don't touch each other, except with stones. The stones and the sun could take either of us out. Now is the moment—"

VIII

A sliver of the sun appeared on the horizon. "I'm Nhoj," said Sim's enemy, casually picking up a handful of pebbles and stones, weighing them in his hands. Sim did the same. He was hungry. He hadn't eaten in a while. Hunger was a curse for the people of this planet—an endless demand for more food to fill their empty stomachs. His blood flowed weakly, tingling through his veins in sharp throbs of heat and pressure, his ribcage expanding and contracting, restless for more.

"Now!" yelled the three hundred spectators from the cliffs. "Now!" they shouted, the men, women, and children teetering, in chaos on the ledges. "Now! Start!"

As if on cue, the sun shot up high. It hit them like a flat, sizzling stone. The two men staggered from the intense heat, sweat poured down their bare thighs and lower bodies, and a sheen like fine glass covered their faces and underarms.

Nhoj shifted his massive weight and stared at the sun, seemingly in no rush to fight. Then, without a sound and with no warning, he flicked a pebble with a quick snap of his thumb and forefinger. It hit Sim square on the cheek, knocking him back and sending a jolt of excruciating pain shooting up his injured foot, exploding into a wave of nausea in his stomach. He tasted blood from his wounded cheek.

Nhoj moved gracefully. With three more quick gestures of his magical hands, three small, seemingly harmless bits of stone shot out like whistling birds. Each of them hit their mark with force: one struck Sim's stomach, making him feel like all his food from the last ten hours was about to come back up. Another hit his forehead, and the third hit his neck. He crumpled onto the scorching sand, his knee making a sickening sound against the hard ground. His face was pale, and his eyes, tightly shut, were forcing tears out from the hot, trembling lids. But even as he fell, he had unleashed, with wild intensity, his handful of stones!

The stones hummed in the air. One of them, and only one, hit Nhoj. Right on the left eye. Nhoj groaned and immediately placed his hands on his damaged eye.

Sim let out a bitter, exhausted laugh. This was his one victory: the gaze of his opponent. It would buy him ... Time. Oh, gods, he thought, his stomach twisting uncomfortably, struggling to breathe, this is a world of time. Just a little more, please, just a bit!

Nhoj, one-eyed and struggling in pain, threw stones at the writhing body of Sim, but his aim was off now; the rocks veered to one side, or if they did hit, they were weak, spent, and lifeless.

Sim forced himself to get half hard. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Lyte, waiting and staring at him, her lips moving with words of encouragement and hope. He was drenched in sweat, as if he had just stepped out into a downpour.

The sun was now fully above the horizon. You could smell it. Stones sparkled like mirrors, and the sand started to churn and bubble. Illusions appeared all over the valley. Instead of facing just one warrior, Nhoj was confronted by a dozen, each standing tall and ready to launch another attack. A dozen irregular warriors shimmered in the threatening golden light of day, quivering like bronze gongs struck, all in one vision!

Sim was gasping for air. His nostrils flared and inhaled, while his mouth gulped down flames instead of oxygen. His lungs ignited like silk torches, and his body was being consumed. Sweat poured from his skin, evaporating instantly. He felt himself shrinking, collapsing in on himself, and imagined he looked like his father—old, sunken, frail, withered! Where was the sand? Could he move? Yes. The world squirmed beneath him, but now he was standing.

There won’t be any more fighting.

A murmur from the cliff revealed this. The sunburned faces of the crowd stared, mocked, and cheered for their warrior. "Stand straight, Nhoj, conserve your energy now! Stand tall and sweat!" they urged him. And Nhoj stood, swaying gently, swaying slowly, like a pendulum in a blazing, fiery breath from the horizon. "Don’t move, Nhoj, protect your heart, save your strength!"

"The Test, The Test!" shouted the people on the hilltops. "The test of the sun."

And this was the worst part of the fight. Sim squinted painfully at the twisted mirage of the cliff. He thought he saw his parents; his dad with a defeated expression, his green eyes fiery, his mom with her hair flowing like a cloud of gray smoke in the fierce wind. He had to get to them, to live for and with them!

Behind him, Sim heard Lyte whimper softly. There was a sound of skin against sand. She had fallen. He didn’t dare turn around. The effort to turn would send him crashing down in pain and darkness.

His knees buckled. If I fall, he thought, I'll just lay here and turn to dust. Where was Nhoj? Nhoj was nearby, a few yards away, hunched over, drenched in sweat, looking like he was being struck on the back with massive hammers of destruction.

"Fall, Nhoj! Fall!" screamed Sim, in his mind. "Fall, fall! Fall and die so I can take your spot!"

But Nhoj didn’t fall. One by one, the pebbles in his half-loose left hand dropped onto the scorching sands, and Nhoj's lips curled back, the saliva evaporating from his mouth and his eyes glazing over. But he didn’t fall. The will to live was powerful within him. He hung there as if suspended by a wire.

Sim dropped to one knee!

"Ahh!" cried the aware voices from the cliff. They were witnessing death. Sim quickly lifted his head, grinning awkwardly, as if he had been caught doing something foolish. "No, no," he insisted lazily, and got back up again. Pain overwhelmed him, leaving him in a state of total numbness. A whirring, buzzing, frying sound filled the air. High above, an avalanche fell like a curtain dropping in a play, making no noise. Everything was silent except for a constant humming. He saw fifty versions of Nhoj now, covered in sweat, eyes swollen from suffering, cheeks hollow, lips drawn back like the peel of a drying fruit. But the wire still had him held.

"Now," Sim muttered slowly, with a dry, parched tongue pressed between his burning teeth. "Now I'll fall, lie down, and dream." He said it with a slow, thoughtful satisfaction. He had it all planned out. He knew exactly how it needed to be done. He would do it right. He raised his head to check if the audience was watching.

They vanished!

The sun had forced them back inside. All except for one or two brave ones. Sim laughed drunkenly and watched the sweat collect on his lifeless hands, hesitate, fall off, plunge down toward the sand, and turn to steam halfway there.

Nhoj fell down.

The wire was cut. Nhoj fell flat on his stomach, a spray of blood erupting from his mouth. His eyes rolled back in a blank, chaotic madness.

Nhoj fell. So did his fifty duplicate copies.

All across the valley, the winds sang and howled, and Sim saw a blue lake with a blue river flowing into it. There were low white houses near the river, with people coming and going in and out of the houses, surrounded by tall green trees. The trees were taller than seven men, standing beside the river mirage.

"Okay," Sim said to himself at last, "Now I can fall. Right—into—that—lake."

He stumbled forward.

He was stunned when he felt the hands quickly catch him in mid-fall, lift him up, and rush him off, high in the eager air, like a torch being held and waved, on fire.

"How strange is death," he thought, as darkness enveloped him.

He woke up to the cool water flowing over his cheeks.

He opened his eyes cautiously. Lyte had his head resting on her lap, her fingers bringing food to his mouth. He was incredibly hungry and exhausted, but fear pushed those feelings aside. He pushed himself up, looking at the strange shapes of the cave above him.

"What time is it?" he asked.

"The same day as the contest. Keep it down," she said.

"That same day!"

She nodded with a smile. "You haven't lost anything from your life. This is Nhoj's cave. We're inside the black cliff. We'll live for three more days. Happy now? Just lie down."

"Nhoj is dead?" He staggered back, breathless, his heart pounding against his chest. He gradually calmed down. "I did it. Oh my god, I did it," he whispered.

"Nhoj is dead. So were we, almost. They brought us in from outside just in time."

He ate hungrily. "We can't waste any time. We need to get strong. My leg—" He looked at it, checked it out. There was a patch of long yellow grasses around it and the pain had faded. Even as he watched, the powerful rhythms of his body started working to heal the impurities under the bandages. It has to be strong by sunset, he thought. It has to be.

He got up and hobbled around the cave like a trapped animal. He could feel Lyte's eyes on him. He couldn't look at her. Finally, feeling defeated, he turned.

She interrupted him. "You want to go on the ship?" she asked softly. "Tonight? When the sun sets?"

He took a breath and let it out. "Yes."

"You really can't wait until morning?"

"Nope."

"Then I’ll go with you."

"No way!"

"If I fall behind, so be it. There's nothing for me here."

They stared at each other for a long time. He shrugged tiredly.

"Okay," he said finally. "I can't stop you, I realize that. We'll go together."

IX

They waited at the entrance of their new cave. The sun went down. The stones cooled enough to walk on. It was almost time to leap out and run toward the distant, shining metal seed that rested on the far mountain.

Soon the rains would come. Sim reflected on all the times he had seen the rains turn into streams, then into rivers that carved new paths every night. One night there’d be a river flowing north, the next night a river flowing northeast, and the third night a river heading due west. The valley was constantly reshaped and scarred by the floods. Earthquakes and landslides filled the old riverbeds. New ones were the norm. It was this concept of the river and its changing directions that he had pondered for many hours. It might possibly—well, he would wait and see.

He noticed how living on this new cliff had slowed his heartbeat, slowed everything down. It was a natural result, a shield against solar radiation. Life was still fast, but not as fast as it used to be.

"Now, Sim!" shouted Lyte, taking in the valley air.

They ran. Between the hot death and the cold one. Together, away from the cliffs, out toward the distant, inviting ship.

Never had they run like this in their lives. The sound of their feet pounding was a loud, relentless clatter over wide stretches of rock, down into ravines, up the slopes, and onward. They gasped for air, filling their lungs with each breath. Behind them, the cliffs disappeared into things they could never return to now.

They didn’t eat while they ran. They had eaten until they were stuffed in the cave, to save time. Now it was just running, lifting their legs, balancing their bent elbows, tensing their muscles, and taking in air that had been hot and was now cooling down.

"Are they spying on us?"

Lyte's breathless voice gripped his ears, over the pounding of his heart.

Who? But he knew the answer. The cliff people, of course. How long had it been since a race like this one? A thousand days? Ten thousand? How long since someone had taken the chance and sprinted with the eyes of an entire civilization on their backs, into gullies, across cooling plains? Were there lovers pausing in their laughter back there, gazing at the two tiny dots that were a man and woman running toward their destiny? Were children tasting new fruits and stopping their play to watch the two people racing against time? Was Dienc still alive, narrowing his bushy eyebrows over fading eyes, cheering them on in a weak, raspy voice, shaking a gnarled hand? Were there jeers? Were they being called fools, idiots? And in the midst of the name-calling, were people praying for them, hoping they would reach the ship? Yes, beneath all the cynicism and pessimism, some of them, perhaps all of them, must be praying.

Sim glanced up at the sky, which was starting to darken as night approached. Suddenly, clouds appeared, and a light rain fell over a gully two hundred yards in front of them. Lightning crackled over distant mountains, and there was a strong scent of ozone in the unsettled air.

"The halfway point," Sim breathed heavily, noticing Lyte's face turn slightly, wistfully glancing back at the life she was leaving behind. "Now's our chance; if we want to go back, we still can. Just one more minute—"

Thunder growled in the mountains. An avalanche began small and grew huge and monstrous in a deep crack. Light rain sprinkled Lyte's smooth white skin. In a minute, her hair was shining and soaked with rain.

"It's too late now," she shouted over the sound of her bare feet slapping against the ground. "We have to move forward!"

And it was too late. Sim knew, by estimating the distances, that there was no going back now.

His leg started to hurt a bit. He favored it, moving more slowly. A wind picked up suddenly. A cold wind that stung his skin. But it came from the cliffs behind them, helping rather than hindering them. An omen? he wondered. No.

For as the minutes passed, he realized how badly he had judged the distance. Their time was running out, but they were still an impossible distance away from the ship. He said nothing, but the frustration at the sluggishness of his legs turned into painfully hot tears in his eyes.

He knew that Lyte was thinking the same thing he was. But she soared like a white bird, barely seeming to touch the ground. He could hear her breath going in and out in her throat, like a clean, sharp knife sliding into its sheath.

Half the sky was dark. The first stars were appearing through patches of black cloud. Lightning flickered along a edge just ahead of them. A powerful thunderstorm of heavy rain and crackling electricity poured down on them.

They slipped and skidded on smooth, moss-covered pebbles. Lyte fell, quickly got back up while cursing. Her body was scratched up and dirty. The rain poured down on her.

The rain poured down and wept with Sim. It filled his eyes and streamed like rivers down his spine, and he felt the urge to cry along with it.

Lyte fell and didn't get up, gasping for air, her chest heaving.

He picked her up and held her. "Run, Lyte, please, just run!"

"Leave me, Sim. Just go!" The rain filled her mouth. There was water all around. "It's pointless. Just go on without me."

He stood there, cold and helpless, his thoughts weighed down, the spark of hope flickering out. Everything around him was darkness, cold sheets of rain pouring down, and despair.

"We'll walk, then," he said. "And keep walking and taking breaks."

They walked for fifty yards, comfortably and leisurely, like kids out for a walk. The gully in front of them was full of water that flowed away with a quick, wet sound, heading toward the horizon.

Sim shouted. Pulling on Lyte, he rushed ahead. "A new channel," he said, pointing. "Every day the rain carves a new channel. Look here, Lyte!" He leaned over the floodwaters.

He jumped in, pulling her along with him.

The flood carried them away like scraps of wood. They struggled to keep their heads above water; it slipped into their mouths and noses. The land rushed past on both sides. Gripping Lyte's fingers with an almost desperate strength, Sim felt himself being tossed around, saw flashes of lightning above, and a new fierce hope sparked within him. They couldn’t run anymore, so they would let the water carry them instead.

With a speed that crashed them against the rocks, tore their shoulders open, and scraped their legs, the new, swift river carried them along. "This way!" Sim shouted over a blast of thunder as he desperately steered toward the other side of the gully. The mountain where the ship rested was just ahead. They couldn’t let it slip by. They struggled in the rushing water and were thrown against the far bank. Sim jumped up, grabbed onto an overhanging rock, wrapped his legs around Lyte, and pulled himself upward, hand over hand.

As quickly as it arrived, the storm was over. The lightning dimmed. The rain stopped. The clouds drifted away, clearing the sky. The wind quieted to a whisper.

"The ship!" Lyte was lying on the ground. "The ship, Sim. This is the mountain of the ship!"

Now the cold arrived. The deadly cold.

They pushed themselves up the mountain, drunk. The cold seeped into their limbs, coursed through their veins like a chemical, and slowed them down.

Ahead of them, shining like it was just washed, lay the ship. It felt like a dream. Sim couldn’t believe they were actually this close to it. Two hundred yards. One hundred and seventy yards. Damn, it was cold.

The ground was covered in ice. They slipped and fell over and over. Behind them, the river had turned into a hard, blue-white snake of cold. A few last drops of rain fell from somewhere as hard pellets.

Sim leaned against the side of the ship. He was really touching it. Touching it! He heard Lyte whimpering softly. This was the metal, the ship. How many others had touched it over the years? He and Lyte had made it!

He touched it tenderly. Then, as cold as the air, his veins went icy.

Where's the entrance?

You run, you swim, you almost drown, you curse, you sweat, you work, you reach a mountain, you climb it, you hammer on metal, you shout with relief, you reach the ship, and then—you can't find the entrance.

He struggled to hold back his emotions. Slowly, he reminded himself, but not too slowly, to go around the ship. The metal felt icy under his searching hands, so cold that his sweating palms almost froze to it. Now, far around to the side. Lyte moved alongside him. The cold gripped them tightly, starting to constrict.

The entryway.

Metal. Cold, unyielding metal. A narrow gap at the sealing point. Ignoring all caution, he pounded on it. He felt his stomach churning with cold. His fingers were numb, and his eyes felt half-frozen in their sockets. He started to hit and search and yell at the metal door. "Open up! Open up!" He stumbled.

The air-lock sighed. With a whisper of metal on rubber seals, the door swung gently to the side and disappeared.

He saw Lyte rush forward, grab her throat, and collapse into a small shiny room. He shuffled after her, confused.

The air-lock door closed tightly behind him.

He couldn't breathe. His heart started to slow down, to stop.

They were stuck inside the ship now, and something was going on. He dropped to his knees and struggled to breathe.

The ship he had come to for rescue was now slowing his heartbeat, clouding his mind, and poisoning him. With a desperate, weak kind of fading fear, he understood that he was dying.

Blackness.

He had a vague awareness of time moving, of trying hard to make his heart race... to make his eyes focus. But the fluid in his body moved slowly through his relaxed veins, and he could hear the rhythmic thumping of his pulse at his temple—thud, pause, thud, pause—then thud again with gentle breaks in between.

He couldn’t move, not a hand or leg or finger. It took effort just to lift the weight of his eyelashes. He couldn’t even shift his face to see Lyte lying next to him.

From a distance, he could hear her uneven breathing. It sounded like the noise a wounded bird makes with its dry, tangled wings. She was so close that he could almost feel her warmth; yet she seemed very far away.

I'm getting cold! he thought. Is this death? This slowing of blood, of my heart, this cooling of my body, this sleepy way of thinking?

Staring at the ship's ceiling, he traced its complex network of tubes and machines. The knowledge, the purpose of the ship, and its operations seeped into him. He started to grasp, in a kind of revealing tiredness, exactly what the things he was looking at were. Slow. Slow.

There was a device with a shiny white face.

What's the purpose?

He slogged through the problem, like a man underwater.

People had used the dial. Touched it. People had fixed it. Installed it. People had envisioned it before the building, before the installation, before the fixing and touching and using. The dial held memories of use and creation; its very shape was a memory of dreams that explained to Sim why and for what it had been made. Given time, by looking at anything, he could pull out the knowledge he wanted. A vague part of him reached out, examined the contents of things, and analyzed them.

This clock measured time!

Millions of days!

But how could that be? Sim's eyes widened, hot and shimmering. Where were the humans who needed something like this?

Blood pulsed and throbbed behind his eyes. He shut them.

Panic hit him. The day was going by. I'm just lying here, he thought, and my life is slipping away. I can't move. My youth is fading. How long until I can move?

Through a kind of porthole, he saw the night go by, the day arrive, the day pass, and then another night. Stars twinkled coldly.

I’ll be stuck here for four or five days, getting old and fading away, he thought. This ship won’t let me move. It would have been so much better if I had just stayed on my home cliff, lived my life, enjoyed this brief time. What’s the point of coming here? I’m missing all the sunsets and sunrises. I’ll never get to be with Lyte, even though she’s right next to me.

Delirium. His mind drifted upward. His thoughts spun through the metal ship. He caught the sharp scent of connected metal. He heard the hull tighten with night, loosen with day.

Morning.

Already—another daybreak!

Today I would have been grown-up. His jaw tightened. I have to get up. I have to keep moving. I have to enjoy my time as an adult.

But he didn't move. He felt his blood sluggishly pump from chamber to chamber in his heart, flowing down and around through his lifeless body, to be purified by his expanding and contracting lungs. Then the cycle started again.

The ship warmed up. A machine clicked on from somewhere. The temperature automatically dropped. A steady breeze circulated through the room.

Night again. And then another day.

He lay there and watched four days of his life go by.

He didn't try to fight. It was pointless. His life was over.

He didn’t want to turn his head now. He didn’t want to see Lyte with her face resembling his tortured mother’s—eyelids like gray ash flakes, eyes like tarnished metal, cheeks like weathered stones. He didn’t want to see a throat like dried-out strands of yellow grass, hands patterned like smoke rising from a fire, breasts like dried rinds, and hair rough and unkempt like damp gray weeds!

And what about him? How did he look? Was his jaw sunken, the skin around his eyes hollow, his forehead lined and marked by age?

His strength started to come back. He could feel his heart beating so slowly that it was incredible. One hundred beats a minute. No way. He felt so calm, so reflective, so at ease.

His head tilted to one side. He looked at Lyte. He yelled in shock.

She was young and beautiful.

She was looking at him, too weak to say anything. Her eyes were like tiny silver medals, her throat curved like a child's arm. Her hair was like blue fire consuming her scalp, fueled by the delicate life of her body.

Four days had passed, and she was still young ... no, even younger than when they had boarded the ship. She was still a teenager.

He couldn't believe it.

Her first words were, "How long is this going to last?"

He replied carefully, "I don't know."

"We're still young."

"The ship. Its metal surrounds us. It blocks out the sun and the things that the sun sent to age us."

Her eyes shifted thoughtfully. "So, if we stick around here—"

"We'll stay young."

"Six more days? Fourteen more? Twenty?"

"Maybe even more than that."

She lay there, quietly. After a while, she said, "Sim?"

"Yep."

"Let’s stay here. Let’s not go back. If we go back now, you know what will happen to us...?"

"I’m not sure."

"We're going to start getting old again, aren't we?"

He looked away. He stared at the ceiling and the clock with the ticking hand. "Yeah. We'll get older."

"What if we age—just like that? When we get off the ship, won't the jolt be overwhelming?"

"Maybe."

Another silence. He started to move his limbs, checking how they felt. He was really hungry. "The others are waiting," he said.

Her next words took his breath away. "The others are dead," she said. "Or they will be in a few hours. Everyone we knew back there is old and tired."

He tried to imagine them when they were old. Dark, his sister, hunched and forgetful with age. He shook his head, wiping the image away. "They might die," he said. "But there are others who have been born."

"People we don't even know," Lyte said without emotion.

"But still, our people," he responded. "People who will only live for eight days, or eleven days unless we help them."

"But we're young, Sim! We're young! We can stay young!"

He didn’t want to listen. It was too tempting to hear. To stay here. To live. “We’ve already had more time than the others,” he said. “I need workers. People to fix this ship. We’ll get back on our feet now, you and I, and find food, eat, and see if the ship can be moved. I’m scared to try to move it myself. It’s so big. I’ll need help.”

"But that means running all the way back!"

"I know." He pushed himself up weakly. "But I will do it."

"How are you going to bring the guys back here?"

"We'll use the river."

"If it's there, it might be somewhere else."

"We'll wait until there is one, then. I need to go back, Lyte. The son of Dienc is waiting for me, my sister, your brother, are elderly, on the verge of dying, and waiting for some news from us—"

After a long time, he heard her stir, pulling herself wearily toward him. She rested her head on his chest, her eyes shut, rubbing his arm. "I'm sorry. Please forgive me. You need to go back. I'm such a selfish idiot."

He touched her cheek awkwardly. "You're human. I get it. There's nothing to forgive."

They found food. They walked through the ship. It was empty. Only in the control room did they find the remains of a man who must have been the chief pilot. The others had obviously bailed out into space using emergency lifeboats. This pilot, alone at his controls, had landed the ship on a mountain where other fallen and wrecked crafts could be seen. Its location on high ground had saved it from flooding. The pilot himself had died, likely of heart failure, soon after landing. The ship had stayed here, almost within reach of the other survivors, untouched and pristine, but silent, for—how many thousand days? If the pilot had survived, life might have been so different for Sim and Lyte's ancestors. Sim, thinking about this, felt the distant, ominous vibration of war. How had the conflict between worlds ended? Who had come out on top? Or had both planets lost and never bothered to search for survivors? Who was right? Who was the enemy? Were Sim's people on the guilty or innocent side? They might never know.

He quickly inspected the ship. He didn't know anything about how it worked, but as he walked through its corridors and touched its machines, he started to understand it. All it needed was a crew. One person couldn't possibly get the whole thing up and running again. He put his hand on a round, snout-like machine but jerked it back as if it had burned him.

"Light!"

"What's that?"

He touched the machine again, caressing it, his hand shook uncontrollably, his eyes filled with tears, his mouth opened and closed, he gazed at the machine, loving it, then glanced at Lyte.

"With this machine—" he stammered, softly, in disbelief. "With—with this machine I can—"

"What’s up, Sim?"

He put his hand into a cup-shaped device with a lever inside. Through the viewport in front of him, he could see the distant outline of the cliffs. "We were worried there might never be another river flowing by this mountain, weren't we?" he asked, excitedly.

"Yeah, Sim, but—"

"There will be a river. And I will come back tonight! And I'll bring guys with me. Five hundred guys! Because with this machine I can blast a riverbed all the way to the cliffs, down which the water will flow, giving me and the guys a fast, sure way to travel back!" He rubbed the machine's barrel-like body. "When I touched it, its life and method shot into me! Watch!" He pressed the lever.

A beam of bright fire shot out from the ship, screaming.

Steadily and precisely, Sim started to carve out a riverbed for the stormwater to flow into. The night was transformed into daylight by its relentless consumption.

The return to the cliffs was to be done by Sim alone. Lyte would stay on the ship, just in case anything went wrong. The trip back looked impossible at first. There wouldn't be a river rushing by to save time or carry him toward his destination. He would have to run the whole distance at dawn, and the sun would catch him before he reached safety.

"The only way to do it is to start before sunrise."

"But you'd be frozen, Sim."

"Here." He made tweaks on the machine that had just finished cutting the riverbed into the rocky floor of the valley. He lifted the smooth end of the gun, pressed the lever, and held it down. A burst of fire shot toward the cliffs. He adjusted the range control, focusing the flame three miles from its origin. Done. He turned to Lyte. "But I don't understand," she said.

He opened the air-lock door. "It's freezing out, and there's still half an hour until dawn. If I run alongside the flame from the machine, close enough to it, there won't be much heat, but it should be enough to keep me alive, at least."

"It doesn't sound safe," Lyte argued.

"Nothing does, in this world." He stepped ahead. "I'll have a thirty-minute head start. That should be enough to get to the cliffs."

"But what if the machine breaks down while you're still operating close to its beam?"

"Let’s not think about that," he said.

A moment later, he was outside. He stumbled like he had been punched in the stomach. His heart felt like it was going to explode. The vibe of his world pushed him into fast-paced living again. He could feel his pulse racing, pumping through his veins.

The night was freezing. The heat ray from the ship cut through the valley, buzzing, solid, and warm. He moved right next to it, really close. One wrong step in his running and—

"I'll be back," he shouted to Lyte.

He and the beam of light went together.

In the early morning, the people in the caves saw the long finger of orange light and the strange whitish figure floating, moving alongside it. There were murmurs and superstitions.

So when Sim finally got to the cliffs from his childhood, he saw strangers everywhere. There were no familiar faces. Then he understood how silly it was to expect to see anyone he knew. One of the older men looked down at him with a glare. "Who are you?" he yelled. "Are you from the enemy cliff? What's your name?"

"I’m Sim, the son of Sim!"

"Yes!"

An elderly woman yelled from the cliff above him. She hobbled down the stone path. "Sim, Sim, it is you!"

He looked at her, clearly confused. "But I don't know you," he said quietly.

"Sim, don’t you remember me? Oh, Sim, it’s me! Dark!"

"Dim!"

He felt nauseous. She collapsed into his arms. This old, trembling woman with the nearly blind eyes, his sister.

Another face appeared above. It belonged to an old man. A cruel, bitter face. It looked down at Sim and snarled. "Get rid of him!" shouted the old man. "He comes from the enemy's cliff. He’s lived there! He’s still young! Those who go there can never come back among us. Disloyal beast!" And a rock came hurtling down.

Sim jumped to the side, taking the old woman with him.

A roar erupted from the crowd. They rushed toward Sim, shaking their fists. "Kill him, kill him!" shouted the old man, and Sim had no idea who he was.

"Stop!" Sim held up his hands. "I'm from the ship!"

"The ship?" The people slowed down. Dark clung to him, looking up into his young face, wondering about its smoothness.

"Kill him, kill him, kill him!" the old man croaked, picking up another rock.

"I give you ten days, twenty days, thirty extra days of life!"

The people stopped. Their mouths were agape. Their eyes were wide with disbelief.

"Thirty days?" It was repeated over and over. "How?"

"Come back to the ship with me. Inside, you can live forever!"

The old man raised a rock high, then, gasping, fell forward in a seizure and tumbled down the rocks to land at Sim's feet.

Sim bent down to look at the old man, at the glazed, lifeless eyes, the sagging, mocking lips, the wrinkled, silent body.

"Yo!"

"Yeah," said Dark behind him, in a raspy, weird voice. "Your enemy. Chion."

That night, a thousand warriors set out for the ship as if heading into battle. The water flowed in the new channel. Five hundred of them drowned or got left behind in the cold. The others, along with Sim, made it to the ship.

Lyte waited for them and swung open the metal door.

The weeks went by. Generations lived and died in the cliffs, while the five hundred workers worked on the ship, figuring out how it functioned and what its parts were.

On the last day, they broke up. Each person hurried to their post. Now there was a traveler who still stayed behind.

Sim touched the control panels beneath his fingers.

Lyte, rubbing her eyes, came and sat on the floor next to him, resting her head against his knee, feeling sleepy. "I had a dream," she said, gazing off at something far away. "I dreamed I lived in caves on a cliff on a planet where it was both cold and hot, and people aged and died in eight days and were cremated."

"What an impossible dream," said Sim. "There's no way people could live in such a nightmare. Just forget it. You're awake now."

He gently touched the controls. The ship lifted off and soared into space. Sim was right. The nightmare was finally over.

[Transcriber's Note: No Section III or V heading in original text.]