To Ineffability and Beyond, Chapter 3
Chapter 1: http://go-exchange.livejournal.com/198741.html
Chapter 2: http://go-exchange.livejournal.com/199132.html
Chapter 3
The first thing Crowley became aware of as he drifted towards wakefulness was the fact that he was cold. Damn cold. Surely this must be how cold it was in the depths of space.
The second was the fact that he was drowning.
He had been discorporated in the 1100’s by falling off a boat and drowning in the ice-cold Atlantic Ocean. This is what it had felt like, and his body began to urge him to remedy the situation somehow.
He began to thrash. His hand broke the surface of whatever he was submerged in, only to hit something solid above it. He shoved both hands upwards as hard as he could against that surface, desperate to break through it to whatever freedom he was sure was on the other side.
The glassy surface yielded and swung up and out of the way. Warm air flooded in at him in a wave. Still flailing, he pulled himself upright, retching violently. A viscous blue liquid came pouring out of his mouth, and he heaved, emptying his lungs, blindly grabbing for something solid with which to steady himself.
Air finally rushed into his lungs, and he sucked in one, two, three deep breaths. He managed to grab onto the edge of his receptacle, and he lowered his head onto it, shivering and gasping.
“Are you all right?”
Crowley looked up. Aziraphale was a few feet away, likewise in a pod filled with liquid, looking as befuddled and bewildered as Crowley felt. His lips were blue.
Crowley managed to nod. He looked over at the vidscreen.
WELCOME TO KEPLER-442b, it told him. PLEASE FEEL FREE TO TAKE A WARM SHOWER.
Crowley heaved a sigh, rubbing his eyes. “Christ!” he yelled.
“What is it?” said Aziraphale, wobbling to his feet, splashing.
“Christ!”
“What about him?”
“That wasn’t a nap at all! That was awful!”
Aziraphale stepped out of his cryopod, but slipped as his slick foot hit the floor. He held onto the edge and gracefully descended into a sitting position. “Well, we were asleep. I don’t know what more you expected.”
“Naps are warm! And you have nice dreams! That was a rip-off!” Crowley suddenly realized he was still chest-deep in the freezing cryopod. He stood, liquid draining off his stomach and thighs and splashing back into the pod. That was when he remembered that he was completely naked.
“Christ,” he muttered.
“I thought your kind wasn’t supposed to swear to Him,” said Aziraphale.
“Well it’s not like he can hear me all the way out here!” Crowley said. “God, we’ve been asleep for 500 years and the first thing you do when we wake up is start sniping at me about my language. I’m going to the loo.”
He trailed cold cryo-liquid across the floor as he stepped out and pattered to the bath. He turned the temperature all the way to the red and activated the shower.
“Oh…” he moaned as the scalding water rolled over him. “Ooooohhhh…”
There was suddenly a second body in the space with him. Crowley moved defensively like a snake protecting its sunning spot.
Aziraphale reached past him and turned the flow volume up. “There’s enough water for both of us, you silly serpent.”
They both stood still for a few moments, the enclosed space quickly filling with steam.
“Mmmmm…” murmured Crowley.
He felt Aziraphale's fingers combing through his wet hair. "I'm glad to see you again, my dear."
Crowley turned so that he was facing Aziraphale. “Likewise.”
They were both surprisingly tired for two people having just woken up from 500 years of sleep. Crowley made the mistake of leaning into Aziraphale’s shoulder; he ended up falling asleep like that, standing fully upright with the hot water rolling over his back. Aziraphale picked a few stray pieces of goop from the cryopod out of his hair, then did his best to reach the shampoo without removing his shoulder from underneath the demon.
Crowley’s eyes flicked open as Aziraphale rinsed the conditioner out of his hair, but he pretended he had been awake the whole time.
“Your hair’s gotten quite a bit longer,” said Aziraphale.
Crowley reached up and fingered one wet curl on the angel’s hair. “So has yours.”
As soon as he was out of the shower, Aziraphale set about filing his nails down, muttering about how unpresentable they were. Crowley staggered over to the corner of the room where his plant was. The entire alcove was filled with a mass of dry, moldy, ancient leaves. Apparently, in their absence, the plant had exploded in size, flourished-and perished, a potted empire that marched on and then withered without them.
“Nick Jr.,” said Crowley. “Noooooo….”
“Don’t suppose even a fancy container would be enough to keep it alive for 500 years,” said Aziraphale. “Suppose you should have waited.”
Crowley glared at him. He then angrily made his way out of the room.
Aziraphale muzzily continued on with his nails. He then made an attempt at trying to dress himself. The demon returned a few minutes later, a new plant in his muddy hand, the exposed roots trailing dirt behind him.
“Did you… Dear, did you walk all the way to the greenhouse without dressing yourself?”
Crowley looked at him blearily. “Hm? Oh. S’pose I did.”
“Crowley!”
“Well it’s not like I was the only one!”
“What?”
“And you’re one to talk. You’re trying to shove your leg into a shirt sleeve.”
Aziraphale looked down at his clothes as if he had just noticed.
Crowley walked over to the potted plant, took the pot with one hand, and dumped the dirt and dead plant directly onto the floor. “I’m sure Nick Jr. Jr. will have better luck,” he said, shoving the new plant into the pot without bothering to try and cover the roots.
A sound beeped at them. Both looked over at the vidscreen to see that the message marquee had scrolled to say PLEASE STAY IN YOUR CABINS UNTIL THE DISORIENTATION ASSOCIATED WITH CRYOSLEEP WEARS OFF.
“Oh,” they both said together.
Crowley knelt on the bed and touched the vidscreen with one dirt-stained hand. He flipped through all the screens the board had to offer, stopping on the last one.
A video feed of a planet. It was muted purple, homogenous in appearance. There were two moons perched around it. An orange star blazed in the background.
“Ha!” said Crowley. “Angel! Welcome to Kepler-442!”
***
I’ll get right to the point without mincing words. Kepler-442b turned out to be dreadful.
They found that the atmosphere was not suitable for breathing after all. They had been prepared for this possibility, but it meant that they would have to spend the first few hundred years with gas pumps increasing the oxygen content and filtering out the neurotoxins that laced the planet while the settlers were confined to an enormous dome. And of course since the planet was barren and lifeless with rocks as far as the eye could see, they would have to put down a foundation of soil before any farming could be done. The crops would have to stay under the dome with them until the atmosphere was suitable for growing carbon-based lifeforms. No oceans and an undeveloped atmosphere meant no greenhouse effect and little temperature moderation, so the average temperature was around -40 degrees Celsius. It looked like it was going to take a millennium before they would be walking on the surface of a green, earth-like planet. There was so much work to be done.
Robots were going to be doing most of it, of course, so it was not particularly burdensome on the settlers. But it was a long time to wait. Their children would never know the feeling of grass under their feet. The Aphelion crew began to talk of possibly going against orders from Earth and moving to a different planet that might be a bit easier, but as they turned their telescopes to the sky, nothing more suitable appeared. Even barren, rocky 442b was more hospitable than its neighbors, which were gas giants, had oppressive gravity, rained shards of glass, or had an atmosphere so thick it would burn up a ship trying to enter it. One planet seemed to be made entirely of compressed carbon, and it glittered like a diamond. It was beautiful, and seeing it hovering in the cold, lifeless backdrop of stars really drove home the point of exactly how alien of a world they had stepped into.
They stowed their complaints and sent down the robots in waves to set up the colony. After a while, a few humans would occasionally travel to the surface on one of the shuttles.
It took a few months. Aziraphale and Crowley kept expecting to run into trouble with the other demon, but she kept to herself, mostly. Once they passed each other in the hallway and she had behaved strangely, making challenging eye contact, only to shy away and run in the opposite direction.
They were hovering fairly close over the surface of Kepler-442b, so the dome being constructed was visible from space with the naked eye. The settlers tracked its progress expectantly, not so much eager to get onto the planet as to get off the Aphelion, which was starting to grow even more boring and cramped than it had seemed before they went into cryosleep.
Finally, they began to shuttle the residents down. This turned out to be not as much of an improvement as had been thought.
The gravity on Kepler-442b was 30% stronger than on Earth, and not even the Aphelion’s 1.1G residents were used to such a dramatic pull. As a consequence, everyone was always tired, as though they had been carrying around extra weight all day. The artificial day-night cycles from the Aphelion were gone as well, and on Kepler-442b there would be a few weeks of daylight during which everyone had trouble sleeping, followed by a few weeks of nighttime during which everyone had trouble staying awake. The star was much bigger in the sky than the sun had been, and even though the bubble dome filtered out harmful rays and maintained the atmosphere, everyone got sunburned easily. It also did an inadequate job of maintaining the temperature-it was parka weather 24/7. This combination of factors kept everybody inside most of the time and in a perpetual state of crankiness and low energy. It was a good thing that most of the processes keeping the colony running and expanding were automated, because the humans on Kepler-442b sure weren’t up for the task.
Crowley developed permanent bags under his eyes. Aziraphale fell asleep on his screen while he was reading. In those moments when they slept deeply enough to dream, they both dreamt of Earth. Crowley began to think that even torture in Hell would have kept him more stimulated than this.
Currently, Crowley was sitting on the crest of a rocky hill at the edge of the dome, smoking an artificial cigarette. It was in the middle of the weeks-long night, and he was stargazing, trying to find new constellations in the sky around both moons.
There was a whirr sound beside him. He looked over, raising his head just enough to catch sight of a wheel out of the corner of his eye.
“Can I bum a cigarette?” said the captain’s voice.
Crowley sighed and lifted his box up. She took one.
“Bah,” she said. “I hate these things. Me and my friends always knew where to find the real ones back before tobacco went extinct.”
The fact that her voice was so gravelly suddenly made sense. “And how are you on this fine evening, captain?” he said.
Despite her complaints, she lit the cigarette up. “Fine, I suppose. Yourself?”
“Been better. Been worse, too.”
They sat in silence for a few moments, looking up at the stars.
“Do you miss Earth?” said the captain. “You do, don’t you? I can tell.”
“More than I care to admit,” he said softly. “Don’t you?”
“I can’t say that I do,” she said. “I was getting to that age when all your friends start dying around you. You’d be too young to understand that, I suppose.”
A trail of smoke wisped from Crowley’s cigarette. “I rather doubt that.”
“What?”
He turned his gaze back towards the sky. “The constellations are different. It bothers me more than I thought it would.”
“We can make up our own constellations, now, if we want.”
Crowley was thinking of when the constellations on Earth had been named. He had been there for that event in a few different civilizations’ histories. He still didn’t understand how they picked the shapes out when they looked nothing like their namesakes. He took a drag. “I suppose.”
The captain flicked her cigarette. “We can give them any names we want and our descendants will have to use them. Hah. Wonder what they’ll think of the Aphelion. It’s going to be in orbit long after all of us are dead.”
Crowley shifted his gaze to the circular starship, still buzzing with motion in the sky, looking so close and yet so far away. “You think so?”
“They weren’t joking when they said he was a perpetual motion machine. He’s completely self-sustaining. It’s going to take something really catastrophic for him to stop spinning.”
“He? Aren’t ships usually she?”
The captain laughed. “Oh, no, the Aphelion is definitely a man.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because it’s only good for spreading seeds around where they don’t belong.”
A faint smile lifted at the corner of Crowley’s lips. He took another drag. “I don’t know if I’d say we don’t belong here. Isn’t that what humans are all about? Furthering the edges of known territory?”
“It’s only been a few months and it’s blatantly obvious humans aren’t meant for this place. It wouldn’t surprise me if we couldn’t breed here after all, and we all just died out and left the ghosts of a civilization and a space craft spinning for a million years in orbit.”
“That’d be all that’s left for the aliens to find.”
She gave a chuckle. “Now there’s a thought. It’d take some aliens to liven up this place. Too bad there aren’t any here.”
“You don’t know that there aren’t any.”
She gave another laugh, and then trailed off. “Oh…you’re serious.” She blew smoke out. “Sorry, kid, but if aliens exist, they aren’t on Kepler-442b. Unless you count us, because we could definitely be considered aliens.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Look,” she said. “There is nothing on the surface of this planet but rocks and dirt. It’s so cold out that if you went to take a leak your piss would freeze mid-stream. There’s nothing here but volcanos and-”
“Volcanos?” said Crowley, furrowing his brow. “I don’t see any volcanos.”
The captain gestured to the horizon. “They’re underground. Can’t see ‘em, but it wouldn’t surprise me if we had another Pompeii early in our future.”
“I never heard anybody mention volcanos before.”
“Kind of hard to see them unless you’re close up. Geologists saw ‘em when we scanned the planet from orbit. Nobody else really seemed interested, so we didn’t bother investigating further.”
“But they’re underground? How do they know they’re volcanos?”
“Heat signatures.”
“They only saw heat signatures?”
“Kid, what else is going to make a heat signature that looks like a volcano except a volcano? If the geologists say they’re volcanos, then they’re volcanos.”
Crowley’s attention was on the dark, rocky horizon now. He stubbed his cigarette on the ground and flicked it off into a pile that evidenced he had completed this activity many times before. “You people. I thought humans were supposed to be the imaginative ones. The lack of oxygen must be getting to your brains.”
The captain turned her wheels to face Crowley as he got up and staggered off. “Hey,” she called after him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Crowley didn’t answer, his back towards her. She glowered in the darkness, the tip of her cigarette smoldering, and turned back towards the vast expanse of the empty planet.
***
Aziraphale was face down on his desk when Crowley walked into the tiny apartment that they shared. “Oh, how was your walk, dear?” he said, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose.
Crowley huffed as he sat down on the bed. “Fine, I guess.”
Aziraphale stood and made his way over to Crowley, massaging his shoulders. “A little stressed out?”
Crowley crossed his arms. “Hmph. No.”
“No?” Aziraphale’s hand moved down Crowley’s back to the seam of his waistband. “Are you sure there’s nothing I can’t take your mind off of?”
“Not now, Aziraphale, I’m not in the mood.”
“Are you sure? You could just lie back and I’ll--”
“I said I’m not in the mood!” Crowley stood, leaving Aziraphale on the bed alone. “I swear to somebody you just got hornier after we came down onto the planet.”
“Sorry.”
“…That’s all right.”
“Do you want to talk about what’s got you down, though?”
Crowley crossed his arms. “The captain of the Aphelion doesn’t believe there could be aliens here.”
Aziraphale twiddled his thumbs. “Well, she’s right you know.”
“She’s-Aziraphale! I thought out of anyone, you might believe in the possibility with all that talk about ineffability or whatever!”
“The planet is empty, Crowley. We’re finally here, on the surface of the planet, and it’s still empty. What more do you want?”
Crowley scowled at him. “Well, she said there were heat signatures underground. Huh? What do you make of that?”
Aziraphale sighed. “I’m so sorry, Crowley. I know you’re bored, but this isn’t really a good way to entertain yourself. Why don’t we put on a film and-”
“Heat signatures, Aziraphale!”
“Crowley, those are volcanos.”
Crowley stopped. “They aren’t! It’s an alien civilization, I know it is!”
Aziraphale took his screen out of his pocket, unrolled it, and tapped on it to navigate. “They sent out a copy of the geothermal map to everyone, you know,” he said, rotating it so that Crowley could see. “What does this look like?”
Crowley bent over and peered at the map. It was of the upper layers of Kepler-442b, cross-sectioned and with rivulets of red and yellow flowing and glittering under the surface. Undeniably, it looked like a series of volcanos.
He stuck his nose in the air. “It’s an alien civilization.”
“Crowley, it’s only a few meters wide at certain points!”
“It’s a very narrow, very hot alien civilization.”
“What, inside the volcano?”
“It’s not a volcano!” Crowley yelled, knocking Aziraphale’s screen out of his hand. “Why won’t you admit there could be aliens on the planet with us?”
Aziraphale rubbed his temples. “All right, Crowley, it’s because I don’t think He would have made an entire other civilization of thinking beings separate from Earth, all the way out here where the odds of us ever encountering them are a trillion to one. There’d be no point. You think there’d be little green angels and demons and a separate alien Hell and Heaven? It doesn’t make sense. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
Crowley was seething. He lifted one finger and pointed it at the angel. “You know what?”
“What?”
“Fuck you!” said Crowley, dragging his heavy jacket back on. “Fuck you, Aziraphale! I know there are aliens out here!”
“Oh, and you’re going to go find them, are you?”
“Maybe I will!”
“Well, have fun! You’d be walking out alone for days and days! You’ll get bored in a couple of hours and come crawling back!”
“Maybe I will and maybe I won’t!”
“Fine!”
“Fine!”
The door slammed shut behind him.
Aziraphale was still incensed a few hours later. He let a few films run in front of his eyes without really absorbing them. He had expected Crowley to come back shortly, embarrassed, and sheepishly cuddle up next to him, and Aziraphale would hug him closer and comfort him and they would fall asleep together. The fact that Crowley did not behave as expected only made Aziraphale more irritated with him, but even when he was angry he could not cease to worry and fuss. He huffed and stomped over to his screen and opened a communication line with whoever was on duty keeping an eye on the dome. Authorized personnel could take atmosphere suits to go out into the open air when they had business out there, and he suspected Crowley would have miraculously convinced them to give him one if he had been serious.
“I’m looking for my partner and I think he might have tried to cross the barrier. Have you had any unexpected personnel come by lately?”
He was informed that one of their atmosphere suits had been taken and was still unaccounted for, and there had been an unauthorized exit from the bubble that was currently being investigated. Aziraphale thanked them and hung up.
He crossed his arms and sat on the couch. There was no reason to worry. Crowley wasn’t stupid, and he’d come back as soon as he realized how silly this game was.
It was still in the middle the night cycle, so Aziraphale ended up dozing on the couch for who knows how long. He was awoken by a demonic presence outside his door.
“There you are!” he growled, swinging the door open. “I was worried about you.”
He stopped, because he was not looking at Crowley at all. It was the other demon, the one who hadn’t really engaged them at all. She looked back at him politely.
“Hello,” she said. “I don’t think we’ve officially met yet. My name’s Lily.”
She extended her hand. Aziraphale shook it nervously. “Ah…hello…my name’s Aziraphale…May I ask to what I owe the pleasure of your visit?”
“Angel, I-”
“Don’t call me that.”
“What?”
“Don’t call me ‘angel.’”
The other demon clapped her hands together in a gesture of supplication. “Angel, I am begging you. Begging you. Please, start a fight with me.”
“Ah, I-what?”
She dragged her hands down her face, pulling down her eyelids. “This is so boring. This is the most boring thing I’ve ever done. Please, just a sword fight or something. I can’t stand these mind games we’ve been playing with each other so far.”
Mind games? Aziraphale imagined Lily trying to do subtle things to get his attention and then interpreting his silence as a deliberate response, a game of cat-and-mouse only one of them was aware was ongoing. Did she even know that Crowley was here too?
“Er, well you can forget all that nonsense about a fight,” he said. “Mine is supposed to be a nonviolent mission. You’ll have to find something else to keep you entertained, I’m afraid.”
“Aw, come on!” She threw her hands in the air. “I’m an agent of the evil one! Don’t you want to smite me?”
“Not really.”
She huffed angrily and stomped into the room, pushing past him.
“Hey, what do you think you’re doing?”
She kicked the stand upon which Crowley’s plant sat; the pot shattered as it hit the ground, and she viciously stomped the leaves. “Ha!” she said, continuing her violent onslaught on the innocent greenery. “There, I’m destroying your plant! Doesn’t that just make you mad enough to hit me?”
Aziraphale was still standing with his hand on the doorknob. “Er…that wasn’t mine, actually.”
She boiled over with frustration. “You’re pathetic! Useless! You hear me! What kind of angel won’t even fight a demon?”
Aziraphale stuck his nose in the air and pointed out the door. “One who’s had enough of this! I’ll kindly ask you to leave my home!”
Lily seemed to deflate. She trudged out, and Aziraphale slammed and locked the door behind her.
The angel plopped himself face down on the bed, pulling a pillow over his head. His anger was all gone now, and he just wanted Crowley back to cuddle. He supposed he should be more focused on preparing for a potential fight with the demoness of chaos, but he just didn’t have the energy. So he just lay there in the perpetual dark, under the heavy burden of gravity, alone and morose.
To be continued!
Chapter 2: http://go-exchange.livejournal.com/199132.html
Chapter 3
The first thing Crowley became aware of as he drifted towards wakefulness was the fact that he was cold. Damn cold. Surely this must be how cold it was in the depths of space.
The second was the fact that he was drowning.
He had been discorporated in the 1100’s by falling off a boat and drowning in the ice-cold Atlantic Ocean. This is what it had felt like, and his body began to urge him to remedy the situation somehow.
He began to thrash. His hand broke the surface of whatever he was submerged in, only to hit something solid above it. He shoved both hands upwards as hard as he could against that surface, desperate to break through it to whatever freedom he was sure was on the other side.
The glassy surface yielded and swung up and out of the way. Warm air flooded in at him in a wave. Still flailing, he pulled himself upright, retching violently. A viscous blue liquid came pouring out of his mouth, and he heaved, emptying his lungs, blindly grabbing for something solid with which to steady himself.
Air finally rushed into his lungs, and he sucked in one, two, three deep breaths. He managed to grab onto the edge of his receptacle, and he lowered his head onto it, shivering and gasping.
“Are you all right?”
Crowley looked up. Aziraphale was a few feet away, likewise in a pod filled with liquid, looking as befuddled and bewildered as Crowley felt. His lips were blue.
Crowley managed to nod. He looked over at the vidscreen.
WELCOME TO KEPLER-442b, it told him. PLEASE FEEL FREE TO TAKE A WARM SHOWER.
Crowley heaved a sigh, rubbing his eyes. “Christ!” he yelled.
“What is it?” said Aziraphale, wobbling to his feet, splashing.
“Christ!”
“What about him?”
“That wasn’t a nap at all! That was awful!”
Aziraphale stepped out of his cryopod, but slipped as his slick foot hit the floor. He held onto the edge and gracefully descended into a sitting position. “Well, we were asleep. I don’t know what more you expected.”
“Naps are warm! And you have nice dreams! That was a rip-off!” Crowley suddenly realized he was still chest-deep in the freezing cryopod. He stood, liquid draining off his stomach and thighs and splashing back into the pod. That was when he remembered that he was completely naked.
“Christ,” he muttered.
“I thought your kind wasn’t supposed to swear to Him,” said Aziraphale.
“Well it’s not like he can hear me all the way out here!” Crowley said. “God, we’ve been asleep for 500 years and the first thing you do when we wake up is start sniping at me about my language. I’m going to the loo.”
He trailed cold cryo-liquid across the floor as he stepped out and pattered to the bath. He turned the temperature all the way to the red and activated the shower.
“Oh…” he moaned as the scalding water rolled over him. “Ooooohhhh…”
There was suddenly a second body in the space with him. Crowley moved defensively like a snake protecting its sunning spot.
Aziraphale reached past him and turned the flow volume up. “There’s enough water for both of us, you silly serpent.”
They both stood still for a few moments, the enclosed space quickly filling with steam.
“Mmmmm…” murmured Crowley.
He felt Aziraphale's fingers combing through his wet hair. "I'm glad to see you again, my dear."
Crowley turned so that he was facing Aziraphale. “Likewise.”
They were both surprisingly tired for two people having just woken up from 500 years of sleep. Crowley made the mistake of leaning into Aziraphale’s shoulder; he ended up falling asleep like that, standing fully upright with the hot water rolling over his back. Aziraphale picked a few stray pieces of goop from the cryopod out of his hair, then did his best to reach the shampoo without removing his shoulder from underneath the demon.
Crowley’s eyes flicked open as Aziraphale rinsed the conditioner out of his hair, but he pretended he had been awake the whole time.
“Your hair’s gotten quite a bit longer,” said Aziraphale.
Crowley reached up and fingered one wet curl on the angel’s hair. “So has yours.”
As soon as he was out of the shower, Aziraphale set about filing his nails down, muttering about how unpresentable they were. Crowley staggered over to the corner of the room where his plant was. The entire alcove was filled with a mass of dry, moldy, ancient leaves. Apparently, in their absence, the plant had exploded in size, flourished-and perished, a potted empire that marched on and then withered without them.
“Nick Jr.,” said Crowley. “Noooooo….”
“Don’t suppose even a fancy container would be enough to keep it alive for 500 years,” said Aziraphale. “Suppose you should have waited.”
Crowley glared at him. He then angrily made his way out of the room.
Aziraphale muzzily continued on with his nails. He then made an attempt at trying to dress himself. The demon returned a few minutes later, a new plant in his muddy hand, the exposed roots trailing dirt behind him.
“Did you… Dear, did you walk all the way to the greenhouse without dressing yourself?”
Crowley looked at him blearily. “Hm? Oh. S’pose I did.”
“Crowley!”
“Well it’s not like I was the only one!”
“What?”
“And you’re one to talk. You’re trying to shove your leg into a shirt sleeve.”
Aziraphale looked down at his clothes as if he had just noticed.
Crowley walked over to the potted plant, took the pot with one hand, and dumped the dirt and dead plant directly onto the floor. “I’m sure Nick Jr. Jr. will have better luck,” he said, shoving the new plant into the pot without bothering to try and cover the roots.
A sound beeped at them. Both looked over at the vidscreen to see that the message marquee had scrolled to say PLEASE STAY IN YOUR CABINS UNTIL THE DISORIENTATION ASSOCIATED WITH CRYOSLEEP WEARS OFF.
“Oh,” they both said together.
Crowley knelt on the bed and touched the vidscreen with one dirt-stained hand. He flipped through all the screens the board had to offer, stopping on the last one.
A video feed of a planet. It was muted purple, homogenous in appearance. There were two moons perched around it. An orange star blazed in the background.
“Ha!” said Crowley. “Angel! Welcome to Kepler-442!”
***
I’ll get right to the point without mincing words. Kepler-442b turned out to be dreadful.
They found that the atmosphere was not suitable for breathing after all. They had been prepared for this possibility, but it meant that they would have to spend the first few hundred years with gas pumps increasing the oxygen content and filtering out the neurotoxins that laced the planet while the settlers were confined to an enormous dome. And of course since the planet was barren and lifeless with rocks as far as the eye could see, they would have to put down a foundation of soil before any farming could be done. The crops would have to stay under the dome with them until the atmosphere was suitable for growing carbon-based lifeforms. No oceans and an undeveloped atmosphere meant no greenhouse effect and little temperature moderation, so the average temperature was around -40 degrees Celsius. It looked like it was going to take a millennium before they would be walking on the surface of a green, earth-like planet. There was so much work to be done.
Robots were going to be doing most of it, of course, so it was not particularly burdensome on the settlers. But it was a long time to wait. Their children would never know the feeling of grass under their feet. The Aphelion crew began to talk of possibly going against orders from Earth and moving to a different planet that might be a bit easier, but as they turned their telescopes to the sky, nothing more suitable appeared. Even barren, rocky 442b was more hospitable than its neighbors, which were gas giants, had oppressive gravity, rained shards of glass, or had an atmosphere so thick it would burn up a ship trying to enter it. One planet seemed to be made entirely of compressed carbon, and it glittered like a diamond. It was beautiful, and seeing it hovering in the cold, lifeless backdrop of stars really drove home the point of exactly how alien of a world they had stepped into.
They stowed their complaints and sent down the robots in waves to set up the colony. After a while, a few humans would occasionally travel to the surface on one of the shuttles.
It took a few months. Aziraphale and Crowley kept expecting to run into trouble with the other demon, but she kept to herself, mostly. Once they passed each other in the hallway and she had behaved strangely, making challenging eye contact, only to shy away and run in the opposite direction.
They were hovering fairly close over the surface of Kepler-442b, so the dome being constructed was visible from space with the naked eye. The settlers tracked its progress expectantly, not so much eager to get onto the planet as to get off the Aphelion, which was starting to grow even more boring and cramped than it had seemed before they went into cryosleep.
Finally, they began to shuttle the residents down. This turned out to be not as much of an improvement as had been thought.
The gravity on Kepler-442b was 30% stronger than on Earth, and not even the Aphelion’s 1.1G residents were used to such a dramatic pull. As a consequence, everyone was always tired, as though they had been carrying around extra weight all day. The artificial day-night cycles from the Aphelion were gone as well, and on Kepler-442b there would be a few weeks of daylight during which everyone had trouble sleeping, followed by a few weeks of nighttime during which everyone had trouble staying awake. The star was much bigger in the sky than the sun had been, and even though the bubble dome filtered out harmful rays and maintained the atmosphere, everyone got sunburned easily. It also did an inadequate job of maintaining the temperature-it was parka weather 24/7. This combination of factors kept everybody inside most of the time and in a perpetual state of crankiness and low energy. It was a good thing that most of the processes keeping the colony running and expanding were automated, because the humans on Kepler-442b sure weren’t up for the task.
Crowley developed permanent bags under his eyes. Aziraphale fell asleep on his screen while he was reading. In those moments when they slept deeply enough to dream, they both dreamt of Earth. Crowley began to think that even torture in Hell would have kept him more stimulated than this.
Currently, Crowley was sitting on the crest of a rocky hill at the edge of the dome, smoking an artificial cigarette. It was in the middle of the weeks-long night, and he was stargazing, trying to find new constellations in the sky around both moons.
There was a whirr sound beside him. He looked over, raising his head just enough to catch sight of a wheel out of the corner of his eye.
“Can I bum a cigarette?” said the captain’s voice.
Crowley sighed and lifted his box up. She took one.
“Bah,” she said. “I hate these things. Me and my friends always knew where to find the real ones back before tobacco went extinct.”
The fact that her voice was so gravelly suddenly made sense. “And how are you on this fine evening, captain?” he said.
Despite her complaints, she lit the cigarette up. “Fine, I suppose. Yourself?”
“Been better. Been worse, too.”
They sat in silence for a few moments, looking up at the stars.
“Do you miss Earth?” said the captain. “You do, don’t you? I can tell.”
“More than I care to admit,” he said softly. “Don’t you?”
“I can’t say that I do,” she said. “I was getting to that age when all your friends start dying around you. You’d be too young to understand that, I suppose.”
A trail of smoke wisped from Crowley’s cigarette. “I rather doubt that.”
“What?”
He turned his gaze back towards the sky. “The constellations are different. It bothers me more than I thought it would.”
“We can make up our own constellations, now, if we want.”
Crowley was thinking of when the constellations on Earth had been named. He had been there for that event in a few different civilizations’ histories. He still didn’t understand how they picked the shapes out when they looked nothing like their namesakes. He took a drag. “I suppose.”
The captain flicked her cigarette. “We can give them any names we want and our descendants will have to use them. Hah. Wonder what they’ll think of the Aphelion. It’s going to be in orbit long after all of us are dead.”
Crowley shifted his gaze to the circular starship, still buzzing with motion in the sky, looking so close and yet so far away. “You think so?”
“They weren’t joking when they said he was a perpetual motion machine. He’s completely self-sustaining. It’s going to take something really catastrophic for him to stop spinning.”
“He? Aren’t ships usually she?”
The captain laughed. “Oh, no, the Aphelion is definitely a man.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because it’s only good for spreading seeds around where they don’t belong.”
A faint smile lifted at the corner of Crowley’s lips. He took another drag. “I don’t know if I’d say we don’t belong here. Isn’t that what humans are all about? Furthering the edges of known territory?”
“It’s only been a few months and it’s blatantly obvious humans aren’t meant for this place. It wouldn’t surprise me if we couldn’t breed here after all, and we all just died out and left the ghosts of a civilization and a space craft spinning for a million years in orbit.”
“That’d be all that’s left for the aliens to find.”
She gave a chuckle. “Now there’s a thought. It’d take some aliens to liven up this place. Too bad there aren’t any here.”
“You don’t know that there aren’t any.”
She gave another laugh, and then trailed off. “Oh…you’re serious.” She blew smoke out. “Sorry, kid, but if aliens exist, they aren’t on Kepler-442b. Unless you count us, because we could definitely be considered aliens.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Look,” she said. “There is nothing on the surface of this planet but rocks and dirt. It’s so cold out that if you went to take a leak your piss would freeze mid-stream. There’s nothing here but volcanos and-”
“Volcanos?” said Crowley, furrowing his brow. “I don’t see any volcanos.”
The captain gestured to the horizon. “They’re underground. Can’t see ‘em, but it wouldn’t surprise me if we had another Pompeii early in our future.”
“I never heard anybody mention volcanos before.”
“Kind of hard to see them unless you’re close up. Geologists saw ‘em when we scanned the planet from orbit. Nobody else really seemed interested, so we didn’t bother investigating further.”
“But they’re underground? How do they know they’re volcanos?”
“Heat signatures.”
“They only saw heat signatures?”
“Kid, what else is going to make a heat signature that looks like a volcano except a volcano? If the geologists say they’re volcanos, then they’re volcanos.”
Crowley’s attention was on the dark, rocky horizon now. He stubbed his cigarette on the ground and flicked it off into a pile that evidenced he had completed this activity many times before. “You people. I thought humans were supposed to be the imaginative ones. The lack of oxygen must be getting to your brains.”
The captain turned her wheels to face Crowley as he got up and staggered off. “Hey,” she called after him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Crowley didn’t answer, his back towards her. She glowered in the darkness, the tip of her cigarette smoldering, and turned back towards the vast expanse of the empty planet.
***
Aziraphale was face down on his desk when Crowley walked into the tiny apartment that they shared. “Oh, how was your walk, dear?” he said, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose.
Crowley huffed as he sat down on the bed. “Fine, I guess.”
Aziraphale stood and made his way over to Crowley, massaging his shoulders. “A little stressed out?”
Crowley crossed his arms. “Hmph. No.”
“No?” Aziraphale’s hand moved down Crowley’s back to the seam of his waistband. “Are you sure there’s nothing I can’t take your mind off of?”
“Not now, Aziraphale, I’m not in the mood.”
“Are you sure? You could just lie back and I’ll--”
“I said I’m not in the mood!” Crowley stood, leaving Aziraphale on the bed alone. “I swear to somebody you just got hornier after we came down onto the planet.”
“Sorry.”
“…That’s all right.”
“Do you want to talk about what’s got you down, though?”
Crowley crossed his arms. “The captain of the Aphelion doesn’t believe there could be aliens here.”
Aziraphale twiddled his thumbs. “Well, she’s right you know.”
“She’s-Aziraphale! I thought out of anyone, you might believe in the possibility with all that talk about ineffability or whatever!”
“The planet is empty, Crowley. We’re finally here, on the surface of the planet, and it’s still empty. What more do you want?”
Crowley scowled at him. “Well, she said there were heat signatures underground. Huh? What do you make of that?”
Aziraphale sighed. “I’m so sorry, Crowley. I know you’re bored, but this isn’t really a good way to entertain yourself. Why don’t we put on a film and-”
“Heat signatures, Aziraphale!”
“Crowley, those are volcanos.”
Crowley stopped. “They aren’t! It’s an alien civilization, I know it is!”
Aziraphale took his screen out of his pocket, unrolled it, and tapped on it to navigate. “They sent out a copy of the geothermal map to everyone, you know,” he said, rotating it so that Crowley could see. “What does this look like?”
Crowley bent over and peered at the map. It was of the upper layers of Kepler-442b, cross-sectioned and with rivulets of red and yellow flowing and glittering under the surface. Undeniably, it looked like a series of volcanos.
He stuck his nose in the air. “It’s an alien civilization.”
“Crowley, it’s only a few meters wide at certain points!”
“It’s a very narrow, very hot alien civilization.”
“What, inside the volcano?”
“It’s not a volcano!” Crowley yelled, knocking Aziraphale’s screen out of his hand. “Why won’t you admit there could be aliens on the planet with us?”
Aziraphale rubbed his temples. “All right, Crowley, it’s because I don’t think He would have made an entire other civilization of thinking beings separate from Earth, all the way out here where the odds of us ever encountering them are a trillion to one. There’d be no point. You think there’d be little green angels and demons and a separate alien Hell and Heaven? It doesn’t make sense. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
Crowley was seething. He lifted one finger and pointed it at the angel. “You know what?”
“What?”
“Fuck you!” said Crowley, dragging his heavy jacket back on. “Fuck you, Aziraphale! I know there are aliens out here!”
“Oh, and you’re going to go find them, are you?”
“Maybe I will!”
“Well, have fun! You’d be walking out alone for days and days! You’ll get bored in a couple of hours and come crawling back!”
“Maybe I will and maybe I won’t!”
“Fine!”
“Fine!”
The door slammed shut behind him.
Aziraphale was still incensed a few hours later. He let a few films run in front of his eyes without really absorbing them. He had expected Crowley to come back shortly, embarrassed, and sheepishly cuddle up next to him, and Aziraphale would hug him closer and comfort him and they would fall asleep together. The fact that Crowley did not behave as expected only made Aziraphale more irritated with him, but even when he was angry he could not cease to worry and fuss. He huffed and stomped over to his screen and opened a communication line with whoever was on duty keeping an eye on the dome. Authorized personnel could take atmosphere suits to go out into the open air when they had business out there, and he suspected Crowley would have miraculously convinced them to give him one if he had been serious.
“I’m looking for my partner and I think he might have tried to cross the barrier. Have you had any unexpected personnel come by lately?”
He was informed that one of their atmosphere suits had been taken and was still unaccounted for, and there had been an unauthorized exit from the bubble that was currently being investigated. Aziraphale thanked them and hung up.
He crossed his arms and sat on the couch. There was no reason to worry. Crowley wasn’t stupid, and he’d come back as soon as he realized how silly this game was.
It was still in the middle the night cycle, so Aziraphale ended up dozing on the couch for who knows how long. He was awoken by a demonic presence outside his door.
“There you are!” he growled, swinging the door open. “I was worried about you.”
He stopped, because he was not looking at Crowley at all. It was the other demon, the one who hadn’t really engaged them at all. She looked back at him politely.
“Hello,” she said. “I don’t think we’ve officially met yet. My name’s Lily.”
She extended her hand. Aziraphale shook it nervously. “Ah…hello…my name’s Aziraphale…May I ask to what I owe the pleasure of your visit?”
“Angel, I-”
“Don’t call me that.”
“What?”
“Don’t call me ‘angel.’”
The other demon clapped her hands together in a gesture of supplication. “Angel, I am begging you. Begging you. Please, start a fight with me.”
“Ah, I-what?”
She dragged her hands down her face, pulling down her eyelids. “This is so boring. This is the most boring thing I’ve ever done. Please, just a sword fight or something. I can’t stand these mind games we’ve been playing with each other so far.”
Mind games? Aziraphale imagined Lily trying to do subtle things to get his attention and then interpreting his silence as a deliberate response, a game of cat-and-mouse only one of them was aware was ongoing. Did she even know that Crowley was here too?
“Er, well you can forget all that nonsense about a fight,” he said. “Mine is supposed to be a nonviolent mission. You’ll have to find something else to keep you entertained, I’m afraid.”
“Aw, come on!” She threw her hands in the air. “I’m an agent of the evil one! Don’t you want to smite me?”
“Not really.”
She huffed angrily and stomped into the room, pushing past him.
“Hey, what do you think you’re doing?”
She kicked the stand upon which Crowley’s plant sat; the pot shattered as it hit the ground, and she viciously stomped the leaves. “Ha!” she said, continuing her violent onslaught on the innocent greenery. “There, I’m destroying your plant! Doesn’t that just make you mad enough to hit me?”
Aziraphale was still standing with his hand on the doorknob. “Er…that wasn’t mine, actually.”
She boiled over with frustration. “You’re pathetic! Useless! You hear me! What kind of angel won’t even fight a demon?”
Aziraphale stuck his nose in the air and pointed out the door. “One who’s had enough of this! I’ll kindly ask you to leave my home!”
Lily seemed to deflate. She trudged out, and Aziraphale slammed and locked the door behind her.
The angel plopped himself face down on the bed, pulling a pillow over his head. His anger was all gone now, and he just wanted Crowley back to cuddle. He supposed he should be more focused on preparing for a potential fight with the demoness of chaos, but he just didn’t have the energy. So he just lay there in the perpetual dark, under the heavy burden of gravity, alone and morose.
To be continued!