Somehow, She Remains

By Z.T. Bright

Sometimes, identical twin sisters can be a real pain. Like when they ask you to carve two years out of your life to go visit them on an entirely different planet. Never mind it would doom your relationship with your fiancé. Who cares that you’d have to quit your job? Sever every social tie to everyone on Earth. No big deal.

But when you receive a video message from your sister saying she thinks she’s dying of cancer, you go.

Though the interstellar bridge can carry data faster than physical matter —both without the effects of time dilation— it still takes weeks for communications to cross. Like the old Pony Express days. Otherwise, I would have argued with her.

“No, you need to come home,” I would have said. “Come back to where we have effective cancer treatments. We can do puzzle after puzzle, just like when we were kids.”

“Mahra, I need to stay here for work. I’m so close to a breakthrough,” she would have said.

To which I’d respond, “I know it’s strange that the Piklorians all died mysteriously and simultaneously, and I know it’s your job to care, but now that they’re gone, there’s no reason for you to stay. It’s not worth dying over.”

Alas, the back and forth of that argument would have taken months, if not years, due to the transmission delay. Precious time that Cehri didn’t have. So, I broke Piklor’s atmosphere in an EPC —Extra-Planetary Commission— shuttle, cursing the planet for stealing my sister. Fury at my dying sister was not a good look, but there was nothing stopping me from sneering at a planet.

You’d think a 10-month shuttle across the interstellar bridge would be enough time for my anger to cool. Instead, the first time I saw one of Piklor’s notorious spires as the shuttle descended to the surface, I spat on the window. Petty, yes, but it was easier than sorrow and self-pity.

The shuttle ramp slapped the ground hard and kicked up a fog of rust-colored dust. I was the first to disembark. Not that there were many others on the shuttle. The only ones eligible to voyage to Piklor were government contracted researchers, and their immediate-family visitors. Anthropologists —like Cehri— biologists, geologists, and the like. It was truly a new frontier, like the old American West. And nearly everyone had already left. The EPC was done issuing new permits as the moratorium was set to end. I got an exception based on Cehri’s condition.

The shuttle pad was nothing but a massive dirt circle, some 100 yards in diameter. I shielded my eyes from the morning sun, which had just crested over a tree-lined mountain ridge. At the edge of the clearing, Cehri sat astride a massive horse-sized, feathered creature. I stumbled off the shuttle ramp, not used to the 0.9 gravity on the Earth-grav scale. Funny how 90 percent can be so close to something, yet so noticeable. Piklor had been selected by the Interstellar Bridge Committee for being so close to Earth in size, atmosphere, resources, and even biology.

The sight of my sister before endless trees and the silhouetted spire punched me in the gut. The trees behind her rose hundreds of feet in the air, the smaller and thinner among them bowed away slightly from the clearing by the force of the shuttle landings. I’d hardly ever even seen a tree in person, let alone an entire forest— trips from the towers back home to nature reserves were things few could afford. Taking slow, awkward steps in the not-quite-Earthlike levels of gravity, I breathed in the crisp, oxygen-rich air, wondering if that was what Earth used to smell like.

As if she knew what I was thinking, Cehri and her…chicken-horse approached slowly. I wiped tears from my eyes, taking it all in. I hadn’t felt anything like this since Mom and Dad took us on our first space tour. It may have even been enough for me to soften my attitude toward Piklor, but then Cehri came close enough for me to see her face. We were twins. 29 years old. She wasn’t supposed to look like that. Like I was looking at myself ten, or maybe twenty, years in the future. She really was dying.

Her dark hair a bit grayer. Olive skin too pale. Brown eyes too sunken.

My anger toward the planet burned hotter than it ever had. She thought I’d come here to spend the entire two-month period between shuttle stops with her. But I’d had ten months on a shuttle to devise my own plan. I didn’t have much time to convince her to come home with me on the shuttle when it would depart in 48 hours after a recharge.

We rode on the back of Chicken-Horse —Cehri told me what she’d named him, but I forgot it and I liked “Chicken-Horse” better anyway— up a narrow mountain trail through the forest. We rode double atop the creature along a narrow trail that cut through the trees.

“I’ll help you pack all your things,” I said. “Two days is plenty of time. You can continue your research on the shuttle!”

She was too thin. It was like riding behind a skeleton. “I can’t, Mahra. I need to be here.” The ride was surprisingly smooth, but she had trouble even speaking. “The moratorium is ending soon. With the native people gone, there’s no way it will be renewed unless we can find something to convince the council this place shouldn’t be covered with cement. They were such a fascinating species. So similar to us in some ways. Did you know that every Piklorian was a twin?” Cehri asked, as if that would soften my attitude towards the situation. “They had all their children in groups of two to four, mostly. Sometimes more.”

I ignored her attempt to distract me with that admittedly very cool fact. “But if they’re gone, why do you need to be here anyway? I mean, there are nobody’s rights to violate anymore. Why put this ahead of your own health?”

The moratorium —extending to everything from tourism to business development to colonization— existed as humanity’s way of wrestling with its troubled past on Earth. Hell, the bridge tech to get us to this planet and back without time dilation was an example of us strong-arming another species into a lopsided peace treaty— the few species we’d connected with so far, that were as capable as us technologically, had not valued military tech like we did. Earth wasn’t united in this, but there was enough support in certain social, political, and religious circles to push the moratorium though.

“First of all,” Cehri said, “that’s not the point. There’s life here, even if the people are gone. But more than that, I need to figure out why they did it. There’s so much more to this than we know, Mahr. We need to figure it out before the moratorium ends. Everyone else has already given up.”

“Cehri, you know we need the space. Maybe it’s a good thing the Piklorian’s are gone. Maybe the moratorium should end.”

Cehri didn’t answer. I hoped my argument was working. Without the conversation to keep me occupied, I was reminded of where I was. On a different planet. I’d lived all my life in the towers back on earth. Sure, we had zoos and nature floors. Most towers had even converted their roofs into miniature nature preserves. But this was on a different level. Tall, red-trunked trees as far as I could see. So tall and so thick they blocked out most sunlight.

So many sensations I was unaccustomed to. Wind whooshing through trees. Animals clicking and chirping in the canopy. The heavy breathing of the beast I sat on. Wind on my face–not from a fan like in the towers, but the kind that blew in gusts, and changed directions, pushing and pulling, carrying with it myriad scents. I never would have imagined dirt had a smell, and a pleasant one at that.

For a time, I almost forgot my plan. The trees surrounding us became sparser as we rode. Eventually, we reached the tree line and there was nothing but patches of browning grass and rocky cliffs. The trail turned a sharp left, bending around a cliff face and suddenly I was reminded of my purpose.

The spire, nearly as wide and seemingly as tall as one of the towers back home, stretched skyward, sunlight sparkling off the dark indigo volcanic glass of its surface. I clenched my jaw as my hatred for the planet rekindled inside me.

“Sorry, Cehri,” I said. “But none of this is worth your life. I’d nuke the entire thing if it meant I could get you treatments. Don’t look at me like that, there’s nobody here, and you’re all that matters to me.”

“From what we can tell,” Cehri said, ignoring me, “the spires were used by every Piklorian tribe for a kind of death ceremony. Their culture seems to be too uniform for a planet as large as this. I think it’s tied to how they all coordinated their deaths. Why did they do it?”

Cehri’s health slipped quickly. I think she’d been holding on with any strength she had left until I arrived, but when I did, she allowed herself to fade. Piklor was the epitome of the frontier, so at the best of times there wasn’t anything more than a medic for basic ailments, but this late in the moratorium there was nobody left in the area but shuttle docking crew.

My two-day timeframe of convincing her came and went. I’d failed. Within two weeks of being with her again, my twin was gone. It was clear to me that Cehri chose to die here. While she likely could have been treated back home, and even had treatments shipped to her out here, she would have had to go home first to be diagnosed properly. She just wasn’t willing to do it.

I wrapped Cehri up with torn burlap sacks, laid her across Chicken-Horse, and rode up to the spire with a foldable camp shovel and a bottle of moonshine Cehri had in her shack. Nothing makes you miss the comforts of modern life like having to bury a loved one with your own hands. But nothing connects you more to your own fragile humanity either.

It took me an entire day to bury her. I can’t say I dug the standard six feet. My hands blistered and bled, and I cried and screamed and cursed at the spire. I rode Chicken-Horse back down the trail to Cehri’s tiny log shack and polished off the moonshine on the way. I don’t remember the rest of that night.

I do remember waking up outdoors, next to the shack. I was shivering–the mornings were cold and the afternoons cool. Chicken-Horse squatted next to me. I may have followed Cehri into the dirt of Piklor had it not been for his body heat.

As it was, I did become ill for the next two weeks. I spent that time inside the shack, organizing Cehri’s work, only leaving to fetch water for tea from a nearby stream. Reading as much of her notes as I could along the way, I organized all her collections into two piles: leave-behind, and important-research/sentimental. It was not easy work, and I walked the line of trying to grasp as much of Cehri’s research as possible and numbing the pain of her loss with hard beverage.

Occasionally I’d stop to scream at her for leaving me. I’d scream at Piklor for stealing her. Then, when my throat felt like it was bleeding, I’d open another of her notebooks. Cehri wanted me to solve her puzzle. That was stupid. I was an accountant and had no business with any of this. But, I was driven to find out why she felt it could have been so important that she chose to die for it.

I learned much about Piklor over those two weeks. Cehri had left notes on basic survival— where she stored all the dried and smoked foods that would last my entire trip, where to find water, basic first aid, dangerous flora and fauna, and landmarks. But, as an anthropologist, Cehri’s notes were mostly on the Piklorians and their culture.

She continuously referenced the spires. This wasn’t exactly a surprise. The spires dotted the entire planet and were the most intriguing aspect of Piklor, but she emphasized them so much that I circled every mention in her old-fashioned paper notebooks.

When I’d recovered enough, I spent the next two weeks making daily journeys to the spire with Chicken-Horse. I would read her notes all day as the shadow of the spire rotated around it like a massive sundial. The layout of Cehri’s puzzle became clearer to me.

The Piklorians viewed death very differently than we did. Though humanity was very familiar with the idea of an afterlife of some sort —humanity progressed with this belief being accepted by most people throughout history— the Piklorians took this a step further. Life seemed almost inconsequential to them. They did not mourn the loss of loved ones. They celebrated death. “Life” was akin to being in the womb. A strange period, followed by a very uncomfortable and scary transition into the next life. The real life.

They viewed their bodies as a part of Piklor. Their concept of themselves as individuals was not tied to a physical body, but to a sort of spiritual presence. A soul. They lived in harmony with nature. They were nomadic, and had either not yet mastered farming, or didn’t care to. Again, while many humans —even the non-religious— understood this concept, the Piklorians amplified it.

I learned that they had mastered the domestication of wildlife, hence Chicken-Horse. They used birds to communicate with other tribes much the same way humans had once used carrier pigeons. Though, how they did this nomadically was not understood. I thought that was one of the pieces of the puzzle. Cehri wondered how they could have coordinated the death of an entire species. It was as simple as the Piklorians not wanting to deal with what humanity would bring with them, so they communicated by these birds to come to a consensus that it wasn’t worth it. After all, they didn’t view life like humans did, right?

But Cehri was stuck on this point. She felt there was something else here she hadn’t found. So, I kept digging, confident that the next time I put a proverbial puzzle piece in place, I’d be done. I had two weeks.

But Piklor had other ideas.

Over my first month and a half, I’d been lucky when it came to the natural dangers of the planet. The weather was getting colder, but it wasn’t unbearable. Cehri’s food reserves and a nearby stream made life simple, if a bit rugged. And the list of dangerous wildlife in the area was small enough, and Chicken-Horse being enough of a predator deterrent, that I didn’t worry about it.

While I felt I was getting closer and closer to finishing Cehri’s puzzle, the deadline of the shuttle’s arrival was a constant irritant. With two weeks to go, I worked with increased ferocity. Reading and rereading old notes, I got little sleep. I began arriving at the spire earlier in the day and leaving later, spending time during my visits exploring the area.

One evening, I lost track of time. I had lit a fire earlier, as the afternoons were getting chillier, and the firelight worked well enough for reading Cehri’s notes that the sun had completely set before I realized.

Some gentle nudges from Chicken-Horse encouraged me to start packing up. But before we set off, something brushed against the spire in the darkness. Something big. Chicken-Horse let out a terrifying shriek that I swear gave me a heart attack right then and there. He swiftly sprung between me and the approaching noise, and as I backed away, I noticed two large eyes glowing in the firelight.

In the blink of an eye what I can only describe as a cross between a wolf and an eagle darted at me. It was beaked and feathered but wingless. Smaller than Chicken-Horse, but I would have been no match for it. Chicken-Horse snatched one of its back legs with a large talon and yanked it back away from me.

The eagle-wolf cried out in pain and turned to swipe at Chicken-Horse. I scrambled back as the two creatures clawed and bit at each other. Shrieks of pain and anger from them both bounced off the walls of rock cliffs and the spire.

I turned to run, but with no light I twisted an ankle and fell, smashing my right arm and head on a chunk of spireglass. I don’t know how long I was out, but when Chicken-Horse woke me with his gentle nudging, the embers of the fire were just barely glowing. My whole body was wracked with pain, but I shot to a sitting position once I remembered our attacker.

When my eyes adjusted to the dark though, I could make out the still corpse of the eagle-wolf near the fire. With my good arm I reached out to pat Chicken-Horse. I recoiled as my hand touched something wet. I looked at my hand, then at Chicken-Horse, to see them both slicked with dark blood.

He put his large, beaked head in my lap and died as I stroked his neck.

I tried to be Piklorian about it, but I cried for a long time, and the way my sobs echoed off the spire made it seem like it was crying along with me. It seemed to me then that the spire and I had something in common. We had lost so many, but we remained.

I hobbled back to the shack that night, knowing it would get too cold. I had two weeks left until the shuttle returned and I had to solve Cehri’s puzzle without the aid of Chicken-Horse. No help in the miles-long journey to and from the spire. No protection from threat of wildlife that I’d become complacent about.

Any progress I felt I’d made in solving the puzzle crumbled like it was being placed back into its box.

Was this what I was resigned to letting happen to Piklor? I imagined hundreds or even thousands of shuttles descending on the planet like flies to rotting meat. Even worse, the drilling for resources, and the mass construction of large towers. The trees, the spires, all of it would be chewed up by human manufacturing to build the planet’s own headstones for people to live in, just like we’d done on Earth.

I swallowed a painful lump in my throat, as I realized this was how Cehri had felt about Piklor. If I left without finishing her puzzle, the moratorium would end, and all of what I had become so fond of would fall into the hands of people that didn’t appreciate it.

As I absentmindedly collected Cehri’s notebooks, a tear dripped off my nose and onto her last entry.

-Grandma’s puzzles

-Saving the last pieces

-Mahra is the last piece

Our parents passed away when we were 12. We went to live with Grandma. It was a dark time I tried not to think about. At first, Grandma didn’t have all the new things 12-year-old’s of that time usually kept busy with —and she was broken by our parent’s passing too— so Cehri became obsessed with Grandma’s puzzles. I had no interest. But she always wanted me to finish them for her. It was irritating to me.

I recalled Grandma getting upset with me as I complained to her about all the puzzles.

“Mahra,” she said, slapping a hand on her kitchen countertop. “Which pieces of the puzzle are the simplest? Think about it. She doesn’t need you to finish the puzzle for her. She wants to do it with you! She’s doing this for you!”

Grandma had stomped away in tears and we never talked about it again. I don’t think I fully understood then, but I did now. Cehri knew I needed a distraction. Something to keep me busy and focused on something other than our devastating loss. She’d done it again. She’d put the pieces in place, all I had to do was arrange them.

As always, the shuttle would dock for 48 hours. I had one more day to work on the puzzle, then one day to get my things and go home. I left immediately with food and water and limped up the trail to the spire, hoping that sunlight would be enough to keep predators away.

It was slower going than I’d anticipated. My ankle throbbed, and my entire body ached from overcompensating. I rested longer than I walked. As I rested, I tried to work out the last pieces. If Cehri had arranged everything for me, why wouldn’t she just tell me? There had to be more than her just wanting me to figure it out. There was something else. Something she hadn’t figured out. Something she couldn’t instruct me on if she had wanted to.

Mahra is the last piece.

What did she mean by that? How was I, an accountant on Earth, instrumental in any of this? The only reason I was here at all was because I was the twin of an anthropologist.

A twin.

I didn’t know how that would help, but Cehri had mentioned that all Piklorians were from Multiple Pregnancies. Could that be it? I kept trudging up the mountain.

Before reaching the spire, I realized that I was going so slow that I’d have to turn around as soon as I arrived in order to make it back before nightfall. At least I would have time to say goodbye to Cehri. Before I left the cover of the forest, I picked a few white, tubular flowers to place on her grave.

Sure enough, by the time I reached the spire, the sun was approaching the horizon. It was frigid, and the base of the spire had even accumulated a dusting of snow. I placed the flowers on Cehri’s grave and had a long cry. My tears dried on my cheeks as I sat for a few minutes admiring the spire in all its sunlit, indigo glory.

I had to admit, I didn’t hate it any longer. It had gone from an enemy to a comrade-in-arms. We’d lost many of our fellows, and that brought us closer together. There’s something about mourning together that creates a special bond.

But I was out of time. I couldn’t stay after dark. I’d learned my lesson with the eagle-wolf.

I stood, apologized to Cehri for failing her, and said one last goodbye. Then, I approached the spire to do the same. I reached out my left hand to the smooth, glassy surface, and placed my palm upon it.

I recoiled as I felt its warmth. Its contrast from the cold weather was off-putting. I supposed the sun had warmed it.

But no, I’d felt the spire in warmer weather, and it was always cool to the touch. I felt drawn to the spire by more than my own curiosity. Not only was it warm to the touch, but it felt warm to my soul in a way I didn’t understand.

I placed my forehead against the strangely flesh-like warmth of the spire, crying. I’d said goodbye to Cehri and Chicken-Horse. Now the spire. I wished I could have stayed there for hours, but it was time.

“Goodbye,” I said aloud, not sure if I was addressing Cehri, or Chicken-Horse, the spire, or myself. “I’m sorry.”

A tear ran down my nose and onto the spire. As I was about to go, I felt a strange sensation on my skin. A pulsating. No, more of a vibration. It became clearer, and I realized I was hearing something through the spire.

The sound seemed to swirl around me for a moment, like a gentle breeze. It slowed, then paused. Then, clear as day, the spire spoke to me.

“You always finished the puzzles for me.” It was Cehri’s voice. Not just her voice. It was Cehri. Inside the spire. Her body was gone, buried in the soil of Piklor, but somehow, she remained.

“Only because you let me,” I said, sobbing. “I figured out your little trick. Distracting me and giving me a sense of purpose. You knew that your death would have wrecked me without something to keep me busy.”

Cehri laughed. It was always such a beautiful, musical sound and I’d thought I’d lost it forever. “Yes. But it was also selfish. I needed to be with you. I suspected this might happen. That we might be able to communicate like this. But I didn’t know how. And, if I’m being honest, I didn’t want to die without you by my side.”

I couldn’t make sense of it all, honestly. Cehri was there, then she wasn’t. I tried to call her back to me. I felt her presence swirl about a few more times, but she didn’t speak again.

My heart pounded in my ears. My skin was on fire. I all but sprinted back to the shack, bum ankle be damned. I wished I had more time at the spire, but I knew I had to get back to the shuttle and bring this news back to Earth. I wanted to stay, but the food rations were dwindling, and this was the last shuttle before the moratorium ended.

The last puzzle piece was the fact that Cehri and I were twins. We shared a DNA profile that connected us, similarly to the Piklorians connecting to each other. The experience I had with Cehri at the spire made everything else seem obvious. She’d nearly worked it all out. That’s why she was so set on staying on Piklor.

The Piklorians must have been able to communicate with their dead loved ones as well. If we could speak to our dead, would we be as afraid of death as we were? It made sense to me that the dead Piklorians encouraged their living —through the help of the spire— to pass to the next life, as humanity descended upon the planet.

Maybe it was simply to avoid humanity. Maybe they felt they could serve their planet better from whatever reality they lived in within the spire. I wondered if their mysterious deaths created the intrigue that led Cehri and I to this discovery. If it would protect Piklor, was that reason enough?

There was little doubt that this would extend the moratorium. Such a discovery of an alien ability or technology would be studied thoroughly without risking anything that might damage it. Humanity would want this for itself and wouldn’t rest until they understood it.

I brought Cehri’s work with me to the shuttle. I’d spend time on the return voyage writing up a more detailed account of my experience, after sending a video message to Cehri’s colleagues back on Earth. I looked out the window as the thrusters of the shuttle roared. My gut tightened as I watched the spire fall away from view.

Cehri had been right all along. Piklor was worth saving. Regardless of Cehri, or the spire, I would do all I could to protect it. After all of this, she’d done it again. Tricked me into finishing her work for her.

Sometimes, twin sisters can be a real pain in the ass.