Welcome, friends, to a new entry in the atlas that is my serial novel. Today we begin our journey in earnest with Chapter One of my serialized story, The Strings Of Us. Here, we’ll meet our protagonist in their natural habitat, exploring the contours of a life that is about to be irrevocably changed.
For those who want to start at the absolute beginning and see the spark that lit this flame, you can find the Prologe right here:
And now, on with the show… cough* I mean, book!
Act 1
Elias - Human - Male: testimonial 001
I had always tried to protect my wife, the love of my life, but that had been getting harder, the world was getting harder. As the cracks in society started to widen and splinter, I could feel us moving further away from the hierarchical plateaus that afforded decency and comfort in life. We struggled, simply because we were not as necessary to the good of society, or so we were routinely told by the politicians. The world had become more extreme, and a person’s function - their role in society - had become a much more meaningful aspect to be considered for the average person than it had once been. Gone were the days when you could ‘follow your heart’. It begged the question of me, what use was a man who studied history, the past, and what use was a woman whose legs don’t work properly?
Things were getting particularly bad as our lives became more interlinked, evidenced by the days when we found ourselves eating from the same food banks as rabbits and breathing out mist into a one room studio apartment that didn’t have heating.
All of it was just about manageable of course, we had each other and we had a bit of work. We could survive because the one thing they couldn’t take was our enjoyment of the time we spent together.
Then one day I found out she was pregnant and, as you might expect, everything changed.
At first the feeling was elation, and then abject fear. Fear of what it would mean to bring a child into this poor life, fear of how we could provide for our baby. Love is often a dance you play with fear, because the things you hold dearest are also the things that could eventually break you if you were to lose them - or worse - let them down. Ironic that I did both.
This baby suddenly consumed the rest of the space my heart had to offer… But beyond that full heart, I could offer little else. I was scared for my baby. For the world I desperately wanted to give it, but couldn’t conceivably offer.
By this point I had already been contacted by government agencies offering me a better work position. They never could tell me what the job entailed fully, only that it would involve more of my unique expertise as a historian of Rabbit-kind. The caveat being that it would take me away from my home and my beloved wife and future child indefinitely.
Naturally I turned it down once, twice, over and over again. I could never quite fathom what they saw in me anyway. I was a historian in a notable university and with a few books to my name, yes, but simply a historian nonetheless. And what’s more, the topics of my studies were still widely unacceptable to most of human society. My interest in understanding rabbit kind was considered whimsical at best, and a waste of time at worst.
Anyway, my life has always been here, with her, with my geeky studies. There had never been any need to change it.
However, today was different. Weeks and weeks of near sleepless nights had culminated in this moment. Something had shifted in me, something that went deeper than the sleep deprivation. The baby was only one week away from its due date. I woke up one morning with an agenda. I used up a great deal of my credits to go into central London. I had told my wife that I was just going to work as usual, and to her credit she didn’t believe me. She knew me too well and she suspected something was up by the way I held her before I left. I was a terrible liar.
Striding through the doors of the nondescript building I had been given the address for felt like the final nail in the coffin. I was there to strike a deal and the moment I entered I knew I had to see it through. This was not an address that I suspected could remain known to someone they didn’t trust.
Two hours later I was on my way back home, a changed man. This was going to be the hardest part. I hadn’t been given long to get my life in order for this new position. Apparently if I had accepted earlier I could have had months, maybe even years to prepare. Now I had mere hours. I was told to pack my essentials, collect my books and my documents, what few possessions I could not do without, and to report to the airport by 9pm ready to be taken to America.
I didn’t know then whether to be thankful that when I got home she wasn’t there. By this point my heart was like a shredded tapestry, incomprehensible, and in my body’s confusion I didn’t read the room properly. I was crushing myself under the weight of this betrayal and so I only saw what I wanted to see, that perhaps she had gone to her sisters as she often did to listen to some music.
I grabbed my old phone, my packed up belongings, and left. An utter disgrace, and yet I knew it had to be done. What kind of a man abandons his wife and unborn child? I did. I had exchanged myself and my heart for a better life for them. A chance for them to live on one of the splintered shelves of this world where people still lived a good life. A healthy life.
Nine hours later I was being briefed about the nature of my new existence. I was leaving not only my family, but the only home I had ever known, this planet. I was being sent on some science expedition that would take me to the other side of the moon. Too many questions plagued my mind to be able to make sense of it, and the vast majority of my thoughts lingered on what I had done to them instead, until of course it became too painful and I pulled away to the comfort of mental nothingness. No thought… no pain.
I was told I might return someday, but that it was unlikely.
Later that same day, as the sun was low in the sky, I stepped into the elevator, a monolithic structure that extended to a geo-locked satellite far above earth in low orbit. The elevator had chairs of varying sizes that surrounded the outer edge of the vehicle, with seat belts that crossed over your shoulders and chest. I took one in the furthest corner, as far away from any light sources as I could get. I didn’t want to be seen. I wanted to be lost in the dark.
There were two passengers that later joined me in the elevator, a female rabbit and another rather austere looking human. Neither said much, but I didn’t blame them as I was projecting to utmost perfection, the demeanour of someone that distinctly didn’t want to be spoken to.
When the pod started rising upwards, a holographic video began to play in the middle of the room, enveloping us all in light and sound, almost truly immersive, effectively separating us three passengers through walls of light that stretched to the edges of my eyes. The first mission briefing had begun. I didn’t pay much attention, though I was mesmerised by some of the things I saw. Footage of scientists working on something extraordinary. A vast construction of some description though what shape or form it would take I couldn’t tell. There was a bit of talk on what had inspired this project, a scientific collaboration between humans and rabbits, a first of its kind level of cooperation.
One piece started to click into place at least, as a historian of human and rabbit relations, I was no doubt expected to mediate these two parties. That would likely be my new job.
The images continued to swirl showing earth environments, science labs, intersected with speaking heads detailing the nuances. I couldn’t really care less…
My pocket vibrated and a piercing sound pitched through the cabin. My phone was ringing. The name that hovered ghost-like above the screen sent unfathomable waves of guilt coursing through my stomach, so strong that I nearly feared the pod carrying me and my fellow passengers would be capsized by them. My shaking thumb hovered over the avatar picture of my wife. It pressed down.
“Elias. Where are you, I need you, where are you!”
She sounded as though she was in pain, there was a lot of background noise too, people talking to her, telling her to breathe. Reality slammed into me like a speeding train. Dear god no, she wasn’t due for another week!
“Ahhhhhhhh!” - (“breathe, and push again, you are nearly there, one more contraction).
“Elias, why aren’t you here! There are people taking me somewhere, I’m so scared” She nearly shouted it between heavy breaths.
“My love, listen to me, stay with those people, they are there because I asked them to be. They are taking you to a better…”
She roared and moaned again. I could hear the nurse in the background guiding her, teaching her what no one could ever really be taught. (That’s it, it’s coming now. I want you to push again in three more breaths…)
“Elias I need you… I need you…”
Finally the last pieces of my heart shattered and scattered across the floor. My eyes opened and tears poured out of me. Tears of remorse, of shame but mostly of love for this beautiful woman who I had left to go through this ordeal on her own.
“I’m sorry. I can’t join you. I’m being pulled somewhere else and I … I just can’t. But please know, I love you. I love you so much. These people are going to take care of you. Of both of you, you are going to have a good life, a life… a life that we never could have had or dreamed of.”
“Elias why? I love you… ahhhhhhhhhh - (breathe again, breathe, and then one more push, you are so close) - I don’t want a life without you in it”
She breathed and breathed as if she had been running a marathon and then roared once more in utter defiance of everything else. The holograms in the elevator cabin shielded me from the immediacy of the world around me, wrapping me in a cocoon of despair. The story being told in the holo-projections was leading towards a conclusion but I barely paid it any heed. An altitude meter in the corner of the hologram showed our progress upwards in the elevator pod as we moved further and further away from earth. In that moment I willed and wished for it to descend instead, but no force of man or god could stop it.
A baby’s cry cut through the swirling madness I was descending into. Echoing loudly through the phone and tugging at my ears. The guttural wail of a pure innocent, knowing the world and its coldness for the first time. A child feeling the sharpness of air as it was pulled into lungs not yet accustomed to being used. Straining against a muscle that had never been stretched. The child cried and everything else stopped. Never in all the world had I heard a sound so pure. So immediate. So divine.
“Elias, are you there.. Elias, she’s beautiful, she is so beautiful, she has your eyes”.
“Please tell me about her - what are you going to call her?”
“Elias, you should be here”. - she sobbed. I sobbed too.
“How about naming her after your sister? I asked”.
“Juliette, god no - that’s awful”. I heard a small smile in her voice. The mental image of which I held in my mind. “Maybe we can name her after your gran El, I always liked her name, and its still Shakespearean. Olivia? I like Olivia. She looks like an Olivia”.
The altitude meter started to flash showing that we were heading into the chronosphere of the planet’s atmosphere. The cabin started to pressurise and adjust around me, with hisses and clicks. I knew then I didn’t have much time left.
“Please, my love, listen to me. I’m going somewhere, I don’t know where, but I know that there is likely no return, and that I cannot be followed. Please. I am dead to you now!”
The weight of those words slammed into me like a train. I was dying. I had killed myself. But I had to keep talking, somehow!
“But it is my dying wish that you will both be protected, loved, safe. I have arranged it. You, your mother and sister, little Olivia as well, you are all going to have a new life and I … I can’t follow” I sobbed and struggled to find words or even oxygen.
“I know you will never forgive me for this, and I don’t expect you…”
“I forgive you Elias” she cried between her tears. “I will hate you for a long time, but I can forgive you. I know you would not have, could not have, done this any other way, and I have always loved you for exactly who you are. In every moment, even when you are a bloody idiot… I love you”.
“How can you know I would not have done this any other way”. I asked the question selfishly with my head between my knees, looking for an answer to give me some comfort, some respite from my guilt and shame.
“Because if you could have done it any other way, you would have... Elias, one day you might learn this”. This was not the first time she had said this to me, and I had never really understood it fully. But this time around the words brought me a moment of peace. A moment of silence hung between us as I grappled with what she was telling me.
My wife whispered down the phone.
“Olivia, my baby, say goodbye to your daddy.”
By now my daughter’s crying had subdued and Olivia was snuffling. I could hear every sound from my daughter, and they were like jewels, each and every one. Beautiful and yet sharp to the touch.
“Olivia, my daughter, I am so sorry, I hope you will have a good life.” I replied. “And to you, my dear… I love you so much, please be safe too”.
The altitude meter was flashing red now showing we were close to being released from our Mother Earth.
“Elias I love you too…”
Click*
And that was it, my phone stopped working as we went beyond the limits of its signal.
I folded over and buried my head in my hands, naked before the storm of emotions swelling through me. I felt stripped of everything and stood bare in front of the weight of my memories, expectations, hopes, fears, and judgements.
Light started to shine through my fingers, a colourful array of lights. The hologram was still playing, but the music had calmed and was peaceful. Music that sounded like the soft gentle lapping of a calm sea as it met the land. I looked up and what I saw took my breath away and caused my emotions to temporarily melt into the ground. In front of me was live footage of a … thing… floating behind the moon. If it was a satellite or a spaceship, it was unlike anything I had ever seen. It shone with the light of the sun as it might reflect off the earth. It was perhaps the size of a small country, a mini planet which against all expectations hovered there. A long needle-like structure emanated from it like a stem attached to the head of a dandelion that had gone to seed. The stem culminated in a comparatively small ball-like structure which then unfurled, petal-like, into sweeping majestic sails that wrapped back around and formed a curving shield that followed the shape of this miniature planet perfectly.
At that moment I saw my first real look at something beyond myself. Pain washed through me, stripping me of everything I had ever known about myself, and all that was left was an awareness that saw, as if for the first time, one of the most awe inspiring sights earth-kind had ever conceived. A jewel in the sky, and just moments before, a jewel in my phone’s speaker. The sound of my daughter’s life that came wailing into existence still rang in my ears, just as this mesmerising sight came bursting into existence before me as well. And through it all hung that moment, when my beautiful wife had found the capacity to somehow, beyond all comprehension, forgive me. Of all the wonders I witnessed, her forgiveness was the most incomprehensible miracle of all.
The moment of awe and wonder all too soon passed, and the pain of my treacherous decisions crashed back around me like water from a burst dam, flooding through my body and bursting from my eyes.
I later learnt that finding forgiveness for myself would be a much longer and tougher journey than my wife had made it look. Unbeknownst to me at that moment, however, I had all the galaxy ahead of me to find it.
And so we leave Elias, a man stripped of everything but his guilt, on a journey to the stars.
This first chapter is a heavy one, I know. It introduces the central, heartbreaking theme of our story: the impossible sacrifices we make for the ones we love, and the long, difficult road to forgiving ourselves for them. His testimonial is just the first thread in a much larger tapestry we’ll be weaving together in the stories yet to come.
Now, I’d love to hear from you.
What are your first impressions of Elias? Do you see his choice as an act of selfless love, a tragic betrayal, or something more complicated in between?
I’m eager to hear your thoughts in the comments.
Beautiful, beautiful writing. In some ways, too relatable, and where it isn't, truly fantastical in the most magical way. I'm excited to enter this world you've created!!!
Oh dear, you didn't lie when you said this was making people cry. Great introduction to the character and the world. It felt very cinematic! I'm astonished by Elias' wife. I couldn't forgive him, I would crawl through the phone, slap him left and right, and drag him right back where he belongs. Stupid man 😠