What Fates We Make

What Fates We Make
By Marcelle Natisin



It was 559 years after the red star called the Crimson Eye went supernova.
That same day The Oracle had died, leaving behind her 1,000 years of prophesy meticulously laid out, day by day, on the Holy Calendar.
"We must remain on Schedule." Lochrane said into the microphone, but though it was talking to a council of elders seated comfortably on their home world, it was thinking of the death of The Oracle: of how she had looked laid out on her funeral bed, of the particular weight of her armorless hand in its own.
It had never seen another personage out of their exoskeleton before, but The Oracle was so old by then that her limbs could not bear the strain of the suit meant to protect her. The chamber offered a strange tableau from where Lochrane stood between the open double doors. Soft swooping lines of soothing coral pink and pure white marble decorated walls and ceiling, and the other personages there to serve The Oracle in her final hours drifted in hulking silence around the fluffy white bed, their malachite exoskeletons stark against the glowing decor. Then, surreal amidst it all,  that frightening sight: The Oracle dying. Lochrane remembered her looking both terribly fragile and utterly frightening.
She wore a white quilted gown seeded with pearls and her skin was clear-- flexible and clear--over her long bones. Lochrane had seen tendons, veins, and worst of all, the skull: the under-skull like the kinds animals have, with great dark brown eyes staring out from the orbits in sad contemplation. She had looked at Lochrane as if she were looking at herself, reflected in Lochrane's multifaceted eye lenses. Her clear lips--discernable only by their vaguely pinkish tinge--curved upward. Lochrane recalled, innocuously and at a later date, that The Oracle's lips had been the same pink hue as the coral decorations on the vaulted ceiling. When her hand closed around Lochrane's hand, Lochrane had been afraid.
"Someday, you too…" was all she said.
"You will be entering the atmosphere shortly," the council commander in the monitor said.
"Exactly 17:00 hours," Lochrane replied, shortly, examining the jewel bright display on the navigation monitor. "Just as prophesized."
It reached across the control panel, twisted the knob that cut off power to the rockets in its malachite fingers, and braced itself. The capsule shuddered violently. Lochrane calmly tightened the restraint strap across its chest as the shuttle fell into orbit.
"Once you have made the landing, you must complete The Day's Itinerary." The council secretary began enumerating, its tone verging on boredom, with that particular cadence that bespoke a complete lack of interest in the material. During Itinerary Point Four, the audio feed began to falter.
"Council?" Lochrane asked, vaguely alarmed. "Council, can you repeat yourself?"   Around it, the capsule began to jitter violently.  Lochrane's exoskeleton made sharp metallic ringing noises as it bounced within the seat. Static scratched over the audio feed, and a gauge above the control panel pulsed bright red as the temperature increased alarmingly.  Though protected by it's exoskeleton, Lochrane felt the capsule around it growing abnormally warm.
"Council?" It asked the static. And then , filled with exasperation and horror, Lochrane cried, "This is not on The Schedule!"
Then there was a violent jolt, so hard that Lochrane felt its head, its soft inner skeleton, strike  the inside of its exoskeleton. Something lanced up into its side, piercing the malachite plates. It lost consciousness just as the capsule tore open and white light burned through.




It did not  realize that pain was pain. There was only one past instance where it had ever been damaged enough to puncture its exoskeleton. In the single most uncomfortable moment of its life, Lochrane had caught its arm in a water-mill engine propeller.
Lochrane woke upside-down , still strapped to the launch chair.  The sound of rushing water hummed in its ears. Maybe it was the sound of the water, or the strange-rare discomfort of pain, that reminded Lochrane of that time. Compared to what Lochrane felt now, that brief flash of sensation seemed pathetic.
It tried to move, carefully at first and then violently when careful did not produce freedom.
There was nothing left of the capsule but a half-circular wall behind it. The chair it sat in was wedged between two rocks, and a silver trail of shrapnel lead up the side of the mountain to the sky.
Cool winds scoured grey rock and tossed through placid green brush dotted with lilac blossoms. Moisture splattered Lochrane's eye lenses. Twisting its head to the right, it saw the waterfall roaring out over the rocks and down the mountain only a few paces from where the capsule sat lodged amid the boulders.
There was no mountain on The Itinerary and no crash listed either. All of this, especially the stinging pain in its side and the raw feeling of oxygen on its bare under-skeleton, was wrong.  Flipping its forearm blade out slowly, Lochrane tentatively reached up and cut the restraint belt . It fell heavily, malachite plates clattering, and slid down 15 feet of tattered foliage into a flowering bush. Only a swift grab at a helpful pine tree kept it from plummeting off into the rushing water. Carefully, Lochrane sat up, grunting, and pressed a hand to its side. Its own armored hand felt painfully warm and hard against the  flesh left exposed by the rent in its armor.
It moaned in anguish muttering, "This isn't right, this isn't right," and put its head in its hands, tasting something thick and metallic in its mouth.
The alien sun was at its zenith when, an hour later, Lochrane convinced itself to stand. It moved carefully up the mountain, scanning the scattered tubes  and heat resistant ceramic plates that had been torn from the capsule. There was nothing left of the control panel or the visual screen. Only a single undamaged cache of nutrient pellet rations remained. At least it would not starve.  When Lochrane tried to use its personal intercom to contact the council,  it heard nothing but static. Kicking the broken remains of the capsule computer did not miraculously revive it. There would be no turning on the computer to access The Day's Itinerary and make a valiant attempted at rescuing the day's Schedule.
Luckily, Lochrane,  like any faithful personage, kept a copy of The Oracle's Holy Calendar on clear-film it the chest slot of it exoskeleton.
It wanted to remove The Calendar and turn it on right away, desperate for the measure of comfort found it its prophetic lines and all-knowing numbers. However, the desire to remove the taste from its mouth overrode this desire. Lochrane let base instinct guide it. For Lochrane, who had never moved in any way that was not predetermined, this was the most difficult thing it had ever done in its life.
It staggered back down the mountain, following the trail of debris then  bypassing it. Below, where the waterfall crashed into a great dark basin, there lay a sprawling carpet of pine trees, curving up the slopes over other mountains, their forms punctuating an endless expanse of wilderness like the spikes on the back of an arcing water serpent. Mist swirled over the forest-world in great gauzy swaths.
"Beautiful." Lochrane murmured to itself and to the view this alien world provided. But beauty hadn't been on The Schedule today either. The capsule was supposed to have made a water landing for the most minimal damage to the natural environment but Lochrane could see no hint of ocean: no water aside from the glowing ribbon of the river, which snaked on through the trees in great arches to the misty horizon.
By the time it reached the bottom, it was in so much pain and nearly doubled over from thirst, that it nearly walked into the broad  bowl of the waterfall.  In the exoskeleton, Lochrane would have been safe from downing. It could have stood on the bottom of the river and examined the sediments on the riverbed or the local fauna swimming within. With the gaping crack in its side, however, Lochrane's exoskeleton would fill up in an instant. Its hand went to the slot over its heart where The Oracle's Calendar rested, but Lochrane did not remove it.
Standing on the store, Lochrane instead stared in hungry desire at the rippling silver liquid. It remembered The Oracle's words, echoing through memory: "Someday, you too…"
Now Lochrane knew what she meant.
Lochrane could not remember a time being out of its exoskeleton. Only the dead ever lay naked without its protection. But, Lochrane reasoned, it was as good as dead. No harm, then, in taking off the exoskeleton. And it desperately wanted a drink. It started with the broken torso plates, flinging the release valves with steady fingers then moving out to the limbs; the arms and then the legs. Lastly, Lochrane removed the helmet and set it gingerly aside, amid the neat pile that was its personage: its entire being. It sat naked, knowing it should look at itself but afraid--terribly afraid to acknowledge anything below the chin. So, Lochrane refused to look at itself  and to hide its naked strangeness from its own eyes, it slipped into the river water.
Blood, bright red blood, washed away in the warm water, the current twirling the foulness off along the shore and through the weaving pine trees. Lochrane cupped handfuls of the clean liquid in its strange naked hands and lifted it to its  strange naked lips, laughing hysterically at how horribly wrong and horribly beautiful everything was. It clenched its hands into fists, seeing the veins beneath the skin dark blue as the damselflies skimming over the water. Thousands of light years away, the council must be scrambling in anxiety, flipping through The Calendar searchingly, crying out in multifaceted voices, made sharp by the speakers in their exoskeletons.
"Lochrane, Lochrane come in. Why don't you answer?"
"This isn't on The Calendar."
"What should we do?"
" It doesn't say!"
"Oh sweet Oracle, guide us!"
Lochrane thought of them all twisted in their panic and gave a sad, soft laugh. They must be wondering if they would ever find their next Oracle now that Lochrane's mission had failed. Once the Holy Calendar ran out, who then would plot the next 1000 years of their lives?
Lochrane turned back for the shore, and when it did, it caught a flash of something in the water. Against its better judgment, against its will, Lochrane glanced down.
It saw the Oracle staring up at it from the shimmering surface of the water, The Oracle as she was  on her deathbed, with her face bare. Yet the face Lochrane glimpsed was not wrinkled at the corners of the eyes and mouth but smooth almost all over, save for a single vertical frown-line that ran between the brows. There was evidence of a broken nose and a messy split in the lips where teeth had cut them from the inside. The flesh was pale to translucence with the same bright blue veins; the same great dark eyes, wild as an animal's.
"I knew I would find you here." Lochrane said, speaking down to her own reflection.