Bennu Station, 009:7 - Alignment Day
It has been nine days since the seventh alignment of the current star cycle. Alignment Day in the core is a much bigger deal, but it felt more special here in the outer concentric. I experienced cultures mashing their own celebratory traditions together with our own, not the same tired core-sponsored military parades and comfort foods legal for seven days of the year and priced accordingly.
Here, I made my mom's fermented vegetable cakes with sweet sauce and no one batted an eye that I had E. traditionalis cultures growing in my room. Shah said that it smelled a little weird, but never questioned the legality of it. It didn't taste as good as I remember, lacking the correct balance of spice and tang that I at least approximated in my previous attempts, but not even in the same realm as my mom's, which I haven't had for many Alignment Days now. I think knowing I could make it any time of the year without repercussions stole some of the flavour away.
Gazing down the Alignment Channel that Bennu set up was the most I've felt connected to the station, or to another being in all of my existence. Nothing one can do in a human relationship comes close. We all had our headsets on and gathered to stare out the station windows. The flare nearly blinded us, but then dissociated into the strongest colour fragments and shapes I have ever seen from an alignment. I knew the angle from out here was more aggressive, but I didn't---couldn't have---imagined the difference it would make. Rich people in the core always travel one or two concentrics out, and I know why, but their money is no good. Nothing could replicate what I experienced. The oranges triangles that the beam broke into as it melted, and the swirls that scooped every observer into the same warm wave has been running through my mind every day---it helps me fall asleep. For one instant every tentacle, limb, and sensory system was the same splash of burbling colour against the stars. If this had been thousands of years ago, a new religion would have been born.
This communion has given me time to reflect, and confirmed that some aspects of the self---maybe the most important ones---shouldn't be shared. This realization was the one that found me on a shuttle to Bennu in the first place. People are only ever presented the facade of others, and they come to rely on its stability. My naivete back in the core had me sharing the very essence of myself, believing this disclosure critical for lasting relationships. Maybe this is true for some people, but has not been true for me in practice.
It is why I find myself alone at my desk in a station on the edge of the outer concentric, anachronistically scrawling against my screen set to "paper" mode. I would have loved to see paper as it truly existed, not the few examples used for teaching or history. The actual warm gutting of the lungs of the earth to have a temporary and fragile document. Unable to be easily shared or distributed. A good so abundant that it could be treated with such contempt. This collective indifference is what I would like to experience the most.
I can dream of the medium, but the job of writing---of art---remains the same: to communicate the sacred and profane beliefs that must be secretly kept; to uphold the beautiful veil, lest the world catch more than a fleeting glimpse of unprocessed truth.
I will honour the Samurai sweeps of this katana on the page, and the worlds they can cut from whole cloth.