Radiance

It is a familiar story: Before the Wernyhora siblings gave us our road to the stars, the colonial powers and their worst-behaved corporate children made a feast of the world, and seemed ready to slaughter each other at table for one more slice of the bloody prize. To prove which one could fit the whole world in its mouth at once. And then—what? We are still stuck at that same table, frozen in place, a portrait of the dinner party at the moment it dispersed for more exciting revels. What would be left of Europe if those hungry empires had not been distracted by a hundred new worlds? What would be left now of the Iroquois League if half the American experiment had not lost interest in Louisiana the moment Venus sashayed by? Why should the doors of wild and raucous space still read England, Russia, France, Germany, China? Ninety years on, we still cannot get free of that cannibal dinner party whose invitations hit the post before any of us were born.

[SEVERIN tries to catch her breath. Terror shows in her eyes. The flush has drained from her cheeks. Her hands shake.]

I…I don’t remember what I meant to say. I had something written. I don’t remember. [A tremendous boom sounds somewhere off-camera; SEVERIN drops to the ground instinctively, crouching low. But she does not stop speaking.] I was born on the Moon, yet am not Lunar. I call myself English for no reason but the lion on my passport. I have never been to London. I have only set foot on Earth twice. I don’t know or care what goes on down there—but Earth still owns me. Earth owns all of us. And when we try to run into the garden, just for a moment, just to see something besides the same parlours and kitchens and halls our resentful parents built, we know what happens now. Phobos knows. They will starve us. They will burn us. They will bleed us.

[Fire detonates against the building; glass flies, cutting SEVERIN’S face, her arms, knocking her hard against Prithvi Deep Sea Holdings’ massive steel mineral processors. She crumples to the floor. She tries to lift herself up, but her left arm will not take the weight. She does not lift her head, but her words can be heard clearly. Blood drips from her mouth onto the cement.]

Our mother countries never stopped longing to devour everything. They never stopped hanging garlands for the party they had planned, never stopped groping to pin the tail on the manifest destiny. Back then, back before the stars, they meant to go to war over who got that pin. Today, I can’t escape the feeling that their war is still coming. It’ll take longer than it would have if we had stayed safe in our Earthbound beds. It may take a lot longer. It will be so much worse. But there is a script, and it will be followed.

[Men swarm into the warehouse, bashing the machinery with crowbars, with their bare hands, with streetlamps hoisted by six at a time. They do not see the camera or SEVERIN; they trample her, their boots on her cheek, her shoulder, her back. She calls out pitifully before she loses consciousness.]

ARKADY LIU

They may starve us, but we will choke them on their own wealth!

SEVERIN

Raz, help me. Fuck. I’m really hurt.

From the Personal Reels of

Percival Alfred Unck

[PERCIVAL UNCK films his daughter playing on the slopes of Mount Ampère. Blue alpine cassias twist up all around her, gnarled and stumped and prickly with translucent needles. They prefer the relative warmth of the valleys. The heights turn the endless forests of the Moon to hunched, baleful, contorted creatures. A thin scrim of snow crunches under SEVERIN UNCK’S small feet. She is dressed in her father’s idea of a mountain climber’s costume: lederhosen, stockings, buckled shoes, a ruffled shirt. Her long hair is ribboned into thick pigtails. Severin tries to entice her father into playing hide and seek, but though he is happy to seek her, he will not perform his part by hiding. He might miss something. Finally, the child gives up.]

SEVERIN

Daddy, you have to chase me! Don’t you know anything?

PERCIVAL

Oh, I’ll chase you, Rinny. I’ll chase you anywhere you run! And when I find you I will chomp you to bits like a bad old wolf!

[Shrieks and giggles. SEVERIN runs behind a malevolently torsioned cassia. She peeks out again, brushing needles out of her hair.]

SEVERIN

But when you catch me and chomp me, after that you have to hide and I’ll chase you! That’s how you play, silly! And when I find you I’ll roar like a TIGER and scare you to DEATH.

PERCIVAL

[Laughing.] Shan’t! I have the camera, and whoever has the camera is King and gets to make the rules.

SEVERIN

[Leaps up, grasping at air. The image shakes as he yanks Clara up and out of reach.] Gimme! Give it to me! I want it!

The Ingénue’s Handbook

January 16, 1930, Definitely Three in the Morning