Women on the Edge of Space
edited by Danielle Bodnar and Cecilia Tan
Circlet Press, Inc.
Cambridge, MA
Women on the Edge of Space
Copyright © 2011 Circlet Press, Inc.
Cover Illustration: © 2007 Janet Bruessellbach www.bruessellbach.com
Published by Circlet Press, Inc.
39 Hurlbut Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
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Table of Contents
Introduction by Danielle Bodnar
The Many Little Deaths of Cicilia Long by Shanna Germain
Fair as the Moon, Clear as the Sun by Laurel Waterford
Adrift by Kaysee Renee Robichaud
Unfolding Her Wings by Elizabeth Black
Introduction
Space is a place that is full of mystery: most of it lies beyond our senses and our lifetime. Traveling through outer space is a journey unlike any other, letting go of our usual sense of place and time and opening ourselves up to new possibilities. Looking on at the vast expanse of darkness that is the universe around us can cause the deepest despair, and yet the scattered, glittering lights of the stars can create a feeling of hope for the discovery of new worlds and new life.
Outer space has always been a point of fascination for me, a place untouched by civilization and impossible to conquer. It’s the very definition of infinity. It reminds us that as great as we might consider ourselves, human beings occupy an atomic fraction of the universe. If one day we are able to penetrate through the darkness and reach the impossible edge of the universe, we would still know scarcely more than we do now. Such is the way of the human heart. We can never truly know why we fall in love with certain people; we can only embrace our feelings, or deny them. To map out the course of a human’s sexuality, as making a complete chart of the universe, is futile, for like space, the capacity for love and desire is infinite.
In the space opera, the improbability of science fiction and the impossibility of fantasy combine, fusing the best of both genres. In the face of the unknown, we often experience fear, for what we don’t know may harm or even kill us or worse, those whom we love. The emptiness of space can act as a magnet, accelerating two lovers closer together more quickly than the earth’s gravitational pull. Space is also a place of escape, where we can let go of all our earthly worries and inhibitions and just drift away, allowing the forces of a more mysterious nature overcome us. Space operas allow our imaginations to take us places where our bodies cannot go, and when the erotic is added to the mix, our desires can find a place even within the farthest reaches of nothingness. Outside of the earthly limitations of prejudice and discrimination, women can claim space for their own, living how they want and loving whomever they choose, exploring their sexuality in ways they never thought possible.
In these four stories, women explore the uncharted trails of human desire as they rocket through space and transcend time and place. They inspire fear and hope in the face of danger and uncertainty, and the thrills of satiating a hunger for intimacy in a strange new world. Space is not defined by time or place, existing as both finite and infinite. The stories that fill this anthology are brief, but their scope extends well beyond the virtual page. Now, sit back, and enjoy the journey that these four stories will take you on.
The Many Little Deaths of Cicilia Long
The first time Cicilia Long died, she was eighteen and had just enlisted as a Rift Jumper. In the tick-tock seconds before Cicilia's death, her mother was back in Illinois, standing on the slanted porch, looking up, lamenting the loss of her daughter to the forces of the sky. And Cicilia's girlfriend--former girlfriend, fuck-up of a girlfriend, fuck-and-dump-her girlfriend, the reason she was here in outer space girlfriend--was probably lying down on that super-skinny Darlene Shanka, not even thinking about Cicilia. Or maybe, hopefully, lying on her back under the pimple-faced Darlene, looking up at her constellation of zits and thinking about Cicilia flying up in the sky, past the sky, up in the universe, and thinking how she was the stupidest person ever for having passed her up for a little earth-bound nothing.
But that was all right for them, because at the moment before she died the first time, Cicilia was standing on the edge of a satellite station somewhere between the new moon and the old one. When Cicilia had enlisted, it had been because she was pissed at her former girlfriend and at her mother, who had said, "Well, perhaps if you dated boys instead..." and she'd thought she would have a desk job, making graphs or something like her Aunt Daliah. However, her superiors back at Base had quickly discovered that while she was athletic and intuitive, math was not her strong suit. So she'd been trained in rift-jumping, not in navigation, and had discovered she loved it. She was doing work that mattered--exploring the effects of time and space travel on the body--and so she barely even thought about the two women that had once been so important to her life. They were the reason she'd come here, a childish act of revenge, but they weren't the reason she'd stayed. It was beautiful up here. Wherever up here was.
For while Cicilia, through training and instinct, could tell the precise moment when the rift would open to let her through and the exact diameter of the rift, in both inches and centimeters, she wasn't exactly sure where she was in the world as she stood on the edge of it.
Which, as it turned out, was the problem. Because the girl who was trained in navigation, the one who was supposed to be watching Cicilia's back, was in lust or love or at the very least, like, with Cicilia. When she was supposed to be navigating the ship and its satellite to the exact rift-jumping spot, she was, in fact, looking at Cicilia's long legs wrapped in her high-tech atmosphere pants and at Cicilia's hair, which was longer than it should have been and so she kept it woven in three longs braids that fell out of the back of her helmet and rested against her back. Through the monitor, the shape of Cicilia's back and ass looked like an old violin, the kind that was perfect for playing, the kind that would make a perfect song if you just knew what to do with your fingers and her strings.
And in watching Cicilia and thinking about playing Cicilia, the girl who was trained in navigation forgot her training for a moment and lined Cicilia up, not at the very degree of the risk at which it was safe to jump, but one degree to the right, which was a place that was the exact opposite.
The rift opened, just when and how Cicilia knew it would and she gave the girl in the navigation room two thumbs up through the motion camera, noticing for the first time as she did so, the girl's perfectly heart-shaped face and her golden-green eyes.
And then she jumped.
Rifts are funny things, scientifically somewhere between black holes and worm holes, but looking more like ripped holes in a piece of sky fabric, a long jagged tear that let the underslip of the world show through. Sky fabric, unlike real fabric, is neither soft nor flexible, the sharp, hard edges opening toward a wide middle section. That very middle, wide-open center, was where Cicilia was supposed to do her rift-jumping.
Cicilia realized just how much rifts are funny things as she went through this one, but she didn't actually go through it. In fact, she was just two clicks to the left of where she needed to be, and her bottom half went through it and her top half hit hard enough against the edge of the rift that it dented her helmet, a sound so loud that even the girl who was trained in navigation heard it through the motion camera and drew in her breath, having realized at last that she had caused the love of her life, Cicilia Rachel Long, to have her first death.
Cicilia knew that this wasn't how rift jumping was supposed to go--at least not according to the hundreds of simulations she'd done at base. She had a moment of disconnect, her body going two ways and her mind going a third, and then there was a rather loud snap, like a door closing, and Cicilia was rift jumping, only it wasn't like any rift she'd ever seen, not even on the training video series "When Things Go Wrong, Which they Won't, But Just in Case, Videos I, II, III, IV and V" that they'd showed at base. This was kaboom and her whole body went whooshing. It was as though her body had been broken into an infinite number of pieces and she could feel each one all edged and tingly. Her body, in all of its separate units, beyond her nipples and clit, down to her cells, her neurons and dendrites and axons, all gave a collective gasp as if preparing themselves. The implosion and explosion were simultaneous, lightening the atmosphere with their collective heat.
Dying, thought the infinite exploding stars that once were Cicilia, was way better than sex.
* * * *
The second time Cicilia Long died, she was, for the first time in her life, having good sex, and her death was both unexpected and unwanted.
The person she'd been having sex with was the girl who had been trained in navigation, but had been fired upon report of Cicilia's death, and was now managing a magazine for intergalactic travelers.